Foreign Tongue (6 page)

T
he day I printed out my much-revised translation of chapter one was sunny and cool, so I put on jeans and a sweater and walked to Editions Laveau. The cowbell clanged as I walked in. Monsieur Laveau, phone glued to ear, poked his head out of his office, scowled at me, and ducked back in. He raised his voice and slammed the door.

The bookstore smelled musty and humid, old leather mixed with damp. I paged through a handsomely bound George Sand and ran my fingers over a twenty-volume set of Saint-Simon’s memoirs. I sat on a stack of dusty
Revue des etudes napoléoniennes
and took out the envelope.

Laveau opened the door, plucked the envelope from my lap, gave me a five-euro note, and shut the door. I looked down at the bill. Was it a
tip? Did he think I was a messenger? I turned it over in my hand.

“Mais alors,”
he scolded, coming out of his office two minutes later.
“Vous êtes toujours là?”
He fixed me with a pained look. He had no idea who I was.

“Yup, still here,” I said, hoping English would jog his memory. He continued to stare at me.
“Il me semble que vous me devez une petite somme d’argent,”
I prodded, my voice squeaking.
“La traduction.”
Enlightenment dawned.

“Ah, oui, c’est vrai. Entrez, mademoiselle, je vous en prie,”
he said. I followed him into the office and stood, avoiding the evil club chair. I spotted my translation on the floor, on top of a pile of papers. In fact, the whole office was littered with small mountains of manuscripts and papers. It occurred to me that there were probably lots of us bilingual women running around Paris, looking to make some extra cash doing translation. I was probably one of many he’d hired on spec.
“Tenez,”
he said, handing me a check. It was for three hundred euros, more than the amount he’d said, and it was blank. So, he’d forgotten my name as well.

I eyed the piles of paper again. His author probably didn’t read more than a page or two of our translations before he tossed them into the
poubelle
with a weary sigh. Monsieur Laveau ignored me, rifling through a file folder while I stood there, shifting my weight from foot to foot. I’d worked hard on that translation, and it didn’t matter.

“Au revoir, monsieur,”
I said. He nodded, not looking up. Because I figured it was the last time I’d have to deal with him, I added,
“C’est bien dommage.”
It’s a pity.

That got his attention.
“Pardon?”
he asked.

“Non, rien.”
I shrugged.
“Enfin, c’est dommage que personne ne lira ce que j’ai traduit. Le chapitre est nul, mais pas si nul que ça.”
It’s a pity no one will read what I translated. The chapter is bad, but not that bad. I said it breezily, offhand.

“Mais voyons, mademoiselle—”
he began, his voice deep with reproach. The phone rang, and he waved at me to stay, but I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t want to wait obediently while he talked, I didn’t like being waved at, and I didn’t want to be polite.

I yanked open the door and walked outside. On the sidewalk, I felt like a rebel, walking out on someone who reminded me of my disapproving French grandfather. The 96 bus approached the carrefour, and I chased it down, running like it was the last bus out of the Sixth ever.

Even though the French claimed the summer exodus wasn’t as extreme as it used to be, by mid-August, Paris felt emptied of Parisians. Restaurants and stores closed, leaving hastily scribbled signs taped to their doors notifying customers of the
fermeture annuelle
. There were lines at the big museums, with double-parked tourist buses, their engines running to keep the AC on for one white-shirted driver. In less touristy neighborhoods, nearly all of the
commerçants,
including my
boulangerie
across the street, closed, and some drivers didn’t deign to stop at red lights.

Bunny went to Lake Constance, somewhere in Austria, where friends of his had a chalet. Pascal went away again, to join Florian on the île de Porquerolles. Clara called from her sister’s place in Corsica, repeating her invitation for me to join her. Althea and Ivan sent me a postcard from the Dordogne, where, she wrote in green crayon, they were eating and drinking too much.

I visited the smaller museums—the Jacquemart-André, Nissim de Camondo, Cernuschi, even the Musée de la Chasse, with its stuffed deer heads. At the Fondation Cartier, I toured a room with nine oversize black-and-white photographs of the Namibian desert. The shadows of the sand looked like flesh: the dip of a belly button, the back of a knee, the hollow of a neck. I thought of Eve, the author’s description of her
skin. After ten days of no real conversation beyond slip-thin exchanges of pleasantries, I was a little bored and counting the days until
la rentrée,
at the beginning of September.

Another day, after holing up at the Action Christine for a Jean Gabin double feature, I went to the Musée de Cluny to visit the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, which I hadn’t seen since I was a kid. I wandered through the medieval garden and followed an elderly couple with matching gray haircuts and tracksuits down a flight of stairs to the ruins of the Roman thermal baths.

It was cold and quiet in the
frigidarium,
and I looked for the mosaic mentioned in the information pamphlet. It was eerily quiet, and the city seemed far away. I scraped my feet against the stone floor and admired the carved arches. There was something intriguing about the place. In the stillness, I could feel, well, if not an ancient hush, a respectable age.

The elderly couple spoke, and the sound bounced off the walls. I couldn’t tell where they were, but they had English accents.

“You know, I’d rather like to get back,” she said, playfully.

“Hungry already? We’ve only just had tea.”

“Richard.
Think
.” Then a shuffling sound.

They were in their seventies, and they were kissing behind a wall when I bumped into them. A flurry of embarrassed apologies ensued. We flew in opposite directions, like repelling magnets.

I kept seeing them kissing, eager to get back to their hotel: her hand, grasping the shiny, nylon waistband of his pants, his arm around her shoulders, nose pressed into her cheek, awkward and hungry. Timothy and I had kissed under an archway in Venice, as passing car headlights striped us with light.

I stood in the Roman bathhouse. I was a lonely person in an empty town.

I walked back through the winding streets of the Fifth, away from the bustle of tourists in the Quartier Latin. I walked around the Arènes
de Lutèce, down behind the Jardin des Plantes, and I had no context and no contact. I might as well have been a ghost, wandering through streets where real people lived. I felt immaterial, disembodied, incapable of making an impression: if I’d walked through mud, I wouldn’t have left prints.

At home, I ran a bath with water so hot I had to ease into it. A thin line between bathing and braising. The air was steamy, and my toes turned red in the water. I bent down, reached my hands in for balance, and lowered myself into a sitting position. The contrast between hot water and cool air made me want to scratch my skin, and I watched the waterline itch its way up my knees as I straightened them. Tiny bubbles clung to my stomach. I gave them a nudge and they floated away. My breasts floated on the surface like buoys, the nipples puckered and pink. Heat licked off the water, and I felt groggy and still, suspended.

The phone rang, and I had to duck the stupid and impossible hope that it was Timothy, but it was just Pascal and Florian, back in town and asking me over for dinner.

I got dressed and walked across the
grands boulevards
to their little two-floor courtyard house in the garment district,
le sentier
. A set decorator, Florian had created a jungle of greenery with potted plants around the front door. Inside, Pascal was cutting up a melon when I kissed him hello. The décor had changed since the last time I’d been there, two years ago, the old zebra stripes replaced by sage green suede furniture with brown leather pillows.

Florian came downstairs as I was wrestling with their ancient sharpei, Butch. Except for the tan, he looked the same: ruddy skin stretched across sharp, raw-boned features, long, thin nose, big ears. We sat down to a dinner of
melon de Cavaillon
with
jambon de parme,
followed by pasta primavera and a big green salad, all of it washed down with rosé. Florian, eyes twinkling with an almost malevolent delight, wasted no time in firing the opening salvo in that national sport, the argument.

“There is no such thing as good American television,” he declared.

“That’s not true. There are lots of good shows on American TV,” I said, finding myself in the dubious position of defending something I rarely watched.

“Oui
.
Alerte à Malibu,”
he scoffed, using the French title for
Baywatch.

“Give me a break,” I scoffed back, helping myself to more salad. “That’s like me saying there’s no good French music and backing it up by citing Johnny Hallyday.”

“Name one good TV program,” he said. Before I could, he added, “It’s all crap, designed to pander to the lowest common denominator and sell useless products to your consumer culture while the masses starve.”

“What masses? We have poverty, no doubt, but no starving masses,” I protested.

“Of course you do. As does the rest of the world.”

“But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about TV, and there
are
good shows, you just don’t know about them because they’re not on French TV—”

“Laisse tomber,”
Pascal murmured, urging me to let it go. I ignored him.

“Like
The Office,
or
Lost,
or
The Daily Show,
” I continued.

“Paid for by powerful media conglomerates whose only real interest is making money,” Florian retorted. “What do you have, six media companies? Six?”

“But that doesn’t mean the shows aren’t good!” I said. “Stop changing the subject!”

“That
is
the subject,” he said.

“No, it isn’t. The subject is whether there’s anything good on TV,” I said.

“Oh, les Américains,”
he sighed. “
Toujours premier degré
. So literal.”

I turned to Pascal.
“Aide moi!”
I pleaded, but he shook his head and took a drag off his cigarette.

“He pisses me off!” I exclaimed. Florian smiled, little shark teeth gleaming. “Yes, you,” I said, glaring at him. The French consider a meaty, messy argument good, clean fun for the whole family; moreover, they like to go off on tangents and dart around the issue like it’s a soccer ball to be kicked around a field. Florian dropped a kiss on the top of my head.

“
Allons,
I’ll buy you an ice cream,” he said. “It’s my turn to walk the dog.” I kissed Pascal good night, and Florian, Butch, and I walked down the rue Montorgueil to Amorino, the gelateria, where we stood in a line stretching out onto the sidewalk.

“Alors, dis-moi.
Pascal told me a little bit.
Comment vas tu?
” Florian asked.

“So-so,” I said. “Some days are better than others. Today wasn’t one of them.”

“It is very important to be faceful,” he said. His English was good, but sometimes he struggled with the “th” sound, especially when he was tired. “You know, I am in love with Pascal, and Pascal is in love with me. It is the most beautiful thing: the man I love loves me.” I bit my lip as he spoke. “And in the gay community, it is much harder to be faceful,” he added, his big, round eyes solemn. “
Alors,
this Tom—”

“Timothy,” I corrected.

“Bah, Tom, Tim, it’s a name for a pet. A black Labrador.
N’est-ce pas,
Butch?” He bent and scooped the dog up in his arms. “He was no good,” he concluded. I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s the truce,” he protested.

We got our cones and walked outside. Half a dozen American senior citizens, all wearing flag pins, stood on the sidewalk, comparing flavors. Florian grinned and shouted, “God bless America, and vote Democrat!” He’d started saying it after 9/11 and hadn’t stopped.

T
he novelty of
la rentrée
faded, and by the end of the first week in September, the city shifted into regular speed. Despite the fact that I’d had to transfer more money out of my savings, I continued to live as if I were carefree, on vacation. I woke up late, lounged around, checked e-mail, saw friends, explored the city, and shopped for food, one of my favorite activities.

On my way to the rue de Buci market street across the river, the smell of charred sweet corn wafted over from a makeshift brazier fitted into a supermarket shopping cart on the corner. I bought my weekly
Pariscope
at the kiosk, and the elderly man with gold-rimmed glasses who’d never acknowledged my existence beyond returning change smiled and wished me good day.

Startled, I felt my dry lips stick to my teeth as my voice hiccuped over the polite
“Vous aussi.”
It was the first time my larynx had formed
sounds that day. I had to remember to talk to myself over breakfast in the future; I smiled at the thought of behaving like a crazy person in private in order to prevent the appearance of such in public.

A hefty butcher in a bloody apron, unloading large pieces of beef from a van, roared,
“Vous voyez? C’est beaucoup mieux quand vous souriez!”
You see? It’s much better when you smile. He slid mottled, pudgy fingers down his chest, as if he were looking for suspenders to tuck his thumbs into.

The French have an expression for a surly face:
“aimable comme une porte de prison,”
as friendly as a prison door. Apparently, it was the face I usually wore, but for some reason, I didn’t have it on today, and people noticed.

I crossed the river at the Pont Neuf. There was a furniture store on the other side that always made me happy, partly because each of its picture windows exhibited a single chair, angled just so and lit like a Hurrell model, and partly because of its name, Etat de Siège, which means state of siege, but
“siège”
in French also means seat, armchair. It wasn’t a translatable pun, though I’d toyed with “seat of power.”

There were lots of people milling about when I got to the market. I stood for a moment, watching the passersby. I’ve always loved French market streets. You can eavesdrop on conversations about recipes, see what fruits and vegetables are in season, and learn about the things people eat. At the
poissonnerie,
I’d learned that the orange sac attached to a scallop,
le corail,
is considered a delicacy. The secret to a velvety spinach velouté is to purée one whole ripe pear into it, a bourgeoise in a Burberry and an Hermès scarf told her friend at the vegetable stand.

I stopped in front of the
traiteur,
gazing at eggs in clear jelly like resin paperweights, various salads, quiches with golden brown
pâte brisée
crusts, and glazed tarts paved with mosaics of sliced fruit. A woman behind the counter moved a
tourte provençale
aside to give the
place d’honneur
to a whole poached salmon, covered in translucent cucumber scales. A black olive eye glistened at the head.

Across the street, a tourist shop sold polyester print scarves of the Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower key chains, and reproduction street signs. There were also baskets filled with seashells, iridescent with mother-of-pearl or shiny with a genital pink. I picked up a spiky conch and held it to my ear. A brown stream of cold liquid raced down my forearm to the elbow. I gave a yelp and thrust the shell back. I mopped my arm with a tissue, but it had a shockingly foul and persistent odor, the smell of rotting seaweed, or rotting sea creature. In my bag, I found an old Air France towelette and scrubbed my arm, but I could still smell the stink beneath the artificial lemon scent.

I dumped the towelette in the trash and walked into a patisserie. An idea of dinner took the shape of a couple of chocolate éclairs, but then I saw the almond croissants,
fourré à la frangipane et au chocolat
. They were limp with filling, as if exhausted by their own excess, and decorated with piped chocolate and a dusting of powdered sugar. I stared, rapt, until the person behind me coughed.

“Pardonnez-moi, monsieur,”
I said, stepping aside to let a beige trench coat go by.

“Ah, Monsieur Laveau! J’ai votre tarte aux pommes ici,”
said the woman behind the counter. I looked up: it was the same Monsieur Laveau. I ducked my head, debating whether to say hello or bolt. He walked past me, dangling a medium-size cake box by its ribbon, and I blurted out his name.

“Monsieur Laveau?”
I asked.

“Oui?”
He looked at me blankly. I felt a flush of anger. Was I invisible? Was there no way to make an impression on this man?

“Je ne sais pas si vous vous souvenez de moi, mais je vous ai fait une traduction il y quelque temps?”
As I reminded him of who I was, I started out okay, but then I made my statement a question, a nervous, adolescent tic. He studied me for a moment, then exclaimed:

“Ah, mais c’est vous! Mademoiselle, on vous cherchait! Vous n’avez pas laissé vos coordonnées, ni votre nom sur le dossier! Nous étions convaincus
qu’on ne vous trouvera jamais!”
It’s you! We were looking for you, but you didn’t leave your name or phone number. We thought we’d never find you.

I didn’t know who the “we” was, and his answer threw me. I knew I’d included my name and number on the manuscript, and I rushed to say so.
“Mais, monsieur, je suis certaine que j’ai—”

“Venez, j’ai un autre chapitre pour vous, j’aurais besoin de la traduction la semaine prochaine, assez rapidement si possible,”
he interrupted.
“Trois cents euros par chapitre, ça vous va?”
he asked, taking my elbow and wheeling me around, presumably to the bookstore. Now I was even more convinced he’d mixed me up with someone else—I distinctly remembered him originally quoting two hundred euros per chapter, but I wasn’t going to argue with more money.

“Vous avez bien deux minutes?”
he asked, looking at his watch.

“Oui, mais, peut-être vous faites confusion avec quelqu’un d’autre?”
Maybe you’re confusing me with someone else?

“Mais non, mais non, mais non,”
he muttered, pulling me across the boulevard Saint-Germain. His nose twitched, and he let go of my elbow. I wondered if my arm still smelled of decaying sea creature. We walked up the street and into his store, and yet again, I stood alone among the piles of books as Monsieur Laveau leaped to answer the phone in his office, slamming the door behind him. I picked up a collection of short stories and sat down on a rickety chair in the corner. The cowbell pealed, and a tall man came in and said,
“Bonjour.”

“Bonjour,”
I answered politely, not looking up from the book.

“Vous attendez Bernard?”
he asked, gesturing at the closed door.

“Oui,”
I said, glancing at him. He looked familiar, with a rugged, handsome face: olive skin under a mop of brown hair, beaky nose, square jaw, and hooded, brown eyes. Around forty, he wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a velvet jacket, an old leather portfolio tucked under his arm.

“Il nous fait toujours attendre, ce sacré Bernard,”
he said with a rueful, dimpled smile. He always makes us wait. I gave a quick smile and looked
away, feeling shy.
“Qu’est ce que vous lisez?”
he asked, tucking sunglasses into his pocket. I held up the book and read the spine.

“Stendhal,
Chroniques italiennes,
” I said.

“‘C’est la cristallisation, comme dit Stendhal,’”
he said, sounding like he was quoting someone. I squinted at him, puzzled.

“Une chanson de Gainsbourg cite la fameuse théorie de Stendhal sur la cristallisation de l’amour,”
he said, explaining that a Gainsbourg song referenced some theory Stendhal had. I shook my head: I didn’t know it, either the theory or the song. He studied me for a moment.

“Ah, vous n’êtes pas française,”
he observed.
“Italienne?”
I shook my head.
“Espagnole?”
I shook my head again.
“Je sais,”
he said, tapping the side of his nose.
“Grecque.”
I shook my head again.
“Dites-moi, alors,”
he asked, giving up.

“Américaine.”

“Really? You don’t sound American. You don’t look American, either,” he said, switching into accented but fluent English. “How do you know Bernard?”

“I’m doing some work for him. Translation.”

“Ah.” His speculative look said, So, it’s you. I wondered if he was Monsieur Laveau’s famous secretive writer.

“What’s
cristallisation
?” I asked.

“It’s a theory Stendhal came up with to describe the process of falling in love. There’s a delightful drawing he made, comparing it to a journey from Bologna to Rome.”

His phone beeped, and as he studied the screen, I realized where I’d seen his face: he was an actor. I’d seen him in a TV movie about police corruption, where he’d played an Algerian cop with a heroin problem. He caught me staring and held the look. A warm liquid pooled in my stomach.

“Olivier! Navré de vous avoir fait attendre,”
Monsieur Laveau apologized, emerging from his den.

“Mais pas du tout, mon ami. Je parlais avec cette charmante demoi
selle—”
Olivier said, still looking at me and leaving a silence open for my name. Monsieur Laveau’s head swiveled around in alarm. He placed his hands on his hips, the picture of arms-akimbo vexation.

“Vous êtes toujours là?”
You’re still here? My jaw dropped open. It was pathological, the way he always forgot about me. Olivier folded his arms and grinned, finding this hugely entertaining. Monsieur Laveau muttered something unintelligible, took an envelope from his office, and thrust it at me.

“Tenez, mademoiselle. A bientôt,”
he said. He took my arm and hustled me outside. On the sidewalk, he apologized for being brusque and explained that he had a meeting with an important client. Then he reminded me that the translation was confidential. I nodded, bewildered.

“Bien. Vous n’avez rien dit?”
You didn’t say anything? he asked, cocking his head toward the store.

“Non,”
I said, wondering if telling Olivier I was translating counted.

“Bien. Bien, bien.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“A mercredi prochain,”
he added, reminding me to come back next Wednesday, and went back in. I walked away, turning over pieces of information like Scrabble tiles, wondering if I could arrange them to make sense. Was Olivier the writer? He couldn’t be: Monsieur Laveau had described a famous intellectual, not an actor. Though the French did consider some actors intellectuals. Maybe Olivier knew the writer. Or maybe Olivier was his important client? Nothing fit together in any illuminating way.

On the other hand, three hundred euros a week under the table wasn’t a bad income for someone who wasn’t paying rent. I stopped in front of a boutique window and stared at my shadowy outline in the glass as I twisted my neck to unkink it.

“Puis-je vous aider?”
asked the store clerk, a young woman in a miniskirt and high heels standing in the doorway. Startled, I realized I’d been standing in front of a window display of silk and lace lingerie, all the time wondering what the hollow at the base of Olivier’s neck tasted like.