French Toast (14 page)

One situation Japanese businessmen in particular have trouble coping with is the business meeting
(la réunion)
. “In Japan we have a meeting once something is almost decided, and the meeting is just to confirm and conclude. In France, everyone is talking all at once and they are too tired to accomplish anything.” For the French, “principles are very important, which is why the French are such good diplomats,” says Ota. “For the Japanese, pragmatism is what counts.”

Talking in general is a problem. For the Japanese, as for Anglo-Saxons, the spoken word is important, serious. “The French talk as if they are strolling. The conversation doesn't go anywhere,” says Ota. And this leads to confusion for the Japanese, who have trouble, in any case, formulating an answer before the French have
skipped to another subject. And yet, “if you don't talk here, you don't exist,” another contradiction for the Japanese, for whom silence and discretion are important.

The Japanese aren't alone in not understanding the French (and the Parisians in particular). The English have a centuries-old love-hate relationship with the French, which regularly springs up in the English tabloid press in the form of “hate Froggy” insults. The Americans—well, as one who has lived here for over two decades, I can attest to the fact that the Parisians, including my husband, are not always the world's easiest people to understand. And yet—this is the crux—one is never bored!

If there are so many cultural differences and the French are so cryptic, why, one might ask, do so many people keep coming—and staying? To which my Parisian husband would reply, “Where else in the world could you live?” As one Paris-lover remarked a century ago, “I only know that I found in Paris all and even more than I was expecting. I only know that I was charmed and enchanted more than I can say.”

In 1869, Mark Twain wrote of Paris in
The Innocents Abroad
: “We secured rooms at the hotel, or rather, we had three beds put into one room, so that we might be together, and then we went out to a restaurant, just after lamplighting, and ate a comfortable, satisfactory, lingering dinner. It was a pleasure to eat where everything was so tidy, the food so well cooked, the waiters so polite, and
the coming and departing company so moustached, so frisky, so affable, so fearfully and wonderfully Frenchy!”

But the tribute I love the best is one written by Joe Murray in an “Opinion” column in the
International Herald Tribune
: “Paris should be declared an international shrine. The World Bank should finance its economy. The people of Paris should work at no other job than simply that of being Parisians.”

I can only wholeheartedly agree with Joe Murray and Mark Twain. It surely must be this “fearfully and wonderfully Frenchy” side that's kept me here for all these years, and I must confess (now I mustn't get sentimental here) that I find this city as beautiful as the first day I laid eyes on it. Even with all the incomprehensible cultural differences and a certain amount of moaning and groaning about the inevitable vicissitudes of city life, I can't really imagine where else I could possibly live. I guess I've become a real
Parisienne
after all.

Interview with Philippe

HARRIET
:
After all I have written here, do you have the feeling that I am being unfair, or even racist, about Parisians?

PHILIPPE
:
Absolutely! Paris is not just taxi drivers or surly waiters. The criminality has nothing to do
with what you find in the States. It's better to get a
coup de pare-chocs
than a
coup de revolver
[a bang in the fender than a bang from a gun]. Parisians may be obnoxious but you can still drive around here without locking all your windows and doors
.

HARRIET
:
How about dog poop and snarling salespeople? What do you have to say about that?

PHILIPPE
:
Shoot them all
.

HARRIET
:
Okay, one more question. Why do the Parisians do everything so fast?

PHILIPPE
:
Because they're—we're—agitated
. Voilà.
And only a person from Iowa could live here for over twenty years and maintain
your
rhythm
.

HARRIET
:
I've often noticed that Parisians make fun not only of foreign accents but even of French accents that are not Parisian. How do you Parisians situate yourselves in relationship to other Frenchmen?

PHILIPPE
:
What other Frenchmen?

It may be hard to figure out why the French, and especially the Parisians, act as they do, but if you're a tourist, you probably don't really care. However, if you live in France, there are a few things you have to try to understand, such as French rules of politesse, which are so complicated that they take years to grasp. Only then do you realize all the gaffes and mistakes you've been making!

As the years passed, I made an amazing discovery that enabled me to understand why the French have such a worldwide reputation for rudeness. In France, you are not expected to like everybody or even act as if you do.

The good side of this is that your smile muscles don't get worn out, because you rarely use them; the bad side is that since the French in general reserve
their true sentiments and warmth for the people they know, many foreigners come away thinking that the French are universally impolite. They can rest assured. The French treat one another even worse than they treat foreigners.

It's true that there's no premium placed on being nice to people you don't know. Inconsiderate acts such as double-parking the car, taking dogs to restaurants, or smoking in elevators are all perpetrated on people you don't know and hence don't care about. Relieving oneself by the side of a road or major thoroughfare falls into the same category, but with a little macho tinge.

On the other hand, the French have a set of codes for polite behavior that is extremely complicated. I know now, for example, that I have made many gaffes by being too candid. In France, for instance, there is no intrinsic merit in being frank and to the point.

Au contraire
. The blunt way we Americans say things is considered by polite French people to be “violent” (the word they use for it in French is the same—
violent
). Even if a statement is true, the French won't appreciate it coming at them in a strong-arm fashion. The oblique is better than the direct. Wrap up your comment in a pretty package and deliver it to your listener on a platter. You're on your way.

Try this exercise in politesse: Your neighbor's radio is driving you nuts and you want to do something
about it. As an American, I would go to the person and say, “Could you please turn your radio down?” A French person with manners would phrase it differently. “Have you moved your radio? I never used to hear it before.” The person, if he or she is French, will get the hint.

I decided to test my level of subtlety the day my new neighbor asked me if I would like her to put up a divider so that I wouldn't see all her washing hanging out on the back porch we share. I hypocritically said, “No, it doesn't bother me,” a bold-faced lie. I delightedly reported the incident to my husband, noting that for once in my life, I had been indirect. “No,” my husband told me, “you got it all wrong.” A French person would have put the ball in her court: “It's up to you. I don't know whether you mind other people seeing your personal belongings.” Translation: “Of course I don't want to look out my kitchen window at your underwear, you sap!”

In the heart of the country, at the home of some people we didn't know, we were offered an aperitif. Unfortunately, a fly landed in my drink. Without my ever seeing it, my husband quickly exchanged glasses, all the while talking to the host. I never knew what he did with the fly—I think he plucked it out and flicked it into the fireplace. In any event, no one ever knew what happened, including me, and that was only because he told me afterward. Calling attention to the fly, as I
surely would have done, would have been totally unthinkable.

In line with this, the phone is another battlefield for cultural differences. When my American friends call, I say, “May I call you back? I'm eating.” My husband says that is the height of rudeness. He himself would pick up the phone and let his food go cold rather than cut someone off. For him, telling the caller that you are otherwise engaged means that you have better things to do than talk to him, and it puts the person in the awkward position of having to apologize.

When I counter that my friends would be embarrassed to have me on the phone an hour if they knew I was eating, he doesn't understand. (I have on many occasions called my sister-in-law, and the only indication that she had company was that she would say, “Oh, no problem, we're just going to the table.” Translation: “I'm busy!”) Raymonde Carroll explains in
Cultural Misunderstandings
that phoning for the French is a ritual and that “picking up the telephone to tell a friend ready for ritual that one is not free to participate constitutes an incongruity for a French person.”

In another sterling paradox, while the French can be monumentally impolite when they want to be, at the same time they are almost Japanese in their way of circumventing delicate situations so that the other person can be spared discomfiture or can save face. A telling scene: A friend was accosted by a driver who almost
mowed her down to get a parking place he thought she had stolen from him. It turned out that the same night she was invited to a party and introduced to an exquisite young man with lovely manners. When she looked him full in the face, she discovered, to her consternation, that he was the mad driver. She didn't know whether he recognized her or not. In a typical bourgeois ballet, each pretended never to have seen the other.

By the same token, the French often speak in double negatives to avoid unpleasant situations. It is a great way to hedge. Saying, “I wouldn't say no,” or “I'm not unhappy,” or “It's not bad” instead of “Yes” or “Great!” is a way of not exposing yourself to ridicule and/or of reserving your judgment. My husband talks this way all the time. One day, however, we got into an elevator and in a friendly way he said to the person we were riding with, “That exhibition was great, wasn't it?” and the stranger answered, “No!” Guess who looked stupid, and the French
hate
looking stupid.

As if this verbal juggling is not enough, the French have codes and secret signs that only they can figure out. These codes, which they recognize but no one else does, can cause incredible misunderstandings. For years, my American family and many non-French friends thought my husband was a real check-grabber. What they didn't realize was that he would lunge for the bill forcefully, quite confident that there would be an instantaneous remonstrance and he wouldn't end up with it. The problem
was that with non-French people, he only succeeded in scaring them into thinking that he really did want to pay, and they let him!

“Why do you keep doing that?” I would ask him. He explained to me that French people would understand right away that his gesture was one of politeness, an offer that was not necessarily to be taken up. I explained to him that Americans take people literally, so no wonder he got stuck in such predicaments. Once he figured out this was yet another enormous cultural gap, he changed his behavior—fortunately, before we went bankrupt.

Codes are hard to decipher. As Edward and Mildred Hall point out in
Understanding Cultural Differences
, Americans “are often uncomfortable with indirectness and sometimes miss nonverbal cues: subtle shifts in voice, slight, almost imperceptible changes in body posture or breathing.” I know I certainly miss a lot, including with one Frenchman, who happens to be my husband. He's always sending me very subtle brain waves I absolutely don't get.