I leaned back on the bench and watched a pair of magpies swoop and chase each other. Sparrows pecked at the ground. I would miss visiting him in the park. Any park.
It was a long good-bye. The light changed, my hands got cold in their gloves, and my nose ran. When my toes began to go numb, I walked out of the cemetery and found a taxi at the gate. I climbed in and checked my cell phone. I listened to Bernard Laveau tell me he thought I’d enjoy translating a nineteenth-century murder mystery, and would I come by on Monday morning. The driver, a chatty sort, caught my eye in the rearview mirror. He told me he was an engineer, but he’d been laid off. Then he asked what I did for a living.
“Je suis traductrice.” I told him I was a translator as I watched Paris go by: people sitting in cafés, standing in line at the boulangerie, walking home with plastic bags from Monoprix…couples and children, singles with groceries, and little old ladies with little old dogs.
“Quelles langues?” Which languages?
“De français en anglais,” I said and relaxed back in the seat.
“Aha! I have a tricky one!” he announced, switching into English. “No one ever knows this. I’ve been known to offer a free fare to anyone who can tell me,” he said, though I noticed he didn’t offer it now. “How do you translate ‘Nous ne sommes pas encore sortis de l’auberge’?” he asked.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” I said.
“Ah!” Excited, he turned to look at me at the red light. “You are the first one who has been able to answer me. You must be very good,” he said.
“Pas mal,” I said. “Not bad at all.”
I looked at my reflection in the glass and smiled. In French, “not bad” meant pretty good. We drove west, and the new crescent moon, like a sliver of my heart, hung as if suspended in the early evening Parisian sky.
Acknowledgments
I would like to extend heartfelt thanks to the following:
Friends and early readers: Marjorie Gellhorn Sa’adah, Gail Vida Hamburg, Maria Grasso, Amy Waddell, Rebecca Turner, Lisa McErlean, and David Ulin. Also, to the every other Wednesday writing group, where this book first took shape.
Jeanne Robson and everyone in years of Tuesday nights.
Friends from whom I borrowed bits and pieces: Natalie Milani, Pascal Reveau, Cynthia Coleman-Sparke, Drea Maier, Leyla Kahla, Sophie Poux, and Elizabeth Brahy.
To everyone at HarperCollins, especially my wonderful editor, Jeanette Perez, for her kindness, keen intelligence, and incisive comments, as well as Carrie Kania, Cal Morgan, Jennifer Hart, Nicole Reardon, Mary Beth Constant, Alberto Rojas, and Rachel Chubinsky.
At Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.: special thanks to the great Robert Guinsler, for his guidance, wisdom, faith, and humor.
To my teachers at Bennington.
My family and friends, in both Los Angeles and Paris: Fifi and Alain Marsot, to whom this book is dedicated; Vanessa Marsot; Thésy Marsot; Jean-Pascal Naudet for my writing retreats at Les Tilleuls; the Gang at Avenue L and Eighth Street; and ROF for the enchanted summer.
Nancy Mitford fans will recognize the story of the Venetian house and the French grandmother from The Pursuit of Love, from which it is shamelessly borrowed.
The City of Paris, the landscape of my dreams.
And to the memory of Roy Koch, the Oberbefehlshasen.
About the Author
VANINA MARSOT holds an MFA in literature and creative writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She has translated numerous television shows and feature film scripts. She divides her time between Paris and Los Angeles.
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Credits
Cover design by Adam Johnson
Cover photograph © Jupiter Images
Copyright
FOREIGN TONGUE. Copyright © 2009 by Vanina Marsot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition March 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-187193-1
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*The story is entirely true, since I imagined it from start to finish.
*Desire possesses an indestructible persistence.
*There are two histories: the official, dissembling one, and the secret one, where the true causes of events are to be found.
*For in Paris almost all the lovers of a well-known woman are friends.
*I wanted to see that love in you.
*The verb “to love” is difficult to conjugate: its past is never simple, its present is but indicative, and its future is always conditional.
*What all the men I’ve loved have in common? Me!
*Happiness is empty, unhappiness is full.
*Does the soul of the cello disappear in the cry of a broken string?
*We think that when one thing ends, another one begins right away. No. In between, it’s chaos.
*In the realm of the sentiments, the real is no different from the imaginary.
*There is no greater misfortune than one’s own.
*And the seagulls delight in our anecdotes.
*One should not let intellectuals play with matches.
*The world, dear Agnes, is a strange affair.
*Why do your knees make me want to invent transitive verbs?
*The cock is feminine. The cunt is masculine. A matter of luck.
*French was not the language of European courts for several centuries because, as popular wisdom would have it, it is the most precise language, but because it is the language in which one can be most precisely imprecise.
*Nothing is more irresistible than a stranger. A man who walks into a bar is worth all the men one has lived with for twenty years.
*I loved you unfaithful, what would I have done if you were true?
*Irène: I’m hesitating between a sugar waffle and a love affair.
Old lady: Well, have the waffle!
Irène: Okay, a sugar waffle.
Cook: With lots of sugar?
Irène (sighing): Oh, yes.
*Certain sad and timid women blossom in the warmth of an admiring gaze, like flowers in sunlight.
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