Sharon Harrigan

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Lost in Translation: Preservatives

 

The male form of the word, preservatifs, means condoms. They are available in parks and metro stations in Paris, so ubiquitous I forget they’re there except on days like today, when I pause at the turnstile to close my umbrella and find my fare. The way the dispenser is placed, right at the entrace, it appears to be related to my ride, a necessary travel item, like luggage. It makes me think of crowded rush-hour trains, commuters pressed leather jacket to leather jacket.

The female form, preservatives, is a bad word, with the same meaning as in English. My boulangerie promises that their all-natural produits contain none of these.

Then there are the other chemicals, the ones in the public service announcements for women. Yesterday, we saw one before the children’s film, Kirikou et Les Hommes et Les Femmes (Kirikou and Men and Women). It’s a sweet little-kid movie, and my fourth-grader was the oldest child in the theater. The ad showed a hold-up at a bank, with a hostage inching slowly, carefully toward her purse. We think she is going to reach for her phone and call the police, but instead she pops a pill. I thought it was a Valium, at first. But no, the punch line is: Nothing should ever get in the way of remembering to take contraceptives. Looking around the theater, I wondered who the intended audience for this message was. All the adults there, almost by definition, already had kids. Maybe it was aimed at the elementary-school set, to indoctrinate them early. My daughter’s school agenda includes helpful tips like “Going out for the weekend? Don’t forget your preservatif,” alongside others, such as “Why not have an apple for dessert today, instead of a sweet?” The French holistic approach to education. It’s only natural.

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Paris Journal: What Do French Bureaucrats and Jane Austen Characters Have in Common?

Yesterday we got an e-mail from our banker saying he needs proof of my maiden name. Even though I have no incentive to lie about it and it has no bearing on my bank-worthiness, I complied. His previous request was for a copy of our landlord’s passport. What’s next: proof of our landlord’s maiden name?

Meanwhile, the person handling our carte de sejour application (which will allow us to leave the country and return after our three-month visa expires) needs an electric bill in our name. A letter from our landlord stating that we pay the electric bills in his name is insufficient. That was yesterday. We’ll see what new request surfaces today.

Our experience seems typical. One of our friends, who lived last year in the apartment we’re renting now, explained, “As many people told us, French bureaucrats usually start any discussion with ‘Non, pas possible.’ But after some suitable persuading, they eventually change their tune.”

Which brings me to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a remarkably relevant satire, which I am in the middle of reading to Ella. When Elizabeth Bennet refuses the marriage proposal proferred by Mr. Collins, he replies, “It is usual with elegant young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.”

So the French will keep saying no, but we’ll realize they mean yes? We will probably first be turned down a second or even a third time. But we will get that carte de sejour.

I like to imagine the French bureaucrats in the guise of Marianne, the woman who, in paintings and sculptures, represents France itself. Marianne, you coquette! We will lead you to the altar, ere long.

 

 

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L’Assassin à la pomme verte, par Christophe Carlier


Je viens de finir L’Assassin à la pomme verte, juste à temps pour l’événement à la librairie ce soir. Félicitations à Carlier d’être sélectionné pour le prix du premier roman. Quel honneur !

C’était un vrai plaisir de le lire. (Même si, à cause de mon français faible, je suis sûre que beaucoup de subtilités m’ont manqués.) J’apprécie, surtout, le style : c’est élégant, philosophique, poétique mais concis, hanté, et il me donne la peau des poulets. C’est un conte moral tellement séducteur et malin. Quelques comparaisons qui me viennent vite : les films d’Eric Rohmer  (surtout les contes morales). Les films d’Alfred Hitchcock (surtout Rope). Le film Crimes and Misdemeanors de Woody Allen (c’est-à-dire Woody Allen quand il est le plus profond). Paul Auster (surtout The New York Trilogy). Comme Auster, Carlier mélange la philosophie avec l’art des policiers (c’est comme quelques journalistes ont dit vis à vis Auster, « Kafka goes gumshoe. »

J’adore comment Carlier décrit l’hôtel comme un microcosme du monde. L’insularité donne l’air du luxe et de la prison. C’est un zoo, comme Sébastien nous dit, si éloquemment :

« Rivé à mon poste, comme un gardien de zoo, je vois sortir le soir les panthères hautaines et les longs reptiles qui déplient avec lenteur leurs anneaux sous la lune. Leur présence chasse les espèces communes que je croise dans ma vie a rebours : bancs de poissons ternes et grisâtres, singes pouilleux, oiseaux au cou maigre et mite. »

Sébastien est un personnage tres expresif, un observateur astucieux. J’aime la façon qu’il voit tout, alors meme que personne ne le voit. Par exemple :

« Dans quelques heures, quand je me réveillerai entre mes murs, l’hôtel m’apparaitra comme un rêve étrange. L’illusion durera jusqu’au moment ou je reprendrai mon service. Il m’est arrivé de rencontrer des clients qui venaient se promener à Montmartre pendant la journée, et dont le hasard me faisait croiser la route. Ils ne m’ont jamais reconnu. »

Les échos (comme le couteau de l’assassin qui réapparait à la réception de l’hôtel et sur le bagage de Craig) sont lyrique dans une manière très satisfaisantes. Et la façon que la phase « ti amo » est ressuscité dans la lettre de Vicky (dans laquelle elle fait semblant d’être Craig) a l’air poétique et aussi de la justice poétique. Les parallélismes sont très bien composés, comme une machine élégante.

Encore une autre section que j’aime bien, de la part de Craig, séduisaient beau, avec son ambiance de promis et du retenue. Je ne penserai pas d’une chambre d’hôtel dans la même manière à partir de lire ce passage-ci :

« La salle de bains est un territoire mystérieux de la féminité. Mais, par une indiscrétion inhérente aux grands hôtels, je savais tout, ce soir-la, de l’intimité d’Elena : la texture du peignoir qu’elle jetterait sur ses épaules en sortant de son bain, la couleur de la serviette qu’elle nouerait autour de ses cheveux et l’odeur du savon au miel qui laissait une trainée dorée sur l’email de sa baignoire. Je portais à mes pieds les mules en éponge dans lesquelles elle avait enfilé les siens. Je connaissais le chiffre de l’oreiller ou elle poserait la tête en s’endormant. Pour éteindre la lampe de chevet, nous ferions le même geste, pratiquement à la même heure. »

Je suis impatiente pour ce soir, quand je peux aller à la librairie ou l’auteur lira quelques passages et signera mon copie. Ce sera mon premier événement littéraire ici, à Paris !

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Paris Journal: “That’s the Way the French Do It”

 

As we huddled on the street, waiting to be let in the school for a meeting with new families, I found several parents from my daughter Ella’s class chatting about how difficult their children’s workload is and how public the humiliation is if they don’t do well. For instance, each day the children have to recite a French sentence they learned the day before. When each child is finished, the teacher grades him or her aloud: tres bien (very good), bon (good), ca va (OK), or horrible. I don’t tell them that Ella doesn’t complain, that instead, she’s grateful to be challenged. (It would sound unsympathetic.) She is not the best French speaker in the class. Some children speak perfectly but just need to work on their writing. “I love being average!” she said, the other day, which made me laugh. “School is designed for the kids in the middle,” she explained, “and for once I’m the target audience.”

Leave it to me, American provocateur that I am, to steer the conversation from homework to sex. “Did your kids tell you about the movie?” I asked. They hadn’t. I said Ella was excited to tell me yesterday that the teacher had shown a movie with naked children in it and that they could see their “private parts.” The teacher had explained, matter-of-factly: “That’s the way the French do it.”

Every Monday the class watches a little movie, then they use it as a springboard for vocabulary, spelling, and acting out scenes. This week the movie was “Bath Time.”

“Maybe it’s only in America that teachers wouldn’t show a scene like that,” I said to two mothers, one Dutch, one British. The Dutch mother shrugged her shoulders. I thought of Amsterdam’s legal prostitution and wondered if anything shocked her kids. The British  mother said, “They wouldn’t show that kind of movie in England because of recent scandals with priests and coaches.”

Today the children will choose roles, and on Friday they will act out the scene. I wonder if it will be in authentic (un)dress! At the end, I hope the teacher says “tres bien.”

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Paris Journal: Fashion Update

This is what I see on the street, now that the locals have returned:

1. Red pants. For men, women, and children. Not always blue-jean material, but always blue-jean cut. Paired with anything from a button-down shirt and blazer to a t-shirt. (Confirmation, perhaps of what Rosecrans Baldwin says in Paris I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down: that in Paris Frenchmen dress the way gay men do in America.)

2. Scarves. The ends thrown over your shoulders like windswept hair, wrapped around your neck like a muffler, or hanging loose. Almost a requirement for women, but men and some children wear them, too. A $10 blue cotton foulard is the one item I’ve bought so far, and it’s worked so well to disguise me as a native that I’ve had people ask me for directions in French. It’s also one-size-fits-all, which will come in handy, given my new Camembert-with-every-meal habit.

3. Skinny jeans. For men, women, and children. In all colors, many of them bright.

4. Pointy leather shoes for men. Converse sneakers in all colors for boys and girls. (But never clunky running shoes. Only “les baskets.”) Ballet flats with no socks for girls and women. Short, sleek boots if it’s too cold to go sockless. Heels, high and low, even with (or especially with) jeans, for women and older girls.

5. Button-up dress shirts and jackets without a tie for men.

6. Flowered underwear. Even for men (including in the e-mail I just received from my supermarket). In Charlottesville, my supermarket didn’t send me e-mails with lingerie promotions, but in Paris, underwear is everywhere.

7. Speedos and other racing swimsuits. Men and boys are not allowed in pools with baggy suits.

8. Tailored everything. All the peasant skirts and flouncy dresses my nine-year-old daughter packed were charming in Charlottesville but seem rather frumpy here. So she bought three pairs of skinny jeans, her first ever.

9. Tailored shorts with stockings. For twenty-somethings.

10. For older-than-twenty-somethings (like me): Dark skinny jeans; a short, boxy, tailored suit-type jacket; and impeccable shoes. You can substitute a jean jacket, if you have a beautiful scarf. Studied casual is the look. The desired effect is elegant but not too formal or fussy.

11. Even elderly women wear jeans, though not skinny jeans. They may wear loafers instead of ballet flats or heels.

Maybe I’ll buy something today. Or maybe I’ll wait, so I can get even-more-skinny jeans. Because, paradoxically, I’m losing weight, even though for a month I didn’t go to the gym and ate butter and cheese with every meal.

It’s the French paradox, right? Is it something in the air? The red wine? The walking? The frisson of sex everywhere you look? I say it’s all the lingerie ads. You can fill in the rest.