Pardon My French

by Allen Johnson

  On this point my philosophy was resolute. I would not allow a single, unhappy encounter to color my perception of an entire nation. And besides, there were always those very special people who made everything worthwhile—people like Marie-Françoise.

  * * *

  HOW DOES ONE CALCULATE THE COST OF ABSOLUTE LIBERTY? What is the cost of all the lost workdays accumulated each week across the nation by striking workers? What price do you attach to the thousands of French men, women, and children who lose their lives on the roads and highways of France each year? What is the price of entitlement and narcissism masquerading as liberty?

  I don’t know the answers to these questions. They are too expansive and impersonal to comprehend. I can tell you from a personal perspective that absolute liberty—liberty without the temperance of equality and fraternity—will destroy a relationship.

  I want to share a story about a Frenchwoman I met in France—how I fell in love with her, not in a romantic sense, but as any compassionate man or woman cares deeply about the spiritual and intellectual well-being of another human being. I will call the woman Sharice.

  I met her at a Christmas party at the home of a friend in Pérols. The woman was standing alone in the kitchen, sipping from a flute of champagne. She was lean, with thick dark-brown hair that was cut short and close to her face—a style that accented her high cheekbones and hazel eyes. I placed her in her mid-forties. Standing there alone, holding the stem of the champagne flute with the fingertips of both hands, she looked pensive and a little sad. I decided to speak to her.

  “I was hoping to find someone who was not engaged in conversation,” I said. “May I speak with you?”

  Shaken from her reverie, the woman looked at me and smiled. “Of course,” she said.

  “My name is Allen.”

  “I’m Sharice.”

  I really don’t enjoy cocktail parties where the conversation revolves around weather, sports, or politics. So I sidestepped all of that and asked a personal question—a practice that most French (and many Americans for that matter) find surprising, if not intimidating. On the other hand, there are a precious few who consider the tactic refreshing. Sharice fell into the latter camp. “Tell me, Sharice, you look a little sad tonight. Do you have the blues?” She knew the meaning of the word “blues”; the French have adopted the American word into their vocabulary.

  Sharice looked into my eyes to gauge my sincerity. I held her gaze.

  “Perhaps a little,” she admitted.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Oh, there is not much to tell.” Then, after a pause, “No, that’s not true. There is a lot to tell, but you seem like a nice man, and I really don’t want to trouble you with my little problems.”

  “It’s no trouble,” I said truthfully.

  She must have believed me because she began speaking softly and slowly about her three children, whom she adored, and her husband, an alcoholic, whom she could not abide. In fact, she was in the process of filing for a divorce. Our conversation lasted close to an hour. When we said goodbye, I told her I hoped that I would see her again one day.

  That wish came true. In fact, we saw quite a bit of each other. I told Nita about Sharice, and we had her over for dinner. Later, I went on a couple of hikes with her in the Cévennes mountain range. I enjoyed her company. I always felt that I did not need to censor my thoughts with her. I could be silly or profound and never feel misunderstood or criticized, even when my French was labored. It was a good feeling, and I told her so.

  After I have spent some time with someone, I always wonder if the person could be one of my “golden friends.” To explain, a “golden friend” is a lifelong companion, someone with whom I can be transparent and nonjudgmental and expect the same in return. They are hard to find—I have maybe a dozen at the most—but when found, they are invaluable.

  I do not blithely ask someone if he or she would like to join my very exclusive club. I must see something in them that is magical. They must be perceptive, curious, and intellectually alive. They should also be playful, funny, unmannered, and a little irreverent. Most importantly, they must know how to listen, not to problem-solve, but to understand. They do not turn what someone else has said from the heart into a springboard for their own monologue. They seek to better understand. The job requirements are tough. I figure that only one in a thousand can pass muster. But I thought that Sharice had the right stuff.

  “I’d like to be your friend for a lifetime,” I finally told her one day.

  “But why?” she asked. “I have so many problems.”

  “Who doesn’t? It’s called living.”

  “But why me?”

  “Well, for starters you are charming and intelligent and funny. Will that do?”

  Sharice looked down and smiled, a timorous look of self-satisfaction. “I don’t know if I deserve you,” she said wistfully.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said, feigning resignation, “you don’t deserve me.”

  She gave me a rabbit punch to the arm.

  One weekend, we had planned to take in an early movie and then dinner. She was to meet Nita and me at our apartment at five o’clock that evening. She didn’t show. There was no phone call, no email message—nothing. She didn’t answer her phone. When I did finally manage to reach her three days later, she seemed very cavalier.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I was feeling pretty depressed, I guess.”

  “Well, come on over,” I said. “Let’s talk about it.”

  “No, not today.”

  That was not the last time Sharice blew off a rendezvous. A few weeks later, she missed a meeting for a luncheon and then, a month after that, a half-day hike along the seashore. And in each case, there was no warning and no apology.

  Two days after the last rebuff, I saw her walking away from me in the parking lot at Carrefour. Although I called her by name, she did not stop. I called louder. Still no response. I was not going to let her get away with that. I chased her down, grabbed her by the arm, and swung her around.

  “Hey, Sharice. Hold on a minute.”

  “Allen! How are you?” she said, kissing me on both cheeks.

  “Well, okay, but I’m a little confused about you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean our rendezvous two days ago. That’s what I mean.”

  She said nothing.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, my life is a mess,” she said.

  “Okay, I understand. Maybe I can help you with that, but not if you’re going to continue standing me up.”

  Sharice was now looking at the ground.

  “I love you,” I continued. “I meant it when I said I wanted to be a friend for a lifetime, but je ne peux pas compter sur toi, I can’t count on you. I will always be your friend, but I will not allow you to abuse me.”

  I could see Sharice recoil on those words. “I’m sorry,” she said. She put her arms around me and gave me a long, hard hug, kissing me on the neck before releasing me. I knew at that moment that I had lost her.

  After that Sharice would not respond to any of my email messages. She never spoke to me again. I still miss her, and I still love her. I have not given up on her. I still send her an email message from time to time to wish her a happy birthday or to let her know that the door is always open. She continues to be silent.

  When liberty becomes a pass to ignore a friend, when liberty becomes an excuse to wallow in depression, the strain on a friendship is unsupportable. I probably should add a few other job requirements for “golden friendship”: self-confidence, optimism, and trustworthiness.

  What cost is absolute liberty? For me the toll is impossible to calculate. What price should I place on friendship? What value should I ascribe to human intimacy? That is the cost—and not one heartache less.

  What is the source of French indulgence?

  In a discussion with Gérald, a retired French special forces colonel, I want
ed to understand what he saw as the source of his country’s unbridled personal freedom.

  “Our motto—Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité—born out of the French Revolution, is an important part of our national heritage.”

  “Especially liberté,” I offered.

  “Yes, especially liberté. In fact, I am afraid that égalité is less important, and fraternité is nearly extinct. We seem to only remember liberté.”

  “But liberty without equality or fraternity is empty, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes. And that’s the problem. Are you familiar with the events of May 1968?”

  I was. It was a massive revolt—nearly a revolution—that was in part fueled by the anti-Vietnam War protests in the United States. It was not long before the movement crossed the Atlantic. Beginning with anti-war demonstrations at Nanterre and Sorbonne Universities, the student revolt quickly captured the attention of underpaid union workers. At one point thousands of students battled the police in the streets. One hundred and twenty-two factories were occupied, and ten million workers, comprising two-thirds of the workforce, were on strike.

  As quickly as the revolt had ignited, it was as quickly extinguished when the French government drew up an agreement with the largest Communist-backed union that was occupying the factories. The laborers returned to work, leaving the students isolated in their revolt, which in any case was abating with the approach of summer vacation.

  “That revolt,” Gérald explained, “brought about some good. For example, it helped women enter the workforce. But it also did a great deal of harm.”

  “How so?”

  “In education the adherence to hierarchy was broken down. Before 1968 the professor had complete power. After 1968 that power was shared with the students. Don’t get me wrong. Education was in need of reform. In the old system the student was not allowed to interact with the professor. The students’ education was built almost entirely on memorization. Education was too rigid. But the changes that came out of 1968 have gone too far. Today high school and college professors have little control over their students. Many consider it to be the decline of French education.”

  “Were there other changes?” I asked.

  “We changed in the same way the United States evolved after the 1960s. Morally, culturally, sexually, intellectually. It was a different world—a more indulgent world. We became trop égoïstes, too selfish. Parents became overly permissive, ultimately losing control of their children. Sexual mores became more relaxed. Street demonstrations and strikes became the weapons of political change and, all too often, frivolous gripes.”

  Gérald’s observations reminded me of just how nonsensical strikes had become in France. One day I discovered to my consternation that the Montpellier tram was shut down because a teenager in a rough neighborhood had tossed a brick at a streetcar. The response from the tram conductors was to go on strike for increased security—abandoning thousands of Montpellier residents who depended on the tram for daily transportation.

  Gérald continued. “After the 1960s work was seen as an evil necessity or, at best, an institution to serve the pleasures of the employee and not the interests of the employer.”

  I had certainly seen evidence of Gérald’s last point. Each year French federal workers enjoy a thirty-five hour workweek and twenty-five days of vacation (thirteen more days than American workers). Despite that schedule, the French routinely told me that work was something to be endured, not enjoyed.

  One French electrical engineer told me that the French live for vacation. He theorized that the decline in work satisfaction occurred in the early 1990s when the workforce was increasingly absorbed by the age of information and technology. “As a nation, we stopped creating a product and, instead, started transferring data. It is difficult for an employee to become passionate about his work when his only source of communication is a machine. It became natural to crave the human contact that is now absent from the workplace. The solution? More vacation.”

  Several French executives told me that they actually preferred working with their American colleagues. When I asked why, I was told that Americans enjoyed work. They were serious, diligent, punctual, and goal oriented. “It was always a pleasure to collaborate with my American friends,” one IBM manager told me. “They appreciate hard work.”

  The French are well aware of their more relaxed attitude toward work. They even make jokes about it, as made evident in a full-page cartoon in the September 14, 2002 issue of Madame Figaro. The drawing depicted a male candidate for employment sitting across the desk from a bank executive. The caption read, “I have chosen to orientate myself toward the banking sector because someone told me that you have lots of tall single blonds with great bodies.”

  I described the cartoon to Gérald.

  “Yes,” he said, “humor is often very close to the truth.”

  I wanted to go deeper. “Can you give me a specific example of a cultural change in France?”

  “It used to be that lessons on morality were presented several days a week in our elementary schools. That ended after 1968. It was as though morality suddenly became old-fashioned. There is some talk about reinstituting lessons on morality, but it hasn’t happened yet.” (Gérald lent me a copy of a morality text designed for high school students—a 1920 publication entitled Morale: Instruction Civique—Droit Privé, Économie, Politique. It included such staples as courage, goodness, integrity, and civility.)

  “What do you see for the future?”

  Gérald shook his head. “I tend to be a positive kind of person. But frankly, I don’t see positive changes happening quickly. Today’s young people are the children and grandchildren of those who protested in the streets in 1968. Those children have grown accustomed to a liberal lifestyle. Every political administration talks about reform, but the problem is this: Cultural changes always run deeper than political referendums.

  “But I will say this,” Gérald continued. “We know that we have a problem, and we are concerned. That awareness is the beginning of change. It will not happen in my lifetime. It may not happen in my children’s lifetime. But I think that the French people will grow so weary of the current state of chaos that change will inevitably occur. It may not swing back to the way it was before 1968—we wouldn’t want that anyway because life was too rigid—but some order has to return. I have some faith—well, call it more a wish than faith—that things will change someday.”

  When I first spoke to Gérald, I wondered if his observations were unique. But the more I spoke to the French, the more I realized that his thoughts were a reflection of the general population, at least the mature population. The reaction of youth is predictable. Young people will always call for greater freedom with less responsibility, but French adults are ready for the trinity of liberté, égalité, and fraternité to be equally balanced. They know that liberté without égalité is injustice and that liberté without fraternité is narcissism.

  One evening I had a quiet conversation with a French couple with whom I had been a friend for thirty years. I will call them Antoine and Sandrine. At one point, we began talking about our future goals.

  “I will not be here that long,” Sandrine said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “When I am fifty-five, I will commit suicide,” she said in a steady voice.

  I stared in disbelief at my friend. Sandrine was then fifty-two years old, an avid cyclist, and in perfect health. I could see in her eyes that she was serious.

  “My God, Sandrine, why would you even say such a thing?” I asked.

  “It is simple,” she said. “After fifty-five your health begins to deteriorate. Your body becomes soft and your mind addled. You have done everything you are going to do. There is no sense in continuing.”

  I looked at Antoine, who was sitting quietly next to his wife. I asked him what he thought of Sandrine’s statement.

  “Yes, she has said that before,” Antoine said matter-of-factly with a faint s
mile that suggested it was out of his control.

  When I asked Sandrine about her responsibility to family and friends, she responded, “They have their lives to live, and I have mine. I have a perfect right to end my life as I choose.”

  As of this writing, Sandrine is now fifty-four years old.

  Interestingly, according to the 2013 United Nations Human Development Report, male suicides are forty percent more frequent in France than in the United States. And Frenchwomen commit suicide eighty-nine percent more frequently than American women.

  Unbridled liberty has its toll. When any nation—France and, yes, the United States—is more concerned with liberty over equality and fraternity, the richness and sacredness of the community is placed at risk. Is any social erosion more dangerous than that?

  CHAPTER 7

  Making Friends

  BEFORE LEAVING THE STATES, I worried about making friends in France. “Maybe they won’t like me,” I said to my French friend, Nathalie, shamelessly fishing for a compliment.

  “Oh, not to worry,” Nathalie said to me in French. “There are over sixty million people in France; you’re sure to find someone who likes you. I suggest you start in Lille and work your way south.”

  Happily, making friends was not a problem, notably due to a wonderful and relatively new French tradition, la foire des associations (the fair of associations).

  One weekend in September, all the clubs and associations within a community set up booths in a central square. In Montpellier, a city of 250,000 inhabitants, there were nearly 1,100 booths scattered throughout a one-hundred acre neighborhood called Antigone. Built in the 1970s to accommodate thousands of French citizens who left Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence, Antigone is a magnificent community of apartments, business offices, shops, and four central squares. Designed by Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill, this massive neo-classical housing project was constructed with prestressed concrete that has the look and feel of stone. The four in-line squares run the length of the development and are so expansive and uncluttered that I felt as though I were strolling from one massive acropolis to the next.