“No!” the teacher shouted. “For God’s sake, they’re working class.”
I had given that answer twenty minutes earlier, but I guess she dismissed it when I mentioned the snow globe. It was just that kind of day.
January 18, 1999
Paris
Again the teacher was in a foul mood. She called me a misogynist because, in an essay on my dream house, I said that every evening, once the sun set, I’d decide whether I wanted to sleep with one of my three hundred wives or a camel. She later told me, in English, that she hated me. I had used falloir in the subjunctive rather than the imparfait, so I guess I deserved it.
January 20, 1999
Paris
Today the teacher told us that a ripe Camembert should have the same consistency as a human eyebrow. It was just a little something she threw in. All week, as part of our homework, we’re supposed to listen to the radio and talk in class about what we heard. Luis brought up the forty-some bodies that were just discovered in Kosovo and the teacher listened, then said, “Now tell me what happened that was even worse.”
January 22, 1999
Paris
Doing laundry in Paris has to be planned a week in advance, as it takes that long to work up the change. It shouldn’t be that difficult, but cashiers here act as if their money drawers can only accept deposits. In New York you’d see signs reading NO CHANGE WITHOUT PURCHASE, but here they should read, simply, NO CHANGE. Every time you pay for something, they shake you down for the exact amount. If the thing costs, say, 185 francs, and you hand over a 200-franc bill, the person will frown at it and say, “Really? You don’t have a hundred and eighty-five?”
At the grocery store, I’ve had several cashiers say, “Didn’t I see something smaller in your wallet?” The other day one of them snatched my coin purse out of my hands and simply took what she wanted. On top of that, the checkout people sit rather than stand. They don’t bag your groceries like they do in the States, and everything is scanned rather than entered manually into the machine. Their only job is to make change, and they refuse to do it.
January 24, 1999
Paris
It’s nine thirty p.m. and I haven’t left the apartment all day. Eleven and a half hours ago I started my homework and there’s still no end in sight. Every word is checked in the dictionary, every verb tense is reconsidered, and it takes forever. I still have eight questions to answer, three personal sentences to write, and a story to finish.
January 25, 1999
Paris
I spent a total of seventeen hours on my homework. The hardest part was a story the teacher started and asked us to finish. Her opener went like this: “At midnight I decided to leave the party and walk twenty minutes to the train station where I could get a taxi. It was dark and the streets were deserted. I was nervous and hurrying along when I heard a car roll up from behind with its headlights off.”
My completion reads “Surprisingly, the trunk was not uncomfortable. There was a pillow there, and a woolen blanket. The floor was carpeted and smelled like pizza. Yes, it was dark, but relatively spacious. While lying there, I would often reflect upon my life before I came to live in this trunk. I’d been walking to the train station when this car stopped behind me. It was dark, but still I could see that the driver was handsome and well dressed. He sensed my nervousness and said, ‘Come on, then, give us a smile.’”
In my story she lives in the trunk for twenty-two days and falls madly in love with the man who put her there. Eventually they come to tutoie each other through a little hole, and everything’s great until he abandons the car at the airport, with her still in the back. A steep ticket is issued for illegal parking, and when she is held responsible, she cries.
January 26, 1999
Paris
Before I left the apartment this afternoon a woman knocked on the door and asked if I wanted to buy her carpet. I don’t know if she lives in the building or just walked in off the street, but either way, the answer was the same. I’m not a big carpet person, but rather than getting into it, I just said no and then hurried to class, where the teacher read my story about her being locked in the trunk. Her delivery was good, but she kept pausing to call me a misogynist.
“No,” I corrected her, “I’m not a misogynist, I’m a misanthrope. I hate everyone equally.”
January 28, 1999
Paris
I went this afternoon and bought a ticket for You’ve Got Mail, which here is called Vous Avez un Message. I guess I mispronounced something, as the guy behind the counter loudly mocked me to his associates, all of whom laughed. Handing me my change, he said, “We charge extra to tourists.”
If he’d said they charge extra to Americans I might have pointed out that American movies are what keeps his theater in business. As it was, I said nothing and quietly burned for the rest of the day.
February 11, 1999
Paris
A very small man came to the door this morning and used a verb I wasn’t familiar with. His face was smeared with something black, as were his hands. Coal? I wondered. Luckily Hugh was home and explained that the verb meant “to ream out.” The man said that by law our furnace vents and chimneys were to be reamed out once a year, and with that he scrambled up onto the kitchen counter, then climbed on top of the refrigerator. Once there, he reached into a vent and came away with a fistful of soot, saying we should have it cleaned for insurance purposes.
The man’s top teeth were rotted to stubs, but the bottom ones were white and even. He came up to my shoulder, that’s how small he was. Once we agreed that he should do it, the little guy left and was replaced by his assistant, who was young and handsome. He wore a one-piece work suit over his clothes—the kind that mechanics wear—and the rear end was torn open. Like his boss, his hands were black and his face was smeared. I was enchanted and asked if he could do the fireplaces as well. While he worked, I did my homework, pausing every now and then to ask or answer a question. Did I know, he asked, that the same verb, “to ream out,” was also used for sex acts?
“You’re kidding,” I said. “How interesting.”
We talked about his love of football and cats and his hatred of the English. It cost the equivalent of $130, but now I can build fires.
February 26, 1999
Paris
Today was the last day of class. Next month the teacher goes to Brazil, and then she has to work a few months in the office. She kissed several students good-bye, but I slipped out the door. I would have liked to thank her, but everything feels different since my article (“Me Talk Pretty One Day”) came out in Esquire. I wish I hadn’t published it. I meant it at the time, but since then things have changed. She’s still moody, but I think she’s a good teacher. I can see that now, whereas I couldn’t before.
March 13, 1999
Reston, Virginia
This evening for the first time in seven months I got to watch some episodes of Cops. They weren’t the best ones, but at least I’d never seen them before. Last night’s hotel in Alabama had thirty-eight stations, including the Animal Planet Network, which offered something called Wildlife Emergency, a sort of ER for wounded creatures. The first segment featured an eagle with possible lead poisoning. “Katie, I want you to draw some blood and get this guy into X-ray, ASAP.”
I thought, OK, it’s an eagle. It’s on stamps and coins so I guess it makes sense to go all out. Next came a possum with a broken jaw, and again the doctors leaped into action. I was wondering why they didn’t just put it down, but that would be another show—Mercy Killing, maybe, or When Animals Die.
Later that night I watched a British import called Vets in Practice, which follows the goings-on of four attractive veterinarians. Pete was presented with a parrot suffering from an ingrown toenail, and then we cut to Brian, who had his arm embedded to the elbow in a cow’s asshole and talked briefly about his relationship with his girlfriend. We saw Ellen, who had recently amputated both wings of a goose and was now reintroducing
her back into society. “I’m worried about Denise,” she said. “Worried that the others won’t accept her.”
The show cut to a commercial and the announcer said, “Coming up next, Allison treats a cat and her kittens for fleas.”
March 23, 1999
Chicago
I haven’t had a drink in forty-eight hours. This is not an accident but a concerted effort, and a very difficult one. I’d have to double-check, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been drunk every night for the past eighteen years. At the airport yesterday, I felt, if not good, then at least proud of myself. I’ve long assumed that everyone can tell I’m an alcoholic—strangers, even, the people you present your boarding pass to or buy a newspaper from. If it shows in my face that I drink, mustn’t it eventually show that I don’t anymore?
March 24, 1999
Chicago
Again last night I lay in bed unable to sleep. It was my third night without a drink and I was trying to remember what’s so good about being sober. One thing is that I’ll be able to walk through Paris at night. Hugh and I went out for coffee once, and I’ve wobbled to the Pont Neuf on New Year’s Eve, but otherwise I’ve always been too drunk. I can’t walk straight or go any real distance because after seven beers and two Scotches, I need a bathroom every three blocks or so. So on the plus side, I can start getting out more. My fear is that I’ll find it even duller than sitting at home.
April 4, 1999
Paris
Yesterday afternoon I went to the grocery store and bought a half a rabbit, never making the connection that this is Easter. It’s a little like eating reindeer for Christmas, or Founding Father on the Fourth of July. My half a rabbit was prepackaged—cut into pieces and arranged in a Styrofoam casket, much like a quartered fryer. I was out of the house while Hugh was cooking and didn’t realize until later that when they say half a rabbit, they really mean half a rabbit. I was serving myself seconds when I noticed half the rabbit’s head lying in profile at the bottom of the pot.
They must have sawed this thing right down the middle. I examined half the rabbit’s brain and wondered which variety of thoughts it included. Was this the half that instinctively warned it to run away from dogs or the half that held childhood memories or grudges against other rabbits? I prodded it with a fork, realized I could have eaten it by accident, and had half a mind to become a vegetarian.
April 6, 1999
Paris
The inevitable finally happened, just as I knew it would. My French teacher faxed Andy at Esquire to say my article has had the effect of a bomb at the Alliance Française.
“Maybe she means that in a good way,” Hugh said.
I tell myself I’m not going to think about it and find I’m able to distract myself for up to fifteen seconds at a time. In my story I failed to mention her wit, and her skill as a teacher. That is what I have to apologize for, my laziness.
April 8, 1999
La Bagotière
Due to the bombings of Serbian targets, there’s a lot more anti-American graffiti in Paris. Yesterday on the way to the train station I passed a wall reading USA = GROSS CONS (“big assholes”) and the other day in the Métro station I read FUCK OF US. I love it when it’s not grammatically correct. “That’s fuck off, thank you very much.”
April 17, 1999
Paris
Hugh and I spent the weekend in Normandy while his mother, Joan, stayed behind to take care of the cat. Before I left, she bought a bottle of wine and I warned her that she might want to pick up a decent corkscrew, because Hugh’s is worthless. Every time I use it, I wind up pushing in the cork with a screwdriver.
I returned to Paris this afternoon and shortly afterward Joan walked through the door with a sackful of groceries and a new corkscrew, the type with the two prongs. “Boy, you were right about Hugh’s,” she said. “I couldn’t get it to do anything.” I pointed out that she’d just bought an exact replica of the corkscrew we already have, and she knit her brows. “What are you talking about?”
She opened the drawer beside the refrigerator and pulled out a palm-size plastic disk attached to a shallow coupling. “I thought this was Hugh’s corkscrew,” she said. “The circle part fits over the top of the bottle, but when I tried turning it toward the arrow, nothing happened.”
This was for me one of those adult moments involving a choice. Do you shrug your shoulders and say, “I couldn’t get it to work either,” or do you tell the woman she spent the weekend trying to open a wine bottle with the broken knob to the dishwasher?
April 30, 1999
Paris
This evening a man knocked on the door of our apartment and said, “Hello, I just got out of prison, may I come in?”
I’m not sure if he was legally required to introduce himself like this or if it was his own idea. Either way, it was a case of honesty getting you nowhere.
“Hugh!” I called. “There’s somebody here to see you.”
The ex-convict was attempting to sell a series of Magic Marker drawings he’d matted into little cardboard frames. They were geometric designs, the kind people sketch when they’re trapped on the phone with a relative or, possibly, a parole officer. When Hugh told the guy we weren’t interested, he became hostile. “You’re all the same,” he spat. “You think that just because somebody’s been in jail they’re not good enough to come inside and sit on your furniture.”
He called us a number of names I’ve only recently come to understand, and then he banged on our neighbor’s door and insulted her as well. This is the third time this month that somebody has gotten into the building and come knocking. It used to happen every so often in New York, but there I never gave it much thought, as I’d been able to fluently lie and talk my way out of whatever someone was selling. Last week I was visited by two Catholic nuns collecting money for what I can only hope were new uniforms, and a few days later a small elderly woman came by wondering if I wanted to buy her bath mat. “Look,” she said, “it’s dry and clean. Perfect for the feet!”
May 8, 1999
London, England
Over dinner I stupidly asked if Vanessa did anything that got on Steve’s nerves. I meant it as a joke, but Steve answered seriously. He complained that she always leaves the caps off bottles, and just as I thought that was that, he started in on a list of other things. Vanessa tried defending herself, and when it got awkward, I suggested that Steve put a lid on it.
“Do what?”
I learned then that in England, one says, “Put a sock in it.” The phrase originated in the early part of the century. Gramophones had no volume control, so to lower the music, you put a sock in the horn. I also learned there’s a woman at the BBC named Jonquil Panting.
Why is it you so rarely see a woman with a hearing aid?
May 17, 1999
Berlin, Germany
I flew from Paris on Air France and was seated across the aisle from the fattest man I’ve ever seen in my life. He was German, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts with an elastic waist. They brought him an extender for his seat belt and when he sat, his stomach pressed against his folded-up tray table. The guy was on the aisle, while his friend took the window. In order to fit, he had to raise both armrests. Half of him invaded his friend’s space and the other half was repeatedly battered by the food and beverage carts that struggled to get past him. When breakfast was served, his tray had to be placed on his friend’s table. The fat fellow ate his food and then asked for two additional rolls. The only thing I touched was my coffee, and though I could feel the guy’s eyes on my food and had no problem with him taking it, I didn’t know how to offer without saying, in effect, “Hey, you’re fat. Why don’t you eat this?”
May 18, 1999
Cologne, Germany
Harry Rowohlt, the fellow who translated my book into German and is reading with me on my tour, told me that when someone on the bus or at a nearby table in a restaurant talks on a cell phone, he likes to lean over and shout, “Come back to bed, I’m freezing.”
May 19, 1999
Cologne
Yesterday at five a woman arrived to take my picture. She was in her late fifties and because her English was weak, we spoke in French. During our time together I learned that her husband had recently died of lung cancer and that she was grateful to have no children. She said that her mother is in her nineties and has recently started to pee in her pants.
When we had finished I said good-bye and walked to a supermarket I had passed earlier in the day. You don’t have to know French to feel at ease in a French grocery store. Many of the words are recognizable to an English speaker, so you’re not likely to mistake cat food for tuna. In Germany, though, it’s not so easy. I was standing in the soap aisle when a young woman approached, pushing her shopping cart with her chin. She was in her mid-twenties, and attractive. The first thing I noticed was her beautiful shoulder-length hair. Then I realized that she had no arms. It didn’t look as if she’d lost them in an accident, at least not recently. Her ease suggested she’d been born without them.
Next to me were the shampoos. The young woman stopped, and after considering them, she slipped off a shoe and reached up to the shelf with her bare foot. It was level with my chest, but she seemed to have no problem grabbing the plastic bottle and putting it in her cart. I didn’t see her paying for her groceries but imagine she was just as skilled at opening her wallet and presenting the cashier with both bills and change.
Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 Page 32
