Breathless (9 page)

The only way I could put an end to the criticism of my libertine tendencies was to say that things had become serious between Bernard and me. (That was how my parents always framed relationship queries: Is it “serious”?) In fact, I hinted, we were thinking about getting married. Thinking about it wasn’t the same as having a concrete plan, of course, but the idea of marriage had entered our conversations in part because Alain and Monique had decided to marry when Alain finished his
degree, and in part because it seemed a way to deal with the uncertainty of the future, to curb the anxiety of the drift. Bernard and I had become engaged, for lack of a better word, despite the financial impossibility of translating that word into action. My father had not been entirely wrong about the tomorrow problem.

S
OMETIMES, WHEN
I
RETURNED TO
Paris from my weekly trip to Poitiers, often alone in a compartment on the beautiful high-speed train, I’d try to sort out my feelings. I loved the teaching; I loved speaking French; I loved being away from home. Did I also love Bernard? Going to Tunisia was taking a public step forward in the marriage plot, but was that what I wanted, or was I just copying Monique and Alain? They were happily sliding into domestic bliss as if it were their destiny. What was wrong with me? It was true that marrying Bernard would guarantee that I’d never live in America. I liked that idea, but it was less clear that hooking my fate to Bernard’s would also mean that I wanted to make my life with him the way Monique had already done with Alain. Fighting for my right to marry him against my parents’ wishes had moved me into a narrative turn I wasn’t sure I was ready for, even if I refused to give ground. But I couldn’t figure out what to put in its place, another kind of story. And besides, we had bought our tickets for Tunisia.

B
ERNARD WANTED TO SHOW ME
where in North Africa he had grown up and introduce me to his family. Everyone was curious about the American girl. I wasn’t sure I was ready to meet the parents, but refusing seemed harder than accepting. I wanted to see the city I had read about in my high-school Latin class: Carthage.

On the eve of my trip to Tunisia, I described my involvement with Bernard, defining his appeal: “Outwardly, Bernard seems entirely different from me and all the other boys I’ve been with, but underneath we are very much the same. We get along perfectly—almost—and he is very good for me in all ways.” Unfortunately, through the hedge of
almost
,
and, worse yet, by giving an example of what in the relationship was less than perfect, I had opened the door to my father’s prosecutorial scrutiny. I also made the mistake of mentioning that Bernard liked to tease me (my gnawing on the chicken leg had become one of his favorite digs) when he thought I was acting “American”; whatever was wrong with me derived from that.

Bernard also thought I was too complicated. “Complicated” was code to mean that I argued about everything, rather than accepting his views. I was bothered, I admit, by a kind of exaggerated masculinity that I tried to explain in the same way, by cultural difference; I chalked Bernard’s swagger up to his North African upbringing, which reinforced the standard French line.
Vive la différence
seemed to mean that men were right and women should wear sexy underwear. “The main difference,” I wrote to Judy, a Barnard classmate who had married in our senior year, “is that here things are clearly MALE-FEMALE—with no possibility of doubt—and
I
am the inferior being. I hesitate to go into details because I am quite confused about my feelings at this moment, and anything I write now will inevitably be contradicted tomorrow.” I didn’t say anything about my confusion to my parents. Nor could I tell them (or Judy, for that matter) about Bernard’s sexual program for correcting my truly worst American-girl habits. And as always, what I couldn’t possibly say, let alone admit fully to myself, ended by tripping me up.

In a surprising burst of literary criticism, my father decided to analyze the portrait of Bernard I had painted in my letter. Promising that he would not throw a tantrum, but that he couldn’t help acting like a lawyer, he performed an
explication de texte
of my letter in a two-page brief, handwritten on onionskin legal paper with a red rule. His handwriting, like his logic, couldn’t have been clearer and he crossed out only one word.

I’m only going to take up those items, which you disclosed, which I deem of substantial significance. I am concerned about his making fun of you. This is out and out subliminal [“disguised” crossed out] hostility and aggression, vis à vis you. It’s
close to a form of bullying. It is a not unknown phenomenon and in my amateur analysis reflects a not so good adjustment. As to masculinity, ‘‘he likes to think he dominates me,” is of a piece with my first comments. Why should a person want to dominate another? Respect, it seems to me, would be a better objective. Temperament is a form of self-indulgence
.

As to playing at being inflexible
—
that’s all right for a Nazi, but not for a husband or father. Since you imply that the inflexibility is “to impress,” is it not indicative of some sort of insecurity?

After working his way through all the other problems—the army, school, financial dependence on his parents—my father concluded with a conciliatory note: “Please believe me, I would love to be able to say, Go ahead—get married—love will cancel out the minus factors. I just can’t do it on the basis of what you have told us.”

Finally, abandoning the psychological, and in an attempt to get a complete picture of the material details (the real “minus factors”), my father attached a questionnaire at the bottom of the letter for me to detach (
TEAR HERE
) on the dotted line and return:

            
1.
  
Do you have a definite grant for next year and where?

            
2.
  
How old is Bernard and how many more years of school does he have to complete?

            
3.
  
How much army service does Bernard have and when?

            
4.
  
Are you definitely returning to your room in June?

            
5.
  
Are you planning to “visit” New York and how will you finance it?

I dutifully filled out the questionnaire about Bernard and mailed it to my father in New York. The only unambiguous information I could offer was Bernard’s age: the same as mine, twenty-two.

I had opened the door a crack to my father’s skepticism by airing my anxieties. But I didn’t expect him to fling the door wide open. The skill of his “amateur analysis,” as he styled it, unnerved me. In some ways,
Bernard’s macho teasing was familiar—a variant of David’s parrying— and usually silly. And it was the other side of extreme tenderness, kisses on the eyelids at night, smooth caresses on my forehead. He called me
his petit cornichon
, a nickname inspired by his view of my nose as a pickle. (Granted, not exactly flattering, but endearing nonetheless. Maybe I should have mentioned that in my letter.)

Still, my father’s question irked me. “Why should a person want to dominate another?” It was a fair enough concern, if you removed the hyperbole of “Nazi.” The letters stood out starkly on the page. Of course, I thought, as I mulled over my unwritten response, he never noticed how he tried to dominate me. What was this indictment of my judgment, if not an elaborate form of bullying? Turning my words against me. It was for my own good, as he liked to say, justifying his exercise of authority when my sister and I were growing up. “It’s for your health and welfare.” I knew that’s how he would answer the charge of authoritarianism. The welfare department knew no borders.

My father seemed not to notice how completely, in his marriage, my mother dominated him; at least he didn’t act as if he suffered from it. Maybe “Nazi” was the unconscious expression of his private pain. I hated my mother’s spousal superiority. It was wrong, I thought, for a wife to dominate her husband. In return, I was determined never to do that to mine. But when it came right down to it, I never liked being bossed around. Even as a joke. That part my father had right.

Easter in Tunisia

B
ERNARD AND
I
WENT FOR
long walks along the beach on the outskirts of Tunis at night and during the day sat in cafés along the main drag, smoking and soaking up the sun.

“I’m late,” I told Bernard one afternoon, as we returned to his parents’ apartment.

“How late?”

“At least a week,” I said, fingering the hand of Fatma, the amulet against the evil eye I had picked up on my first excursion into the bazaar.

“We’ll get married,” Bernard said with a comfortable smile, holding me close to him to confirm his enthusiasm. “You could live here while I do my military service.”

“I don’t think so,” I said slowly, releasing myself from the protective circle of his arm. “I’m not ready.”

Bernard’s smile faded. I knew he was disappointed. I also knew
that the prospect of having a child with Bernard in Tunis terrified me as much as it had with Leo in Paris.

When two weeks had gone by, Bernard told his mother that we were worried.

“What do you want to do?” Sophie asked me over tea in her immaculate kitchen.

“Anything to get my period,” I said with sudden vehemence, looking at the palm trees outside the window as though they threatened my existence.

“Are you sure?” she asked, squeezing my hand. “I wouldn’t mind being a young grandmother while Bernard does his military service.”

I didn’t want to live in Tunisia, and it wasn’t just the camels. True, I was enraptured by the scent of jasmine and orange blossoms, the pine nuts soaking in mint tea, and the shopping bargains to be had in the Souk. My arms were covered with bangles that tinkled with every gesture. The languor of the climate was seductive, but what would I do in a small provincial city? The women were cordoned off into their own world of domestic concerns. I could sense how restless Sophie was now that her children were grown, how much a grandchild would mean to her, and I was touched that faced with my distress, she quietly arranged for me to get a series of hormone injections to bring on my period; her brother owned a pharmacy in town.

Bernard and I passed through a curtain of beads to a small storeroom in the back of the pharmacy. His uncle told me to lift my skirt in a tone that made it sound as though that was how I had gotten into trouble in the first place. I had always dreaded injections, but as I stood there gripping the counter, I welcomed the pain of the thick fluid moving slowly into my muscles. I would have tolerated even more if it meant bringing on my period. Afterward, we sat for a while and smoked until I was ready to go back to Bernard’s family. Every day for the next week, I weighed myself at the pharmacy and moved the steel weights to the right. Three more shots and we would make the next decision.

At the house, we would sit for hours, it seemed, at the dining room table. I prayed that this crisis would be like the last time with Leo, a little more than a year ago, when the pregnancy turned out to be a
combination of pasta and anxiety. Now that overly sweet, sticky pastry I didn’t even like. Crushed almond paste. Colored jellies. Glossy, fried dough. One morning I noticed a tiny spot of blood on my underpants. When nothing followed the brownish dot, we made an appointment with a gynecologist who was a friend of the pharmacist. Dr. Habib examined me and said that the injections had caused the egg to fall, but that my tubes were blocked. At least that’s what I thought he said, translating through my anxiety.

“So I’m not pregnant?” He looked at me incredulously for not using the diaphragm just because Bernard didn’t like the idea of it.

The doctor said he couldn’t tell me that without further examination in his clinic.

Maybe I was still pregnant; maybe we were speaking about an abortion, only in code. This was a country in which you could never be sure what was going on; so much was wrapped in decorum and unsaids.

The next morning Bernard’s mother drove us to the clinic thirty minutes away from the center of the city. It appeared to be a maternity clinic, since most of the patients I saw had huge bellies. The doctor ushered me into a big room with a high ceiling and bright lights. I climbed up on the examining table and placed my legs in the stirrups.

Someone took my arm and inserted a drip. The lights started to fade. I felt a rapid shudder of peace.

“M
AKE THEM STOP CRYING
,” I could hear myself saying.

We must have been on the floor for newborns, who were screaming their tiny lungs out down the hall. I was propped up in bed with an ice pack on my stomach and thick layers of cotton pads between my legs. Bernard was holding my hand, gazing at me sweetly. His mother was there too.

“You’re fine,” she said, with a kind expression on her face. “The doctor just cleaned you out.”

The next morning the three of us returned to Tunis.

Cleaned out, I thought, like Valerie’s car in Venice.

Dog Days

L
ES PARENTS TERRIBLES
STARTED PRESSING
me to explain my living arrangements. We made a phone date. Transatlantic calls required elaborate planning and timing. You had to determine the time first by letter or, more urgently, by telegram. Then you had to go to a post office that could handle the calls. After you left your number at the main desk, you sat down to wait your turn until a booth came free. It was so expensive to talk for even a few minutes that we avoided calls whenever possible, especially as I tended to cry, which prolonged the conversation. Still, my parents were determined to clarify the status of my relationship with Bernard.

Serious or not serious?

“Look, doll,” my father began, “we’re just trying to understand what you feel.” I could hear my mother making sarcastic comments in the background. My father handled matters when things seemed to have
spiraled out of control. The term of endearment marked his willingness to hear my side of things.