Another Faust (9 page)

Victoria’s head was spinning when the pretty young salesgirl approached them. “May I put this in a fitting room for you?” She eyed the shirt that Victoria was unknowingly clutching in her hand.

“Oh, no, actually, I’ll take it,” she said.

“All right. Let me ring that up for you,” the girl said cheerfully — too cheerfully for this boutique; Victoria could tell that she was new. Obviously hired for her beauty, she would develop a cold indifferent eye within a month. As the girl was completing the transaction, anger filled Victoria from head to toe. She wasn’t quite sure why she was so mad, but she was. Maybe it was the memory of her father. Maybe it was the idea that there could be people out there who were better than her. Or the reminder that there were so many before who were more successful. She snatched the shopping bag from the girl and stormed out of the store, with Madame Vileroy calmly strolling behind her. When she was out of the store, she grabbed the shirt from the bag.

“This is ugly,” she said.

“Hm.” Madame Vileroy seemed to agree.

With a swift yank, Victoria ripped one of the sleeves half off. She then marched back into the store, with Madame Vileroy following closely behind.

“This is damaged,” she yelled at the salesgirl.

“Oh . . . I’m sorry. . . . Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? Am I sure? Take a look! The sleeve is practically off.”

“But it wasn’t like that when . . .”

The salesgirl didn’t know what to do. It was her first day, and Victoria scared her.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Of course not.”

“I have never seen such terrible customer service! First you sell me a torn shirt. Then you call me a liar. And now you’re just wasting my time!”

“I’m sorry. If you’ll just give me a moment, I can give you a refund.”

“A refund? Well, that’s a given. That hardly makes up for this horrible service.”

“Uh, of course not. Let me just see my manager.”

As the girl ran to the back office, Victoria took a deep breath. This was satisfying. Rejuvenating. A few moments later, the girl returned.

“OK, let me process that refund for you. And as a Christmas gift from us, we’re going to offer you a two-hundred-dollar gift certificate. I hope you’ll come again.”

“Christmas gift?” Victoria snapped. “Let’s be clear that if you’re giving me anything, it’s not a gift. It’s restitution for my wasted time and energy.”

With that, she ripped the gift certificate in two and marched out of the store.

A few moments later, as they walked silently along a street, Victoria gave Madame Vileroy a sidelong glance. “Do you think I was too harsh?” she asked, testing her limits with the governess.

“You have to stand up for your rights, my dear. Remember what I said? The world is filled with stupid people. They have to learn to do their job.”

“Yeah. Those people make me so angry.”

“Anger can be soothing.”

“They say it’s one of the seven deadly sins,” Victoria joked, and Madame Vileroy smiled indulgently.

“You’re such a clever girl, Victoria.”
No wonder your father sent you to me. . . .

Sometimes, Bicé would just ride the subway for hours, from one end of the track to the other, from Coney Island to Yankee Stadium, huddled in her seat, listening to all the languages around her. If you saw her, you wouldn’t notice anything abnormal, just a girl on the train, sometimes by herself, sometimes squashed in between commuters. Back and forth, she’d ride the rails, practicing her Russian on the R train to Bayridge, her Greek on the W to Astoria. If she wanted Afghani, there was a group of ladies on the 5 line who would get on in the South Bronx and go down to Atlantic Avenue, where all the Middle Eastern markets were. On the way, under their black coverings, they’d gab about everything from their favorite recipes to how difficult racquetball seemed to be. Bicé would position herself next to them, pretend to read a book, and soak in all the slang they could never teach in a textbook. She would find ways to repay the universe, of course, in her own way. Like the time an old, decrepit man stepped onto the train and seemed completely lost and unable to communicate with anyone. She grabbed his arm and began going through her roster.

“Parlez-vous français?”

“Español?”

“Deutsch?”

The man just smiled and nodded.

“Italiano?”

“Dansk?”

More smiling and nodding.

“Nederlands?”

“Malayalam?”

“Gwong-dong-wa?”

By the time she was down to the West African languages, someone pointed out that he was deaf.

On Christmas Day on the F train, brushing up on her Yiddish, Bicé tried to keep herself from squealing with excitement when she heard a couple speaking Udmurt.
An endangered language. A real endangered language, right here in the New York subway.

“Oy!” she said, unable to help herself.

The couple looked at her, then went back to murmuring — about what, Bicé could not quite make out. She looked them up and down. Their clothes were old, patched together, in a rural style. The woman had long hair, and the man’s face was covered with a mustache and beard. They seemed out of place, here in New York, as if they were here to act as subjects in a cultural study or a documentary. She had read a bit about Udmurt before. She had made sure to read something about all the endangered languages. She knew where they came from. She knew why they were endangered (because children no longer spoke them), but she only knew how to speak a few words of this particular dialect. It seemed to function on the Slovak syntactical structures. . . . Bicé leaned in closer. The woman gave her a sidelong glance.
Their cadence is eastern,
thought Bicé. Then the train lurched, and Bicé went directly into the man’s lap.

“Sorry!” she said, pushing herself away.

Before the couple could reclaim their personal space, Bicé leaned in and stumbled in her own Udmurt, “I am forever apologies, but do you speak of moving picture show?”

The couple could only stare, half startled by the statement, half by the fact that a random girl was semicoherently speaking their semidead language.

Bicé switched to English: “I mean, excuse me, but are you talking about the film festival? Is that what you were talking about? I mean, the subject of what — I wasn’t eavesdropping — I just mean, if that
is
what you’re talking about, then — I’m sort of practicing Udmurt, you see, and — so, what’re you talking about?”

The woman, wide-eyed, stammered, “Y-yes, we’re speaking about the film festival.”

“Oh, good!” said Bicé, clapping her hands. “Can I join you?”

Before the woman could respond, the train doors opened and the man said, “This is our stop.” As the two of them stepped out of the car, Bicé called after them.

“OK, well, we could maybe talk later? Do you have e-mail? We could do a book club.”

The doors closed on Bicé’s requests. She slowly sat back down and noticed that she was all the way to Jamaica Avenue. It would take an hour to get home, where she could hide herself away in a book. Till then, she sat in her seat, as lonely as you could ever be in a train full of people.

Bicé looked down, a bit embarrassed. When she looked up, she thought she caught a glimpse of Madame Vileroy, sitting in the seat in a far corner. She was wearing her black coat, her blond bun resting neatly on top of her head, casting Bicé a knowing and disapproving smile. Bicé whipped around to get a better look, but Vileroy was gone. Had the governess really been there? Had Bicé imagined it? Was she always watching? The thought sent a shudder down Bicé’s spine, and for a moment Bicé was deaf to all the sounds around her. She felt regret at having accosted that couple.

She didn’t notice the look on the Udmurt woman’s face as she was pulled out of the train. The woman lingered outside for a minute, watching the train take Bicé away. Even though it had all happened so fast, and even though her husband had pulled her away too quickly, she was in awe of this miracle she had witnessed — their language, the precious tongue that was fated to die with their generation, being spoken by a young girl in New York. For her, the exchange with Bicé wasn’t awkward. It was something hopeful — a moment that changed her perception of this city, a moment that might cause her to speak well of her visit here.

Without knowing it, Bicé left a trail of memories like this, when people came away from her feeling better somehow, cared for — the kind of sensations that were the very opposite of all those little evils that Madame Vileroy left in her wake.

On the day after yet another Christmas left uncelebrated, the children and Madame Vileroy went to the Marlowe Christmas play, to visit the school and to scope out more families. Valentin, who was keenly aware that Charlotte had written this play to unprecedented accolades, spent the entire ride to the school brooding. Once in a while, Madame Vileroy would whisper in his ear, telling him that, if he wanted,
he
could be the one at center stage.

“I’ve never heard of a play performance on December twenty-sixth,” Valentin huffed, arms crossed.

“I thought it’d be a good distraction from this tiresome season,” said Madame Vileroy.

“You did this?” said Valentin.

“Well,” said the governess. “I didn’t
not
do it.”