In both Greece and Turkey, nodding yes means no, as does closing your eyes. She and a friend went to Istanbul once and couldn’t find a room to save their lives. Finally, at midnight, they entered a hotel and asked if there was a vacancy. The desk clerk nodded, and, delighted, they brought in their bags. In the end, she said, the man let them sleep on the roof.
She brightens up eventually, the teacher, but you have to clear the path. Today, every time I thought she was coming out of it, Ralf would ask a question pertaining to something we had supposedly learned months ago. Then she’d furiously write on the board, turning to say, “Now do you understand it?”
Ralf would squint and think a moment before saying, “No,” and off she’d go again. Twice she told Luis to shut up, and I got scolded when we were asked to identify the class of people represented in a comic strip she gave us. I said I thought they were working class. When asked why, I pointed out the Jesus snow globe displayed atop their television set.
“That shows what you know,” the teacher said. “The French proletariat would never decorate their homes with religious iconography.” Or at least I’m guessing that’s what she said.
“OK,” I said. “They’re low class.”
That’s when she really tore into me, saying she never again wanted to hear language like that from us. She’d just the other day taught us three different words for “farting” along with the phrase “Go fuck yourself on a pole,” but “low class” is out-of-bounds?
My fellow students began to guess. Were they middle class? Retired class?
“No!” the teacher shouted. “For God’s sake, they’re working class.”
I had given that answer twenty minutes earlier, but I guess she dismissed it when I mentioned the snow globe. It was just that kind of day.
January 18, 1999
Paris
Again the teacher was in a foul mood. She called me a misogynist because, in an essay on my dream house, I said that every evening, once the sun set, I’d decide whether I wanted to sleep with one of my three hundred wives or a camel. She later told me, in English, that she hated me. I had used falloir in the subjunctive rather than the imparfait, so I guess I deserved it.
January 20, 1999
Paris
Today the teacher told us that a ripe Camembert should have the same consistency as a human eyebrow. It was just a little something she threw in. All week, as part of our homework, we’re supposed to listen to the radio and talk in class about what we heard. Luis brought up the forty-some bodies that were just discovered in Kosovo and the teacher listened, then said, “Now tell me what happened that was even worse.”
January 22, 1999
Paris
Doing laundry in Paris has to be planned a week in advance, as it takes that long to work up the change. It shouldn’t be that difficult, but cashiers here act as if their money drawers can only accept deposits. In New York you’d see signs reading NO CHANGE WITHOUT PURCHASE, but here they should read, simply, NO CHANGE. Every time you pay for something, they shake you down for the exact amount. If the thing costs, say, 185 francs, and you hand over a 200-franc bill, the person will frown at it and say, “Really? You don’t have a hundred and eighty-five?”
At the grocery store, I’ve had several cashiers say, “Didn’t I see something smaller in your wallet?” The other day one of them snatched my coin purse out of my hands and simply took what she wanted. On top of that, the checkout people sit rather than stand. They don’t bag your groceries like they do in the States, and everything is scanned rather than entered manually into the machine. Their only job is to make change, and they refuse to do it.
January 24, 1999
Paris
It’s nine thirty p.m. and I haven’t left the apartment all day. Eleven and a half hours ago I started my homework and there’s still no end in sight. Every word is checked in the dictionary, every verb tense is reconsidered, and it takes forever. I still have eight questions to answer, three personal sentences to write, and a story to finish.
January 25, 1999
Paris
I spent a total of seventeen hours on my homework. The hardest part was a story the teacher started and asked us to finish. Her opener went like this: “At midnight I decided to leave the party and walk twenty minutes to the train station where I could get a taxi. It was dark and the streets were deserted. I was nervous and hurrying along when I heard a car roll up from behind with its headlights off.”
My completion reads “Surprisingly, the trunk was not uncomfortable. There was a pillow there, and a woolen blanket. The floor was carpeted and smelled like pizza. Yes, it was dark, but relatively spacious. While lying there, I would often reflect upon my life before I came to live in this trunk. I’d been walking to the train station when this car stopped behind me. It was dark, but still I could see that the driver was handsome and well dressed. He sensed my nervousness and said, ‘Come on, then, give us a smile.’”
In my story she lives in the trunk for twenty-two days and falls madly in love with the man who put her there. Eventually they come to tutoie each other through a little hole, and everything’s great until he abandons the car at the airport, with her still in the back. A steep ticket is issued for illegal parking, and when she is held responsible, she cries.
January 26, 1999
Paris
Before I left the apartment this afternoon a woman knocked on the door and asked if I wanted to buy her carpet. I don’t know if she lives in the building or just walked in off the street, but either way, the answer was the same. I’m not a big carpet person, but rather than getting into it, I just said no and then hurried to class, where the teacher read my story about her being locked in the trunk. Her delivery was good, but she kept pausing to call me a misogynist.
“No,” I corrected her, “I’m not a misogynist, I’m a misanthrope. I hate everyone equally.”
January 28, 1999
Paris
I went this afternoon and bought a ticket for You’ve Got Mail, which here is called Vous Avez un Message. I guess I mispronounced something, as the guy behind the counter loudly mocked me to his associates, all of whom laughed. Handing me my change, he said, “We charge extra to tourists.”
If he’d said they charge extra to Americans I might have pointed out that American movies are what keeps his theater in business. As it was, I said nothing and quietly burned for the rest of the day.
February 11, 1999
Paris