Foreign Tongue

by Vanina Marsot

  There was something both weirdly erotic—the strangeness of the situation, the sheer proximity—and weirdly mechanical about it. As I wandered about, I felt like I’d ventured into the kind of situation you don’t necessarily enjoy but might look forward to telling people about later. I didn’t stay too long in any one place and avoided eye contact as I watched people have sex.

  I noticed that here, either you got off or you got off watching. The former was out, as I didn’t go for sex with strangers and I wasn’t attracted to Francis; and the latter didn’t work for me either, as it turned out to be strangely bereft of the thing that could make it engaging: a story, a sense of who these people were. I began to feel more and more out of place.

  A pair of lips grazed the back of my neck as a hand cupped my buttocks.

  “Cut it out, Francis,” I said. When the fondling didn’t stop, I turned around. It wasn’t Francis but a tall, thin woman about my age, with an asymmetrical haircut in a cut-out leather dress. She gave me a friendly smile. Behind her stood a tan man with full lips, fondling her through the slits in the leather. She was all bones and angles, like an Italian greyhound, and as I gave them an apologetic look, I had an absurd, vain thought: Was I her type? If I were gay, would she be mine? “Excusez moi,” I said, and went to find Francis. He was at the bar, talking to the bartender. I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “I’m pulling the rip cord,” I announced. He shrugged and drained his glass. We went upstairs and down the street to the car.

  “Well?” he asked, hands shoved in his pockets.

  “I get it, but I don’t get it,” I said. “It’s funny, I kept wondering what all those people wanted, aside from the obvious. A connection? A thrill, something different? Who are they? What are they looking for?”

  Francis shrugged. “It’s not that complicated. I was looking for a girl I met the last time. She was beautiful. From Cameroon,” he said, wistful. “Shall I take you home?” he asked. I nodded. It was a short drive. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and went inside.

  I got morose in the elevator. Was this what my life was going to be like? Being taken to sex clubs by kinky, aging lawyers? I wasn’t that sort of person; in fact, I was actually kind of prudish, even though I didn’t like to admit it…and…and…somehow, this was all Timothy’s fault. Yes, I was going to go down that path. I was going to sit in the dark and contemplate my sorry life.

  The dress saved me. Inside the apartment, I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. The dress still looked good, and it wanted to party. It was barely past one-thirty, early for Paris. Before I could change my mind, I called Pascal. Sure enough, he was at a nightclub with a bunch of fashionisti and invited me along. I changed into a pair of lower heels and caught a taxi.

  Castel was an old-fashioned yet perpetually chic private club crowded with hipsters, a smattering of aristos and intellos, and just enough local color to keep it from becoming boring. A brass slat in the door slid open, and a pair of eyes scrutinized my appearance before letting me in. I found Pascal holding court with a few friends. My dress perked up.

  “Darling!” he shouted and got up to kiss me. “En robe du soir! Quelle surprise!”

  I grinned and kissed him back. I sat next to Céline, an old friend of Pascal’s and a booker at a modeling agency.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. All the other women were wearing jeans, tank tops, and high heels, just like everyone in L.A. She handed me a glass of champagne.

  “Out to dinner with a lawyer,” I said. “He took me to a club libertin.”

  “Tu plaisantes! Really?” she asked. I nodded. “I’ve always wanted to know what really goes on in those places,” she mused.

  “I know, that’s why I went,” I said. Three women leaned in to hear more.

  “What really goes on where?” asked Pascal.

  “Des clubs échangistes,” Céline said.

  “People fucking,” he said drily. They all looked at me. I nodded in agreement. “On y go?” he asked. We trooped downstairs to the small dance floor. I hadn’t danced in a long time. Only teenagers go dancing in L.A. I danced to music I didn’t recognize, sweating through my dress and not caring. In the mirrored column, I could see my makeup had melted away and my hair, loosened from its tight bun, hung in limp, gel-soaked rattails, but it felt good to dance in a crowd, with music too loud to think.

  At four, we went to a bar in the Tenth with purple leather poufs to drink mint cocktails, smoke water pipes, and listen to Arab lounge music. I left sometime after five.

  The rue de Paradis was empty. Not a taxi in sight, which was just as well: I needed to walk off the alcohol. I tallied up my intake: champagne and wine with dinner, vodka at the sex club, more champagne at Castel, and mint cocktails at Le Sultan.

  Drunk off my ass, I concluded scientifically. My heels clattered on the pavement, and I veered to avoid a long smear of dog shit. It was quiet. My dress was damp against my back. My footsteps rang out, echoing against the buildings. I debated whether walking home drunk was stupid or reasonable. A homeless man sat on the sidewalk, burping loudly and waving his hands in the air like a conductor. He looked a little scary, muttering to himself in a gravelly baritone, but crossing the street to avoid him seemed unnecessary and rude.

  As I passed him, he asked for a light. I kept walking. He shouted, “L’amour n’est pas une pomme de terre!” Love is not a potato. I doubled back and gave him a purple matchbox from the lounge place. He looked at me with rheumy, clever eyes.

  “Merci, chérie,” he said.

  “Bonne nuit,” I said.

  As I wove through narrow streets, I saw lights on in a few apartments, illuminating beamed ceilings, crystal chandeliers, marble mantels, and the spiky shadows of potted palms. Paris by night, a tour of apartment ceilings. La promenade des plafonds la nuit, I mused, pleased with my phrasing until I realized it sounded like the ceilings were going for a walk at night instead of me.

  A bird sang. The black sky was beautiful, the air smelled of woodsmoke, and I soaked up the city like a sponge. It was magic—the past, present, and future all in one place. Other centuries’ footsteps whispered next to the slap of my own.

  Crossing the canal, past thin trees like shocked paintbrushes, I heard a low, mournful moan, coming from close by. I looked around, but there was no one there. I heard it again: a human moan, not an animal one. I pulled my wrap tighter around me. The sound became a chorus of moans. I broke into a run. A taxi zoomed up the street, diesel engine clanking, and then it was quiet again.

  I passed a faded Pernod billboard on the side of a wall. It reminded me of the old signs in the métro, pasted on the tunnels between stops. I remembered cupping my hands around my eyes and looking for the Dubonnet ads when I was a child. First there was a chorus line of Belle Epoque can-can girls, beneath the word “Dubo.” Several yards later was the same image, but with “Dubon.” The last poster said “Dubonnet.” I liked those old ads, and the faded ones on the sides of buildings, the semihidden traces of the past.

  My thoughts went to Timothy, the way a tongue searches out a painful tooth, stupidly and relentlessly. I thought about his habit of making up song lyrics in the car and how sweet he’d been when my cat died, how he liked to invent stories about other shoppers in the supermarket, and how deeply, profoundly awful his cooking was. How he told me I was beautiful and I believed him.

  I felt in my purse for my phone. I thought about calling him, but I knew it was the kind of thing I would justify in my alcoholic stupor and then regret in the morning.

  Was it regret or remorse? In French, they mean different things. Regret is for things you haven’t done, remorse is for the things you have. Hence the saying “Vaut mieux avoir des remords que des regrets”: It is better to have remorse than regret. The French think you should do stupid, emotional things that you’ll feel horrible about in the morning rather than wondering—for the rest of your life—what would’ve happened if you’d done stupid, emotional things that you would
’ve felt horrible about in the morning.

  At the square by the boulevard Jules Ferry, I stopped in front of the statue of La Grisette. She was heartbreaking, a flower girl in an 1840s gown and an absurd hairdo, her thin arms holding a basket of flowers for sale, ignored by the pigeons and passersby. She’d wanted so much and gotten so little. That’s when I gave in. I sat on a damp bench and cried. I was pitiful and pathetic; digging myself out of my own bottomless pit would take more than a spoon.

  7

  I am so glad you have been able to preserve the text in all of its impurity.

  —SAMUEL BECKETT of Endgame,

  in a letter to Alan Schneider dated 1957

  I fought through layers of consciousness to wake up. It was like paddling through mud with ineffectual limbs and an anvil for a head. When I surfaced, I had a stuffed nose and my tongue tasted like a brown chenille bedspread in an ugly motel, but I had to get up: I had brunch plans with Bunny at a salon de thé near WHSmith. I took a shower and threw on clothes, nagged by an unsettled feeling, like I’d had a dream in which I’d wanted to remember something but I couldn’t remember what the something was.

  I gulped down my first café Viennois in silence, appreciating Bunny’s strict brunch rule about not engaging in conversation until you’d ingested coffee, a gallantry left over from his days as a hard-drinking newspaperman. We were at L’Auberge Viennoise, a place I referred to as Heidi’s House, for its gemütlich, Alpine dollhouse atmosphere. A collection of yellow-yarn-haired dolls in lederhosen sat on a china cabinet, and a parade of hand-carved wooden toys decorated the window ledge.

  Our table groaned under the weight of a silver coffee urn, a pitcher of steamed milk, a basket of pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins, croissants, and brioches as well as tartines, a crated tub of creamy beurre d’Echiré, and jars of jam—figue, cerise, and abricot, all fait maison.

  “I had a weird experience last night,” I said.

  “Drinking’ll do that.” He sank his chin into his neck, giving me a knowing look.

  “No, I mean really weird. I was walking home about, I don’t know, four in the morning, and I heard moaning by the canal. I looked around, but there was no one there.” I pulled the top off a brioche.

  “Where?”

  “Not far from my place. Near Saint-Louis,” I said, referring to the hospital.

  “Moaning, huh?” Bunny asked, with sudden interest.

  “You’ve got an archaeological gleam in your eye,” I remarked.

  “It’s not far from Montfaucon,” he said. “Site of medieval Paris’s infamous gallows. The hanged bodies were left dangling in the air for everyone to see.”

  I put down the brioche. “Very funny. Like hanged people moan.”

  “Maybe the ghosts of their relatives do,” he said. I made a face. “I’m just trying to give you a rational explanation—”

  “Ghosts,” I interrupted. “Of gallows hangings. That’s supposed to be rational?”

  “You’re the one hearing things,” he said, biting into a tartine slathered with butter and marmalade. “How’s the translation?” he asked.

  I grimaced. “I don’t know how you can eat that stuff, it’s orange and bitter.”

  “The subtle joy of bitter fruit is an acquired taste, my young friend,” he explained, wiping his mouth with a corner of white napkin. “Like so many things in life. So?”

  I poured more coffee into my cup and stirred in two heart-shaped sugar cubes. “You know, it’s an erotic novel,” I said.

  “I remember. Have you gotten to the dirty bits?” he asked, eyes twinkling. “Don’t make me beg.”

  “I guess. They’re mostly embarrassing,” I said. Bunny’s playful look made me squirm. We’d never talked about sex, and I didn’t know that I wanted to start. “I mean,” I tried to explain, “everyone probably has their own combination of spices in their sexual cooking cabinet, but revealing them makes them seem, I don’t know, absurd. Distasteful, even.” I winced, sounding more judgmental than I felt.

  He sat back, looking disappointed, but in me, not the translation.

  “For example,” I fumbled, “what is it with this femme fatale fantasy? This fantasy of a woman who waltzes into his life, and boom, they’re a perfect fit, the sex is great—”

  “Doesn’t everyone have that fantasy?” he asked. “The right person at the right time?”

  “I guess, but the way he describes it…” I trailed off. Bunny was elsewhere, slowly slathering marmalade on another tartine. “What?”

  He looked up, dreamy-eyed. “There was this thing Diana and I talked about a long time ago,” he said, mentioning an old girlfriend. “A spinning basket,” he explained. “The woman would sit in a basket suspended from the ceiling. It had an opening in the bottom so you could penetrate her from below while the basket spun around.”

  I choked on my coffee. “Did you ever do it?” I asked.

  “No, but it was wonderful to think about.” He pulled an ear off a baby croissant, scattering a flurry of flakes on the tablecloth, and ate it.

  “I’ve never thought of twisting as particularly erotic,” I said. Bunny shrugged and bit off the other croissant ear. He handed me the book review section of The New York Times while he scanned the front page, humming.

  I stared at the paper, not reading it. I was a little freaked out by the thought of this sixty-three-year-old man and his Playboy magazine of the seventies fantasies. Not that he wasn’t allowed to have them, but I didn’t want to hear about them—the same way I didn’t want to know anything about my parents’ sex life. Bunny was like my wise, indulgent uncle, and I liked being his favorite protégée. I didn’t want any messy bits.

  My eyes drifted across a headline. At the same time, wanting everyone to stay in their prescribed roles made me feel like a fascist. I sighed.

  “Now what?” he asked, not looking up from the Times. I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said, folding the paper.

  “No, I’m glad you told me,” I said, trying to sound sincere. I rolled pieces of bread into little pellets.

  “You are not!” He smacked the table with the newspaper. “Maybe you shouldn’t be translating a sex book if talking about sex makes you so uncomfortable,” he said.

  “I’m not uncomfortable! I just want you to keep it to yourself!” It was out before I could pull it back. He picked up the Op-Ed section and ignored me. We sat in uncompanionable silence while I tried to figure out how to make amends. A polka played in the background.

  “Bunny?” I asked. I pulled the translation out of my bag and put it on the table. He didn’t answer. “Bunny.” He lowered his newspaper. “Would you read it? I want to know what you think.” He gave me a baleful look, but he picked up the pages.

  Eve, Eve, the name haunted me like the first woman who ever haunted man. She was the first woman to me. She virtually erased everyone else, reduced my past to a collection of half-forgotten dreams, memorable as cold coffee. The phoenix of my destiny. There was no one else. Even now, I can still remember the sound of her laughter, the smell of her neck, the shape of her breasts, the texture of her skin, her tender look, as precious as a secret a child shares with you.

  She ignored me for the rest of the evening, after knocking the wine into my lap. I ignored her back, but I could sense her next to me, an irritant, an intoxicant. I laughed, told crass jokes, entertained myself hugely, all the time hoping she was wondering who I was, this man who sat next to her with his back turned, immune to her charms. I have found that nothing intrigues a beautiful woman more than a man who ignores her.

  At the end of the evening, I gave her the most perfunctory of goodbyes. In the crisp night air, I stumbled toward my car, regretting the two cognacs.

  Her voice rang out in the night. “Where are you going?” she asked. I squinted. A dark shadow in a coat, she was there, waiting for me. Even in my stupor, I felt triumphant.

  “Home, if I can find my bloody keys.”

  She stepped clo
ser. I could see her lips, shiny in the dim light. “Here.” She put a hand on my waist, the way a man holds a woman. With her other hand, she searched my pockets.

  “Find what you’re looking for?” I drawled. She shoved the keys at my chest. They fell on the pavement. I looked down in stupefaction as she walked away. I ran after her, grabbing her arm.

  “Don’t! You’re too rough!” she said. I moved closer, putting my arm around her waist, and pressed myself into her back.

  “There’s something I have to do or I won’t be able to sleep,” I said, speaking into her hair.

  “I don’t care about your sleep, Jean-Marc. Leave me alone.”

  “But I do. Turn around.” She didn’t move, so I walked around to face her. I trailed my hand down the nape of her neck, her spine, the curve of her ass. She still didn’t move. I could hear her breathing, calm, deep.

  “Why do you stand there like a statue?” I asked.

  “You’re like a drunken bear at a circus. There’s something cruel and fascinating about watching. I wonder what will happen next.” She smiled, mocking me. I wanted to shatter her complacency, her superior taunting. I lunged forward, took her face in my hands, and kissed her.

  “Enough,” she said, pushing me away.

  “Too bearlike for you?”

  “Go home.” She tightened her trench coat belt with two hands.

  “I’ll kill someone.” I stumbled and laughed.

  She looked at me, then tossed her head. “I’ll drive.”

  She walked back and swept up the keys with a fluid movement. I don’t remember how she found my car or how she got me into it. I tried to kiss her neck, but she pushed me aside.

  “But it’s an automatic,” I blathered.

  “I know what it is, you fool.” She drove quickly through the empty streets. At the place de Clichy, I realized we weren’t going to my place. I followed her up six flights of stairs to a sparsely furnished apartment under the eaves. She threw me a blanket, pointed to the sofa, and went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.