Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  The Brazilian who never does his homework turned on us then, saying, “What you’re doing is very rude.”

  Sharon explained that we meant no offense and that Americans are sometimes too open. I added that to us, her life was very exotic, and we were just curious. I mean, really, it’s not like we asked whether she uses a tampon or a pad.

  August 3, 1998

  La Bagotière

  Hugh, Dennis, and I flew TWA from New York to Paris, and the plane was either half empty or half full, depending on how you look at it. I sat beside a stylish woman from the Upper West Side who was maybe sixty and who said after takeoff, “All right, I’m going to tell you one story and then I’m going to shut up.”

  The story was about a tattooed passenger on a crosstown bus who had a boa constrictor beneath her blouse, wrapped around her like a bandage. It was good, and as I listened I thought of the coming year in France and wondered when I’d next understand everything a stranger was saying to me. The New York class helped some. At de Gaulle we got a cab driven by a cheerful black man who spoke with great passion about two accidents he’d witnessed earlier that morning. It took an hour to reach the Montparnasse station, where we caught the train to Normandy. We boarded early, and as I stepped out onto the platform for a cigarette, an old woman asked if I would carry her bag up the stairs. I did, and she tried to give me 5 francs. Of course I turned it down, but seeing as I no longer have a job and have no working papers, I probably should have taken it.

  We’re fine here for the month of August, but then I need to start French school, which will mean finding an apartment in Paris.

  August 21, 1998

  Paris

  At the Alliance Française yesterday afternoon, I took a placement exam: twenty-five multiple-choice questions and a short essay in which I had to describe a party. Without the class I took in New York I’d have been lost, but between that and all the strange vocabulary words I’ve memorized over the past few years, I think I did OK. “The party was held at the home of my Uncle Robert who lives beside the sea with a hairless cat. My family attended and ate a lot. I drank too much and my face got swollen.”

  After I had finished I approached a desk where a well-dressed middle-aged woman held a plastic sheet with holes punched in it over my multiple-choice test. “Very good,” she said. When it came to my essay, she pulled out a pencil and slashed away at all my misspellings and grammatical mistakes. Then she looked up and asked if I had used a dictionary.

  “Me?”

  It made no sense to her that someone on my level would know and be able to spell a medical term used for facial swelling. I explained my “ten new words a day” program and she laid down her pencil, saying, “Good for you! That is an excellent way to learn.”

  Meanwhile, the apartment we’re renting won’t be ready until the middle of September, so it looks like I’ll be going back and forth from Normandy.

  August 31, 1998

  Paris

  The train from Normandy was crowded with people returning from their vacations, and when we arrived in Paris, the station was a madhouse. There must have been eighty people in the taxi line, all of them dragging big, heavy suitcases. Cabs were scarce and it took an hour to get one, mainly because people kept cutting to the front of the line. First it was an obese woman with an equally out-of-shape child. Then came a family of four, the grandmother being led by the hand. Somebody made a comment and she shouted, “I’m blind.”

  Apparently it’s a rule that the disabled get to go first in the taxi line. This seems fair, seeing as the buses and subways are inaccessible, but then it got out of hand, and a dozen more people headed to the front. Either the train from Lourdes had just pulled up or owning a cell phone and a little too much gold jewelry are now considered handicaps by the French government.

  September 1, 1998

  Paris

  I’ve really lucked out in terms of a French teacher. The woman won’t give her age, but I’m guessing she’s in her late forties, funny and expressive. I’m the oldest student and the only American. The others are Japanese, Thai, Polish, Argentinean, Italian, Egyptian, and Chinese. Today’s class started with sentence structure. Then we went through the alphabet and stopped whenever we came to the first letter of someone’s name. I went third and was instructed to introduce myself and give my nationality, occupation, marital status, a short list of likes and dislikes, and my reason for living in Paris.

  A surprising number of students disliked the sun and adored smoking. A Japanese girl said she hated mosquitoes and the teacher made fun of her, saying, “Really? I thought everyone loved them.”

  Unlike my New York teacher, who would occasionally at least try to explain something in English, this is all French all the time. By the end of class, my brain felt like it had been kicked.

  September 3, 1998

  Paris

  Last night I worked on my homework for three hours. This morning I got up early and spent another four and a half hours on it. I wondered if I was maybe going overboard, but all that time did nothing to prepare me for today’s lesson, or for the teacher.

  My fellow students have begun forming camps. The Poles sit together, as do the Japanese, Koreans, Thais, and an inseparable couple composed of an Italian girl and an Argentinean musician, who announced during his introduction that he likes to make love. I was surprised by the number of people who hadn’t done their homework or who handed in scraps of paper written on the Métro. The teacher exploded, calling us liars and good-for-nothing shits. She stormed across the room, berating those who had already had absences. Apparently people enroll just to get their student visas. Then they either come to class or stay home, try their best or give up and stare out the window. If I’m not mistaken, this was her attempt to frighten them off. No one could do anything right today, not even the sweet, pretty Yugoslavian girl who has no one to bond with. I cringed when the teacher yelled at her.

  At one point she asked us a number of true-or-false questions regarding the passé composé. Everyone agreed to the final one, and when I questioned it she marched across the room, raised my hand, and said, “Bravo. He’s the only one in the room who’s not sleeping. He’s the only one who caught it!”

  I felt the hatred of my classmates and slunk down in my seat. Then, too, I’m the only one who typed his homework and handed it in fastened with a paper clip. She told us to keep our sentences simple, and I didn’t quite obey. But why write “I went to the store with a friend” when, without relying on the dictionary, I can say “I visited the slaughterhouse with my godfather and a small monkey”?

  September 7, 1998

  Paris

  We got a new student today, a Moroccan who’s clearly the best French speaker in the room. She correctly and confidently answered one question after another until the teacher shut her down by saying, “This is not your little occasion to show off. This is for people who don’t know the language.”

  Later, when I handed in my homework, the teacher took the stack of papers and said to me, in front of everyone, “What is this, a detective novel?”

  Meanwhile, I got back yesterday’s assignment with Excellent written on the last page. It meant the world, as I’d put a lot of time into it.

  September 10, 1998

  Paris

  I can’t figure this woman out for the life of me. Today she came to class apologizing for not having graded our homework. In hopes that we might forgive her, she brought in a chocolate cake and a roll of paper towels. “Come, don’t be shy. Eat!”

  She was kind and funny for close to twenty minutes, and then she started losing her patience. Today’s lesson involved the future tense. We were given an in-class assignment, and as we wrote, the teacher moved from desk to desk and screamed at us. When she got to me, she looked at my paper, bent down, and attacked it with her eraser, digging away at my mistakes and saying, in her best English, “I hate you.” Later I mispronounced a word and she said it again. Mine was the last answer of the day, so I was
left being the dunce. It’s a horrible feeling. I’m the one who allows everyone else to leave the room thinking, Well, at least I’m not him.

  September 11, 1998

  Paris

  In class the teacher picked on the former flight attendant from Hong Kong, then on Yasser and the pretty young Yugoslavian woman. Toward the middle of the class, she asked us to turn to our homework assignments, and when I pulled my typed sheet from its folder, she snatched it away and held it above her head, shouting, “When I tell you to do a book assignment, you’re supposed to do it in your notebook. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  I pointed out that I had also done it in my notebook. It was all there, written in pencil. I’d only typed it up thinking we might be expected to hand it in.

  This is where she should have apologized. Instead she just said, “Oh.”

  Later we broke into groups to practice the future tense. I was with Anna from Poland, who works as a nanny for a family with three rotten kids, and the former flight attendant, who started class last month and has no idea what the teacher is saying.

  September 13, 1998

  La Bagotière

  I spent all weekend working on my homework. The teacher wants an essay about the future, something along the lines of “One day I will be rich and successful.” But that’s for kids. Instead, I wrote, “One day I will be very old and reside in a nursing home. Toothless, bald, and wrinkled, I will wake myself three times a night, and with the help of my nurses, I will go to the toilet. I will eat nothing but gruel and once a month will bathe myself in tepid, cloudy water. I will regard my long, yellow toenails. I will have no visitors because all of my friends will be in their coffins. When I am old I will lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling. From the next room I will hear my ancient French teacher throwing chalk against the wall. I will say, ‘Stop. That’s enough!’ And she will criticize my pronunciation.”

  September 14, 1998

  Paris

  The teacher threw a lot of chalk today, but none of it at me. We have a new student, a German au pair, and I wonder what she must think, watching people get yelled at and hit with things. Our last homework assignment was handed back, and though I’d technically made no mistakes, she still found fault with it. I’d written, for example, “You will complain all the time, day and night.” Her comment read, in angry red pen, “Pick one or the other. You don’t need both.”

  September 15, 1998

  Paris

  The teacher was a kitten today. She picked on no one and for a brief while we all loosened up. Our homework for Thursday is to finish reading a comic strip and identify the vulgar language.

  September 17, 1998

  Paris

  We had two new students today, an Indonesian who loves to travel and a fifty-year-old American named Janet who, when asked her profession, said, “Je suis a hairdresser.” She answered most of today’s questions in English and while the teacher let her get away with it, tomorrow I imagine she’ll be hit with both barrels. Today we moved into the tense you use when ordering someone around.

  September 18, 1998

  Paris

  We had a substitute today, a casually dressed woman who did not give her name. She asked what we’d been assigned for our homework, and just as we were telling her, the teacher walked in and apologized for being late. She said something to the substitute like “You can go now,” but the woman had no intention of leaving, so the two of them went at it.

  “You were late,” the substitute said. “The rule is that after fifteen minutes, someone else takes the class.”

  Our teacher said she had the lesson all planned, and the substitute interrupted her and said, “Time is time.”

  They went back and forth until eventually our teacher surrendered and stormed out of the room, telling us to have a nice weekend. It was fun watching her fight with someone who could defend herself.

  Our lesson had to do with the imperative, the tense you use when making demands. To illustrate it, the substitute made me her slave and insisted that I kiss everyone in the room except her.

  Later we were told to come up with a list of commands for students learning French—you must do your homework, you must not daydream, etc. I raised my hand. “You must dodge the morsels of chalk thrown by the teacher.”

  The substitute seemed confused. “But no, the teacher does not throw chalk.”

  “Ours does,” said the Korean guy next to me.

  “When?” the substitute asked.

  “All the time,” I said.

  The Thai woman in the front row turned around then and hissed at me. After class I was approached by her and Polish Anna, both of them furious and convinced that now our teacher is going to get fired.

  I tried to say that if I got the teacher fired, I could just as easily have the substitute fired for making me kiss everyone, but it came out a mess.

  Anna said she’s had her share of nice teachers but never learns with them. The strict ones are the best, she said, and the Thai woman agreed.

  I felt like a total shit then and even worse after talking to the Italian, who said that I was clearly the teacher’s favorite. I asked what gave her that idea and she said, “Because she told you that she hated you.”

  September 21, 1998

  Paris

  The teacher returned, and the Poles and Koreans breathed an audible sigh of relief. I was happy as well until she gave us three homework assignments, these on top of the two she had given us earlier. I’ve spent hours on them already and still have to write an essay on an American holiday. It’s a lot of work, as I’ll have to double-check all my spelling in the dictionary.

  September 25, 1998

  Paris

  The teacher was a real wildcat today. We got a new student on Tuesday, an Israeli. He talks a lot in class and she laid into him for it. “This is not your own private session. Why don’t you think before you open your mouth?”

  Still he continued on, not the least bit intimidated.

  The teacher threw a lot of chalk and said to me at one point, “Teaching you is like having a cesarean section every day of the week.”

  Later, related to the exercise we were doing, she asked each of us, “Are you afraid of me?”

  The Israeli said, “I have no fear at all of you.”

  I said pretty much the opposite, and she used a word I didn’t catch. It wasn’t coward; I know how to say that. She used a word I wasn’t familiar with and added, “Every day you sit there and tremble.”

  September 27, 1998

  Paris

  I bought nothing at the flea market today but stopped to admire a human skull from the sixth century. It’s on a stand, the head of a child, crazed with tiny lines, and exquisite. The woman selling it gave me the price, which amounted to $6,000. It seemed extravagant, but then, how do you value a skull? The way it is, I could buy either a decent used car or some kid’s head. It’s twice the cost of Hugh’s computer and half the price of a hysterectomy.

  September 28, 1998

  Paris

  Polish Anna and I spoke after class today. She works as an au pair and told me that her mistress is currently in the hospital. The woman is six months pregnant and just learned that the fetus’s legs are only two inches long. “That means,” Anna said, “that he will have to be pushed always in a rolling chair, and this is very difficult here in Paris.”

  Based on this news, the woman has decided to terminate her pregnancy. This is interesting, as I don’t think you could abort that late in the United States. I’m sure there are always extenuating circumstances, but I don’t think that this—tiny legs—would be an acceptable reason. Would it?

  September 29, 1998

  Paris

  This was the last class before our week-long break, and the teacher baked a cake and organized a little party. Anna brought bread and cheese, the German made a potato salad, and the Japanese girl brought in seaweed crackers. A lot of people didn’t show up, and because there were so few of us
, we got to sit around and ask the teacher personal questions. It was fun watching her talk with her mouth full. After she finished, she pulled out her cigarettes and offered them to everyone. I lit one of my own and she told me, using a word I’d learn from Manuela, that menthol cigarettes are tacky. She talked about American hypocrisy and puritanism and asked why my people were so caught up in our president’s sex life. The others got involved and said, essentially, “Yeah, you, what’s your problem?”

  October 2, 1998

  Paris

  This morning while cutting cheese Hugh sliced off the tip of his finger. That sounds like a sentence I’d write for class, but it’s true. He worried he was going to pass out; my big fear was trying to phone someone for help. There’s a small, Arab-owned market a few doors from our apartment building, so while he wrapped his hand in a rag, I ran down the street to buy Band-Aids, remembering along the way that I had no idea what the word is. I’d tried to buy some at a pharmacy last year in Normandy, but my French was so bad I couldn’t even describe them. In the end I drew a picture and the woman looked at it, responding with what I guessed was “This is a drugstore. We have no surfboards here.” It really was a bad picture. My next attempt was even worse and resembled a flying carpet. In the end, I gave up, figuring my blisters would heal on their own.

  This morning at the market I was able to say, in French, “My friend cut his finger so I am looking for a morsel of rubber.” The sentence kind of falls apart at the end, but still it did the trick. The man handed me a small, $4 box of Band-Aids and I left realizing that everything in that store costs $4: a can of tomatoes, a box of rice, a jug of laundry detergent—it’s all the same price.