The Virgin Blue

by Tracy Chevalier

  ‘You want to go back to the States?’

  ‘Sometimes. Then I get mad at myself for being scared off by a dream.’

  ‘What does the blue look like? Like that?’ He pointed to a sign advertising ice cream for sale in the café. I shook my head.

  ‘No, that's too bright. I mean, the dream blue is bright. Very vivid. But it's bright and yet dark too. I don't know the technical words to describe it. It reflects lots of light. It's beautiful but in the dream it makes me sad. Elated too. It's like there are two sides to the colour. Funny that I remember the colour. I always thought I dreamed in black and white.’

  ‘And the voices? Who are they?’

  ‘I don't know. Sometimes it's my voice. Sometimes I wake up and I've been saying the words. I can almost hear them, as if the room has just then gone silent.’

  ‘What are the words? What are you saying?’

  I thought for a minute, then shook my head. ‘I don't remember.’

  He fixed his eyes on me. ‘Try. Close your eyes.’

  I did as he said, sitting still as long as I could, Jean-Paul silent next to me. Just as I was about to give up, a fragment floated into my mind. ‘Je suis un pot cassé,’ I said suddenly.

  I opened my eyes. ‘I am a broken pot? Where did that come from?’

  Jean-Paul looked startled.

  ‘Can you remember any more?’

  I closed my eyes again. ‘Tu es ma tour et forteresse,’ I mur-mured at last.

  I opened my eyes. Jean-Paul's face was screwed up in concentration and he seemed far away. I could see his mind working, travelling over a vast plain of memory, scanning and rejecting, until something clicked and he returned to me. He fixed his eyes on the ice-cream sign and began to recite:

  Entre tous ceux-là qui me haient

  Mes voisins j'aperçois

  Avoir honte de moi:

  Il semble que mes amis aient

  Horreur de ma rencontre,

  Quand dehors je me montre.

  Je suis hors de leur souvenance,

  Ainsi qu'un trespassé.

  Je suis un pot cassé.

  As he spoke I felt a pressure in my throat and behind my eyes. It was grief.

  I held tightly to the arms of my chair, pushing my body hard against its back as if to brace myself. When he finished I swallowed to ease my throat.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘The thirty-first psalm.’

  I frowned at him. ‘A psalm? From the Bible?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how could I know it? I don't know any psalms! Hardly in English, and certainly not in French. But those words are so familiar. I must have heard it somewhere. How do you know it?’

  ‘Church. When I was young we had to memorize many psalms. But also it was in my studying at one time.’

  ‘You studied psalms for a library science degree?’

  ‘No, no, before that, when I studied history. The history of the Languedoc. That is what I really do.’

  ‘What's Languedoc?’

  ‘An area all around us. From Toulouse and the Pyrenees all the way to the Rhône.’ He drew another circle on his napkin map, encompassing the smaller circle of the Cévennes and a lot of the cow's neck and muzzle. ‘It was named for the language once spoken there. Oc was their word for oui. Langue d'oc – language of oc.’

  ‘What did the psalm have to do with Languedoc?’

  He hesitated. ‘Well, that's curious. It was a psalm the Huguenots used to recite when bad things happened.’

  That night after supper I finally told Rick about the dream, describing the blue, the voices, the atmosphere, as accurately as I could. I left out some things too: I didn't tell him that I'd been over this territory with Jean-Paul, that the words were a psalm, that I only had the dream after sex. Since I had to pick and choose what I told him, the process was more self-conscious and not nearly as therapeutic as it had been with Jean-Paul, when it had come out involuntarily and naturally. Now that I was telling it for Rick's sake rather than my own, I found I had to shape it more into a story, and it began to detach itself from me and take on its own fictional life.

  Rick took it that way too. Maybe it was the way I told it, but he listened as if he were half paying attention to something else at the same time, a radio on in the background or a conversation in the street. He didn't ask any questions the way Jean-Paul had.

  ‘Rick, are you listening to me?’ I asked finally, reaching over and pulling his ponytail.

  ‘Of course I am. You've been having nightmares. About the colour blue.’

  ‘I just wanted you to know. That's why I've been so tired recently.’

  ‘You should wake me up when you have them.’

  ‘I know.’ But I knew I wouldn't. In California I would have woken him immediately the first time I had the dream. Something had changed; since Rick seemed to be himself, it must be me.

  ‘How's the studying going?’

  I shrugged, irritated that he'd changed the subject. ‘OK. No. Terrible. No. I don't know. Sometimes I wonder how I'm ever going to deliver babies in French. I couldn't say the right thing when that baby was choking. If I can't even do that, how can I possibly coach a woman through labour?’

  ‘But you delivered babies from Hispanic women back home and managed.’

  ‘That's different. Maybe they didn't speak English, but they didn't expect me to speak Spanish either. And here all the hospital equipment, all the medicine and the dosages, all that will be in French.’

  Rick leaned forward, elbows anchored on the table, plate pushed to one side. ‘Hey, Ella, what's happened to your optimism? You're not going to start acting French, are you? I get enough of that at work.’

  Even knowing I'd just been critical of Jean-Paul's pessimism, I found myself repeating his words. ‘I'm just trying to be realistic.’

  ‘Yeah, I've heard that at the office too.’

  I opened my mouth for a sharp retort, but stopped myself. It was true that my optimism had diminished in France; maybe I was taking on the cynical nature of the people around me. Rick put a positive spin on everything; it was his positive attitude that had made him successful. That was why the French firm approached him; that was why we were here. I shut my mouth, swallowing my pessimistic words.

  That night we made love, Rick carefully avoiding my psoriasis. Afterwards I lay patiently waiting for sleep and the dream. When it came it was less impressionistic, more tangible than ever. The blue hung over me like a bright sheet, billowing in and out, taking on texture and shape. I woke with tears running down my face and my voice in my ears. I lay still.

  ‘A dress,’ I whispered. ‘It was a dress.’

  In the morning I hurried to the library. The woman was at the desk and I had to turn away to hide my disappointment and irritation that Jean-Paul wasn't there. I wandered aimlessly around the two rooms, the librarian's gaze following me. At last I asked her if Jean-Paul would be in any time that day. ‘Oh no,’ she replied with a small frown. ‘He won't be here for a few days. He has gone to Paris.’

  ‘Paris? But why?’

  She looked surprised that I should ask. ‘Well, his sister is getting married. He will return after the weekend.’

  ‘Oh. Merci,’ I said and left. It was strange to think of him having a sister, a family. Dammit, I thought, pounding down the stairs and out into the square. Madame from the boulangerie was standing next to the fountain talking to the woman who had first led me to the library. Both stopped talking and stared at me for a long moment before turning back to each other. Damn you, I thought. I'd never felt so isolated and conspicuous.

  That Sunday we were invited to lunch at the home of one of Rick's colleagues, the first real socializing we'd done since moving to France, not counting the occasional quick drink with people Rick had met through work. I was nervous about going and focused my worries on what to wear. I had no idea what Sunday lunch meant in French terms, whether it was formal or casual.

  ‘Should I
wear a dress?’ I kept pestering Rick.

  ‘Wear what you want,’ he replied usefully. ‘They won't mind.’

  But I will, I thought, if I wear the wrong thing.

  There was the added problem of my arms – it was a hot day but I couldn't bear the furtive glances at my erupted skin. Finally I chose a stone-coloured sleeveless dress that reached my mid-calf and a white linen jacket. I thought I would fit in with more or less any occasion in such an outfit, but when the couple opened the door of their big suburban house and I took in Chantal's jeans and white T-shirt, Olivier's khaki shorts, I felt simultaneously overdressed and frumpy. They smiled politely at me, and smiled again at the flowers and wine we brought, but I noticed that Chantal abandoned the flowers, still wrapped, on a sideboard in the dining room, and our carefully chosen bottle of wine never made an appearance.

  They had two children, a girl and a boy, who were so polite and quiet that I never even found out their names. At the end of the meal they stood up and disappeared inside as if summoned by a bell only children could hear. They were probably watching television, and I secretly wished I could join them: I found conversation among us adults tiring and at times demoralizing. Rick and Olivier spent most of the time discussing the firm's business, and spoke in English. Chantal and I chatted awkwardly in a mixture of French and English. I tried to speak only French with her, but she kept switching to English when she felt I wasn't keeping up. It would have been impolite for me to continue in French, so I switched to English until there was a pause; then I'd start another subject in French. It turned into a polite struggle between us; I think she took quiet pleasure in showing off how good her English was compared to my French. And she wasn't one for small talk; within ten minutes she had covered most of the political trouble in the world and looked scornful when I didn't have a decisive answer to every problem.

  Both Olivier and Chantal hung onto every word Rick uttered, even though I made more of an effort than he did to speak to them in their own language. For all my struggle to communicate they barely listened to me. I hated comparing my performance with Rick's: I'd never done such a thing in the States.

  We left in the late afternoon, with polite kisses and promises to have them over in Lisle. That'll be a lot of fun, I thought as we drove away. When we were out of sight I pulled off my sweaty jacket. If we had been in the States with friends it wouldn't have mattered what my arms looked like. But then, if we were still in the States I wouldn't have psoriasis.

  ‘Hey, they were nice, weren't they?’ Rick started off our ritual debriefing.

  ‘They didn't touch the wine or flowers.’

  ‘Yeah, but with a wine cellar like theirs, no wonder! Great place.’

  ‘I guess I wasn't thinking about their material possessions.’

  Rick glanced at me sideways. ‘You didn't seem too happy there, babe. What's wrong?’

  ‘I don't know. I just feel – I just feel I don't fit, that's all. I can't seem to talk to people here the way I can in the States. Until now the only person I've had any sustained conversation with besides Madame Sentier is Jean-Paul, and even that isn't real conversation. More like a battle, more like –’

  ‘Who's Jean-Paul?’

  I tried to sound casual. ‘A librarian in Lisle. He's helping me look into my family history. He's away right now,’ I added irrelevantly.

  ‘And what have you two found out?’

  ‘Not much. A little from my cousin in Switzerland. You know, I was starting to think that knowing more about my French background would make me feel more comfortable here, but now I think I'm wrong. People still see me as American.’

  ‘You are American, Ella.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But I have to change a little while I'm here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because – because otherwise I stick out too much. People want me to be what they expect; they want me to be like them. And anyway I can't help but be affected by the landscape around me, the people and the way they think and the language. It's going to make me different, a little different at least.’

  Rick looked puzzled. ‘But you already are yourself,’ he said, switching lanes so suddenly that cars behind us honked indignantly. ‘You don't need to change for other people.’

  ‘It's not like that. It's more like adapting. It's like – cafés here don't serve decaffeinated coffee, so I'm getting used to having less real coffee or no coffee at all.’

  ‘I get my secretary to make decaf at the office.’

  ‘Rick —’ I stopped and counted to ten. He seemed to be wilfully misunderstanding my metaphors, putting that positive spin on things.

  ‘I think you'd be a lot happier if you didn't worry so much about fitting in. People will like you the way you are.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I stared out the window. Rick had the knack of not trying to fit in but being accepted anyway. It was like his ponytail: he wore it so naturally that no one stared or thought him odd. I, on the other hand, despite my attempts to fit in, stood out like a skyscraper.

  Rick had to stop by the office for an hour; I had planned to sit and read or play with one of the computers, but I was in such a bad mood that I went for a walk instead. His office was right in the centre of Toulouse, in an area of narrow streets and boutiques now full of Sunday strollers window-shopping. I began to wander, looking in windows at tasteful clothes, gold jewellery, artful lingerie. The cult of French lingerie always surprised me; even small towns like Lisle-sur-Tarn had a store specializing in it. It was hard to imagine wearing the things on display, with their intricate straps and lace and designs that mapped out the body's erogenous zones. There was something un-American about it, this formalized sexiness.

  In fact French women in the city were so different from me that I often felt invisible around them, a dishevelled ghost standing aside to let them pass. Women out strolling in Toulouse wore tailored blazers with jeans and understated chunks of gold at their ears and throats. Their shoes always had heels. Their haircuts were neat, expensive, their eyebrows plucked smooth, their skin clear. It was easy to imagine them in complicated bras or camisoles, silk underwear cut high on the thigh, stockings, suspenders. They took the presentation of their images seriously. As I walked around I could feel them glancing at me discreetly, scrutinizing the shoulder-length hair I'd left a little too long in cutting, the absence of make-up, the persistently wrinkled linen, the flat clunky sandals I'd thought so fashionable in San Francisco. I was sure I saw pity flash over their faces.

  Do they know I'm American? I thought. Is it that obvious?

  It was; I myself could spot the middle-aged American couple ahead of me a mile off just from what they were wearing and the way they stood. They were looking at a display of chocolate and as I passed were discussing whether or not to return the next day and buy some to take home with them.

  ‘Won't it melt in the plane?’ the woman asked. She had wide, low-slung hips and wore a loose pastel blouse and pants and running shoes. She stood with her legs wide apart, knees locked.

  ‘Naw, honey, it's cold 35,000 feet up. It's not gonna melt, but it might get squished. Maybe there's something else in this town we can take home.’ He carried a substantial gut, emphasized by the belt bisecting and hugging it. He wasn't wearing a baseball cap but he might as well have been. Probably left it at the hotel.

  They looked up and smiled brightly, a wistful hope shining in their faces. Their openness pained me; I quickly turned down a side street. Behind me I heard the man say, ‘Excuse me, miss, sea-view-play.’ I didn't turn around. I felt like a kid who's embarrassed by her parents in front of her friends.

  I came out at the end of the street next to the Musée des Augustins, an old brick complex that held a collection of paintings and sculpture. I glanced around: the couple hadn't followed me. I ducked inside.

  After paying I pushed through the door and entered cloisters, a peaceful, sunny spot, the square walkways lined with sculpture, a neatly planted garden of flowers and vegetables and herbs
in the centre. On one walkway there was a long line of stone dogs, snouts pointed upwards, howling joyously. I walked all the way round the square, then strolled through the garden, admiring the strawberry plants, the lettuces in neat rows, the patches of tarragon and sage and three kinds of mint, the large rosemary bush. I sat for a while, taking off my jacket and letting the psoriasis soak up the sun. I closed my eyes and thought of nothing.

  Finally I roused myself and got up to look at the attached church. It was a huge place, as big as a cathedral, but all the chairs and the altar had been removed, and paintings were hung on all the walls. I'd never seen a church blatantly used as a gallery. I stood in the doorway admiring the effect of a large empty space hanging over the paintings, swamping and diminishing them.