Almost French (6 page)

Everything seems to have happened so quickly. In one
month, my relationship with Frédéric has shifted from holiday romance to something more serious. In retrospect, right from that second night in Bucharest I think I sensed that given half a chance it would. But now this seismic shift has occurred I feel the need to slow down the pace. To take some distance. A few weeks ago I’d felt carefree and unconcerned. Everything had seemed crystal clear—I was in Paris and in love! But our wonderful holiday together has raised the possibility of a commitment—and with it confusing questions about my future.
Do I want to live in France? What if I take the plunge and stay and then everything with Frédéric falls apart?
All clarity is clouded by a sudden premonition of the complications involved in letting this relationship run its course. As my departure day looms I become increasingly impatient to go.

Frédéric takes me to Gare du Nord station. My train will stop at Calais, connecting with a ferry to Dover, where I’ll catch a bus to London. His face is long. At least I have my travels to look forward to, whereas he has only work. We talk about meeting up in the near future for a long weekend in London or maybe Istanbul. This is not really a goodbye, we reassure each other. But there is a poignancy to the moment, reflected in the clamour of comings and goings, the hurried movement all round us, the huge, hangar-like space which makes us feel tiny and uncertain.

As the train glides smoothly forward, I turn over my shoulder for one last wave. Frédéric stands on the platform, arm stretched high in the air. He stays like that for about thirty seconds, perfectly still, until the track curls away from the station and he disappears from view.

Several weeks later I’m a world away from Paris, stretched across four seats on an overnight ferry which is cruising towards the far-eastern edge of Europe. The boat docks at the Greek island of Samos, which nudges—rather tensely—the Turkish coast. After a couple of hot days in Vathi, the main port, I take a bus to the pine-and oak-forested hills skirting Mount Ampelos. The sun beats on my back as I wind through orchards and vineyards, trying to follow a walking trail marked by contradictory arrows and the occasional mad map. Eventually, I arrive at the gleaming white, mountain village of Vourliotes, tired and sweaty.

The scene is surreal. Thousands of kilometres from home, plunged in the middle of nowhere, I suddenly step into what looks like a giant Australian souvenir shop dropped into a Greek setting. Children run playfully past, with koalas, kangaroos and ‘I love Australia’ splashed on their T-shirts. The local taverna is waving an Australian flag. In the shade, elderly men play a card game at the sort of pace which suggests they might take the rest of their lives to finish it. One of them has ‘I’ve surfed Bondi Beach’ emblazoned across his chest.

A charming, chatty villager solves the mystery. After the Second World War, much of the community emigrated to Australia. Over the years, some family members have returned. Most of them no longer know where to call home, the inhabitant explains. His own Australian-born children are studying to be lawyers and teachers. To them, Sydney is home. But for him, the choice is not so simple. Now in his fifties, with every passing year the pull of his village among the vines grows stronger. His life is a constant dilemma: in Australia he feels Greek; in Greece he feels Australian.

‘It’s a bitter–sweet thing, knowing two cultures,’ he sighs.
‘Once you leave your birthplace nothing is ever the same.’ The man stares at the glittering turquoise cradling the coast, thinking of his kids at the opposite end of the earth.

‘It’s a curse to love two countries.’ He smiles wryly at his own melodramatic words. But there is sadness in his eyes.

Unable to relate to his experience, I can only sympathise in a limited sort of way. Besides, I’m in no mood for dark thoughts. A few days from now, I’ll be meeting Sue in Istanbul. In the bursting sunlight, sucking in the island’s jasmine-scented air, the future seems full of promise.

I had no idea then how radically my life was about to change and how well I would come to understand what the Greek had said.

I return to Paris, of course. The way I see it, there is really no alternative.

After four months of travelling, I know only one thing with absolute certainty: if I don’t go to France—and I mean to try to make a life there with Frédéric—I might regret it forever. I’ll always be wondering about the love of my life that could have been, the entirely different future that might have been if only I’d taken the risk. Sure, there’s no guarantee that it’ll work out, but then
nothing ventured, nothing gained
. All I know is a chance encounter has thrown open an unexpected door. Instinct tells me to step through it.

On a winter’s day in January under a watery sun, my plane touches down at Charles de Gaulle airport. Once again I’m struck by the ambivalent appearance of the place. I wonder if this rundown spaceship is a sort of metaphor for France; if this country is in some respects ultramodern and sophisticated yet in other ways behind the times. But a couple of things are different from my arrival here last summer. The weather, for starters. And this time Frédéric’s punctual! Waiting for me with a spare, thick woolly jumper because it’s an especially cold day and he’s worried I’ll freeze outside. We met up for only one weekend in the last four months but we spoke a lot over the phone and
gradually going to Paris had come to seem like the only sensible solution. There’d been no talk of whether I’ll give it two months, six months, or a year. Like many life-changing decisions, the move to Paris was decided with little thought for the consequences. I am totally ignorant of what lies in store.

Frédéric is not the sole reason for staying on in Europe, though. The truth is, I’m not
ready
to go home. And feeling ready is hugely important when your country is so far away from the rest of the world. No Australian or New Zealander wants to end their working holiday in London only to be haunted later by the thought of unlived adventures. Because once you go all the way back, you’re there to stay, goes the logic. Oh sure, you’ll travel and go abroad again but future trips will not stretch towards infinity like this one, they won’t contain so many possibilities. Heading home is the fullstop marking the end of adventure; the beginning of a responsible life. And despite twelve months of travelling, I am not ready to be responsible.

The television network I worked for in Sydney had given me one year leave without pay from my job. Sitting at the dining table of what is now my new home, I write to say I’m not coming back. This is not an especially difficult decision. I’d spent five good years at SBS but now, in my late twenties, I’m wary of getting stuck in a professional rut. The time seems right to take a risk. In my mind, Europe is simmering with exciting opportunities for a journalist. It’s just a matter of finding them.

Still, the prospect of living in France is daunting. I have no job, no friends here and I barely speak the language. Frédéric and I are living together after little more than a month in each other’s company—by any reasonable
standards a ridiculously short time for such a serious move. This recklessness is both scary and sort of exciting. It’s also totally out of character—in Australia I’d have thought this was mad, shacking up before the relationship has even got off the ground. What a recipe for disaster! But risks seem less alarming in a new and foreign environment where you can’t measure your behaviour by familiar yardsticks such as family or friends or society in general. Besides, it’s not like we have another option. Even if I had enough money (which I don’t), renting my own apartment would be almost impossible. Having entered the country as a tourist, strictly speaking I’m not allowed to remain in France longer than three months.

But none of this can dampen my overriding feeling that somehow all of this is
right
: Frédéric; being in France; taking a professional risk. The lack of certainty only seems to underline new possibilities. The challenges ahead seem surmountable. Frédéric doesn’t seem worried by any of it, not even my lack of a long-stay visa which he shrugs off as a detail that will be resolved, somehow. Buoyed by his confidence, I too am optimistic.

It takes me a few days to adapt to this new, wintry Paris. It’s totally different from the sunny holiday city I fell in love with last summer. Gone are the café terraces, the dewy glasses of
kir
and Sancerre. By four in the afternoon, darkness has swallowed the day. The cold weather heightens the appeal of cafés and restaurants, whose glowing interiors contrast with the exterior greyness. On my first Sunday, we resume our habit of strolling around the city. In the smart St-Germain district we stop at Les Deux Magots—a Paris institution, Frédéric explains, where Hemingway once hung out.

Inside, it is lovely and warm, with luminous mirrors,
creamy walls and velvety crimson curtains. The crowd is diverse. A young fellow opposite is reading with a certain fervour, his impenetrable concentration something of a feat among the gossip and frisbeeing drinks trays. Staring, I see his large, thin book is actually sheet music: he must be a musician or a composer. In a corner, an elegant, cigar-smoking gentleman taps away on a lap-top computer. A writer, Frédéric guesses. The area was once full of them but soaring rents mean that starving poets and artists have long since shifted to neighbourhoods in the city’s east. At a nearby table, a group of sleek girls with solarium suntans sit down. They’re carrying bouquets of shopping bags and their leather jackets come in luscious ice-cream tones—cappuccino, chocolate and deep raspberry. St-Germain has become a haven for luxury boutiques. At another table Japanese tourists make shy attempts at hailing a waiter. Maybe they were hoping to soak up a vestige of the bygone intellectual era. Or maybe they came to shop.

At Frédéric’s insistence we order hot chocolates—the speciality of the
maison
, he promises. It arrives in two steaming white jugs and you can tell just from the smell that this is an intense brew made with cream and
couverture
chocolate. We fill our cups. The liquid pours slowly like an oil slick of dark, molten mousse. I take a mouthful—and nearly die of pleasure. Every other hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted suddenly seems like a powdery imitation. I marvel at the French
art de vivre
: their civilised attitude towards consumption. They know how to indulge in a cigarette without guilt, a glass of wine at lunch or a cake without counting calories. In the middle of this thought stream I happen to glance at the ice-cream-coloured girls: they’re drinking slim glasses of sparkling water and bobbing lemon.

When the new week begins I start considering what I’m actually going to do in France. Now that I’m no longer travelling, I’m impatient to establish a routine. I need something to do, I need work. Without it, I’m in limbo—no longer simply a tourist but not a proper resident either. Also, although Frédéric seems totally relaxed about supporting me financially, I am uncomfortable with the idea. I don’t want to be dependent. And my cash situation is getting desperate.

Given that I’m not supposed to be in France long-term, working for a French company (at least legally) is out of the question. The only option is to freelance for foreign media. The idea of being autonomous appeals to me enormously but having only ever been a salaried employee, I’ve no idea how to get started. Frédéric does everything he can to help. A second-hand computer arrives at the apartment, which he bought from our neighbour upstairs who works for a computer company. My stationery supplies soon take on warehouse proportions. Frédéric brings home rainbows of highlighter pens, colour-coded paper files, fancy pencils, notepads, transparent plastic covers, a tower of in and out trays, rows of fat folders and—most ambitious of all—an invoice book to record my future payments. My office takes over the dining room table. Equipped to the eyeballs, I am ready to start. But on what?

I contact a few television networks in Australia but the prospect of regular work looks unpromising. Hiring camera crews in France is too expensive, they tell me. I mull over another idea, one which would mean a new career direction. After leaving Frédéric last summer, I’d continued travelling and eventually returned to Romania in October, partly to see the fun group of friends I’d met there during my first stay but also to work because I needed the cash. It was
during this second stay that I wrote a few articles for an English-language business magazine. An Irish journalist living in Bucharest with whom I’d become good friends had put me in contact with the editor in London. It was my first experience of working in print after six and a half years as a television journalist and at first I wondered whether I would be able to do it. Compared to television reports which only ever ran to a few paragraphs, the thought of writing enough to fill two or three magazine pages seemed inconceivable.