Foreign Tongue

by Vanina Marsot

  “Cheers,” he said, clinking my glass. “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “You looked like you needed rescuing,” I said. “And I need practice flirting.”

  “You’re doing just fine,” he said. His eyes crinkled in amusement. “In fact, you look like the cat that ate the canary.”

  “I could be,” I said, looking at him over my wineglass. Althea and Ivan joined us, along with Charles-Henri and Justine, and two other couples, and we went down the street looking at other galleries, drinking more glasses of art gallery wine. We ended up at a tapas place in the Fifth, at a large corner table.

  After we’d ordered, Ivan stood up and cleared his throat. “Everyone, I have an announcement to make. Althea has agreed to marry me, reckless woman that she is, and I’m officially moving in so we can live in sin until the big day!” There was cheering and clapping. I looked over at Althea and smiled, and she smiled back, looking flushed and happy. Someone called out, “When?”

  “We’re thinking late summer,” Althea said, looking at Ivan.

  “In Provence, in the garden at Charles-Henri’s house,” Ivan added.

  “I’m paying for the champagne,” Charles-Henri announced, to more applause.

  I went over to congratulate them, and there was a round of kissing and hugging before everyone sat down again. I glanced across the table, seeing Ivan and Althea holding hands. I thought about how their two worlds intersected, and how that intersection was full of secrets and stories that knit their lives together.

  I had a secret, too. And I was going to call him back.

  Althea came over and sat next to me. “You’ll come, won’t you?” she asked.

  “To the wedding? All of us gloriously drunk and celebrating you and Ivan in the lap of luxury? I wouldn’t miss it,” I said. “I’m so happy for you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “How are you doing about Olivier?” she asked.

  “I was just about to call him,” I admitted.

  She gave me a careful, even look. “I can lecture you until your ears bleed, but only one question counts: What do you want?” she asked. I gave an involuntary shudder, like a cat shaking water from its paw.

  “The things I want, I won’t get. Olivier without Estelle. An Olivier who hadn’t lied to me,” I said. “Or maybe I just want a proper ending.”

  “Sweetie, you know you deserve to be with someone who can give you more,” she said. “That said, and I’m not judging you, sometimes we take what we can get.” She kissed my cheek.

  I went outside and called him. It was late, and I knew the play would be over.

  “Viens. Je t’attends,” I said. I’m waiting for you.

  At home, I perched on the sofa, nervous, my heart beating wildly. I thought about taking a shower and changing. I thought about putting on music, something appropriate, or heavy-handed, or symbolic. I thought about opening a bottle of wine. I thought about all the other times he’d come over, and I thought about snipping, once and for all, the invisible spider silk thread between us.

  I thought all of those things, and I did none of them. Thinking them was a distraction, a scrim to disguise myself from myself, a pointless ploy because I did know what I wanted. I also knew that when you made a deal with the devil, you wrote your own draft, and mine said “One more night.”

  In the bathroom, I took a good look in the mirror. I wanted to make sure I knew what I looked like. Under the harsh, white light, I memorized what I saw, and the face that looked back at me was determined and old enough to know what I was doing: majeure et vaccinée, past the age of consent and I’d had all my shots.

  I put my fingers on his lips. They were soft, damp, a little chapped. I pressed my face to his neck, breathing in the scent of him, musk and skin, a whiff of tobacco, a trace of aftershave, something new I couldn’t identify. I raked my fingers through his hair, feeling its length and thickness, the shape of his skull.

  He put his arms around me, but I didn’t want to be held, not just yet. I pulled back. He moved to kiss me, and I turned my head. I pushed him against the wall and sniffed him like an animal. I pressed my face into his neck, his chest, his arms. When he groaned, I put my hand over his mouth, feeling the heat of his breath against my palm.

  I undressed him in the bedroom. I slid his coat off his shoulders and unbuttoned his shirt, slipping my fingers between the buttons to touch the skin underneath. I pulled his shirt off and traced his shoulder with my tongue. I unbuckled his belt and unzipped his jeans, reaching my hands inside to hold his hips. When I slid my hand inside his pants to grasp his cock, I heard his sharp intake of breath. I pushed him back on the bed.

  And then I was thirsty. I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. I felt powerful, hungry. I poured another glass of water and walked back to the bedroom. He lay flat on his back, his arms outstretched on either side. I gazed at him, prone on my bed: his profile, the matte, olive skin, the curved angles of his muscles, the line of his hip, the soft, curly hair on his chest and legs. I was no painter, but I wanted a canvas and palette, I wanted to paint him there, naked, waiting for me.

  I put the glass down on the bedside table. I pulled off my dress, un clasped my bra, stepped out of my underwear, and felt goose bumps prickle across my skin. Still I watched him, letting the tension cloud the air, making it difficult to breathe.

  By unspoken agreement, everything was on my terms. He waited for me to approach him, and I took my time because I’d never been here before. I’d always been where Olivier was. I’d been the naked object in bed, while someone else watched. Timothy had watched me. I could see where he’d gotten off.

  It was almost like being with someone else, and though I didn’t know if it was because I was really seeing him for the first time or because I felt like a different person, I finally understood what it was to own my desire, instead of being swept up in someone else’s.

  I climbed on top of him, sliding my limbs over his, and kissed him. I pressed his shoulders down with my hands and explored his mouth with my tongue. He pulled my hips down. He slid his hands around my back, around my waist, up to my breasts. His hands were warm, but I shivered. He wound his hands in my hair, pulling me closer.

  I reached down between my legs and grasped his cock, guiding it inside me. I leaned into him, moving against him, barely hearing the sounds we made in the dark.

  I woke up in the night. Olivier slept with his cheek pressed to the nape of my neck, his arm like a safety belt across my waist. I slid out of bed. In the bathroom mirror, my lips were puffy and my hair was a Medusa-like tangle, but I still looked like me. I heard the sheets rustle. A trapezoid of light appeared on the hall floor when he turned on the lamp.

  “Tu as soif?” I called out.

  “Oui,” he said. I brought him a glass of water. He sat up to drink, and the shiny glint of his watch, still on his wrist, caught my eye.

  “You are frowning,” he said. “I don’t like to see you frown.” He pressed his thumb between my eyebrows.

  “How do you say ‘frown’ in French?” I asked. “I’ve forgotten.”

  “Je ne te dirai pas,” he said. When he leaned forward to kiss me, his lips were cold and wet, like a boy’s.

  It would be light in a couple of hours, but right now, it was still dark, and Olivier was still here. We made love again. Afterward, I listened to him sleep, feeling twinges, flutters in my body that would translate to soreness in the morning. When I closed my eyes, random images flashed through my head: the crazy carpet patterns you see when you rub your eyes, the faces of strangers, grassy hills, fanged monsters, old-fashioned glass jars of milk that shattered on pale green tile floors. Spasms of the imagination.

  Olivier’s eyebrows were thick and dark, the eyelashes short and curved. In sleep, his nose looked bigger and beakier. A sigh escaped from me, a tender little sound. I slid my leg between his, feeling the soft curls of his hair against my skin.

  My attempt at an exorcism was slipping away from me.


  “Don’t be here in the morning,” I whispered.

  When I woke up, I could hear him rooting around in the kitchen. There would be viennoiseries on the table, France Inter on the radio, a pack of cigarettes next to Libération and the International Herald Tribune. These were things I knew.

  I sat up. Other things I knew included the fact that he was still involved with Estelle and nothing had changed. I’d known it last night, but it hadn’t mattered last night; last night had been about last night.

  It wasn’t such a bad thing, if you wanted to share your lover with a married actress nearly fifteen years his senior. I stretched, pointing and flexing my toes. In the space of one night, he’d become a lover, not a boyfriend, not a man I was seeing or dating, not “mon amoureux.”

  I heard him singing “L.A. Woman” in the shower. Some women could do it. Clara did. I probably could, if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. Not because I had old-fashioned, bourgeois ideas about love, though I probably did, but because I wanted more.

  I shoved my arms into my bathrobe and went into the kitchen. My internal voice, like a panicky parrot, squawked, “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

  “I’m having breakfast, like a civilized person, with the man who spent the night,” I muttered. “I’m drinking coffee with my lover and the specter of his married girlfriend. In the clichéd, if accurate, if odious, pop-psychobabble of my generation, I’m breaking bread with someone who is not available,” I continued. Olivier came in.

  “A qui tu parles?” he asked, tilting his head to shake water from his ear.

  “Personne. Je suis folle,” I said, because talking to myself did feel a little crazy.

  “Ah bon? Je ne savais pas,” he said, coming over to kiss me. I pulled away, leaning back against the sink. “Qu’est ce qu’il y a?” he asked.

  “This doesn’t work for me, Olivier.” I swept my hand in the direction of the kitchen table. The sight of two croissants and four little cannelés, caramelized vanilla cakes, on a plate, made my stomach hurt.

  “Le petit déj?” he asked, mystified.

  “No, not breakfast. You being here.”

  “But you invited me,” he said, amused, as if we were playing.

  “I know.” I was going to have to do better than this. I cupped his cheek. “You’re with someone else,” I said. He stiffened. “That’s what doesn’t work for me.”

  “You know that doesn’t matter,” he said, with a touch of anger.

  I had a dizzying sense of déjà vu, déjà vu repeating, a tautology curving back on itself, and I knew he’d used that line before, not just on me, on someone else, and I’d heard it before, not just from him. It was one thing to make a decision in the dark; faced with Olivier, in the flesh in front of me, it was harder. I was susceptible, I could be seduced by words; they could inflate and expand, become so big that I couldn’t see around them, but I had to see around them.

  “It matters to me,” I said. “I wanted last night,” I said, trying to explain. “I wanted a proper good-bye. That’s what last night was about—”

  “Tu as tort,” he interrupted, telling me I was wrong and grasping my shoulders. “Je t’aime,” he said softly. “Le reste, ce n’est pas important.” I love you. The rest isn’t important.

  There they were, the big guns, but it was too late. I stepped back and said, “Si,” thinking only the French would have a specific kind of yes you use to contradict someone. “It is to me,” I added.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Because I have to,” I said, even as the sirens wailed from the rocks. Why can’t you have this? The man just said he loves you! Isn’t that better than nothing? You’ll regret it! One day, it’ll be over with Estelle—she’s getting up there in years, the old bat. If you push him away now, it will be over!

  “Mais tu es complètement ridicule! This is American extremism!” he exclaimed. “All or nothing, black or white! It’s childish! Destructive!”

  Yes, I nodded. From his point of view, it was true. But not ending it now, while it might have been a vote of confidence for Olivier, was a bet against me, and I was holding out for me.

  After he left, I could still see him, an afterimage on my retina. I saw him leaning against the wall, arms folded, and saw him walking toward me. I heard his voice, felt his cheek against mine, the softness of his lips. He was on my skin, the smell of sex and sweat. I sniffed my arms, my hair, inhaling deeply, trying to memorize it. But as evocative as scent was, I knew you couldn’t conjure it up in your memory. It didn’t replay, the way a song did. The only way to have it back was to have it back.

  I took a long, hot shower and washed my hair. Then I stripped the bed and gathered the towels and threw them in the shiny new washing machine. I threw out the croissants and all but one cannelé, which I ate. I drank a cup of coffee and smoked one of his cigarettes, then I threw those out, too.

  38

  Le monde, chère Agnès, est une étrange chose.*

  —MOLIÈRE, L’Ecole des femmes

  I had nightmares every night. Which was odd, because during the day, I was fine. I was sad about Olivier, but it was ordinary, dull sadness, the kind you recover from, not bottomless despair, and already it seemed distant. But at night, I saw the same thing, over and over: a crash, followed by billowing clouds of black smoke. Someone crying or screaming. I’d wake up in a sweat around four, then sleep again until seven.

  After three nights of this, I woke up determined to do something different, shake up my routine. I decided to get out of my neighborhood and go to a museum. I picked a group show at the Musée d’Art Moderne.

  I had most of the show, sculptures and videos of ten artists from around the world, to myself. In one room, I crawled into a hollowed-out, upside-down Volkswagen Bug, suspended by steel cables from the ceiling. Inside, there was a blanket and pillows, and a sped-up video of the Eiffel Tower in front of the Palais de Chaillot played on the TV installed in the rear window. The sky went from day to sunset to night in a matter of seconds, then started over again.

  It was like being in a postapocalyptic baby carriage. I fell asleep, waking up only when the museum guard nudged my shoulder. It was the best sleep I’d had in days.

  I went home and continued work on the last chapter.

  I went back to my hotel that evening savoring the possibility that lay before me. I’d longed for her even after I’d taught myself to forget longing. I stepped onto the balcony and looked out over Hyde Park at night, thinking back, remembering the detective I’d hired to find her, as if the knowledge would bring her back to me. Life, the years, in their own time, had done the work. I was filled with the wildly incongruous sense of being alive again.

  As it turned out, she found me. Her voice on the phone was so familiar, yet richer, burnished. We still knew each other. Some people change their essence over time. Friends you once loved you can no longer find common ground with, the only thing between you an increasing sense of misplaced nostalgia. Others change over time, becoming more who they are, more how you knew them, distilled, as it were, into purer forms of themselves. So it was with her.

  We arranged to meet in Venice, in two weeks’ time.

  Time passed like honey: thick, slow, but infinitely sweet. I wasn’t sure the day would actually come. I crossed streets certain I would be run over by a bus; I drove, convinced that my car would crash; I even boarded a plane convinced it would drop out of the sky. Pitched between a nervous, joyful anticipation and the vicissitudes of ordinary life, I hovered between two versions of my own existence. I would have lived to see my life come full circle. To see the one woman I’d loved and lost come back to me.

  I put the pages down. Yeah, it was one of the oldest stories in the book—finding your old sweetheart later in life—but I had to admit, it worked for me.

  There is no romantic like an old romantic.

  There we were, the two of us, in the same city, together. In a hotel, which
was not the same hotel but which might as well have been the same hotel, we sat on faded damask furniture and talked, as if nothing had changed, though everything had changed: the thing and its opposite, existing together, a hallucination of time explained by physics, a chiaroscuro of shadowy contradictions, illuminated by memory and desire.

  (Love, yes, in its hibernal form.)

  As if things hadn’t changed, as if we hadn’t changed, as if only the stories had changed and we had merely to catch each other up, fill in the blanks, make the most minute of corrections. After all, we’d always told each other stories.

  How to resolve the problem of histoire, which means both story and history?

  There was a sense of continuity between us, history stopped and started again. As if our story was a book, carelessly set down on a summer’s day, only to be picked up and read, years later, in late autumn. The memory of that earlier season, with its sharp, green impetuosity, lingered briefly, then dissipated.

  Her voice had deepened with age and the cigarettes she’d given up. The lines around her eyes and mouth were a testament to all the years she’d smiled without me. They only made her more beautiful. She would laugh at me for that, but I wouldn’t mind. How precious it is, the sound of her laughter.

  I stared out the window, absentmindedly tracing the shape of my own lips with my finger, imagining them on the bed in Venice, wondering what it would be like to find someone again all those years later. For a moment, I let myself sit on that bed in Venice with Olivier. I pictured us older, imagined myself wiser and yet unpretentious, as if I wore the mantle of a well-lived life as casually as the fetching dress I saw myself in.

  I edited the image: maybe a silk shirt with flowing sleeves. Narrow black skirt, sheer stockings, and a different perfume, one that came out of an old-fashioned, cut-glass bottle…Suddenly, Olivier wasn’t in it anymore. I’d let my mind wander, and I was with someone else in Venice, a man I loved, like a presence I could imagine but not quite see.