I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do)

by Mark Greenside

  “Great,” I say, “no crowds.” I’m even happier when I see there are only two cars in the parking lot, and both have their engines running.

  We take the trail to the chapel over tumbling weedy hills and sliding sand dunes, past a few grand old wind-and-rain-worn ivy-and moss-covered stone houses, crossing immaculate, white, solitary beaches. What the hell do the people who live here do? I wonder. Donna wonders where they are. “Nobody’s here,” she says when we reach the top of the hill and the chapel.

  I turn around, doing a full three-hundred-sixty. She’s right. There isn’t a person, bar-tabac, or boulangerie in sight. It’s as if everyone knows some horrible secret, and we don’t. I pull open the chapel door, half expecting the place to be full and everyone yelling, “Bonjour!” but it’s as empty as everything else. We walk around, look at the altar, ceiling, posters on the walls, and out the windows at the roiling sea. Then we follow the trail back down the grassy hill, across the beach and the dunes, to the path and the parking lot. Our Twingo is the only car there. “I don’t get it,” I say, “such a private and beautiful place and no one’s here.” Donna looks at me in a way I choose to ignore.

  We get into the car and I back onto the tiny road we came in on and turn toward Carantec, which is in clear view, less than five minutes away. The problem is in one minute the road I’m on—the road I want, the only road, the road Donna said as we drove in, “Why is everyone going the other way?”—that road is now under six inches of water. I open the door and look down. Water laps at the hubcap. I close the door and look at Donna. She shakes her head, No. It’s five o’clock. I’m hungry, she’s tired, there’s no place to eat or rest on the île, and the tide won’t change for another six hours—I gun the engine.

  “I wouldn’t,” she says. “There’s a reason no one else is here.”

  “Yeah, it’s the difference between being French and American.” I put the car in gear.

  “Look!” She grabs the wheel and points to a group of people moving in single file and wedges, hikers with backpacks, kids, old people with canes and dogs, five or six cars, and a tractor crossing a spit of land, a tiny beach connecting Île Callot to Carantec. It looks like a procession at Lourdes.

  “All right,” I say, like I’m doing her a favor. Who knows how fast the water comes in, how deep it is, or if the road dips? I turn onto the beach and drive toward the crowd, and even though I know it’s the right thing to do, it’s abhorrent to my go-it-alone American spirit.

  The car slides and slips over the rippling, pillowy, moving and shifting—I’m thinking Lawrence of Arabia—sand. I don’t know if going faster or slower is better. Slower, I’m afraid of getting stuck; faster, I lose control. I floor the accelerator, pick up speed, and fishtail into a sand dune.

  “Do you believe this?” I’m laughing like we’re on a ride at Coney or Asterix or Disney. I put the car in reverse and go nowhere. I put it in first and stay put. Donna’s laughing so hard she has to pee. People are watching us as if we’re their favorite show—Martin and Lewis, two of the three stooges, Chevy Chase on Mr. Hulot’s holiday. They’re also keeping their distance, not offering any help or advice, as if whatever possesses us could also afflict them. I floor the gas pedal, barely manage to squiggle us out, and drive toward the tail of the procession, still laughing, as I pass a few older and lamer types hobbling along with canes. I pass a guy walking with his dog, wave out the window, and shout, “Au revoir.”

  “Get a horse,” he shouts back and waves a happy farewell.

  I’m almost at the end of the procession. The only thing that separates us from the last vehicle—the tractor—is a small rolling dune. After that, it’s flat, hard-packed beach all the way to Carantec. I look left, and right. The dune runs the entire width of the spit. The only way around is over it. Donna looks at me, not certain if she should be concerned, but pretty sure.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, “I have a plan. I’ll follow the tire tracks from the other cars, and zip, we’ll be over.”

  It’s a good plan, and it would have worked, except the vehicles in front of us are vans and SUVs and large sedans and that tractor, all of which have much wider wheelbases than my Twingo. I floor the accelerator and drive straight into the dune and get stuck. I put it in reverse and gas it. Nothing. I try rocking it back and forth, still laughing and sputtering, “Stuck in a sand dune. How will I explain this to Renault? I lost the car at sea. I wonder if this thing floats.” I don’t know why I think it’s a joke. I know we’re on an île, an island, but for some reason I’m convinced this strip of sand stays above water. I’m still laughing when the “Get a horse” guy and his dog walk past.

  “Monsieur,” I say, giggling, “Combien du temps pour la mer?”

  “Cinq minutes.”

  “Five minutes!”

  “Oui.”

  Holy shit. I put the car in first and floor it. Nothing. I put it in reverse and floor it again. I’m going nowhere but deeper into the dune. The man and his dog step away from the car and watch. Up ahead, the guy in the tractor is crawling along. I do the only thing left. I hit the horn—just lay on it, hard, long, forever, and hope to hell the guy can hear it over the sound of his tractor and the now howling dog, and realize I’m not beeping hello, or worse, good-bye.

  “I’ll save you,” Donna says, still laughing, knowing I can’t swim.

  I push the horn harder, as if somehow that will make it louder, then open the car door and stand there, hand on horn, hoping he’ll turn around so I can wave for help.

  Meanwhile, I’m thinking, “five minutes,” how can that be? He must be joking. The sea is far enough away to not have to worry. Simultaneously, Donna and I point at each other and say “Pentrez,” remembering the day we took a short walk on the beach, saw the tide zooming in, and ran back to our towels to find our clothes, including my wallet, in three inches of water, heading back to America without us. At Mont Saint-Michel, people drown every year because they underestimate the speed of the tide. This is serious, no longer a Hope and Crosby On the Road show, but a hope and pray.

  The tractor guy finally turns around and sees me frantically waving. He stops his tractor and runs—races—the 100-plus yards to our car, like O.J., though hopefully not. One look at the tires and he understands. He and the “Get a horse” guy shake hands and discuss it. It’s the quickest “what do you think” conversation I’ve ever heard in France. The tractor guy motions us out of the car and directs all of us, including the old guy and his dog, to lean against the car and push. The good news is the Twingo is light, and four adults and a German shepherd can move it. As soon as it’s free, I jump behind the wheel and prepare the assault. The tractor guy goes nuts, jumps up and down, waves his hands, making stop, halt, Are you crazy! motions, and all but drags me out of the car. It’s like a carjacking—like Monsieur Renault personally come to take back his car. He gets behind the wheel and floors it—in reverse. He backs up 25, 50, 100, 150 yards—a football field and a half. Anywhere else I’d think the car was a goner, he was stealing it—but his tractor is still there, on the beach where he left it, and is certainly worth more than my Twingo, which, in fact, isn’t mine but rented.

  We watch, Donna and I and the old guy and his German shepherd, as the tractor guy floors the Twingo and races toward us, like Le Mans, Monte Carlo, and the Grand Prix combined, and hits the sand dune doing at least 180 kilometers. The car wiggles left then right, wobbles, twists, and barely, just barely, hobbles over the dune to the other side.

  The tractor guy leaps out of the car and waves—not even stopping to shake hands—and runs to his tractor. I pat the shepherd on his head, thank the old guy, and ask if he and the dog want a ride.

  “Pas question!” he says. Who could blame him?

  Donna and I get in the car, which is now covered with wet sand and seaweed, and catch up to the tractor guy, who’s running to his tractor, not having the speed he did before. “Merci,” I yell out the window. He waves to me. I point to the backseat, ind
icating I’d like to give him a ride. He waves me away like a swarm of mosquitoes circling his head. I pace him until he makes it safely to his tractor, trying to comfort him and assure him, let him know we’re there for him if he needs us, but in retrospect probably terrorizing him with the idea we’d never leave.

  I drive slowly in front of him, in case the Twingo dies or gets in trouble. Behind both of us are the old guy and his dog, walking. I drive straight into Carantec and stop at the first bar I see, so nervous my foot is shaking. My heart is pounding. Donna’s so nervous she can’t pee. We sit at a table on the terrace and I order two Ricards for me and one for Donna.

  “Look at this,” she says, looking at a photo on the menu. It’s an aerial view of Île Callot totally surrounded by water: no road, no beach, no dunes, no spit of land. Nothing connected to nothing. I vow the next time all the cars are going in the other direction I’ll do what Frenchmen have learned through the centuries: listen to the woman and follow the crowd. It’s the start of something new in our relationship. What surprises me most is how easy it is to give in.

  The Police

  The police and I have always been close and never been friendly. I’ve been on the wrong side of them most of my life, even when I’m right—especially when I’m right, like protesting for civil, labor, and human rights and against war. I seem to bring out the worst in them, and the worst of the worst is at customs. I rarely cross a border where I am not stopped by one country or the other, sometimes both. I’m the only person I know who has been stopped by Canadians when I tried to enter their country. Canadians! Dudley Do-Righters! Who gets stopped by them? Me.

  In the 1980s, I took a Greyhound bus north from San Francisco to Vancouver to visit a girlfriend spending the summer on Salt Spring Island. The bus stopped at the border and everyone descended, walking and joking through customs, declaring nothing, showing driver’s licenses or Social Security cards or library cards—except me. I stepped one toe on Canadian tarmac and got pulled out of line for questioning.

  “Passport.”

  “Passport? This is Canada. Who needs a passport?” Everything went downhill from there.

  “Why are you coming to Canada?”

  “Good question.”

  “How much money do you have?”

  “Not enough.”

  “Where do you work?”

  Terrorism wasn’t yet a household fear, and the war in Vietnam was long over. No one was going to Canada to avoid anything, especially since everything to avoid was already there. Finally, for as little reason as they stopped me, they let me go—only my bus had already gone. I had to wait four hours for the next bus (sitting with the guy who stopped me and didn’t stop anyone else, including a car full of Texans with rifles and beer in their trunk “for moose hunting”) and another five hours once I got to Vancouver for the last ferry to Salt Spring.

  On the other border, upon returning from a one-night stay in Mexico—in Ensenada—I was greeted at U.S. Customs with the customary welcome. “Put-your-hands-on-the-dash-board-of-your-ve-hicle-and-park-over-there.”

  “How can I drive over there with my hands on the dashboard of the ve-hicle?”

  “Do it!”

  I do, but it isn’t easy. The car has a four-speed manual transmission. I get it into first by using my leg and knee and turn the wheel with my elbows, steering it close to the place he indicated, almost wiping out another border guy and his dog as I turn. As soon as I stop the car, the first border guy yanks the door open and orders me out, leading me to a tiny office where a guy three times human size asks me questions.

  “Where were you in Ensenada?”

  “Hussong’s.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Drinking.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  Meanwhile, I watch as my car is placed on a lift and lifted. I watch them lower the muffler and tailpipe assembly, search through the wheel wells, look under the hubcaps, remove the seats and door panels, and bring out the cutest little beagle I’ve ever seen to smell every inch of my car. That dog must be having a blast. The car is a thirty-year-old Volvo that leaks like a sieve and has mushrooms growing from whatever remains of the rugs. Two hours later, the car is reassembled, the dog is giddy, and I’m given a stern warning not to do anything wrong—or even think about it—and told, “We have your number.” It’s the friendliest thing anyone has said to me since I entered the U.S.

  With experiences like these, not to mention reading Victor Hugo, Jean Genet, and Alfred Dreyfus, the last thing I want is an encounter with the gendarmes. If the U.S. and Canadian police treat me this way and I speak their language, I can’t even imagine what French police would do.

  It’s June. I’m exhausted. I’ve just arrived at the house after an eleven-hour flight and a three-and-a-half hour wait in the airport—the normal hour and a half to get my luggage, and another two at customs, where the Africans, Arabs, and I were the only people stopped and searched. I open all the shutters and windows to air the house, leave my bags in the bedroom, and go out to start the car, the one Monsieur and Madame Nedelec gave me at the closing when I bought their house.

  I don’t have a garage, so when I left the summer before, I covered the car in plastic to protect it. I pull the plastic off and I’m shocked. The once blue paint is chipped, peeling, discolored. The car looks like it has impetigo, warts, rashes, shingles, and moles, and is devouring itself with Ebola. Even so, I’m happy. I have a car, and I don’t have to spend the money I don’t have to rent one.

  I open the door and gag. Maybe I don’t have a car. Under plastic for ten months, the last seven of which have been very, very wet, it’s become a hydroponic greenhouse. Living things I’ve never seen before are growing in it. It smells alive. Monsieur and Madame Nedelec owned this car for ten years and it was fine. I own it for one year and have turned it into a tank of primordial ooze, the very source of life, which is great if you’re a botanist or ichthyologist, but not if you need to drive, as I do.

  There’s nothing in the house. I have to go shopping, but the thought (forget the reality) of sitting in this car and touching anything, even breathing the air, is frightening and disgusting. If France is the mother of Legionnaires’ disease, this could be the source.

  I go into the house and find a piece of paper, scrunch it up into a ball, and hold it in my hand to protect me from the handle as I roll down the windows to let in fresh air, hoping I’m not giving whatever is living in there sustenance. I go back into the house and get an old beach towel, one I never want to see or use again, and drape it over the seat. Then I reach in, scrupulous about not touching or rubbing against anything, insert the key, and turn it. The engine starts immediately: Jean and Monsieur P have kept it running and primed all year—a task I now believe worthy of the Croix de Guerre. I touch the steering wheel with my pinkie. It’s slippery-wet, sticky like snail goo. I go back into the house and find a pair of rubber kitchen gloves—pink, unfortunately—and put them on. Gloved and protected, I’m ready to go.

  I back out of the driveway onto the one-lane country road. It’s the road I drive every day, sometimes two or three times a day. I drive slowly, under the viaduct, marveling at the shimmering river, the exhilarating light, the sky, clouds, vaches qui rit, red-blue and white hydrangeas, trying to look inconspicuous in my pink gloves and blue-green Peugeot that looks like something resurrected from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. As I drive I notice tractors, farm vehicles, trucks carrying pigs and chickens to market, the cars of people living in the rehab, social service apartments next to the mairie, poor people, recent immigrants and refugees from Turkey, and everyone’s vehicle looks better than mine. Through the driver’s side mirror I watch a car heading in the opposite direction stop, make a U-turn, and follow me. Even before I see him, I know it’s a cop. He flashes his lights, and I pull over. Papillon, here I come!

  The good news is he’s stopped me in front of Monsieur and Madame P’
s house. If I scream and they understand me, I’m certain they’ll come to my rescue. The bad news is I don’t have my passport, don’t speak French, and haven’t the slightest idea why he’s pulled me over.

  I open the door and get out of the car. The cop seems startled, frightened. Clearly, I’m not from around these parts. I think about opening with “Je suis un propriétaire,” and decide against it. My other two sentences, “C’est joli” and “Je n’ai pas d’argent,” don’t seem quite right either.

  He gets out of his car and demands, “Identification.”

  I take off the gloves and hand him my international driver’s license. He looks at me like, You’ve got to be kidding. I understand exactly how he feels: it looks to me like it came out of a box of Cracker Jack.

  “Carte grise.”

  Luckily, I know that’s the car’s registration. I hand it to him. It has my name on it, the same name that’s on the international driver’s license. He takes both documents and walks to the passenger side of the car.

  “L’assurance.”

  I remove the tiny green sticker that’s attached to the front window—proof I have insurance—hand it to him and smile. The cop looks baffled. I’m not from around here, but I have a locally registered car and insurance in my name. He asks me questions, none of which I understand or answer. He’s getting more and more frustrated. All he wants to do is extricate himself in a dignified manner. That’s my cue. I smell it like a pig on truffles.

  “Monsieur. Qu’est-ce que c’est?” What’s up?

  He blanches and takes a step backward, away from me. Obviously, nobody questions the gendarme.

  “Monsieur!”

  He starts to back away.

  I follow, calling out, “Monsieur! Pourquoi? Je conduis—vous êtes arret moi. Pourquoi?”