Foreign Tongue

by Vanina Marsot

  “Ah, bon,” Clara said. “But this means he can’t ask Laveau for your number, either. You must sit at La Palette every day for the next week,” she said.

  I hadn’t thought of that. “Really?”

  “I don’t have another solution, unless you want to research the name of his agent. He’s an actor, no? I have to go, but I’ll call if I think of anything brilliant,” she promised.

  I had hours to kill before I could go to La Palette. I sat at the computer and cranked out a rough translation, wrote e-mails, including a long, newsy one to my parents, and surfed, catching up on world events. I even checked out a couple of fancy lingerie websites, La Perla and Eres. Through some clever IMDb-ing, I found Olivier’s credits, which were mostly French and Italian TV movies.

  By late afternoon, my insides were doing flapjack somersaults at the thought of seeing him again. Anxiety built a nest in my stomach and settled in to roost.

  I flipped through Tante Isabelle’s music and put on a collection of Argentine tangos. A raspy, mournful voice filled the apartment, accompanied by a dramatic contrabass and a lilting bandonéon. I remembered the night Timothy and I had danced around the floor in socks as he tried to teach me to tango. I’d kept stepping on his toes and apologizing for my clumsiness. He’d taken my chin in his hand and spoken in a fake Spanish accent: “Never apologize to Timoteo for such things, querida.” He’d been joking, but there was something in his look that I didn’t understand.

  I pulled on jeans and a pretty cashmere cardigan edged with lace. I swiped on some eyeliner and left it at that, not wanting to look like I was trying too hard. The tango played in my head as I strolled down the hill. It was l’heure de l’apéritif, and the cafés were packed. Behind the BHV, the big department store, someone had stencil spray-painted two lines: REDOUTER CE QU’ON SOUHAITE, and below it, SOUHAITER CE QU’ON REDOUTE. To fear what you wish for, and to wish for what you fear.

  The creature in my stomach ruffled its feathers in agitation. What did I fear most: Olivier being there or not being there? Did I wish for his presence or his absence? In front of the Hôtel de Ville, a teenager in aviator sunglasses passed out flyers for a theme night at a trendy gay boîte off the Champs-Elysées. A Queen Elizabeth impersonator with pink hair and a tiara held an enormous phallus like a microphone. Glitter script announced this weekend’s “Gode Save The Gouine” party.

  It wasn’t a case of quaintly mistaken orthography. “Gode,” I’d learned from my dictionary of slang, was a dildo. A “gouine” was a lesbian. It was a bilingual pun. I crossed the Seine to La Palette, immediately finding an empty table, a sign that luck was on my side. The familiar mustache appeared in front of me.

  “Bonsoir, Bruno. Vous allez bien?” I asked, risking an impish tone but sticking to the second-person plural.

  “Pffft,” he replied, letting air out through compressed lips. He rattled the coins in his waistcoat. I wasn’t sure if it was an impatient gesture or a tic.

  “Une tasse de thé, s’il vous plaît,” I said, making up my mind. “Earl Grey.”

  “Je ne vous emmène pas les olives, alors,” he grumbled.

  “Pourquoi?” Just because I wasn’t having wine didn’t mean I didn’t want the little dish of olives.

  “Ça ne se mange pas avec le thé, voyons,” he said reprovingly, playfulness in the guise of deadpan disapproval. I felt like a member of the club, especially when he brought a little plate of brown-edged langue de chat cookies with my tea. As I gave him my most winning smile, Olivier sauntered up. He shook hands with Bruno.

  “Mais tu la gâtes, Bruno! Et puis quoi encore?” Olivier accused Bruno of spoiling me, then ordered a coffee. “Je peux?” he asked, pointing to the chair across from me. I nodded, trying to look cool and wishing I’d worn something more feminine: a skirt, heels. Olivier’s hair was an unruly mess, and he wore a gray, cable-knit wool sweater, bisected diagonally by the black strap of his messenger bag. I wanted to bury myself in it and gnaw on the yarn.

  “You know Bruno?” I asked.

  “I live nearby.” He shrugged.

  I nodded, stirred sugar into my tea, and thought, Your turn. He had a serious look on his face. I let the silence stretch out, even though the creature in my stomach squawked in protest. He leaned forward and looked deep into my eyes.

  “I want one of your cookies,” he growled. I moved to offer him one but caught myself. I could play, too. I pretended to think it over.

  “Je regrette. That will not be possible.” I took a careful sip of tea.

  “Then you can’t have your shopping bag,” he shot back, folding his arms.

  “It’s of no use to you,” I pointed out.

  “What do you know? I may have many uses for such pretty lingerie.”

  “You looked inside. Very bad form.” I shook my head.

  “I was curious. Why does she leave so abruptly? Where is she really going?” he asked, leaning forward. “What is in the bag she left behind? It was my only clue.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Et alors? Cats have nine lives. I must have at least one or two left. Cookie?”

  “No.” I bit down on my lower lip to keep from smiling, now a different kind of nervous: Olivier was fun.

  “You’re very ungrateful. I didn’t have to take your lingerie. I could have left it with Bruno or Madame Sollers, and then you would have had to ask them. It would have been very embarrassing,” he said, lean ing back so Bruno could deposit his express on the table. I watched him unwrap a sugar cube and dip it into his coffee. The brown liquid leached into the crystals.

  “It’s called a canard, like a duck, when you do this,” he explained and ate it.

  “I know.”

  “Bien sûr.”

  “‘Canard’ in English means a false story. Not a duck,” I offered. There was a small silence, and loud laughter from the table next to us. Olivier stirred his coffee.

  “In French, ‘canard’ also means newspaper, like Le Canard enchaîné,” he said.

  “That I didn’t know,” I admitted.

  “Hah! Cookie!” he demanded.

  “If I give you a cookie, will you give me my bag?”

  “If I give you your bag, will you stay instead of inventing an excuse to leave?” His tone was light, but the question brought me up short. It was strangely intimate, that he knew I’d lied and said so, and in the same sentence told me he wanted me to stay. It made me feel like I’d been found out, as if some shameful thing I’d been trying to hide, like a four-foot-long bushy tail or cloven feet, was both obvious and somehow beside the point. Or that my embarrassment should have been about the act of hiding something, and not about having something to hide.

  I looked down at my lap, at the people at the next table, anywhere but at Olivier. Redouter ce qu’on souhaite. Souhaiter ce qu’on redoute. My face grew hot. I didn’t know what to say. It was a relief when he spoke.

  “Remind me. What does the duck say in English?” he asked gently, like he was letting me off the hook.

  “Quack quack,” I answered.

  “Comme c’est débile. A duck says ‘coin coin.’”

  “Oh, shush. Have a cookie,” I said, offering him the plate.

  “I am not so easily bought off.” He bit into a cookie. “Or distracted. What happened last night? Did I say something wrong?” He rubbed his fingers together, shaking off crumbs, looking at me.

  Timothy had accused me once of being too good a poker player, of never showing my hand. “Half the time, I have no idea what’s going on with you,” he’d said.

  “Okay,” I said, taking a leap. “I had a great time with you and your sister. But I don’t know how much of this”—I waved my hands in the air—“is about trying to get information about Monsieur Laveau’s writer.” He stiffened, like I’d insulted him. I felt my face redden, but I pressed on, explaining, “I’m a little self-protective these days.”

  “Et?”

  “C’est tout,” I said.

&nbs
p; He nodded. “It is disarming, when you speak directly,” he said, but his voice had taken on a formal, almost distant tone.

  “I wish I did it more.” I grimaced. He looked away, then back at me.

  “Listen, it’s not sinister,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I’m interested in Bernard’s writer, but I’m working on him. I don’t even know for sure that he’s the person you’re translating. C’est compliqué. Can we have dinner soon, and I’ll tell you about it?” It wasn’t the best answer in the world, but I could live with it. I nodded.

  He looked at his watch. “I must go,” he said and tapped the table. “Je peux t’appeler?”

  I gave him my phone numbers and watched as he programmed them into his cell phone. He opened his bag and pulled out my rumpled shopping bag.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m very glad I didn’t lose it.”

  He leaned over the table. “I’ll call you,” he said and kissed me on the mouth, hard. He walked away, and I sat there, running my fingers over my lips.

  Someone said something, but I wasn’t listening. It became more insistent, until finally, Pascal put a hand on my shoulder, shaking me out of my reverie.

  “Oh, là, tu dors?” he asked. “What are you doing in the ’hood?” I squinted up at him, wondering where he was learning all his American slang. He waved at Bruno and signaled for two glasses of wine. “Eh, oh! You’re not sleeping, you’re dreaming,” he said, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “What’s his name?” he asked, guessing.

  “I’m not telling you. You’ll only make fun of me,” I said.

  “Why, is he famous?” he asked, joking.

  “No, not really,” I said, but I must’ve looked guilty. He gave me a sharp look. “An actor,” I confessed.

  “Ah, non! Mais ça ne va pas la tête?” he asked, rapidly tapping his temple with his index finger, the French national gesture for “What the hell is wrong with you?” or “Are you insane?” With minor variations in tapping speed and facial expression, it’s employed for everything from mild insanity to the ultimate outrage, bad driving. They go wild with the temple tap at l’Etoile.

  “Didn’t you say you were never getting involved with another man in the entertainment industry?” His mouth set in a thin horizontal line of disapproval.

  “But that was in Los Angeles!” I protested.

  “It was not. You said it here. I heard you. You said it to me,” he said.

  “Well, I meant it about Los Angeles,” I muttered.

  He slapped his pack of cigarettes against his palm, then took one out and lit it. “I’m meeting Florian for dinner. You want to join us?” he asked, exhaling smoke.

  I shook my head and kissed him good-bye. I swung my shopping bag as I floated home through the Marais.

  14

  Il y a deux histoires: l’histoire officielle, menteuse, puis l’histoire secrète, où sont les véritables causes des événements.*

  —HONORÉ DE BALZAC

  The sheets were cold and the memory came to me before I could stop myself. One of the things I missed most about Timothy was how warm he was. His body was like a furnace, it heated the whole bed. He didn’t mind my cold hands and feet. “Wrap yourself around me,” he’d say, and I’d twine around him like a vine, comme une liane, finding a nook in his neck for my nose. I thought that was what love was, someone who warmed you up when you were cold.

  I felt a sharp pang, half longing, half loss. I rubbed my feet against each other to warm them up, and thought about Los Angeles. One of my favorite things about living in California was getting in a hot car on a cold day. The heat enveloped you, seeping into your pores like a sauna until it got unbearable and you had to open the window because even your teeth were hot. I burrowed under the duvet and forced my thoughts away from Timothy, imagining instead what warming myself up with Olivier would feel like.

  I looked over the manuscript in the morning, but it didn’t read the way I’d remembered. Sure, they went to Venice and had a big fight, but now it seemed poignant, even charming. Was I half-asleep when I read it the first time? Feeling bitter and jaded? Was my mood so different now? Puzzled, I sat in front of the computer and rewrote the second half of the chapter.

  We ate in a restaurant under a ceiling made from the ribs of an old sailing ship. We had tagliarini alla granseola, pasta with Adriatic sea crab, a Venetian specialty. I told her about the sea creatures that lived in the canals, the odd crayfish and fleshy eels. I told her about the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on the earth, and the fish that lived at the bottom of the ocean. Strange fish, with sharp, glassine teeth; fish with hanging lanterns above their heads so they could see in the abysmal dark; fish who lived their lives in a permanent night under the terrible pressure of the water.

  Fish tales, she said.

  I made a note to find out if the expression “fish tales” means the same thing in French as it does in English.

  It is only fitting, she said. I caught her hand across the table, holding the fingers captive. I turned it over and stroked the inside of her arm. The soft skin was like a secret revealed, translucent, traced with a fine blue-green network of veins. The skin on her breasts was nearly transparent as well, revealing her bloodstream as plainly as the lacy veining on a leaf. I thought of an old lover, Fimi: a white-blond Finnish girl with pale lashes and brows. Her skin was white, with a bluish tint, like a water creature: a sprite.

  We strolled away from San Marco after dinner, walking in the cold, damp air. The crowds thinned and dwindled, until it seemed we were alone in the city. At night, La Serenissima had an air at once enchanting and perilous, as if angels and monsters lurked around each corner.

  “It’s a city of stories,” Eve remarked, as we stopped to look out over a canal. “I read one in an English book once,” she said. “An old lady, a French grandmother, goes to visit Venice. She’d been famous in her youth for her beauty, and had had many lovers. She’d married well, had children and several grandchildren. When her husband died, she decided to travel, revisit the cities of the classic Grand Tour with her favorite cousin.

  “In Venice, on a small canal, they came upon an exquisite, Moorish-style, pink house. Mysteriously drawn to it, they rang the doorbell and asked to visit. A caretaker told them the house had been uninhabited for years, but he would show them around.

  “They toured the drawing rooms, with furniture covered in white sheets. There were elaborate ceiling frescoes and tall windows hung with faded silk. The caretaker pointed out various features of the house, and the grandmother became distant and odd, as if she were warding off a chill, or an illness. When at last they were shown the master bedroom, her face cleared. She walked into the center of the room and announced, ‘If, on the night table, there is a box with a key on a black ribbon, this house belongs to me.’

  “There was, as well as a letter addressed to her. A former lover had given her the house decades ago, and she’d forgotten about it until being there triggered the memory.”

  Eve looked out over the water and smiled. “How I’d love to be like her when I’m eighty,” she said. “To have lived so much! Imagine traveling through Italy and discovering a Venetian palazzo a former lover had left you.”

  “Do you want a Venetian palazzo?” I asked.

  “No!” she exclaimed. “I want to be a respectable grandmother who had a scandalous youth. Don’t you understand?” Eve pulled her shawl around her shoulders.

  I thought I recognized the story but couldn’t place it. Maybe I’d read the same book. I knew what she meant, though: I understood yearning for a rich, adventurous life to look back on.

  “Now, I’ve a Venetian story for you,” I said. “A foreign businessman came to Venice. His meetings finished late, and he found himself stuck in town, as there was no train home that night. Since he was in a city fabled for its beauty, he decided to treat himself to an expensive dinner and an expensive companion. The concierge was unable to help him with the latter. ‘Signore, I regret to i
nform you there is no red-light district in Venice,’ he said. But the concierge’s assistant chased after him. ‘My uncle may be able to help,’ he said. ‘If anyone knows, he does.’

  “The foreigner was directed through a maze of streets to the uncle’s antiques shop. Dark and nondescript from the exterior, inside it was an Ali Baba’s cavern of treasures: Moroccan lanterns, Persian ceramics, Indian beds, and Turkish kilims. There were chairs inlaid with mother-of-pearl, mosaic tables, tapestries, and blown-glass vases and lamps. In the back, the foreigner found a wizened man with old-fashioned spectacles and a crafty demeanor. He explained his problem.

  “‘I have the solution,’ said the old man. ‘I have a book I will sell you. Oh! A rare book, the only one of its kind. Inside, there is a name and an address. You may have it for this sum,’ he said, naming a figure and placing the book in front of the foreigner. It was bound in gold-stamped leather, a handsome artifact. Having come this far, the foreigner pulled out his wallet and paid him.

  “Inside the book he found a name and an address. He studied his map and, after losing his way several times, found his way to the address indicated. He rang the doorbell of a crumbling palazzo. A man answered the door. The foreigner asked for the woman whose name he’d found in the book. ‘Well, she lived here,’ said the man, startled. ‘But signore, that was over sixty years ago. She was the last prostitute in Venice.’”

  I liked that they were telling each other stories, though I liked hers better. I saved the draft. The phone rang. It was Olivier.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Working on the translation,” I said, happy to hear his voice.

  “You say these things just to provoke me.”

  “Yes.” I smiled. I could hear the way it changed my voice.

  “I know it’s the last minute, but would you like to come to a cocktail party tonight? There will be some interesting people. You might enjoy it,” he said. His voice was smooth, nearly viscous. It poured into my ear. Silver-tongued, the Greeks used to say. Mielleux, the French say: honeylike.