Foreign Tongue (34 page)

T
he next day, I met Bunny in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Up on a sunny hill not far from the folly, with a sweeping view of the city. I told him about my nightmares and my appointment with Maître Seydi.

“A witch doctor? Are you kidding me?” He folded his arms across his chest and glared at me. The cold wind whistled through the air. “Mumbo jumbo,” he said, his mouth twisting. “Though I suppose it explains why you’ve been acting so strange lately.”

“I have not been acting strange!” I protested. He slid me a sideways look.

“And you think this
marabout
can cure you?”

I tilted my head and looked at him. “It’s worth a shot.”

He was silent for a moment. “You want me to walk with you?” he asked. I nodded. He picked up his WHSmith bag, and we walked toward the avenue de Laumière.

At number thirty-nine, I punched in the building code and pushed the door open. Bunny stood, stubbing the sidewalk with the tip of his running shoe.

“I’m not coming in,” he said.

“Fine,” I said, exasperated. He squinted, looking down the street.

“I may not be here when you come out,” he added.

“What do you mean, you might not be here? Why can’t you wait for me there?” I asked, pointing to the café on the corner, Le Carambolage.

“I don’t know, I have stuff to do,” he said, wrinkling his nose with a cross look.

“But—”

“I don’t know this neighborhood, and who knows how long you’ll be. Plus, I’m tired and it’s cold,” he said, playing his trump card. I couldn’t argue with that, and he knew it. I looked at his face, the wrinkled skin and watery eyes.

“You’ll be okay, kid. You know where to find me,” he said. “You always do.” He bent his head to whisper in my ear. “You’ll be okay.”

I climbed four flights of stairs to Maître Seydi’s apartment, wondering what I would find. What if it was mumbo jumbo or voodoo? Or dangerous? I paced the landing, scenes of zombie movies flashing before my eyes, but then the fragrant aroma of onions and garlic sautéing in butter wafted through the air, and it reassured me.

Maître Seydi opened the door. He was a small, slight man, whose meticulously pressed olive green suit looked baggy, as if he’d lost some weight, perhaps due to illness. His cheeks sagged as well, but unlike his brother’s, they weren’t scarred. He had short gray hair, wore mirrored aviator sunglasses, and spoke French with a singsongy accent.

“Bienvenue chez nous, mademoiselle,”
he said, opening his arms wide in welcome. Was I supposed to hug him?

“Merci, maître,”
I said.

He took my arm above the elbow.
“Venez, venez,”
he said, pulling me into a small room. It was painted yellow, the paint peeling at the baseboards, with ikat-covered chairs surrounding a round table. A vase filled with wilting yellow roses sat on the table. An Elgar suite played in the background, a piece I knew.

“S’il vous plaît,”
he said, pointing to a chair. He pinched the pleats in his pants and sat next to me. He asked me a series of questions, about my background, my marital status, profession, and health. Then he got up and turned off the music. When he sat down again, he stretched out his hand. I placed mine in it. It was warm and dry.

“Alors, parlez-moi de votre problème,”
he said. As I told him about my bad dreams, the disasters and claustrophobia, he nodded and made small clicking noises.

“You say car crashes, explosions?” he asked. I nodded. “Yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “Sometimes a woman’s voice, weeping, maybe Italian or Spanish.”

“Every night?”

“No, but a lot of nights
quand-même,
” I said.

“You’re lucky you found me,” he said matter-of-factly. He squeezed my hand. I let out a sigh of relief. “Of course you are not crazy,” he said, reading my thoughts. “Someone is trying to tell you something. How long has this been going on?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Weeks.”

He whistled. “Weeks! It is a long time to sleep with such dreams.”

“I got used to it, I guess.”

“This is because you are unmarried and have no children,” he declared, shaking his head. My faith in Maître Seydi took a nosedive. I made a noncommittal hum.

“Don’t pretend to agree with me!” he rebuked, shaking my hand. “I am trying to understand. You did not come here to tell me stories!” He looked fierce as he furrowed his forehead, his mouth grim below the motorcycle cop shades.

Des histoires
. I had lots of stories. Eve’s story, Monsieur X’s story, which was also Monsieur le Ministre’s story. I was, in fact, surrounded by story.

“Sometimes, the world is too much to bear,” he said. “This pain, it can take up residence in the hidden part of your mind, your dreams.”

“Huh?” I didn’t follow. He grimaced, two dimples appearing by his mouth.

“Your skin, it is a membrane that protects your body from disease. In a similar way, your being must protect itself. It must filter, reason, understand, feel, of course, but with perspective, moderation.”

I blinked.

“But now, it must stop! You must make it stop,” he said and, turning to face me, gripped my hands. “Concentrate,” he said.

A distant memory came to me: holding a friend’s hands in second grade, two little girls spinning around on the playground.

“Il faut surmonter la souffrance, pas vivre dans son ombre,”
he said. You must surmount suffering, not live in its shadow. “Close your eyes.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Stop thinking so much,” he snapped.

I shut my eyes. The room spun, and for a moment, as if from far off, I heard a couple of piano notes and a rustle of wind, as if they were coming from a TV next door.

“Breathe!” Maître Seydi barked, startling me. My eyes flew open and I sucked in air, not knowing I’d been holding it. “Again,” he said. I closed my eyes again, but now all I could think about was the shape of his fingers, the odd intimacy of holding hands with a stranger. I opened one eye to peek at him.

“No, no. You are not serious,” he said, his mouth curling. He let go of my hands and leaned back. He was sweating, and something told me he was working harder at this than I was. He shook his head. “Come back another time.”

“But—”

“You must concentrate, then move out of the way. I cannot do everything.
Ce n’est pas sérieux
.” He waved his hand in the air, as if to sweep me away, and pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket. His gravity was bracing. I didn’t want to give up; I didn’t want him to give up on me.

“Maître,” I said, “the first time, I remembered something from my childhood, and I heard laughter. This is strange for me, but I want to try again.” To my surprise, my voice cracked.

I couldn’t tell what was going on behind the mirrored glasses, but he tucked the phone away and held out his hands. I placed mine in them. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, picturing myself asleep. He tightened his grip, and, like the slow dance of a merry-go-round, the room began to spin again.

It was dark, but in the distance, I saw something small and bright, like an illuminated scene in a snow globe. The snow globe grew larger, until I saw myself, younger this time, maybe five or six, wearing a pinafore and white shoes, hiding in the corner of a garden. I was clutching a small stuffed animal, its long, floppy, torn ear in one hand, and crying my little heart out. I walked closer.

She looked up at me, her face swollen and red. I reached down and drew her into my arms. There was an ache in the air, the sweetest, saddest piano music mixed with the scent of roses, the smell of freshly mowed lawn, and me and my little childhood self. It echoed inside me, that aching, sweet sadness, fitting itself to me like a lover.

I don’t know how long I sat with her, with me, her hand tucked into mine. The wind kicked up. She stood and wiped her face. The sun was setting, and up above, the sky was turning a deeper blue. I felt minuscule and frozen, as if I were watching the world from inside a glass marble which got smaller and smaller. I started to panic, but I heard a familiar voice, and I pulled myself on it, a rope in a storm.

“You’ll be okay, kid.”

My eyes snapped open. Only Maître Seydi’s grip kept me from toppling over. For the second time in my life, I saw stars, only this time they looked like silent insects, doing cartwheels through my peripheral vision before they disappeared.

I didn’t speak as I got my bearings. My face was wet, and I blew my nose. I noticed a tall wood sculpture in the corner of the room, a white cane beside it. Maître Seydi removed his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His eyes were a pale, milky blue, and I saw he was blind. He cleaned his glasses with a white linen handkerchief, a gesture that seemed both absurd and touching, and put them back on.

“I didn’t know. How sad she was,” I said in a small voice.

He pulled a cigarette from a silver case and lit it with a matching lighter. It felt like he was watching me from behind those glasses. When he exhaled through his nose, the two escaping plumes of smoke made me think of a dragon. One thin, blue stream of smoke curled itself into a question mark, hung in the air between us, and dissipated.

My mouth was suddenly dry, and my eyes stung. Maître Seydi cleared his throat.

“But you know, there’s nothing I can do about your ghost,
ma petite
.” He said it in the kindest voice, so gently I almost didn’t understand. “The tall one, your rabbit friend.”

My legs wobbled beneath me as I went down the four flights of stairs. Outside, it was bright and sunny. The sidewalks seemed to sparkle with bits of glass and broken jewelry. I was a little unsteady, but I walked through the unfamiliar neighborhood, passing a
traiteur
advertising fresh
terrine de lapin
. I walked all the way to Père Lachaise, entering the cemetery behind a group of American college students looking for Jim Morrison’s grave.

I meandered down the dappled alleys, amazed, as always, by the variety of names, headstones, sculptures, and urns. I continued up the
hill to the columbarium beyond the narrow, white smokestack rising above the cemetery heights. I walked down the stone steps to the second floor and made a left, my feet taking me, the rest of me just following. Inside, the air was cold and moist. I stopped when I found it: a small, shiny onyx square with bright gilt letters. There, in the dark, I sighed, and knelt my forehead against Bunny’s name.

I found a spot with a view under some rustling trees. In front of me, Paris stretched out under a blue sky with cotton-candy clouds. There’d been a phone call, weeks ago, in the middle of the night, the one I didn’t want to hear, the strange woman’s voice, the woman who’d gotten my number out of his book, telling me about Bunny’s car crash on the Italian
auto-strada
. It had been so easy to press the wrong button in the morning.

I leaned back on the bench and watched a pair of magpies swoop and chase each other. Sparrows pecked at the ground. I would miss visiting him in the park. Any park.

It was a long good-bye. The light changed, my hands got cold in their gloves, and my nose ran. When my toes began to go numb, I walked out of the cemetery and found a taxi at the gate. I climbed in and checked my cell phone. I listened to Bernard Laveau tell me he thought I’d enjoy translating a nineteenth-century murder mystery, and would I come by on Monday morning. The driver, a chatty sort, caught my eye in the rearview mirror. He told me he was an engineer, but he’d been laid off. Then he asked what I did for a living.

“Je suis traductrice.”
I told him I was a translator as I watched Paris go by: people sitting in cafés, standing in line at the
boulangerie,
walking home with plastic bags from Monoprix…couples and children, singles with groceries, and little old ladies with little old dogs.

“Quelles langues?”
Which languages?

“De français en anglais,”
I said and relaxed back in the seat.

“Aha! I have a tricky one!” he announced, switching into English.
“No one ever knows this. I’ve been known to offer a free fare to anyone who can tell me,” he said, though I noticed he didn’t offer it now. “How do you translate
‘Nous ne sommes pas encore sortis de l’auberge’
?” he asked.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” I said.

“Ah!” Excited, he turned to look at me at the red light. “You are the first one who has been able to answer me. You must be very good,” he said.

“Pas mal,”
I said. “Not bad at all.”

I looked at my reflection in the glass and smiled. In French, “not bad” meant pretty good. We drove west, and the new crescent moon, like a sliver of my heart, hung as if suspended in the early evening Parisian sky.

I
would like to extend heartfelt thanks to the following:

Friends and early readers: Marjorie Gellhorn Sa’adah, Gail Vida Hamburg, Maria Grasso, Amy Waddell, Rebecca Turner, Lisa McErlean, and David Ulin. Also, to the every other Wednesday writing group, where this book first took shape.

Jeanne Robson and everyone in years of Tuesday nights.

Friends from whom I borrowed bits and pieces: Natalie Milani, Pascal Reveau, Cynthia Coleman-Sparke, Drea Maier, Leyla Kahla, Sophie Poux, and Elizabeth Brahy.

To everyone at HarperCollins, especially my wonderful editor, Jeanette Perez, for her kindness, keen intelligence, and incisive comments, as well as Carrie Kania, Cal Morgan, Jennifer Hart, Nicole Reardon, Mary Beth Constant, Alberto Rojas, and Rachel Chubinsky.

At Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.: special thanks to the great Robert Guinsler, for his guidance, wisdom, faith, and humor.

To my teachers at Bennington.

My family and friends, in both Los Angeles and Paris: Fifi and Alain Marsot, to whom this book is dedicated; Vanessa Marsot; Thésy Marsot; Jean-Pascal Naudet for my writing retreats at Les Tilleuls; the Gang at Avenue L and Eighth Street; and ROF for the enchanted summer.

Nancy Mitford fans will recognize the story of the Venetian house
and the French grandmother from
The Pursuit of Love,
from which it is shamelessly borrowed.

The City of Paris, the landscape of my dreams.

And to the memory of Roy Koch, the
Oberbefehlshasen
.