I hurry to the microphone before anything bad can happen and welcome everyone in French, saying how pleased I am they are here. Peggy then repeats what I said in real French and Joanna repeats it in English because it’s clear no one has understood what I said. I turn on the tape deck and play Josephine Baker singing “My Two Loves,” my country and France. The Americans nod and get sentimental. Monsieur Jacques, a short fellow, like an elf, stands and informs me they’re Breton, not French—and we’re off.
Monsieur Robert, of lambig and venison pâté fame, who fixed the washing machine the second time it jammed, ambles over to where I’m sitting and whispers to me in French, “Servons-nous les premiers.” It’s a good idea. The first plate is fruits de mer. It will make the Bretons comfortable and happy and slow the Americans down, though that’s not the reason he suggests it. The reason has to do with the significance of gesture: the right gift, touch, word, action—which in this case is the tangible demonstration of who’s first.
I tell Stéphanie, who tells the two servers. The Bretons “bon” and “oui” when they see the plates piled with fresh clams, langoustine, snails, crab, mussels, lobster, and teensy things you pull out of their shell with a pin like earwax. It’s a triple victory for the home team: not only are they served first, but they know what to do, and the Americans don’t. What a party! Everyone gets to feel out of place.
The Americans watch the Bretons thoroughly and methodically disembowel and dismantle their food, cracking carapace, shells, and claws, snapping valves, scraping meat, breaking off the heads and thorax of the langoustine, and picking them and everything else dry. The Americans try to follow, but their side of the U looks like Animal House. They’re splattered with crustacean juice and smell like sex or the sea. The Bretons are attempting not to gloat, and failing. Finally, the children take pity. Jean and Sharon’s boys, Yann and Noé, circle the table, starting with Gay and Stephen’s kids, and show the Americans how to break and enter the shells, eat the meat, and use the sauces. Most get the hang of it, though a few, like my mom, are disgusted. “You’re lucky,” I whisper. “The specialty of the house is tête de veau.”
For the main dish, I ask Stéphanie to serve the Americans first. Monsieur Robert sees the first server come out carrying plates of salmon and lamb and deliver them to the American side of the table. He looks at me, disappointed, then nods, Okay. Fair is fair. I feel like I’m at Potsdam or Yalta with U.S. and Soviet troops sitting at the same table, at truce, but not in calm. The Americans are speaking English, the Bretons French. Each side watches the other eat, the different ways utensils are held, meat and fish are cut, knives and forks are used, Americans switching hands to cut and eat their food, Bretons looking at the Americans as if to say, Look, one hand! Mercifully, the wine is flowing and everyone is getting looped. People are on their best behavior, being polite and considerate, but staying with their own. It remains that way through cheese and salad: pleasant, formal, stifling. If I owned a watch, I’d be looking at the time.
At 11:30, Peggy goes to the microphone and explains in French and English that we’re going to begin a roast. She says, “Roti,” and the Bretons think it’s another course and look at each other as if to say, After cheese?
LeRoy then stands and reads several letters he wrote and attributes to famous and prominent people, each of whom has something disparaging to say about me. The Americans howl. Peggy translates the letters into French. The Bretons are confused. How do I know Bill Clinton, and why would he say these terrible things about me—and why would my friends read them at my party?
Donna gets up and bangs two metal balls—boules—together, cracking jokes filled with sexual innuendo, no translation necessary. The Americans howl. The Bretons are aghast. You do this in public? What kind of people are you? This from a people who walk around nude on the beach and whose TV shows more breasts than guns, cars, and beer combined.
Gay, Stephen, and their kids enact a skit showing how Gay and I were arrested at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. How could they know most of the Bretons supported de Gaulle and opposed the student movement? Still, you’d think the people who produced Talleyrand and gave the world the language and form of modern diplomacy would be better at containing their thoughts, but no. Several are looking at me the way Kathryn did the last time I saw her.
After an hour, the Bretons look battered and bewildered. Marc invites everyone to dinner. It’s his birthday, and he’s paying for it all—and his guests mock and ridicule him, two of the worst things you can do to anyone in France. How can this be? What kind of people are these? Even his mother joins in. It’s too much for them. Madame P orders her son Henri to stand and address the Americans—in English.
“We love you, Marc. We’re glad you’re here,” and the Bretons, most of whom don’t know what he said, applaud—and take over. They sing Breton songs and French songs in solos, duets, combos, and chorus. They quote poems from memory and tell jokes. They dance Breton dances and teach the Americans how to do the steps. At 1:00, Stéphanie carries the cake into the room. People stop dancing and circle it, mumbling. No one has ever seen anything like it. Everyone searches for and finds his or her name, points it out to others, and introduces him or herself. We’ve been together for five hours, broken bread, shared wine and food, and the ice has finally cracked. The cake is cut, coffee is served, the wine keeps flowing, music blares—The Stones, Beatles, Aznavour, Halliday—and everyone’s dancing, men with men, women with women, men with women, kids with anyone, Bretons with Americans.
At 2:30, Madame P goes to the microphone. She and Monsieur, Henri and Renée, and Messieurs Robert, Jacques, and Charles, have bought me a gift. Henri lifts a huge box and places it on the table. I remove the paper without tearing it—to show I’m careful, respectful, frugal, not profligate, and see it’s a TV. I’m touched. They’ve bought a television to keep me company, probably hoping I’ll watch it and learn how to speak French, which would make life easier for everyone. Before I have a chance to say anything, Madame P breaks into song and leads a chorus of Bretons singing the Breton national anthem. That’s how the evening ends. Good-byes, à bientôts, farewells, adieus, everybody laughing. I walk home with my ten housemates, who proceed to finish the roast they started.
The next day I go to the restaurant to pay Stéphanie. She has the bill completely itemized, including every bottle of wine and mineral water and the tip for the two servers. It’s a little over six thousand francs, about eleven hundred dollars, twenty-five dollars a person. I don’t know how they do it. I thank her and Georges and the staff for a wonderful, memorable night. Then I go home, turn on the TV, and begin to study French. I’m the E. F. Hutton of Brittany. When I speak, people listen. I wish I knew what I said.
Two Loves, Two Lives
I arrived late last night and unpacked. This morning I have to shop for everything. I begin at Maison de la Presse to buy postcards to send to Donna and select ten sunny photos to remind her what it’s like here, sometimes. Three people are wedged ahead of me, and I’m doing my best to wait patiently while the lady in front goes back and forth about something. The man behind the counter, who usually says nothing to me, and didn’t say “Bonjour” when I entered, waves me to the front of the line. My first day back, and already I’ve done something wrong.
I schlep to the counter with my eyes lowered like he caught me stealing and hand him the postcards, saying “Dix.” He pushes them away and rings up the sale: fifteen francs. “Merci,” I say, and pay him, stunned.
I’ve been in this store hundreds of times, and this is the first time he hasn’t counted the cards. He doesn’t even count the money when I hand it to him, and he’s served me ahead of three other people, two of whom I know are French, even if they are Parisian. Holy cow! This bodes well. I leave the store elated and go to Leclerc, a continuing source of humiliation in my life.
I weave my cart between carts, avoiding blocked aisles and potential accidents, finding everything I need in record tim
e. My cart is loaded, topped with paper towels, napkins, and toilet paper that I miraculously found in this year’s new, hidden enclave. Why they hide these things, I’ll never know. Nor, apparently, do the French.
I’m in the soup aisle, which was last year’s cereal aisle, checking out the newest soups in a box, when a completely frazzled woman in stiletto heels and dressed as if she’s going to the theater, slams her cart into mine and demands—in French—“Where did you get that toilet paper?”
I point to the back of the store and say “En bas,” which I know means under, not back, but it’s as close as I can get. She thanks me graciously, “Merci, merci, monsieur,” and tells me, resignedly, “J’ai cherché pour quinze minutes,” then wheels her cart away and bangs into another woman who’s searching for something. I’m thrilled. To my great surprise, I knew the answer and helped her, and even more surprising, I knew the question, too!
I’m feeling pretty good as I get in line at the checkout stand—first the Maison de la Presse guy, then the toilet paper lady. I think I’m ready for anything, prepared as a WEBELO, semper fi like the marines. In the past, I’ve been sent back to reweigh my produce, or worse, had to wait while people in line stared at me as the girl behind the counter left to reweigh my produce, because one look told her and everyone else no matter how many times I weighed it, I’d never get it right. But not today. Today, I’ve got it. I’ve correctly weighed my fruit and veggies, pushed all the right buttons on the scale, matched picture, name, and product, distinguished between four types of tomatoes, white and yellow peaches, big and small mushrooms, three kinds of pears, and got all the weights and prices right. Everything is on the checkout stand, arranged from nonedible, heavy, solid, to breakable, bruiseable, fragile, waiting for me to pack. If pride is a sin, I’m already in Hell.
“Bonjour,” I say to the girl behind the counter.
“Bonjour,” she says, and begins sliding each item across the electronic bar code reader.
I pick up the toilet bowl cleaner and see there are no plastic bags on the counter. “Le sac, s’il vous plaît?” I ask, as I have hundreds of times before.
“Quoi?”
“Le sac?”
She shakes her head, no. A quiver of doubt runs through me. It reminds me of the first summer I was here when I didn’t take a cart, didn’t think I needed one because I wasn’t going to buy much, then did, bought more than I could carry, and grabbed an empty cardboard box and put everything in it. When I got to the counter, the girl stared at me. She points to the box and indicates she’s going to charge me for it. “No, no,” I say, “Je vole.” I’ll return it. At least that’s what I wanted to say, volver being “to return” in Spanish, which even though isn’t French is the next country over and European with a Latinate language. “Oui, oui,” I affirm, “Je vole.” The girl blanches. People in the line step away. It isn’t until I go home and look vole up in a dictionary that I realize voler is to steal, and I was outlandishly, brazenly announcing my theft. The good news is the girl recognized she was dealing with an idiot and didn’t charge me for the box or call the gendarme. The bad news is she’s there every time I shop, and says “Bonjour” when she sees me and giggles. So I look at this girl, determined to be very careful. I know something’s up, but I have no idea what, only whatever it is won’t be good for me. The bravura I felt a minute ago is gone, along with, apparently, the plastic sacs, which until this summer have been as ubiquitous as rain.
“Pollution,” she says. “Pas de sac.”
“Ah. Bon.” I’ve been worried about France’s lack of concern with the environment. There’s not much recycling, little wind or solar energy, lots of nuclear power, and everything is packed and packaged in plastic. They’re finally doing something about it. Good! I pick up the 25-liter plastic container of laundry detergent called OMO—who knows why?—and place it in my cart.
“Monsieur,” the girl says, and points to a dozen large silver-colored plastic bags hanging from a rack behind the register. Oh, no. I should have known. Free plastic bags increase pollution; sold plastic bags with the Leclerc Eco logo on it are fine. I look at my things on the checkout counter. A quick calculation tells me I’ll need at least six bags, and without them packing will take forever. I look at the people behind me, patiently waiting, carrying their shimmering plastic Leclerc Eco bags, and realize I can’t do it, that I’ll never own such a bag or wear a shirt or glasses or shorts with an alligator on it or buy a pastel-colored T-shirt with a cutesy saying in English or French, like “Be My Friend” or “Je t’aime.”
“No, merci,” I say to the girl and place the paper towels in the cart after she swipes them across the bar code reader. I do the same with the napkins, toilet paper, and everything else. The woman behind me, a Brit—I can tell by her rumpled blouse and the four liter bottles of gin in her cart—sighs. I do what the French do, take my time and ignore her, though she bothers me, because one look tells me I’m as unkempt as she is, and if I were in her place, I’d act the same, or worse.
I finish packing the cart and pay the bill, counting out a thousand francs in twenty-and fifty-franc notes. I wheel the cart to the car and remove each item and place it securely behind the backseat for the ride home, where I will again remove the items one or two at a time and carry them to the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and shed. The good news, I tell myself as I walk back and forth from the car to the house, is I didn’t succumb, bow to pressure, and buy the bag like everyone else. The bad news is, I’ll never be French.
If this were the end of a story, things would reconcile, add up, I would add up, or at least have direction, there’d be no loose ends, and the end might take you back to the beginning. But this isn’t a story, it’s my life, and the French and American sides don’t easily fit. When I’m in France, I see how American I am. In the U.S, it’s the reverse. I now try to bring the best of my American self (friendly, active, progressive, persistent, generous, doubting, resilient, prepared, inventive, questioning, analytical, self-mocking, humorous, independent) to France and the best of my French self (trusting, accepting, open, connected, accommodating, patient, respectful, compliant, child-like, living in the present, grateful, dependent, conservative, wondrous) to America, and often fall short in both places.
Here’s what I’ve learned. Two loves and two lives is not an easy life. When something happens here, I worry. When something happens there, I worry. I now worry two times as much as I used to. In that, I find familiarity and purpose. And also in this: Finistère, the end of the earth in French, is Penn ar Bed in Breton—the beginning of the world. For me, it is.
Acknowledgments
Most books are not written alone, and this book is not an exception. The ways people helped, supported, and assisted are innumerable. I want to thank the following people for making it possible for me to write this book:
In France
Yvonne, Yvon, Yann, Xavier, Thierry, Tatjana, Susan, Sharon, Sandy, Raymond, Olivier, Nolwenn, Noé, Monique, Mikael, Martine, Martin, Marion, Marie, Marcel, Maëlle, Ludwig, Louise, Loni, Kerry, John, Joël, Jean-Pierre, Jeanine, Jean, Gilles, Gilbert, Georges, Gaël, Françoise, François, Evelyne, Estelle, David, Claude, Christine, Bruno, Bob, Anjela.
For Reading, Editing, Correcting, and Suggesting—in English, French, Latin, and Breton
Sharon Ahearn, Timmie Chandler, Peggy DeCoursey, Anne Fox, Roy Glassberg, Gilles Goulard, Paula Panich, Janice and Warren Poland, Fred Setterberg, and Kate Vergeer.
For Illustration Ideas
Betty Krasne, Marty Schwartz, and George Wallach
For Evocative and Elegant Drawings
Kim Thoman
For Technical Support, Advice, Help, and Hand-holding
Bob Grill
For Numerous Visits to Plombien and Friendship Beyond Reason
Peggy DeCoursey, Joanna Smith, and LeRoy Votto
For Warm, Clean, Cheap, Well-lit Office Space
Bill and Helen Shyvers
For Inspiration, Role Models, and
Teachers
Molly Giles, Leo Litwack, and the ongoing creative writing class at the Downtown Oakland Senior Center
For Publication
Naomi Puro, who found Denis Clifford, who found Phillip Spitzer, my agent—the best—who found Leslie Meredith, my editor, also the best. Lucky me.
For Those People Who Came to the House and the Area and Who Will Always Be Part of It and Me, Though They Are No Longer Here
Patrice Bastard, Jerry and Sheryl Kramer, Pat Schwartz, Michael Valentini, Eve St. Martin Wallenstein
About the Author
MARK GREENSIDE holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin. He has been a civil rights activist, Vietnam War protestor, antidraft counselor, Vista Volunteer, union leader, and college professor. His stories have appeared in The Sun, The Literary Review, Cimarron Review, The Nebraska Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, The New Laurel Review, Crosscurrents, Five Fingers Review, and The Long Story, as well as other journals and magazines, and he is the author of the short story collection I Saw a Man Hit His Wife.
He presently lives in Alameda, California, where he continues to teach and be politically active, and Brittany, France, where he still can’t do anything without asking for help.
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