(Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living

by Mark Greenside

  Two weeks later, I knock on the open front door, call out, “Bonjour,” and walk into Madame P’s kitchen, which is also the all-purpose family room, complete with TV, radio, and stereo, and see Madame sitting at the table with a blanket over her head and a chunky middle-aged woman grinding tiny brown seeds into powder with a mortar and pestle. Madame lifts the blanket and introduces me: “Marc, c’est Docteur D.”

  The table is covered with branches, leaves, twigs, herbs, seeds, berries—God knows what else, maybe frogs. If Madame D is a doctor, she’s a witch doctor. She goes to the stove and removes the lid from a huge pot, and I realize the burning rubber smell I thought was brakes or tires is coming from Madame’s kitchen and being brewed on the stove. Dr. D ladles a huge spoonful of goop into a cup and places it in front of Madame. Madame inhales the steam, covers her head and the goop-filled cup with the blanket, and moans a long, satisfying, “Ahhhhhhhh.”

  This too, I learn, is reimbursed by the national health system: homeopathy, thalassotherapy, acupressure, acupuncture—everything, it seems, except counseling and voluntary, non-mandated, therapy, which are apparently too bizarre to be covered. All of it, except thalassotherapy, which requires the ocean, is available in the privacy and comfort of your home when you need it—or when you think you do.

  It’s almost (but not quite) enough to make me want to try the system myself—and then I do.

  At the Pharmacy

  I wake scratching between my toes and discover I have athlete’s foot. God knows why. I certainly haven’t earned it. I show Madame P, and ask her what to do. She tells me to go to the pharmacy, which for some reason has a flashing green cross above the door, not red.

  I walk into the shop, get in the wedge, and say, “Bonjour” when it’s my turn.

  “Bonjour,” the pretty lady in a white lab coat responds.

  “S’il vous plaît,” I say and point to my left foot. It’s bare because I’m wearing flip flops—because I still haven’t found a Mephisto store with the shoes or sandals I want in the right size, color, or model.

  “Ah oui,” she says, “champignons.”

  Mushrooms? I look at my foot. What does she see that I don’t? What does she know that I don’t? She’s now changed how I look at mushrooms—and eat them—forever. Why couldn’t she have diagnosed my ailment as Brussels sprouts? Given what French people think about Belgians, I’m surprised it’s not . . . She hands me a tube and charges me five euros—about eight dollars. I don’t know if I should put it on my foot or a salad. I stand there clutching the tube like an idiot. Madame, professional that she is, recognizes this symptom. She swings around the counter, pries the box from my hand and destroys it after it fails to easily open at the place marked clearly in red, “ouvrir ici.” She punctures the mouth of the tube with the point of her pen, squeezes a generous amount on my foot and rubs it in with her naked fingers. It feels so good I want to return three times a day.

  “Merci, merci,” I say. Except for the non-kiss cheek kisses, it’s the first time a woman has touched me since I left Donna in California. “À bientôt,” I say, and to put her at ease add, “Au revoir.”

  A month later, I return with the aoûtats. At first, I thought it was a horrible bug bite. Then I found out it’s worse: it’s horrible and disgusting, and painful as hell. I show Madame P a welt the size of a jumbo shrimp under my armpit. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “Les aoûtats.”

  This is the first I’ve heard of it. Mouches (flies), moustiques (mosquitos), abeilles (bees), chauves-souris (bats), puces (fleas) sure, but the aoûtats? “Quece que c’est?” What is it? And more important, “Où est ce la?” Where is it? And most important, what does it look like: “C’est possible, je regarde?” This is one creature I need to avoid.

  Madame says, “C’est invisible. C’est un microbe.”

  Holy shit! “Une microbe!”

  “Oui.”

  “Il habite à où?” Where does it live?

  She points at me.

  “No, no, où habiton les aoûtats?”

  She takes me outside and points, “Le jardin (garden), la pelouse (grass), la terre (land), les fleurs (flowers), et toi (me)!” Then she explains in great detail what the aoûtat is and what it does. I don’t understand much until she says that magic one-in-every-three words that’s the same in English: “larve,” larva, the singular of larvae. Holy, holy shit! Living baby aoûtats are growing inside me and eating me up—and that’s not even the worst of it. The welt I showed her is the visible one, the polite one. The others are in the corners and creases of my warmest, moistest, most private parts, which they apparently like as much as I do. No wonder I’ve been scratching my crotch for a week. And a week, believe me, is enough, so I’m back in a wedge at the pharmacy.

  “Bonjour,” the same lady sings when it’s my turn. “Comment sont les champignons?”

  “Bien. Bon, au revoir.”

  “Bon,” she says, wondering, I’m sure, what today will bring.

  “S’il vous plaît,” I say, and scratch my hip. “Les aoûtats.”

  It’s August—août—when the aoûtats appear. It’s also hot, which the aoûtats like, but she’s not a clerk, she’s a professional, and she’s not going to give me any medicine or treatment without seeing what’s wrong and making a diagnosis. She walks around the counter, and before I can say “Jean Paul Belmondo,” she’s pulling the elastic on my shorts and looking down my pants. Lucky for me—and her—I’m wearing underwear, because until today it itched so much around the elastic I took them off. Three female customers are in the shop. None of them look at me, and none seems to think this is strange. The pretty lady pharmacist touches one of the welts on my hip, and says, “Ah oui, les aoûtats.” Diagnosis over, she hands me a box with a tube of cream in it and charges me five euros. It looks like the same box she gave me for the champignons. I stand there holding the box, waiting and hopeful, expectant. She smiles and walks away.

  Pharmacies are the first line of medical defense in France. They’re where you go to get prescriptions filled and to fix anything wrong with your body, head, skin, hair, nails, and mouth, and most important, your digestion—things going down, things coming up, things coming out, and not. So when I’m dog-sitting for Bob and Loni at their house on the Île aux Moines and get the stomach flu, I know exactly what to do. I wait as long as I can—about two days—and go to the pharmacy.

  I open the door and see two wedges of people. I join the shortest wedge and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. There’s always a wait for the pharmacist, who by another immutable French law—is there a national test, a pageant, a Catherine Deneuve look-alike contest requirement?—always seems to be a pretty woman of indeterminate age with shiny teeth and glowing hair, perfectly coiffed, made-up, and manicured, as if she personally is responsible for modeling every health and beauty product in the store. This time is no exception, as one of the two women is much younger and prettier than average, and average is about 9.5 out of 10. Normally, I’m hoping for the prettiest one, but not today. Whoever it is, though, please God, make it fast.

  An old woman steps forward from the wedge. She’s so small I didn’t see her. She opens her bag and fumbles through it—it’s half her size—separates a piece of paper that looks like a letter from other pieces of paper that look like letters, and hands it to the pretty pharmacist. Oh shit! I know what this means: an hour’s wait—and I don’t have it in me. Or, I do, but I won’t, if I wait.

  I know this because I’ve been to the pharmacy for Monsieur and Madame P and given a letter like that to the pharmacist. The last time I did it, it took an hour to fill the order, because the letter contained enough prescriptions to fill two large shopping bags with medications and supplies, and because shopping at the pharmacy is like every other shopping experience in France: slow.

  It doesn’t matter that everyone in the wedge is in a hurry, needs something, and usually badly—every transaction takes forever. Each person is asked question after qu
estion about his or her needs, history, symptoms, and diet, whether they’re buying mouthwash or diuretics. It’s like a job interview for your body or a lifetime longevity study—all asked and answered in public, so within fifteen minutes of leaving the pharmacy everyone knows your breath smells, your hair’s dry, and you’re incontinent. Finally, when you’ve answered everything to her satisfaction—and only then—the pharmacist will leave the counter, go behind a curtain, and unlike any other shopping experience I’ve had, always returns with what I need. These women are one hundred percent thorough and professional, courteous and bright—and if they get to me before I shit on myself or faint, both of which I now feel coming, they’ll fix me.

  I distract myself by praying—please God, give me the one who looks old enough to have had her own intestinal experiences—and by practicing what I’m going to say if I get to speak to someone in time. Wisely, I looked up the word and its pronunciation before leaving the house. Diarrhée, pronounced “djare . . . Djareeee, D-jareee . . .” Shit, I’m in trouble.

  “Monsieur.”

  It’s the younger, prettier one. “Avez vous le produit pour djaree,” I whisper.

  “Quoi.”

  My bowel slips. I can feel it. “Djaree, djareeeee . . . ”

  Her concern is palpable—she’s as serious as Mother Teresa. She wants desperately to help, “Quoi, quoi, Monsieur . . . ”

  I’m a grown man, an adult, well educated, relatively successful and accomplished, and all I can think is please don’t make me have to act this out. I rub my stomach and think of the movie, La Grande Bouffe.

  “Pour digestion,” she says.

  “No.”

  “Non?”

  I’m about to say, “l’autre fin,” the other end, knowing in my gut it’s not right, when she yells, “DIARRHÉE!” like she just won Jeopardy or bingo.

  I’m so thankful and relieved I don’t even care that the entire village now knows I have the runs.

  “Beaucoup?”

  Is she kidding me?

  “Combien de fois?” How many times?

  I blink. I shrug. What is she asking?

  “Par jour.”

  “Oh, oh, huit, neuf, dix . . . ”

  “OOOOO la la.”

  This is the first time I’ve actually heard this expression in France. I’ve been wondering when it’s used. Now, I know. The girl hurries behind the curtain. People behind me murmur. I want to tell everyone this never happens when I eat American food. The woman behind me taps me on the back and offers me a look of empathy, sympathy, pain, and condolence, as if I’m stage-four terminal, and says, “Désolée.”

  “Moi aussi,” I say. Me too.

  The girl returns holding a box half the size of a pack of Gauloises. She carefully explains that I should take two pills now, and she gives me a glass of water to make sure I at least get the first part right and don’t ruin her floor or her business. After that, it’s up to me. She tells me to drink plenty of liquids and eat “des carrottes,” and she explains half a dozen times and writes on the box: “2 tout de suite. MAXIMUM: 6 par jour.”

  “Or what?” I want to ask, but don’t have the time or sphincter power to wait for the answer.

  I hurry home, barely get to the toilet, and let loose. For a second, while sitting there, because that’s all it takes, I think: she thinks I’m constipated and want diarrhea and, she’s given me a pill to give it to me. I look at the box. It says “Diarrhetique.” It doesn’t say stop or start. I remove the pills—they’re smaller than Tylenol. I think I should take two more. Then I remind myself, she may look eighteen and like a supermodel actress, but she’s a professional pharmacist who knows what she’s doing . . . I hope.

  She does. It’s the last crap I take for five days. I can’t even imagine what would have happened—and what the conversation at the pharmacy would have been—had I taken two more. Luckily, none of us will ever know.

  At the Doctor’s Office

  My first trip to a doctor’s office occurs with my friend Bonnie, who’s visiting me from California. She arrived with a cold and a cough, and is getting worse, hacking and sneezing. After a few days, I do what I always do. I telephone Madame P, thinking pharmacy, drugs, some kind of prescription Theraflu. I call in the morning. In the afternoon, Bonnie is on her way to the doctor’s office. Madame’s not taking any chances. No American is getting sick on her watch—and since I called her, it is her watch.

  The doctor, a Madame K, is waiting for us when we arrive. Clearly, Madame P is taking no chances with my French either, and has already explained the situation. The doctor leads Bonnie into a room the size of a small bathroom, sits her in an armchair facing a poster of cows grazing in a pastoral field, and proceeds to give her a full examination: lungs, ears, nose, and throat, and concludes, “C’est un virus.”

  It’s the same diagnosis I would have made—it’s the best disease and diagnosis there is—since it’s invisible. It’s like stress or anxiety or USD, “unspecific sexual disease.” All medical beauts, as far as I’m concerned. Say the word, and ca-ching! ca-ching! is the sound of the music you’ll hear.

  I’m expecting Docteur K to take out her pad and write several prescriptions, as one never seems to be enough in France, and she does. Then she takes out a syringe.

  Bonnie looks at me, I look at Docteur K, she looks at both of us like, ‘Hey, I’m a doctor. If you want to get better, this is what you do.’ She loads up the syringe, bends Bonnie over the chair and drops her shorts—I look away, not out of propriety, but because I hate shots—and that’s it. The whole thing is a minor miracle, almost unheard of for anything less than a life-threatening illness in the U.S.: call, appointment, exam, and treatment all in less than four hours, two of which are lunch, with a doctor who isn’t your own or a member of your family.

  Even more amazing, when Bonnie asks for the bill, the woman refuses to give it. Ah, I think, the notorious French black books, “au noir”: she wants to be paid under the table. I start to fish through my wallet, but she waves me away. There is no black book or “noir” or table. It’s simply: I’m a doctor. This is what I do.

  I don’t know if it’s charity, good will, or more of Madame P’s magic—or if Docteur K is rich, doesn’t want to bother with U.S. and French insurance, not to mention Bonnie’s English and my French—but whatever it is, not paying for services can’t be usual. And it’s not: when my brother gets sick and goes to a doctor, he pays.

  Jeff and Corinne are celebrating his sixtieth birthday with Donna and me—and celebrate we do, with lots of new, tasty and strange foods for him to eat: langoustine in homemade mayonnaise, cheeses he’s never heard of, everything cooked in butter and crème fraîche, whipped cream on ice cream with caramel, and more alcohol than he’s drunk in his entire life.

  On the third day, he wakes up dizzy, heart pounding, white-faced, feeling numb on his left side. Our father died of a massive heart attack in his sixties, so this is serious.

  I call Henri, Madame P’s youngest son, who arrives in ten minutes with his ambulance and his assistant, Louis. Henri asks Jeff where it hurts, how he feels, what he ate and drank. “Did you drink rosé and mix it with white and red?”

  Jeff groans, “Yes.”

  Henri and Louis look at each other and nod. “Can you stand?”

  Jeff groans, “No.”

  Henri and Louis help him down two flights of stairs and into the ambulance. They lay him gently on a gurney and drive to Loscoat, where Henri has already called Docteur B, an English speaker who’s agreed to leave his office and examine Jeff in the ambulance. Donna, Corinne, and I follow in the car.

  Henri parks on the main street in Loscoat. While we’re waiting, people stop to shake Henri’s hand as if he’s running for office. No one asks about the ambulance, who’s inside, or what’s happening. A tall, thin young man dressed like a car salesman crosses the street and shakes Henri’s hand, Louis’s, mine, Donna’s, and Corinne’s. He opens the ambulance door and climbs in. That’s how I
know he’s the doctor. It’s perplexing: we’re standing next to an ambulance with my brother inside with what could be a heart attack, and only Corinne, Donna, and I seem concerned. No one else, including the doctor, seems worried.

  Thirty minutes later, he steps out of the ambulance and writes a prescription. He hands it to Corinne and tells her Jeff has a hangover, and the prescription is for cramps, but the best thing he can do is go home and drink a shot of Ricard, a 45-percent-proof anise-flavored liqueur—the old hair of the dog—go to bed, and wake up refreshed. Jeff does, and he does.

  The doctor charges twenty-three dollars for his services. The prescription costs twenty-seven. Henri doesn’t charge for the ambulance because we are friends, but if he had, the entire bill would have been $150—for an American! A French person would have been reimbursed for about 75 percent, leaving a bill of about thirty-eight dollars. If the person had complimentary insurance, as French people are now required to do—at a cost of between $600 and $1,000 a year, $50 to $83 dollars a month (depending on the size of the family), the reimbursement would have been 95 to 100 percent, and their maximum out-of-pocket cost would have been $7.50—less than the price of a discounted movie ticket in the U.S . . . It makes me want to cry.

  So does having to replace my glasses.

  The Ophthalmologist

  One morning, I bend over to tie a loose, non-Mephisto shoelace, and my glasses fall out of my shirt pocket onto the hundred-plus-year-old tile floor in the hallway, and crack. These are my TV, movie, driving, and seeing-anything-beyond-my-nose glasses. I’ve worn glasses for more than thirty years, and I’ve never lost a pair or broken a lens, so it never occurs to me I could or would, which is why I don’t have my prescription with me, or a second pair, and why I need to see a doctor to get them replaced. I do what I do best: I call Madame P.

  I call her on a Thursday afternoon. Friday morning she drives me to a village twenty miles away, where she’s made an appointment with an ophthalmologist, a Doctor C, a tall, thin, pleasant bald man, who speaks no English. He shakes my hand and leads me to his office, where he gives me a complete eye exam—in French. The first part is easy: look at the chart and go thumbs up, thumbs down to indicate seeing better or worse as he changes a dozen or more lenses to determine my sight. Everything moves smoothly until he indicates he wants me to verify what I’m seeing and read the eye chart out loud. I look through the lenses and see the letters clearly. E, U, R, I, A. That’s easy. The hard part is how to say them. E is pronounced eh, I know, so I say, “eh.” He looks at me like I’m in pain. “E-uh,” I repeat, “e-uh.” Euw for U fares no better, and my wah (W) for rrr (R) is utterly hopeless. He gives up with my eee for I and goes back to thumbs up, thumbs down, each of us hoping for the best: me, that I get a pair of glasses that allow me to see well enough to not hit anything when I drive; he, that I don’t come back. I spend forty-five minutes with him, for which he bills me the equivalent of twenty-five dollars. I happily pay him on the spot.