The first year, we were crazy about the place. If Saumane were a lover, we’d have been locked in a passionate embrace. But we, like all humans, are susceptible to hedonic adaption. Raymond Chandler understood this well when he wrote: “The first kiss is magic. The second is intimate. The third is routine.” We should have known. Passion has a short shelf life. Last year we found it amusing, even delightful, that the faucet in the kitchen sink shot two streams of water straight into our eyes. This time we look up the word for wrench and pay a visit to Monsieur Bricolage, Mr. Do It Yourself, the French equivalent of Home Depot.
Our French has become rusty. I hear our neighbors René and Danielle talking in the street. I don’t understand a word they are saying. They might as well be geese honking. Have I forgotten so much French? We’ve been working so hard to learn this language, and the only person we really understand, at least reliably, is Monique, and that’s only because she insists upon it. If something happened to her, we’d only be able to talk incorrectly to one another. Some days we wonder: Will our efforts to learn this language be even more hopeless than the efforts of the proverbial frog—no offense intended—trying to jump out of the well?
Eating at Lou Clapas is also threatening to become routine, as is the once thrillingly tortuous six-kilometer downhill drive to Monique’s. And it isn’t until this, our second stay, that we realize that Saumane, while a medieval hill town, too closely resembles an American suburb. Everything is a car ride away. For next year, we resolve to rent in a village, where there’s plenty of action and commerce.
We also didn’t fully appreciate how freaking hot it would be in Provence in June and July. We open the windows, hoping for a premature mistral, and instead get a houseful of flies, les mouches.
Our house has no screens. We are told that many people in Provence don’t have screens on their windows. Why not? The sun, they say, heats up the screens and ends up adding considerable discomfort to the already impossibly hot afternoons. But so do the flies. Larry adds to the problem by opening the front door as well as the shutters on the windows to get some air, thereby sponsoring a regular mouche invitational when what he means to achieve is a mild breeze. Les mouches seem to wander in during the day, and then when the air outside begins to cool off—at this time of year at around eight in the evening—they head back outdoors. Even they don’t want to be stuck in a hot room full of flies.
Everything changes for the newer and better when another student, Ulrike, “Ulli,” joins our classroom. Ulli, sprightly, blond, blue eyed, and pretty, was brought up in East Berlin where her parents were members of a resistance movement that met at the local church. Her partner, Bettina, was raised in the German sector. By contrast, Bettina looks more Indian maiden than fraulein, with her long, dark, straight hair and angular good looks. Both of them share the alleged Teutonic qualities of seriousness and discipline, but when they’re not devoting themselves to a task, both are humorous and playful.
Ulli and Bettina have left Germany for good and have chosen France as their new homeland. They have recently bought a house in nearby Perrotet, a hamlet that was once a working farm. The outbuildings where wheat, goats, wine, and tools were once housed have been charmingly renovated into dwellings. Ulli and Bettina live in the former lamb shed. That they both speak some English is a decided boon to our friendship.
They seem eager to tell all us their story, and we listen with fascination. They’re both in their thirties. Bettina was married in her twenties to a man who understood that she had a preference for women. Apparently he loved her enough, and she him. Moreover, the marriage, which lasted ten years, allowed her to continue to deny her homosexuality.
Ulli has never married, but she dated men exclusively until she met Bettina. Luckily, both sets of parents have come around to appreciate and even love each partner, so now they all feel at ease together. Perhaps they share this information with us right away to test our attitude toward their lesbianism. We, too, feel at ease.
Over this second month, we will spend increasing amounts of time with them. When we do, we always start out speaking French, but when the going gets tough, we ease into English. Bettina already speaks French well and is working at a facility for the handicapped, so she doesn’t participate in our class, but Ulli must learn the language quickly in order to find a job. Larry and I are stunned by their courageous move. Their bold commitment reenergizes the meaning of the cliché “making a new life.”
Ulli doesn’t speak French as well as we do. At last! Someone whose head is lower than mine! I have taken a liking to an all-purpose French phrase, ça ne fait rien, which means “it doesn’t matter.” I drop it carelessly into the conversation whenever it seems to apply. I love it when she turns to me in class and asks me what it means. For one delightful but illegitimate moment, I get to play teacher.
Real Friends and False Friends
Larry and I are relieved and encouraged by the fact that many French words—verbs and nouns—are the same in English. Sources differ, but there are between 1,500 and 2,500 such cognates in the French language, and Larry and I grab onto them whenever we get the chance. If one of us wants to ask about someone’s reputation—réputation, with the accent on the last syllable—it’s a good bet. So are abrasion, abattoir, bandit, bandage, cage, calorie, date, dense, and hundreds more, right down to zéro. We are constantly on the lookout for cognates, or what the French call vrais amis, the linguistic equivalent of taking candy from a baby. We hardly ever confess that it’s le même en anglais, the same in English. We prefer to let Monique think we’re well on our way to fluency. What glib fun I have saying that I’ve eaten too many calories.
Meanwhile, Ulli fumes. We have an unfair advantage. The German language offers her no vrais amis. On the other hand, Ulli studies like a demon, while we spend only an hour or two a day doing homework, such as memorizing long lists of irregular verbs. We try. We conjugate. We even quiz each other, but our senior brains fight us every millimètre of the way. I am more diligent than Larry. I was one of those who spent my grammar school days in the front row trying to get called on, perpetually waving my hand while the teacher scanned the classroom, plaintively asking, “People, must I always see the same hands?”
Now that we’re studying French in Provence, I, who spent my lifetime competing for best daughter, best camper, and best student, now compete for best French speaker. Throughout grammar school and high school, my classmates called me a “suck” and a “brown nose.” Even in this place, I want to be teacher’s pet. I do not, cannot, change my colors in Provence. The little girl in the front row, waving her hand and wanting to be called on, remains alive, well, and obnoxious. Since neither Larry nor Ulli aspire to that calling, I win hands up.
For English speakers, the French language gives with one hand and takes with another. The language takes its revenge by leading one down the primrose path of les faux amis where false cognates lurk. French débutantes don’t come out; a débutant is a beginner. Actuellement, a particular temptation of mine, means “at the moment,” not “actually,” and éditeurs are publishers, not editors, and a canape´ is a sofa, and an etiquette has nothing to do with manners; it’s a label. And while we’re at it, it is not a good idea to employ the verb blesser if you want to bless someone. You will wound them instead. And then there’s the just plain bizarre—neither faux nor vrais. What do the French call a photographer? Un photographe.
Occasionally Mo, very much a free spirit, teaches us words we will never need to know, like the two different words for yeast that are mentioned in an article we read about artisanal bread. Larry doesn’t bake bread anymore, and it’s been years since I’ve had a yeast infection.
Life is short. My brain is shrinking; my arteries are filling with plaque. I begin to make a mental list of words to forget. The list lengthens the day Mo hands out three newspaper articles, each one devoted to a different career. Larry gets the one about an entarteur, a guy who throws p
ies in the faces of celebrities. Ulli gets marinette, a woman sailor. I get cascadeuse, a woman who performs stunts. Larry’s and my projected life expectancies are sufficiently brief so that I think we can be confident of never needing either to speak or understand any of them. We need to save the space in our brains for important words like lawyer and writer and heart attack. How perverse, then, that we cannot forget them! Cascadeuse? I’m stuck with it. It is seared into my brain. It is branded alongside another useless but unforgettable phrase I learned during my first year of high school French, vendeur itinérant de peaux de lapin, an itinerant seller of rabbit skins.
We learn almost as much French when we’re out in the streets as we do when we’re in a classroom. After examining all the baked goodies on display in our local pâtisserie, I point to a particularly good-looking tart, rehearse my request to myself, decide I have it right, and say, “Je veux cette tarte-là”—“I want that tart there”—triggering one of what would be many unscheduled but welcome and friendly French lessons from total strangers. The owner explains to me in French that “I want” is too strong and demanding, something a policeman would say. She advises me to say, “je voudrais”—“I would like”—instead.
Larry makes his own faux pas, many of them due to minor slips in pronunciation, which, especially in French, can be catastrophic. “Où est la guerre?” “Where is the war?” he asks a befuddled Frenchman when he wants directions to the railroad station, la gare. Still, he recovers nicely. “Après moi,” he jokes, “le vin rouge.”
I feel a thrill when I realize that I have finally made a French word or phrase my own. Tout à fait, which means “quite,” is a very French way of agreeing with someone. So is d’accord. “Ah oui” is another bit of conversational evidence that indicates that I am understanding, or at least pretending to understand what someone is saying. (Larry, who can sometimes be even more pretentious than I, has noticed that some French people don’t pronounce oui “wee;” they say “way,” so he does too.)
We pick up some basic manners. In Provence, it is proper for the customer to greet the shop owner face-to-face with “Bonjour, Madame,” or “Bonjour, Monsieur.” At home, it’s the opposite; the shopkeeper greets the customer. But in both countries, the goal is to sell.
“Puis-je vous aider?” “May I help you?”
“Je ne fais que regarder.” “Just looking,” I learn to say. “Merci, nous avons bien mangé,” I prattle to maîtres d’hôtels at the end of a pleasant meal. After lots of practice, thanking the host for having eaten well now flows trippingly off my tongue. We add almost daily to our repertoire of words and phrases. We begin to think in French. This is one of the acknowledged intermediate stages on the way to fluency, one, alas, we will not get far beyond.
Even though we know a lot of words relating to French food, we still have trouble translating some menu offerings. We know that court bouillon is fish stock, not the spare change that Louis XIV left on his bureau at Versailles, but what are blanquettes de gras-double au pistou? Blankets with extra grass and pistons? Can’t be. Or what to make of cervelles de veau en matelote? Servile veal in a mattress? Unlikely. Tête d’Ane farcie can’t be humorous head of donkey. We know that Gallantine and Mousseline are not two of the Three Musketeers, but what are they? I search in vain for my bilingual fail-safe: filet mignon. We take our puny revenge when menus in French are also translated into fractured English, and pieds et paquets à la Provençale becomes feet and packages in Provence.
We wanted to be out of our comfort zone, and we are. Every challenge is a potential learning experience, a way to grow, or a faux pas so embarrassing that you want to disappear. Either way, you learn. No matter how well we speak, our accents give us away. We had hoped to pass for French, but that rarely happens. When we open our mouths to speak French, an American flag unfurls.
We notice that French women wear jeans and sneakers, which sometimes makes them difficult to distinguish from Americans. There was a time when no French woman—even one with bunions and hammertoes—would ever wear sneakers. She’d rather have her feet amputated.
Trying to make yourself at home in a place that is not home requires an aptitude for pretending. Happily, Larry and I share that talent. When I was a kid, after a Saturday matinee of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I’d be Audrey Hepburn, swanning about town until the spell broke. To this day, Larry will speak with a British accent after viewing an English film. The effect usually wears off within fifteen minutes, by which time we’re literally back to ourselves.
It makes his day when Larry manages to fool an American woman in need of directions, who approaches him while he is painting a watercolor of Lou Clapas. Pronouncing each syllable slowly, loudly, and with care, she asks him, “Do you speak English?”
“I speek a leetle,” Larry replies.
We try, Larry and I, to speak a leetle French to each other when we’re at home or otherwise alone together. Clearly, that’s the way to make the most of our French lessons. We start out with the best of intentions, but after a few minutes, we break down, at a literal loss for words. We’ve got certain phrases and thoughts down pat, like, “I’m hungry,” or, “Did you finish your homework,” but an intimate, adult relationship cannot thrive for long at a fifth-grade level.
However, when we’re out on the street, and when we think we’re walking near Americans, Larry and I will automatically switch from speaking English to pretending to speak fluent French. Under the cover of anonymity, we let it rip, inventing French words, throwing proper verb endings to the winds, and tossing in an occasional “Voilà!” Americans are the only people we can hope to fool, assuming that they’re even overhearing us, which they’re probably not.
It is pitifully important to us that both they and we see us as French—they being other Americans, normal Americans who are not pretending to be French. At times like this, we don’t think of ourselves as pretentious snobs, although perhaps we should. Instead, we feel more like children who know they’re pretending when they say, “Let’s play house.” When we “play French,” we also know we’re pretending.
It Loses in Translation
Eating out is one of the great pleasures of Provençal life. Unlike tourists, we are in one locale long enough to find and revisit our favorite restaurants near our French home. Some we choose more for the conversation than the food, because we know that the proprietor will stop by our table to talk. Being recognized as regulars is a very good way to feel French. But sometimes we like to explore farther afield. Bob and Ellen have recommended the Bistro Lyonnais in Avignon. We look forward to another opportunity to speak French.
Larry calls to make a réservation. Linguistically this is not a difficult job. “Je voudrais faire une réservation pour deux,” he says. Larry frequently mispronounces “two” as “Dieu,” as in, “I would like to make a reservation for God.” Luckily this time he gets it right.
The gentleman who takes our reservation answers back in English. “A table for two. What day and hour?”
“Samedi soir à vingt heures,” Larry insists.
“Fine,” the annoying Frenchman answers “We’ll see you Saturday night at eight o’clock.”
“A bientôt,” says Larry, sticking to his guns.
“See you soon,” says the Francophone killjoy.
Larry hates it when he is so easily unmasked. It doesn’t occur to us that just as we want to practice our French, M. Yves Meduan, proprietor and chef de cuisine, may want to practice his English.
A similar war of words ensues on Saturday night when M. Meduan greets us at the door of his bistro.
“Welcome,” he says, offering a hand to shake. “You must be the friends of the Greeneisens.”
“Oui,” says Larry. “Ils nous ont recommandé votre restaurant.”
“Well,” he says, “I hope you will be pleased with their recommendation.”
And so it goes, this no-love-lost game of li
nguistic tennis: he lobs one over in very good English, and we lob one back in serviceable French. He shows us to our table.
We order in French while M. Meduan comments on our various choices in English.
“Le poulet à la crème de champignons.” When dining out, I frequently order chicken since Larry won’t eat it at home.
“Very good,” says M. Meduan. “I think you’ll enjoy the mushroom cream sauce.”
“Pour commencer,” says Larry, “le foie gras.”
“Our goose liver is the finest,” says M. Meduan. “Enjoy it while you can. Soon you’ll be back in America where it’s getter harder and harder to find. There are anti foie gras societies like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Provence,” he tells us, “but they have little influence here.” The French love their foie gras, a delicacy achieved by force-feeding a duck or goose until its liver is grossly enlarged, a process called gavage.
Force-feeding has a very bad press in America, but we wonder. Is gavage akin to a bulimic binge toward which a duck might waddle, as I would toward a Mars Bar, or is it more like water-boarding, away from which a duck might flap and flee? Ducks and geese, after all, are not people. Their esophagi are more flexible than those of humans. The results of studies, involving duck and goose control groups—but no fine-feathered focus groups—have been conclusive; nevertheless, the practice has been banned in many places.
While on a trip to the Dordogne in 1985, Larry and I witnessed a gavage. We were expecting to be horrified, but the moment the farmer appeared with his gavage pump, these birds of a feather flocked together around him, as eager as Pavlov’s dog for the reward of having a tube inserted down their throats and their stomachs filled with maize. Was it masochism or genuine pleasure these geese were exhibiting at the prospect of being overfed? It is this experience that has convinced Larry to indulge his taste for the silky, fatty texture and mild liver taste of foie gras. He also indulges in cholesterol reducing drugs.
Playing House in Provence Page 6