Lessons in French: A Novel

by Hilary Reyl

With the opening of every envelope she gave me a quick portrait of the sender so that I would be able to recognize him or her when we did meet. The cast of characters sounded fascinating. And the events we had missed were fabulous. There was a soirée where we almost definitely would have seen “Sam” Beckett. There was a note from Salman Rushdie’s French publisher. We had to answer that one carefully. There were art openings and wine tastings, some in New York, some in Paris, a hunting party in England, a cocktail party for the New Yorker in Rome. It all blended into an enticing swirl of missed faces and events gone by, the stuff of future dreams.

  “Thank you, Katherine. I could never have faced all that alone,” said Lydia as the sky through her office window started to darken. “Now, I think we’ve earned a peach Kir, don’t you?”

  I dared to look at my watch to see how much time stood between me and Olivier. It was almost five o’clock. Three hours. I would have a drink with Lydia, excuse myself around six, spend half an hour showering and dressing, head back to the Marais and our horseshoe bar.

  “Absolutely, it’s time for a Kir. We have earned it,” I echoed, flooded with relief at my complicity with Lydia.

  “Listen, before we go knock off, I have to mention something. I couldn’t help but notice in your notebook some jottings about fashion journalism. I know Clarence is getting you to help out on his book. He’s having you transcribe the things he says into that little tape-recorder thing of his, isn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I don’t mind,” she continued. “Really, it’s okay. It means he trusts you and I’m happy for him that he has someone he can rely on a little so he doesn’t feel so at sea in this whole process. This book is a big deal for him. He needs to publish. Nothing has happened in his career in years and it’s very, very hard for him. Very hard for a man with his intelligence, especially since I’m so visible. You understand, don’t you? This sabbatical is a crucial time for him. And there’s a big risk that he’s going to lose his focus on the fashion thing, for which he already has a book contract and which is where he needs to be concentrating his energy. He could blow it and start trying to publish articles on the whole Muslim fundamentalist fiasco. He keeps talking about translating his theories about capitalism into some explanation of what’s going on. And he’s in so far over his head he has no idea. If he tries this he will be a laughingstock, an absolute laughingstock. I love the man, but current events are not his strong suit, and what he needs right now is a critical academic success. So, anything you can do to help him stay on target and in the nineteenth century has my blessing. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Absolutely.” My alliance had so shifted to my boss that I too saw Clarence in shades of pity.

  “And there’s no need for him to know we’ve had this conversation. Obviously, we both want what’s best for him.”

  “Obviously.” Line for line, I was reflecting back to her. I couldn’t help myself.

  “Oh, and, if I’m not too tired, we may have to do a bit more work this evening.”

  “A bit more?” My inner world shook.

  “I doubt I can handle it, but if the force is with me we should begin transcribing some of the interviews of my German subjects. There’s a massive amount to do.” She dug her eyes into my face. “You look pale. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of work?”

  “No, not at all. It’s just that I had plans tonight, but—”

  “Oh, I see,” she snapped. “Well, never mind then. No work if you have plans.”

  “Thanks.” I found I could still breathe. “I could do it late tomorrow night if that’s good. Or any other night or through the weekend.”

  “You know,” she clucked, “we may just have to do tonight. We’ll see. We have a deadline tomorrow. But I’ll make a call to my editor. You should probably be fine for your plan. And I’m exhausted anyway. Although I feel better now after dealing with that avalanche of mail.”

  Lamely, I aspired to buoyancy. “Cool.” But my voice cracked.

  “Well now, it’s time for that drink. What do you say?” And she stood up, opened the office door and yelled down the hallway, “Clarence, darling, Katherine and I are ready for our crème de pêche!”

  fifteen

  After Kirs with Clarence and Lydia, and her joking assurance that he and she were going out in the neighborhood tonight for a proper bourgeois grande bouffe to celebrate her arrival, pity I couldn’t join them, I went to dress for my final date with Olivier.

  I showered and primped. I even dabbed perfume from my free sample collection. Chanel No. 5. Then, after two applications of lotion, I dressed. Black leggings and an off-the-shoulder gray dress in softest sweatshirt material. I put on mascara. I pulled on heels.

  I slipped a fresh pair of underwear and some flats into my bag, locked my door, unlocked it to get a lipstick and a book to stare at on the Métro. Then I headed down flight after flight, my heart skipping to the music of the unaccustomed heels.

  As I hit the bottom stair and faced the marvelous prospect of the courtyard, the door to Lydia’s apartment swung open. It was as though my first step into the night air had triggered a spring. Out popped Lydia in a silk paisley bathrobe.

  “Christ, it’s freezing,” she said. “Come in! Come in! Hurry! The heating bills on this place are killing us.”

  “I was just heading out actually.”

  “Yes, I can tell. Nice shoes,” she added, ushering me into the foyer. “But you might want to take them off. We have a long night ahead of us, my dear. You have to understand that you did not sign on for a nine-to-five job. No time clocks here. No punching in and out.” She gave my face a look that managed to be both cursory and searching. “Of course, if that’s not what you want . . .”

  “No, no, no. I mean yes.”

  Although I had no idea what I meant, she took my words as a declaration of my readiness to get down to business. We had to transcribe those German interviews right now. History was marching forward and we couldn’t afford not to meet it head-on.

  Steadying a tremor as I hung my coat, I asked if I could have a couple of minutes to call and leave a message for the cousin I was supposed to meet. I didn’t want him to worry.

  This was not, I assured myself, a total lie, as this was the night I had promised Étienne to go to his dinner party. I was breaking two dates.

  She said fine, showing no interest. But I felt compelled to add, as we walked down the hallway right past Portia’s room, all lavender and perfume bottles, that Étienne had invited me to his apartment near the Bastille tonight, that he was the one whose family I’d lived with as a kid, whose parents had retired back to Orléans, and that he was in Paris now, doing some kind of art.

  “Oh, well that makes me feel a hell of a lot less guilty. You can see your cousin anytime if he’s local, can’t you? Tell him you are standing him up in the name of truth and beauty.” She laughed, closing her office door behind us.

  I went to the phone book beside the Rolodex to look up the Fer à Cheval, wondering if Portia would be waiting for Olivier tomorrow at the airport in New York, ditching school, holding some expensive bottle of champagne.

  There was a knock at the door. Clarence.

  “Lydia,” he said. “This is ridiculous. This can wait until tomorrow and you know it. The poor girl has plans of her own. She’s been working all day.”

  “Clarence, you have no idea what you’re talking about. If you did, you would eat your words. Things are happening too fast in this world for us to pause now. There will be time later. Now leave us be.”

  “But I thought you and I were going out to dinner. I thought you wanted a grande bouffe tonight. What happened to the bouffe?”

  “Look at me, Clarence.”

  “You look fine.”

  “I’m wearing my bathrobe. I am obviously not going anywhere, not with you or anyone else. We have plenty of roa
st chicken left over if we get hungry. The Berlin Wall could come down tonight. Now get out.”

  I managed to find the number for the bar while, just feet away, Lydia busied herself with contact sheets and notebook pages.

  I remained remarkably steady.

  “Fer à Cheval, bonsoir!” Background jazz felted over a hum of voices. I wondered if one of them was Olivier’s, if he had shown up early to meet me. I looked at my watch. I was supposed to be there in half an hour.

  I tried to sound casual. “Bonsoir, Michel, this is Kate, the American girl you met on Wednesday night.”

  “La copine d’Olivier?”

  “Yes.” A copine could either be a girlfriend or friend who was a girl. There was no way to tell. “He’s my cousin,” I said meaningfully.

  Had Lydia heard Olivier’s name through the receiver? If she had, she gave no indication, and I had to assume that she was too consumed with her place in history to bother about my social life.

  “Ah, bon? Your cousin?” Michel laughed.

  “Yes, just please tell him that Kate cannot make it to the dinner party tonight. I have to stay at work. Something important has come up.”

  Would I like to speak to him, Michel asked? He was right here.

  I looked at the backs of Lydia’s ears, bobbing and swaying as she worked. “No,” I managed, with a final ebb of hope. “He must be busy in the kitchen. Thank you, Michel, but that is not a good idea. I can’t come at all.”

  A firework exploded in an airless box, I felt my excitement sputter and smoke to nothing. Lydia did not appear to notice my distress.

  She kept me in her office until two in the morning, transcribing the escapist fantasies of an East German family bracing for the West. She showed me their portraits.

  Around midnight, Clarence brought us a cold supper and a couple of glasses of wine.

  sixteen

  Over the next two weeks, there was no sign of Claudia. Christie, the jogger, called to push our Deux Magots date to the following Friday because she had been invited to Deauville for the weekend. Whenever I could, I went to museums to sketch, finding an accustomed solace. But I didn’t have much time. Lydia and Clarence were quite demanding. I grew familiar with the themes of their arguments, the aesthetics, the politics, the climate of suspicion. I found it all maniacally entertaining. Until the day it became too much.

  We were having tea in the kitchen.

  “Clarence, how can you possibly say that Britain isn’t a racist country? What a ridiculous thing to say. Don’t you agree, Katherine?”

  They both widened their eyes over me, clam shells parting to take in water.

  Then Lydia continued at Clarence. “I’ve heard you, yourself, use the word ‘Paki.’ Don’t deny it.”

  “Utter fantasy on your part, but that’s beside the point. The term ‘Paki’ will be reclaimed, like the term ‘Black’ in America. Someday it will be turned on its head and seem to be made powerful.”

  “Seem to be made? Will it be powerful or won’t it? Say something, Clarence, that actually means something, please.”

  “My point, and don’t pretend you can’t fathom my point, is that it’s not in the interests of capitalism to be racist because capitalism is not about your nature or who you are. It’s antimaterialist. It dissolves differences. It wants everyone to be a consumer regardless of race or religion. The whole danger of capitalism is this.”

  “The whole danger of capitalism is that it isn’t racist! Good one! Put that in your book.” Lydia turned from him to give me a big satisfied smile. She was stirring one of her papaya pills into a tall glass of water. “I need a longer spoon. Clarence, have you seen the long spoons?”

  “Not lately. Maybe that Olivier bloody bastard sold them at the flea market to buy a Birkin bag for his mother.”

  “You’ve got to love a man who knows his handbags.” Lydia was talking directly to me now.

  Clarence winked at me as he addressed his wife. “Lydia, all I’m saying is that your approach to the Muslim problem in England is all wrong and it’s going to be bad for your career. People are accusing you of missing the point, the point not being Mr. Rushdie, the paranoid publicity hound. The point—”

  “The paranoid publicity hound who is much more famous than you will ever be and—”

  “Whose books are unreadable.”

  “I liked The Satanic Verses. Katherine liked it too—right, Katherine?”

  “It’s funny,” I said.

  “That’s neither here nor there, my friends.” Clarence heaped a spoonful of Olivier’s honey into his tea. “The point is that capitalism is pluralistic. Like fashion.”

  “I have an idea!” Lydia cried. “Why don’t you stay here and write about fashion not being racist and I’ll go to England to take racist pictures.”

  “Don’t think I didn’t see you jump outside Bon Marché yesterday when that Arab kid got too close. When you’re not working, when you’re a private citizen, you’re as racist as the next person.”

  “First of all, you’re lying. I did not jump at all. Second of all, we’re not talking about me as a private citizen. We’re talking about my work, which you have no right whatsoever to control. I’m going to England to photograph an identity crisis.”

  “What did Susan say about photojournalism, that it’s sublimated looting?”

  “Susan loves my work.” She turned to me. “That’s Sontag, by the way.”

  “Don’t patronize Katie. She knows perfectly well who Susan is.”

  “You are calling me patronizing. I give up.”

  “It would be one thing if you were going to England to see the people, but you’re going to go take portraits of that rubbish writer in his overpriced, overhyped isolation.”

  “The man’s life is in danger.”

  “He’s a symbol. I can’t believe this! You’re complicit, Lydia! Rushdie is becoming a symbol and you are complicit!”

  “He’s not a symbol. He’s a man, actually, and I believe you’re jealous.”

  “No, I’m not remotely jealous, you preposterous woman. I’m simply worried about a crisis in your career. People are saying you’ve abandoned your photographer’s impulse and are becoming a sycophant. They are saying—”

  “What people? Your quote, unquote housepainters? Your graduate students?”

  “They are beginning to think that you are becoming an illustrator. You used to be the one who was shooting from within the crowd and not focusing on the pageantry.”

  And on they went, the two wings of a cornered moth, beating furiously while I rinsed the dishes.

  Finally, Clarence broke from the argument and told me he loved the honey I had bought.

  “It’s from the farmers’ market on Raspail,” I said.

  “I thought so. Best market in town.”

  In the wake of his cheerful comment, I began to tremble. I was guilty, and not only of letting him believe that I had bought the honey when Olivier had. I was guilty, like capitalism itself, of not being solid, of transgression, of dissolving into version after version of a person depending on what was before my eyes. I was living proof of why aesthetics are more important than morals in the modern age, why they are the major component, according to both Clarence and Lydia if only I could get them to listen to one another, of the truth as we now know it. I was diaphanous and I was nervous and if I wasn’t careful, I was going to break a precious teacup right here in the sink.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  • • •

  I left the apartment, and flew up the five flights of the escalier de service. Only as I slid my skeleton key into its hole did my hand and arm begin to solidify. The rest of me followed until the weight sunk back into my shoes. I was a person, a distinct one, a person loved by a boy named Olivier. And in order to celebrate this being, not to pierce her new skin, I move
d, with slow and comic delicacy, toward the secret place that was my sock and underwear drawer. There, buried at the very back, tied with a ribbon, were three letters. The first was the note in the red envelope that I had not been able to throw away. The second, Olivier had left for me at the Petit Fer à Cheval the morning of his departure. He had written it while he was waiting for me to show up. “Where are you, Kate?” The third letter he had mailed from the airport, also to the Fer à Cheval.

  I melted into my futon to reread.

  Olivier’s letters covered the time we ought to have spent together, his last night and morning in Paris before returning to the States and working life.

  While his handwriting was beautiful, the actual contents of the pages were not what I might have expected had it been a good idea to expect anything in particular. The letters gave me virtually no information about the promised breakup with Portia and suggested no plans for us to meet again, but they were affectionate. The last one was my favorite because it ended with a pastel rendition of an elongated me, flawless as an ad, reading a letter on a bench under a tree with the red brick and black iron detailing of the Place des Vosges in the background. “J’imagine Kate” was penned below. It wasn’t a real drawing but a pastiche of symbolic shortcuts, the sort of thing I would never dare to do but that I admired the way nerds admire hip kids, with grudging confusion. Where did he find such ease?

  In his image, I was groomed to a sheen, reading his words in the most picturesque square in all of Paris, wearing a long fitted dress that washed over the edge of the bench. My hair was down. The toenails resting in my delicate sandals were painted a soft pink. If this was how he saw me, then maybe I would be perfect someday.

  “A bientôt, ma beauté.”

  Ma beauté folded her letters back into their envelopes, retied the ribbon, arranged undergarments and closed the drawer.

  What the hell was I doing?

  Although I was beginning to understand that Lydia and Clarence could be unkind, that they often fed on a desire to humiliate each other, I still hoped they would love me. I felt myself on the verge of folding into Lydia’s rich and textured family, so different from my own white-walled mother-daughter starkness. And this feeling gave me moments of utter security that it seemed crazy to risk on a boy.