The World in My Kitchen (6 page)

Then we would walk to Katz’s delicatessen for lunch. The restaurant was like nothing I had ever experienced. At lunch it was packed with people who, I was told, came from all over the city to eat pastrami sandwiches, which I disliked, or steamed corned beef, sausages, or brisket, which I loved. Along the wall was a small army of men carving the meats. I adored the thick, fatty sandwiches of steamed beef brisket. My favorite moment was standing at the counter, mouth watering, famished, watching the old man carve the brisket with such dexterity and rapid movements that I was totally mesmerized. Smiling, he would always offer me a thin slice of hot, fatty brisket for my approval. I would say “Great! Delicious!” and my sandwich would be so thick and moist that the bread would invariably fall apart. It was so succulent that I picked up the pieces with my fingers. Full and satisfied, we would find our way to Bleecker Street.

On Saturdays, Bleecker Street was lined with carts piled high with salads, two or three types of eggplants, leeks, or green peppers. Along the street, we stopped at Italian stores offering salamis, hams, cheese, fresh Parmesan, and what I liked most, sweet Italian sausages that I would serve the next day for lunch with sautéed green peppers. There were several bakeries with crisp Italian baguettes that were not as good as the French bread I was used to, but certainly a great improvement on the soft white bread from the supermarket. Back at our apartment, I would cook dinner with the things I had bought: I would make a potato and leek soup, stuffed chicken with garlic, and steamed fresh spinach. But what I liked to do on weekends was to bake those large Idaho potatoes. I was then in love with this quintessential American way of preparing a potato. But to be different, I would often top them with herb butter or fresh ricotta from Bleecker Street. In the evening we would stroll on Broadway and often go to the Thalia, a petite avant-garde movie house that showed foreign films.

My tranquil routine at work lasted only a few months. An international crisis was looming. Everything changed suddenly. The United Nations was in full session to examine the Middle East crisis after Egypt and its leader, Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. The French and the English attacked Egypt; the Soviet Union sided with Egypt, and the UN Security Council called an emergency meeting of the General Assembly to discuss the problem. I was quite worried as I still had some family members living in Cairo. M. Ribaud reappeared in my life, arriving in the office in his rumpled suit, saying that from now on and for the duration of the General Assembly meetings, I was to attend UN General Assembly and Security Council meetings and write daily reports for
La Libre Belgique.
He would take my place and write the weekly article to send home. I called on Renaldo, my Italian journalist friend, to help me through the labyrinth of the United Nations. Every day for several weeks, I sat and listened to arguments on both sides. At lunchtime, Renaldo and I would stroll to a small Italian restaurant not far from the United Nations where I would order a plate of spaghetti Bolognese or veal scaloppini with clams and a glass of red wine. Sleepily, I would go back to the General Assembly meetings and doze off because of my lunch while listening to the Israeli-French arguments and the Soviet Union response. Often, the sessions would last late into the night, and I would not come home until the wee hours of the morning. Jimmy did not like coming home to a dark house and no dinner. We argued a lot about this new development, but I was so excited and interested that in the end he accepted the situation. Then when the UN sessions ended, I went back to my old routine of reading my daily newspapers.

M. Ribaud reappeared a few weeks later to announce that a Belgian state senator was arriving in New York. The senator needed a translator to accompany him to Washington, since he had important business to discuss with members of the American government. M. Ribaud offered me the job and said that I would be paid $100 a day, for three days, a lot of money for us, plus my usual salary of $35 a week. This was my first trip to Washington, and I was told that the senator would put me up in a nice hotel. Worried about me being alone with the senator, Jimmy reluctantly let me go, making me promise that I would call every day.

Senator S. was a tall, portly man, dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, shiny black shoes, and a red handkerchief in his left pocket. He looked more like an actor playing the role of a senator than a real one, but I was quite impressed. During the train ride to Washington, he explained that I was to help him secure an appointment with the newly appointed Secretary of State, Christian Herter. Senator S. knew how to reach him. The American Consulate in Brussels, who was his friend, had given him several telephone numbers. We checked in the hotel, and as Senator S. had no address in New York, he suggested that he use mine. As soon as we were registered, I started to make inquiries and quickly found that one did not get such an appointment that easily, even if you were a senator from a friendly but small country like Belgium. I was told to call again the next day, so I convinced the senator to take me on a tour of Washington’s monuments. The city delighted me with its wide avenues and its great monuments that felt so much like Paris. That night Senator S. left me alone to dine at the hotel, while he went to visit some friends. Shy and lonely, I ate in my room and spoke to Jimmy for hours, knowing that the senator would pay the bill. The next day, I tried again to set up an appointment but failed. I was about to give up when a message came. The senator could meet with the then Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy the next day. Murphy would decide if a meeting with the secretary of state was warranted. From our hotel, we walked to the State Department and were greeted by Mr. Murphy. As we sat down, I heard for the first time the reason for our trip and was asked by Senator S. to translate. Senator S. stated that he represented Belgium’s right wing political party. They were very concerned with the future results of the presidential elections. They had raised a million dollars, and he was empowered to offer the money to Eisenhower’s campaign for a second term. At that moment, as I looked up at Mr. Murphy, I thought that he was going to explode. He jumped up, red in the face, and told us to get out of his office, and he insisted that we never, never appear before him. Shaking and scared, I translated what Mr. Murphy had said: It was totally illegal for a foreign country to interfere in American politics. Senator S. wanted to argue, but I insisted that we leave immediately. I understood that we had made a fatal mistake. Back at the hotel, I told Senator S. that I would immediately go back to New York, as he no longer needed my services. I requested to be paid. He promised to send me a check and take care of the hotel bill. Relieved, I left for New York.

I took the next few days off, and then on the following Monday, went back to work. When I arrived at the office, I was astonished to find it totally empty. The desks and the teletype machine were gone. The superintendent of the building told me M. Ribaud had moved out, and when I called the only telephone number he had given me, I discovered it was disconnected. I called the newspaper in Brussels and was told that he had been fired three weeks ago. He had never told me, and he had left the country without paying me!

For the next few days, I scanned the employment ads looking for another job, but was not successful. I looked every day for the mail, hoping to get a check from Senator S. But nothing came. I called his hotel in Washington but was told he had checked out. I called his hotel in New York but was told they had not heard from him. I was angry and upset. I felt both men had used me. A few days later, as I was preparing dinner, the bell rang. I opened the door for two men in black suits looking stern and very official. They asked if they could come in, so I called Jimmy, who found out they were from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“It’s the FBI. They want to talk to you. We have to let them in.”

Suddenly I was afraid.

“The FBI? What is the FBI? Some sort of police?”

“Never mind, Colette; I will explain later. Just answer their questions.”

They began by asking me dozens of questions. When did I meet Senator S. and M. Ribaud? Did I know that he had signed the hotel bills in Washington and New York and had given my telephone number and address as the person in charge of paying the bills? No, I did not know. I tried to explain that I had just met him, that my job was to accompany him to Washington and translate for him. I was even more frightened when I learned that he had bought an expensive fur coat in Washington with a phony check, he had gambled in underground betting places and had lost huge amounts of money, and he had given my name and address as the person in charge of his office. I was devastated and petrified. As they left, the two men implied that I could be deported and sent back to France.

That night both Jimmy and I could not sleep.

“Jimmy, what if they deport me? What a disaster! And I didn’t even get my $300. If they deported me, will you come with me? Do you love me?”

I cried on his shoulder, while he tried to comfort me.

“Of course I love you. I did not know I had a criminal as a wife—much more exciting. Stop crying. The truth will come out. You were innocent. This is America; nothing could happen to you.” Then he added, “I am starving! Let’s eat. Let’s go in the kitchen and have some French scrambled eggs.”

Drying my tears, I made scrambled eggs and went to bed feeling a bit less scared.

For the next few days, we heard nothing, and no one came to our door. But on the third day, the two agents reappeared. It turned out that the Belgian ambassador in Washington had cleared me. I learned that M. Ribaud and Senator S. were both criminals and not members of any political party. The FBI apologized for scaring me and left.

Years later, when I ran for political office as a councilwoman for my neighborhood, I found out that the FBI had a dossier on me and that for a few years they had monitored my career and activities.

I was unemployed once more and began searching for jobs again. In early September, I spotted an ad for a French teacher at the Convent of the Sacred Heart on Fifth Avenue. When I was growing up in Cairo, my mother, who came from a Jewish family, had converted to Catholicism. When I was seven, she had decided that I should also be a Catholic and registered me as a boarder in the Convent of Sacred Heart in Cairo. I stayed at the convent until I was fourteen. When I saw the notice, I felt that as an alumna, I had a good chance of landing the job.

The convent occupied a magnificent old house on Fifth Avenue and Ninety-first Street. In my youth, there were two orders of nuns: the mothers, who were upper class and well educated and wore elaborate habits, and the Sisters, in simpler garb who cleaned the school and cooked. Now, two decades later, the order had changed. The Mothers’ habits were different and simpler, and there were no longer any sisters. I was interviewed by the Mother Superior and tried to play up my background as an alumna of the convent, and despite my obvious lack of experience, was given the job. The salary was $3,500 a year, which seemed like a fortune to me after my $35 a week. I would teach seventh, eighth, and tenth grades. Instructed to appear at 8:30
A.M
., I would attend the general meeting and morning prayers, then teach my classes. Lunch was served at 12:30
P.M
., and classes would resume at 2:00
P.M
. I had several free periods during which I could sit at my desk in the teacher’s room and prepare for my classes. I was handed a weekly plan book and told that the mother in charge of the studies would look at my book from time to time. “One more thing,” the Mother Superior added, “we have a very important marching band, and we compete in Cardinal Spellman’s marching band competition, and this year we want to win. If you have students in your classes that belong to the team, their practice takes precedent over French lessons.” (As far as I know, during my tenure at the convent, they never won.) And so my career as a French teacher began.

I quickly discovered that I loved teaching and was good at it, but I had problems with the nun in charge of studies. She would pop in on my classes just as I would be telling a story about Paris or writing a funny rhyme on the blackboard. She thought my plan book was far too disorderly. She also thought that I told too many stories in class, my method of teaching lacked discipline, and worst of all, I did not follow the curriculum. I did attempt to change the way I taught and to follow her directives, but soon I became bored with the planned lessons. To my mind, making the learning of language fun was more important than her strict teaching rules. I continued to tell stories about growing up in Paris, sing songs, and play games. Often, I had nothing to do because most of my students were part of the marching band and rehearsals took them away. The students were, for the most part, children of wealthy Catholic New Yorkers. I learned from the other lay teachers that the majority of the students would end up next door at the Duchesne School, the convent’s finishing school, and not go on to college. Those who did go on to college usually went to Marymount, a Catholic university. At my first parent-teachers meeting, I was relieved to find out that my students loved their French class and parents were very pleased with my performance. At Christmas time, I was showered with gifts. There were bottles of French perfume, scarves, leather gloves, but most of all, box after box of expensive writing paper from Tiffany & Co. (you must often write home to France, explained one of my students, upon giving me yet another box of writing paper). So for the next two years, I had a sizeable credit at the store but never quite enough to buy myself a nice Tiffany bauble.

Anne, who lived alone during the winter in Coral Gables, Florida, asked us to join her for the holidays. Jimmy, who for a while had gone to school in the South, wanted to show me Florida and see old friends. Christmas had always been very important to me. At boarding school in Cairo, I would wait impatiently for Christmas vacation hoping to see my mother, who I seldom saw, and spending some days with my grandparents, who I loved. Most Christmases, my mother would forget that I was on vacation, or she would be traveling somewhere. But my grandmother, knowing how disappointed I would be, showered me with gifts. Waking up in the morning, I would run into our large salon and there, in a corner, would be a pile of presents: books, games, dresses, lovely gold bangles, sweaters, and many other things.