Lessons in French

five

It was ten-fifteen. The phone was beside me on the kitchen table. I kept touching it.

I sweetened my tea with Olivier’s honey.

With my first sip, the kitchen grew a shade homier. The Washington marchers lowered their eyelids toward me, less imposing than intimate despite being on the cover of Life. I felt the flicker of their benevolence. Even Jim Morrison was beginning to know me. But my place in this wonderful web was tenuous. If I messed up this phone call, I might “not work out,” and then what would I do?

It was ten twenty-two.

The phone rang. I picked up and gave my cheeriest, “Allo?”

“Listen, Katherine, I’m pressed for time, but you arrived okay? Was Olivier still there when you showed up?”

“Just barely.”

“Madame Fidelio was decent? She takes a while to warm up. The last girl quite threw her. I’ve told her you’re vastly different, but she’ll take her sweet time. Anyway, I have a meeting in two minutes, but here’s what I’d like you to do. Can you clip and précis anything in Le Monde or Libération on Germany for the next few weeks? There’s a box of petty cash in the far right drawer of my desk to buy the papers with. Don’t forget to put all your receipts back in the box. Start today. I have to keep a time line for the photos.”

“A time line? What exactly—”

“Use the files in my office. Start a new one for the Wall. And you can clip Le Canard enchainé too, but only if you see something interesting. I find it so hard to follow, don’t you? Oh, and did Olivier mention a package for me?”

“There’s a bag in the kitchen with your name on it.”

“Could you look inside?”

“It’s a bottle of what looks like vitamins.”

“What does the bottle say?”

“Extrait de papaye.”

“God, that’s a nice accent.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m going to have to have you make all my French calls. Anyway, you’re sure that’s what it says? Good. What about the paint?”

“It looks like the entryway and the living room are about half-done.”

“Listen, do me a favor. When Clarence shows up tomorrow, do a walk-through with him and get him to tell you the names of the colors. He won’t tell me, but I’m sure he’ll tell you and I need to know what he’s up to.”

“The names of the colors?”

“Yes. Find out what he thinks the colors are. Find out what is going on in his mind. Then you can tell me what they really are, but right now I have a very important meeting. I don’t mean to be abrupt, but you’re fine, right?”

“Great, I’m great. Thanks for everything.”

“Your chambre is clean? She didn’t sabotage it?”

“No, she left me tea and sugar.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean to. Anyway, Olivier didn’t say anything in particular? Nothing going on?”

“I barely saw him. He had to leave right away.”

“Well, good. I’m glad you’re settled. Now, call your mother. She’ll want to know you’ve landed. Do you know how to make a collect call from France?”

“Sure. I just have to wait until it’s late enough in California.”

“Listen, my German translator has shown up. Tell Clarence, when he gets there, to expect a call from me tomorrow evening, around five.”

Clip and précis. Knowing the definition of the words didn’t illuminate Lydia’s meaning. How did one keep a time line? How could she trust me to synthesize international events and to fathom her husband’s ideas about paint color? And which part of my job was the more important? All the tasks she listed sounded equally urgent. “A little bit of everything.”

I went into Lydia’s office, off the main hallway, to investigate. The room’s two windows framed the small interior garden, one degree further removed from the street than the quiet courtyard, the gem within the gem. Almost no one ever saw this garden, with its pleasantly overgrown geometric plots, outlined in pale stone, and its wrought iron table with a glass top where someone, Olivier surely, had left a china cup that must be full of rainwater by now.

Despite its harmonious view, the office was unsettling. Its topography was like nothing I had experienced. There were piles of papers everywhere. There were file cabinets, an enormous desk with a giant computer, an armoire full of supplies, a Rolodex. There were envelopes from Condé Nast and from a photo agency called Maxim. There were proof sheets full of people I had never seen and places I did not recognize, all marked up in white china marker, in a mysterious and beautiful code of circles and X’s and arrows.

I picked up a magnifying glass from Lydia’s desk and looked through it. At first, all I saw was a close-up of a boy in a knit hat with a faraway look in his eyes. Then I noticed a guitar strap over his shoulder, then a tank rolling behind him. There was a Post-it above the boy that read, “learning English from Bob Dylan records, hopes to go West.”

There was another sheet of soft circles of light over shadowy-colored backgrounds. It proved to be a candlelight vigil on the West Berlin side of the Wall. A bearded man held a white candle up in front of a silver-gray vulture with clenched claws and an alarmingly focused downward glare. A baby in a pouch slept in the glow of her mother’s candle, behind them the word TRACE spray-painted a ghostly outline over layers and layers of bold block letters. There was a couple sharing a candle by a soaring Japanese manga boy, with a lean muscular chest, white wings and red hair whipped upward by the wind into the shape of a flame. There were German names and cartoon animals bathed in candlelight. An old woman smiled behind her candle, her teeth sparkling from the depths of her shawl. So this was how people looked in Berlin.

But what about clipping and précising?

In the top drawer of the first file cabinet I opened, I found a manila folder labeled “Germany Time Line.” I smiled. On the front of the folder was a magazine cutout of a pillared monument. On closer look, there was a rushing bronze chariot on top. I didn’t recognize anything about it until I read a quote below: “‘The German Question will remain open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed.’—JFK. The Brandenburg Gates.”

Mom had a recording of the Brandenburg Concertos that she had played during breakfast on almost every morning of my childhood in order to make me smart. Now I realized where those concertos came from. I opened the Brandenburg file. There were Xerox-ed clippings and a date-by-date summary of the articles. The summary ended a little over a week ago, when the last girl must have gone. A time line. Perhaps I could be trusted after all.

I took some cash from the box in Lydia’s drawer, went out, found a news kiosk, bought Le Monde, Libération and some strawberry Hollywood chewing gum.

It had stopped raining.

The German story of the day was about a hundred arrests at a demonstration in Liepzig. Helmut Kohl, the prime minister of West Germany, had denounced them.

Back in the office, I turned on the electric typewriter. Lydia had told me not to touch her computer. It was easily sabotaged, she said.

I found the scissors in a mug that said VOGUE.

I took a moment to feel impressed by my new boss. She was creating art that would refract for years through millions of eyes and brains and hearts. Even though she was probably driving some poor translator in Germany crazy right now, she was giving meaning to her times.

My own mother back home, what was she doing? She was smoothing things over for a powerful man, a lawyer who was not her husband. She was organizing lives, his, mine, hers to some extent. But what was she making? What did she mean?

I stopped cutting Libération and picked up the proof sheet closest to the computer, all close-ups of a half-smiling man labeled “Portraits of Salman” in red crayon.

Even I knew who Salman was. Muslim extremists had put a price on his head for “offensive” passages in his novel The Satanic Verses. In these images, he appeared quiet and resolved. I gazed into his sympathetic eyes.

My communion with Salman Rushdie was short-lived. When the phone rang, I dropped the pictures, leaped to the ringer on Lydia’s desk. It was touch-tone. Modern.

“Allo?”

“Who is this?” It was a young woman’s voice, soft and faintly accusatory.

“This is Kate. I’m Lydia Schell’s assistant. Can I help you?” I asked, pleased with my imitation of professionalism.

“I’m Portia, Lydia’s daughter. My mother is very busy right now so she has asked me to call you with some instructions for the house.”

‘’Hi, Portia.”

She came back quick and breathy. “Hi, listen, my mother asks that you call the plumber—his name is Monsieur Polanski and you’ll find him in the Rolodex—because the toilet in her bathroom is running and also to tell Madame Fidelio to have the window washer come as soon as possible. Apparently the windows in my bedroom are filthy. Also, look out for a delivery for me from Maud Frizon.”

“Maud Frizon?”

“Shoes”—she sounded as though she could barely mask her surprise at my ignorance. “Boots actually. A pair of boots I ordered last time I was in Paris. They’re finally in.”

“What should I do with the boots?”

“Oh, send them please. They’re fall boots. I won’t be in Europe before Thanksgiving.”

“Sure.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind. Really. Listen, nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

So, Olivier dated a girl who liked her windows clean, who summoned window washers even though she lived on the ground floor, or rather had her mother’s assistant summon them by way of her concierge.

Olivier must have been the one to tell her the windows were “filthy.” After all, he had spent the last few nights in her ruffly room. Despite what he’d said about being an outsider like me, he must really be on her aesthetic plane.

It was all I could do not to hate her.

six

Nobody had told me that Clarence was British. Olivier’s use of “pompous” to describe him, which I quickly found inaccurate, was probably meant as a synonym for British, but I had not caught on and was startled by his accent.

“Lovely to meet you. What do you go by, Katherine? Kate?”

I liked him immediately. “My friends call me Katie.”

“Katie it is. I hope you were welcomed. Madame Fidelio can be a bit daft, but I trust she hasn’t been too hostile. You are settling in?”

He was gangling, but with a fleshy face, full quivering lips and unruly curls that were turning silver. There were specks of dandruff on his glasses.

“Oh, Madame Fidelio was quite nice to me, and I’m fine. I absolutely love it here. It’s unreal.”

“Lydia will tell you it’s a bit of a shambles, but I adore the place, even if the courtyard is sunless. How long have you been here now?”

“A week today. It’s such a fantastic neighborhood.” Could I sound any more like I had never left Southern California? Why did I always revert when I was nervous?

But he didn’t seem to mind. My enthusiasm swept across his face. As he smiled almost youthfully, his glasses hopped. “So, I trust you’re finding your way around?”

“I’ve been doing some exploring. Paris is the greatest city to walk in. I guess that’s a cliché, but I mean it. It’s the best city to wander around alone because it’s so beautiful you feel like it’s hugging you.”

“An embrace, yes. Nicely put. These are the most satisfying streets to experience on one’s own. And even when one arrives at this empty apartment, one feels welcomed, despite the vicious Portuguese sentry!”

We laughed.

Right away, I was comfortable with Clarence. Having spent long stretches of my adolescence imagining what life with a father would be like, I was emotionally primed for this man with his ripe, knowing face, as he took off his blazer in his half-painted entryway and ushered me into his living room with a gallant “please.”

The leafy motif of his ascot matched the celadon stripe in the cushion where he rested his elbow as he settled into an armchair. The cushion was of the same striped fabric that covered the ottoman. I was beginning to notice patterns in the apartment where before there had only been striking, singular images. Was familiarity like this?

“Lydia said you teach comparative literature and that you’re on sabbatical writing?”

“Did she happen to say what I was writing about?”

“Well, I don’t know if she mentioned it, but I—”

“Oh, bloody hell!” His calm rippled furiously, then resettled.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing. Just that ridiculous old clock. It’s rubbish, but Lydia is very attached to it. I suppose it’s valuable rubbish if such a thing can be. Expensive rubbish anyway. Why did the painters put it on the floor like that? Bloody idiots, all of them.”

I had only looked at this clock to check the time with Olivier while we were drinking. I had not noticed that the clock face was set in a black tree ornamented with Rococo branches. Wrapped around the tree was a polished snake. And beside the tree, standing on the bronze base, was a fairy, fondling the snake with one hand and offering it a drink from a half-shell in the other. The snake was arching into the fairy’s caress.

“It’s not ticking, is it?” Again, a slight erosion of calm, then he chuckled. “But it serves her right. It’s so hideous, that object.”

“You’re right, it’s not ticking. I think it must have stopped. It was working when I got here. Last time I checked. A week ago.”

“It’s appalling-looking, don’t you think? I mean, didn’t it strike you as hideous when you first entered the room? That’s not to say that it’s uninteresting, historically. It’s probably very revelatory of the 1830s, but that doesn’t mean we need it in our living room, does it? For goodness sake, swastikas are revelatory.”

“Well, it’s not my taste, but there is something very French-looking about it.”

“You’re kind. Lydia did say that about you, that you seemed like a kind person.”

“Goodness, thanks. So, what are you writing about?”

He looked at me as though he were about to pull a big box of chocolates from behind his back. He may have even winked.

“In a word,” he said “‘fashion.’”

I glanced at him, ascot askew in the collar of a rumpled Oxford shirt, brown cords, old-man shoes, a white flake on the glasses.

“Wow.”

The telephone rang.

“That will be Lydia.” He picked up a cream-colored rotary phone from a black-lacquered side table.

“Hello, my dear. Are the Huns brandishing their pickaxes yet?” He began to pace within the limits of the phone coil. “Yes, she’s fine…. Yes, Olivier appears to be gone, thank God. And he doesn’t appear to have murdered Katie or stolen or ransacked anything, although I did have to rescue a piece of your faience from the garden. He’d left one of your cups out there to the mercy of the elements. It was full of rainwater and dead leaves. Selfish twit. … As I say, Lydia, she’s fine. Why don’t you ask her yourself?” With a meaningful look at the stopped clock on the floor, he put his finger to his lips. Then he handed me the receiver.

Lydia sounded awash in happiness, but a happiness that had nothing to do with Clarence and me and everything to do with faraway events. The Wall would break soon, she said. There was monumental pressure from both sides. That was all anyone was talking about. She was getting unbelievable shots. She kept interrupting herself to say “hello” and “wonderful to see you” so that our conversation was populated by prominent German ghosts. She told me that her Paris printer would be stopping by tomorrow to introduce herself and that the two of us should have a coffee—“keep the receipt”—because we would be working together from time to time. “She does all my black and white work in Europe.” There was a loud social rumble. “Thank you!” she said away from the receiver, and I heard a clink and a cool rivulet down her throat. “Listen, I’ll call you from somewhere quieter tomorrow, but I have to know, have you told Clarence about Yale yet?”

“About Yale?”

“He can’t stand the Deconstructionists. They’re his nemesis. He’ll die when he finds out that I’ve hired a Deconstructionist from Yale to come work in the apartment. He’ll just die. He’ll moan that there’s a traitor in his midst.”

“But—”

“Just tell him. It’s a joke, sweetheart. He’s trying to be a Historicist.”

“Of course, yeah.” I giggled nervously.

“Listen, the prime minister has just arrived. I’ll call you later.”

Deconstruction was a joke? The form of literary criticism I had felt so terrible not mastering in college, hell, not even grasping, except to understand that all language pointed nowhere but back upon itself, which wasn’t very helpful. This concept that had walled me out with its jargon, these lit majors who had hurt my feelings so many times, this momentous testament to my lack of sophistication was really a gag. Here in the land of jet-set intellectuals, it was a mere farce between husband and wife. I felt my world gelling anew as if I had finally found the right prescription for a pair of glasses. So, this was the point of view of choice. Deconstruction was not glowering and intimidating. It was funny.

“What’s so amusing?” Clarence asked. He was annoyed, but not with me.

“Lydia wanted me to pretend I was a Deconstructionist because I did some literature at Yale. I was an art major, actually, but I did try some theory courses because you kind of had to in order to know what anyone was talking about. She said you would think it was funny because you’re a Historicist.”

“I hope she said I was a ‘New Historicist.’”

“I’m sure she did.”

“Probably not, but it’s not your fault. Anyway, is that her idea of a joke?”

“Well, she said the Deconstructionists were your nemesis, that I was the enemy.”

He practically spat. His trembling lips were a comical version of Portia’s gorgeous pout from the leather frame.

“Where is the woman’s sense of nuance? My nemesis indeed! She likes to pretend I’m some sort of reactionary. I am a cultural critic. I incorporate deconstruction into my work. I appreciate the text-only approach for what it meant to its time, but it’s passé, you understand.”

“Not exactly.”

Clarence explained it to me in fatherly tones. He said that it was simply the jargon that got you. Most critics should be shot. Their writing was rubbish.

“Can you believe that Derrida was the first photo in Lydia’s last book?” he asked. “You must have seen it. A travesty. I nearly convinced her not to do it, but you’ll learn how stubborn she can be. Anyway, I can help you sift through the jargon if you’re interested. Then you’ll see how easy it is to move beyond it.”

My perspective adjusted again. So, deconstruction wasn’t a joke exactly. Instead, it was a historical phase that I would master because this lovely professor, whose eyebrows did not frown and who did not assume I knew what hermeneutics were, was going to help me. Yet another vista to take in. There were cocktail parties where the German chancellor was giving you the inside scoop on when the Berlin Wall would come tumbling down and a room full of Monets that made your mother sigh as though she had once possessed them in her boudoir. There was faience abandoned in a secret garden, chestnut croissants at Hédiard.

The doorbell rang. Clarence jumped out of his seat, then sank back.

“Who could possibly be here now? Are you expecting anyone?”

I shook my head.

“Shall we go see?”

We were just intimate enough by now for me to know perfectly well that he knew perfectly well who was at the door.

seven

“Are you sure these people aren’t exploiting you?”

“Mom, it’s a different world here. Things don’t work like that. It’s not like I’m punching a time clock and they aren’t paying me for my overtime. It’s a full situation I’ve moved into. You should see this place. I’m in the heart of Paris, Mom. Henri Cartier-Bresson stopped in yesterday for tea. This world-famous old man just dropped by the house. He’s a friend of Lydia and Clarence’s. Apparently, Lydia has already mentioned me to him. She told him I was an artist in the making. He asked about my work because he’s started to draw as a second career. He said he likes the exertion. He’s questing, Mom, at his age, and doing something he’ll never be nearly as famous for only because it’s interesting. He looked at my Paris sketchbook and said my work was beautiful, almost without flaws, he said. People like this are talking to me. They like me.”

“I’m sure they do. What’s not to like? All I’m saying is that you’re paying a ridiculous amount for one room and you have almost no salary and you’re transcribing notes for the husband and running errands at all hours. You have to learn to protect yourself. I don’t want you to get to a year from now and feel like you’ve wasted your time.”

“It’s not wasting time. It’s experience. This is what experience is. I’ve only been here a couple of weeks and I’ve already learned so much.”

“I’m telling you, if you’re not careful, you’ll be a dog-walker before you know it.”

“The dog isn’t even here yet. Clarence is getting him from the country tomorrow. He’s been boarding at some farm in Normandy. Nice, huh?”

“You mean there is a dog? I was kidding, darling. It was a manner of speaking. Listen, if this Lydia person says that her fancy magazines can only pay you so much, then she asks you to walk her dog, she should supplement your salary. And if you end up working for her husband, then he should pay you too.”

“Mom, you’re being cynical. These people aren’t petty. I’m telling you, it’s not a tit-for-tat world. They feed me and it’s not like they send me bills. Clarence and his friends even take me out to eat with them sometimes, and I know Lydia will too when she gets here. She already said there are all these places in the neighborhood where we’ll be regulars. I could never afford that if it was just me working in an office. And it won’t be so bad to walk a dog in Paris, anyway. I can take him to the Luxembourg.”

“So, you are going to walk the dog. You know that already. They’ve prepared you to walk their dog. It’s part of the deal. Admit it.”

“They bought the dog for their son, and he doesn’t take care of it anymore and the whole thing breaks their hearts. So, he’s become sort of a family project. Everyone pitches in. I will too. Apparently he’s cute. He’s some big sheep dog. And, by the way, if I worked in a law firm, I’d pick up dry cleaning and make coffee and do all kinds of stupid errands. You know I would. Only they’d be boring.”