by Edmund White
It wasn’t indifference that guided her but deep exhaustion, a total abnegation of enthusiasm, which was so at odds with Texas pep.
I asked her, “So why are you here on the forty acres, in Austin?”
She said, sighing, almost groaning, “I’m here working on Virginia Woolf’s papers. For some reason they are here in the Airy Rensome Library.”
Oh, I thought, that’s her cute way of saying the Harry Ransom.
“I’m comparing her to Nathalie Sarraute, a French writer you’ve probably never heard of.”
“You’re a hundred percent right there.”
“Why do you want to learn French?” she asked, as if it were Swahili. Or as if I were unworthy of it.
“Fashion!” I said. “I want to work in fashion.”
“Not in those sneakers, you don’t—just kidding!” She touched my arm with her hand as though smoothing the part she might have burned. “I have an aunt—enfin, a sort of cousine—who works for Givenchy.”
When I beamed my Tri-Delt smile, she said, “You know Givenchy?”
“And how! I adore him.”
“Do you know him personally?”
“Oh, no. I just love his work.”
“My cousine is his public relation.” She looked strangely smug at her specialized vocabulary. “Of course, Givenchy are being only snob because she’s a species of countess or something.”
“My word, your cousin is a countess! Isn’t that like royalty?!”
“Not really. But she is a good species of countess … if you care about silly old things like that.” I figured that by “species” she must mean “type.” Now I know she was translating “espèce,” which is slightly contemptuous. I guess it’s what today we’d call a humble-brag.
“You’ve got to teach me French.” I paused and then asked suspiciously, “Does that mean you’re a countess, too?”
“Oh, no. That is too stupid! When I had my rallye the invitation called me a baronne—first I’d heard of it.”
“Golly—is that like baroness? You’re royalty, too! It must be so, so wonderful being a baroness: that’s what I long to be. Through marriage, of course.”
She sighed and shrugged, but I could tell she was pleased.
“I think it’s great you’re working even though you are a baroness. That’s very American of you.”
She held up her index finger and tick-tocked it back and forth reprovingly. “Là, there you are very mistaken, my friend. I am very, very poor. Many of us old régime aristocracy are very poor.” She smiled primly.
“Old regime?”
“Here’s a lesson. The ancien régime, repeat after me: ancien régime.”
“Ancient regime.”
“Ha-ha, not bad.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ve heard of Lewis Sixteen? Or Mary Antoine? Head chop-chop?” And she mimed with her right hand a guillotine falling.
“Oh!” I said. “Marie Antoinette and King Looey the Sixteenth?”
“You’re very cultivée for an American.”
“I went to a good school.”
“In New York? Boston?” she asked encouragingly. But when I said “Dallas,” she made a face and informed me, “That is in Texas,” as if it were an open-and-shut case, a bad one.
Little did I suspect, but Pauline would be my entrée into a whole new world, the world not of Paris fashion but of Paris aristocracy. I would take conversation lessons from her three times a week for three years. I never learned to read or write and after all these years I still write French “like a cow,” as they would say, but I learned to speak with a perfect accent, even a perfect r, and I acquired a big, if not huge, vocabulary, except when it comes to the technical words of a glazier, say, or a chimney sweep (though I learned that the “little chimney sweep”—le petit ramoneur—had a very dirty meaning and most ramoneurs were considered Gypsy thieves who would clean out your hole—and house).
It turned out I had my sister’s gift for languages, though my French is better than her Spanish ever was. Maybe because Pauline was so rude about my slack-lipped Texas accent, I was cured of it in a matter of months, and to this day Parisian friends who know my exquisite, idiomatic French are astonished when they hear my mushy Texas English. I used to have in Paris an answering machine in which I said my message in both languages: “Je vous prie de me laisser un message après le signale sonaire; please leave me an itty-bitty little message when you hear the bip.” I’d say I rose a whole social class just by switching languages, not to mention my advantageous marriage.
I brought Pauline home for Thanksgiving. Daddy thought she was very pretty and smart. She adored Yvette, whom she considered a “real person,” and she accepted Daddy as “amusing,” which I realized later conveyed a very limited approval. I constantly pumped her for an insider’s information on fashion and the French aristocracy. Those were my two great passions, though they were only side interests for Pauline. But she could see how I snapped to when she mentioned my subjects, and maybe she began to pad them out (in a plausible way, to be sure) once she discovered they could be used pedagogically.
Now three decades have gone by. We have CNN here in Paris and the other day someone called and told me to turn it on. There was a middle-aged Mexican man with a thick mustache. The legend on the screen identified him as Hector Colimas, the little boy my sister saved in Austin that day, her first miracle. Of course, I knew my poor deceased sister had already been named a Venerable and the Vatican was right now deciding whether or not to make her a Blessed. Mother Cabrini and Elizabeth Ann Seton were the only American female saints, I believe. I was so depressed seeing what an ugly man Hector had become. He was being interviewed about the “miracle” right here in Texas, as he said, that had led to her being named a Venerable. The altar in Austin looked like a jukebox.
CHAPTER 5
For my spring semester abroad I arrived at the big old-fashioned apartment of Pauline’s grandmother on the Avenue Mozart (she’d taught me to say “Moh-Zar,” not “Moht-zart” as we pronounce it—correctly, I might add) with seventeen pieces of luggage and an extra taxi. For the door on the ground floor Pauline had given me the “code,” whatever that was. I saw a panel with some numbers and punched them and wedged my hatbox in the heavy wood door, lacquered teal blue and adorned with a heavy round brass knocker. Though I’d tipped them extravagantly the drivers had just dumped my bags on the sidewalk. I moved them all into the building’s big entrance hall, which had rather dirty black-and-white tiles and smelled of fish (cod, as I later learned, since the concierge was Portuguese and ate nothing but bacalao). She looked suspiciously out through her lace-curtained window and disappeared. Wasn’t it her job to help me?
The elevator was big enough for only two people. I decided to haul everything up in three trips to the fifth floor and the entrance to Mme de Castiglione’s apartment (in French with two p’s, appartement). When I got everything up there I sat on my suitcase for three minutes till I stopped perspiring, then rang her bell. I didn’t expect her to hug me, exactly, but I did expect her to greet me in slow but precise French with a formality and a certain warmth.
Instead she looked at my mountain of matching Vuitton luggage, put her hands on her hips, and snarled, “Mais non! C’est impossible! Vous exaggerez, ma chère. You have rented only a chambre de bonne, a maid’s room one floor up, and you can never fit all that—” She made a wide, despairing gesture and tilted back her head, lips downturned.
“This is not the Ritz. Oh, non, full of American clothes, no doubt.”
Still clucking like a broody hen, she gave me a key to my room and said, “I’ll see you at eight for dinner,” then slammed the door. I sat down on my biggest suitcase and sobbed. But I decided to be peppy and happy, like a true Tri-Delt, and within three minutes had pulled myself together, carried all my bags up in three elevator trips, found the right door, and let myself into a maid’s room with a sink, no toilet, one window, a room no bigger than my closet in Da
llas, the narrowest bed I’d ever seen with the thinnest mattress and just one coffee-stained blanket and a pillow, which, if you peeked under its crisp white pillowcase, you saw had turned tobacco-yellow with years of sweat. Other people’s sweat. There was no closet and no armoire, just three wire hangers stuck into cracks in the wall. Everything smelled of old copper wire—or was that roach spray?
I discovered the toilet behind a curved door halfway down the stairs. It had a bare bulb, nothing to sit on, just two scored ceramic tiles on the floor, where you were supposed to place your feet, squat, and let fly into a stinking hole in the floor. The whole thing was no bigger than a phone booth. I couldn’t see any trace of toilet paper, though some scraps of a newspaper—Le Figaro—were probably intended for mopping up, which might have been okay if you had a bidet, which I didn’t. I assumed the shower was in Mme de Castiglione’s apartment.
No, the whole thing was impossible! I would rent a proper hotel room nearby where I could leak in comfort and hang my clothes and bathe but I would pretend to live here so I could still have my total immersion in French (if not in soapy water) and eat French food and participate in the life of impoverished aristocrats. Tomorrow I’d get my hotel room while Madame was out and tip two bellboys to move my luggage. And get myself some great croissants (I’d researched a patisserie across the street called La Flûte Enchantée). Next door there was supposed to be an art nouveau hotel with green glazed tiles and the inevitable dragonflies (libellules). Something built by Hector Guimard, the man who did those wonderful old noodle metro entrances under the fanning pebbled glass awnings.
It was only six o’clock, so I decided to go out for a walk. I was in a very tight skirt and bright colors and high, high heels. It took me a moment to realize I had to push a button to release the front door.
Everyone looked at me oddly, the men with interest and the women with disapproval, or was I just being paranoid? Although it was January, the air was surprisingly warm and pregnant with moisture, as if it might rain at any moment, stop the moment after—and it wouldn’t really matter except to my hair. I looked around for the Flûte Enchantée—and spied it! And it was open. I walked in and queued up behind four rather dowdy older women and rehearsed what I would say, but the other customers looked at me and one even clucked, whereas a saucy teen behind the counter pretended he’d just touched something hot with his hand, hissed, and shook his fingers in the air as if to cool them off. In my best French I said, “A crescent, s’il vous plait,” and the cheeky teen scrunched up his face in confusion and the man behind me said, “Elle veut un croissant,” and tipped his hat. I smiled. The boy said,“C’est trop tard, y’a plus.” The man translated (very loudly), “NOT MORE.” I smiled my thanks. When I finally chose a coffee-cream pyramid called a “nun,” une religieuse, the clerk waved his hand impatiently, as if I were a fly, and then pointed to the cashier. “PAY NOW,” the nice man said.
When I finally returned to my room, I devoured my creamy nun, hoping it would spoil my appetite, since the food was bound to be as austere as my room. I made sure in the cracked mirror that my mouth showed no signs of pastry. I opened my one window and lay down on my sagging bed and stared at my ceiling, which was low and had beams buried in the plaster, rough-hewn supports that looked surprisingly primitive in prissy ol’ Paris. The bells were ringing in several neighborhood churches and the breeze had turned cold. It was January 20.
When I went down to dinner after taking a maid’s bath at the sink (washing under my arms and my neck, my heine and my cooze) and applying fresh makeup and lots of perfume, Mme de Castiglione greeted me at the door, invited me into the shabby salon, indicated where I should sit on the couch, introduced me to her other boarder, Justine Goldwasser, a name she pronounced with an obvious emphasis on the last name, as if to indicate I must avoid saying anything anti-Semitic, which she was implying might be my first impulse in polite conversation.
Justine, I learned after I posed a few questions (Mme de Castiglione later taught me that questions were considered rude in France), had grown up in Zurich. Her first language was Swiss-German though she assured us she was also fluent in “real” German. She was a sullen girl with dirty hair and a dirty face, dressed in an almost laughably anonymous way. She said she wanted to learn French and English, since she was obliged someday to take over the management of the family “palace,” which I learned must mean a luxury hotel in the Alps.
Mme de Castiglione, holding herself erect on the edge of her chair, said, “This is the last occasion we speak English—to welcome Madamoiselle Cravfjord.”
“Crawford,” I corrected.
“Yes,” she repeated, “Cravfjord. This is the elegant French pronunciation. Would you like an aperitif?”
“Don’t go to any bother.”
“I wouldn’t. Elegant French people drinks an aperitif before their souper.”
She stood, poured me a thimbleful of sweet vermouth, and handed it to me. I smiled but her face was blank, or rather composed, like a salad of cooked vegetables pressed and shaped into a dome. “Thank you,” I said. “Merci.”
She said nothing back and I assumed it was inelegant to answer, “You’re welcome,” though I learned later the tacky French-Canadians say, “Vous êtes bienvenu,” a horrible Americanism. The real French might ironically mime doffing a plumed hat and mutter, “Pas de quoi,” making their compatriots smile at the antique foolishness of it all.
“And you?” she said, turning to Justine. “As the Italians say, ‘What beautiful thing have you did today?’ ”
Justine ran a hand through her bushy hair and shrugged. Was she rude or shy? I wondered.
“Eh bien, I have been busy searching the black fabric. See!” Madame de Castiglione pointed to a pile of bunting. “I will put it in the window tomorrow. January twenty-first is when his majesty Louis the Sixteenth was beheaded. For us it is a national day of deuil.”
“Mourning?” I asked. “But I thought France was a republic with a president.”
“Hélas.”
“I looked you up in the encyclopedia,” I said brightly. “They suggested you weren’t ancient regime at all but that the countess of Castiglione was Napoleon the Third’s mistress.”
“My poor Yvonne,” she said. “I never thought I would be discussing my own genealogy—which goes back to the Crusades—with a Texane—oh! How amusing!” And she laughed mirthlessly. “We’re having pas mal of work to make you a lady. Now our aperitif is finish we go in to dinner.” She smiled, showing her bad teeth. “First lesson. Do not talk so loud. Here in Paree we say there are two bad accents—the American and the Cantonese. Mademoiselle, you must lower your voice. Also no loud clothes—but that is tomorrow’s lesson.” Wearing her dirty old sweater (sa petite laine), a blouse yellowed with age, a straight black skirt, and worn-down spool heels, she led the way into the dining room, which was brightly lit (“So we can see our food”), the table outfitted with a patched white damask cloth, matching napkins and an array of forks (the tines turned upside down), two knives—one big, one small, the blades facing out—a soup spoon, and, above the plates, lying horizontally, another soup spoon, all describing, it seemed, some obscure Masonic symbol. The utensils looked from another century, with heavy baroque handles. Three glasses of different sizes, faintly etched with worn gold swirls. The tableware was the only sign of a now-vanished wealth.
“I don’t know where to begin,” I confessed in what I hoped were more moderate tones.
“Yes, we’re a long way from Dallas,” Mme de Castiglione said primly. I wanted to knock her in the puss. “Start from the outside in. And sit up straight, your back not touching the chair, both hands on the table.”
“In Dallas—” I started to explain.
“We’re not in Dallas, heureusement.” She spooned out a watery soup with a ladle from a tureen. She poured a minuscule glass of white wine, which tasted like turpentine.
“What heavenly celery soup,” I lied.
“It’s a classic
soupe de légumes. But we don’t comment on the food. It’s assumed that the cooker made it; of course it’s good. If you are offered seconds you may say, ‘Merci,’ which means no. You may add here, ‘But it is delicious,’ or better, simply, ‘It is very good.’ In aristocratic families the way you hold yourself at table is extremely important; it say everything about how you were elevated. I know in America you eat soup from the side of the spoon, but in Paree from the tip.” And she demonstrated the proper method, like swallowing a liquid medicine. I wanted to ask why, but I knew it was as senseless as challenging the rules of grammar.
“Where were you brought up, Madame?” I asked, wanting to show a Tri-Delt interest in the other and shift the subject away from table manners.
“You must never ask that of a Parisian. It suggests they might have a provincial accent. And you must not ask them what they do for work. What if they don’t work? Many of our best families have never worked.”
“What do you talk about?”
“The movies. That’s safe. Your upcoming holiday in Thailand or Granville, a seaside resort at Normandy, two hours from Paris. Or other people’s sex scandals.”
“You can talk about sex?”
“Of course! Histoires de cul, ass stories, sex stories, considered very gay and osées and amusing. Sex but never money.” I eventually learned that if Americans talk about money to avoid talking about sex, the French discuss sex instead of money. I was thoroughly confused. I had never been at a loss for words before, but now there was a long silence, which I broke by asking, “Are there any good movies playing at the moment?”