Foreign Tongue

by Vanina Marsot

  I knew my writer was male, a famous intellectual, and I’d gotten the sense from Bernard that he’d published recently. I also suspected that he was not Rémi Le Jaa. I wondered whether Bernard was deliberately misleading Olivier, or whether that was just Olivier’s fertile imagination.

  To be sure, I went to fiction and skimmed the first few pages of Le Jaa’s La Vie de bateau. His style was spartan, the language elegant and minimalist, full of words I didn’t know. No way was he Monsieur X. This was going to be easier than I thought.

  I parked myself in front of Recent Arrivals and contemplated genres. I ruled out fiction. My author didn’t know how to structure a novel, and apparently, he didn’t know how to end one either. I sensed he was better at writing about real events, or maybe essays or analyses. And I remembered again: when I’d first met him, Bernard had said the author wrote about politics and sociology.

  My eyes swept over the nonfiction table, a four-foot-wide, eight-foot-long ocean of titles. There was only one possible course of action: pick up each book written by a man, read the back cover, study any photographs, read the first page, and see if the style sounded familiar.

  I tied my coat arms around my waist and began with a book on Mitterrand’s political policy. I read the back cover: no author photo. I read the first page. No spark of recognition. Next were books on Sarkozy, Chirac, Dominique de Villepin, Jospin, Ségolène Royal, and half a dozen other French politicians. Nothing.

  I moved to international politics: the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain, the relationship between France and America, the role of France in the twenty-first century, the European Union, the impact of immigration on the European Union, the impact of America on the European Union, the relationship between France and Algeria.

  Still nothing. My back hurt from standing for almost an hour with locked knees. A young man corralled a wheeled, black stool, the kind that sinks to the floor when weighted, and sat on it to peruse the Sarkozy book. I was so jealous I wanted to bite him.

  I soldiered on: numerous titles on Iraq, the first Gulf War and its implications for the current one, a new history of the Middle East, a history of the old histories of the Middle East, and a history of France’s involve ment in the Middle East. A swath of books on terrorism made my head spin. The salesclerk gave me the evil eye. I, in turn, bored holes into the back of the guy on the stool, but he hunched over his book, showing no sign of giving up his seat. A dull throbbing in my left temple threatened migraine, and so far, I’d come up with zilch. Outside on the sidewalk, a group of Japanese tourists stood around a street musician, who sang “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.”

  With a heavy heart, I picked up a history of the Socialist party. The young man looked at his watch, tossed Sarkozy on the table, and left. I sank onto the stool and plowed through four more political party histories and a comparative study of the influence of labor unions. I was two-thirds of the way through the table when my cell phone rang; it was Olivier, and I went outside to talk.

  “Salut, mon amour,” he said. “Will you be ready by three?”

  I looked at my watch. “Better make it four. I’ll see you soon.”

  I went back inside. To my immense displeasure, the salesclerk who’d given me a dirty look was now using the black stool to shelve oversize art books. I tried to muster the stamina to keep going.

  Twenty minutes later, I was done. Zip. No little hairs rose on the back of my neck, no drop in the air pressure, no red light accompanied by a honking submarine dive alarm to signal I’d found it. The only place tingling was my lower back, in knots from standing and reading. Either my gut instinct was busted or there was nothing here written by my author.

  I looked over at the shelves and made a fainthearted foray in the direction of Histoire Politique, Sociologie, and Essais, but the sight of so many books, normally a pleasant thing, made me want to cry. There were hundreds of them, serious-looking, full of dense pages with intimidating vocabulary and complex concepts. I couldn’t do it. I ducked into the métro and went home.

  At four, I closed the metal volets on the windows and went downstairs. The sun was peeking out of extravagant, fleshy, pink clouds, the sky as lush as a Rubens painting. Olivier pulled up in his blue Golf, and I got in.

  “Off we go,” I said sunnily. I was determined to be in a good mood. I was determined to be light. I was determined to keep my nasty suspicions from him. I would shove the goblins under the carpet, stomp down hard, and chill.

  26

  There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in

  —LEONARD COHEN, “Anthem”

  Once we passed the suburbs and the centres commerciaux, the scenery changed to flat, green land, dotted with farmhouses and picturesque villages, with church steeples and the occasional castle or ruin. Olivier tried to tell me about rehearsal, but I didn’t want to hear anything about Estelle, so I changed the topic. In a lame attempt to be playful, I asked him questions: the name of his first pet (Castor, a black cat), his favorite color (green), his favorite food (gnocchi with Gorgonzola tied with baba au rhum), and his Desert Island discs. I stopped when I realized my voice—high-pitched, airy, fake—made me sound like I was twelve and my questions weren’t satisfying substitutes for the ones I really wanted to ask, like, What was Victorine implying? What’s up with you and Estelle? Why didn’t you tell me you were at the hospital with her?

  “The house we are going to belongs to a childhood friend,” Olivier said. “It has been in his family for generations.” The friend was a journalist, currently based in Bucharest. Olivier had the keys and came often, keeping an eye on the place.

  “Did you grow up here?” I asked.

  “No, but I spent summers nearby, learning to sail. My grandparents had a house near Cabourg. My grandfather sold it after my grandmother died, when I was at the Conservatoire.”

  “That must have been sad,” I remarked. He gave a brief nod. I watched his face.

  “Quoi?”

  “Nothing. Just looking at you,” I said. “There’s so much I don’t know.” It came out like an accusation. He snorted.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Et moi, donc?” he asked, shooting me a dark look.

  “Okay,” I said, bristling. “Ask me anything.”

  “Et merde!” he cursed and exited the autoroute. “I missed the turnoff for the départementale,” he explained. I turned on the radio. We listened to classical music in silence.

  It was dusk when we arrived. Olivier drove the car onto a gravel path. The house was a two-floor Norman-style, with half-timber work and a thatched roof. There were apple trees and a lichen-stained stone table in the garden.

  Using a heavy iron key, he opened the door and went to turn on the furnace. I looked around the living room, furnished with squashy canvas sofas, worn rugs over brown floor tiles, framed photographs, and piles of books. It looked lived-in and inviting. There was a stone fireplace with a large iron plaque inside, for reflecting heat.

  Olivier picked up my bag and showed me the bedroom upstairs. It was decorated with faded red toile de Jouy under a low, beamed ceiling.

  “Let’s go for a walk while the house heats up,” he suggested.

  “Wait.” I kissed him, but he pulled away.

  “Come, I want to show you the village,” he said, tugging my hand.

  “Twilight” in French is one of my favorite words: le crépuscule. In Los Angeles, the sun sets, and shortly afterward, it’s night. Here, that in-between time can last for an hour. The darkness creeps up on you like an intuition, spreads silently like a stain.

  We drove into town and walked along the boardwalk. The beach was wide and windy; my nose ran, and it was too loud to talk. When we got back to the car, the sky was royal blue, and the orange lights inside the houses reminded me of Magritte’s Empire of Light. We passed a house with a goldfish bowl on the windowsill. A lanky black-and-white cat agitated the water
with a paw as the goldfish swam around in a claustrophobic panic.

  At dinner, our conversation was stilted and awkward. The weight of what I wasn’t saying sucked the wind out of me. My back hurt from poring over all those books, and Olivier kept looking over my shoulder, seemingly more interested in talking to the waiter than to me. I got so fidgety, I smoked one of his cigarettes with coffee. It tasted like dirt.

  When we got back, the house was still chilly. “I’ll make a fire,” Olivier said.

  “Is there music?”

  “In the study,” he said, pointing to a doorway. I found the stereo next to a wooden wine case full of old jazz albums. I put a Duke Ellington album on the turntable. On the desk, there were framed photos of two little girls. I went back into the living room and sat on the sofa. He piled twigs over crumpled newspaper.

  “Who are the little girls?” I asked.

  “The younger one is my goddaughter.” He put another log sideways over the first one and lit the newspaper.

  “Do you see her often?”

  “Not so much. I take her to the cinema from time to time.”

  “Let me guess: Steve McQueen?”

  “Bientôt.” He smiled over his shoulder. “Right now, it’s Disney and Miyazaki,” he said. In front of the fire, with the music playing, I felt a warm rush go through me, something like happiness but fuller, almost achy. How stupid I’d been to get so stressed out. So what if he spent a couple of days at the hospital lending moral support to his old friend and leading lady? Surely I was big enough to understand that? I wrapped a light wool blanket around my shoulders. Being here with Olivier was simple, uncomplicated, a pleasure. I watched the light from the flames play on his profile, and thought about how much I liked him. If I put aside my neurotic tendency to overthink every situation, things would be fine. I had to tell him. Right away.

  “You’re a sweet man,” I said. “Olivier,” I began and stopped. “What did people call you as a kid? Olive?” I asked. He nodded, watching the fire. “I have a confession to make,” I continued. He made an impatient gesture, as if to say it wasn’t necessary. “No, this is important,” I said. “I’ve been stressed for a few days, and then, at my tea with Antoine and Victorine, she made some stupid comments, implying something about you and Estelle. She was needling me, and I got paranoid and suspicious, and I think…I think I’ve been a bit tense. But it was stupid to let her affect me like that. I love being here with you.”

  I expected him to smile. No, I expected him to look relieved and say something like “That explains why you’ve been so strange.” But he didn’t. He dragged a hand down across his eyes, and squinted like he had a sudden headache.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said.

  My internal radio played a song from the eighties whose chorus went “Hindsight is twenty-twenty vision,” each “twenty” a short, two-beat staccato. It’s not true. Hindsight is a retroactive arrow that whistles through time to stab you in the back. I’d had all the clues, but I’d been blind anyway.

  My first instinct was to laugh; it struck me as funny that I’d been through this before. The sense of déjà vu was inevitable, but I raced ahead. I knew the itinerary, could see it on the map, a southwest road trip from hell: first stop, Shock, like Las Vegas on crack, everything neon and wonky; a long interlude in Anger and Humiliation, like being held hostage in an unair-conditioned diner in New Mexico; and then I would run out of gas and hole up in Miserable and Sorry for Myself, not a town but a rundown intersection with a motel and a buzzing vacancy sign. The rent was cheap and I was repeat business.

  “Estelle and I,” he said, “have a special friendship.” Spéciale was one of the big-time sneaky semi–faux amis. It meant special, but in this context, particular, unusual. They’d been involved, romantically, on and off, for years. “I was madly in love with her for a long time,” he said, shaking his head. Of course, he still loved her, but it was a different kind of love, he explained.

  He said he’d thought about ending it when he met me, despite the fact that they were working together. But things had changed; she was going through a rough patch and she needed him. “Ce n’est pas le moment,” he said, caressing the knot of my fist. Now wasn’t the time. He hoped I’d understand.

  He spoke softly but clearly. I heard every word, every snap of the fire as it cast flickering shadows around the room. I was all ears, as if hearing everything would prevent the oncoming traffic that had already hit me. My arm muscles contracted. I was rigid with tension. But when I spoke, I was so composed, it was creepy.

  “And you’re telling me this why?” I asked.

  “Because I wanted to be honest, too,” he answered.

  “Does she know about me?” I asked, remembering our chance meeting, her orange silk coat. Had she orchestrated it? “Were you honest with her?” I asked, verbally underlining the word. The nights he wasn’t with me, was he with her?

  “She guessed. She knows me very well,” he said with a rueful smile. I think I hated him in that moment. I pulled my hand away.

  “I’m sure she does,” I said, nodding my head slowly, waiting for something, I didn’t know what. For a rabbit to hop into the room, for a Greek chorus to chant “We told you so,” for something so surreal, it would make this feel normal. But nothing happened.

  If he’d said something else, I thought later, I might have stayed. If he’d said he loved me, for example, and that he wanted to clear the air, make a clean break from Estelle, start over. Really, I might have stayed. Maybe.

  “Why did we come here?” I asked. “I mean, it seems we could’ve ended this in Paris.” He looked alarmed, opened his mouth to speak, but I continued. “Unless…” I said. He didn’t say anything. “Unless…wait, you thought you could tell me this and we could…continue?” I asked. He made an awkward gesture with his hands, as if to offer me a large, invisible balloon.

  I checked my watch. It was nine-thirty. I threw off the blanket and stood up.

  “I’m getting my bag. Please call the train station and find out if there’s a train back to Paris.” There it was, that creepy composed voice again. I couldn’t help it.

  “I’ll drive us back,” he said in a tired voice.

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “J’insiste,” he said.

  “Insist all you like. I’m not going with you, and I’m not fighting with you,” I said.

  “Why are you like this? Fight with me! Say something! Merde!” He hit a pile of books on the coffee table, sending them crashing to the floor. I was silent. “Tu me punis, alors,” he said. His tone was reproachful, and it pissed me off.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no. I’m not punishing you, Olivier. I just don’t want anything more to do with you,” I said. He grabbed my arm, but I shook him off. I was not going to French Movie Land with him. He could do that with his other girlfriend, the movie star. I went upstairs.

  I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to cry, I repeated over and over again. You should have seen this coming. I avoided looking in the mirror. You can cry on the train.

  “Can we talk about this?” he asked, when I came down with my bag.

  “Why? So we can discuss you lying to me? So we can go over the times you’ve spent with her while we’ve been together? So we can talk about our feelings? So that—” Ooh, I thought, I have a friend in sarcasm.

  “Arrête.”

  “See? I don’t want to do this, either. I’ve been to the circus before, Olivier. I know it’s smoke and mirrors, I don’t want to hang out with the clowns again, and I don’t do juggling.” I wasn’t sure I made sense, but it sounded good.

  He drove me to the station. The round, illuminated clock in the tower echoed the shape of the full moon. Olivier went to the guichet. There was a half-hour wait at Lisieux, but I would make it to Paris by midnight.

  “Stay. You don’t have to go,” he said, holding the ticket.

  “Thank you,” I said, plucking it from his hand.

  “Je t’appell
erai.”

  I stood, studying him. There was a look on his face that reminded me of Timothy. It was a look I knew, one I could almost understand; a look that told me he was fallible and didn’t want to lose me. It had caused me a certain amount of pain the last time around.

  “Don’t,” I said. Forcing myself not to look back, I got on the train. It was just two cars long, with dingy brown vinyl seats. I sat by the window in an empty compartment.

  Across the tracks, a woman in a belted coat stood on the platform. She checked her watch, then her cell phone. I watched her, wanting to be her. I wanted to be someone else, someone waiting for someone, not someone leaving.

  I rested my head against the dark safety glass. It seeped an icy circle onto my scalp. An incomprehensible announcement blared through the PA system, and I made out the words “destination Lisieux.” As my train pulled out of the station, the woman on the platform turned and opened her arms wide. A man at the top of the stairs walked into them like he was coming home.

  That’s when I started to cry.

  27

  Le bonheur est vide, le malheur est plein.*

  —VICTOR HUGO, Tas de pierres

  It would be a lie to say I cried all the way back to Paris because I didn’t. The trip was nearly two hours long, and no one cries for two hours straight, though you might tell the story as if you did. I wept for a while, then I stared out the window. My eyes followed evenly spaced lights, going back and forth like a typewriter carriage, not seeing anything.

  My lips were dry. I found lip balm in my bag and applied it, using my shadowy reflection in the glass as a mirror. It felt like a pose, as if I were being watched, though no one was there.

  I remembered my first crise de conscience, though at the time, I lacked the vocabulary to name it. I was seven or eight, and seriously upset, for a reason that escapes me now. It probably had something to do with Barbie—wanting a Barbie, being refused a Barbie—or something else I’d desperately wanted. Maybe it was something I was convinced I’d be miserable without—a stuffed animal, permission to go to a slumber party, forgiveness for some minor transgression. I remember crying so hard my chest hurt, like after a day of playing in the pool.