Pardon My French

by Allen Johnson

  “Good. Thank you.”

  Marco was now directing his discourse to me. “Should we start?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for my approval, so I said, “Mais oui, allons-y” Let’s go. (I did not say, “Allez les pisseuses,” although it did occur to me. Occasionally, even I know when it’s time to shut the hell up.)

  Marco instructed the men to stand behind him, facing the women, who were positioned on the opposite side of the room against the mirror. “This is the basic step for le rock,” he said. “One, two, three-and-four, five-and-six. And again: one, two, three-and-four, five-and-six.”

  I followed Marco’s lead, my feet shuffling backward, forward, and side to side. The step was easy enough, and after a while I was beginning to feel a little smug. This dance thing is a snap, I said to myself. And then Marco said, “Let’s try it with music.” In a moment, Elvis Presley’s “I’m All Shook Up” rattled the dance studio in Pérols, France.

  It was a strange feeling. I felt like I was suddenly transported back to the USA. But it was also a good feeling. This is my music, I thought. I’ll become a French legend before the night is through. I was singing along with Elvis. “Oh-oh, yeah, I’m all shook up.” Marco paired us up. I was to dance with Marie-France, who was looking askance at my Elvis hip-swivel routine.

  Come to the King, pretty mamma. Thank you very much.

  Marco called out the cadence, and we started to dance to Elvis, and for a moment I was flying. And then, without warning, my feet defied me. Suddenly, I lost the beat, and before I knew what had happened, my left foot was where my right foot should have been.

  Marco stopped the music. “Allen, what are you doing?” he asked politely.

  “Well, everything was just fine for a minute, but then I got excited and more or less lost my way.”

  “Ça se voit.” One sees that, Marco said, squinting. “Shall we start again?”

  “Please.”

  The second time around I was able to stay in rhythm, but without thinking my steps got progressively longer, which eventually forced Marie-France to take awkward giant steps to stay even remotely face-to-face. While the music continued to play, Marco walked over to me and tapped me on my shoulder. He had a pinched prune look about him as though I had just dropped my pants in public.

  “Look, Allen,” he said, “your partner, Marie-France, is the flower. She is what counts. You are of no importance.”

  Okey dokey, I’m glad we got that straightened out.

  “Everything you do,” Marco went on, “must glorify the flower. Do you know what you are doing to your flower?”

  “Uh, glorifying her?” I said hopefully.

  “Mais non. You are running her ragged. That is what you’re doing. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “It is very simple. Your job is to be a charnière. Do you know what a charnière is?”

  I didn’t. But whatever it was, I knew I wasn’t it.

  “Come with me,” he said. Marco took me by the arm and led me to a three-foot gate that separated a small alcove from the studio. For a moment, I thought he was fed up with my clumsiness and was throwing me out for good.

  “Look. This is a charnière,” he said, pointing at the gate hinge.

  “Oooh.”

  “You must be like a charnière. You pivot, but you do not move. Have you got it?”

  “J’y suis.” I’ve got it.

  Marco squinted. I could tell that he was not convinced that I had it at all. He smiled a tight-lipped smile and patted me on the shoulder. That’s a good dog. “Go back to your partner,” he said.

  Marie-France was the perfect dance consort. Not only did she have good rhythm but abundant patience—a first-order job requirement when coupled with me. There was a delightful grace about her. She seemed to glide where I stomped.

  “You’re a wonderful dancer,” I said after a pause in the music, knowing I couldn’t risk talking and dancing at the same time.

  “I like dancing very much,” she said, ignoring the compliment. “And you dance very well yourself.”

  Now, I recognize condescension in any language, but my American bravado was quickly dwindling, so I accepted the compliment wholeheartedly.

  “How are things going so far?” Marco asked.

  “Génial!” Thierry said.

  “Super!” Brigitte added.

  “This is great,” I said. “Marie-France and I are thinking about getting married.”

  After an hour of dancing le rock, Marco announced that we would now begin the tango.

  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

  “Remember,” Marco said, “eighty percent of the tango is the attitude. Men, you are the master, and she is your woman. Take command.”

  With that anthem, Marco demonstrated the initial step: two long slow steps, followed by two short quick steps, and so on. Each stride was a step of supreme authority—the foot slowly lifting off the ground with toes pointed downward; the leg, slightly flexed, thrusting forward from the hip; the open chest following in perfect alignment—like a proud matador, turning his back on the bull, his cape dragging behind in the arena dust. It was a work of art.

  “And now you,” Marco said to the men.

  We awkwardly strode across the dance floor, as Marco called out the tempo. “Lent-lent, vite-vite; lent-lent, vite-vite.” Slow-slow, quick-quick; slow-slow, quick-quick. I could not speak for the other men, but I was feeling less like a proud matador and more like the bull on roller skates.

  After one trip across the room and back, Marco said, “Ça ne va pas.” No good. “Allen, why are you looking at your feet?”

  “I don’t know,” I said meekly, “to make sure they’re still attached to my legs?”

  “Mais non. Keep your head up and your eyes straight ahead. Now, take a deep breath.”

  I took what I thought was a respectable breath.

  “No, no, not like that. Like this,” Marco said, filling his lungs with air until his chest rolled out like a wine barrel. “You see? Now, let your shoulders drop. They must not be tense.”

  I let my shoulders drop.

  “Oh là là. Impossible. Roll your shoulders back. Otherwise you will look like a country bumpkin.”

  The colloquial French word Marco used for “country bumpkin” was “plouc.” It wasn’t a word that I knew at the time, but I got its meaning.

  “Un plouc,” I repeated, pantomiming an oafish stride with knees bent, a protruding stomach, and arms hanging limply like ripe eggplants.

  “Exactly,” Marco said.

  I struck my tango pose—chest out, shoulders back, chin up.

  “Et voilà,” Marie-France said.

  “Bon,” Marco said to the class. “Select a partner, and we will dance the tango as couples.”

  Marie-France gave me a nod. I was exceedingly thankful for that simple gesture, like a little proclamation of faith, despite my clunky dance skills.

  I struck my tango pose again, and Marie-France took my hand and leaned into me like the perfect puzzle piece. The music started, and I took my first step forward—then my second and third. I knew almost immediately that something was wrong. The tango, as Marco explained to us, is a dance of contact—you feel the legs and hips of your partner—but when you move, you must move as one person. That was not happening. I was not gliding with Marie-France; I was pushing. After five minutes of plodding around the perimeter of the studio, we were both exhausted before the song was half done.

  “Something is wrong,” I said.

  “Évidemment,” Marie-France said.

  Évidemment does not have the same sense as the English word “evidently,” meaning “apparently.” Évidemment is more definitive, more forceful, meaning “certainly” or “obviously.” So, with a single word, Marie-France told me that she recognized there was a problem too.

  “I feel like I am pushing you,” I said.

  “I feel like I’m being pushed.”

  “What do we do?�
�

  Marie-France took my hand. “Let’s try again.”

  We started to dance. Immediately, I could feel Marie-France flowing with my strides. “Yes,” I said. “That is more like it.” We continued to dance around the studio, becoming more and more in sync with every turn.

  As we glided past Marco, he turned down the corners of his mouth and said, “Not bad. Not good, of course, but not bad,” which, coming from Marco, was tantamount to being canonized by the Catholic Church.

  At the end of the session, Marco taught us the Madison, a kind of line dance that can be seen in the 1988 movie Hairspray. It’s a simple dance that features a ninety-degree right turn every four measures. By that time in the evening, all of us were fast friends. We laughed as we shuffled left and right to the two-beat western tune.

  As we left the studio, I thanked Marco—a practice I would repeat at the end of each session all year long. He always appeared a little stunned when I thanked him, clearly unsure of how to accept my gratitude. In a way I thought of it as a kind of cultural exchange. This, my friend, is how Americans acknowledge a gracious and competent guide.

  Walking across the courtyard to our cars, I started talking with Marie-France. I learned she had taken a new job as a supplier for a chain of gift shops and that her husband, Henri, was working in Lyon. Every Friday, Henri took the 200-mile train ride to Montpellier to join his wife for the weekend.

  “I would like to meet him,” I said.

  “Èvidemment.”

  We continued talking, and Marie-France asked me what I did when I was not dancing.

  “A little bit of everything,” I said. “My wife and I like to hike, and I like to write in the morning.”

  “Do you write in French?”

  “Are you serious? No, I write in English.”

  “What are you writing about?”

  “Mostly my experiences here—especially the people I meet. One day I will probably write about you.”

  “Really?” Marie-France said, beaming. “And what will you say?”

  “I’ll say that you were the perfect dance partner.”

  Marie-France blushed. “Oh, you Americans know how to say the right things.” And then, quickly changing the subject, “Is there anything in France that you want to do that you haven’t done yet?”

  I thought for a moment. “Yes. There is one thing. I’m an amateur jazz singer. I’d love to meet an authentic, old-time French jazz singer. Someone who knows the great old songs. That would be a dream come true.”

  “Hmm. That’s interesting.”

  We said our goodbyes, and Marie-France leaned forward, offering her cheek as a signal for me to faire la bise—the kissing thing on each cheek.

  * * *

  ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, Marie-France gave me a call.

  “Henri is coming into town late Friday night. I told him that I met an interesting American.”

  “Merci. That’s kind of you.”

  “Actually, I told him I met a rich American.”

  “Not all Americans are rich, you know.”

  “Bof.”

  “Don’t say ‘bof.’ There’s no bof about it. I’m comfortable but by no means rich.”

  Marie-France said something that sounded like “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

  I decided to let it go. Curiously, I could never change her mind about the modest heft of my wallet. In fact, it became an inside joke between us. Whenever she introduced me to someone new, I was always her “rich American friend.”

  “Saturday morning we would like to take you to the abrivado in Palavas.”

  “What’s an abrivado?”

  “You’ll see,” she said. “We’ll pick you up at ten o’clock.”

  Saturday morning we spotted Marie-France and Henri from our bedroom window that overlooked the street. We hurried downstairs to spare them the three-flight ascent to our apartment.

  Henri was a huge man with massive catcher-mitt hands. He was not fat—just big. He had a healthy shock of white hair and a broad, boyish smile. I liked him immediately.

  “So you are the American who is dancing with my wife,” he said, pretending to be menacing.

  “Uh, oui, Monsieur Sage,” I said in an exaggerated mousy voice. “But I don’t enjoy it. She makes me do it.”

  “What do you mean you don’t enjoy it?” he roared.

  “I mean, I don’t enjoy it … in that way,” I said, shaking my hand the way the French do when they see a beautiful woman.

  “I like this American,” Henri said, laughing thunderously. He enveloped my hand in his and shook it like a pit bull going for the kill. When the handshake rocked me on my heels, he planted his left paw on my shoulder to keep me from tipping over.

  We got into Henri’s Renault—Nita in the back with Marie-France, I in the front with Henri. Nita and Marie-France started chatting immediately. I knew they would hit it off—everyone likes Nita.

  Henri drove to Palavas, the seaside resort village a few miles west of our own village of Carnon. It’s a pleasant town that features a canal—replete with fishing and sailing boats—that cuts through the center of the eighteenth-century village. On that day there was a riot of compact cars, motorcycles, and pedestrians. By a small miracle, Henry spotted a patch of sidewalk that matched the width of the Renault. He eased up to the six-inch curb and edged the car over the obstacle. It scraped bottom.

  “Oh là là,” Marie-France cried out.

  “Ce n’est pas grave.” It’s not serious, Henri said calmly.

  “Of course it’s not serious,” Marie-France protested. “It’s not your car. It’s my car.”

  The car stationed, we threaded our way through the festive crowd, finally stopping at a barricade that blocked a side street from the principal road. The four of us leaned side by side over the barricade that overlooked the main street.

  “So, what is an abrivado?” I asked Henri.

  “You will see,” he said, echoing his wife’s deferring tactic.

  As we soaked in the warm Mediterranean sun, a brass and woodwind band—twenty to twenty-five musicians strong, none of whom were reading music—struck up a rousing march. Their tonality was accurate, bright, and well balanced.

  The director, a tall, slender man with a sparkling gold cape and matching top hat danced in rhythm before the band. He kicked an imaginary ball over his head with his right foot and then with his left. Then he swooped down into a Cossack squat and launched himself straight into the air with legs straight and his top hat twirling in his hand over his head. It was an amazing workout. Whatever he earned, it was not enough.

  I started chatting with Henri. In a few minutes, I discovered that he was the head chef for a high school in Lyon.

  “What’s the most difficult part of your job?” I asked.

  “Trying to satisfy the wishes of all the students and, of course, their parents. The Arabs, for example, have very specific dietary requirements.”

  “Do you try to honor that?” I asked.

  “No, that’s something I’m resisting. I think it’s important for all immigrants to be integrated into our culture. That includes eating the foods that we are accustomed to eating. Besides, it would be impossible for me to provide special menus for every ethnic preference. It just can’t be done.”

  It was at that time that I heard the distinctive sound of galloping horse hooves. We leaned over the barricade to see what was happening. Then, from around the bend in the street appeared six stocky white horses—the kind that run wild in the Camargue, the nature reserve on the Mediterranean east of Montpellier. The horses were mounted by the gardians, the French cowboys, wearing white shirts and, for some, a black fedora.

  The gardians formed a perfect V-shaped wedge as they galloped down the street. Within the wedge, partially hidden from view, were three black bulls. Adding to the excitement, a dozen teenage boys chased behind after the bulls, attempting to grab a taureau by the tail. Of course, the task of the gardians was to protect the bulls from the onslaug
ht. With their honor at stake, they would occasionally swat the teenage runners with the traditional pronged cattle stick.

  “So this is an abrivado,” I said to Henri after the first of a half-dozen runs.

  “Yes, this is an abrivado. Did you notice the pompoms on the horns of the bulls? The runners try to grab the bull by the tail and turn it around. Then they try to grab the pompoms. If they are successful, it is a great honor.”

  “How often are they successful?”

  “Hardly ever. The gardians are very protective. Sometimes, you will see a gardian grab a bull by the horn to keep it moving forward.”

  Just then another team of white horses and gardians rounded the corner. This time, a boy had managed to snatch the tail of one of the bulls. He was half running, half stumbling until he lost his balance and tumbled to the ground. He quickly jumped to his feet, dusted himself off, and, with dancing eyes, recounted his exploits to his comrades.

  With the last charge of horses and bulls, the crowd of spectators began to disperse. We worked our way back to the car. This time we stood to the side while Henri backed the Renault off the sidewalk, thereby avoiding a repetition of the awful grating sound of metal passing over concrete. We loaded into the car and headed north.

  “We’d like to take you to a bar we know in Montpellier,” Henri said. “The owner is a friend of mine, someone you should meet.”

  As we drove the short distance between Palavas and Montpellier, Henri volunteered that he was a national-level rugby player in his youth. Now he was a part-time referee.

  Although I had never seen a professional rugby match (Henri would introduce me to my first game a month later), a vivid image sprang to mind: a throng of beefy men with tree stumps for legs colliding headlong into a brawny mass of equal power and girth.

  “That makes sense,” I said. “You look like someone who could be a rugby player.”

  “Oh, not everyone is my size,” Henri said. “That’s the nice thing about rugby. There is a position for every size.”

  “It seems like such a violent sport—and dangerous, given that you don’t wear pads. Tell me, was your body covered with bruises at the end of a match?”

  “Not really,” Henri said modestly.