Book Read Free

Foreign Tongue

Page 20

by Vanina Marsot


  This was a letdown. I’d been hoping for something more interesting than another run-of-the-mill boy-meets-kept-girl story.

  “Solange Ramzy was born in Alexandria in 1952, the daughter of Lisette Bouret, a French music teacher, and Ashraf Ramzy, a professor of Egyptian archaeology. The latter died of a heart attack when Solange was twelve. Her mother remarried a local jeweler, a widower with two adult daughters.

  “At sixteen, Solange ran away to Cairo with a musician. After a month together, the musician left her for the daughter of a wealthy cigarette importer. Solange suffered through months of financial hardship, occasionally receiving handouts from her mother. She changed her name to Eve when she got a job as a singer at Le Lido, a seedy nightclub on the Pyramid road catering to Russian businessmen. She sang Edith Piaf and Nina Simone songs between belly dancer sets.

  “Le Lido was known for its prostitutes, who encouraged clients to buy expensive bottles of watered-down whiskey. It is not known whether Eve exercised this trade.

  “After two years in Cairo, Eve purchased a boat passage to France, but her plans were delayed when her mother and stepfather died in a car crash on the Corniche. She returned to Alexandria for the funeral but chose to avoid a legal battle over the financial succession with her stepfather’s children. Taking her mother’s jewelry and fur coats, she boarded a cargo ship to Nice. [Note: charges for theft of jewelry and other personal belongings of Madame Lisette El-Nouri were filed and subsequently dropped.]

  “Her whereabouts and activities between the time she arrived in Nice and the time she resurfaced in Paris, eight months later, are not known.

  “Once in Paris, Eve lodged with a distant cousin of her mother’s, Georgette Leclerc, a retired haute couture seamstress. She found employment as a house model at Nina Ricci and was able to rent maid’s quarters near the Parc Monceau. She was now twenty. She studied dramatic arts at a private theater school.

  “There were no significant romantic involvements until she met Fabien Ribot, a self-made nightclub owner. Twenty-three years her senior, he married Eve and then hired her to run L’Apparence, a private club on the rue Godot de Mauroy. Under her management, the former topless cabaret became a fashionable destination, attracting media figures and the international jet set. This is where Eve met Eric Beaufort de Blois, who was then married to his first wife, Vrouwtje Spoontje, a Dutch socialite.

  “Financial mismanagement and, quite possibly, rumored drug use forced Ribot to sell his only successful asset, L’Apparence, to a food conglomerate, which transformed the nightclub into the flagship of its steak and fries chain. [Note: The property now houses an Irish bar and an adult video store.]

  “In debt again two years later, Ribot took on two business partners, the Carvalho twins, brothers from Casamance. In August 1979, Ribot was stabbed in an alley off the avenue Foch. The police report states that his body was found by municipal street cleaners. The prevailing theory was of a revenge killing, as he was found with 1700 francs in his wallet and two grams of cocaine. At the time, Eve Ribot was in the country with her cousin, Madame Leclerc. The murder remains unsolved.

  “Eve Ribot inherited an apartment in the Seventeenth Arrondissement, 18, rue Berzélius, which she still owns, and a small farmhouse in the Tarn. The Carvalho brothers took possession of Ribot’s remaining nightclubs, Le Jazz Hot and Crazy Filles.

  “Returning to fashion, Eve Ribot was hired to manage the Given-chy haute couture salon. Her acquaintance with Eric Beaufort de Blois was renewed when he married his second wife, Paula Ottinello, a patron of the fashion house. When Paula left him for a gigolo named Lars Braunschweig [Note: a pseudonym], Beaufort began divorce proceedings. During that time, he and Eve Ribot were frequently seen together.

  “But Eve Ribot refused to marry Beaufort. He broke off the relationship and married his current wife. The marriage soured: it was rumored Beaufort de Blois found his wife in bed with her secretary, Madeleine Marchmont…”

  Eve’s life read like an Aaron Spelling miniseries written by Sidney Sheldon. The bio raised more questions than it answered: why did Eve leave Egypt? Did she ever work as a hooker? What was she doing during those eight months? Was she happy with Ribot? Why didn’t she marry Beaufort?

  I put down Verbier’s report and poured another whiskey. I wanted to fly to Monte Carlo and confront her. But seeing her with Beaufort again was unthinkable. She’d chosen him over me.

  I looked at the report again. I still didn’t know why she’d left me, or if she’d felt anything for me. Did she feel obligated to Beaufort? Why? What if he was dying? Maybe he had cancer, a congenital heart condition, or an inoperable tumor. These agreeable thoughts drifted through my head, a narcotic of morbid hope. But as appealing as the notion was, I couldn’t assume she’d return to me after his death.

  There was so much she hadn’t told me: about her marriage, for one, and to Ribot, a notorious mafioso. I remembered the murder, the newspaper headlines. At the time, I’d been a research assistant, working on my dissertation. Perhaps I’d been to L’Apparence, Ribot’s nightclub. I’d certainly heard of it, though at the time, there had been so many clubs with names that began with “A”: L’Atmosphère, L’Apocalypse…even L’Apoplexie. How strange to think our paths might have crossed all those years ago.

  I drank whiskey after whiskey, wondering how long it would take to pass out. Come, forgetfulness, unconsciousness, oblivion: I invite you! I drank medicinally, counting the minutes, eager to get to where nothing mattered…

  I felt a small quiver of distaste. I knew what he was talking about, which explained my reaction. I wanted to distance myself from his suffering. And yet, he had a right to feel miserable, I reminded myself: the woman he loved had left him. If he wanted to get stinking drunk, he had a right.

  Maybe my distaste was also about how seductive suffering is, how romantic pain is, how it seems to be an end in and of itself: self-enclosed, exquisite, stuck. How stuck in it I could be. Had been.

  I forced myself back to the desk. The narrator indulged in several days of uninterrupted drinking, which took up seven pages of boring, paranoid, intoxicated rants mixed in with genuine moments of despair. I’d just about exhausted Mr. Roget’s words for alcoholic stupor (“haze,” “coma,” “numbness,” “daze,” “unconsciousness,” “glaze,” “befuddlement,” “trance”), when Daphne reappeared.

  The banging continued. I shouted obscenities at the door, but my unwelcome visitor didn’t stop pushing the bell. The shrill sound drove a spike into my ears.

  It was Daphne. She looked like a Madonna in blue. She gasped when she saw me.

  “There, you’ve seen me!” I roared. “Satisfied? Now get out!”

  She shoved past me and marched inside, stopping at the array of empty bottles, dirty plates, and glasses. A rank fog of cigarette smoke hovered at eye level. She bent down to pick up a plate. I grabbed her wrist.

  “Get out! I don’t want you here!” I shouted. She wrenched her arm free.

  “Look at yourself! You monster! You haven’t shaved in days! You stink of alcohol! Enough! It must stop!” she screamed, her face nearly purple with rage.

  She found a pair of rubber gloves in the kitchen and began cleaning. She washed dishes and glasses, emptied ashtrays, aired the rooms, and made the bed with clean sheets. She ordered me into the bathroom to wash and shave while she vacuumed. Cowed by her energy as much as her anger, I went inside and filled the sink with water.

  My hands trembled, and I cut myself twice before I threw the razor aside. I sat on the edge of the tub and wept. Daphne pushed the door open. “I’m going to run a bath,” she said, as if to a child. “I’ll help you shave and wash your hair.” I clutched her hand.

  “I don’t deserve you,” I said. A pink flush crept up her neck. She’d never leave me again.

  “It’s true, you don’t deserve me. But you don’t have me either,” she said.

  I added that last line. My fingers went on typing. Daphne didn’t say it in the original.
All she said was “C’est vrai, tu ne me mérites pas.” It was an improvisation, though not a big stretch. In fact, it fit nicely with her new take-charge attitude.

  I reread the words on the screen. If you added something that was in the spirit of the original, something that you felt expressed the original—even if it wasn’t in the original—was it still translating? Or had it tipped over into writing, and by extension, in this case, taking liberties?

  I stared at the sentence, reading it over and over until it stopped making sense, though I couldn’t tell if it didn’t make sense because it didn’t make sense or because, if you stare at anything long enough, it stops making sense.

  I pressed Delete and watched the letters disappear.

  Then I pressed Undo Delete. Ctrl Z. Ctrl Y. Control zee. Control why.

  What would Bernard think? What would the author think? I wondered if they’d even catch it. I wanted to leave it in to see if they noticed.

  Daphne picked out a suit and tie, and helped me dress.

  “There,” she said. “You’re presentable.” She smoothed the lapels of my jacket.

  “Jean-Marc,” she said. “Your aunt called me when you didn’t answer your phone. Your mother is very ill. She’s dying.”

  Phooey! Just when he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, another crisis thwacks him upside the head. It was so predictable. It couldn’t get worse.

  I was wrong. I slogged through the next few pages. On the train to see his mother, Daphne kept throwing up and confessed she was pregnant. He proposed, his mother approved and promptly croaked, the young couple moved to Neuilly, and he became the editor of an aerospace industry trade magazine.

  A year later, after the birth of our son, Tristan, we drove to Pau to visit my mother’s grave. We stopped at a country inn on our way back. While Daphne and Tristan napped, I took a walk in the woods and found a clearing, a remote place I would never return to.

  I removed Verbier’s worn report from my pocket and set it on fire with a lighter Daphne had given me. I waited until there was nothing left but ashes.

  It was twilight when I got back.

  The chapter ended. That was it. I even looked in the envelope, to see if I’d missed a page, but that was it. A small sound caught in my throat, almost like panic, as I wondered if this was the end of the novel. If it was, I didn’t like it. Maybe that’s how real life unfolds, maybe events are swift, decisive, coincidental, pat, even slightly grotesque, but this reeked of the best worst ending, something hatched like a scheme, not an egg, and I didn’t buy it.

  Sure, sometimes you don’t get closure. Sometimes people leave and don’t say good-bye, and that’s what Eve did. Sometimes there are no explanations. There was nothing inherently wrong with the narrator marrying Daphne, except he didn’t love her. Then again, she’d put up with him and taken care of him when he was down—if she wanted him, she deserved him. But it happened too quickly, and he seemed numb at the end, even as he burned the report. Or maybe that was the point?

  But none of this was my problem. My job was translating, not editing. I went back over my work, double-checking word choices, spellchecking, and making sure it read well. I hit Save and went for a stroll around the neighborhood.

  On my way back up the street, I passed a new bookstore, with smart navy blue awnings. One window displayed a photo of Rémi Le Jaa and a reprint from a Le Monde article from 1989 titled “Le Phénomène Le Jaa.” In the photo, he had straight black hair and wore little round glasses. He looked almost Asian, except for the large, unmistakably Gallic nose. When I went inside, the harried bookseller told me that he’d sold his last remaining copy of La Vie de bateau, and that they’d also sold out his other books in anticipation of his impending new release.

  I glanced at the fall books table, thumbing through new novels and wondering if my author was among them. No, I remembered now, Laveau had said he wrote on politics and sociology. I went over to a table marked Nouveautés en actualité internationale, but my cell phone rang. I went outside to answer it, but it was someone trying to sell me double-glazed windows. I walked home and changed into black pants and a smart red jacket for my afternoon tea.

  At a neighborhood fleuriste, I bought a dozen anémones and carried the bouquet aloft as I followed Antoine’s directions to their street behind the butte. As in my quartier, the buildings were all late-nineteenth-century pierre de taille, biscuit-colored Parisian limestone, but with more elaborate wrought iron and variations in the stone vermiculation. Some even had leaded glass windows and gold mosaics.

  Antoine opened the door wearing a tweed jacket and a pink, open-necked shirt. He ushered me into a red and beige salon so jam-packed it seemed to sag inward under the weight of its contents. The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and every surface was loaded with more books, plus magazines, DVDs, scraps of paper, pens, objets d’art, even a banana peel, neatly folded, like a pair of spotted gloves, on the coffee table. A careless arrangement of red Chinese lantern flowers spilled over a vase on the marble mantel, obscuring the ornate mirror behind it.

  “Merci,” he said when I handed him the bouquet. He plunked it down on stack of dry cleaning on the piano. “Victorine forgot you were coming and went to the patisserie for something sweet,” he added.

  “She didn’t have to go to the trouble,” I said.

  “Yes, she did. I have a terrible sweet tooth. Asseyez-vous.” He removed a stack of magazines and an umbrella from a chair and pointed to it. “Such a difficult week. We deserve a reward, no?” he asked. “For you, also?”

  I nodded. “A friend of mine was forced into retirement, another friend sprained her ankle, and—” I stopped myself before I said anything about Olivier.

  “And?” Antoine prodded.

  “I couldn’t sleep. Unidentified anxiety, probably. And you?” I asked.

  “On vieillit. Every day I am reminded how fragile we are.” He shrugged. The front door opened and slammed shut. “Ah, voilà ma femme,” he said and left the room.

  When he didn’t come back right away, I walked around a carved trunk to admire an old still life: an artful arrangement of a dead pheasant, cloudy-skinned grapes, translucent berries, walnut shells, a half-eaten loaf of bread, cheese, and a bottle of wine. Peering closer, I noticed three insects crawling over the food. The iridescent carapace of a scorpion was rendered in a metallic blue-violet; the sharp pincers on an earwig were done with a tiny brush. A malevolent, furry, red spider raised one delicate leg over a crumbling wedge of blue cheese.

  “Do you like it?” Antoine asked, pushing a tea trolley into the salon.

  “It’s amazing. And repulsive. I’m not sure I could eat anything after looking at it,” I said, brushing imaginary bugs from my arms. He chuckled.

  “Victorine refused to have it in the dining room for that very reason. It’s Italian, ottocento,” he said, waving at it. “Unsigned. I bought it at an auction house in Turin, years ago, even though it was an extravagance. So rare to find something that so closely echoes one’s worldview, no?”

  At a loss for words—his worldview was about decay? insects and rotting food?—I merely nodded. Victorine bustled in, her cheeks splotched red above a black turtleneck. She shook my hand and gave me a thin-lipped smile.

  “Sit, sit, please. What’s this?” she asked, pointing to my bouquet. “Ah, c’est joli!” she said, sounding as if she meant the opposite. She whisked the vase off the mantel and disappeared, leaving a trail of red blooms on the Persian carpet. She came back and plunked the anemones in the vase. “Do you take your Earl Grey with milk or citron?” Not listening for an answer, she turned to Antoine. “Bon. They didn’t have a chocolate cake for you, mon vieux, so I got your étouffe-chrétien,” she said. I gave an involuntary laugh at the phrase, which literally meant a food that suffocated Christians but was often used for rich or dense cakes.

  “Je suis épuisée!” She grimaced, falling into an armchair with theatrical exhaustion. “Why haven’t you told me how you ta
ke your tea?” she demanded.

  “Citron, s’il vous plaît,” I answered. A white cat crawled out from underneath a tasseled ottoman, glanced around, and skulked away. Neither of them seemed to notice.

  “An old friend of ours gave us a scare,” she said conversationally. “At first, he thought it was a crise de foie, but then it turned out to be more serious. We were all at the hospital earlier this week. But surely Olivier told you?” she asked, slanting me a sideways look as she handed me a cup of milky tea.

  I felt like the wedge of blue cheese. I glanced at Antoine, but he was cleaning his pipe. “Was it really a minor heart attack?” I asked, neatly sidestepping her question.

  “The poor man!” she exclaimed, nodding. “Of course, Estelle has been a wreck. Thank goodness Olivier was there. She’s always been able to lean on him.” She crossed her legs and gave me a smile so insincere you could sharpen a knife on it. A crushed red lantern flower clung to her heel.

  “Enfin, Victorine,” Antoine said mildly. She tossed her head and cut into a raspberry cream cake. A dark red fruit coulis oozed out. I’d never been to such a dangerous tea: spiders and scorpions and bloody cake, oh my. Antoine banged his pipe against the mantel.

  “J’ai oublié les citrons. Didn’t you say lemon?” She gave my cup an angry look.

  “Don’t pay too much attention,” Antoine murmured when she left the room. He patted my hand awkwardly, the way a man who doesn’t like animals pats a friend’s dog.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, now on my guard with both of them.

  “She’s bored,” he explained, looking guilty. When she came back with a plate of sliced lemons, he steered the conversation toward more anodyne subjects, and the afternoon took on a milder tenor. Without talking directly about the translation, I got them started on my new favorite topic: the difference between French and English.

 

‹ Prev