“No, I’m American.”
“Ah! Mais bien sûr. Elle est Américaine.” Some of the French students giggled and smiled in collusion, though they had surely missed much of his rapid-fire English. I could hardly blame them for their relief that they were not the ones being singled out by our terrifying professor of translation, Monsieur Boulu. He had been pacing before a giant whiteboard for the last half hour on a diatribe that leaped from one tangent to another in wholly inexplicable ways, pointing an index finger at cowering students as he said a word in one language and demanded to know its equivalent in the other. What meager translations were offered were mostly shot down, although Sophie had scored a point by identifying la bougeotte as “wanderlust.” And then I had sneezed. Loudly.
“I will ask you yet again, Mademoiselle États-Unis. What is the meaning of this sneeze?”
I looked around as though I might find some information or encouragement on the faces of my classmates, but no such luck. Even Sophie’s face was blank, if sympathetic.
“The sneeze has no meaning, monsieur,” I said, trying to keep my voice as respectful as possible. “It’s just a noise.”
“Wrong!” he said, slamming an open hand against his desk and then addressing one of the more persistent gigglers. “Perhaps you can tell us why this has meaning? Why it is relevant?” The student was sitting in the front row, and Monsieur Boulu leaned forward across his desk, looming from his towering height.
Sheepishly, the student shook his head.
“Non? Alors, arrêtez avec les rires bébêtes! Stop with the giggles!”
The poor kid nodded and obediently scribbled something on his notepad as we had all been feverishly doing throughout class.
“Alors, Mademoiselle États-Unis. Now that you have had a moment to reflect on the question, perhaps you can enlighten us on this issue which you have so helpfully brought to light.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, monsieur, but I cannot see where an involuntary noise fits into our discussion of language. It’s just a noise I made. A-choo.”
“Aha! Now we are getting somewhere. Mademoiselle États-Unis said ‘a-choo’ because she is American. Mais Monsieur Giggles là veut dire ‘atchoum’ parce qu’il est Français. Do you see now where I am going? The phones in America ring and the phones here in France dring; the dogs there say ‘woof,’ the dogs here say ‘abois.’ Now I will trust that you have encountered un chien français during your time here?”
I nodded.
“And did he sound any different than an American dog?”
I shook my head.
“You see”—blessedly he turned his laserlike focus from me and back onto the class—“language is deeper than what we are conscious of. It is not just a way of speaking but a whole way of communicating with the world. It is not only about what comes out of your little mouths, but also about what goes into your little heads. That is assuming of course that anything permeates at all.” He smiled pointedly at Monsieur Giggles, who grinned back dumbly.
“You must begin to look beyond everything that you’ve taken for granted about language. You must begin to see that one sneezes in French or in English depending on who hears the sneeze, that the sound of a dog’s bark is meaningless to us unless we can interpret the sound into our language, and not just the language of humans but the language of French or American humans, who will disagree about what the dog has said because they do not hear it in the same language. You must move beyond the laziness that makes you think that this is simple onomatopoeia, because onomatopoeia is a mirage! Let us not be lazy students of language.”
The students, despite their confusion (or terror), were riveted by the passionate speech. He took in our faces with a satisfied smile and appeared content for a moment.
“Many thanks to Mademoiselle États-Unis for bringing this noteworthy aspect of language to the forefront of our discussion today.”
As much as the class terrified me, I’d fought for my place in it. Sophie and Adam were approved to take his class already, but because of my low test scores I had had to petition both him and Madame Rochet, and I did so fervently. My French verbal skills were improving in leaps and bounds thanks to my long nights at the pub with Sophie. Plus, I suspected somehow that Madame Rochet was developing something of a soft spot for me; she seemed to respect my devotion to the language, at least.
“Brooke,” Adam said to me as we went into the hallway now flooded with students, “you were the star today!” Putting his arm around me, he pulled me to his perfectly laundered side.
I rolled my eyes with a groan and collapsed into him. “Can you even believe that happened? So mortifying.”
We were getting slightly wary glances from the French students following us out of the class. I couldn’t tell if they were appalled or impressed with us, but if we hadn’t brought attention to ourselves before then, we certainly had now.
“No,” Sophie said, appearing at my other side, unconcerned about how much room we took up across the hallway, “not at all. You held your own. At least you didn’t burst into tears!”
“You’re right,” I said, glowing from their warmth. “A traduction class during which I do not break down crying may be called a success.”
“Go on, Brooke,” Sophie said, leaning into my ear, “admit you’re a goddess.”
“What’s going on there, les filles? Inside jokes? Les blagues intimes? Tell me or I will start calling you Mademoiselle États-Unis.”
“We do have to tell you about our new French friends at some point,” Sophie said, giving me a look that I read as Not about the street, not about what happened there. “And you must tell us about your liaisons dangereuses with your Internet friend.”
“Oh, God, him. I will fill you in later, les filles, but right now I’m off to class.”
“Me too,” said Sophie.
I had nothing until later that afternoon, so I said my good-byes.
“We’ll meet later for un pot,” Adam said, almost as an afterthought, as he and Sophie walked away hand in hand. I hoped my envy didn’t show and that my desire to always be with Sophie wasn’t blatant. Groups of three are always difficult, like a stool that’s never quite on balance.
I made my way up the austere concrete corridor. The university was not quite as I’d imagined when I’d been dreaming of coming here over the summer. I had pictured it looking like the university I attended in California but more romantic and rustic. But the University of Nantes was utilitarian looking, much more reminiscent of American public high schools than any universities I had seen in the States. Maybe this wasn’t accidental. They didn’t bother with artifice or professors who pretended to care about your opinion here.
I had two hours before my next class and I sat in a sunny patch in the park down the street from the institute and called my mother on my prepaid cell phone. This was the early era of cell phones and I didn’t even own one back home, so I still marveled at the novelty of being able to call my mother while sitting on a park bench. She was an early riser and would just be waking up.
“Hello?” The connection was fuzzy and it sounded a little as though I were listening to her from underwater.
“Hi, Mom, can you hear me okay?”
“Brooke! I’m glad you finally called. I was getting worried.”
“Sorry, Mom. They’ve been keeping us really busy here.”
A few yards away, two construction workers were sitting on the grass eating a late lunch, and a little farther away, a couple were kissing on a blanket, the girl straddled across the boy’s lap. It reminded me how long it had been since I had kissed someone; it only made it worse that the last time had been under such unfortunate circumstances.
“Tell me everything! I want to know about your host family and your classes and the people you’ve met, the things you’ve seen!” My mother’s words ran together in excitement.
I suddenly felt exhausted at the prospect of even beginning to relate these details, much as I did when I sat do
wn occasionally to take notes in the purple moleskin journal my mom had given me as a going-away present, in which I had sworn to myself I would make careful entries every day. But every time I sat down to write—my mind spilling over with the observations I had amassed about the food, the buildings, the French students, my fellow Americans—I was overwhelmed. Instead of the lovely, linear entries I had composed in my head, details came scrawled out at random and I was left with accounts that would later seem hieroglyphic: Remember those strawberries, Americans: well-meaning colonists, and of course Sophie . . . ??? And later Alex. Alex. Alex.
I told my mother I couldn’t talk long and offered some cursory information. My host family is nice. Three kids. Only one class at the university. I related the story of the sneeze, and my mother said the professor sounded like a pompous jerk, and I told her a little nastily that she had missed the point of the story. Even though Monsieur Boulu was a pompous jerk, I wanted her to understand how exciting it all was. It was perhaps then that I realized my mother might never quite be capable of understanding me again.
The construction workers got up to leave, and now that no one else was around, I unabashedly stared at the couple under the tree. The girl’s skirt was hiked up around her hips, and the man’s hands were entwined in her hair, though he frequently removed one to caress a thigh or fondle a breast. I began to wonder what would happen if they actually started to make love under the tree. Would I be compelled to leave? Would it be rude to stay? It sent a thrilling shiver up my spine to think that they might have noticed me here and were hoping I would stay to watch them. After all, they must be exhibitionists to be so openly groping each other in public. Or maybe they were simply so caught up in their mutual passion that they were impervious to anyone else.
“I have to go, Mom, I have class.”
“All right, sweetheart. Have a good time and be safe. Oh! And say hello to Sophie for me. How is she doing?”
“She’s doing great, this whole thing is a breeze for her.”
“Well, she seems very bright,” my mother said with something like pride in her voice, as though Sophie were her daughter as well. I felt a twisting inside me. Faint, and then gone.
I stayed there for a few moments after hanging up, but without the prop of the phone conversation I began to feel too conspicuous sitting there. I headed back to the institute feeling hollowed out and wishing I’d never gone to the park at all.
That afternoon I checked my e-mail in the computer room—the one and only place most students had access to the Internet, unless they wanted to pay to use a café—and was surprised to see an e-mail from Sophie’s mother, Rebecca.
Hi Brooke,
I hope you girls are having a great time in France! I’m so sorry to bother you but we haven’t heard from Sophie in a couple of weeks and we’re getting very worried. Could you please tell her to contact us right away? I’m sure everything is fine! We just worry, as parents. You girls will understand when you’re older (-:
I hope you’re both enjoying your French sojourn!
Hugs and kisses,
Rebecca (Sophie’s mom)
I wrote her back hurriedly, telling her that both Sophie and I were doing well, adding in a white lie that the program had been keeping us busy with schoolwork and organized outings (there were organized outings, but Sophie and I avoided them like the plague), and that I was sure that Sophie just hadn’t been able to get any time in the computer room to e-mail them.
I found Sophie in one of the rooms, curled up in one of the decrepit institute armchairs, an abandoned novel in her lap as she snoozed.
“Soph”—I shook her shoulder—“wake up for a second.” When she finally roused herself, I told her about the e-mail.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, how mortifying.”
“I told her you were fine and that we’d just been busy with school.”
“So you lied”—she smiled—“good instincts. They made me promise to e-mail them every other day. I mean, how ridiculous is that?”
I shrugged, wondering if there wasn’t a reason for it. “Parents.”
“They make me never want to go home.”
THE WEATHER seemed to get cold overnight in Nantes and the days shortened dramatically. The initial shock, cultural and otherwise, of entering the country had worn off by late October, and most of us were settling in. The other Americans hung out only with each other and had their little power struggles and allegiances among themselves. Sophie and I stuck together. We still spent some time with Adam and Lindsay, traveling with them to Munich for Oktoberfest and to Dublin for a long, incredibly drunken weekend, but we mostly kept to ourselves, continuing our adventures as a twosome.
We saw Véronique and her friends occasionally after that miraculous first night with them, but we didn’t see Alex. Much to my dismay, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. It became hard to recall precisely what he looked like, and I found the more I tried, the hazier his image became, until I remembered more the feeling of being near him than the details of his appearance.
One night at conversation club, I resolved to ask Véronique where Alex was. She came in a few minutes late with a somewhat doleful-seeming Thomas by her side, and taking him by the arm, she headed for us as soon as she saw us.
The four of us helped ourselves to wine and sat down together. The young teacher who was supervising the session immediately came over and separated us, officiously explaining that there were to be partnerships of only two, lest some talkative member of the group dominate the conversation. Secretly, I was glad to have Véronique to myself so that I could gossip with her.
“This wine is really pretty good,” I said.
“Of course, it’s the wine of the region. What we always drink.”
“That’s a difference between the U.S. and France. No one would bother serving good wine at something meant for college students in the U.S. There would be some awful boxed wine if there was any at all.”
Véronique pursed her lips and nodded in agreement, perhaps remembering some horrifying boxed-wine experience during her time in the States. “But there are also some very nice wines in California,” she said generously.
I leaned over the desk and lowered my voice. “Véronique.”
“Oui?”
“I was just thinking the other day about the first time we hung out at your apartment. Whatever happened to your cousin?”
“Alex?” She smiled.
“Yeah, I thought he was in Nantes but we haven’t seen him again.”
“He went back to Paris for a bit for work; he booked a couple of good jobs there.”
“Oh. Okay. I was just wondering.” I hoped it wasn’t completely obvious how crestfallen I was.
Véronique studied me for a moment before giving me a wry smile. “He’ll be back, though, for the holidays. Hopefully he’ll stay for a while, but you never know with him.”
I nodded. “Being a photographer must be like that.”
“Should I bring him around again next time he’s in town?”
“Oh, only if you want.”
“Of course I do. He’s my cousin, I love him.” She took a sip of her wine. “But then, don’t we all?”
“Oh, no,” I said too quickly, “I mean, I only met him once.”
“Sometimes that’s all it takes,” she said playfully.
“Oh, well, I’m American. We don’t really do things that way.”
She laughed out loud and rolled her eyes. “I forgot how scared Americans are of that word. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; lots of girls fall in love with my cousin the moment they lay eyes on him.”
I bristled defensively. I wanted nothing less than to be one of these many girls. “I just thought he was interesting. I like photography,” I blurted out helplessly.
“Oh, yes? I didn’t know this. Do you want to be a photographer?”
“Well, no, I want to be a writer. I’m just always fascinated by other art forms. How they come to be.” I hoped I’d finessed t
he phrase in French accurately enough to at least make sense.
She looked at me a little quizzically. “I didn’t know that you were a writer.”
“I don’t talk about it much.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged, not sure how to explain—let alone in French—the horrible feeling that I would be called a liar if I said things like this out loud or, even worse, secretly considered a fraud.
She nodded. “Maybe I do understand. I’m an actress but I never want to talk about it.”
“That’s right. Can we see you in a show while we’re here?”
“Perhaps”—her smile looked a little wary—“but why are we talking about me when I know you want to be talking about Alex?”
I sighed. Was I surprised that she saw right through me? Had I been hoping she would? I gave up. “How old is he anyway?”
“I believe twenty-five?” She ticked off years on her long fingers. I had noticed that she always had perfect fingernails, smooth little ovals in an array of shades. It seemed to me that she must change the polish weekly, and today they were eggplant. “Yes, because he finished at the École des Beaux-Arts four years ago now.”
Twenty-five still seemed far off and remote, the other side of some gateway to adulthood that was only barely coming into my line of sight.
“And he normally lives in Paris?”
“Yes, you would love his place there. It’s a large apartment on the Left Bank that his father’s family owns. He has parties there all the time. I used to go up there on the train when I was sixteen, and my mother would get so angry with me.”
“It’s your mother’s family that’s related?”
“Yes, our mothers are sisters. Virginie, who lives in Nantes, is Alex’s paternal grandmother.”
I wondered why someone who was living in a grand, family-owned apartment on the Left Bank would need to leave town for work, but I took it for granted that—this being France and involving both money and family—there were innumerable nuances I wasn’t privy to.
Losing the Light Page 9
