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

by Mark Greenside

  I just paid him for the original work and now I need more. The good news is it should be covered by my insurance. The bad news is, I have to see my insurance guy to get it.

  The Insurance Guy

  A few days after closing on the house and signing documents I couldn’t read or understand, I went to an insurance agent, where I signed several more documents I couldn’t read or understand. The insurance man was in his mid-sixties, well dressed in tie and tweeds, very flush in the face, and looked familiar. I realized while sitting there and signing documents that he was one of the old guys I saw in the bar every day with his glass of red at seven in the morning when I got my daily bread. I don’t know if this is good news or not, whether it will make it easier to make a claim or harder. He’s jovial and pleasant, and I expect, as in the U.S., I’ll never see him again, and I don’t.

  He retires shortly afterward and passes the business on to his son, a lovely young man whose worst nightmare is me. Every professional has one. It’s the client you do the most for: you help, advise, direct, lead by the hand, bend the rules, feed if necessary, hold, do more for and charge less, expect less, make compromises you never thought you’d make and never made before—all for no apparent or tangible reason, none of which the client sees, appreciates, understands, recognizes, or acknowledges. You tell the person the same thing over and over and over again, and he never does what you say. At some point in the all too near future, you know two things for sure: (1) you’re going to have to tell the person everything again; and (2) he’s not going to do what you told him, there’s going to be a problem, and you’re the only one who can fix it.

  That’s me with the insurance guy. I want to understand. I want to do what he tells me, but he speaks so fast—mostly, I think, to get me out of his office—that I understand nothing. So I return a few days later and ask the same question and drive him nuts. This has become our routine. I do everything I can to help him, and he does everything he can to help me, and more often than not, we fail. It’s pitiful.

  I know I could ask Madame or Monsieur Nedelec or one of my other bilingual friends to come with me, but French people have such a natural aversion, fear, and loathing of anything bureaucratic or official, I don’t want to ask. People break out in hives, twitch, get sick if they have to deal with the bureaucracy, which makes life difficult because there is so much of it. Mail is okay, probably because the person delivering it is local and it’s face-to-face, but the telephone is a problem.

  The French don’t like the telephone—they like to see the person they’re dealing with, the expression, mood, and body language, so they know how to react—except, of course, if they’re talking with a bureaucrat, whom they don’t want to see at all. Ever. And bureaucrats feel the same way. They don’t want to see their clients. The system works fine, based on mutual distrust and loathing: bureaucrat does job, never sees client; client gets service, never sees bureaucrat. Professional distance, distance between client and worker, is great, and actual contact kept to a minimum. (No wonder therapy hasn’t caught on in Brittany. The last thing you’d want to tell your therapist is anything personal.) Everyone likes it this way, except me. I’m middle-aged, Jewish, the son of a lawyer, I read the San Francisco Chronicle, listen to talk radio, and watch local Fox news: thinking up disasters comes naturally. I wake up with nightmare questions about my house. What happens if…? and I want to talk to my agent. That’s when the problems begin.

  For example, I’ve asked all my French friends what happens if I’ve been drinking and have a serious car accident and wipe out a herd of cows. Could I lose my house? Everyone looks at me aghast. The first time I asked I felt like a pedophile asking them where the kids are. I learn—after many responses—that it isn’t the situation that frightens them, that I’d actually do it or contemplate doing it or that they’ve driven with me and didn’t know I had these instincts or proclivities. No, what scares them is (1) I could even think of it, and (2) it’s possible—even likely—in the U.S.

  “No,” they all say. “Here, in France, it’s not possible.”

  I’m reassured, but I want to hear it from my insurance agent. I don’t know why this is such an obsessive question, but it is. Maybe it has to do with how much money I’ve put into the house. Given the way the French drive—and the way I drive in France—hitting a herd of cows is certainly a possibility. So if losing the house is likely, why spend extra money on it? Like why fix the gate if I’m going to lose the house in some French trickster insurance scam? That’s what I want to know from my agent.

  I never make an appointment to see him. To my way of thinking it’s more informal and less threatening if I just stop by. To his way of thinking he’s caught, dead, trapped, cornered. At this point in our relationship (in all my relationships in France) I know I should call (French people don’t like to be surprised), but if I do, he’s going to ask me what it’s about and I won’t be able to explain on the phone. All I’ll be able to say is “L’assurance,” which isn’t going to help him a lot. If I make an appointment—say, mardi à quinze heures, Tuesday at three in the afternoon—he’ll worry from the time of the call to the meeting about what I’m going to ask, need, say, and how he’s going to fail me again. This is what bothers him most, what bothers most French people, not knowing (which is why they don’t like surprises), not succeeding, not being able to help, failing. He tries so hard, I feel sorry for him, so I don’t call. Why ruin two days for him when I can just drop by his office and ruin an hour?

  As soon as I walk in he stands, shakes my hand, offers me a seat, a pen, calendar, anything, trying to anticipate or imagine what it is I’m here for and hoping it’s over soon.

  I sit down, then he sits down. He holds his hands together in front of him, fingers folded together in a prayerful way, forcing himself to be calm.

  “Bonjour,” I say. “J’ai une question.”

  “Ouuuui,” he says, squinting.

  He’s reacting the same way I do whenever a girlfriend says, “We have to talk.” I ignore him the way they ignore me and go on. “Par example. Je conduit le voiture et beaucoup la vache sur la route—et voilà! Bang!—beaucoup morte vache. Si possible le propriétaire apprendre mon maison?” I finish, amazed actually that I got it out, but my amazement is nothing compared to his. He’s dumbstruck, something virtually unheard of in France.

  “Vous êtes compris?”

  “Oui.”

  “C’est possible?”

  He stands and goes to his files to get my file. It’s like watching inertia made visible. It’s not that he’s slow, it’s that it’s hopeless and he knows it and whatever he says or does won’t work and I’ll feel bad and he’ll feel worse.

  He places my file on his desk, reads it over or pretends to because nobody whose left eye is blinking the way his is could read anything. He then points to a section of the agreement I signed and initialed, reads it out loud, and says, “Bon.”

  “Bon?”

  “Oui.”

  “Oui, mais, par example, c’est possible je perdue la maison?”

  All he wants is to get out of here, but it’s three o’clock in the afternoon and we both know he’s there till seven. He pretends to read further into the contract. “Normalement,” he says, keeping his eyes on the page, and I know I’m in trouble. No eye contact means bad news and normalement, like en principe, means this is the way things are supposed to be, and they never are. He says a few more things I don’t understand and concludes grimly and firmly with, “Normalement.”

  He just gave me a series of exceptions for when I could lose the house, and I don’t understand any of them, which leaves me where I was when I started, ignorant, but he, my insurance agent, is shattered. Once again he’s tried to help me and failed.

  I thank him, stand, and shake his hand. His smile is forced and both of his eyes are now blinking. I feel awful. I want to help him, empower him, give him a chance to succeed. In the U.S., communication is often competitive—I win, you lose, fuck you. B
ut in France, I’ve learned, communication is about mutual success: If you succeed, I succeed, and I want to succeed very much. Using my best teaching voice and technique, I say, “Monsieur, j’ai un autre question.”

  He sinks to his chair with an audible sigh.

  “Sur la maison.”

  He closes my car file, puts it back where he got it, and returns with my house file.

  “Oui.”

  “J’ai une chambre plus.”

  “Oui.” His eyes widen. The blinking stops. He shrugs. My rates will go up, I know it. Still, I’ve promised myself that I will be completely forthright, honest, and forthcoming in my dealings with people here, and I have something to tell him.

  “Oui, le attic…” He looks blank. No recognition. It’s a look I’ve seen before. One-third of all English words are French in origin, so I’ve got a one in three chance of getting it right by just changing the accent. “A-tick,” I try; “at-ick.” Still no recognition. Now I have to resort to acting. I hold my hand over my head. “La chambre en haute la maison est nouveau.”

  “Oui.”

  He says it the way I do when I haven’t a clue.

  “S’il vous plaît,” I say, reaching for a piece of paper and a pen. I draw a picture of a house with an arrow pointing to the attic. “C’est nouvelle.” I point, using nouveau and nouvelle interchangeably because I don’t know the difference and hope one of them is right. “Beaucoup travaillé. Fine maintenant. Nouvelle chambre.”

  “Oui.”

  He says it like he’s dealing with a three-year-old, which, given my language skills, is giving me a year or two. I plunge forward. “C’est nécessaire je payee plus d’assurance?” It’s a question I would never in my life ask in the U.S.

  He looks at me the way I feel. Only a nut would ask me this. Still, I’ve begun, so I persist. “Plus d’assurance, c’est nécessaire?” Maybe it’s better backward.

  He takes the pen from my hand, turns the paper over, and draws a house.

  “Oui,” I say.

  He looks at me like, “Oui” what? but he knows it’s useless. He draws an identical house next to the one I drew. Beneath the first house he writes “avant.” Beneath the second he writes “après.”

  “Bon,” I say. “Oui.” Before and after. I get it.

  “C’est la même,” he says. “C’est la même.” After repeating it twenty or thirty times, I finally do get it. The house is the same size, same number of square meters: nothing new has been added in space. I’ve been honest and forthright and forthcoming, and it hasn’t cost me a franc. But I want to be sure, so I ask, “Ce n’est pas nécessaire payee plus d’assurance?”

  “Non.”

  “Bon.”

  “Bon.”

  I’m thrilled, and the insurance guy is even more so. I’m finally leaving his office and I understand. He’s happy and I’m happy—a mutual success.

  Still, when the river overflows and the house floods and I have to make a claim, I’m not too sure. The last time I had a question, this time a claim. The last time it was my money I was asking about, this time it’s his.

  The good news is most of the furniture is saved thanks to Sharon and Jean, Martin and Louise (an English couple who recently moved to Plobien), and Madame P, who move things to higher ground before anything gets seriously soaked. The bad news is the rugs—old kilims—and all the furniture legs are damaged, and the newly redone floor in the library–game room is ruined. I have bills for the hours it took to clean the house of mud, silt, and salt stains, the cost of cleaning the rugs, and repairing the furniture. What I still need is an estimate from Hugo, the floor guy, to submit to the insurance guy so I can make my claim.

  I call his office and get his wife, Nadine, again, and say “Bonjour” and “Ça va,” and remind her who I am in case she forgot—“Je suis le Américaine dans Kostez Gwer”—I’m the American girl inside Kostez Gwer. “C’est nécessaire Monsieur visite moi pour l’inondation.” It’s necessary Monsieur visits me for the flood.

  “Oui. Bien sûr,” and she tells me tomorrow at three, “quinze heures,” and invites me to their house for poisson.

  The next day, at 3:15, there’s a knock on the door. I’m amazed. I race down the stairs, open the door, and see Johann. I invite him in and we spend the afternoon chatting about American literature, the U.S., France, the world. When he leaves he tells me his father will be here next week.

  “Quand?” I ask. “Quel jour?”

  “La semaine prochaine.” He shakes my hand.

  A week later Hugo arrives. We begin by talking about Johann, his English, his future, a visit to the U.S., and he invites me to his house for dinner the following week. As far as I can see, nothing’s changed: he’s still the happiest man I know.

  He sets about measuring the room as if he and his son and Monsieur Le Traitement have never measured it before and this is the first time he’s been here. When he finishes, he tells me the floor is ruined, which I already know, and suggests replacing the old pine planks with chestnut. He tells me this by showing me the French word for chestnut—châtaignier—in the dictionary. He also suggests doing something under the floor, but I don’t get it. After his fifth attempt to explain it to me, he walks to the farthest corner of the room, bends over, and rips a huge chunk of pine out of the floor. Holy shit! A minute ago I had a warped, ruined floor I could walk on. Now I have a warped, ruined floor with a one-foot by two-foot hole in it that’s pouring cold, winter air into the house.

  “Bon,” he says, and points to the hole, indicating he wants me to look in. I look and see the floor is supported by a wooden frame that’s sitting on the ground. In the middle of the space is a tiny patch of cracked and broken concrete. No wonder this room is cold and damp and the house gets moist. He then walks me through the medieval garden-party room to the kitchen and shows me the other floors all have a concrete base because they’re tile. I get it. He wants to put a concrete base under this floor as well, and he wants to build it into the devis. Why not?

  “Bon,” I say. “Oui.”

  Two days later I bring all the paperwork to the insurance guy with great trepidation. I walk into his office and expect him to shudder. He leaps when he sees me, comes around his desk—the first time ever—and shakes my hand. Then he guides me to a chair and sits me down, none of which I think bodes well. The only times I’ve seen him this happy is when I was leaving. I figure he’s comforting me, easing me into the bad news.

  He starts right in talking about the flood—l’inondation—the rain, storm—l’oroge—and the dam that didn’t hold. He explains this to me making hand gestures and wooshing noises, punctuating everything with “C’est dommage,” “dommage,” and “une catastrophe.” The more he goes on, the more I wonder how much I’m going to lose—all of it, three-quarters, half, a third? He’s so happy, I can’t tell. I wait for him to finish, then hand him my papers.

  He takes them, reads them quickly, nodding, saying “Bon, bon, oui.” French people hate to deliver bad news. They’ll do anything to avoid it. I’m sure he’s putting on the happy face—it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him—to tell me no, I don’t qualify. It was an act of God or some such thing and, as with all insurance, you’re covered for everything except what you claim.

  This is what I’m thinking as he removes a piece of paper from the drawer in his desk and starts writing. He makes a list of all the items I’ve claimed. Next to each item he writes the cost I’ve claimed. I don’t know if this is good news or cruel and unusual punishment. He draws a line down the page and rearranges the list into two columns. Over one column he puts a ^. Over the other a -. I figure ^ means I get a pittance and-that I owe him. He writes 100% over the ^ column and 80% over the-column, and I see it’s worse than I thought, a total loss.

  He turns the paper toward me and says, “Normalement,” and I want to cry. He points to the items with a ^ and explains they will be covered 100 percent. The items with the-will be covered 80 percent. I look at the lists. The
100 percent coverage has to do with the minor costs, the hours of work for cleaning the house, and the mileage for driving to the dump and to Quimper to get the rugs cleaned. The 80 percent coverage has to do with serious damage, which includes replacing the floor and the concrete slab. Twenty percent deductible, given the price of the floor and the concrete, leaves a substantial cost for me.

  I start to argue, telling him the floor is new, less than a year old, beautifully finished, and I show him the bill, “Regardez,” and the date of the work, “Regardez,” and photos, “Regardez,” and underline in red how much I paid.

  “Non, non.” He shakes his head, emphatic, beaming, even happier than he was before. He turns the paper toward himself and draws another line creating a third column and adds a + everywhere there is a -.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” I ask, intrigued. This is either a good thing or a tax—an additional tax they’ve added to my deductible.

  “Le supplément.”

  “Quel supplément?”

  “Le supplément pour l’inondation.”

  “Combien?”

  “Vingt-cinq.”

  “Vingt-cinq percent?”

  “Oui.”

  “Vingt percent deductible et vingt-cinq supplément?”

  “Oui.”

  “Cinq percent plus le facture!”

  “Oui.”

  “Pourquoi?”

  “L’inondation.”