(Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living

by Mark Greenside

  Three weeks later, LeRoy and I return, and I say, “Je voudrais changer d’argent.” The same woman looks at me with an expression of annoyance, contempt, disregard, disbelief, and awe—and acts as if the Poste does not change money, she doesn’t know how to do it, and she’s never seen me before in her life. Then she proceeds to change the checks. The last time I was there, with my mom, the telephone book of check samples was gone, and everything was computerized, which I thought would make things easier—but there are new obstacles now, and easier, I can tell you, doesn’t exist, and the process takes just as long.

  ATMs are quicker and cheaper, but if you lose your card (as X did), or it’s stolen in Paris (as Y’s was), or the machine devours it (as with Z), you’re in serious trouble. For me, there’s my checkbook. For family and friends, there’s begging, explaining (which most of them can’t do in French), and prayer, which to me are more embrassing, tedious, and time-consuming than losing a few euros in the exchange. Safe is better than sorry. I know, because over the years I’ve been sorry a lot.

  Paying People for Work

  When I bought my house, I knew it would require maintenance. How much maintenance, I—a renter for life until then—had no idea. Who knew faucets regularly and repeatedly leaked, sockets had to be rewired, plugs added, wood re-painted and re-painted and re-painted, gutters cleaned, walls re-plastered, windows re-glazed, grass cut weekly, trees trimmed yearly—and most amazingly that I’d want—desperately—my floors refinished, rooms refurbished, cabinets built, a terrace, stone wall, a flower garden? I didn’t think about any of these things when I bought the house, so I didn’t worry about them.

  What I did worry about was Peter Mayle and the other English and American writers I’d read and their horror stories about the difficulty—seeming impossibility—of finding reliable people to work on their houses: people who showed up, worked a full day, and finished on time. Luckily, (thanks to Madame P, who knows everyone, Jean who can fix anything, and Martin and Rick who can build anything), that’s not been a problem for me. My problem has been how to pay them.

  English people are easy. Soon after I arrive in Plobien, I call Martin, Louise, Jon, Chris, Ella, and Rick, to pay them for work they’ve done on the house during the year: repairing shutters, painting the terrace, tiling the bathroom, plastering . . . I call them, they tell me what I owe, and I pay. It’s as easy as that.

  Not so with the Bretons. If I call and ask for the bill too soon (as I’ve done), the transaction becomes commercial. If I wait too long (as I’ve also done), there’s the unspoken fear I might forget. The timing has to be just right. That’s probably why there’s all that small talk about the weather and haricots verts, pommes de terre, and tomates every morning in the boulangerie—to take the sting from the commercial, to soften or hide it, and transform it into something else. So after I call and pay my English friends, I wait.

  When Monsieur Charles visits I comment on his work in the garden, the yard, cutting the grass, cleaning the gutters, fixing the fence. “C’est beau . . . Belle . . . Parfait . . . ” and I thank him profusely, “Merci, merci, merci beaucoup,” thereby acknowledging (1) I know the work is done, (2) done well, and (3) I appreciate it. Then we talk about family, the past year, the world, the weather, his garden—everything and anything, except money.

  Finally, after several weeks of repeating this, usually about halfway through the summer, sometimes starting with the weather, sometimes ending with it, but always in the middle of some other topic, where it is heard but not emphasized, I once again compliment Monsieur Charles on his work, and add, “Je vais à la banque demain. S’il vous plaît, donne moi le facture pour votre travaille.” I’m going to the bank tomorrow. Tell me what I owe you for your work. At least, that’s what I think I’m saying.

  “Oui, oui,” he says, and waves me away, as in not yet, not yet, but visibly pleased and relieved that I remembered, and that I brought it up so he won’t have to. I do this two or three more times over the next several weeks, and each time it’s the same—until the time I say it again, as casually as I can, exactly as I’ve said it before, and he removes a slip of paper from his pocket or wallet and hands me a detailed, itemized-down-to-the-centime list of hours and minutes worked, materials bought, and additional costs, such as renting a backhoe or hiring a tree surgeon.

  The same thing happens repeatedly. Hugo, the floor guy, works three long weeks repairing and replacing my floors and waits eight months to give me a bill. Jean and Sharon’s son, Noé, rewires my house, and I have to call him numerous times and finally drive to his house—forty minutes away—to pay him. Monsieur C, the plumber, regularly does emergency work on my tired old furnace when renters are at the house and have no hot water, and he never sends me a bill. I have to track him down, and when I do, he says, “La prochaine fois,” but next time has yet to come. Eric, the son of the oil guy, refills my oil tank whenever it needs it, whether I’m in France or California. Each time he fills it he advances me eight hundred to a thousand dollars. There’s no prepayment, autopayment, or pre-authorization. He does it, because it needs to be done.

  If I am foolish enough to offer a down payment (as I’ve done), people wave me away as if I’m nuts: madame in the pâtisserie when I preorder a cake or tart; Stéphanie in the restaurant when I reserved a room a year in advance for my party; Hugo when he worked on my floors; Monsieur B, who trims my trees. No one wants or expects a deposit. The only time I’ve ever put money down in advance was to pay for expensive supplies, equipment, and tools that were needed for the job. In France, or at least Plobien, where people don’t want to pay for anything they haven’t yet received, a deal is sealed with a handshake. In the U.S., it requires a down payment and a multipage contract. Having done both—shaken and signed—I know the handshake is worth more than the paper the contract is written on.

  France gave us the word “bourgeoisie” and made it a pejorative, something to aspire to and despise. What else is there to say about money?

  10 Things I’ve Learned about Money in France

  1. I like to think of myself as a humanist—“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”—and in most things I am, except when following the value of the euro. I read the newspapers secretly hoping for problems in Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, and Portugal, because if the value of the euro drops, I’ll have a few centimes more . . . This is how capitalism works: I hope for someone else’s loss so I can gain. The good news is I have not had to feel bad about my bad thoughts because since Bush II and 9/11, I’ve been the loser most of the time. That’s also the bad news. On the other hand, the euros I have in the bank and the value of my house have increased. If capitalism doesn’t get you coming, it gets you going, or the other way around, or both.

  2. Before buying anything expensive, I make sure the establishment accepts U.S. credit cards. This is especially true at fine restaurants, because unlike jewelry and clothing, the food I just ate is not returnable in any form they want. In the U.S., I carry my Visa card and driver’s license everywhere. In France, it’s my checkbook. I’ve seen French people write checks for the equivalent of a dollar-fifty and less, and the clerk or owner happily accepts them.

  3. The sales tax is 20 percent. The good news is the posted price includes the 20 percent, so I don’t see or feel it when I pay it. The bad news is I’m paying a 20 percent sales tax. The best news is I can get much of it returned at airport customs when I leave France. The worst news is there is only one person handling a line of hundreds of people waiting for their reimbursements. Mostly, they’re people from Asia, people who know how to wait forever and entertain themselves with electronic devices. I figure this is part of France’s grand economic recovery plan: pay one person the minimum wage to handle the never-ending line, and pay out as little as possible. To facilitate that goal, the customs official has multiple breaks to ensure the line never shortens. It also helps that signs to the “Douanes” are harder to find than the elevators at Charl
es de Gaulle, Terminal One. Unless I have hours to kill and I’m saving thousands of dollars (neither of which I do) it’s not worth waiting—so I and thousands of others don’t, and that’s worth millions to France. Not so happily, I’m paying my part.

  4. I am no longer fooled by Duty Free signs in shop windows in Paris and other cities. Those places will promise me a full refund of the 20 percent sales tax and will fill out all the paperwork to qualify me—but I still have to wait in that line to get it, which means I never do. I’m not fooled by Duty Free signs at the airport anymore either. I bought a bottle of Wild Turkey and a bottle of Jameson at the Duty Free shop at San Francisco International Airport on my way to Paris, Charles de Gaulle, where I had to change terminals from 2E to 2F for my flight to Brest. At 2F—ninety dollars and sixteen hours after the purchase, not to mention the twenty-five-minute trek lugging my computer-laden briefcase and the two liter–size bottles of booze—the douane tells me I can’t carry the Duty Free bag onto the plane. He tells me this by confiscating it. “Pourquoi?” I demand, outraged. The answer, I think, is Duty Free is for international flights, but now that I’m in France (Paris) and I’m flying to Brest (France) Duty Free does not apply. I could pack the bottles in my baggage, and that would be OK, except I don’t have my baggage—it’s on the plane going directly to Brest. I board the plane alcohol free and vow never to shop Duty Free again.

  5. France has two great machines that barely exist in the U.S. The first is a handheld computer that accepts, or in my case, rejects my credit card at my table so everyone around me thinks I’m broke. The other device is a cash register that fills out my check. It prints the name of the store, the amount of the bill, the date, and location. All I have to do is sign it—a great boon for people who don’t know how to write the date or their numbers. Why it’s in France, one of the most literate countries in the world, I don’t know—but the local shopkeepers and I are happy for it. I try to shop wherever they have that machine.

  6. In the U.S., you are what you do, though nothing that you do really matters. In France, it doesn’t matter what you do—even if it’s nothing, especially if it’s nothing—and everything matters, is judged, rated, and critiqued. In the U.S. people say, ‘What do you do for a living,’ meaning ‘What’s your job?’ In France, people talk about life and living the good life and never once does it refer to work. In the U.S., living and job are used interchangeably. In France, the two rarely meet.

  7. In France, it is illegal to turn off a household’s utilities in winter but perfectly fine to close a bank account if it goes over the overdraft limit. In the U.S., my bank carries me if I bounce a check or two or three, but Pacific Gas and Electric will cut me in ninety days—no matter that it is January, freezing, ice on the ground, a baby in the house, and I’m ill. In France, it is better to not pay the bill than to bounce the check. In the U.S., it’s the opposite. A bounced check, at least the first or second time, shows good will and intentions. Knowing the difference is like having money in the bank when you don’t.

  8. Money has changed three times in France since 1960: from the old franc to the new franc (100 old francs = 1 new franc) to the euro (1 euro = 6.55957 new francs). The result is no one who has been through those changes is comfortable speaking about large numbers. Euros have simplified things a little, as there are no old euros or new euros, just the euro. Unfortunately, however, in an attempt to make things easier for people, something France doesn’t excel at, all prices are required to be written in euros and francs—new francs, which are now old, and have not been legal tender since 2002. The result is many older people translate the euro price into francs—ancien and nouveau. So when someone over sixty tells me a new front gate will cost soixante mille—60,000—I drop two zeros and hope it’s right, though I live in fear that one of these days I’m going to agree to something I can’t afford. Then I’ll have the Sally experience, or worse, I’ll learn about French bankruptcy laws and debtor prison—and whether or not they have laws protecting the mathematically challenged and other mental deficients—all things I hope not to learn.

  9. French people are schizo about money: they love what it can do, what it buys—they are shoppers and consumers par excellence—and they disdain it, especially ostentatious displays of what other people have and they don’t. France is a generous, social welfare, neosocialist state—and I’ve never been so vigilant with money in all my life.

  10. In France, as elsewhere, nothing causes more trouble between people than bad money and good sex. Luckily, I’ve managed to avoid both with my friends and neighbors.

  I’m Eating What?

  Most people know France is foodie heaven. It’s haute cuisine land, home of Escoffier, Carême, Ducasse, Bocuse, and the eleven-hundred-page Larousse Gastronomique, all of which are salivating-exciting if you’re an explorer of taste like Donna, but daunting if you’re a culinary coward, like me.

  I won’t eat eel (the thought of it), sweetbreads (the source of it), and organs (except liver in foie gras) are off the chart. I’d rather spend hundreds of dollars on Springsteen tickets, good theater, or a baseball game than a meal at French Laundry or Boulud. For me, eating is more comfort and sustenance than adventure. I prefer the familiar, which is why ten months of the year I go to the same Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, and Italian restaurants and order the same dishes, and to the extent nothing has changed, I’m happy. Then I go to France, where every summer is a gastronomique adventure.

  Pig

  I’m on the train from Paris to Brest, avoiding the Périphérique. It’s lunchtime, and everyone is eating but me. I’m reading Genet, waiting to go to the club car to buy a chicken sandwich, un sandwich poulet—one of the few things I can identify and pronounce—when the lady in the seat across the aisle from me hands me a chunk of something that looks like sausage and smells like death. All I can think of is The Jungle, sawdust, roaches, rat droppings, and body parts. In the U.S., under no imaginable circumstances short of torture or starvation would I put anything that smells like this in my mouth, let alone my stomach, not to mention my hand, where it is, because the lady put it there before I could pull away.

  Genet in one hand, I-don’t-know-what in the other, I look at this friendly, middle-aged lady who could be Babette, Charlotte Corday, or a French version of Jeffrey Dahmer. She points to my hand, and says something that sounds like, “And we.”

  I know she’s telling me something important, but I have no idea what. I bite it, because all the other options I can think of are worse, and swallow. The good news is it’s not as bad as it smells. The bad news is it smells like a toilet in a gas station that hasn’t been cleaned in a month. The amazing news is I finish it without gagging and thank the lady profusely, while declining more.

  I gag later, when I find out “andouille” is French for pig intestines.

  I’ve been back in France less than five hours, and once again I’ve eaten something I would have leaped to avoid stepping in if I’d seen it on the street. If I am what I eat, I’m in trouble.

  Crustacean

  Madame P has invited me to dinner with her, Monsieur, and her grandson, Daniel. We’ve had apéritifs and nibbles and are sitting at the table, in the center of which is a huge covered bowl. The settings are simple: a plate, a glass for water, a glass for wine, a tablespoon, dinner knife and fork, and tiny picking implements that look to me like dental equipment. I know Brittany is oyster land, but July is not a month that ends in an R, even in French. Besides, the only oysters I eat are baked, like oysters Rockefeller, or fried—never raw. Raw, they remind me of phlegm. Madame uncovers the bowl, and Daniel goes over the top when he sees what’s inside. I do, too, as I look at dozens of the ugliest shrimp I’ve ever seen piled on top of each other like a massacre. Then, what I see next is worse.

  Madame digs into the bowl with her bare hand, grabs a handful of these orangey-pink things, and drops them in a mound onto my plate, saying, “Langoustine.”

  It’s what the Li
onel girl was playing with at Leclerc, and what I vowed to avoid. I look at the pile in front of me: bulging bodies, appendages akimbo, whiskers, feelers, tiny irridescent orange eggs, and big, shiny, beady black eyes staring up at me. I sit there with my hands in my lap, staring back.

  The good news is they’re not moving. The better news is neither am I. No way am I touching them, let alone eating them. The andouille lady got past me, but not this. Then, I watch horrified as Daniel breaks the head off one of them and sucks on the thorax with delight. He lifts one of the picks and scrapes the insides out like a dentist cleaning plaque. Madame and Monsieur begin to do the same. Everyone is happy—except me.

  I know it’s rude not to eat these things, or at least taste them, especially since Madame cooked this treat, this specialty straight from the Atlantic still breathing and crawling when she got out of bed early this morning to buy them, for me. I also know it’s not polite to throw up on the table, and that’s what will happen if I put one near my mouth.

  Monsieur passes me the bread. I cut a piece and butter it, pretty sure there’s no going wrong with that. Crispy baguette and rich, creamy butter—forget Campbell’s soup: this is “Mmmm, mmmm, good.”

  I chew my bread and watch Madame, Monsieur, and Daniel demolish the mounds in front of them and reach into the bowl for more. Piles of black beady-eyed heads, pieces of pink exoskeleton and carapace, shell splinters, whiskers, feelers, and glowing teensy orange eggs litter their plates and the table all around them, making a mess. The space in front of me is spotless. Until this moment, I thought cleanliness was godliness to Madame. Now I see there’s a higher order, and gustatory pleasure and need trumps all: clean plate tops clean house. Meanwhile, Monsieur keeps filling the wine glasses, and I keep emptying mine.