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.
I returned home, grateful that Hugh was still conscious, and when I repeated what I’d said at the market, he corrected me. It seems he did not “cut his finger” but, rather, “cut of himself the finger.”
He applied the Band-Aid, cleaned the bloody knife, and went back to making lunch while I watched from the doorway, hoping he might stab himself again so I could return to the store with both the reflexive verb “to cut of oneself” and the proper word for Band-Aid.
October 8, 1998
Paris
I have two homework assignments to hand in, and though I could make it easy, I just can’t stop myself from having fun with it. One of the assignments involves accepting or rejecting social invitations. When asked if she wants to join Henri for a run around the lake, Natalie could reply, “With pleasure!” Instead I’m having her say, “That would be different. I’ll just put on my leg and we’ll be ready to go!”
I’m liking the teacher a lot more since the new semester started. The class is smaller, and the students are a bit older. It’s a good group. I like the Italian lawyer who isn’t afraid to admit when he’s lost. The Colombian gets a lot of grief, but it’s his fault for not doing his homework.
October 9, 1998
Paris
After class I took Amy to a pet shop on the Right Bank, where we saw a miniature potbellied pig for $300. He was the size of a house cat and stood in his cage urinating a puddle. Amy can’t believe I didn’t walk out with him; she was mad, practically, and kept saying, “It’s not expensive,” as if that’s the only thing that would stop a person from buying a pig and keeping it in his third-floor apartment. I tried imagining him as a pet, but all I saw were his sharp hooves scratching my beautiful floors.
October 10, 1998
Paris
Just as Amy told me and Hugh that she’s never heard anyone in Paris say “Excuse me,” she got hit in the knee with a Coke can, and the boy who threw it called out in French that he was sorry.
October 12, 1998
Paris
Today the high school students went on strike. There were tens of thousands of them marching down the boulevard in front of the school and we could hear their chants all afternoon. The kids were marching in support of their teachers, who’d had a strike of their own a few weeks back. I’m not certain what it was about, but someone told me that the government had wanted to cut some jobs. Walking home from class, I was surrounded by teens with messages painted on their faces. They stopped to chide customers walking into stores and scolded the merchants for not closing in support of their cause.
October 13, 1998
Paris
Today the teacher called me a sadist. I tried to say that was like the pot calling the kettle black but came out with something closer to “That is like a pan saying to a dark pan, ‘You are a pan.’”
October 16, 1998