The music was loud: songs by Pulp. Lindsay and Rachel started dancing by themselves, though not the Tecktonik. The Australian girl from the bar, Dana, was there, too, sitting with her boyfriend, a tan blond Parisian named Michel. He was fondling her thigh, smoking with the other hand.
“But how do you not know Michel?” Richard asked me while playing with his hat. Richard turned to Michel and said in French, with an extremely good Parisian accent, “Michel, you must tell him.”
“Tell him what?” Michel said.
“About becoming king.”
“Please, Richard,” Michel groaned.
Michel’s hair seemed constructed from two waves of yellow ice.
Dana said, “Michel is royal, like to the Bourbons? He’ll be king of England if two hundred people die in the correct sequence.”
“I’d heard that,” I said, and thought, Logistics suck.
“Two hundred and seventy-one,” Michel said a moment later. He rotated toward me, his open shirt puckering like lips. “You’re from New York. You know Café Gitane? I have an apartment near there. So cool. Except for all the French, of course.”
I knew Café Gitane; I’d gone there once on a date. Café Gitane was New York’s Le Fumoir, where rich people from other countries had meetings to discuss their leisure careers—fashion consulting, cupcake stores.
He aspired, Michel said, to become an entrepreneur. But in the American mode. “Funny, it’s a French word, entrepreneur, but the concept does not exist in France today.” He dreamed, Michel said, of opening a chain of gourmet cheeseburger franchises in Paris, like what he’d seen in New York. But taxes and bureaucracy made it difficult to start a business in France. So far, his first outlet was mired in red tape, and it hadn’t even opened yet. He wanted to kill himself!
I found Pascal in the kitchen warming platters from Picard—this would be our fifth party in Paris that featured Picard hors d’oeuvres. Pascal asked if I wanted to examine his cheese plate, using the same tone as an American hostess offering a tour of her house. Then Pascal told me in English about his macarons: “From my mother’s favorite patisserie. Better than Ladurée. No wait in the queue, and much better taste. It is fundamental to have the best taste.”
Pascal preferred to speak English with me so that he could practice. “I do not have people here, mostly. You come anytime,” Pascal said. “Just call, we take a dinner. I do not have lots of friends,” he added.
It made me a little uncomfortable, Pascal’s English. Did my French come across so bald and vulnerable?
“Pascal,” Lindsay asked in the living room, “why do Frenchmen always call me baby?”
Pascal said, “Because you are babies. American girls, they are the most—”
“Stupid?” Michel said.
“Immature,” Pascal announced, with good cheer. “They are the most immature women in the world. They come to Paris, you meet, and they take off their pants. Like Sarah Jessica Parker.”
“As soon as those cheese straws have cooled,” Lindsay said, “I am out of here.”
Half an hour later, we left. The night was full of house music. Dana, Michel, and Richard said they were tired and decamped to find the Métro. Lindsay said she’d heard about a party in the Bois de Boulogne, in a château, so we caught a taxi. The cabdriver was mute, listening to jazz on the radio. We go? Nod nod, hurry hurry. Normally, Bois de Boulogne would be a thirty-minute drive, but with the techno parade and Saturday-evening traffic … Pascal figured it would take an hour. The Eiffel Tower was all lit up. We rocketed along a highway that seemed level with the Seine. In the distance, La Défense, the outlying skyscraper district, was our lighthouse, atop the edge of the Bois. Twenty minutes later, we entered the forest’s perimeter.
In total, the Bois was more than twice the size of Central Park. Trees hung over the road: black, globular, frozen. The woods seemed to go on forever.
At the palace gates, cars approaching were twenty deep. Two hundred bodies were queued around the shrubbery. People standing near the street rushed over to obtain our taxi.
“We won’t get in,” Rachel said.
“I’m more worried about getting home, actually,” I said.
It was already two a.m. It would be an hour before we got inside. To get home would take another hour and fifty euros, assuming we found a cab.
Lindsay sank in her seat. Fine, she said, let’s go home.
A dozen people were jostling outside our taxi.
“We go back? Okay, turn around, we go back,” Pascal commanded the driver. A second later, he said to the driver in French, “They’re like children,” referring to us.
* * *
Living in another language and speaking defectively, I could not be clever. At best, I was genuine. Accidentally funny, but never funny on purpose. Earnest, not savvy. I’d worked this out, that it was difficult for me to influence other people’s impressions of me favorably when I didn’t speak the language well, and apparently this was something I needed, people having favorable impressions of me based on what I’d said.
So moving abroad was not unlike psychoanalysis.
But it was round-the-clock therapy, most of the time unwanted. Where every minute I needed to make myself understood, and was at the mercy of others.
That sandwich is what?
Which immigration form exactly?
I am lost.
Of course, lots of people in the office were semiadept at multiple languages. English, German, Italian, Chinese. But when they spoke poorly, they seemed comfortable in the floating state, hovering between full comprehension and zero. Meanwhile, I found myself reflected in Pascal—feelings from the mouth of a giant baby.
For example, I’d be in a meeting with Bruno and our project managers, and flash! something would occur to me. Well, how’d it go in French? Two minutes later, when I produced my idea out loud, inevitably Bruno had already said it better, only I hadn’t heard him say it because I’d been too busy in my head.
But I learned from Tomaso that he and my non-Anglo coworkers were required to take a telephone exam each year that measured their English fluency and influenced their pay. It would be idiotic not to recognize that globalization was on my side. I also developed more respect for non-English-speakers back home, anyone crossing the border to clean toilets, and also Hiro Take, a friend from sixth grade who’d learned English rapidly after moving to the States from Japan and had made doing it seem cool. I looked him up on the Internet, but he wasn’t there.
Each day, I brainstormed, I presented, I butchered the French language bloody.
It was petrifying.
14
Semibig announcement on the newsstands: Cécilia Sarkozy wanted a divorce. President Sarkozy and his wife married in 1996, and Sarkozy was on record as being head over heels in love with her, but no one was shocked. Cécilia had fallen in love elsewhere. Besides, Cécilia had said on TV that the idea of being First Lady bored her.
Now the president faced catastrophe. Many times, Sarkozy had said how besotted he was with Cécilia. He’d promised voters they would love her, too, assuming they loved that other great French heroine, Jackie Kennedy—born, let’s remember, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. No, a divorced president was not a symbol France needed, the papers said, not when France traditionally desired stability, a father figure, even a grandfather figure. If French leaders kept girls to see at lunch, fine, men were men. But they should not be left alone at night to whimper and second-guess their decisions.
At the office, I asked my deskmates what they thought about Sarkozy, the bachelor. Summing up for the majority, Julie explained that France desired a macho man, not a president who was unsure of himself, especially this one who was already prone to nombrilisme, navel gazing, she believed.
Pierre suggested I e-mail the Palais de l’Elysée and give them the address of that Notre Dame apartment I’d seen. Perhaps, he said, Sarkozy needed a room with a view.
* * *
A letter arrived requiring me to take a d
ay off work and attend a formation civique, a “civic education” class. The day’s purpose would be to provide “a day of civic training to present the fundamental rights, principles, and values of the French Republic.” If I blew it off, “the préfet could terminate your contract or refuse to renew your residence permit.”
Bruno didn’t believe me until I showed him the letter. He said it was a stupid Sarkozy initiative, to entrench France against Muslim/Polish/Roma hordes.
“But what about lunch?” Bruno said. “You could come back, maybe we could go out and grab a pizza?”
I showed Bruno where, toward the bottom of the letter, the class promised lunch.
“Whatever this is,” Bruno said, flicking the letter away, “I would fail it. So would anyone who’s French.” Then Bruno started laughing. “Hey, so today you’re Steve Jobs?” It seemed that morning I’d worn a black turtleneck, blue jeans, and New Balance sneakers—the trademark uniform of the king of Apple Computer. In good American English, I told mon cher compatriote to go screw himself.
Bruno replied, “Je ne comprend pas.”
My class was held in a quiet neighborhood, in northern Paris, that I’d never seen before. We might have been in a French surburb on the moon—so many buildings reflecting 1970s futurism. My fellow immigrants and I arrived and took our seats around a conference table. There were about twenty of us. The instructor was a thirtysomething guy wearing red wire-frame glasses and a brown, long-sleeve T-shirt with a star on the chest. He commenced by asking us our names, countries of origin, and why we’d come to Paris. I was the only American. The rest of the class were mainly African, mostly from Morocco and Senegal.
Two women arrived late and tried to sit in the back.
“Excuse me,” the teacher said. “You’re in the wrong classroom.”
The women apologized. The instructor said, “No, you do not understand me. This is not your classroom. If it were your classroom, you would have arrived fifteen minutes ago. Please, go find the right room, we are working here.”
One of the women said that her babysitter had not shown up.
“Excuse me, this is not my problem,” the teacher said, laughing. His teeth were brown and uneven. He looked around at us in mock wonder—did we hear ourselves challenged? The teacher said, “None of us were late, none of us decided we would take advantage of the group. My class commences at nine. You must belong in a class that begins at nine-fifteen. Hello, are you deaf? You’re stupid?”
Some guys, student-age, urged the teacher to go easy, but that only made him shout louder. Once the women had left, he turned on us. Was this a problem? Did someone have a problem? After a moment, the teacher explained that here was a good example of democracy in action. To be equal under the law, everyone obeyed the same rules.
“Then how come we couldn’t vote if the women could stay?” one boy said.
Murmurs of agreement.
The teacher said, “What is your name?”
“Hasan,” the boy said. Hasan looked sixteen. He had a wispy beard and wore green track pants and a black motorcycle jacket with Kevlar shoulder pads.
“Hasan,” the teacher said, “do you think if I came over and punched you right now, the class should be able to vote whether or not I am punished?”
“No, because you can’t hit me.”
“That is correct,” the instructor said. “That is exactly the law.”
“Actually, I’m an Arab,” Hasan said, “so you probably can hit me. Maybe it depends where you hit me.”
Everyone laughed. The teacher raised his hands for calm, though he was smiling. “The answer is that no matter what you are, I can’t hit you. That would be a crime. In France, laws and rules are applied the same to everyone—whites, blacks, Arabs, even Martians. This way, we ensure equality.”
Hasan said, “Hey, we know the laws are not the same for everyone. Not truly. Not even in the United States,” he said, gesturing to me.
“Maybe this is true. Let’s talk about it,” the instructor said. He turned to me. “What do you think?”
“It depends,” I said, “how the rules are applied.”
I’d learned the verb appliquer the previous week.
“Anyway, Hasan,” the teacher said, “this is your opinion. Another right of the Republic: you are free to have your opinion. But please, everyone, open your pamphlets now. Do you know liberté, fraternité, égalité? Today we begin with the second aspect. Now, introduce yourself to your neighbors.”
By that point, my French was good enough to follow most of the conversation. After we met our classmates, the morning was devoted to French history and cigarette breaks, the instructor calling for a seven-minute pause every thirty minutes, which he spent smoking and texting in the courtyard. Mostly we nodded off. My neighbors were an old woman from Tunisia and an attractive girl from Russia. At one point, my eyes jerked open and I noticed that the old man sitting across from me had a wooden leg, a prosthesis stuck into a white sneaker.
At noon, we broke for lunch, and the instructor escorted us to a bistro. There we were served three courses: pork terrine or potato soup; entrecôte and fries or croque-Monsieur and salad; for dessert, a rice pudding, two types of cheese, and coffee or tea.
The instructor requested the Russian girl sit with him. He ordered them wine. I sat with a girl my age from Senegal who loved film. “Tarantino, vous connaissez Quentin Tarantino?” She’d come to Paris to study nursing. After I told her what I did, she said she hadn’t realized that advertising required writers. “Donc, cette pub-là”—she pointed at an Orangina poster—“un auteur a écrit ça?”
It showed a cheetah in pinup pose wearing high heels and a bra. I answered affirmatively: a writer had been responsible, if not for the idea, then its promise of Naturellement Pulpeuse. Back in class, our instructor introduced an oral quiz. “In France,” he asked, “can a husband beat his wife?”
Responses from around the room: “Non,” “Jamais,” “Ça dépend,” “Chez moi, chaque semaine.” (No; never; it depends; every week at my house.)
“The answer is no,” the teacher said. “In France, a husband and wife are equal. This is important. In France, men and women are the same.”
“Man and woman are never the same,” a woman said. She was sitting across from me, an older woman from Nigeria. “Not husband and wife.”
“In the eyes of the government, you are wrong,” the instructor told her, now sitting beside her on the table. “Tell me, you think a man and a woman, if they are husband and wife, they have different rights?”
“Of course,” the woman said.
People voiced agreement.
The instructor got up and said, “Okay, say a man meets a woman at a café. They are not married, but they become friendly. Later, he wants to go to bed, but she does not. Can he make her go to bed with him?”
At this, the class agreed no. An old man in the back with a beard said, “Actually, sometimes, if you’re quick.” Some young guys shouted him down, but he yelled at them that in France, as we’d learned, he was entitled to his opinion, so they could go fuck themselves.
What if, the teacher said, the people are married, then can a husband force his wife to go to bed?
“In a marriage, things are different,” another woman said.
“Not true,” said the instructor. “The law says it is always forbidden to force sex. In all cases, rape is illegal. This is very important. Now, what if a woman wants to get divorced, does she need to ask permission from her husband?”
The Nigerian woman said, “Of course!”
“Not of course—why of course?”
The Nigerian locked eyes with the instructor. She said slowly, “A wife must obey her husband. This is a rule of marriage, without a doubt.”
“In fact, the answer is no,” the instructor said. “Under French law, the wife does not need to ask permission. Okay? Does everyone follow?”
“Well, in my culture,” the Nigerian woman said, glaring, “this is the law.�
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A young guy shouted at her, “But we’re in France now, not Nigeria!” Several people clapped and whooped.
“Actually, this is an interesting question,” the instructor said. “What is the difference between culture and law? In France, we say we are French before we are anything else.”
“What about if you’re religious?” asked Hassan.
“Religion, good. A French Muslim, is he Muslim or is he French?”
Hasan said, laughing, “But it’s forbidden to be Muslim in France.”
“Okay, good joke,” the teacher said. “In France we say he is French before he is Muslim. Same for the French Jew, the French Catholic, the French atheist. Good? Now,” the instructor said, looking at the clock, “let’s take a break.”
On return, he asked who was allowed to purchase condoms in France. The young Russian woman said anyone, which was correct, though it stunned the Nigerian woman, who wanted to know if this meant children could purchase condoms, too. Then we discussed polygamy. By class’s end, we’d learned a lot. For example, how genital mutilation was not allowed in France, but this didn’t include genital piercing or shaving, assuming the genitals’ owner wanted them pierced or shaved; it took ten minutes to work out that distinction. Hasan spent five minutes speculating that if a man came from a country where polygamy was allowed—like South Africa, or “Utah” (ew-tah)—and he emigrated to France with multiple wives, then died, under French law would all of his children inherit his property? Or only the children from the wife that France recognized? What if he’d had an affair outside of his marriages, what would his bastard children receive?
At four p.m., our instructor congratulated us on our efforts and gave us certificates from l’Office français de l’immigration et de l’intégration. We all shook hands. In the courtyard, the Senegalese nursing student and I wished each other good luck in our professions, bon courage, and parted ways.
On the sidewalk, the workday was over. People streamed home. At a nearby Métro station, a man played accordion on the crowded platform, but we couldn’t hear him because we all wore headphones. People waiting stood four ranks deep. The cars were packed. When a train arrived, filled to capacity, desperate commuters would throw themselves at the fleshy spots, and either they fell back stunned or they stuck for a moment and used the closing doors to pinch their asses and squeeze them in.
Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down Page 8
