Almost French (36 page)

A Parisian hostess has to be a contortionist. To appreciate her skills—‘her’ because I know few French men who venture into the kitchen—try preparing a perfect four-course meal for eight on top of your washing machine. That’s exactly what we used to do at Levallois where the only bench space was the washing machine surface with its awkward hip-height that caused a lot of back-ache. Thanks to Mio’s renovations, in this apartment we now have a luxurious metre and a half—not bad by Paris standards. Like many Parisians our ‘oven’ is a dodgy portable thing no bigger than a microwave. It sits on top of the refrigerator (that is the only spare spot) where it defrosts the freezer every time we use it.

I stick the duck breasts under the grill. Soon their fat is popping and spitting, occasionally igniting the orange ropes of heat. My impersonation of a perfect Parisian hostess is interrupted by mad dashes into the kitchen to extinguish the flames. Sometime after ten we move to the table, where our friends now visibly relax, comforted by the knowledge that the duck is not burnt and that at least three hours of unhurried eating and drinking stretches before them.

As I now well know, the French are bad at small talk with people they’ve just met (which is why drinks parties are often so awkward). Even at dinners with good friends, the conversation remains remarkably impersonal. Most of the time, the entire table takes part in the one discussion. Between them tonight’s crowd seems to have read every French classic, all the latest political tomes. They blithely refer to France’s transport minister in 1959 or the cultural minister in 1971 as though the names of every government minister from the last century were something they learned by rote in first grade. The guys from the
grandes écoles
talk a lot, delivering intel
ligent opinions in an eloquent flow that is devoid of the stumbles and grammatical faults which are inherent in the way most people speak. The conversation is lithe, lively, skipping from serious to silly subjects in a breath.

Dinners like this used to be hard work, intimidating even. It was a struggle to get a word in edgeways. The
grandes écoles
guys seemed terribly confident. (Now I know they’re not: countless French people who have attended one of these prestigious institutions have since told me the highly competitive education system has left them with a lingering sense of never being good enough.) The conversation was too fast, people too quick to interrupt. Nobody ever asked me anything about myself. They seemed far more interested in airing their own views than listening to anyone else’s.

At first I didn’t get it. Then in my second year in France I saw
Ridicule.

Bubbling with tightly bodiced bosoms and wicked banter, the film portrays the decadent court of Louis XVI—a world where wit is a powerful weapon. The story centres on the good Baron of Malavoys who goes to Versailles to win support for his project to drain a swampland that is spreading mosquitoes and disease throughout his province. But dying peasants make for dull court conversation. The baron is befriended by a kindly aristocrat who advises there’s only one thing that will get him an audience with the fickle King: a fine wit.

And so the young baron with his provincial ways sets about trying to gain the King’s attention. The aristocrat instructs him how to dance, powder his face and most importantly the art of verbal jousting using
les jeux de mots
—play on words. Conversation is a game; the courtiers are cruelly competitive, delivering sharp epigrams designed to belittle their opponents. When someone fails to deliver a clever come
back or misquotes Voltaire the others smirk behind their fancy Flemish fans. Everyone lives in fear of humiliation. Anyone who fails to entertain is banished from the court.

Louis XVI might have ended up on the guillotine, but the Revolution didn’t change French society as radically as is often believed.
Ridicule
speaks volumes about France today. It is still an incredibly hierarchical country. Dependence on the monarchy was simply replaced by an unhealthy veneration of the state. You only need switch on television and watch the satirical puppet show
‘Les Guignols’
to see the French can be ruthlessly cynical about their politicians. But belying this irreverence is a deep fascination and awe for power. In interviews, French journalists are astonishingly deferential to politicians and rarely ask probing questions. A
Conseiller d’Etat
or an
Inspecteur des Finances
inspires the sort of hushed reverence that would be unthinkable for even the most erudite ministerial advisor in Australia.

Many of the prejudices portrayed in the film persist: the Parisian view that
les provinciaux
are unsophisticated; the view in the provinces that Parisians are snobby, superficial and rude; the fact that style counts just as much as what’s actually said. One scene in
Ridicule
made me laugh out loud. It captured so beautifully the French emphasis on refinement and sophistication. In it, the kind aristocrat congratulates the country baron on his witty remark which had caused the court to titter admiringly. ‘Shame you laughed, though,’ he scolds, referring to the hearty way in which the baron had enjoyed his own joke. ‘You’ll have to lose that manner of laughing with all your teeth.
C’est infiniment rustique.
’

These days in France no-one gets expelled from the dinner table for being dim-witted. But in educated circles conversation can still be played like a game, dominated by
those possessing an elegant command of the language and an awesome general knowledge, or
grande culture
. The French still adore wordplay. People still fear being made to look stupid (‘appearing ridiculous kills you,’ goes the French saying) which is why the less confident say nothing at all.

To me
Ridicule
was a revelation. I finally understood French dinner party conversation. It isn’t about getting to know anyone better or trying to include everyone in the discussion. No-one really cares about guests establishing a rapport with each other, not even the host. Quite simply, it’s about being brilliant.
Everyone wants to shine, to impress.
The film forced me to face facts—my style of communicating doesn’t work in France. It had to change.

And gradually it did. These days, I don’t feel compelled to fill silences. It has sunk in: there’s no obligation to make small talk in France. I’ve learnt to control my Anglo-Saxon impulse to persevere with questions. Now, faced with an indifferent neighbour, I can maintain stoic silence throughout entire weddings and long dinners. It may not sound exactly like progress but it beats heading home with a sense of being diminished by wasted effort. In the same way, faced with an unfriendly French woman, now I quickly stop making an effort. I’ve even learned how to deliver the odd cutting riposte.

The day of our dinner party, walking into the patisserie to buy a quick snack, I passed a smartly dressed elderly gentleman with a superior sneer. He looked like he lived on some stodgy avenue in the 16th
arrondissement
. I was loaded with my shopping bags and Maddie trailed behind me on her lead. He’d glanced at Maddie then stared at me with cold contempt.

‘
Tiens
,’ he said to his wife, his accusing eyes not leaving
mine, ‘
un chien dans une pâtisserie
.’ Fancy that—a dog in a patisserie.

Now, either this fellow was in a foul mood and wanting to take it out on someone or else I’d happened on the only Frenchman in the world who objects to dogs in food shops. At this particular patisserie, my regular, Maddie is a favoured client. But what riled me much more than his message—which might have been reasonable had it been delivered differently—was his supercilious manner. For once surprise didn’t render me speechless. I didn’t miss a beat.

‘
Tiens,’
I mimicked, my eyes beaming back murderously, ‘
un con dans une pâtisserie.
’ Fancy that—a dickhead in a patisserie. I added an icy smile for effect.

As replies go, it was very rude—and very effective. Mr Smart 16th looked disbelieving, then outraged. He stormed out of the shop, his shocked wife tripping after him. I continued nonchalantly to the counter where the
serveur
was giggling and looking impressed. My anger at the man quickly subsided. By the time our friends arrived for dinner that night, I’d almost forgotten the incident.

Frédéric makes me repeat the story to the table. Everyone laughs. Serge congratulates me on my
mot juste, ‘con’
(dickhead). But it is Frédéric who is most delighted by my exchange at the patisserie. ‘Perfect!
Impeccable!
’ he’d cried earlier when I told him my reply. Now he beams proudly. He is relieved, I realise. Because this time I didn’t come home full of anger and frustration at my inability to immediately respond. There was no need for a postmortem, going over all the things I should have said if only I’d been quicker. This time I’d had the last word.

Five years ago when I first arrived in France such casual rudeness would have been beyond me. Warmed by the com
pliments and Frédéric’s pride, I suddenly see the incident for what it is: a glorious sign of my progress. Surveying our dinner party, it strikes me that I have evolved on other fronts too. The food ritual and conversation, two sides of a coin elemental to French life, used to seem baffling and terribly foreign. I found it weird that hosts would go to so much trouble to ensure everything was perfect—the many courses, the wine, the table settings—and yet not bother asking guests about themselves or try to get to know them better. The effort seemed misdirected, contradictory.

But I’ve grown to love the civilised attitudes to wine and food in this country. And I guess I’ve adapted to the way French people interact and converse. Perhaps I’m wrong and the sides of the coin aren’t contradictory at all. Maybe it all has some kind of sublime logic.

During my first few years in Paris, there was one underlying theme to virtually every news story coming out of France. The terrible strikes, the rise of the far-right National Front party, the alarming unemployment—not to mention acute Gallic depression—these were all merely symptoms of the same problem. Simply put, France was a mess, a social and economic basket case about as stable as a hexagonal boulder poised to roll off a cliff edge. Even its dreamy capital was in peril: dull, dull, dull, declared every international magazine that counts. Compared to hip London with its new restaurants and budding bars, Paris was a stage cast in stone—gilded and glorious but dead nonetheless.

At the time I wasn’t sure what to make of these reports. On the one hand it was discomforting to know that in the eyes of the world the French capital was
dépassée
. It created a vague impression of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I didn’t know Paris any other way. My new home was alien to me and the process of figuring it out made life far from dull. And so when the French themselves began lamenting
le mal français
and
la crise
I thought maybe they were just jumping on the bandwagon. Maybe they were constantly claiming crises and nation-wide depressions. It wasn’t until years later when the city came to life that
I could appreciate how downcast Paris had been.

Many people claimed the catalyst for change was
l’effet mondial
—a reference to France’s stunning World Cup victory in 1998. Frédéric and I watched the match at a bar along Rue Montmartre. Like everyone else, we thought it’d be an early night; of course, France didn’t stand a chance against Brazil. After Emmanuel Petit scored the final goal for the French team, giving them a decisive 3–0 victory, the city turned inside out. Parisians poured from buildings, whooping and waving flags, surging along Rue de Rivoli towards the Champs Elysées. Paris hadn’t experienced such euphoria since Marshal Leclerc marched down the same famous avenue to symbolically end the German Occupation.

To appreciate the significance of the World Cup celebrations, you have to understand this is a country where cerebral skills have traditionally caused more excitement than sporting prowess. Switch on French television and chances are you’ll catch not a rugby replay or the tennis but a group of
intellos
pontificating about what’s wrong with France or the world. They have weekly columns in news magazines, where they opine about the violence in Algeria, the formation of a new ‘European culture’ and even their own role in society (which has diminished, although they remain influential). Often I get to the end of these articles still unsure of the writer’s position on his or her subject. ‘What’s their point, exactly?’ I’ll ask Frédéric, perplexed, because I can’t help feeling it’s all a bit abstract. Exasperated by my Anglo-Saxon simplicity, he reminds me the point is to explore the range of possibilities.

But the celebrations over France’s World Cup win took place far from the slick television studios and articulate intellectuals. It is a night I’ll never forget. Who would have predicted such incredible emotion from the French over a
soccer game? And at a time when more and more people were voting for the anti-immigration National Front party, who would have imagined this kaleidoscope of black, white and brown faces painted the colours of the French flag? Like the winning team itself, the revellers were of varied ethnic origin. The subsequent mad celebrations seemed to go beyond a sporting victory to embrace France’s diversity.