Foreign Tongue (27 page)
Authors: Vanina Marsot
“That was Monsieur X!” I exclaimed.
“Si vous voulez,”
he said. He lifted his cup to his lips.
“He does exist!” I said. “I was starting to wonder if you’d made him up,” I joked.
“
C’est quoi,
‘made him up’?” he asked, the bushy eyebrows drawing together.
“To invent,” I explained.
He leaned back in his chair, his gaze cold. “
Mais voyons, mademoiselle
, if I had invented him, whose work would you be translating?” he asked.
“Well, maybe you wrote it, or…” I trailed off. Bernard was not amused. “Never mind.” I said, slouching down on the chair. Playtime
was over. He handed me an envelope. I reached for it, but he didn’t let go.
“Inside, you will find another ending, and you will recall you owe me the translation of the second one—”
“I haven’t started that one. I didn’t know whether I should,” I said, interrupting him. “But I’ll get right on it.”
He nodded. “So you will owe me two chapters,” he said, “and you will find also a confidentiality agreement and a standard contract, which you will sign and return to me, as well as information about
droits d’auteur,
or author’s rights. In addition, I want your word that you will not discuss this work with anyone.
Ever
.” His voice was solemn. He let go of the envelope and leaned back, steepling his fingers together.
“You have it, of course. But I’m never to talk about it? Even after it’s published?” I asked. He gave a long-suffering sigh.
“
Mais non, mademoiselle
.
If
it gets published,
then
you may discuss it. And
if
it gets published in English, you will,
bien sûr,
receive credit in
very small print
beneath the author’s name, or his pseudonym.
If
we sell the English-language rights, your rights will also include, as you will see from the contract, a bonus compensation plus royalties.
If,
” he repeated, shaking a finger at me.
“Royalties? I get royalties?” I grinned.
“Il ne faut pas vendre la peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tué,”
he said, the French equivalent of not counting chickens, except it was about selling a bearskin before you kill the bear.
“Vous ne buvez pas votre café?”
“Si, si.”
I picked up the cup and downed the coffee in two gulps. He looked at me expectantly.
“Molto buono,”
I said.
He nodded. “You’ll see, there’s a shift in the writing. Let me see your work by Friday midday, as I am going to the country.” He stood. I was discharged.
“A bientôt, mademoiselle.”
“A bientôt, monsieur, et merci encore,”
I said. I stood there for a moment, hesitant, wanting to tell him how grateful I felt, but I didn’t know
quite what to say. He gave me a questioning look, then nodded, understanding. I squelched an urge to kiss him on the cheek and instead gave him a jaunty salute.
He glanced at my hand.
“Qu’est ce qui s’est passé?”
he asked, pointing to the bandage.
“A bad burn,” I answered. “But it’s healing.”
I walked out, realizing our relationship had changed. I’d felt it in the playfulness in our exchange. It was like a dance, a minuet, where I constantly trod on his toes. Behind his amused, impatient, stern manner of putting me in my place, I could tell that not only had he forgiven me but he liked me. The French didn’t bother instructing people they didn’t care about: knowledge was a gift you bestowed on people you liked. If the French were indifferent to you, they let you labor in ignorance. If they disliked you, they delighted in your lack of knowledge.
Therefore, Bernard’s condescension, chastisement, and lecturing meant he liked me. The conclusion was so delightful that I grinned at a young woman pushing a navy blue pram. She glared at me.
I cut down to the rue Jacob and window-shopped the antiques stores. I examined storefronts displaying ormolu sconces, nineteenth-century furniture, brass carriage lamps, gravures of maps, oil paintings of jowly burghers, fraying tapestries, and my favorite, stacks of ironed, monogrammed, and
ajouré
d tablecloths, napkins, and bed linens.
The sun made stealth appearances through breaks in the clouds. I crossed back over the Seine on the Pont du Carrousel and into the Tuileries. Although it was a crisp day, Parisians strolled through the garden and sat on the benches, soaking up a bit of sun.
Up ahead, I could see the large round fountain at the end of the garden, its jets turned off. Green enamel metal chairs were arranged around it in random fashion. I’d sat there before with Bunny, usually around this time of day, after lunch at one of his haunts. The Austrian
brunch place and the soufflé restaurant were nearby, off the rue de Ravioli.
I wondered where he was. I wanted to tell him about Monsieur Laveau, how I’d nearly lost my job. As I got closer to the fountain, the sunlight shimmered on the surface, and I squinted against the starbursts of light. A large figure in a khaki trench coat, jeans, and sneakers sat on a chair under a tree, his head balanced on his fist like Rodin’s thinker. My toe stubbed a large pebble and sent it skidding over the gravel.
It looked like Bunny, but it couldn’t be Bunny. Bunny would’ve called to tell me he was back in town, to make plans, to eat an
onglet
with
frites
at Le Petit Victor Hugo in the Sixteenth or that Indian place he called Banana. Bunny would’ve called when he got back, to complain about European drivers, the lack of good food on the road, the lamentable state of Top 40 radio. So, it couldn’t be Bunny. But the man seated on the green enamel chair looked just like him. I walked toward him in the bright midday light.
Dans le domaine des sentiments, le réel ne se distingue pas de l’imaginaire.
*
—
ANDRÉ GIDE
, Les Faux-Monnayeurs
I
recognized the giant sneakers. There was a plastic WHSmith shopping bag on the ground next to him. I stopped a couple of feet away.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” I asked rhetorically, because now I was sure. Pale skin, thin gray-brown hair, age spots on his cheeks and hands.
He looked up. “He-e-e-y,” he said, as if surprised out of a reverie. “You found me.”
“When d’you get back?” I asked. He dusted off the chair next to him, and I sat. He looked tired, the bags under his eyes thick and droopy.
“I don’t know. Couple of days, I guess.” He looked across the park.
“Did you get my message?”
“Will ya look at that kid?” he asked, his eyes lighting up. I followed his gaze across the fountain to a toddler, speeding toward the water with a large stuffed animal. His mother gave chase, catching him just in time to prevent the ignoble dunking of Babar, king of the elephants, complete with a green three-piece suit and a yellow crown.
“Bunny,” I said. He tore his eyes away and looked at me.
“Yeah, yeah, the one where you sound like a refugee. I can’t deal with hysterical women,” he said, screwing up his eyes against the sun.
“I wasn’t hysterical! I missed you!” I protested, irked.
“Cool it, I’m kidding. I got back last night. I was going to call later. I just had to get my head together, pick up a few books. Incredible food, but not a decent bookstore on the whole coast.”
“But you read Italian,” I said.
“Just because I
read
Italian doesn’t mean I
wanna
read in Italian. When I’m on vacation, I want a thriller in my native tongue. Ed McBain. Or Vonnegut,” he growled.
“What’s wrong? Are you in a bad mood?” I asked. Something wasn’t right, as if he were out of sorts, not entirely there. He picked a twig off the ground.
“Takes a while to get used to ’Ris again,” he said. “Not sure I want to stay.”
“Would you really move to Avignon?” I watched as he drew lines in the hard-packed sand. A gust of wind blew dust up, and he tossed the stick away.
“Maybe. It’s small, but I want somewhere warm. I’m tired of cold,” he said, pulling his coat around him. “Winter here is dark and gloomy.” His mouth set in a line.
“How about Dalloyau, for an
opéra
? My treat,” I said.
A tired smile flitted across his face, but he said, “Nah. It’s too far.”
“There’s one on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré,” I said.
He shook his head. “The doc says I have to watch my cholesterol, and I didn’t in Italy,” he explained. “Besides, my back is killing me. It’s an eleven-hour drive from Genoa. I had to take the métro here. I hate the métro.” He leaned forward, his face tight. For a moment, it looked like he might cry.
“Bunny.” I reached a hand toward him, but he sat back. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine, kid. I’ll get used to things again. You?”
“Fine,” I answered, though my voice rose at the end of the word, making it sound like a question. He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. It felt like a shock of cold air, his lips were so cold. “I’m gonna go. I have to descend the hell of the Sixteenth back to Boulogne. See you.”
I watched him lumber up the slanted walk toward the Concorde station. At the top, he paused and raised his right hand to wave without turning around. He looked like a mirage, his coat flapping in the wind before he disappeared behind the stone balustrade.
I sat in the park, letting the wind blow my hair around. Bunny’s sad mood seeped into me. It had to be hard, being squeezed out of your job. At least Italy had been a distraction. But here, in the city where he’d lived and worked for the past twenty years…
I walked toward Ravioli and took the métro home. I was thrilled to have my job back, and not one but two chapters due in days.
At home, I sat on the sofa and looked at both chapters. Each one was twenty pages long and, I suspected, in a smaller font than the earlier ones. Bernard was one sneaky bastard, I laughed to myself. I stretched out and read the second ending. It began where the previous one had, with the narrator waiting for the detective’s report.
During the two weeks I waited to hear from Verbier, my relationship with Daphne disintegrated. We barely spoke to each other. Returning home from work one evening, I found a taxi driver putting her suitcase in the trunk. Daphne sat waiting for me, her set of keys on the table. It was astonishing how little it affected me.
She lit a cigarette. “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said, pouring myself a whiskey.
“There are many things you don’t know,” she said coolly, straightening a pleat in her skirt. “I don’t know who she is, and I don’t care. I’m leaving you for Mathieu.”
“He didn’t tell me he was getting a divorce,” I remarked, trying to picture them together. Mathieu and I had done our military service together. I’d been a witness at his wedding. Daphne put out her cigarette, slapped me once, very hard, picked up her handbag and gloves, and left.
Afterward, it was the silence I noticed. It was the only thing that bothered me.
Aha. So, Daphne the Veal could take care of herself. Good for her.
I spent more time at the office, immersing myself in work. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Eve, especially after Verbier’s report arrived in the mail.
“After numerous hours of research, it has been determined that Madame Eve Denoël, née Marguerite Rashwan, is currently living in Biarritz, at 6, allée des Libellules. She is often seen in the company of Monsieur Eric Beaufort de Blois, chairman of Ericsson Holdings, Ltd., and a widower. He also maintains a residence in Biarritz, the Villa du Soleil, which overlooks the sea…”
It was as I’d suspected, when I’d seen them at Longchamp: she was Beaufort’s mistress. Why had I disregarded it? I’d been a fool to think it didn’t matter.
“Marguerite was born and raised in Lausanne, Switzerland, the daughter of Lisette Cabourg, a French socialite, and Raouf Rashwan, a retired Egyptian diplomat, former ambassador to France and the United Nations.
“When her father died of lung cancer, Marguerite was sent to Miss Pym’s School in Gloucestershire. Her mother moved to Geneva and remarried twice. The first was to a British banker, Ian Rathmines; he died skiing in Crans-Montana in a freak avalanche. A year later, Madame Rashwan-Rathmines married Fletcher Flanagan, a retired pulmonary surgeon and fellow member of the Alpine Birding Club.
“At eighteen, Marguerite left England with her boyfriend, Ricky Taher, a student at Cambridge and scion of a prominent Cairene family. They lived together briefly in Cairo but split up when Taher’s family pressured him into marrying a distant cousin.
“Marguerite enrolled in classes at the American University and moved in with an American student, James Rochester. With various friends, they formed a jazz music band; James played piano and Marguerite sang. They played once a week for the expatriate crowd at the Hôtel Méridien. Marguerite changed her name to Eve.
“Rochester, addicted to hashish and prescription drugs, was prone to violent mood swings. While still living with him, Eve began an affair with a Russian petroleum engineer. James attempted suicide, leaping from their third-floor balcony and breaking a leg as well as injuring a donkey tethered in the street below. Eve returned to Geneva, remaining there until her mother’s death from leukemia.
“She donated a portion of her inheritance to cancer research, then spent a year abroad before moving to Paris. She bought an apartment and studied theater. During this time she became involved with Laurent Weissman, a documentary filmmaker for TF1.
“At the Cannes Film Festival, Eve struck up a friendship with Eric Beaufort de Blois, a French industrialist fifteen years her senior, an acquaintance of her stepfather. Beaufort was married to the fashion designer Alix de Cruz. It was also at this time that Eve discovered Weissman’s numerous infidelities. She left him shortly thereafter.
“She accepted a job in public relations for the house of Alix de Cruz, and a friendship developed between the two women. A year later, Eve married de Cruz’s brother, Jean Denoël, legal counsel and chief financial officer of the fashion house.”
Ending number two was nearly the same story but slightly tweaked, a parallel universe.
“In an uncanny case of history repeating, Jean Denoël disappeared in a heli-skiing accident in the Bugaboos. Search-and-rescue teams failed to find his body.
“Eve retreated to Switzerland. Coaxed back to Paris by Alix de Cruz, she resumed work at the fashion house six months later. When Alix de Cruz overdosed on painkillers, Beaufort closed the fashion house (under two preexisting contracts, the brand name Alix de Cruz continues, licensed to an eyewear company and a textile manufacturer, for a line of cotton sheets). Beaufort devoted himself to his hobby, breeding racehorses. Eve Denoël became a frequent visitor to his farm in Normandy…”
I put the report down. My fury with Eve was replaced by an acute sense of disappointment. She had a long history with Beaufort. I was a minor deviation on a predetermined path they walked together.
Ew. Really clunky metaphor. I made a note to tinker with it later.
I couldn’t understand how I could have fallen so deeply for a woman who was so involved with someone else. The thought occupied me for days. I had no insight as to why, but I had to be pragmatic. There was no choice but to let go. And yet, I couldn’t.
“I want a detailed description of Eve Denoël’s daily activities in Biarritz,” I told Verbier on the phone. “Where she eats, who she visits, where she gets her hair done.”
I would go to Biarritz.
Uh-oh. I suspected my narrator was about to get his ass kicked.
Less than five days later, I booked a hotel and a ticket on Air Inter.
I pressed Save. My stomach rumbled, and I went into the kitchen to hunt down dinner. Finding a frozen herbed
merlan
steak, I put it in a pan and set the timer. I made a mental note to check the Web for its mercury levels and, while I was at it, what kind of fish it was. My French fluency had alarming limits: I knew the fish I liked in English (yellowtail, black cod), I knew the fish I liked in French
(bar, loup de mer, cabillaud, rouget),
but I didn’t know how to translate them, aside from the obvious ones:
saumon, truite, thon
. Maybe one ate different fish in different countries, given the different oceans. Or maybe there weren’t enough neural pathways in my brain connecting the two languages. My dabbling in translation theory had kick-started all sorts of questions.
If the fish were different because they lived in different oceans, were people different in each language? In English, I sounded more monotonous, and I didn’t need to open my mouth much to speak it. French, on the other hand, required precise contortions of the lips, use of the back of the palate for the “r’s,” and an almost musical scale for emphasis and exclamations. If I was tired, my French pronunciation of
“concert”
sounded like
“cancer.”
Sometimes, my English-language brain smirked at the theatrical way my voice rose and fell in French. An explanation on the Internet said French was a “syllable-timed” language, meaning each syllable was of the same duration, versus English, which was a “stress-timed” language, meaning that, depending on the word, each syllable might have a different length but that the time between the syllables remained consistent. I sounded out words, trying to figure out what this meant, but I didn’t get it.
In the next few pages, the narrator went down to Biarritz and stalked Eve. This led to one quasicomical but somewhat pathetic scene where he knocked over a display of stocking-covered plastic legs fanned out like a peacock tail in the hosiery section of the Printemps department store before confronting her at her apartment.
“What are you doing here?” Eve shouted, dropping her shopping bags. “You gave me such a shock, you cretin! What’s happened to you? You look terrible.”
In all my fantasies, these were not the first words she spoke to me.
I chuckled. Every once in a while, Monsieur X had a sense of humor.
I followed her inside her apartment. It was a sunny place, painted white and furnished with ugly modern furniture the color of goose shit.
I backspaced.
Caca d’oie
is not a color in English. I changed it to “dung brown.”
“You look terrible,” she repeated, but smiling this time. “But I’m so happy to see you.” She folded me in her arms.
“How could you disappear like that?” I asked her hair, confused.
“I told you I was going away,” she said, pulling away from me.
“You neglected to tell me whether you were coming back,” I pointed out.
“Of course I was coming back. I live in Paris.” She turned to put various food items in the refrigerator and in cupboards. I reached out a hand to stop her. Startled, she dropped a jar of jam on my foot.
Ignoring the pain, I said, “You’re living here! In his apartment! Going to restaurants with him! Why would I think you were coming back?” I asked.
She recoiled. “You’ve been spying on me?”
“I was going mad,” I said, grasping her shoulders. She shook herself free…
The narrator and Eve yelled at each other for a couple of pages, the fighting escalating. He called her a heartless kept woman; she called him a dirty spy. She broke things, then broke down, sobbing. He tried to
comfort her; she pushed him away. He broke down and kicked the furniture. Did people really fight like this?
Eve’s eyes flashed with fury. “This is
my
apartment,” she said, pointing to herself. “It has belonged to me since my husband died,” she said. “Eric has been like a father to me, his wife was my closest friend. Your suspicions are repugnant,” she hissed.
We looked at each other across the white floor. My anger dwindled away. I believed her. I believed her, and I saw her as if for the first time, vulnerable, hurt, angry, but above all, the woman I loved.
“Eve,” I began, moving toward her. “I was going mad, wondering if you’d come back,” I said. She didn’t say anything. I took another step.
“I came here to beg you to come back—” I stopped as one pear-shaped tear rolled down her cheek. “I love you, Eve. Why did you leave?” I asked.
“Venice frightened me. I didn’t want to care for someone so deeply,” she said. “But now you’re here…”
I waited, holding my breath. If she asked me to leave, I would banish myself from her life.
“I love you, too,” she said.