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

by Mark Greenside

  Speaking as slowly as he can, which is still very fast, and using hand motions and moving his arms up and down, he lets me know he is offering to cut them, at his expense, and haul them away. He wants to eliminate them completely, no two-meter height, and replace them with a two-meter hedge that he will pay for, plant, and maintain. All very reasonable and proper, I think—and no way, not a chance, not with my trees he won’t. I point to my head and say, “Je pense.”

  I have to come up with something fast: either the notaire bluff letter or a compromise. What to do? What to do? I unpack the grocery bags and sit on the patio, sipping a Ricard and facing the trees, missing them even before they are gone. I have to salvage something, save some of them, because I treasure them and because Monsieur and Madame Nedelec bestowed the care of this house and property on me—I still think of it as really theirs—and I don’t want to let them down. Sitting there, thinking about this, it comes to me.

  I’ll agree to cut the trees from the road all the way back to his garage. That way he’ll get full sun on his garden, have a full view, and not have to see the dead, brown branches. The rest of the trees, from his garage to the back of the house, would remain. He has no windows on that side of his house and no backyard. The area between his garage and the trees is a storage area for a boat. Leaving the trees behind his house where he can’t see them shouldn’t be a problem.

  I tell Madame and Monsieur P, and they agree it’s fair. I tell Jean and Sharon. They think Pierre has the right to say yes or no. I tell Monsieur and Madame Nedelec. They say to try it, though I know they prefer I resist.

  I go to Pierre’s house in the afternoon, after midi, in the hope that he’s relaxed and full and satisfied and maybe a little drunk from lunch, and explain my solution. I lead him to the tree next to his garage and say, “Ici, coupe,” then walk forward to the road, and point. “Tout. Pas des arbres. Au revoir.” Then I walk him from the same tree next to his garage in the other direction, back, and say, “La même. Pas de coupe.”

  “Non.” He shakes his head and takes me to the border of our properties. “Deux mètres,” and shows me the trees are within two meters of his property. Then he points to the orange Day-Glo swath, “Deux mètres,” and shows me how much he’s allowed to force me to cut. “C’est le droit.” It’s the law.

  I’m furious but don’t have the language to express it, which is probably for the best.

  The next day Martin stops by. We sit on the patio he designed and built, drinking Ricard, watching the sailboats float through the lock, when it dawns on me, I should ask him to speak with Pierre. Martin is fluent in French and knows Pierre, likes him, has spoken with him many times—and being English, is not reluctant to get involved in personal matters, especially personal matters involving the French. I ask Martin to explain in detail, in French (as opposed to my hand motions and single words) that I see Pierre’s point, and I want to address his problems and take away the ugly view and the shadows on his garden—and how the trees behind his house do not affect him at all. He won’t see them, can’t see them, and they won’t block the sun from his garden. It’s fair. Reasonable. A win-win—and I’ll pay for everything, cutting the trees, removing them, and building and maintaining a new, two-meter-high, wooden fence. Reason and cost, two things I’m sure will prevail in France.

  Martin agrees to try. I refill our glasses, and we wait for Pierre to come outside and work in his garden as he usually does in the late afternoon. Thankfully, he appears before we’re completely sloshed. Martin and I walk over to him. I’m hoping to resolve this amicably, though Martin has already told me, (1) it is fair and reasonable, and (2) Pierre won’t go for it. He explains the whole thing in great detail—how I want to be a good neighbor, pointing to the sun, Pierre’s garden, the trees, making sweeping motions with his arms, laughing, joking, all of it very friendly and going, I think, very well. As soon as Martin finishes, Pierre says, “Non.”

  He makes his own sweeping motion with his arms and says “all of them.” “Tout. C’est le droit.”

  Something pre-Lascaux churns in me, and my own personal double helix does a flip. I tap Martin on the shoulder, and as calmly as I can, with my most friendly and reassuring smile on my face, nodding yes, yes, yes to Pierre, I say, “Tell him this: if he makes me cut all of my trees, I will plant something in my yard, more than two meters from his yard, that will grow so high and so fast he’ll never see the sun again.”

  The effect is incredible. In zero seconds, Pierre goes cold, becoming the least animated French person I’ve ever seen.

  “Tell him,” I say to Martin, “C’est le droit.”

  Ten minutes later we have a deal: I’ll cut and remove all the trees—about ten of them—from the road in front of his house to his garage, and replace them with a new fence that Martin will build and install. The rest of the trees will remain as is. We shake—all three of us—and it’s a deal.

  Two days later I give Pierre a bottle of Ricard to seal the deal and thank him for being reasonable. The following week he gives me a huge bowl of langoustine that he and Denise bought from a fisherman on the coast and seasoned and cooked for me. After that we exchange pleasantries and gifts regularly, though he still speaks so fast I can barely understand him. What he thinks of what I say, I can’t even imagine.

  For a while I avoid sitting on the patio. The missing trees are like ghost limbs. Sometimes I think they’re still there. Eventually I return, though, because even with their loss it’s beautiful, especially in late afternoon. I sit there when it’s not raining, in the bright, unfiltered light, watching the river flow, sailboats pass through the lock, and the sky. It’s like being inside a bowl or a planetarium, where everything above you is immense. It’s on one of those late afternoons, I see that Pierre was right: the view and light and openness without the trees are better for me, as well as for him. I sit there, embarrassed by the fuss I made, then drive into town to buy a bottle of Ricard and do something I’ve never done in the U.S. I give him the bottle and tell him he was right and thank him for being a good neighbor—un bon voisin—and for making me a good neighbor too. Living here surprises the hell out of me.

  Île Callot

  When Donna and I begin dating seriously all my friends are thrilled and delighted. None, I imagine, more than my Breton friends, who undoubtedly sing, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last,” now that someone else is responsible for me. Ha!

  Donna is Japanese-American, from the Minamoto clan, a group of people so resolute they make the Anglo-Saxon stiff upper lip look like a simper. These people will themselves to death when they think their time has come, and if honor is involved, they die even sooner. Once, when I was sick with the flu for four days and convinced I had everything from mono to yellow and rheumatic fevers, Donna asked me if I wanted a bowl of noodle soup from the local Chinese restaurant. “Sure,” I groaned from the bathroom, where I’d made my living quarters. “That would be nice.” It was 9:00 a.m. when she asked, 10:00 a.m. when she left, and 5:00 p.m. when she returned and handed me a container of lukewarm wonton soup.

  “Where were you?” I asked. “I expected you at noon.”

  “I had to get out of here. Your whining was driving me nuts.”

  Whining! I thought I was a brick, a regular Judah Maccabee, but she saw me as a Jeremiah. Little wonder. My people have been getting their kishkes squeezed out of them for millennia, running and hiding, fearing the knock in the night. Hers have been slicing and slaughtering anything that moved in Asia, including themselves. It’s an interesting match.

  In very white Brittany, Donna’s exotic. People walk up to her and touch her hair—physical proximity and the need to be tactile being much greater in France than in the U.S. If a stranger touched Donna in the U.S., she’d clobber him. In France, people she doesn’t know stop her on the street and ask, “What are you?” She always answers, “American,” and they always respond, “No, no, what are you?” not satisfied until she says, “Japanese.
” Then they smile and the conversation begins. French people like to know who they’re talking to. It’s only then that they know what to say. That’s why all those rules and right and wrong ways of saying everything.

  One of the things that moves me to tears is Donna’s morning salutation, “‘Bye, honey, I’m going to work.’” It brings joy to my heart: she’s the only girlfriend I’ve had who’s been gainfully employed. That’s the good news. The bad news is she’s self-employed, which means her vacation time is limited. I’m always careful to have my housey chores and responsibilities finished by the time she arrives so we can take little one-, two-, and three-day trips to places I’ve been and want to show her, or places I’ve never been and want us both to see. That’s how we discover Île Callot.

  We’re on a two-day trip along the North Atlantic coast, starting at Le Conquet and ending at Roscoff. I go against my better judgment and try something new. Instead of taking the direct route, the route I’m familiar with, I drive inland, to Saint-Renan, a village I’ve never heard of. It’s written in large, dark letters on the map, situated with all roads leading in and out of it, making it a hub, a hub in the middle of nowhere with a traffic jam like the L.A. and L.I. expressways combined.

  “Let’s stop,” Donna says.

  In the U.S. I’d resist, wanting to get to our destination, but this is France, and it’s market day, and we’re not going anywhere.

  I park like the French, on the sidewalk. The market’s everywhere—on both sides of the main street, in alleys, the park, around the church and mairie, in front of the pissoir—and everything imaginable is for sale: beds, window frames, dressers, chairs, vacuum cleaners, tools, kitchenware; clothes for kids, young women, middle-aged women, old women; shoes, hats, sweaters, T-shirts; live animals, dead animals, cooked animals, raw animals; whole and filleted fish, snapping crustaceans, flapping fowl, chunks of mammals, pizza, paella, nuts, flowers, veggies, fruit, olives, cheese, spices, wine, cider, beer, pastry, cake, and every kind of sausage imaginable. We buy a hunk of white bread cut from a loaf the size of a truck tire, local cheese, a tomme and chèvre, dry sausage with pistachios, pâté de campagne, strawberries from Plougastel, two pears, two green apples, a bottle of local cider, and a huge chocolate truffle for dessert—and drive to Pointe de Corsen on the Atlantic for a picnic.

  We arrive at one o’clock. The French have another hour to eat, so parking is easy. I unpack the food and a blanket and set it all on a large, flat rock overlooking the sea. It’s perfect—gentle breeze, waves cracking, a royal blue sky with white Rorschach clouds, and we have it all to ourselves—until an entourage from a local wedding arrives for a photo shoot. I’ve seen French wedding pictures in window displays. The groom, twenty years old, smiling and happy, the proud captain of his ship. The bride in her gown, standing on the rocks, the waves and turbulence behind her. The bride and groom together, safe on the shore. It’s the French at their most nostalgic and sentimental, turning the moment into a permanent Renoir, forgetting for the moment Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec. Donna and I watch the photographer shoot picture after picture, moving the bride and groom a little this way, a little that. When she’s finished, I toast them with our bottle of cider. Donna wishes them “Félicitations, bonne santé, et bonne chance.”

  We finish eating and clean up—better than the French, but who’s comparing?—and drive to Le Conquet and the Hôtel St. Barbe, where we have reservations for the night. Upon seeing the hotel, I have additional reservations. It’s 1920s pre-depression depression faux-Mediterranean, with a cracked façade and faded, peeling, dingy, colorless paint. Donna looks at me and I shrug. I know what she’s thinking, because I’m thinking it too—bleak room, lumpy bed, no shower—or worse, one of those dribbly things on a hose that wets you one body part at a time while the rest of you freezes.

  I carry the bags into the hotel lobby and sing “Bon-jour” to the dressed-in-black, string-bean-thin, middle-aged woman behind the counter, like I’m happy as hell to be here. “Je suis Monsieur Greenseed….” For some reason I’ve recently decided this is how my name is pronounced in French. “J’ai une réservation. Chambre deux, quatre, deux,” I say, and hold up two, four, and two fingers for clarity. It’s the room the guidebook says to reserve. Donna shakes her head and walks away, suddenly compelled to read a poster announcing a Vivaldi concert that happened a month ago.

  “Ouiiii,” the lady says. “Voudriez-vous une réservation pour le restaurant ce soir?” She points.

  I look to my right into a blindingly bright, modern, windows-on-three-sides, hanging-over-the-Atlantic dining room. “Est-ce possible un table à côté la fenêtre, madame?”

  “Non, monsieur.”

  I’m not surprised. I’ve been in France long enough to know the customer is never right. Still, I ask, “Pourquoi?”

  “Vous avez la chambre, pas de table.”

  Seems fair enough. No one should get everything. “Bon,” I say, “à huit heures.”

  She writes it down, hands me the key, and points toward the elevator. I drag Donna away from the poster, which she’s now reading as if it were written by Proust and she’ll be tested on it later. We take the elevator to the second floor and follow the signs toward room 242, out the old building, into the new. Ours is the last room at the end of the hall. I insert the key and push open the door, and it’s like stepping into space, flying, and floating over the sea. The room is glass from ceiling to floor on two sides. To the right is the busy fishing port and harbor of Le Conquet; facing us, pummeling the cliffs, is the Atlantic.

  Donna walks around the room, saying, “Incroyable, incroyable.”

  I follow her, checking things out. The toilet and shower are new. There’s even a glass shower door to keep the bathroom from getting soaked when we bathe, something every country except France seems to have mastered. The reading lamps have 60-watt bulbs instead of the normal 25-and 40-watters—and they work! I sit on the bed, expecting this to be the corner that’s cut. “Holy cow! It’s comfortable. We lucked out. It’s like being at sea without being at sea and getting seasick.”

  We leave our bags in the room and go for a walk on the coast road, oohing and ahhing over the jagged, rocky cliffs, turbulent sea, towering sky with its palpable light, and the ubiquitous relandscaping by Hitler: concrete bunkers and pillboxes cut into the cliffs at every cove, inlet, and peninsula as far as the eye can see. It’s sobering enough to drive a person to drink, which is what I intend to do at dinner.

  Back at the hotel, I shower first and leave the bathroom to Donna. I’ve decided to dress for dinner, meaning I’ll wear a shirt with a collar, clean pants, and socks instead of bare feet with my sandals. That’s the plan. The problem is, I left my towel in the bathroom, and my clothes are in the suitcase on the floor in front of the window on the other side of the room, and I’m naked. I could knock on the door and ask Donna for the towel, but why bother her? We’re on the second floor, this is France, I’ve seen more nudity on the public beaches and family TV than in R-rated movies in the U.S. If anyone sees me, who cares? I’ll never see the person again. I tiptoe across the room toward the suitcase. A woman on the port side waves to me. What the hell! I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. I move closer to the window and wave back—with all of me.

  At dinner, she’s at the table next to us. She doesn’t give the slightest hint of recognition, which the American me is not sure is a compliment, but that’s how it is in France. The public is often private (men peeing alongside the highway, and passersby pretending they’re not there), and the private is often public (using the right utensils, sitting in the right place, serving the right food in the right order, everything propre). I’m learning which is which by trial and lots of errors. The lady smiles at me as we leave. I smile back and wish her “Bonsoir.”

  We go back to our room, where I can’t wait to see the night view. During dinner I kept looking at the sky as it darkened, but the lights in the restaurant were too bright for me to see very much. I push ope
n the door and we’re greeted by the ping…ping…ping of the foghorn followed by a lick of light from the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor…Ping, ping, lick…Ping, ping, lick…The rhythm is soothing and romantic and so are the winking stars and waxing moon. We make love as if we’re outside under the sky and moon and stars, only this is better, because we’re not. There are no bugs. It’s not cold. I can get up and pee in a toilet and fall asleep in a bed.

  I wake at six-thirty and go downstairs for the normal ten-dollar, one-cup, no-refill-coffee, small—which they don’t bother to call grande—orange-juice, half-a-baguette, two-croissants, quarter-pound-of-butter, and three-jam breakfast. Donna joins me, making it a twenty-dollar breakfast, then we leave. We drive along the Atlantic coast through heavy rain, sunlight, clouds, and drizzle, passing cows, sheep, the occasional goat, and wedges of traffic slowing, often blocking, Tour-de-France-look-alike, sixty-year-old and teenage bicyclists. We’re going to Roscoff, where the guidebook says Mary Queen of Scots landed in 1548, Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746, and today a daily ferry from Plymouth deposits its load of Irish, Scots, Welsh, and English. We drive to the terminal, take one look, and keep going. The next town is Saint Pol-de-Léon, the birthplace of Madame P. I’ve been there with her, and I want Donna to see the magnificent fifteenth-century Gothic spire of Notre-Dame du Kreisker, the tallest steeple in Brittany. It’s from the top of the spire, standing in the wind, grasping the stone wall, exhausted and relieved after successfully climbing one hundred seventy progressively smaller and narrower railingless stairs, that Donna spies a tiny island with a sandy beach, a few houses, and a chapel.

  “Let’s go,” she says.

  I give her my Are you crazy? look, and see it means nothing to her, so I say, “Okay,” and we’re off to Île Callot.

  I drive through the village of Carantec onto the one-and-a-half-lane road to the île. The only cars on the road are coming from the opposite direction. Donna mentions this to me as we arrive on the île.