Almost French (12 page)

‘You’re off your head,’ I laughed.

Unfazed, Alicia tried to persuade me. ‘Go on, it’d be great! A friend of mine held a raffle to pay for some expensive college and he raised heaps of money.’

I was touched and buoyed by her enthusiasm—and who knows, maybe the plan would really work. But I couldn’t ask for money from friends and family, I wouldn’t feel comfortable. Besides, selling raffle tickets had never been my forte. When I was at school, Mum and Dad always ended up having to buy all my unsold booklets.

In the end, I decided simply to write to companies and ask for sponsorship. Because I needed to narrow my focus somehow, I targeted Australian companies which do business in France and French groups which have interests in Australia. It seemed logical given my nationality and the fact that the program is based in Paris. Breaking down the required total amount into more digestible bites, we decided to ask them for ‘contributions’ of about $4,000. All I needed was for six companies to say yes.

Although we didn’t admit it, neither Frédéric nor I really believed this strategy would work. Companies receive hundreds of requests each year to support causes far more worthy than mine. But the alternative was to give up and forget about the program and I wasn’t prepared to do that, not yet. All my hopes for the future were wrapped up in it and these hopes provided me with a purpose, a goal. We concealed our doubts under bouncy, brittle optimism. The business of letter writing turned into a full-time job—for both of us. But our approaches to the task turned out to be rather different.

‘Can’t you make it less flowery? I mean, it’s not supposed
to be poetry.’ Frédéric’s French translation of my English letter seemed longwinded. Its wordy sentences, carved by commas, trailed onto a second page. On the computer, we fiddled with the font until eventually it squashed onto one sheet. In contrast with the airy original, the French version looked dark and compressed.

But as everyone knows from Proust’s legendary page-long sentences, the French language doesn’t lend itself to concision. Its beauty lies in the fluid rhythms of musical, meandering passages which express a multitude of possibilities and doubts before reaching any conclusion. Oblique messages are revered as subtle and sophisticated whereas direct language is considered too blunt—an appropriate writing style for a robot but not for an erudite human being. My English letter ended succinctly with ‘Yours sincerely’. Signing off in French requires a two line formal flourish: ‘
Je vous prie de recevoir, Monsieur/Madame, l’expression de ma considération distinguée.’
Literally, ‘I beg you to receive, Monsieur or Madame, the expression of my distinguished consideration.’

Thanks to the seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician René Descartes, though, in France Latin flamboyance is tempered by method and reasoning. It’s the French Yin and Yang, apparently. Frédéric’s letter might have been long but each line led the reader through another step in his argument. Although I remained unconvinced about the length and wording of his translation, he was insistent. We were writing to some of the most important names in French business. They were most likely cultivated, highly educated people. Our message needed to be elegant, lucid.

By mid-June we had sent out about fifty letters and there were another thirty or so to be written. We hurried to get them done as quickly as possible. In a few weeks it would be
summer and Parisians would start fleeing the city. My target companies would be operating on a scant staff who’d get to work late and take long lunches. Few decisions are ever made in July and August. Normal business in Paris would not fully resume until the first week of September, only one month before the start of the Journalists in Europe program. Most of the busy executives would not get my letter until after their holidays, when they’d have one million more important things to do. Meanwhile, responses trickled in from Australian companies, all minor variations of the same message.
I regret we are unable to provide any financial support …

It was during my flurry of letter writing that France dropped a bombshell. Anxious to kick off his term to a decisive Gaullist start, the newly elected French President announced the resumption of French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. Jacques Chirac—who during his eighteen years as Paris mayor earned the nickname ‘
le bulldozer
’—planned a series of at least six tests on Mururoa Atoll. The decision had explosive repercussions for France’s relations with the rest of the world, and nowhere was the protest stronger than in Australia. It also had direct consequences for me.

Suddenly, revealing my nationality sparked debate. Most French people my age appeared sympathetic to the anti-test stand.
‘Il est con, Chirac
,’ they shrugged. Chirac’s a dickhead. But then media reports poured in from Australia describing French restaurant windows being smashed and—even more absurd—shops removing croissants from shelves. Although I shared my country’s opposition to the tests, I was embarrassed by the extreme elements of the protest and tried to reassure those who asked that only a small minority of Australians were
behind it. Meanwhile, interviews were aired with French travellers back from Australia, where some suffered gibes and even discriminatory treatment. The national mood in France turned from empathy to hurt. We’ve always liked Australia, people told me. Why are you taking out your protest on the French people?

It was a fair question. France is hardly the worst offender when it comes to nuclear tests, responsible for only one tenth of the world’s total. Of course there was the thorny question of why, if these tests are so safe, the French government was conducting them far from its own shores. But even so, the virulence of the protest was revealing. France seems to trigger fiery emotions. The we-don’t-give-a-stuff-what-the world-thinks attitude of French politicians only exacerbated matters, cementing the country’s reputation for contrariness and prickly pride. As international fury rose, France reminded me more and more of one of those starchy grand dames you see jumping queues in smart Paris boutiques. She has a rather inflated notion of her own importance and an unshakeable belief in being different from everybody else. Dark looks from the other customers don’t faze her. She is utterly unapologetic about being difficult, considering it merely a sign of strong character.

The escalating tensions triggered a few outbursts in my own life. One day, sitting in a café with an Australian girlfriend, Brigid, I was accosted by two French academics. Having discerned our nationality from our conversation, they thundered on about Australia’s hypocrisy—look how we’ve treated the Aborigines, how dare we give France lessons! A few weeks later, Frédéric and I were invited to lunch with some of his aunts and uncles. So far I’d met his sister and brother-in-law and his father, Alain, a charming, stern,
widely read man with a passion for history who lives alone in northern France. These previous meetings with Frédéric’s immediate family had gone well, I’d thought.

This was my first encounter with his extended family, though, and I hoped to make a good impression. The house was a lovely eighteenth-century manor burrowed in the hills a few kilometres from Boulogne-sur-Mer and because it was a fine day, lunch was outside, in an idyllic garden courtyard. But the aftershock of
les essais nucléaires
reverberated around the table, sending tremors through the perfect setting, conspiring against me. Our host was a highly successful, retired businessman. In his olive cords and freckled tweed blazer he epitomised the look the French call ‘gentleman farmer’, which is about the only fashion style they admit to borrowing from the English. But his sociable charm evaporated when the conversation turned to the tests.

‘
Les Australiens sont chiants!
’ he roared, suddenly excited, from the head of the table.

‘
Pardon?
’

‘
LES AUSTRALIENS SONT CHIANTS!
’

Confused, I turned to Frédéric. He looked pained, focusing on a snail cruising around the garden bed, envying, no doubt, its peaceful endeavour.

‘Umm, my uncle said that you Australians are shitty.’

I was speechless. These were the first words anyone had addressed directly to me in the two hours we’d been there and they were not exactly the welcome I’d expected. I wanted to tell Frédéric’s uncle he was shitty too, but then we might have had an international incident on our hands. While I pondered a response, the conversation switched to the house next door which had been ruined by the
erreurs de goût
(errors in taste) of the new owners. The uncle’s outburst
was not meant as a way of opening conversation or seeking my opinion, I realised, but rather as a simple statement of fact.

‘Well, that was a great success.’ Afterwards I was despondent. It was as though I’d landed in the middle of a minefield and instead of nimbly negotiating my way out I was bumbling and tripping, triggering disaster after disaster.

‘They didn’t mean to be unfriendly,’ began Frédéric, reluctantly recast in his meat-in-the-sandwich role. ‘It’s just they’re not used to meeting foreigners. They’re really fun, kind people, you’ll see.’

The thing is, I already knew they were fun, kind people. It was obvious by the engraved laugh lines on their faces, the way they joked all the time. There was a lot of love around the table. But once again I’d felt invisible throughout the entire four hours. ‘Pretend you’re a chair,’ the book
French or Foe
had advised as a way of steeling yourself for being ignored. Oh, if only I could. But I was too consumed by the effort of trying to adapt to my new home to see the reaction of Frédéric’s relatives within the context of a culture. Instead, I did exactly what you shouldn’t do, what I’ve been doing all along in France. I took it personally.

The international furore over the nuclear tests brought me more work. Increasingly the messages from editors read something like this:

Dear Sarah

I like your proposal. Can you do 1,200 words by the 11 August?

There was an insatiable demand from abroad for articles relating to the tests and—as one foreign editor put it—‘any story that makes the French look bad’. For one newspaper feature, I needed to speak to a top defence officer whom I could question about France’s nuclear policy. The army chief was refusing to comment so I tracked down his predecessor. Although he was still a big brass with a bureau at the sumptuous Ecole Militaire, I thought he may be less constrained by protocol than the incumbent.

By now I’d learnt that in France, getting an interview is a more protracted procedure than the fairly straightforward system I was used to in Sydney. It’s rare you can just ring an expert for a quick quote. Even telephone interviews often require a written request. The aim of your first call is simply to win the sympathy of the personal assistant and find out the fax number. Several days or even weeks may pass, during which you repeatedly blow extended story deadlines waiting for a response. Then, if you’re lucky, the secretary will call back suggesting a day and time for the meeting.

I telephoned the Ecole Militaire hoping to just get the general’s fax number. His secretary asked me to hold. Several seconds later an authoritative male voice curtly announceed his identity. It was the venerable general himself.

Far from being pleased by this easy access, I was appalled. I had not prepared. Logically, all I had to do was introduce myself and explain the reason for my call. The interview—if there was to be one at all—would happen later. But making yourself understood in another language is harder over the telephone than speaking with someone in person. My conversations have to be carefully choreographed, the sentences translated into French and written on a notepad which is kept in front of me throughout the call.

Unnerved, I stumbled straight into a foolish mistake. Instead of using the respectful word for ‘you’,
vous
, I addressed him with the casual, matey
tu
. In France, the military is the ultimate bastion of pomp and prestige and it’s quite possible not even the good general’s wife is permitted such familiarity. In my growing panic, I
tu
-ed him again. Then, after more nervous jabber, I said the unthinkable.

‘
Tu veux le faire ou non?
’ Do you want to do the interview or not? This sounds bad enough in English but in France—where the same question would require five minutes of poetic persuasion—such brusqueness is obscene. Forget about using his proper title,
mon Général
—I didn’t even call him
Monsieur
. My French had been reduced to the sort of crude questions you’d expect from a five-year-old. The conversation had turned into an excruciating out-of-body experience. From my lofty vantage point it was obvious the babbling journalist had blown it. A faint feeling of hysteria squeezed my breath. Please oh please, let’s just hang up and start again.

The general said he needed time to consider the interview, which under the circumstances seemed saintly, that he might even contemplate speaking to me again. Rushing to end the call, I said the first farewell that popped into my head.