Claudette makes herself a tea and sits with us.
‘In Australia,’ I say, ‘we eat cheese before dinner – with drinks.’ Delphine puts the lid back on the cheeses and returns them to the fridge. I don’t add that at barbeques and dinner parties it’s unlikely there would be any cheese left over – I’ve watched my parents’ friends polish off a supermarket brie within minutes. I imagine the cheeses I’m eating now come from a cheese shop though.
It is now 9.30 pm. Is it too early for bed? I wonder. I decide no, it isn’t, and say, ‘I’m just going to get ready for tomorrow. School.’
‘Bonne nuit, Sofie.’
Before leaving the kitchen, I stop myself and turn back. ‘Should I …?’ I point at the dishes and make a scrubbing motion.
‘I will put everything in the dishwasher,’ says Claudette.
In my room, as I gather my things together, I feel outside of myself. I feel excited and happy and disappointed, all at the one time. I’m out of place, but I can’t quite bring myself to admit it. I have worked so hard to be here.
This outside-of-myself, dreamy, jet-lagged, displaced feeling is probably what makes all of my stuff take on talismanic qualities. I open the suitcase and bring out my things – each one sparking joy and comfort – and I give them homes in my new room.
I have never kept a journal, but I don’t want to forget my days here. I have a blank notebook, and so on my second night in Paris after my first real day, I start.
Except a whole bank page seems overwhelming when the idea is to fill it with words. Instead, I draw a funny little map, like a mind map, of the places we walked. I draw the red-haired girl leaning against the glass pyramid of the Louvre while reading James Joyce. I draw landmarks, and it’s easier to write labels alongside. I note the time it took to walk between particular sounds and smells.
Today I walked along the Seine river. I stood in front of the Notre Dame, and I looked up and saw the gargoyles with my own eyes. I stood before the Eiffel Tower. How can this be? Are we allowed to get everything we’ve ever wanted?
This is everything I expected.
My head feels light and confused, and my body is heavy, so I lie down on the bed without even changing into my pyjamas. There’s a siren outside – even the sirens are different.
This is not what I expected.
Décalage horaire. Jet lag.
Sofie
It suddenly seems very rude that
I have to go to school when I’m
meant to be on summer holidays.
Crow
Yep that really sucks for you.
And how are you filling your
endless days of freedom?
You know. Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll.
So sleeping the morning away and
then hanging out with your gran?
Pretty much.
– Overnight chats with Crow
I go with Léon on my first day at school. I’m pretty sure he’d explained that he would come with me and then go to his studio for the day. I still feel like I’m listening underwater though, and only picking up snippets of conversations. Getting over jet lag is like having a bad flu – like I’m weak and dragging my whole weight around.
I layer up before leaving – my plans for being chic and put together set aside in exchange for being warm. I feel like a genius for putting on a pair of tights underneath my jeans.
I’d combed all my local op shops for new outfits after I found out I was going to France. It felt important to have a new look for my exchange. Hana never cared about clothes, so I think I went the opposite way. I love beautiful things, so I try to wear clothes that feel nice and look pretty. In the past I have favoured floaty dresses, with lots of colours and patterns. ‘Librarian chic’, Mum sometimes called my style. To get ready for France, I made a few alterations to my look. The first one was chopping a fringe in, which was a terrible mistake. It ended up shorter than I intended and revealed a cowlick that sent part of my fringe skew-whiff. At least it would grow out.
In Paris, my style was going to be simple and structured. I chose dark jeans and oversized tops that I could layer. I found shapeless black dresses I could cinch in with statement belts. Skivvies to wear underneath. Fewer colours, a capsule wardrobe, long beaded necklaces and scarves for pops of colour.
Crow made fun of me for ‘preparing a uniform’, as she called it. ‘Nice reinvention,’ she teased. ‘Have you got your stripy top and your jaunty beret ready too? Your Chanel perfume?’ (Why yes, I spritzed some Chanel onto bits of cardboard in Myer and tucked them into my suitcase in the hope it’d infuse my clothes. So?)
‘Shut up,’ I’d said, ineloquently.
The school is a squat concrete block, like the rest of the buildings in the quartier. I look for graffiti in the hope of some colour or personality, like the streets around the metro stop, but everything I see here is ugly and dull. Black spray paint scrawls across the wall, making words I can’t understand.
I had imagined a lycée dedicated to the Arts would be a bit more interesting. Even inside the building is shabbier than I’d expected. But it has that smell of school, so I guess that’s a comfort in some ways.
In the principal’s office Léon talks fast and gruffly, and the principal – la directrice – is businesslike, and neither of them really pay me much attention. She gives me my class schedule and my ID card. ‘You must show this to get in and out of the school, and for taking your lunch also.’
I nod.
‘I understand that you are interested in plastic art,’ she continues.
Léon nods.
‘Plastic art?’ I ask. Plastic art?! I want to draw. Not work with plastic. I’m ANTI-plastic.
Turns out Arts Plastiques is the French way of saying Fine Arts. Which, yes, is what I want to do. I want to study Fine Arts and I want to be an artist.
‘Véronique said your drawing was strong,’ says Léon. Véronique is the art teacher here at the lycée, and I knew from our emails that Léon used to teach at this school before he began tutoring at the university. ‘And she thought you would enjoy some more focused study of artistic practices. This particular course is for lycée students who plan to attend the grandes écoles for art.’
The grandes écoles are universities that specialise in particular courses and that are really, really hard to get into. They’re kind of like the Ivy League colleges of France. I know about the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts – the Fine Arts Academy. This is more than I could have ever dreamed!
I must be smiling excessively because both Léon and the directrice are smiling back at me in a slightly condescending way, but I don’t even care.
‘Okay, Sofie. À ce soir. Tu as la clé?’ asks Léon. See you tonight. You have the key?
The interview bit is over and they are standing up. I jump to my feet as Léon salute-waves and leaves the room.
I suddenly need to double-check that I do have the key. I feel for it down the bottom of my tote and hold onto it while the directrice walks me to class.
I feel a normal amount of nervousness in the face of meeting so many strangers. When we go into the classroom, I can only scan the room, hardly focusing on the faces.
‘I present you Sofie, who has come all the way from Australia.’ Then, with a smile and a jangle of her bracelets, the directrice is away – bonne journée – and I’m pointed towards an empty seat next to a boy with neat lightning bolts shaved into his hair, who nods at me.
The French word for someone who has come from another country is étranger. Stranger. I am the stranger. And that makes me feel a bit more confident in a way. Strangers are mysterious.
I’m not sure if I am supposed to understand what is going on, and I can’t remember how the grades I get during my exchange are counted when I get home. Right now it seems very unfair to be marked when my classe
s are all in another language!
I let the words and the sounds wash over me, and open my notebook when everyone else opens theirs. Nobody has a laptop, which makes me glad I didn’t bring mine along.
I watch the teacher, Madame Michel. Not to understand the class – I decided after five minutes that there is no point. Everyone speaks so fast! The language is just scooting by my poor jet-lagged ears. But I look at her fashion. I love the woollen scarf she has draped around her neck, the thin white blouse and the crisp navy blue trousers. She isn’t wearing any jewellery. I draw myself in her outfit to see how I might look, taking notes and inspiration from her.
A couple of girls from my class ask me to come with them to the canteen for lunch. I’m grateful when they try to speak English with me because my brain is feeling thoroughly overwhelmed. They all look like they’re wearing a uniform of their own choosing: blue jeans that tuck into boots, plain tops and jackets.
Like the directrice said, I have to show my ID card and also scan my hand (what?!) in a machine, which shoots out a tray, and then I can choose my lunch. I follow the girls to a salad bar and a hot lunch station (potato, chicken, carrots and brussels sprouts).
‘Does anyone bring their lunch from home?’ I ask.
‘In France it’s forbidden to bring your own lunch,’ says the girl with braids, whose name I have already forgotten.
‘It’s better like this,’ says one of the others, whose gold hoop earrings are so impressively big they almost touch her shoulders. ‘We all eat the same thing. It is more fair.’
This makes sense, even though it blows my mind. I think about my old life, and its regular lunch of a cheese sandwich, apple and maybe a little packet of Barbecue Shapes. In my new life, I eat my way through a three-course meal, including dessert. Today it is yoghurt.
‘Sometimes we will have fruit or mousse au chocolat,’ says the braids girl. (How do I ask her name again without being rude?)
We’re all in the same class all the time, basically, and we all study the same core subjects: Maths, French, English, Histoire-Géo (history-geography), Science, and everyone has to study another language as well. ‘It is good,’ says one of the other girls, ‘because we can help you find your way.’
‘The directrice has put me in German class,’ I tell them. ‘I am scared of the first class! I know nothing!’
The girls laugh, so I laugh along.
After lunch we go outside and stand around in the concrete courtyard. A bunch of kids kick a soccer ball around, and the game and the shouting and the cold air are alienating. I feel alien.
The girls lead me over to a small group that I recognise from class. ‘Bonjour,’ I say, being quite brave.
‘Amandine, Victor, Hassan …’
I try to keep track as I am introduced to a semi-circle of faces.
‘T’es la petite Australienne?’
‘Euh. Oui?’
They try to speak English to me. I can’t decide if I like it or feel frustrated by it.
They look me up and down and I start to feel kind of uncomfortable.
‘Doctor Martens,’ says one of the guys, who has a shaved head, looking at my feet. ‘You are punk? Punk music?’
‘Not really,’ I reply, but the next person along is already talking.
‘What kind of music do you like? Do you like French music? Tell us one French singer what you know!’
‘You must be rich to do exchange. Are they all rich, the Australians?’
I don’t know how to respond. I have also never patted a kangaroo, and I don’t know how to surf. I hope they’ll find something interesting about me at some point. I’ve never been great at making friends.
‘Did you have a nice day?’ asks the girl with the braids, as students surge up the concrete steps and through the front door onto the street. I am so grateful for her sticking by me all day. It is 5 pm and I am exhausted.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I reply.
‘And you like Paris, hein?’
I pull my beanie onto my head. ‘It’s a bit cold,’ I say. My brain feels like it is about to explode. It is already night-time, the sky low and the streetlights on. Will I be able to find my way back to the house? No time for navigation worries. I have to make like an explorer. Challenge accepted.
The girl smiles and zips up her puffer jacket. ‘Salut! À demain, Sofie.’ Bye! See you tomorrow, Sofie.
‘À demain!’ I call back. A friend! But what is her name again?
‘Leia!’ a guy calls. My new friend turns towards him. ‘On va faire un MacDo! Tu viens?’
(I realise later that her name isn’t Leia, like the space princess. It is Léa.)
That night, after my first day at my new French school, I lie awake in my borrowed bed, and sleep isn’t going to happen. I draw my day like a map – the grim school building, the classes, the classmates. After I’ve recorded my day my mind turns to home, and I draw the flight path again, going Paris to Melbourne this time. I label the distances. I draw in the time zones. One hundred and forty days until I go home.
I decide to call these drawings my Lonely Homesick Maps. I think about posting them to my feed, but then I decide not to share them online in case I worry my parents and Hana. She’s done so much to get me here. They all have. I’ve done so much to get me here.
I draw my house, back home. Next to it, I draw the apartment here. I should send this to Mum and Dad, I think, temporarily forgetting I can take a photo.
I draw a rope ladder from my Paris window.
I draw a person, waiting at the bottom of the rope ladder.
A handsome someone. With dark curly hair.
A someone I had spied today in the hallway of my new school.
I am definitely more occupied with nerves about drawing in front of people than I am about fitting in during my first drawing class with the Arts Plastiques group. We meet in the school’s atelier de peinture – the art studio.
Where the rest of the school kind of lacks personality (although even now, on day two, I am getting glimpses of life here and there), the atelier seems to welcome me with warm and open arms. I mean, it smells the same as the art classroom back home – of paint and turpentine – but here there truly is an aroma of imagination and possibility.
Back home, the art classroom was fine and had everything I needed, but it was dark and poky. The atelier is a large open space with heavy-looking wooden tables and a row of easels. There’s shambolic shelving and racks for drying and a big window for light. I am already in love with it.
I meet Pauline and Paul and Victor and Fatima. I recognise some of them from my other classes.
I’ve worn my black dress with a belt for today’s class. I drew winged eyeliner on. But I put my clothes, my hair, my face out of my mind. I am here for the ART.
Or I think I am, before a latecomer lopes in. Dark curly hair. Black button-down shirt with a pair of black jeans. My heart skips a beat and I remember yesterday – the most beautiful boy I’ve seen outside of the movies, holding a hardback book in his hand and speaking to a friend in the hallway. When I walked past, he glanced over and smiled at me. His smile caused molten gold to run through my blood.
Now, as he takes his seat, I wrench my attention back to class and will my heart to beat at a regular pace and the heat in my veins to cool.
‘Good morning, everyone!’ Véronique, art teacher and friend of Léon, is almost exactly what I had wished for in an art teacher in France – stately, with long hair twirled up into a bun, wearing a simple-but-surely-expensive black shift dress (see! My outfit is right!) and some small silver earrings.
I discover pretty quickly that I have a real gift for interpreting body language and gestures if I don’t understand the words being said. Maybe it’s all that time I’ve spent, as Crow says, being ‘a weird little watching creeper’. I am a watcher and Crow is a thinker. I guess
that’s why we’ve stayed friends all this time – we don’t mind the other just disappearing into reverie, dreamworld or spiral. I have always liked to observe what’s going on before I act, or at least I find it useful. Also, the French are terrific at gestures and facial expressions. The pursed lips, a little puff of air released between them, more a ppt than a pfft.
We sketch in this first class – still life mostly. ‘This is a simple task,’ says Véronique, conducting a piece of charcoal through the air as she speaks, ‘but one to take seriously.’
I breathe in the smell of charcoal. I smooth my paper beneath my hand. I am happy with my apple, but I’m having trouble with my pear. I’m finding it hard to make it look realistic and not lopsided. The fat end is easy because that’s quite apple-ish, but as I move towards the end with the stalk on it, it’s harder to capture. It’s so frustrating – my skills have always been in the detail.
‘This is not bad,’ says a voice over my shoulder.
I scrunch my face up at Véronique. ‘I must practise.’
‘All the world must practise,’ she says. (I realise later that she meant ‘everyone’, not ‘all the world’. Tout le monde. That’s an expression I know! Argh, come on, brain.)
The class turns to look.
‘Please forgive my faults,’ I say. They laugh, just a little bit. What mistake have I made now? ‘I am Australian,’ I say. ‘It’s only my second day at school in France.’
We look at each other’s work. ‘But we do not compare ourselves; we just compare what we have done to what we will do,’ Véronique reminds us sternly. I want to say, ‘Please forgive my faults’ again, but I just do a little half-smile (a Mona Lisa smile!) and admire my classmates’ work.
Some of them are at a similar level to mine. Pear-ish, apple-ish. Some have better shading; others have better shape. Some are much better than mine.
I watch the curly-haired boy brush charcoal off his hands and I ogle his still life, which is absolutely amazing. Perfect. His apple is an apple – I feel like I could reach out and pluck it from the page. It wouldn’t even taste of charcoal; it would be sweet and tangy. He’s even managed to make his pear a pear!
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