Foreign Tongue (5 page)

I got morose in the elevator. Was this what my life was going to be like? Being taken to sex clubs by kinky, aging lawyers? I wasn’t that sort of person; in fact, I was actually kind of prudish, even though I didn’t like to admit it…and…and…somehow, this was all Timothy’s fault. Yes, I was going to go down that path. I was going to sit in the dark and contemplate my sorry life.

The dress saved me. Inside the apartment, I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. The dress still looked good, and it wanted to party. It was barely past one-thirty, early for Paris. Before I could
change my mind, I called Pascal. Sure enough, he was at a nightclub with a bunch of fashionisti and invited me along. I changed into a pair of lower heels and caught a taxi.

Castel was an old-fashioned yet perpetually chic private club crowded with hipsters, a smattering of aristos and intellos, and just enough local color to keep it from becoming boring. A brass slat in the door slid open, and a pair of eyes scrutinized my appearance before letting me in. I found Pascal holding court with a few friends. My dress perked up.

“Darling!” he shouted and got up to kiss me.
“En robe du soir! Quelle surprise!”

I grinned and kissed him back. I sat next to Céline, an old friend of Pascal’s and a booker at a modeling agency.

“Where have you been?” she asked. All the other women were wearing jeans, tank tops, and high heels, just like everyone in L.A. She handed me a glass of champagne.

“Out to dinner with a lawyer,” I said. “He took me to a
club libertin.
”

“
Tu plaisantes!
Really?” she asked. I nodded. “I’ve always wanted to know what really goes on in those places,” she mused.

“I know, that’s why I went,” I said. Three women leaned in to hear more.

“What really goes on where?” asked Pascal.

“Des clubs échangistes,”
Céline said.

“People fucking,” he said drily. They all looked at me. I nodded in agreement. “
On y
go?” he asked. We trooped downstairs to the small dance floor. I hadn’t danced in a long time. Only teenagers go dancing in L.A. I danced to music I didn’t recognize, sweating through my dress and not caring. In the mirrored column, I could see my makeup had melted away and my hair, loosened from its tight bun, hung in limp, gel-soaked rattails, but it felt good to dance in a crowd, with music too loud to think.

At four, we went to a bar in the Tenth with purple leather poufs to drink mint cocktails, smoke water pipes, and listen to Arab lounge music. I left sometime after five.

The rue de Paradis was empty. Not a taxi in sight, which was just as well: I needed to walk off the alcohol. I tallied up my intake: champagne and wine with dinner, vodka at the sex club, more champagne at Castel, and mint cocktails at Le Sultan.

Drunk off my ass, I concluded scientifically. My heels clattered on the pavement, and I veered to avoid a long smear of dog shit. It was quiet. My dress was damp against my back. My footsteps rang out, echoing against the buildings. I debated whether walking home drunk was stupid or reasonable. A homeless man sat on the sidewalk, burping loudly and waving his hands in the air like a conductor. He looked a little scary, muttering to himself in a gravelly baritone, but crossing the street to avoid him seemed unnecessary and rude.

As I passed him, he asked for a light. I kept walking. He shouted,
“L’amour n’est pas une pomme de terre!”
Love is not a potato. I doubled back and gave him a purple matchbox from the lounge place. He looked at me with rheumy, clever eyes.

“Merci, chérie,”
he said.

“Bonne nuit,”
I said.

As I wove through narrow streets, I saw lights on in a few apartments, illuminating beamed ceilings, crystal chandeliers, marble mantels, and the spiky shadows of potted palms. Paris by night, a tour of apartment ceilings.
La promenade des plafonds la nuit,
I mused, pleased with my phrasing until I realized it sounded like the ceilings were going for a walk at night instead of me.

A bird sang. The black sky was beautiful, the air smelled of woodsmoke, and I soaked up the city like a sponge. It was magic—the past, present, and future all in one place. Other centuries’ footsteps whispered next to the slap of my own.

Crossing the canal, past thin trees like shocked paintbrushes, I heard
a low, mournful moan, coming from close by. I looked around, but there was no one there. I heard it again: a human moan, not an animal one. I pulled my wrap tighter around me. The sound became a chorus of moans. I broke into a run. A taxi zoomed up the street, diesel engine clanking, and then it was quiet again.

I passed a faded Pernod billboard on the side of a wall. It reminded me of the old signs in the métro, pasted on the tunnels between stops. I remembered cupping my hands around my eyes and looking for the Dubonnet ads when I was a child. First there was a chorus line of Belle Epoque can-can girls, beneath the word “Dubo.” Several yards later was the same image, but with “Dubon.” The last poster said “Dubonnet.” I liked those old ads, and the faded ones on the sides of buildings, the semihidden traces of the past.

My thoughts went to Timothy, the way a tongue searches out a painful tooth, stupidly and relentlessly. I thought about his habit of making up song lyrics in the car and how sweet he’d been when my cat died, how he liked to invent stories about other shoppers in the supermarket, and how deeply, profoundly awful his cooking was. How he told me I was beautiful and I believed him.

I felt in my purse for my phone. I thought about calling him, but I knew it was the kind of thing I would justify in my alcoholic stupor and then regret in the morning.

Was it regret or remorse? In French, they mean different things. Regret is for things you haven’t done, remorse is for the things you have. Hence the saying
“Vaut mieux avoir des remords que des regrets”
: It is better to have remorse than regret. The French think you should do stupid, emotional things that you’ll feel horrible about in the morning rather than wondering—
for the rest of your life
—what would’ve happened if you’d done stupid, emotional things that you would’ve felt horrible about in the morning.

At the square by the boulevard Jules Ferry, I stopped in front of the statue of
La Grisette
. She was heartbreaking, a flower girl in an 1840s
gown and an absurd hairdo, her thin arms holding a basket of flowers for sale, ignored by the pigeons and passersby. She’d wanted so much and gotten so little. That’s when I gave in. I sat on a damp bench and cried. I was pitiful and pathetic; digging myself out of my own bottomless pit would take more than a spoon.

I
fought through layers of consciousness to wake up. It was like paddling through mud with ineffectual limbs and an anvil for a head. When I surfaced, I had a stuffed nose and my tongue tasted like a brown chenille bedspread in an ugly motel, but I had to get up: I had brunch plans with Bunny at a
salon de thé
near WHSmith. I took a shower and threw on clothes, nagged by an unsettled feeling, like I’d had a dream in which I’d wanted to remember something but I couldn’t remember what the something was.

I gulped down my first
café Viennois
in silence, appreciating Bunny’s strict brunch rule about not engaging in conversation until you’d ingested coffee, a gallantry left over from his days as a hard-drinking newspaperman. We were at L’Auberge Viennoise, a place I referred to as Heidi’s House, for its gemütlich, Alpine dollhouse atmosphere. A collection of yellow-yarn-haired dolls in lederhosen sat on a china cabinet, and a parade of hand-carved wooden toys decorated the window ledge.

Our table groaned under the weight of a silver coffee urn, a pitcher of steamed milk, a basket of
pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins,
croissants, and brioches as well as
tartines,
a crated tub of creamy
beurre d’Echiré,
and jars of jam—
figue, cerise,
and
abricot,
all
fait maison
.

“I had a weird experience last night,” I said.

“Drinking’ll do that.” He sank his chin into his neck, giving me a knowing look.

“No, I mean really weird. I was walking home about, I don’t know, four in the morning, and I heard moaning by the canal. I looked around, but there was no one there.” I pulled the top off a brioche.

“Where?”

“Not far from my place. Near Saint-Louis,” I said, referring to the hospital.

“Moaning, huh?” Bunny asked, with sudden interest.

“You’ve got an archaeological gleam in your eye,” I remarked.

“It’s not far from Montfaucon,” he said. “Site of medieval Paris’s infamous gallows. The hanged bodies were left dangling in the air for everyone to see.”

I put down the brioche. “Very funny. Like hanged people moan.”

“Maybe the ghosts of their relatives do,” he said. I made a face. “I’m just trying to give you a rational explanation—”

“Ghosts,” I interrupted. “Of gallows hangings. That’s supposed to be rational?”

“You’re the one hearing things,” he said, biting into a
tartine
slathered with butter and marmalade. “How’s the translation?” he asked.

I grimaced. “I don’t know how you can eat that stuff, it’s orange
and
bitter.”

“The subtle joy of bitter fruit is an acquired taste, my young friend,” he explained, wiping his mouth with a corner of white napkin. “Like so many things in life. So?”

I poured more coffee into my cup and stirred in two heart-shaped sugar cubes. “You know, it’s an erotic novel,” I said.

“I remember. Have you gotten to the dirty bits?” he asked, eyes twinkling. “Don’t make me beg.”

“I guess. They’re mostly embarrassing,” I said. Bunny’s playful look made me squirm. We’d never talked about sex, and I didn’t know that I wanted to start. “I mean,” I tried to explain, “everyone probably has their own combination of spices in their sexual cooking cabinet, but revealing them makes them seem, I don’t know, absurd. Distasteful, even.” I winced, sounding more judgmental than I felt.

He sat back, looking disappointed, but in me, not the translation.

“For example,” I fumbled, “what is it with this femme fatale fantasy? This fantasy of a woman who waltzes into his life, and boom, they’re a perfect fit, the sex is great—”

“Doesn’t everyone have that fantasy?” he asked. “The right person at the right time?”

“I guess, but the way he describes it…” I trailed off. Bunny was elsewhere, slowly slathering marmalade on another
tartine
. “What?”

He looked up, dreamy-eyed. “There was this thing Diana and I talked about a long time ago,” he said, mentioning an old girlfriend. “A spinning basket,” he explained. “The woman would sit in a basket suspended from the ceiling. It had an opening in the bottom so you could penetrate her from below while the basket spun around.”

I choked on my coffee. “Did you ever do it?” I asked.

“No, but it was wonderful to think about.” He pulled an ear off a baby croissant, scattering a flurry of flakes on the tablecloth, and ate it.

“I’ve never thought of twisting as particularly erotic,” I said. Bunny shrugged and bit off the other croissant ear. He handed me the book review section of
The New York Times
while he scanned the front page, humming.

I stared at the paper, not reading it. I was a little freaked out by the thought of this sixty-three-year-old man and his
Playboy
magazine of the seventies fantasies. Not that he wasn’t allowed to have them, but I didn’t want to hear about them—the same way I didn’t want to know
anything about my parents’ sex life. Bunny was like my wise, indulgent uncle, and I liked being his favorite protégée. I didn’t want any messy bits.

My eyes drifted across a headline. At the same time, wanting everyone to stay in their prescribed roles made me feel like a fascist. I sighed.

“Now what?” he asked, not looking up from the
Times
. I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said, folding the paper.

“No, I’m glad you told me,” I said, trying to sound sincere. I rolled pieces of bread into little pellets.

“You are not!” He smacked the table with the newspaper. “Maybe you shouldn’t be translating a sex book if talking about sex makes you so uncomfortable,” he said.

“I’m not uncomfortable! I just want you to keep it to yourself!” It was out before I could pull it back. He picked up the Op-Ed section and ignored me. We sat in uncompanionable silence while I tried to figure out how to make amends. A polka played in the background.

“Bunny?” I asked. I pulled the translation out of my bag and put it on the table. He didn’t answer. “Bunny.” He lowered his newspaper. “Would you read it? I want to know what you think.” He gave me a baleful look, but he picked up the pages.

As he read, Bunny’s reactions flitted across his face: a frown, a smirk, raised eyebrows, pursed lips. He turned the page. His hands were large, with thick knuckles and neat, broad fingernails. I knew how the skin on his cheek felt, I’d kissed it often enough: soft and papery. Perhaps to compensate for his height, he tended to stoop, but he moved gracefully. Just because he was old enough to be my father and I didn’t want to sleep with him didn’t mean he didn’t have a sex life. Despite myself, I wondered what he was like in bed, and suddenly sensed he’d be nervous and kind and surprisingly adept. I shook the thought away.

Bunny shifted in his seat, and the corners of his mouth twitched.
He’d gotten to
that
part: the short but graphic sex scene. He put the pages down, nodding.

“Is there more?”

“Nope. That’s chapter one.” I felt pretty pleased with myself and reached over to nab the square of dark chocolate off his saucer. He finished his coffee.

“It’s a bit clinical—” he began.

“Believe me, the original is worse,” I said.

Nodding again, he looked at his coffee cup, then put it down, squaring his shoulders. “You’re going to have to do better if you want the job. The language is stiff and stilted. He doesn’t sound at all likable—in fact, you make him sound like a pompous—”

“He
is
pompous!” I exclaimed.

“—horse’s ass. Which may be the case, but he isn’t going to hire you for pointing it out.”

“Wait. I’m supposed to pretty it up?”

“Not the way you’ve done it. The way you’ve written it, it’s like a Harlequin romance. I hear they’re sexing those up.” His mouth twitched again as he tried not to laugh. Furious, I fumbled in my bag and shoved the original at him.

“Read the French!” I said.

“Look, I’m just saying—”

“Read the original, goddamnit!” He read the manuscript while I fumed.

He finished reading and put it down. “I apologize,” he said. “It’s a brilliant translation.” He signaled for the bill.

“And?” I asked.

“And nothing.”

“Don’t play around, Bunny. It’s not nice.”

He sighed. “Either you want to know what I think or you don’t.”

“I want to know what you think. I respect your opinion,” I said, small-voiced.

“Then stop biting my head off,” he said, glaring at me. “You’re not going to get the job if you turn that in,” he repeated, jabbing a finger at my draft. “It shows up every single pretension in his stupid prose and makes him sound like more of an imbecile than in the original, where a certain flowery elegance buys him some leeway, if not credibility. Here, it’s stripped down, literal, and”—he paused to push up his sleeves—“dreadful. I wouldn’t read any more unless I was being paid or had nothing else to do.”

Stung and embarrassed, I looked down at my translation and the French original, trying to see what he saw, but the words blurred in front of me.

“He-e-e-y,” Bunny neighed. “It’s not that bad.”

I picked at a ragged cuticle. “What do I do?”

“Do you want the job?”

“Mmm-yeah. No.” I sounded sulky. “Maybe.”

“Jesus, I hate it when women act like cats in front of an open door. In or out. Yes or no. Fish or cut bai—”

“Oh, shut up! Yes, I want the job.”

“Then you have to write it well. Not a literal translation,” he said. I shook my head, not understanding. Bunny cupped his fingers like he was holding a fruit. “If you translate literally, he sounds like a jerk, but he doesn’t sound like one in French. Maybe he’s not likable, but he’s not a jerk. Jesus, Anna, you speak both languages, you know you can’t do it literally—the aesthetics are different. Do a translation of what you could imagine it to be if it lost its pretensions and grew up one day to be a solid and intelligent citizen.”