Foreign Tongue (19 page)
Authors: Vanina Marsot
I wound down the road again and dreamed about them. They were the thousand moths of memory, and each moth had the face of a Victorian angel, a pink-cheeked holiday caroler with Cupid’s bow lips curved in an “O” of song. As they approached the windshield, their wings fluttered and released random memories. I saw images and heard bits of conversation and songs, as if a radio on scan were playing snippets of my childhood. It grew louder and louder, until the noise became a white, crashing static, and I fell asleep.
The Etruscans: For instance, the verb ‘is.’ Marilyn: I didn’t know ‘is’ was a verb. The Etruscans: What did you think it was? Marilyn: A light for the other verbs.
—
ANNE CARSON,
“Detail from the Tomb of the Diver (Paestum 500–453
BC
)”
I
n the morning, Olivier whispered something in my ear and left. I lolled in bed, fuzzy from the sleeping pill and slightly headachy. Clara called to cancel our lunch: she’d sprained her ankle but told me not to worry, her mother was on her way in from Versailles and would take care of her. That left me practically all day to work on the translation before tea at Antoine and Victorine’s.
Every time I thought about Olivier, a vague, worried sensation fluttered its wings and settled in my stomach, so I got to work on the translation in order to distract myself. I looked again at the chapter, wondering if I’d absorbed anything—like osmosis—from my amateurish foray into translation theory.
I skimmed through the pages: mostly plot-heavy, mostly about the narrator’s attempts to get information about Eve from her accountant, who wouldn’t talk. Well, duh.
Then he spent six pages rabbiting on about being sucked into a whirlpool of despair. Yeah, yeah, yeah; I was familiar with the whirlpool. Was despair always this boring, or was it the way it was written? In desperation, the narrator called the friend he’d met Eve through, a writer of detective novels. The friend sent him to a private detective near the Gare du Nord.
I expected André Verbier to look like a hardened cop, but he was as memorable as a tollbooth operator: dull gray skin and mouse-brown hair in a shapeless suit. When he spoke, he revealed a row of jagged, stained teeth, putting me in mind of a rodent.
He had no reaction to my story, other than to take notes.
“Do you handle cases like this often?” I asked. I looked at the dusty blinds and the vinyl wallpaper, a pattern of blue and green bubbles outlined in silver foil. There was a brown water stain shaped like India above the window.
“I specialize in finding women,” he said with an inward smile. “I am an expert.”
“What makes you so successful?”
“I listen. People are always revealing information, whether they know it or not,” he said. I could tell he was waiting for me to ask him what I’d revealed about myself. I refrained from doing so. He continued, “And then, I have been in the business for seventeen years, locating runaway teenagers, adulterous wives, suicidal girlfriends…”
“Why do women leave?” I asked. He looked at me with eyes the color of shit.
“Because they are unhappy,” he said.
It felt like a rebuke. Verbier made me feel small. It was odious to be here, this office, the dingy neighborhood, his knowing air. I felt an intense self-loathing, that I’d been reduced to this, hiring a detective out of a trashy novel…
“Trashy novel” wasn’t right. Too colloquial, and it didn’t do
“roman de gare”
justice, considering there was a possible play on words: “train station novel,” in this case, could refer to the genre as well as the location. Pulp novel? Dime-store novel?
“I will call you when I have news,” Verbier said. When I shook it, his hand felt dry and firm, the opposite of how I’d thought it would.
I walked around the dirty neighborhood, riddled with garish cafés and storefronts selling prosthetic limbs. The thought of going back to the flat I still shared with Daphne was monstrous, and I was a monster for going home to her.
But Daphne was no fool. She’d probably sensed something. Perhaps she was as unhappy with me as I was with her, though I didn’t care. My life had shrunk, reduced to the thought of seeing Eve again, if only once more.
During the two weeks I waited to hear from Verbier, I was cruel to Daphne. Perhaps the worst cruelty was that I did it without thinking. I was impervious to her manipulations. Though they had no effect, she tried every ploy in the book: being affectionate, being cold, attempting to make me jealous, ignoring me, watching me like a hawk. I came home to candlelit tables, elaborate meals, Daphne in various stages of undress. Or it was crying fits and angry scenes. After one final, semi-rehearsed speech, she announced her return to her apartment near the Jardin des Plantes and indicated that I should not contact her unless I came on bent, and preferably bloodied, knees.
I worked longer hours. Sometimes I stopped at a café near the place de Clichy for a drink. I was haunted not by the specter of my empty flat but rather by the darkened windows of Eve’s apartment.
Verbier sent me a typed report peppered with explanatory notes.
“After many hours of research and a few well-placed payments (itemized in addendum A) I have ascertained that Eve Ribot, née Solange Ramzy, is living in Monte Carlo, at 39, avenue des Tilleuls,
in an apartment owned by Ericsson Holdings, Ltd. Eric Beaufort de Blois is CEO and majority owner of Ericsson Holdings, Ltd.
“Beaufort and his third wife, Bettina Beaufort de Blois, née Astiani, maintain separate residences. Madame Beaufort resides primarily in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Beaufort and Madame Ribot are often seen together in public, even at the Red Cross Ball, which indicates their relationship is an open and accepted secret in Monte Carlo society…”
I threw the report aside. Just as I’d suspected, she was Beaufort’s mistress. I’d guessed as much when I’d seen them together at Longchamp. I should’ve known, but I didn’t want to know…
This was a letdown. I’d been hoping for something more interesting than another run-of-the-mill boy-meets-kept-girl story.
“Solange Ramzy was born in Alexandria in 1952, the daughter of Lisette Bouret, a French music teacher, and Ashraf Ramzy, a professor of Egyptian archaeology. The latter died of a heart attack when Solange was twelve. Her mother remarried a local jeweler, a widower with two adult daughters.
“At sixteen, Solange ran away to Cairo with a musician. After a month together, the musician left her for the daughter of a wealthy cigarette importer. Solange suffered through months of financial hardship, occasionally receiving handouts from her mother. She changed her name to Eve when she got a job as a singer at Le Lido, a seedy nightclub on the Pyramid road catering to Russian businessmen. She sang Edith Piaf and Nina Simone songs between belly dancer sets.
“Le Lido was known for its prostitutes, who encouraged clients to buy expensive bottles of watered-down whiskey. It is not known whether Eve exercised this trade.
“After two years in Cairo, Eve purchased a boat passage to France, but her plans were delayed when her mother and stepfather died in a
car crash on the Corniche. She returned to Alexandria for the funeral but chose to avoid a legal battle over the financial succession with her stepfather’s children. Taking her mother’s jewelry and fur coats, she boarded a cargo ship to Nice. [Note: charges for theft of jewelry and other personal belongings of Madame Lisette El-Nouri were filed and subsequently dropped.]
“Her whereabouts and activities between the time she arrived in Nice and the time she resurfaced in Paris, eight months later, are not known.
“Once in Paris, Eve lodged with a distant cousin of her mother’s, Georgette Leclerc, a retired haute couture seamstress. She found employment as a house model at Nina Ricci and was able to rent maid’s quarters near the Parc Monceau. She was now twenty. She studied dramatic arts at a private theater school.
“There were no significant romantic involvements until she met Fabien Ribot, a self-made nightclub owner. Twenty-three years her senior, he married Eve and then hired her to run L’Apparence, a private club on the rue Godot de Mauroy. Under her management, the former topless cabaret became a fashionable destination, attracting media figures and the international jet set. This is where Eve met Eric Beaufort de Blois, who was then married to his first wife, Vrouwtje Spoontje, a Dutch socialite.
“Financial mismanagement and, quite possibly, rumored drug use forced Ribot to sell his only successful asset, L’Apparence, to a food conglomerate, which transformed the nightclub into the flagship of its steak and fries chain. [Note: The property now houses an Irish bar and an adult video store.]
“In debt again two years later, Ribot took on two business partners, the Carvalho twins, brothers from Casamance. In August 1979, Ribot was stabbed in an alley off the avenue Foch. The police report states that his body was found by municipal street cleaners. The prevailing
theory was of a revenge killing, as he was found with 1700 francs in his wallet and two grams of cocaine. At the time, Eve Ribot was in the country with her cousin, Madame Leclerc. The murder remains unsolved.
“Eve Ribot inherited an apartment in the Seventeenth Arrondissement, 18, rue Berzélius, which she still owns, and a small farmhouse in the Tarn. The Carvalho brothers took possession of Ribot’s remaining nightclubs, Le Jazz Hot and Crazy Filles.
“Returning to fashion, Eve Ribot was hired to manage the Given-chy haute couture salon. Her acquaintance with Eric Beaufort de Blois was renewed when he married his second wife, Paula Ottinello, a patron of the fashion house. When Paula left him for a gigolo named Lars Braunschweig [Note: a pseudonym], Beaufort began divorce proceedings. During that time, he and Eve Ribot were frequently seen together.
“But Eve Ribot refused to marry Beaufort. He broke off the relationship and married his current wife. The marriage soured: it was rumored Beaufort de Blois found his wife in bed with her secretary, Madeleine Marchmont…”
Eve’s life read like an Aaron Spelling miniseries written by Sidney Sheldon. The bio raised more questions than it answered: why did Eve leave Egypt? Did she ever work as a hooker? What was she doing during those eight months? Was she happy with Ribot? Why didn’t she marry Beaufort?
I put down Verbier’s report and poured another whiskey. I wanted to fly to Monte Carlo and confront her. But seeing her with Beaufort again was unthinkable. She’d chosen him over me.
I looked at the report again. I still didn’t know why she’d left me, or if she’d felt anything for me. Did she feel obligated to Beaufort? Why?
What if he was dying? Maybe he had cancer, a congenital heart condition, or an inoperable tumor. These agreeable thoughts drifted through my head, a narcotic of morbid hope. But as appealing as the notion was, I couldn’t assume she’d return to me after his death.
There was so much she hadn’t told me: about her marriage, for one, and to Ribot, a notorious mafioso. I remembered the murder, the newspaper headlines. At the time, I’d been a research assistant, working on my dissertation. Perhaps I’d been to L’Apparence, Ribot’s nightclub. I’d certainly heard of it, though at the time, there had been so many clubs with names that began with “A”: L’Atmosphère, L’Apocalypse…even L’Apoplexie. How strange to think our paths might have crossed all those years ago.
I drank whiskey after whiskey, wondering how long it would take to pass out. Come, forgetfulness, unconsciousness, oblivion: I invite you! I drank medicinally, counting the minutes, eager to get to where nothing mattered…
I felt a small quiver of distaste. I knew what he was talking about, which explained my reaction. I wanted to distance myself from his suffering. And yet, he had a right to feel miserable, I reminded myself: the woman he loved had left him. If he wanted to get stinking drunk, he had a right.
Maybe my distaste was also about how seductive suffering is, how romantic pain is, how it seems to be an end in and of itself: self-enclosed, exquisite, stuck. How stuck in it I could be. Had been.
I forced myself back to the desk. The narrator indulged in several days of uninterrupted drinking, which took up seven pages of boring, paranoid, intoxicated rants mixed in with genuine moments of despair. I’d just about exhausted Mr. Roget’s words for alcoholic stupor (“haze,” “coma,” “numbness,” “daze,” “unconsciousness,” “glaze,” “befuddlement,” “trance”), when Daphne reappeared.
The banging continued. I shouted obscenities at the door, but my unwelcome visitor didn’t stop pushing the bell. The shrill sound drove a spike into my ears.
It was Daphne. She looked like a Madonna in blue. She gasped when she saw me.
“There, you’ve seen me!” I roared. “Satisfied? Now get out!”
She shoved past me and marched inside, stopping at the array of empty bottles, dirty plates, and glasses. A rank fog of cigarette smoke hovered at eye level. She bent down to pick up a plate. I grabbed her wrist.
“Get out! I don’t want you here!” I shouted. She wrenched her arm free.
“Look at yourself! You monster! You haven’t shaved in days! You stink of alcohol! Enough! It must stop!” she screamed, her face nearly purple with rage.
She found a pair of rubber gloves in the kitchen and began cleaning. She washed dishes and glasses, emptied ashtrays, aired the rooms, and made the bed with clean sheets. She ordered me into the bathroom to wash and shave while she vacuumed. Cowed by her energy as much as her anger, I went inside and filled the sink with water.
My hands trembled, and I cut myself twice before I threw the razor aside. I sat on the edge of the tub and wept. Daphne pushed the door open. “I’m going to run a bath,” she said, as if to a child. “I’ll help you shave and wash your hair.” I clutched her hand.
“I don’t deserve you,” I said. A pink flush crept up her neck. She’d never leave me again.
“It’s true, you don’t deserve me. But you don’t have me either,” she said.
I added that last line. My fingers went on typing. Daphne didn’t say it in the original. All she said was
“C’est vrai, tu ne me mérites pas.”
It was
an improvisation, though not a big stretch. In fact, it fit nicely with her new take-charge attitude.
I reread the words on the screen. If you added something that was in the spirit of the original, something that you felt expressed the original—even if it wasn’t
in
the original—was it still translating? Or had it tipped over into writing, and by extension, in this case, taking liberties?
