I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do)

by Mark Greenside

  FREE PRESS

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 2008 by Mark Greenside

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All illustrations copyright © Kim Thoman

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Greenside, Mark.

  I’ll never be French (no matter what I do): living in a small village in Brittany / Mark Greenside

  p.cm.

  1. Americans—France—Brittany. 2. Brittany (France)—Description and travel. 3. Brittany (France)—Social life and customs. 4. Country life—France—Brittany. I. Title.

  DC34.5.A44G74 2008

  944' .10839092—dc22

  [B] 2008007984

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-8713-2

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-8713-6

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  To Kathryn Levy for getting me there,

  and Donna Umeki, who makes it better every year;

  and to my parents, Dorothy and Ernest Greenside,

  for their generosity in everything,

  and all my friends in Brittany,

  especially Joe and Yvonne B. and their family;

  merci, merci, mercy.

  A Note to the Reader

  It is my fervent wish in writing this book not to create any international incidents or lose any friends. There fore, the American, English, and Canadian names are actual names (except Sally’s), because those people generally like being singled out. Most of the French names, including some of the places, are fictionalized, because those people generally do not.

  Contents

  I

  Getting There

  There

  Market Day

  Pardon Moi

  Fête Nautique

  Buying a House

  II

  The Oil Guys

  The Floor Guy

  The Insurance Guy

  Martin and Jean

  III

  A Day in the Life

  The New Yorker in Me

  Île Callot

  The Police

  Bon Anniversaire to Me

  Two Loves, Two Lives

  Acknowledgments

  I

  Getting There

  It begins with a girl. It always begins with a girl, and even though we don’t make it through the summer—through even half the summer—she gets me there and changes my life. It doesn’t matter what happened or why, it’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given.

  It happened like this.

  It’s 1991 and I’m in her apartment, living her third of our bicoastal relationship (one-third in New York, one-third in California, one-third apart), probably the only person in Manhattan looking forward to a summer in the city, when she says, “Honey, let’s go to France.”

  I close my book and listen, petrified. I hate to fly and don’t speak French. This isn’t a good idea. I was in Paris in 1966, and they loathed me, and I don’t think I’ve changed that much. “Let’s go to Saskatchewan.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “I know. They speak English and we can drive.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”

  It’s late May, a beautiful spring in New York, and this is her busiest time at work. As far as I can see, there’s no need to start studying French.

  That’s my second mistake.

  One week later, she announces she’s found the perfect place. “It’s special, magical, enchanted.” She’s a poet. Everything she says is exaggerated.

  “Where?” I ask, thinking Paris, Nice, Cannes, Antibes.

  “Brittany. It’s as far west as you can go. Finistère.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The end of the world.”

  That’s when I panic. I go to the bookstore and read in a guidebook that Bretons aren’t French but Celtic—linked by language and culture to the Irish, Scots, Cornish, and Welsh—so maybe I do have a chance. On the other hand, they’ve been French since 1532, why chance it? I go to the Café des Artistes and write her a note. “Great work. Could you ask if the place is on-a-country-road quiet, sunny, and large? Does it have a good bed, hard mattress, running water, hot running water [remembering my stay in Paris], a TV, stereo, car, separate studies for writing, a coffeemaker, shower, bath, at least two floors, farm animals in the vicinity, a washing machine, dryer, and dishwasher, a bar in the village, a boulangerie, a market, a post office, bikes, and neighbors who want Americans living next door?” I leave it on her desk, thinking, Saskatchewan, here we come.

  The next day she leaves me a message on her answering machine. “We have it—a thousand a month, with a car.”

  I wait a minute, put on my happy voice, and call her at work. “Hi…got your message.”

  “Ouiiiiiii,” she sings.

  “Does it have all those things I asked about?

  “Certainement. The last thing I need is to listen to you complaining every day.”

  “It really has all those things?”

  “That’s what the lady said. Her name’s Sally. She’s English and just returned from the house. She lives in Massachusetts, you can ask her yourself.”

  So I do. I call her, and she says yes to everything. There’s no way out. I’m going to France.

  We book our flight on Air France. All I can think of is a joke I recently heard. “In Heaven, the French are the cooks, Italians are the lovers, English are the police, Swiss are the managers, and Germans are the engineers. In Hell, the English are the cooks, Swiss are the lovers, Italians are the engineers, Germans are the police, and the French are the managers.” I know I’m going to die—but if I do, I’m going in comfort and style. The food on the flight is scrumptious, and we’re flying economy. The meal begins with a printed menu and a choice of boeuf Bourguignon or filet de sole bonne femme. The wine is French—Côte du Rhône, Burgundy, Beaujolais—and is good and free and limitless. The front of the menu has a lovely little poem by La Fontaine. Mine is “Lion.” Hers is “Swan.” I look around and see four other poems. Everything about this is class. Joie de vivre, savoir-faire, je ne sais quoi. The movies, the nibbles and snacks, the pampering. If this is France, this is going to be all right, I think—until we get to the baggage claim, which brings me back to the joke.

  The flight was wonderful, the landing superb. We took off and landed on time. The stewards and stewardesses were everything you’d want them to be in appearance, demeanor, humor, efficiency. I’ve slept. I’m full. I’m in Paris. I have everything I need—except my luggage. The good news is, nobody else has theirs either. The worst news is, an hour and a half later, it’s still the same. Six and a half hours of relaxing comfort and pleasure getting here, and an hour and a half of standing up, nowhere to go, sit, eat, rest, drink, or relax.

  It’s baffling. Everything about Charles de Gaulle Airport is space-age, high-tech modern: tubes, lights, tunnels; escalators running up, down, sideways. The French love gadgets and gadgetry (think guillotine), and everything that can be is automated, everything except labor.

  Two and a half hours later—9:30 on the dot—we’re on the bus to Paris. We sit in the seat directly behind the driver. Kathryn takes the window and spends the next hour oohing and aaahing over the architecture and skyline. I spend it in awe of the driver, watching h
im alternately race to 130 kilometers per hour, then slow down to 30, only to race back to 130 and never once move more than eighteen inches away from the vehicle directly in front of us. He does this for fifty minutes, all the way from Charles de Gaulle Aéroport to downtown Paris, where he stops in front of a brasserie.

  “Let’s go,” Kathryn says.

  “Go where?”

  “To the station.”

  For some reason—and I’m sure there is one, because there always is one, a reason, or rule, or normalement—the bus stop is across the street from the train station. Across two big busy streets in a city and a country not known for its kind, safe, considerate, California, pedestrian-has-the-right-of-way drivers. A phalanx of cars and trucks whizzes by and shakes the bus.

  “Let’s wait,” I say.

  “For what? This is the stop. Let’s go.” She pulls my hand.

  I hesitate, then leap and run to the doorway of the brasserie to wait.

  When everybody is off the bus and milling about, the driver pushes himself out of his seat, lumbers to the side of the bus, raises the panels, and lugubriously begins unloading the luggage. He does it with the seriousness and concentration of a brain surgeon. It’s then that I notice his uniform bears no name. No “Hi, I’m Jacques, I’m your driver for the day.” No “My name’s Pierre. If I drive like a maniac or smash your bag, here’s how you can report me.” This bothers me, because in a second or two, whatever his name, he’s going to hate us.

  Everyone else’s bags are relatively small and lightweight, but we’re writers and staying for the summer. Between us we have nine heavy bags and two luggage carts. I have a computer. She has a typewriter. We each have a bag filled with books and another with files and notebooks and paper. She has lots and lots of shoes and clothes, something for any occasion. I have three bottles of twelve-year-old Macallan and a jacket and shoes for every kind of weather from blizzards and hurricanes to drought. The driver doesn’t know any of this because someone else loaded the bags at the airport. Now, as he pulls them out, he begins to grumble. The fourth bag he yanks and drops on the sidewalk. The fifth he tosses at me. The sixth he throws. The seventh is Kathryn’s typewriter. She taps him on the arm and tells him in flawless French that she’s a poet and that’s her typewriter and asks him to please be careful. He lifts it and puts it down gently, as gently as if it were a quail’s egg, the last quail’s egg in the world and he’s the hungriest man alive. Then he starts talking to her about poetry, quoting Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Poe, while I crawl into the luggage bin and tear my pants as I get my computer. When he finally finishes cooing and leaves, she’s beaming. “La belle France, la belle France. That’s why I love it here.”

  That’s also when it starts to rain.

  She unzips her backpack and removes an umbrella. I’m amazed and delighted by her forethought. My rain gear is all packed on the bottom of the one bag I have that isn’t waterproof. I wait in grateful anticipation as she unsheathes her umbrella and opens it. It’s Barbie’s umbrella. Thumbelina’s. The tiniest little umbrella in the universe. An umbrella for one. I wipe the water from my glasses and glare at her.

  She shrugs.

  I gather our bags as quickly as I can, balance and tie them to our luggage carts, and wait for a lull in the traffic. There is none. You’d think with the rain coming down harder and us standing there getting wet, someone might slow down. Not a chance. The morning Paris commute is a crazed Le Mans. I’m astonished. Can these be the same people who took two and a half hours to unload our bags?

  Kathryn takes two steps into the street. I watch, as miraculously one car stops, then another, and another, and another. It’s like royalty entering a room. The stillness is almost palpable. I follow in her wake through the traffic, across the streets, all the way into Gare Montparnasse, feeling unbeatable, like Napoleon must have felt just before Waterloo.

  Gare Montparnasse is huge, gargantuan, signifying grandeur, power, control, direction, order, authority, a plan. The first floor, the one we’re standing on, is a big wide-open space. In the middle of this space, slowly, inexorably, moving up and down, is a bank of escalators. On either side of the escalators are stairs.

  I push my luggage cart around in ever-widening circles, looking for the elevator.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for the elevator.”

  “I don’t think there is one. I’ll ask.”

  How can that be? This is a train station. A huge modern train station, the point of departure for all points west in France. How could old people, disabled people, people in wheelchairs, people carrying five heavy bags of luggage like me, get from this floor to the next without an elevator?

  “Nope. No elevator. We have to take the escalator or the stairs.”

  “Ask someone else. A woman this time—an old one.”

  She glares at me, but she does it. She finds the oldest, crookedest person I’ve ever seen and returns shaking her head. “There is none. We have to use the escalator.”

  I glower at the old woman and watch to see what she does. I want to make sure she doesn’t sneak off to some secret French person’s elevator and leave the American to the escalator. She doesn’t. She cautiously boards the escalator and white-knuckles the belt as it herky-jerks her upward, and I wonder for the first of many times: how can the French be so good at elegance and well-being, joie de vivre and eau de vie and vie de vie, and not have the slightest clue about ordinary, daily convenience—things like toilet seats, window screens, and shower curtains?

  “Let’s go,” Kathryn calls, and wheels far away from me.

  I follow and watch as three men open the line for her and make room for her and help her, while another holds her cart and bags in place with his knees. I wait for a break in the line, see none, and push my way in. Amazingly, no one complains or threatens to kill me.

  I follow her to a fenced-in area, a square space roped off like a boxing ring, with a sign in the middle that says Terrasse. I know what that means: I’m going to pay more than the normal outrageous price for a cup of coffee the size of a thimble with no refill. She sits down and orders a café au lait and a brioche. I do the same by pointing at her, then at myself, and nodding my head up and down like a bobblehead. That’s when I realize there are no sweatpants, track suits, or women in curlers. No beggars, homeless, or hungry people. No green hair or shaved heads, tattoos or pierced body parts—except for ears—and no crazies. I’m the scruffiest person on the terrasse, maybe even in the entire gare, Paris, and France. I look like an escapee from Devil’s Island—rumpled, crumpled, pants torn from the bus, and sweaty. Everyone else looks like Saturday night at the ball. I look like Monday morning.

  Our train is scheduled to depart at 1:05. I pay the bill—twenty dollars for two coffees and a basket of brioches—and we get up to amble and stretch, which turns out to be a mistake. At 12:00 virtually every French person not serving food in Gare Montparnasse stops whatever he or she is doing and starts to eat. By 12:05 not a single chair, table, bench, or horizontal surface is empty. There are lines—actually wedges, the French don’t make lines—thirty and forty people deep waiting to buy a sandwich or a Coke or their ubiquitous bottle of water. Others are waiting in wedges just as deep for buffets. It’s a regular feeding frenzy. At 11:55 we could have sat anywhere and bought anything. By 12:05 there’s no place to go. I haven’t seen anything like it since the piranha tank at the Brooklyn Aquarium.

  The good news is while everyone is busy eating we can easily board the train. I locate the track and begin walking along it looking for our car.

  “Wait, you have to post your ticket.”

  “What?”

  “You have to post your ticket. It’s not valid if you don’t post it. It’s a crime.”

  I walk back to where Kathryn’s standing. “I thought these are reserved seats.”

  “They are.”

  “Then what’s with this posting?”

  “It’s the law.”

&n
bsp; “How do you know? Where does it say? Where’s the sign?” I’ve been in France five hours and already I’m gesticulating. “How is anyone supposed to know?”

  She shrugs and points. I turn around and see another wedge of people standing in front of what looks like a time clock on an altar, which, given what they do with time, seems to me a sacrilege. I watch as, one by one, each person inserts his or her ticket into the machine, waits for it to click, then removes it, and goes on his or her validated way. They all look pleased with themselves, modern-day Saint Michaels, as if they’ve put their hand in the dragon’s mouth and emerged with it unscathed. Then Kathryn does it too, and I follow her—again, and again, and again. It takes me three tries, as the ticket goes in only one way and there’s no way on earth to know which way. I think about my father and his parents, Hungarians who emigrated to the U.S. from France, and my mother’s parents, who emigrated from Hungary and Poland, all of them at Ellis Island, and about cultural differences and assumptions, the things we take for granted—like the subway system in New York, and how lucky I am I was born there and speak English, and that some of the people who work there do too.

  It’s in that mood that I search for our train car, not sure what to expect, French comfort or lack of convenience. It’s a TGV bullet train, sleek and shiny, the Concorde of trains, but I’ve just come from the “modern airport,” so I’m not expecting the best. I enter our car, look around, and relax. The seats are airline seats, first-class airline seats, leather, individually contoured, with a headrest, footrest, and a table, and they recline. The windows are huge and spotless. The lights are bright, and the bathroom smells good and works. The train, like the plane, is wonderful, and like the plane, it departs on time. At precisely 1:05, we leave Gare Montparnasse and head west for Brittany, Finistère—the end of the world.