by Jayne Tuttle
‘And what about your papers?’
‘I’ve got a student visa for now, but that’s going to run out soon. If I get a job —’
‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Marry him.’
‘Yes, but I don’t need to —’
‘Marry him.’
‘There are other ways,’ I say, but Daphné bats my words away with her cigarette, bending over to kiss Bisou. The loving face she shows to him returns to bitch face as she looks back at me. She tells me again to get married, it’s the only way. I tell her I have it under control. She tells me to get out, she has another appointment. Then adds that I should get new photos – mine are disgusting.
If I enrol in the three-month French course at the Sorbonne I can extend my visa for that amount of time. That will be long enough to get a job and sort out my living situation. Adrien and I could pretend we’ve been living together and get a de-facto visa, though I don’t want to bring this up with him, it seems so unromantic. I have, however, secretly gone to the town hall and got the cold pile of paperwork.
In the end I decide on the extension, but I have no intention of turning up to the classes at the Sorbonne, and not just because they start at eight am – I don’t want to go. But I learn to my dismay that a new decree has been made, whereby you must have a near-perfect attendance rate to keep your student visa. So there’s no option but to go to class, every weekday morning for three hours.
I’m surprised to find them interesting. I like driving my professor crazy with the street French I’ve learned. When he asks if I enjoyed my weekend I say it was un truc de ouf quoi. The others in the class need to learn correct French, Monsieur Carlieu says, but I keep asking why we’re learning things that people don’t actually say. I make it my mission to convert my classmates into real French speakers, so that they don’t leave the course, as I had university, impotent in the real world.
Daphné sends me to weird auditions with briefs like unpretentious foreigner, hungry cat that wakes in a glass box (for a science fiction film) and French-speaking American journalist that interviews Édith Piaf on a beach. I get a call-back for a role in a touring production of Othello, but when they find out I don’t have a long-term visa they give the part to a friend of Nadine’s.
Papers, papers everywhere. Job applications. Attestations. Bank statements. Visa forms. Adrien sleeps soundly as I rifle through the pile, trying to make sense of them all. Two weeks until I have to leave the Récollets. No more money. I sigh and put my head in my hands, then walk naked to the window. The chestnut tree is at its fullest, fluttering with birdlife.
Adrien’s head appears over the mezzanine wall. ‘Hi you,’ he says, rubbing his eyes.
‘Hi.’ I turn around, enjoying the sun on my back. ‘Want a coffee?’
He smiles. ‘Want to get married?’
‘Ha!’ I say, disappearing into the kitchen. I bring him up his coffee and flop on the bed.
‘I’m serious,’ he says, putting the coffee to one side.
In French you say se marier avec. You marry yourself with someone. Squash yourself together with them. Yes, I want to squash myself together with Adrien. But do I want to marry him? It would solve a lot of problems. Also, I love him. If I marry him we can stay together.
‘I want to marry myself with you,’ he says. His face is soft. His eyes are clear. ‘I want you to be my wife.’
I put my hand on his cheek. ‘I want to marry myself with you too!’
We stay in bed all morning, trying the idea on our lips and in our bodies.
‘My wife,’ he says. In French, femme – the same word as for ‘woman’. Perhaps I am becoming a woman after all. A madame. Madame Masson.
‘My husband.’ Mon mari. The words resound, deep and mature.
I say he should call my dad. He looks sheepish but puts on clothes.
I dial the number and Dad picks up and says, ‘Can it wait? It’s the last half-hour of 24.’ I say no, it’s important, and pass Adrien the phone. He goes downstairs and I hear the words ‘I love yer dotter en I would like to merry her, if that is okay wiz you, and I promise I will be good to her and I won’t take her away from you.’
I will marry him at La Grange in springtime in long grass with wildflowers and an outdoor lunch table with côte de bœuf and I Need You. It will be warm and breezy and my dress will move gently. I will have bare feet and hardly any makeup on. Kiki and Dad and Kate and the boys will come.
We talk dates, send ‘save the date’ messages, call our friends and family, get excited. Kiki says she’ll come, and adds, ‘Wow, you really are going to have baby croissants.’ Kate says, ‘I can’t believe I don’t know him.’ My brothers both say, ‘Congrats.’ Dad says Adrien sounds very nice and that he guesses he’d better book himself a ticket.
Adrien takes me to the Brasserie Julien, the jewel of the Faubourg-Saint-Denis with its sensual curved doors and mysterious dusty hats in the windows belying an Art Nouveau treasure trove: carved mahogany chairs, polished bar with crêpe suzettes burning in silver dishes, red velvet banquettes, and tall, meticulously painted women curling up the walls. We order foie gras and champagne and steaks and wine and chocolate fondant and dessert wine, compliments of Dad. My stomach and soul burst with joy and a little apprehension about how we are going to do it all in our current financial situation. But I try to forget that. We talk about rings and let ourselves be wrapped in the opulence of old Paris.
On a hot morning in early July I hand my keys in to Chantal at the Récollets desk. She hugs me like I’m her child. Then, feeling like one, I take the train to Asnières, with my enormous suitcase and too many loose bags. In his apartment Adrien wraps his arms around me tight. Now we are a family.
There is not enough space for us both. I won’t settle in too far – I have put notices up at the Sorbonne and in the English bookshops and the American Church, where I found my au pair job years ago, advertising English tuition, so I’m bound to get some work soon, then we’ll be able to afford a bigger place, dans Paris. In the meantime, small pockets of space have been made for my shoes and my clothers. Adrien hangs my Special Dress under one of his heavy suit jackets. A few other dresses fit in the wardrobe, the doodoona on the back of the door, and the rest of my clothes in tight piles in the drawers he has emptied for me.
Everything must be put back in its place after use – I can’t throw my jacket over the sofa when I come in, or leave my sandals in the entranceway. It is essential that the bed is made and returned to its sofa alter-ego every morning upon waking, or life will crumble. Bathroom time is structured and we are still discreet about pooping, and I get used to cold showers as the hot water is off again. Fragments of me slowly migrate to bookshelves, walls, drawers – hair ties and pins and long strands of blond hair.
There’s just one thing that won’t find its place, the orange A4 envelope with Al’s photos of Kiki and me in the Dordogne. I don’t know what to do with them. I’m afraid of what Adrien will do if he finds them, and yet I can’t throw them out. They are precious, not only because they were taken by such a famous photographer, but because I love them. They’re awful, and impossible to look at – I haven’t so much as glanced at them since the day I showed them to Kiki – but they’re a tiny piece of us. I’d give them to Harry to hold onto, but what if he looked? Nadine might lose them. Marie-France too. I have to keep them near. Though I may never look at them again, they will forevermore go everywhere with me.
To hide something from my future husband makes me feel uneasy. But I can’t see any way around it. I put the envelope in a pocket in my suitcase.
Girl of the Night
IT’S BASTILLE DAY, quatorze juillet. The day is stinking hot and we’re lying in the park on the slope of Montmartre, under a tree, eating sandwiches. Adrien’s head is on my belly and I’m stroking his hair, which leaves my fingers greasy and smelling of coconut. I sniff them and kiss his temples. Our toes are bare. Adrien’s have huge bulbs at the end like E.T.�
�s fingers.
‘Pleeease!’ I plead. Adrien’s aunt Béatrice is having a party at her Trocadéro apartment, with its view over the Eiffel Tower, to watch the fireworks.
‘I don’t like Bastille Day. A lot of my friends don’t.’
‘Why not?’
Because, he says, it celebrates the murder of a large number of people.
‘But doesn’t it also signify the end of the aristocracy living it up while people were dying in the streets of starvation? The creation of liberty and equality and fraternity for everyone?’
‘Yes, but still, a lot of people were killed.’
‘Right. But can we go see the fireworks anyway? Please?’
‘Okay, princess. I like to watch them too. Plus Béatrice always has excellent wine.’
We finish our sandwiches and ride to Trocadéro. It’s a beautiful evening. The Champs-Élysées has red, white and blue flags all the way down it, like in the painting by Manet. People are parading, shouting, full of Frenchness. I remember marching up the Champs-Élysées with throngs of jubilant people after France won the 1998 World Cup, shouting as though I was one of them and feeling like a phony. I still do. I doubt that even marrying Adrien and raising children here would ever make me French enough to own a World Cup victory. I have decided to stop trying. Speak the language but let go of the pout, accept the smile in my voice, drop the dead eyes in the métro. I seem to be approaching a place where I can speak French and participate without having to annul my personality at the same time.
We reach a cobblestoned street with a steep incline and chain up our bikes. It’s an attractive modern block, perched on one of Paris’s rare mini buttes. We shoot up the lift to the top floor.
The door to Béatrice’s apartment is open. Nobody is inside, they’re all out on the terrace. Around the enormous living room are dozens of bottles of champagne in assorted boxes and bags, tied with ribbons, in ice boxes, on benches and shelves. Thank goodness we didn’t do as I suggested and blow twenty euros on a bottle of champagne, to be polite. A woman in a black dress and apron is placing hors d’œuvres on a platter amid the crowds of bottles. ‘Bonsoir messieurs-dames,’ she says and trots out onto the terrace.
The room has a 270-degree view over Paris. We are very high up. The wraparound terrace is wide, jutting out over the rest of the building. I grab Adrien’s arm and we walk out together. It feels like we’re floating in the sky. We stand gaping at the Eiffel Tower, which looks so close I could jump onto it. It’s lit up with blue stars. The sky is darkening.
‘Your city is a wonderland,’ I say, gazing out.
‘It’s your city too, now.’ He kisses my neck.
‘Get a room,’ says a voice in a British accent. Xavier, Adrien’s peacock of a younger cousin. He launches into his usual fast-paced English in an attempt to emasculate Adrien and impress me. Adrien smiles, unfazed. I don’t want to speak English with Xavier and exclude Adrien, so I talk back to him in French, despite his persistence.
Another voice calls from the crowd and Béatrice emerges to kiss Adrien and me tenderly on both cheeks. ‘But what, no champagne?’ she says, flitting off to find glasses. We clink just as the fireworks begin, then stand mesmerised for forty-five minutes, each burst of light and sound exploding my entire soul. A trillion sparks in all different colours, dancing and lighting me up. Somehow the display is not clichéd or trashy with its grand effects and daring formations. It’s magical.
When the show is over, Xavier says, ‘Last year’s was bigger.’
He asks me about the summer and I tell him about the two new English students I’ve secured, a shy banker whose first name is Williams and a jewellery maker named Sophie, who looks like a porcelain doll. He tells me he’s going to sell handbags with Gigi at the Puces de Vanves, and I could work there too, if I needed extra cash.
‘You have to be there at five am,’ he says. ‘I don’t mind, I rise with the sparrows.’
‘Not me,’ I say in French as Adrien listens in. ‘I’m a girl of the night.’
A woman sitting on a chair next to us makes a loud tut-tutting sound. ‘Be careful what you say,’ she says, shaking her head.
I turn to look at her properly: an attractive woman in her late thirties, wearing expensive-looking evening wear, smoking a long cigarette. She has big red lips and an aquiline nose. It seems she has been observing us for some time.
‘Excusez-moi?’ I say. ‘Are you talking to me?’
‘Yes,’ she says with a sophisticated drawl. ‘You should be careful what you say.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I say. The boys shuffle with embarrassment.
‘You say you are une fille de la nuit. That means something particular in French. People get the wrong impression.’
I would normally apply a She Who Smiles Last nonchalance to this kind of interjection, shrug it off and keep talking with the boys, extra loud, with as many double entendres as I can inject. But I’m drunk, mildly stoned, and irritated that she thinks she has the right to impart her wisdom to me. Adrien and Xavier try to change the subject but I ignore them.
‘A whore, is that what you mean?’
‘Allez chérie, it’s not important,’ says Adrien under his breath and tries to turn me back to the view.
‘No, I really want to understand. You think I’m not aware of that meaning?’ I ask the woman. ‘Is it not obvious I’m not a whore?’
The woman shrugs. ‘I say just that in France, people they hear things and they think things. You have a very loud voice. You should be careful what you say. That is what I say.’
I want to pick up her chair and toss it and her over the balcony, but I manage to keep my cool. ‘Well, I think the inference is funny. Don’t you have a sense of humour?’
She smirks and continues drinking, sitting there alone. I turn to the boys and say loudly, ‘How rude was that?’
Neither of them answers. Then Adrien mumbles, ‘Why didn’t you just ignore her?’ He seems uncomfortable, which shocks me even more.
‘Because she was being rude!’
They both remain silent, and my insides boil, my knees turn to jelly. That sensation returns of the world melting away from beneath my feet. Where am I? A minute ago I felt at home. Now I’m an alien again.
Adrien tries to hug me. ‘Look, maybe she’s right – sometimes you should be more careful of what you say.’
I go rigid. Xavier laughs and lights a cigarette. I make an excuse and push past groups of laughing and talking people to the bathroom and lock the door. There is a big white bath. I imagine it sprayed with my blood. Face in hands I sit and try not to scream, then go back out to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water and signal to Adrien out on the terrace: Let’s go.
Cheers and cracking sounds fade behind us as we ride towards the outskirts of Paris. I want to tear off in the other direction, arm above my head, middle finger raised, or ram him off his bike and punch his sculpted face in.
We ride silently down the boulevard Malesherbes. The night feels dead now, there are no cars, no people, and the closer we get to the périphérique, the stiller and quieter it becomes. As we cross the Seine I stop and scream as loud as I can, in English, ‘PARIIIS! FUUUCCKKK!’
Adrien stops his bike and turns around. Then he surprises me by joining in, screaming out over the river in English too. ‘Helllp me! Paris! PLEEEASE!’
Cars toot as they pass us but we keep screaming until it hurts and then fall to the ground. He grabs my hand and I push it away, then grab it back and bat it away again. I try to kiss him and he pulls away, then takes my face with his hands and holds it hard, staring at me. I shove him roughly in the chest. He looks shocked. I urge him with my eyes to shove me back. He gets on his bike and starts riding. I get on mine and follow him in an obsessive fury.
My stomach is tight through the streets of Levallois, he pedals like fury and I follow. I don’t want to go to his apartment, but where else can I go? The nowhere feeling is huge, though I know this street so well. That old
stone wall. That apartment block. That garage. That dark boulangerie. A sensation of being alive pangs through me, of being nothing but in this moment.
His eyes are shining as we pull our bikes into the lift. He stares at me like an animal. I look straight back at him. I wonder if we’re about to kill each other. We cram our bikes roughly into his entranceway and his tongue is suddenly deep inside my mouth. My hands grasp at his back.
‘You drive me fucking crazy,’ I say, pushing his body off me.
‘You drive me crazy.’ He pulls off my dress and presses himself roughly against me, I scratch and bite at him, tearing at his skin and hair. My back is raw the next morning from couch-burn, my head somewhere else.
The strange energy between us builds over summer. We go stir-crazy in his apartment and can’t afford to go very far. He drives me to the beach at Deauville in Séverine’s car: we get sunburnt as lobsters and come straight home. I leave my clothes on the bathroom floor, which makes him seethe. He keeps playing a new French pop song I can’t stand. He says I overcooked the spices in the dhal I spent hours cooking. I get a searing urinary tract infection on a Sunday when all the pharmacies are shut and have to spend the afternoon lying in Séverine’s bathtub, pissing myself and feeling more insecure than ever before. She’s in Algeria on a shoot, thank goodness. I lie for hours in her manufactured warmth.
After an altercation over the misplacement of his tweezers I suggest one autumn morning we ride to Montmartre, thinking it might lift the mood, and after lunch in a charming, rickety café high on the hill, we return to our bikes to find that his has been stolen, the lock that had been woven through mine cut clean in half. He is furious, and storms off down the hill, as if in search of the culprit. I follow, telling him there’s nothing he can do, but he gives me a death stare so I let him continue his pointless trajectory and ride back to the apartment, and, not knowing what to do, clean it from top to bottom. He doesn’t say thank you, which annoys me and leads to another tiff. He says sorry and then we fuck and feel a bit better.