The girl grabs a handful of plastic bags and tosses them on the counter. I pick up the bundle, rip one from the bunch, and with trepidation, remembering the first time, roll the edge of the shorter side between my fingers, hoping to find the opening. I don’t. I turn the bag one hundred eighty degrees, wet my thumb and forefinger, and roll the edge on the other side. A family at the end of the wedge wheels away. I turn the bag again, back to where I started, and more people leave the wedge. If “plastic bag opening” was an event in Special Olympics, I’d score 0. If this were Survivor, I’d be dead. I’m frantically, hopelessly, turning the bag and wetting my fingers, rolling, twisting, and squeezing the edges, getting nowhere and starting to panic. Then something happens I’ve never seen before or since. The checker and the next two people in line help me. All of us are bagging my stuff: me, because it’s mine; they, so they can get out of there before the store closes, their food rots, or they die from starvation or old age.
I pay with a check because the guy in front of me did, and I saw they have that cash register that fills everything out for me. I sign the check without looking at the numbers and roll the cart to the car and unpack, filling the trunk, back seat, passenger seat, and floor. Then I wheel the cart back to the row of carts and leave it there. I’m trying to set an example, maybe start a revolt. I paid my money, but there’s no reason the next person should. Maybe I can start the next French revolution: free shopping. I leave the cart and walk away, righteous.
“Monsieur,” a woman calls.
I turn around. I think she’s going to thank me. “Oui.”
“Votre chariot?”
“Oui.” I point, “Pour vous.”
“Monsieur,” she walks over to me, takes my hand, and together, her hand on mine, we push the cart into the row. I watch, horrified, as she chains it. I can’t believe it. Even when you try to help these people, to liberate them, they follow the rules and lock their damned carts so no one else can use them. I’m flabbergasted and disappointed. I walk away, my experiment with consumer rights failed.
“Monsieur.”
I turn around. The lady smiles and hands me my coin. It seems when you lock your cart your money is returned to you. There is no cost. It simply guarantees the return of the cart, unlike the U.S., where abandoned shopping carts litter the streets. Oh, these people are smart. Once again, I feel like a jerk.
I now shop Leclerc like a local, though I still get lost and confused when things are moved or disappear. I know to buy what I want when I see it—and to buy it in bulk, because I may never see it again. This apparently is their marketing plan, and I’m here to tell you it works. I spend more than I want and buy more than I need all the time.
Shoes
One day, every summer, signs suddenly appear in shop windows, newspapers, hanging from mannequins, posted on walls, brightly and colorfully proclaiming soldes, sale. Two to three weeks later, additional signs announce deuxième, troisième, and dernière démarque: reduced, reduced, reduced.
As an American, I dismiss those signs as part of the normal business of lying, like the Macy’s absolutely rock-bottom, last-chance, cheapest ever underwear sale that appears in the newspaper every day, or the going-out-of-business sign that’s been in the window of the same furniture store with the same owner for the past twenty years and counting. I see those soldes signs and walk past the stores, unbelieving—until Gilles and Tatjana tell me these sales are real, official, regulated, approved by the state, and these are the only days in summer (and winter) certain kinds of stores can have them—which is why I’m standing in front of a Mephisto store.
I like good shoes: good fit, construction, and looks. In the U.S., I buy Eccos, but I covet Mephistos, and here I am at soldes-time, and there’s a dernière démarque sign in the window, and a black shoe and a pair of brown sandals I like. In the U.S., I refuse to spend two hundred fifty to three hundred dollars for a pair of shoes, not to mention for sandals. But here, for two hundred fifty dollars I can get the black shoes and the sandals. It’s a deal too good to pass up, and since I’ve already learned the basic rule of French shopping—buy what you like when you see it and buy it in bulk—I walk in. The store’s tiny, but who cares: it’s a Mephisto store, and I’ve seen what I want at a price I’ll pay.
“Bonjour,” I say to the saleslady and head toward the side of the store where men’s shoes are displayed.
“Bonjour,” she says, and thankfully leaves me alone. I look for the shoes and sandals I saw in the window and don’t see them anywhere. I walk to the women’s side—who knows how they arrange things here? If melons, les melons, are masculine, as Jean has told me, how clear can the divisions be? I look and don’t see them there either. The saleslady sees me on the women’s side, rushes over, and says, “Monsieur,” like this isn’t that kind of store.
“Oui, oui,” I say, “je compris,” though it’s clear I don’t understand a thing. I walk her to the window and point to the shoes and sandals I’d like to see.
“Quelle taille?”
I shrug. “Je ne sais pas.” I know my size in American—8½ or 9—but I have no idea in French. I sit on a stool and look around for one of those foot-measuring things that shoe salespeople in the U.S. carry and use like stethoscopes. There are none. There’s no way to measure the width and length of my feet, to know if the right foot is longer or wider than the left, or vice versa. Somehow everyone in France, maybe in Europe and the world, knows their shoe size, maybe has it imprinted or bar-coded on their driver’s license or credit card along with their photos and fingerprints. The saleslady looks at me like I’m a dolt, which isn’t actually wrong, but for this? It feels excessive, especially when there’s so much more she could find lacking in me.
I remove my left shoe, pleased I’m wearing socks without holes. The saleslady moves and acts like she’s ninety, though she can’t be more than twenty-five. She sits facing me and sighs. Clearly, she doesn’t want to be bothered, and wouldn’t be either, except I’m the only customer in the store. She reaches behind her and removes the nearest shoe from the display rack—a huge, maybe size 11 in American, ugly brown loafer with tassels—and holds it against the bottom of my foot. “Quarante-et-un, quarante-deux,” she pronounces: 41, 42, two numbers I will never forget.
“Bon,” I say.
She stands and walks to the back of the store. It’s ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. The store was closed Sunday and Monday, and she’s moving like she’s been here for a hundred years without a vacation, holiday, or break. She returns carrying six boxes, not a good sign, since I only want two. She drops the pile down in front of me and removes the cover from the top box.
“Voilà!”
I look and see it’s close to the sandal I want, except it’s black not brown, has a Velcro strap instead of a buckle, and is size 40. Somehow, I know the other boxes won’t fare any better. The second box is a 42, but the shoes are tan, not black. The third box has the same shoe in dark brown, the fourth is a white loafer. The fifth has exactly what I want in a size 46. One look and I can see they’re too big. The last box has the ugly brown tasseled loafer in my size. I don’t want any of them. In the U.S., I’d say, “Thank you,” and leave. But this is France, and even though the sales girl seemingly could not care less, I don’t want to be rude or wasteful of her time, though, as far as I can see, only SNCF trains and Air France seem to acknowledge its existence. I put on the dark brown pair, walk around the shop, stare at my feet in the mirror, take off the left shoe, and replace it with the tan.
A mother-daughter team, maybe sixty and forty years old, enters the shop while I’m doing this. They see me walking around, one foot tan, the other dark brown, and sit down to enjoy the show. As far as they’re concerned, this is Paris, and I’m Kate Moss. Meanwhile, the saleslady has gone from ninety to sixteen. I don’t know if it’s because she senses a sale, likes an audience, or is that much closer to lunch, but she’s now actively urging me to get the tan, which to me is the color of caca.
/> “C’est beau, c’est beau,” she keeps repeating, all but jumping up and down.
“Oui,” the mother agrees. The daughter prefers the dark brown. All are very emphatic and enthusiastic about my choice. They begin to argue with each other, “Marron, fauve, marron, fauve,” like a football cheer.
At least the shoes they like fit. The pair I want, the black, are clown’s shoes. Now, instead of getting to disappoint one person, I get to disappoint three. I take the shoes off—I won’t even try the ugly tasseled loafer—and say, “Madame, avez vous ce la . . . ” and point to the black shoe, “ . . . en quarante-deux?” and hold up four fingers on my left hand and two on my right. I say it as if this is a wholly new idea. A bonne idée.
“Non,” the saleslady says.
The mother says, “Les fauves, les fauves.” The daughter says, “Les marrons.”
I don’t know why, but I persist. “Quand?” When?
They all look at me as if I asked for the shoes for free.
“La semaine prochaine, peut-être?” Maybe next week? I ask.
“Oui. C’est possible.”
This is incredible. This is a Mephisto store. It sells nothing but Mephisto shoes, and they don’t have the style or color I want in my size, and they don’t know when, or apparently if they ever will. How do they stay in business? Who shops here? That’s what I’m thinking as three more people walk in. I thank the saleslady, mother, and daughter, and say, “Au revoir,” pleased at least that I now know my French shoe size, and will never have to go through that again.
The rest of the summer I go to Mephisto stores in Quimper, Vannes, Lorient, Morlaix, and Rennes, searching for those shoes and sandals in a size 42. The salesperson always says, “Oui,” and goes to the storeroom. God knows why, there’s nothing ever there, unless they’re going back there to laugh, and returns with the right shoe in the wrong size or color or the wrong shoe in the right size. We then have the conversation that ends like this: “No, we don’t have that style.” Or, “We have it, but not in your color or size.” And, “No, I don’t know when,” and, “No, I cannot call and order them.”
I leave France $250 richer, wondering how these people stay in business. They have little stock or inventory—sometimes all they have is what’s on display—and no idea or control over when they’ll get more or what they’ll get. They get what Mephisto gives them, and the customer gets what they have in stock. If the customer wants something that’s not available, the answer is “peut-être demain,” but I can tell you after returning many times to many stores, you have a better chance of finding Atlantis. I once went into a shoe store where every shoe in the store was in a pile on the floor. It was the customer’s job to find the style, color, size, and mate. I now know why they’re named Mephisto, short for Mephistopheles: it’s a devil of a shoe to find—and why I’m still wearing Eccos.
A Bookcase
In California, my furniture is old and used, bought at flea markets and antique shops. I prefer honey-colored oak in arts-and-crafts style, creating a Carnegie-library effect of straight lines, good light, and open space. I want the same in Plobien, but it isn’t easy.
The wood of choice in rural Brittany is dark, heavy, thick mahogany, which feels to me like grandma furniture and funerals. Finding oak—especially honey-colored oak—is rare. That’s the bad news. The good news is when I do find it no one else wants it, and the seller has had it a long time and wants to get rid of it quickly. It also helps that I like lots of open space, so I don’t need a lot of furniture.
Space, I’ve come to learn (like time) is one of those huge cultural divides: take the men’s room, for example. I’m at the movies in Quimper, and I have to pee. I head straight to the urinal farthest from the door. A French guy walks in and uses the urinal right next to me. In the U.S., this is not normal behavior. It’s a sign of a possible—probable—invitation to a party I don’t want to attend. In the U.S., if there’s an open urinal between urinals, you leave it. You never stand next to someone unless you have to. Not so in France. At this point, I’m surprised the guy doesn’t want to share. In France, people congregate. In the U.S., they separate. I see it all the time.
There’s a little public park across the street from my house. The village provides a public shower and toilet for overnight campers and boaters. Year after year I watch, amazed. In the U.S., if I arrive at a camping or picnic area where others have already set up, I go as far away from them as possible. In France, the rule seems to be the closer the better—and the closest to the toilet is best. In the U.S., I want to be far away from the noise, lights, smell, and activity. In France, people want to be within sight, smell, and feel. Maybe it’s a difference in diet and camp food. In the U.S., when I go camping I get constipated. Maybe it’s the reverse in France. Whatever it is, people pile on top of each other. Campgrounds are as densely packed as high-rise apartment buildings, with most people deliberately camping and parking right next to each other. I often see people happily picnicking luxuriously—Champagne, flute glasses, cloth napkins, foie gras—sitting in concrete parking lots surrounded by cars and RVs or on the gravel on the side of a highway.
Americans tend to search for private, out-of-the-way, one-of-a-kind, solitary, secret places. French people like to go where everyone has been and is going, and they want what everyone has. Cars are not customized in France. The exteriors of houses are not different. Day-to-day clothing does not differentiate among people. In France, if it’s good enough for everyone else, it’s good enough for me. In the U.S., if everyone else has it, who wants it? The more people have it, the less it’s worth. Americans tend to open their space. French people tend to close it. French space is internal, American space is external. I think I’m the only person in the village who sleeps with my shutters and windows wide open.
Once, when I was with Philippe, Madame and Monsieur P’s eldest son, he pointed to a guy walking in the other direction, and said, “He’s an American.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“The way he walks—his stride and the way he swings his arms. No one else takes up that much space.”
He’s right—and it applies to U.S. foreign policy, the footprint of the U.S. on the environment, and also to aesthetic taste: “Give me room, lots of room . . . Don’t fence me in . . . ” To cross any room in my house in Plobien, you walk a straight line. To cross a room in a traditional Breton home, you walk in arcs and zigzags.
I’m willing to change many things about myself in France, but not my aesthetics. I like what I like: the Carnegie-library effect of honey-oak, arts-and-crafts design, and space. That’s my comfort zone, and since everything else in France is so different, I want to keep my aesthetics, which is why week after week after week I’ve been shopping for the perfect bookcase—to shelve the piles of books and magazines that are accumulating on my floors, tables, and chairs, taking up space.
Twice a week I drive to Emmaüs, France’s version of the St. Vincent de Paul charity, in Brest and Quimper, to see if anything new and interesting has arrived. Over the years, I’ve bought furniture and appliances from them dirt cheap: an oak armoire and bureau, my washing machine, and an animal trough that I use to store tablecloths, seat cushions, CDs, and books. When French people visit and see it, they always ask what it is, knowing full well, but not believing it, or wanting to. It’s more proof, if needed, that I’m weird: like, who but an American would bring an animal feeder into a house? And its unstated corollary, how much do you think he paid for it? And its unstated corollary, what other weird things do you think he has bought? I’ve been going to Emmaüs all summer. No bookcases or oak have been found.
I’ve also been making a weekly circuit of local vide greniers (attic sales), marchés aux puces (flea markets), dépôt-ventes (second-hand stores) and brocantes (a mix of antique store and Goodwill), where I’ve bought furniture in the past. I’ve seen two oak bookcases I like, but both are priced out of my league. Aesthetics are one thing, price is another—and in my in
come bracket, the two rarely meet.
My best bet is the once-a-year weekend antiques fair at Plomelin, where a château and its grounds are rented and filled with several hundred booths of antique dealers and brocantes from all over France. Most items cost much more than I can afford—like the shards and broken and cracked pieces of Quimperware selling for hundreds of dollars—but the array is endlessly fascinating (think of all the episodes of Antiques Roadshow you’ve ever seen happening in one place). Over the years, I’ve bought a few things here—a chair, a couple of tables, a lamp. If I have any chance of finding what I want, this is it.
I arrive late in the afternoon on Sunday, the last day of the fair, knowing sellers often let their goods go cheaply rather than pack them up and carry them home. I start at the booths farthest from the large tent and château because their rent is cheapest, and they’re most likely to have what I can afford, which I figure is around five hundred dollars.
I go to the farthest stall and start walking in. Stalls are arranged in concentric circles, like a labyrinth or maze, which (like when driving) makes knowing where you are and finding your way back a challenge. Since that’s my normal state in France, I’m comfortable. My system, based on years of flea market shopping in California, is to walk an aisle in one direction, then to turn around and walk back, because what I see coming is different from what I see going, even though nothing has changed.
Sure enough, there, in the center of the circle—a bull’s eye—I see what I’m looking for: light oak, five-shelf, beveled glass door, about six feet tall, with deco-like Aztec designs carved into the front piece; a beauty. I turn and walk as far away from it as I can and stare at it. It’s the same method I used to meet girls at parties in high school. I’d spot one I liked and go to the opposite corner. This system works better, I can tell you, with furniture. By the time I was ready to meet the girl, she was gone. Furniture, thankfully, stays put.
(Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living Page 7