Break It Down

by Lydia Davis

  We will now introduce a piece of language history and then, following it, a language concept.

  Agriculture is a pursuit in France, as it is in our own country, but the word is pronounced differently, agriculture . The spelling is the same because the word is derived from the Latin. In your lessons you will notice that some French words, such as la ferme, are spelled the same way or nearly the same way as the equivalent words in our own language, and in these cases the words in both languages are derived from the same Latin word. Other French words are not at all like our words for the same things. In these cases, the French words are usually derived from the Latin but our words for the same things are not, and have come to us from the Anglo-Saxon, the Danish, and so on. This is a piece of information about language history. There will be more language history in later lessons, because language history is really quite fascinating, as we hope you will agree by the end of the course.

  We have just said that we have our own words in English for the same things. This is not strictly true. We can’t really say there are several words for the same thing. It is in fact just the opposite—there is only one word for many things, and usually even that word, when it is a noun, is too general. Keep this language concept in mind as you listen to the following example:

  A French arbre is not the elm or maple shading the main street of our New England towns in the infinitely long, hot and listless, vacant summer of our childhoods, which are themselves different from the childhoods of French children, and if you see a Frenchman standing on a street in a small town in America pointing to an elm or a maple and calling it an arbre, you will know this is wrong. An arbre is a plane tree in an ancient town square with lopped, stubby branches and patchy, leprous bark standing in a row of similar plane trees across from the town hall, in front of which a bicycle ridden by a man with thick, reddish skin and an old cap wavers past and turns into a narrow lane. Or an arbre is one of the dense, scrubby live oaks in the blazing dry hills of Provence, through which a similar figure in a blue cloth jacket carrying some sort of a net or trap pushes his way. An arbre can also cast a pleasant shade and keep la maison cool in the summer, but remember that la maison is not wood-framed with a widow’s walk and a wide front porch but is laid out on a north-south axis, is built of irregular, sand-colored blocks of stone, and has a red tile roof, small square windows with green shutters, and no windows on the north side, which is also protected from the wind by a closely planted line of cypresses, while a pretty mulberry or olive may shade the south. Not that there are not many different sorts of maisons in France, their architecture depending on their climate or on the fact that there may be a foreign country nearby, like Germany, but we cannot really have more than one image behind a word we say, like maison. What do you see when you say house? Do you see more than one kind of house?

  When are we going to return to our ferme? As we pointed out earlier, a language student should master la ferme before he or she moves on to la ville, just as we should all come to the city only in our adolescent years, when nature, or animal life, is no longer as important or interesting to us as it once was.

  If you stand in a tilled field at the edge of la ferme, you will hear les vaches lowing because it is five in the winter evening and their udders are full. A light is on in the barn, but outside it is dark and la femme of le fermier looks out a little anxiously across the barnyard from the window of her cuisine, where she is peeling vegetables. Now the hired man is silhouetted in the doorway of the barn. La femme wonders why he is standing still holding a short object in his right hand. The plural article les, spelled l e s, as in les vaches, is invariable, but do not pronounce the s. The singular article is either masculine, le, or feminine, la, depending on the noun it accompanies, and it must always be learned along with any new noun in your vocabulary, because there is very little else to go by, to tell what in the world of French nouns is masculine and what is feminine. You may try to remember that all countries ending in silent e are feminine except for le Mexique, or that all the states in the United States of America ending in silent e are feminine except for Maine—just as in German the four seasons are masculine and all minerals are masculine—but you will soon forget these rules. One day, however, la maison will seem inevitably feminine to you, with its welcoming open doors, its shady rooms, its warm kitchen. La bicyclette, a word we are introducing now, will also seem feminine, and can be thought of as a young girl, ribbons fluttering in her spokes as she wobbles down the rutted lane away from the farm. La bicyclette. But that was earlier in the afternoon. Now les vaches stand at the barnyard gate, lowing and chewing their cuds. The word cud, and probably also the word lowing, are words you will not have to know in French, since you would almost never have occasion to use them.

  Now the hired man swings open la barrière and les vaches amble across the barnyard, udders swaying, up to their hocks in la boue, nodding their heads and switching their tails. Now their hooves clatter across the concrete floor of la grange and the hired man swings la barrière shut. But where is le fermier? And why, in fact, is the chopping block covered with sang that is still sticky, even though le fermier has not killed un poulet in days? You will need to use indefinite articles as well as definite articles with your nouns, and we must repeat that you will make no mistakes with the gender of your nouns if you learn the articles at the same time. Un is masculine, une is feminine. This being so, what gender is un poulet? If you say masculine you are right, though the bird herself may be a young female. After the age of ten months, however, when she should also be stewed rather than broiled, fried, or roasted, she is known as la poule and makes a great racket after laying a clutch of eggs in a corner of the poultry yard la femme will have trouble finding in the morning, when she will also discover something that does not belong there and that makes her stand still, her apron full of eggs, and gaze off across the fields.

  Notice that the words poule, poulet, and poultry, especially when seen on the page, have some resemblance. This is because all three are derived from the same Latin word. This may help you remember the word poulet. Poule, poulet, and poultry have no resemblance to the word chicken, because chicken is derived from the Anglo-Saxon.

  In this first lesson we have concentrated on nouns. We can safely, however, introduce a preposition at this point, and before we are through we will also be using one verb, so that by the end of the lesson you will be able to form some simple sentences. Try to learn what this preposition means by the context in which it is used. You will notice that you have been doing this all along with most of the vocabulary introduced. It is a good way to learn a language because it is how children learn their native languages, by associating the sounds they hear with the context in which the sounds are uttered. If the context changed continually, the children would never learn to speak. Also, the so-called meaning of a word is completely determined by the context in which it is spoken, so that in fact we cannot say a meaning is inescapably attached to a word, but that it shifts over time and from context to context. Certainly the so-called meaning of a French word, as I tried to suggest earlier, is not its English equivalent but whatever it refers to in French life. These are modern or contemporary ideas about language, but they are generally accepted. Now the new word we are adding to our vocabulary is the word dans, spelled d a n s. Remember not to pronounce the last letter, s, or, in this case, the next to the last letter, n, and speak the word through your nose. Dans.

  Do you remember la femme? Do you remember what she was doing? It is still dark, les vaches are gone from her sight and quieter than they were earlier, except for the one bellowing vache who is ill and was not let out that morning by le fermier for fear that she would infect the others, and la femme is still there, peeling vegetables. She is—now listen carefully—dans la cuisine. Do you remember what la cuisine is? It is the only place, except perhaps for the sunny front courtyard on a cool late summer afternoon, where une femme would reasonably peel les legumes.

  La femme is holding a sma
ll knife dans her red-knuckled hand and there are bits of potato skin stuck to her wrist, just as there are feathers stuck in le sang on the chopping block outside the back door, smaller feathers, however, than would be expected from un poulet. The glistening white peeled pommes de terre are dans une bassine and la bassine is dans the sink, and les vaches are dans la grange, where they should have been an hour ago. Above them the bales of hay are stacked neatly dans the loft, and near them is a calf dans the calves’ pen. The rows of bare light bulbs in the ceiling shine on the clanking stanchions. Stanchion is another word you will probably not have to know in French, though it is a nice one to know in English.

  Now that you know the words la femme, dans, and la cuisine, you will have no trouble understanding your first complete sentence in French: La femme est dans la cuisine. Say it over until you feel comfortable with it. La femme est—spelled e s t but don’t pronounce the s or the t—dans la cuisine. Here are a few more simple sentences to practice on: La vache est dans la grange. La pomme de terre est dans la bassine. La bassine est dans the sink.

  The whereabouts of le fermier is more of a problem, but in the next lesson we may be able to follow him into la ville. Before going on to la ville, however, do study the list of additional vocabulary:

  le sac: bag

  la grive: thrush

  l’alouette: lark

  l’aile: wing

  la plume: feather

  la hachette: hatchet

  le manche: handle

  l’anxiété: anxiety

  le meurtre: murder

  Once a Very Stupid Man

  She is tired and a little ill and not thinking very clearly and as she tries to get dressed she keeps asking him where her things are and he very patiently tells her where each thing is—first her pants, then her shirt, then her socks, then her glasses. He suggests to her that she should put her glasses on and she does, but this doesn’t seem to help very much. There isn’t much light coming into the room. Part of the way through this search and this attempt to dress herself she lies down on the bed mostly dressed while he lies under the covers after earlier getting up to feed the cat, opening the can of food with a noise that puzzled her because it sounded like milk squirting from the teat of a cow into a metal bucket. As she lies there nearly dressed beside him he talks to her steadily about various things, and after a while, as she has been listening to him with different reactions according to what he says to her, first resentment, then great interest, then amusement, then distraction, then resentment again, then amusement again, he asks her if she minds him talking so much and if she wants him to stop or go on. She says it is time for her to get ready to go and she gets up off the bed.

  She resumes her search for her clothes and he resumes helping her. She asks him where her ring is and where her shoes are, and where her jacket is and where her purse is. He tells her where each thing is and then gets up and hands her some things even before she asks. By the time she is fully dressed to go, she sees more clearly what is happening, that her situation is very like a Hasidic tale she read on the subway the day before from a book that is still in her purse. She asks him if she can read him a story, he hesitates, and she thinks he probably doesn’t like her to read to him, even though he likes to read to her. She says it is only a paragraph, he agrees, and they sit down at the kitchen table. By now he is dressed too, in a white T-shirt and pants that fit him nicely. From the thin brown book she reads the following tale:

  “There was once a man who was very stupid. When he got up in the morning it was so hard for him to find his clothes that at night he almost hesitated to go to bed for thinking of the trouble he would have on waking. One evening he took paper and pencil and with great effort, as he undressed, noted down exactly where he put everything he had on. The next morning, well pleased with himself, he took the slip of paper in his hand and read: ‘cap’—there it was, he set it on his head; ‘pants’—there they lay, he got into them; and so it went until he was fully dressed. But now he was overcome with consternation, and he said to himself: ‘This is all very well, I have found my clothes and I am dressed, but where am I myself? Where in the world am I?’ And he looked and looked, but it was a vain search; he could not find himself. And that is how it is with us, said the rabbi.”

  She stops reading. He likes the story, but does not seem to like the ending—“Where am I?”—as much as he likes the beginning, about the man’s problem and his solution.

  She herself feels she is like the very stupid man, not only because she couldn’t find her clothes, not only because sometimes other simple things besides getting dressed are also beyond her, but most of all because she often doesn’t know where she is, and particularly concerning this man she doesn’t know where she is. She thinks she is probably no place in the life of this man, who is also not only not in his own house, just as she is not in her own house when she visits him and in fact doesn’t know where this house is but arrives here as though in a dream, stumbling and falling in the street, but who is not altogether in his own life anymore and might well also ask himself, “Where am I?”

  In fact, she wants to call herself a very stupid man. Can’t she say, This woman is a very stupid man, just the way a few weeks before she thought she had called herself a bearded man? Because if the very stupid man in the story behaves just the way she herself would behave or is even right now behaving, can’t she consider herself to be a very stupid man, just as a few weeks ago she thought anyone writing at the next table in a café might be considered to be a bearded man? She was sitting in a café and a bearded man was writing two tables away from her and two loud women came in to have lunch and disturbed the bearded man and she wrote down in her notebook that they had disturbed the bearded man writing at the next table and then saw that since she herself, as she wrote this, was writing at the next table, she was probably calling herself a bearded man. It was not that she had changed in any way, but that the words bearded man could now apply to her. Or perhaps she had changed.

  She has read the tale out loud to him because it is so like what has just happened to her, but then she wonders if it is not the other way around and the tale lodged somewhere in her mind the day before and made it possible for her to forget where all her clothes were and have such trouble dressing. Later that morning, or perhaps on another morning, feeling the same stupidity leaving this man who is not quite in his life anymore, as she looks again for herself in his life and can’t find herself anywhere, there are other confusions. She cries and may be crying only because it is raining outdoors and she has been staring at the rain coming down the windowpane, and then wonders if she is crying more because it is raining or if the rain made it possible for her to cry in the first place, since she doesn’t cry very often, and finally thinks the two, the rain and the tears, are the same. Then, out on the street, there is a sudden great din coming from several places at once—a few cars honking, a truck’s loud engine roaring, another truck with loose parts rattling over an uneven road surface, a roadmender pounding—and the din seems to be occurring right inside her as if her anger and confusion had emptied her and made a place in the middle of her chest for this great clashing of metal, or as if she herself had left this body and left it open to this noise, and then she wonders, Has the noise really come into me, or has something in me gone out into the street to make such a great noise?

  The Housemaid

  I know I am not pretty. My dark hair is cut short and is so thin it hardly hides my skull. I have a hasty and lopsided way of walking, as though I were crippled in one leg. When I bought my glasses I thought they were elegant—the frames are black and shaped like butterfly wings—but now I have learned how unbecoming they are and am stuck with them, since I have no money to buy new ones. My skin is the color of a toad’s belly and my lips are narrow. But I am not nearly as ugly as my mother, who is much older. Her face is small and wrinkled and black like a prune, and her teeth wobble in her mouth. I can hardly bear to sit across from her at dinner and I can
tell by the look on her face that she feels the same way about me.

  For years we have lived together in the basement. She is the cook; I am the housemaid. We are not good servants, but no one can dismiss us because we are still better than most. My mother’s dream is that someday she will save enough money to leave me and live in the country. My dream is nearly the same, except that when I am feeling angry and unhappy I look across the table at her clawlike hands and hope that she will choke to death on her food. Then no one would be there to stop me from going into her closet and breaking open her money box. I would put on her dresses and her hats, and open the windows of her room and let the smell out.

  Whenever I imagine these things, sitting alone in the kitchen late at night, I am always ill the next day. Then it is my mother herself who nurses me, holding water to my lips and fanning my face with a fly swatter, neglecting her duties in the kitchen, and I struggle to persuade myself that she is not silently gloating over my weakness.

  Things have not always been like this. When Mr. Martin lived in the rooms above us, we were happier, though we seldom spoke to one another. I was no prettier than I am now, but I never wore my glasses in his presence and took care to stand up straight and to walk gracefully. I stumbled often, and even fell flat on my face because I could not see where I was going; I ached all night from trying to hold in my round stomach as I walked. But none of this stopped me from trying to be someone Mr. Martin could love. I broke many more things then than I do now, because I could not see where my hand was going when I dusted the parlor vases and sponged the dining-room mirrors. But Mr. Martin hardly noticed. He would start from his fireside chair, as the glass shattered, and stare up at the ceiling in a puzzled sort of way. After a moment, as I held my breath by the glittering pieces, he would pass his white-gloved hand over his forehead and sit down again.