Paris
I took a walk last night and ran into Richard, who lives in a grand Left Bank apartment overlooking the river. We talked for half an hour or so, and he told me about a friend of his, a journalist, who each week buys $60 worth of magazines from a kiosk near the Café de Flore. She was there with a male friend recently, a photographer who wanted to see if one of his pictures had been used in the latest Italian Vogue. The guy started leafing through it when the newsagent said, the way they do here, “This is not a lending library.”
The journalist said she would pay for the magazine, and when she pulled out her wallet the newsagent said, “Why don’t you go get fucked up the ass by a nigger.”
So much stuff goes over my head here.
December 14, 1998
Paris
For homework we’re supposed to write about gift-giving practices in our home countries. I don’t actually understand the assignment. We read an essay in class, the teacher asked how flowers are wrapped in Japan, and then she told a story about her husband’s Greek grandmother spitting into the mouth of a newborn baby.
December 15, 1998
Paris
Yesterday the teacher held up my essay on social change during the 1960s and pronounced it “a remarkable document.” I made plenty of grammatical errors but gained points on the structure. Today I turned in my paper on social customs. In it I wrote that on the eve of an American man’s wedding, it is customary for his parents to cut off two of his fingers and bury them near the parking lot. The groom has eight hours in which to find them, and if he does, it means that the marriage will last.
December 22, 1998
Paris
This was the last day of class until the new semester begins in January. We presented the teacher with the lighter I had had engraved and the carton of cigarettes I had collected money for. She seemed to appreciate both. The lesson was hard, and we broke off fifteen minutes early to eat cake. The room had a nice, festive atmosphere until the Hong Kong student confronted the teacher, saying, in English, “How come you no pass me? How come me alone and not nobody else?”
Personally I like this student, if only because she’s so bad. She’ll occasionally come to class or do her homework, but only if she’s in the mood. Her French doesn’t sound much different from her Cantonese, and as long as she was around, I was never the worst one.
December 24, 1998
Paris
As our cab left for the train station this morning, my father turned to me and said, “Ask the driver if it’s going to rain all day.”
I don’t think he cared what the answer was. He just wanted to see if I could ask properly, not that he’s any judge. He doesn’t speak a word of French, but that hasn’t stopped him from criticizing me.
“He said that yes, it’s going to rain all day,” I said.
My father nodded. “It’s coming in from the west. Rain always comes from the west in France.”
This is going to be a long eight days.
December 31, 1998
Paris
Last night, shortly after dinner, my father’s head caught on fire. He was leaning toward a candle, examining a scratch on the table, and seconds later I noticed the flames, which encircled his scalp like a brilliant crown. He looked like a happy king, content that all was well throughout the land. Just as he realized what was happening, Gretchen bounded over with a cloth napkin. Dad retreated into the bathroom and spent ten minutes examining the damage with a hand mirror. This morning we went to buy him a hat.
1999
January 1, 1999
Paris
Dad ate dinner last night with his airplane ticket in his shirt pocket. With it was a slip of paper upon which he had written the estimated taxi fare to Charles de Gaulle, including the amount he planned to tip the driver. He wore a tan shirt with epaulets, a scarf, a sweater, and a Windbreaker. He wore a hat. The poor thing was more than ready to leave and would have gladly spent the night at the airport—not in a hotel but just sitting in a chair, waiting. It’s not France he dislikes, exactly. I think he just hates to be away from his TV.
January 4, 1999
Paris
School started today and we got two new students. One’s a pregnant Chinese woman who is married to a Frenchman and hopes to name her baby Beyond, and the other is a German fellow who moved here for love. The rest of us introduced ourselves, and then we all recounted our Christmas holidays. I said that half my family came and stayed for sixteen days, and my classmates audibly drew in their breath. Then I said that I received nine cartons of cigarettes and that before my father left for home, his head caught on fire.
Next came Milton, who got drunk on New Year’s Eve and fell on his face, breaking a few blood vessels. When Polish Anna’s turn came, the teacher accused her of getting drunk as well, even though she denied it. The teacher has this thing about Poles and alcohol.
January 7, 1999
Paris
In French class we’re studying the gérondif, which is used when someone is doing two things at once. As part of last night’s homework we were instructed to write six sentences along the lines of “She sang while vacuuming.” It was a simple and unrewarding exercise until I turned to the Pocket Guide to Medical French that Amy gave me for Christmas. The book is full of terrific phrases, everything from “Do you feel paranoid?” to “Have you noticed any unusual discharge?” I spent a lot of time constructing sentences for the assignment, my favorite being “‘Has anything else been inserted into your anus?’ The doctor posed the question as he examined the wounded sphincter.”
The teacher collected the papers at the end of class and, as usual, took a moment to skim through what I’d handed her. Things like this can go either way. The paper is grammatically correct, but something tells me I may have missed the mark here.
January 14, 1999
Paris
The teacher was extremely unhappy with the other day’s homework and entered the room as if it were a boxing ring. When she’s angry, nothing can please her. She didn’t warm up until the last half hour of class. We’d listened earlier to a series of recorded phrases and were instructed to match each one with a picture. A kid’s voice shouted, “We won!” for example, and we matched it with a drawing of a boy raising his arms in victory. This somehow led her to tell us that in Greece, you indicate the number five by holding your palm toward your face. Palm outward means the equivalent of “Fuck you.”