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

by Mark Greenside

  “Bonjour, Jean.”

  “Hello, Mark.”

  “I think my stove’s broken. I smell gas.”

  Jean doesn’t waste his time asking me questions. He knows whatever I say will be useless or wrong. He arrives in fifteen minutes, carrying his tools in his handmade wooden toolbox, knowing I won’t have what he needs, or if I do, it will be crap and break while he’s using it.

  “The tank and hose are okay. I checked,” I tell him.

  He turns on the tank and smells it, then the hose. I don’t blame him, it’s his life too, but I feel vindicated when he smells nothing and restrain myself from saying, See.

  He turns off the gas and begins dismantling the top of the stove. I know he’s fixing it, and I know I called him, but it feels like a violation, like I’m betraying the stove—I tend to anthropomorphize things—by subjecting it to this operation. Those are my first thoughts. As the parts pile up, I have second, third, and fourth thoughts—all of which center around What if I’ve found the one thing in the world he can’t fix?

  I go upstairs to the bathroom to ponder this question. When I return Jean’s got the knob off and is testing the electric starter with an ancient, huge, wooden-boxed meter that looks like it’s right out of Frankenstein. It wouldn’t surprise me if the stove came alive. “I don’t know,” he says to the meter, “This stove is old, dangerous…impossible to find parts for….” It sounds hopeless, futile, easier to find the lost ark. In my mind, I’m already walking the aisles shopping for a new stove at Leclerc, Brittany’s answer to Costco.

  Meanwhile, Jean’s unscrewing this, removing that, making notes and diagrams to remind him this minuscule thingie that looks exactly like that minuscule thingie, but is not exactly like it, goes here. Finally, he locates the problem: a hairline crack in a linguini-thin pipe that feeds gas from the burner to the jet. He begins to dismantle the burner. “I don’t know,” he says to the burner. “I don’t think this will work. I don’t think I can fix it. I think you’ll have to get a new stove.” I think I should have called Madame P for an artisan.

  I’m ready to end this torture, call it quits, thank him for his effort, offer him a beer, wine, a pastis…

  “Do you have a tin can?”

  Oh God, please, not with a tin can! I’m going to go boom, I know it. Grandma Esther, here I come! I rummage through the garbage and find an empty can of corn niblets. There’s a zillion acres of corn growing here, and all of it is for chickens. Humans get their corn in a can.

  “A can opener?”

  That’s it. I’m dead. I hand it to him with visions of myself all over the walls. I watch as he opens and removes the bottom of the can, making it open-ended. I watch as he cuts the can from top to bottom and flattens it on the table. “I don’t know if this will work,” he says to the can. “I don’t think so.” I don’t either. I watch as he snips a two-inch piece of tin from the flattened can, places a nail in the center, and carefully, meticulously, as if rolling a cigarette with his last shreds of tobacco, rolls the tin around the nail, once, twice, thrice—Et voilà!—a tube, a pipe—a sleeve!—that he slides over the old broken pipe, covering the crack, and creating a new connection. Holy cow! Maybe I won’t have to buy a new stove or die.

  He solders the sleeve in place, saying, “Maybe it will work. I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Then he turns on the gas, smells, sniffs, puts his nose all over the burner and the pipe and shrugs, telling me we just entered the world of fate, that what happens next is beyond his control, we’re either going to die or we’re not. He takes out his lighter: I take a step backward. He lights it and runs it over and under the sleeve. There’s no boom. We’re still here. He turns the burner on, and pop, it ignites! I’m amazed. There’s no fire or explosion, and I don’t need a new stove. “I don’t know,” he says to his lighter, “I think maybe you need a new stove.” He puts everything back together and tests it all again: the burner, hose, connections. Then he accepts a beer and leaves.

  Every time after that, the first thing he does when he comes into the house is go to the stove and ask, “It still works?”

  “Sure,” I say, “You fixed it.”

  He checks the hose and burners to make sure. “I don’t know. It’s okay now, but it’s not going to last.”

  Jean works like a sleuth. His favorite tools are a stethoscope and his huge, old electric meter. For him every project is a problem, a puzzle to solve. For Martin, it’s an enemy to destroy.

  Martin’s last enemy before he moves to Portugal (for more sun and beach and sea time) is the building of a two-foot-high, fifty-foot-long stone wall in front of my house. He’s already changed the attic from an inquisitor’s delight into a cozy, comfortable, four-skylight, beamed loft bedroom with tile bath. He’s replastered and painted every wall in the house and redesigned the kitchen, adding cabinet space, a new sink, and well-hidden dishwasher. He cut a hole through the three-foot-thick stone wall in the medieval garden-party room to make a door that opens onto the slate patio he designed and built, which faces the river. He’s stabilized stairs, replaced the gauges and knobs on the radiators, and repointed all five fireplaces. There’s not a part of the house he hasn’t worked on and no material he cannot handle. But working with stone, building a wall, this is Martin at his best, what he’s actually been trained to do: stonemasonry.

  For a week people have been walking and driving past the house to watch him work—French people: the same people who won’t look through an open door or window when they walk past are walking and driving here to observe his work. From morning to dusk, he hammers the stone, breaking it, fitting the pieces together, matching color, shape, size, and texture. He holds the pieces in his hands like cards—this one, this one, this one, not this one, working for six straight days. Tomorrow he leaves for Portugal, where Louise is waiting, and I leave for California.

  I’m cleaning the house for the renters who will arrive in two days. I’m on my fourth and final load of laundry when the washing machine jams—again! It’s the third time, and I’m beginning to think this machine was designed with repair in mind. The first time it jammed I called Madame P, who called her younger son, Henri, and his wife-to-be, Renée. They spent three hours taking the machine apart screw by screw to unjam it. The second time I didn’t have the nerve to ask Henri and Renée, so I asked Madame P to find someone else, and she called Monsieur Robert, who also spent three hours taking the machine apart screw by screw to unjam it. The only good thing about this jam is Martin is here.

  “Martin, what do you know about washing machines?”

  “Nothing, mate.”

  “That’s more than I know. Mine just jammed, would you look?”

  Reluctantly, he puts down his hammer and walks to the shed. He opens the outer door of the machine and tries to turn the drum. It’s cement-stuck. He bangs it, tries to force it, leverage it, make it do what he wants. He shakes the machine, turns it on its side, actually lifts it, trying to shake it or jar it loose. It sounds to me like the machine is crying. He starts banging really hard, turns it completely over. Sweat’s pouring out of him, he’s cursing. He hates this job, hates getting nowhere with it even more, and hates not finishing the wall. After fifteen minutes he turns it upright, sets it back where it was, and says, “Call Jean.”

  “Bonjour, Jean.”

  “Hello, Mark.”

  “My washing machine’s jammed.”

  He arrives in ten minutes, holding something that looks like a hanger. When he gets closer I see it is a hanger. Martin sees it too, and stops hammering stones and follows him. Jean opens the outer door of the machine, sticks the hanger in the space between the tumbler and the rubber wall and jiggles it, catches the latch, and turns the drum far enough so he can reach in and remove the clothing piece by piece, until he can turn the drum fully and free it. “Wow!” I say. “Thanks,” and start to refill the machine.

  Jean stops me. He picks up two squares of wood, places a piece on each side of the latch on the inner door an
d bends the latch forty-five degrees, an angle that ensures he’ll never have to do this again. “I don’t know,” he says to the machine. “It won’t last.”

  Martin slaps Jean on the back and says something neither Jean nor I understand. Then we walk to the wall so Jean can see what Martin’s done. He walks the length of the wall, all fifty feet, front and back, stopping here and there to better observe. “It’s good,” Jean says, as he says about all of Martin’s work. It’s the greatest compliment Jean gives. I go into the house and return with three beers. We sit on the wall enjoying the end of the day, the summer, the last time the three of us are together.

  Martin’s left me a house that has been Martinized and a beautiful stone wall that people still drive by to admire. Jean’s given me, among many things, a washing machine that not only works but may be the only one besides his in all of France that is jam free. Without these friends, and Sharon and Louise and Madame P and her family, and later Monsieur Charles and Christine and John, I’d still be living in the Stone Age. It’s another thing I like about my life in France. I’m grateful.

  In the U.S., where I’m relatively successful and know how to get what I want, I’m often angry and frustrated—especially by long lines, traffic, and automated telephone-answering systems. But in France, where I’m helpless and child-like dependent on others, an anathema to any adult U.S. male, I’m grateful. I’d never say it aloud (for fear of losing it) or tell anyone (I’d be embarrassed), but my days in Brittany are days of grace.

  III

  A Day in the Life

  In Oakland I live in the hills at least thirty minutes from most of my friends, not near or convenient to anyone, so they’re reluctant to visit. Brittany, however, twenty hours away plus a thousand-dollar plane ticket, doesn’t seem to pose any problem. I understand completely. If any of my friends bought a house in France, I’d want to see it, and if they told me the stories I’ve been telling them, I’d want to discover what’s real.

  Their visits begin my third summer, the second after buying the house—already I’m counting like the French. LeRoy, my roommate for ten years, plans a ten-day tour of World War I battlefields—Verdun, the Marne, Amiens, the Somme, Ypres, Argonne, the Meuse—and I join him. Joanna, who’s fluent in French—this is my new dividing line: once it was virgin, nonvirgin, then it was progressive, not progressive; now it’s speaks French, doesn’t speak French—decides to rendezvous with us after her Backroads bicycle trip in Provence. The plan is to meet at the house. If she gets there first, she’s to go to Madame P’s, get the key, and wait for us, which is what happens. She opens the house, airs it out, takes a shower, goes shopping for dinner, and begins a load of wash. The last is her first mistake.

  In France, very little is convenient or easy. To this day, I cannot open French packaging without a screwdriver or knife. Anything that says “New Package” or “Easy to Open,” I avoid, the way I do restaurants named Mom’s in the U.S. I follow all directions faithfully. I carefully cut along the white dots prominently displayed on the flap of cardboard attached to the box of soup, believing this time I’ll create the perfect spout exactly as it’s outlined on the box. I cut diligently, a surgeon, gaining confidence with every snip. I finish and gently squeeze the box, ever hopeful, expecting to form a spout. The soup dribbles, drips, shoots into the pot, over the counter, the stove, and me. I have yet to successfully peel the tinfoil from the mouth of a container of milk. I try, always fail, and wind up punching it through with a knife and spilling it. I’ve ripped half a roll of toilet paper looking for the seam. Nuts and potato chips fly out of their packages like freed wild birds. But the worst is plastic wrap because it’s ingeniously disarming. It’s the only box I can easily open, but then it’s impossible to locate the edge of the plastic. Lately, they’ve begun placing a piece of blue tape over the lip to help identify it, and it does help, but it still takes four hands to use it, otherwise it jumbles, sticks, and wads. And if, through some manipulation I’ll never be able to duplicate, I’m lucky enough to actually free a usable sheet of plastic, I make the mistake of yanking up, as in the U.S., instead of down, as in France, and use ten times more than I need. I’m beginning to think that’s the point. The packaging forces you to waste and mishandle the product, which forces you to buy more of it sooner. That seems to be the logic behind it, the raison d’être, as well as perhaps building manual dexterity and inuring you to the absurd, frustrating, and diabolical. In its own twisted way, it makes sense.

  The washing machine does not. What’s even more baffling is that it’s not French but German—Brandt. All I can figure is it’s a special version they export to France to get back for Alsace-Lorraine. Take Joanna, for example. She’s a middle-aged American woman with several advanced degrees. She speaks French, Spanish, English, Indonesian, Tamil, and Vietnamese. She’s traveled to the remotest parts of Asia alone and flown and survived Garuda Airlines. She has thirty years of successful experience doing laundry, all of which would lead any reasonable person to believe she could also do laundry in France. Ha! Working the washing machine here is like trying to use the plastic wrap with one hand.

  Why? Because the Germans, in their revenge, designed a washing machine with two doors, an inner and an outer, and a drum that turns from top to bottom, not side to side. The clothes go in the drum, which unfortunately is thimble size, so it holds about one-third of what a typical Kenmore holds. Also, unfortunately, the machine doesn’t operate with hot water, though Germany and France do have hot water, but for some reason not for this machine. No, the machine heats the water. What’s the difference? About an hour and a half! Each one of these tiny, thimble-sized loads takes between an hour and a half and two hours to complete, depending on how hot you set the water. The temperature can be set at 30, 60, or 90 degrees. It’s centigrade, so Americans set it at 90, forgetting 100 is boiling, and all the colors bleed. But these are only minor inconveniences, none of which is the cause of Joanna’s problem.

  She put her clothes in the drum, and, world traveler that she is, intelligent, sage, and successful, she sets the temperature gauge at 30, shuts the outer door, turns the dial, and thinks she’s going to wash her clothes. But she’s not. Either she’s forgotten to close the inner door because no other machine in the world has two doors, or she’s remembered, but the latch—this is before Jean bends it—is built in such a way as to release at the slightest tension, which, quelle surprise! a drum full of dirty clothes more than amply provides. The door opens—Voilà!—and since the drum turns from top to bottom, the clothes pop out on the first swing down and jam the drum, which stops the machine, but not the cold water. That requires turning the machine off, which Joanna does.

  Her first response, being a capable, can-do American woman, is to fix it, but she can’t. Her next response is to pour herself a glass of wine and wait for LeRoy and me to arrive. She knows us well enough to know we can’t fix it either, but since it’s my house she expects I’ll know whom to call—and that she’ll see her clothes again sometime this summer. She takes a chair and her glass of wine from the house and sits on the grass under the quince tree, watching the sailboats and swans float by.

  LeRoy and I arrive at six o’clock, greasy, exhausted, and salt-and-caffeine-wired, after an eight-hour, several times getting lost, four coffees and Cokes, three grandes frites each drive from Amiens. All I want to do is get out of the car, shower, sit on the lawn, and sip wine.

  We greet with quick pleasantries and California hugs, then LeRoy and I carry our bags into the house, LeRoy to the pre-Martin, still unfinished, nail-infested attic, me to the second-floor bedroom. Joanna’s bag is in the second-floor study. I unpack and shower. LeRoy does the same. An hour later, feeling civil if not civilized, I go downstairs and find Joanna in the kitchen reading a cookbook. In front of her, on the table, is the largest bird I’ve ever seen, complete with head and feet and two huge crowns of purple garlic. “Who’s your friend?” I ask.

  “Poulet noir,” she says, then tells me
about her clothes and the washing machine.

  Immediately I go into action. I call Madame P. I fly through the few salutations I know, “Bonjour, ça va, beaucoup soleil, bon santé,” then blurt, “Machine à lave est kaput. C’est marche pas. Pas de tournée, au revoir,” and leave it at that.

  You’d think by now they’d change their number or stop answering the phone, or at least screen their calls, but they’re French and too social to do that. Twenty minutes later Madame arrives with the troops: Henri and Renée. Both are about nineteen. Neither inspires much confidence. Still, whatever they know is more than I know, and if they can’t fix it, they will know whom to call.

  Joanna, LeRoy, and I follow Madame, Henri and Renée to the shed to watch them. Joanna, I can see, is thinking she’s never going to see her clothes again. I’m thinking my washing machine is gone. LeRoy’s thinking about dinner. Renée unplugs the machine and detaches the hoses, and together she and Henri lift it—it’s as heavy as a Panzer and wreaks as much damage—and carry it to the lawn. Renée finds the plug and drains it, then they lift it again and put it down on a dry spot and begin to circle it. LeRoy, Joanna, and I join the circling. Madame decides to make use of the time by working in her garden, which is half the front yard of my house.

  After much circling and discussion Henri asks me, in English, for a screwdriver and pliers. I have them because every house should have them, not because I use them. Henri takes the screwdriver and gives Renée the pliers. In five minutes, these two easygoing kids have become world-class dismantlers, hopefully not demolishers. They’re taking the machine apart screw by screw. I cannot believe this is German designed. It has to be Italian. French. English. I can’t watch anymore. I know I’m going to have to buy a new machine tomorrow, and probably a new wardrobe for Joanna as well.