The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

  By way of reply, Mrs. Thanatopoulos took a thick album out of the drawer of an antique cabinet. It was full of photos of her youth in Greece. She’d been very pretty. I mean it when I say she looked like Nana Mouskouri. You just have to imagine Nana Mouskouri a little rounder, more jolly, and a lot more padded out. There were photos of her on stage. She’d sung in opera productions in Athens and even Italy. Always minor parts, nothing very serious.

  “I was too lazy to slim down. I was never able to make a career of it.”

  “But lots of voluptuous opera singers have enjoyed great careers.”

  “Like Montserrat Caballé? I saw her in Tosca. London, 1976. What a voice, but she could hardly move around the stage! It was laughable when Scarpia wanted to have his way with her in Act II. She might have smothered him between her thighs! Wait a second, I want you to hear her.”

  She took out a Tosca CD so that I could hear Montserrat Caballé. I wanted to tell her that if God had given her daughter even a quarter of the beauty in that woman’s voice, then no one would give a damn what she looked like. She could go on stage looking like an orangutan and she’d still win everyone over.

  Stella came back dressed in a fashionable sports outfit that must have cost a fortune.

  “I’m ready, Mr. Lamontagne!”

  We began with a few stretches, then I took her out for a jog in the park, with her mother still tagging along. Here, it’s important for me to stress, dear brother, to give you a proper idea of the creature who was handed over to me by her own mother, that Stella never shed a single tear. I’ve seen men bawl in agony after going through half of what I subjected her to. When he was programming her, the great IT guy in the sky must have forgotten to activate the self-pity function. People looked on in disbelief. Stella was breathing harder and harder, panting for breath, laboring like a worn-out mare. She did everything I told her, her face racked with pain. Her mother watched us, arms folded, from the side of the running track. I took pity on the girl after an hour.

  “That’s enough for today, Stella. We’ll get back at it Monday after school.”

  And so it went for three months. Cycling. Swimming. Weightlifting. Aerobics. The diet I prescribed was followed to the letter. And on the second Sunday of Advent, Mrs. Thanatopoulos handed me an envelope containing ten thousand dollars. I’d helped her daughter lose ten kilos.

  “Come back after Christmas. There’s still work to be done.”

  Honestly, I would happily have stopped there. At school, the other girls had, of course, noticed that Stella was getting thinner by the minute. The poor girl had lost so much weight she’d had to buy a new school uniform. Candice, Kayla, and Melikah, the inseparable Grade 11 trio, would often stay behind with me in the gym for a chat after school. I think they had a bit of a crush on me. But I remembered Jodi and what she’d said about dogs not doing it where they ate. Especially not in a Catholic school of all places.

  “Mr. Lamontagne, Stella has gone nuts since you’ve been here!” Melikah told me one December evening as I graded tests in the gym.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, looking up from my papers.

  The others didn’t know I’d been training Stella. Even Mrs. Delvecchio had no idea. She’d thought, the day Mrs. Thanatopoulos had wanted to speak to me in private, that it was to remind me about the basics of gym safety. Mrs. Thanatopoulos didn’t want anyone to know. She’d been very clear about that.

  “In English class, we had to read out a poem we’d written,” Melikah continued. “Stella’s was called ‘The Archangel!’”

  “So what? You all know how religious Stella is. Why shouldn’t she be interested in angels?”

  I tried to distract them.

  “You don’t understand. It was so steamy! You remember, don’t you, Candice?” she insisted.

  “In your arms of steel, all truth is above

  “In your eyes of teal, I’m waiting for love,” Candice recited, pretending to swoon.

  The girls burst out laughing.

  “And that’s not all! The rest of the poem goes on about the Annunciation and all kinds of shit. But that’s only two verses. There are another twenty and they’re even more juicy!”

  “Whatever,” I replied, irritated now.

  “Mr. Lamontagne, haven’t you noticed how much weight she’s lost since you showed up?”

  “Yes, but there’s nothing unusual about losing weight quickly at your age.”

  “You don’t want to see the truth, do you?” Melikah teased.

  “Truth is, you should all leave poor Stella alone and worry about other things.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. Things that are more important than how much your classmates weigh.”

  “And what about you, Mr. Lamontagne. Do you like Stella’s new look? Do you think she’s purrdy?”

  I shooed them out of the gym so that I could finish my work in peace. To be honest, Michel, even though pretty much all of my colleagues were nutcases, especially the old Irishwoman, I was very happy in Toronto. I had all the girls I wanted, and every time Stella lost a gram, I earned a dollar. I had my little twenty-first-floor apartment on the corner of Spadina and Harbord, complete with views of the CN Tower. I could have lived like that for another twenty years. Then Claudia showed up like a miracle, like the springtime. You’ve got to hear how it happened.

  The school had a history and geography teacher by the name of Véronique Poisson. Another Quebecer who, like me, taught her subjects in French as part of the Holy Canadian Martyrs French immersion program. She’d been there four years. The students called her Miss Fish. I never found out what they called me behind my back. Melikah and Candice told me once that the boys had nicknamed me Arnold Physedteacher, but they never said it to my face. I would have taken it as a compliment in any case. Thing is, around Christmas 1994 I very briefly hooked up with Miss Fish. She was one of those women who spend their whole lives taking evening classes. Spanish, Italian, Thai cooking; anything to stave off boredom. In January 1995, she persuaded me to take a German class with her at the Goethe-Institut. I told her right from the start I’d no interest in German.

  “I’d forgotten. Phys ed teachers need to be doing things with their hands. Culture isn’t your forte.”

  You see, Michel? Now that’s exactly the sort of condescending remark you might have come up with. What Véronique meant is that a phys ed teacher is some kind of gorilla who can’t count higher than one hundred, a hulking great philistine who likes to belch at the back of his gym. Granted, maybe most phys ed teachers don’t read beyond the sports section in the tabloids, but there are also French teachers who’ve never picked up Molière. So I followed Véronique along to the Goethe-Institut one evening, just to show her that I was more than capable of taking a German class.

  I’d swiped Véronique’s copy of The Thorn Birds. The novel the TV series was based on, you know the schmaltzy one that makes grannies cry. It’s set in Australia. It doesn’t get any cornier than that. Véronique had only that type of thing on her bookshelf. And she was the one lecturing me about culture? At any rate, at the first German class I found myself sitting between Véronique Poisson and a Polish guy who was studying philosophy at the University of Toronto. It doesn’t get more eclectic than a group of students learning German at the Goethe-Institut, I thought to myself as I ran my gaze over the twenty people gathered around the table, busily flipping through their German workbooks. The reasons for learning German are as difficult to grasp as the language itself, and as a result such groups are a real mixed bag. First off, there are those who have to learn German: Air Canada flight attendants, businesspeople whose work often takes them to Germany, diplomats and their families. This group shows the least interest, resigned to its fate. Most of the time, their boss is paying for the class and their attention appears to be directly proportional to the amount paid out of their own pocket. While they may be lacking in motivation, t
hese students condemned to learn German tend to keep a low profile: they regularly skip class, ask no questions, and manage to get a passing grade to keep their employers off their backs. All Germans speak English anyway, they say, so what’s the point? Then there are the students who are doing a PhD in philosophy, comparative literature, or the differential history of Medieval Yiddish. They likely chose their field of study to set themselves apart from their roommate, who’s hard at work on a dissertation on Toltec culture. They’re pretty much guaranteed to be assholes. Not five minutes goes by without one of them—usually some scrawny type who hasn’t touched a dumbbell in his life or a completely unfuckable fatty who speaks in a falsetto—raising a hand to ask the teacher a question clearly designed to catch them out, things no one could care less about, like “Do you mean Vorstellung in the Heideggerian sense?” They’re insufferable and conceited, and carry around German copies of Nietzsche in their worn leather satchels, nonchalantly leaving them out on the table to make it clear they’re interested in all kinds of things that sail right over your head. Then there are the retirees who have nothing better to do and are making good on the dreams of their youth. These students come in two flavors: there’s the quiet gramps who diligently does his homework, then there are the old grannies who never shut up, always bringing everything back to themselves, rabbiting on about their children and the grandkids, thinking they’re ever so funny. Sometimes they bring homemade muffins to class and go on about how they got the recipe from their mother. And then there are what I like to call the “old Germans,” people with some connection or other to the motherland but whose family forgot the language a generation after stepping foot in America. They never last long. It only takes a few grammar exercises for them to work out why their granny from Hannover always refused to speak German at home. And there are always one or two Jews that I lump together with the old Germans, because they never stick around very long either. I don’t know what they were expecting to get out of the Goethe-Institut. If I were a Jew, it’s the last place I’d go to take a class. I’d learn Chinese, jazz ballet, or Cambodian cooking, but not German. This hodgepodge of students invariably includes a few lost souls like me and Véronique Poisson, who have no good reason for being there. And when I spied a philosophy student with a particularly filthy and matted head of hair, I immediately resolved to sneak out at the break. Maybe I could make it to the pool before closing time.

  Then Claudia walked in.

  First from the side, then from the front.

  How best to describe her? Imagine that Claudia Schiffer had a prettier older sister. Imagine a woman born five years before us, in 1964, in Cologne, Germany. Imagine the piercing gaze of Marlene Dietrich and the figure of Brigitte Bardot. Now imagine she has a slight lisp. That’s Claudia. One other thing: I’m pretty sure she was at least five foot eight or five foot nine. Blond hair held in place on the left side by an opal-blue barrette, somewhere between Marlene Dietrich and Claudia Schiffer. Eyes the color of a blue sky in May. Ample but disciplined bosom. Gap chinos, suede belt, lavender blouse with a stand-up collar. Pumps that clicked with every step as the wooden heels struck the Goethe-Institut’s worn-out floorboards. Opal-blue socks that matched her barrette. Understated gold-rimmed glasses balanced on the bridge of her nose by some unseen angel. A golden chain and a little cross against her cream-colored skin. An inch east of the cross, a beauty spot around which the entire world revolved. And to ward off the drafts in that old building, a pullover draped over her shoulders. Handknit. Chunky stitch. Baltic blue. She set down the pile of workbooks she’d been holding under her right arm, produced a sheet of paper from a binder, and made a show of studying it, a blue Bic pen held up to her lips. Then she looked up.

  “Guten Abend!”

  When she looked at us, the first thing I wondered was which book I was going to swipe from her. Something big. Günther Grass’s Tin Drum or Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain perhaps. Something I’d read in the original for years without ever tiring of it. I didn’t miss a single class. I went about my homework with the zeal of a Carmelite nun and the conscientiousness of a Jesuit. I bitterly regretted the shelves of stolen books and prayed that I would never have to explain where all those books had come from, books with women’s names written on the inside of the front cover.

  Claudia ticked every German beauty box. She had class, education, great posture, good manners; everything about her exuded perfection. The staggering beauty of a secret weapon. The promise of a brighter future. The Kaiser’s revenge. Know what I mean? I didn’t dare approach her, of course. I felt as though I sullied her every time I looked at her, and still feel that way even today. I don’t think I slept for three straight nights. Needless to say, I learned German faster than you can imagine. By the end of term, in April, I’d plucked up enough courage to speak to her in private after class. A Pole—Wlad, I think his name was—had also taken the opportunity to talk to her. For as long as we were taking the class, I think we both followed the unwritten rule of not chatting up your teacher. But once it was over . . . The Pole was built like a string bean; he just didn’t measure up. I let him play out his pathetic little routine. Claudia spoke a few words of Polish, probably just to make him happy. She’s incredibly well mannered. Then the asshole gave her his card and cleared off without so much as a glance in my direction. Someone needed to teach him some manners. I thought to myself that Jodi had been right about the Poles: they were hysterical Catholics who were best avoided. Now all alone in the classroom with Claudia, I felt both completely naked and in my element. I tried to speak to her in German, but there was a tremor in my voice.

  “Ich, Ich . . . Sie . . . Es . . . Vielleicht . . . Möchten Sie mit mir Freitag Abend essen?” I couldn’t believe my own nerve. Claudia smiled, then replied in English. “Perhaps not dinner, Gabriel, but you can come with me to church this Sunday, if you like.”

  Church? I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t even meant to ask the question and now that was her answer. Church? So she went to church. Well, it was that or nothing.

  That Sunday, I went along to the church where she’d agreed to meet. I hadn’t even asked if she was Catholic or Protestant; you never know in Germany. It was a Lutheran church downtown on Bond Street. A pastor led the service in German. One thing about Lutheran services: they might not know how to decorate their churches, but they sure know how to sing. Never have I heard a choir in such perfect harmony.

  Afterward, I invited Claudia to have a cup of tea with me on Yonge Street. It was a Quebec café. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Le Kilo? Anyway, there’s one in Toronto. She told me a little about herself, how much the Lutheran Church meant to her, and gave me the third degree about my religious practices. I told her about our confessions to Father Huot, of course. She seemed impressed. Apparently in the Lutheran Church, the pastor absolves everyone of their sins at once. No one is expected to list their transgressions against God and their neighbor one by one. And, according to Claudia, Lutherans believe that it’s not possible, indeed that it’s pointless, to set out all one’s sins. Now that would have really shut up you-know-who. It’s all about faith. I timidly asked about her love life. Just like that. She replied that, at age twenty-four, she still hadn’t met a man worth getting involved with. My dear Michel, I found her answer so delightfully pure. I felt as though I was sitting in a café with a talking white lily. She was polite enough not to inquire about my own love life. I would have denied it all anyway. We continued to get together every other Sunday.

  Mom would go mad if she found out I went to a Lutheran church for three years. But would anyone notice the difference? Just saying.

  So that’s how I met the woman. That’s why I’m in Berlin. I’m in love, Michel. And it’s killing me.

  Gabriel

  P.S. Véronique Poisson dropped out of German for Beginners. She couldn’t get her head around the grammar.

  * * *

  Zeuthen/Grünau–Hohen Neuendorf

  May 9, 1999

  Dear
Michel,

  It’s noon and I’ve only just crawled out of bed. A word of advice, dear brother: when your career as a tenor brings you to Germany one day and you find yourself living in an apartment block, perhaps a sozialistischer Plattenbau, an old lady might well ask you to share a bottle of Riesling one evening, eager to learn more about the strange creature that’s moved into the apartment upstairs. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the inhuman demands of your rehearsal schedule, say yes. When I got home yesterday after a long day admiring the sheer immensity of Berlin from the S-Bahn, it was already eight o’clock. I’d almost forgotten my appointment with Magdalena Berg, and it wasn’t until I passed by her door that I remembered her curious invitation. I got changed at top speed so as not to be late: nothing distresses a Prussian more than tardiness. As I waited for her to come to the door, I could clearly sense someone peering out from behind one of the other doors on the landing, come to see who had rung Magdalena Berg’s bell.

  “Kapriel! How are you? Come in!”

  Magda Berg’s apartment was bigger than mine. As well as a living room, there was also a bedroom and a little corridor that linked all the rooms. A large bookcase stood in the corridor, overflowing with books, new and old. DDR deco: wallpaper in the same pattern as her dress, appliances with brand names unknown in West Germany, orange carpet that swallowed the sound of every footstep. She led me to the living room, where a sofa took up much of the space. There was a bottle of Riesling from the Rhine Valley on a coffee table, left to chill in a bucket of ice. She’d set out a bowl with those crunchy little fish you nibble on while you drink, like peanuts.

  “Sit, Kapriel.”

  Magda Berg’s German separated each word with perfect diction. It was easy for a foreigner to understand her, easier at any rate than with Germans from the South, who have an accent that’s more difficult to decode to an outsider’s ears. She sat in a large armchair to my right. Her window had brown and orange velvet drapes—and the same view I had, looking out over the buildings of Lichtenberg.