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 Fran?aise 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