Foreign Tongue (16 page)

“Are you going to read me any of the pornographic novel?” he murmured.

“Maybe…” There couldn’t be anything wrong with reading him one choice scene.

“I like very much to be read to.”

“I could be convinced,” I said, pretending to think about it. “It might require some effort on your part.”

“Quel genre d’effort?”
he asked. His hands were warm underneath my shirt.

“Continue, je te dirai.”

I
t’s funny how quickly life can change, I mused one morning after Olivier left. All of a sudden, I was half of a couple, when I’d thought I never would be again. He kept a razor and a toothbrush in the bathroom, and I knew he’d tucked a spare pack of cigarettes in the desk drawer. He came over after rehearsal, we ate at home or at a neighborhood bistro, and then we’d make love and sleep. We had dinner plans with Althea and Ivan, and brunch plans with his sister Sandrine and her boyfriend. Sometimes, he’d sleep in, but most of the time, he woke up early to buy bread and the papers, we’d eat together, and then he’d leave midmorning.

I opened the
International Herald Tribune
and turned to the crossword puzzle. Sometimes Olivier wrote notes in it for me to find later. Today, there was a big heart drawn around the puzzle in blue ink. I glanced up at the book section and noticed a small blurb. It was a book review of a recent translation of Rémi Le Jaa’s
La Vie de bateau
. The man was
everywhere. I cleaned the mess on the coffee table and came across Antoine’s card.
Tiens
. I picked up the phone.

“I was wondering if you were ever going to call us. Come for tea,” Antoine said.

“I’d love to,” I answered. “Thursday?” My cell phone rang, but I ignored it.

“I was going to suggest it. Victorine will be happy to see you again.”

This seemed like an exaggeration, but I said, “How nice,” as if I were flattered.

“She will want to pump you for information, but do not feel obliged,” he warned. “We are in the Eighteenth, near Montmartre,” he said and gave me the address.

I’d missed a call from Olivier, so I hit redial.

“Listen,” he said, speaking in an urgent voice. “I’ve got something I must take care of—I’ll talk to you in a couple of days.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned. “What’s wro—”

“I’m fine, but this isn’t a good time,” he interrupted, his voice tense and unfriendly. “I can’t talk. I’ll call you later.”

“Okay. I’m sorry,” I said. I heard electronic bleeps and an intercom in the background before he hung up. It sounded like he was at the airport. I tucked the translation into my bag and put on my coat. It was wet and unseasonably cold for early October, but I walked over to the bookstore in a fog, oddly wounded. He’s just busy, you caught him at a bad time, I kept repeating.

After a two-week absence, I pushed open the door of Editions Laveau and nearly tripped over a pair of semitransparent galoshes, the kind French grandmothers and my first-grade schoolteacher slid over shoes. A middle-aged woman in a turtleneck sat at Bernard’s desk, correcting papers with a red pen.

“Excusez-moi, madame,”
I said.
“Je cherche Monsieur Laveau.”
She looked up. There was a distinct family resemblance. She had his formi
dable brows, albeit trimmed and plucked into obedience. Her silver hair was cropped close to her head. His sister, I guessed, seeing the same pinkie ring with the family crest.

“Non, il est à l’hôpital,”
she said and went back to her papers. Evidently, natural warmth and friendliness to strangers ran in the family.

“Que s’est-il passé?”
I asked, concerned. She gave me an irritated look.

“C’est un de ces amis. Un accident cardiaque. Il est allé lui rendre visite.”
I wondered which one of Bernard’s friends was in the hospital. I hesitated a moment, tapping my fingers on a leather-bound
La Dame aux Camélias,
Dumas
fils
.

“J’attends sa traductrice et puis je vais fermer,”
she warned, indicating that she was only waiting for his translator and not about to help any customers.

“Eh bien, c’est moi,”
I said.

“Oh, you are the American girl?” she asked in a thick accent, frowning. “You do not speak French like an American.” I tried not to roll my eyes. French people thought it was so rare that a nonnative spoke their language well that they tended to look deeply suspicious, seeking an explanation that either involved subterfuge or ill-gotten gains, like I’d mugged some unsuspecting French person and stolen her accent. I usually slid in my father’s French nationality early on in the conversation and watched their faces clear.

“Mon père est français,”
I explained with a brief, insincere smile.

“And where are you from?” she asked.

“La Californie.”

“Quel beau pays!”
she said, gathering her papers and briefcase. “I drove up the coast with my second husband. Monterey, Big Sur…” she said, looking misty-eyed. “It was so beautiful, it made me forget how sad I was that I was going to divorce him.”

I laughed, but she gave me a perplexed look: she hadn’t meant to be funny. I handed her the translation.

“Bernard left this for you,” she said and gave me a brown envelope. When I looked surprised, she added, “He said you would understand.” Inside were two paper-clipped chapters, with a note that said,
“Continuez, svp.”

I thanked her and walked back into the rain, pleased that Laveau had entrusted me with two more chapters without even seeing my rewrite. I called Bunny, on the off chance that he was up for meeting me at Le Flore. His voice was thin and frail.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I just got back from the dentist, that’s why I sound like this,” he croaked. “I’m taking off this afternoon, motoring down to Avignon. I always thought I’d retire there, so I’m going to look around, maybe visit friends in Italy. I’ve got some buddies near Portofino, some New York pals further down the coast…I need a change of pace.”

“Are you sure you should be traveling?” I asked. “I mean, right now?”

“Lay off, Mom. It’s only a root canal,” he snarled.

“What are you not telling me?” I asked. There was a silence before he answered. When he spoke, his voice was flat, resigned.

“They forced me out. I got a nice package, but it’s final. There was nothing my lawyer could do. I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to whine and moan. I just want to get out of town. I’m stopping at WHSmith for some books, then shooting straight down the Autoroute du Soleil.”

“Oh, Bunny…” I sighed, sad for him and unable to think of anything comforting to say.

“Water under the bridge, kid. Hey, look, I’ll be gone a couple of weeks, maybe more.” His voice sounded breezier now, more animated.

“You can’t go for too long. I might need your advice on the translation.”

“Save me the good parts. That last one was a humdinger, and I’ll want reading material when I return,” he joked.

“I’ll miss you,” I said. “Be safe. Call the second you get back?”

“Promise.”

I pocketed my phone and walked home. Bunny wasn’t my only friend in Paris, but he was one of the dearest. He was an uncle, a father, and a best friend, the one I could make mistakes with who would always forgive me and was always there. It was hard not to feel bereft at the thought of his leaving town.

As I walked through the front door, the phone rang. It was Althea, reminding me to pick up dessert for dinner.

“Oh, right, tonight…” I said. Between Bunny and Olivier, I wasn’t in much of a mood to be social.

“Tonight, dinner at my house. You said you’d bring dessert, or have you forgotten already?”

“No, no, I remember. Do I have to bake it or can I buy it?”

“We’re in France, what kind of nutcase do you take me for? Get something from the place across the street. No strawberries. Ivan is allergic.”

“Olivier can’t make it. He’s got stuff he has to deal with,” I said, peering through the lace curtains down at the
boulangerie
. I could see a tart in the window: apple, maybe pear.

“No worries. I invited a few other people: Charles-Henri, Ivan’s very
bece-bege
cousin, and his girlfriend, Justine, and an academic friend of theirs,
un prof à la fac,
” she said. “I was going to invite Clara, but her man’s in town, and they never leave the house when he’s around.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, I called to check. Anyway, eightish.”

I went downstairs to buy dessert before someone else nabbed it. It was a simple
tarte aux pommes,
the apple slices layered and fanned like an Elizabethan lace ruff.

With an hour to kill before leaving for dinner, I glanced at the first
new chapter, but I wasn’t feeling industrious enough to get started on it. I checked my e-mail, then nosed around the Internet, wondering if there was a word for the French slang which abbreviates words by cutting off the last syllables, like Althea saying
“prof”
for “professor,” and
“fac”
for
“faculté,”
or university. A lot of them ended in “o”:
“ado”
for “adolescent,”
“apéro”
for “aperitif,”
“dico”
for “dictionary,”
“météo”
for “meteorology.” Some felt slangier than others:
“impec”
for “impeccable,”
“resto”
for “restaurant,”
“extra”
for “extraordinary.”

I found it: the word was “apocope,” a near palindrome, whose definition was a kind of metaplasm, or alteration of a word, by the omission of one or more sounds or letters or syllables at the end of the word. It was a Latin word, with a Greek root meaning to cut off, and it was the same word in French.

I put on my
imper
and remembered to take the tart out of the
frigo
before leaving the
appart
. I was the first to arrive at Althea’s, promptly at eight. She greeted me in her bathrobe with wet hair.

“I’m totally behind! Can you help Ivan?” she asked.

I walked into the kitchen, in time to hear Ivan yell, “Motherfucking-
putain-de-merde-de-chat
! You come back here!”

Tobermory, Althea’s fat calico cat, stomach to the ground, shot through my legs like a commando on mission, something long and brown dangling from his jaw.

“Damn cat made off with a piece of mushroom linguine,” Ivan muttered, greeting me wearing a vintage “Kiss the Cook” apron. “You think it got cat hairs in there?” he asked, poking a pile of homemade pasta. Every surface of the kitchen was dusted in a fine layer of white flour. I smothered a giggle and handed him the tart box.

“Go ahead, laugh,” he said. “Ooh, thanks. Drink?” he asked, pouring me a glass of white wine before I could answer.

“Tarte aux pommes.
Can I help?” I hung up my coat and scarf.

He shook his head. “We’re vegetarian tonight,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Charles-Henri’s friend—have you met my cousin?—doesn’t eat
meat, so it’s pasta and vegetables.” He opened the oven door to stir a pan of tomatoes and caramelized onions.

“Smells delicious,” I said, sipping my wine.

“Good. Hey, would you set the table?” he asked, his face pink from the heat.

In the living room, Tobermory sat on Althea’s linen tablecloth, cleaning one paw, not a shred of guilt on his plump pumpkin face. I scratched his head, wondering for the thousandth time where Olivier was.

At dinner, I sat next to Charles-Henri, Ivan’s rich cousin. He lived with his girlfriend Justine, in the Sixteenth, in a
hôtel particulier
he’d inherited from his grandfather. He had pale skin, a wide forehead, and a thin, bony nose, and despite his pinched, aristocratic air, he was easy-going and quick to laugh. Justine resembled the Grace Kelly–like mother in the
Figaro Madame
comic strip,
Les Triplés.
Her straight blond hair was pulled back with a velvet Alice band, to show off the even, placid features of a Victorian debutante. By contrast, their friend Fred was curly-haired and rumpled, with wire-rimmed glasses, a Dudley Do-Right chin, and a hooded sweatshirt under his jacket. He taught French literature at one of the junior year abroad programs. Over the cheese course, he and Charles-Henri argued about an American writer.

“He’s highly overrated,” Fred said, cutting a slab of
comté
.

“You’re wrong, he’s an excellent writer,” Charles-Henri protested. “His insights into human nature and psychology are quite profound.”

“The language is beautiful,” agreed Justine.

“I assure you, he doesn’t read half as well in English,” Fred said. “You like him because he’s got a really good translator.” At this, I looked up from my chèvre.

“Do you think a translation can make that big a difference?” Justine asked.

“If the original is mediocre and the translator is good, of course,” Fred said. “Translation is totally misunderstood. It’s a science
and
an art, but most people think all you have to do is find any bilingual moron and plug in the words. It’s another matter entirely to convey the music, the pacing, the drama of literature in another tongue. When it works, it’s magic, but when it doesn’t, it can turn a classroom of smart kids off Baudelaire or Rimbaud like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“Pretty high standards for your translation, huh?” Althea remarked, nodding at me. I flushed, “any bilingual moron” ringing in my ears. Everyone looked at me.

“I’m translating a novel,” I said, not elaborating further.

“So you’re up on your translation theory,” Fred said, nodding. Althea brought the
tarte aux pommes
in.

“Well, no,” I said, wrinkling my nose as I failed to remember anything resembling translation theory from my college days. Fred blinked in surprise. “I’m just translating a simple love story, written in a very basic style,” I explained, unable to keep a note of apology out of my voice. “It doesn’t require research,” I said, looking around the table. “I use a few different dictionaries for the idiomatic expressions and some of the slang.”

“It’s that easy?” Justine asked, with a skeptical look.

“Well, some of the concepts are more French than I thought—it’s as if the Frenchness sticks to them more, and it’s harder to separate the meaning from the culture. Or maybe it’s my Frenchness that’s sticking to it, and because it’s me, I can’t see it…” I trailed off, sure I sounded incoherent. “Does that make any sense?”