Foreign Tongue (9 page)
Authors: Vanina Marsot
I gave him my phone numbers and watched as he programmed them into his cell phone. He opened his bag and pulled out my rumpled shopping bag.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m very glad I didn’t lose it.”
He leaned over the table. “I’ll call you,” he said and kissed me on the mouth, hard. He walked away, and I sat there, running my fingers over my lips.
Someone said something, but I wasn’t listening. It became more insistent, until finally, Pascal put a hand on my shoulder, shaking me out of my reverie.
“Oh, là, tu dors?”
he asked. “What are you doing in the ’hood?” I squinted up at him, wondering where he was learning all his American slang. He waved at Bruno and signaled for two glasses of wine. “
Eh, oh!
You’re not sleeping, you’re dreaming,” he said, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “What’s his name?” he asked, guessing.
“I’m not telling you. You’ll only make fun of me,” I said.
“Why, is he famous?” he asked, joking.
“No, not really,” I said, but I must’ve looked guilty. He gave me a sharp look. “An actor,” I confessed.
“Ah, non! Mais ça ne va pas la tête?”
he asked, rapidly tapping his temple with his index finger, the French national gesture for “What the hell is wrong with you?” or “Are you insane?” With minor variations in tapping speed and facial expression, it’s employed for everything from mild insanity to the ultimate outrage, bad driving. They go wild with the temple tap at l’Etoile.
“Didn’t you say you were never getting involved with another man in the entertainment industry?” His mouth set in a thin horizontal line of disapproval.
“But that was in Los Angeles!” I protested.
“It was not. You said it here. I heard you. You said it to me,” he said.
“Well, I meant it about Los Angeles,” I muttered.
He slapped his pack of cigarettes against his palm, then took one out and lit it. “I’m meeting Florian for dinner. You want to join us?” he asked, exhaling smoke.
I shook my head and kissed him good-bye. I swung my shopping bag as I floated home through the Marais.
Il y a deux histoires: l’histoire officielle, menteuse, puis l’histoire secrète, où sont les véritables causes des événements.
*
—
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
T
he sheets were cold and the memory came to me before I could stop myself. One of the things I missed most about Timothy was how warm he was. His body was like a furnace, it heated the whole bed. He didn’t mind my cold hands and feet. “Wrap yourself around me,” he’d say, and I’d twine around him like a vine,
comme une liane,
finding a nook in his neck for my nose. I thought that was what love was, someone who warmed you up when you were cold.
I felt a sharp pang, half longing, half loss. I rubbed my feet against each other to warm them up, and thought about Los Angeles. One of my favorite things about living in California was getting in a hot car on a cold day. The heat enveloped you, seeping into your pores like a sauna until it got unbearable and you had to open the window because even your teeth were hot. I burrowed under the duvet and forced my thoughts
away from Timothy, imagining instead what warming myself up with Olivier would feel like.
I looked over the manuscript in the morning, but it didn’t read the way I’d remembered. Sure, they went to Venice and had a big fight, but now it seemed poignant, even charming. Was I half-asleep when I read it the first time? Feeling bitter and jaded? Was my mood so different now? Puzzled, I sat in front of the computer and rewrote the second half of the chapter.
We ate in a restaurant under a ceiling made from the ribs of an old sailing ship. We had tagliarini alla granseola, pasta with Adriatic sea crab, a Venetian specialty. I told her about the sea creatures that lived in the canals, the odd crayfish and fleshy eels. I told her about the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on the earth, and the fish that lived at the bottom of the ocean. Strange fish, with sharp, glassine teeth; fish with hanging lanterns above their heads so they could see in the abysmal dark; fish who lived their lives in a permanent night under the terrible pressure of the water.
Fish tales, she said.
I made a note to find out if the expression “fish tales” means the same thing in French as it does in English.
It is only fitting, she said. I caught her hand across the table, holding the fingers captive. I turned it over and stroked the inside of her arm. The soft skin was like a secret revealed, translucent, traced with a fine blue-green network of veins. The skin on her breasts was nearly transparent as well, revealing her bloodstream as plainly as the lacy veining on a leaf. I thought of an old lover, Fimi: a white-blond Finnish girl with pale lashes and brows. Her skin was white, with a bluish tint, like a water creature: a sprite.
We strolled away from San Marco after dinner, walking in the
cold, damp air. The crowds thinned and dwindled, until it seemed we were alone in the city. At night, La Serenissima had an air at once enchanting and perilous, as if angels and monsters lurked around each corner.
“It’s a city of stories,” Eve remarked, as we stopped to look out over a canal. “I read one in an English book once,” she said. “An old lady, a French grandmother, goes to visit Venice. She’d been famous in her youth for her beauty, and had had many lovers. She’d married well, had children and several grandchildren. When her husband died, she decided to travel, revisit the cities of the classic Grand Tour with her favorite cousin.
“In Venice, on a small canal, they came upon an exquisite, Moorish-style, pink house. Mysteriously drawn to it, they rang the doorbell and asked to visit. A caretaker told them the house had been uninhabited for years, but he would show them around.
“They toured the drawing rooms, with furniture covered in white sheets. There were elaborate ceiling frescoes and tall windows hung with faded silk. The caretaker pointed out various features of the house, and the grandmother became distant and odd, as if she were warding off a chill, or an illness. When at last they were shown the master bedroom, her face cleared. She walked into the center of the room and announced, ‘If, on the night table, there is a box with a key on a black ribbon, this house belongs to me.’
“There was, as well as a letter addressed to her. A former lover had given her the house decades ago, and she’d forgotten about it until being there triggered the memory.”
Eve looked out over the water and smiled. “How I’d love to be like her when I’m eighty,” she said. “To have lived so much! Imagine traveling through Italy and discovering a Venetian palazzo a former lover had left you.”
“Do you want a Venetian palazzo?” I asked.
“No!” she exclaimed. “I want to be a respectable grandmother who
had a scandalous youth. Don’t you understand?” Eve pulled her shawl around her shoulders.
I thought I recognized the story but couldn’t place it. Maybe I’d read the same book. I knew what she meant, though: I understood yearning for a rich, adventurous life to look back on.
“Now, I’ve a Venetian story for you,” I said. “A foreign businessman came to Venice. His meetings finished late, and he found himself stuck in town, as there was no train home that night. Since he was in a city fabled for its beauty, he decided to treat himself to an expensive dinner and an expensive companion. The concierge was unable to help him with the latter. ‘Signore, I regret to inform you there is no red-light district in Venice,’ he said. But the concierge’s assistant chased after him. ‘My uncle may be able to help,’ he said. ‘If anyone knows, he does.’
“The foreigner was directed through a maze of streets to the uncle’s antiques shop. Dark and nondescript from the exterior, inside it was an Ali Baba’s cavern of treasures: Moroccan lanterns, Persian ceramics, Indian beds, and Turkish kilims. There were chairs inlaid with mother-of-pearl, mosaic tables, tapestries, and blown-glass vases and lamps. In the back, the foreigner found a wizened man with old-fashioned spectacles and a crafty demeanor. He explained his problem.
“‘I have the solution,’ said the old man. ‘I have a book I will sell you. Oh! A rare book, the only one of its kind. Inside, there is a name and an address. You may have it for this sum,’ he said, naming a figure and placing the book in front of the foreigner. It was bound in gold-stamped leather, a handsome artifact. Having come this far, the foreigner pulled out his wallet and paid him.
“Inside the book he found a name and an address. He studied his map and, after losing his way several times, found his way to the address indicated. He rang the doorbell of a crumbling palazzo. A man answered the door. The foreigner asked for the woman whose name
he’d found in the book. ‘Well, she lived here,’ said the man, startled. ‘But signore, that was over sixty years ago. She was the last prostitute in Venice.’”
I liked that they were telling each other stories, though I liked hers better. I saved the draft. The phone rang. It was Olivier.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Working on the translation,” I said, happy to hear his voice.
“You say these things just to provoke me.”
“Yes.” I smiled. I could hear the way it changed my voice.
“I know it’s the last minute, but would you like to come to a cocktail party tonight? There will be some interesting people. You might enjoy it,” he said. His voice was smooth, nearly viscous. It poured into my ear. Silver-tongued, the Greeks used to say.
Mielleux,
the French say: honeylike.
“I’d love to,” I said, pressing my ear into the receiver.
“Can I meet you there? I have to be at the theater before.”
“Are you in a play?”
“I’m directing something. I’ll tell you about it.”
“Do I need to dress up?” I asked hopefully.
“Not so much. It’s at a friend’s house, Laure de Saligny and her husband. Meet me there around seven-thirty?” he asked. “We could have dinner afterward.”
I wrote down the directions and hung up. I slid over the wood floor in my socks and bounced from one foot to the other while I searched the closet for something to wear and speed-dialed Clara.
“It’s me, it’s me, why aren’t you there? Not only did I get the lingerie back, but I think I’m going to wear it!” I babbled into her voice mail.
The rest of the afternoon, I was useless. I tried to distract myself by doing one of Tante Isabelle’s yoga
DVD
s, but I knocked the back of my
head on the coffee table doing downward dog. I ran out to Monoprix and bought two pairs of black stockings and the wrong batteries for the TV remote. I painted my toenails, then spent half an hour fixing the smudges. I had to force myself to put down the eyebrow tweezers before I plucked myself into the silent film era.
I propped my feet on the coffee table to let the polish dry and caught the end of one of the literary talk shows. The episode was devoted to the fall book releases, and a wraithlike man with spiky, gelled hair delivered an impassioned monologue decrying the amount of attention devoted to the highly overrated Rémi Le Jaa, an opinion unpopular with the studio audience, who booed him.
It was a name I hadn’t heard before. I turned off the TV and studied Tante Isabelle’s bookshelves: nothing by Le Jaa.
I wiggled into my new lingerie, sucked in my stomach, and pranced around the bedroom. Leaning back on the bed, I lifted one leg, pointed my toes, and pulled on the stockings. Stockings always made me feel glamorous, a little retro, like Monica Vitti in smudgy black eye shadow. My mother wore stockings. I remembered watching her fasten them with nublike clips that didn’t exist on any other piece of clothing.
I slipped my feet into a pair of high-heeled, black silk pumps with velvet bows and pink flowers embroidered on the heels, one of my expensive summer sale purchases, and shimmied into a tight but slimming, sleeveless black turtleneck dress. I sucked in my cheeks, turned three-quarters, and did my best Faye Dunaway in front of the mirror.
I looked like a slut. I changed a half dozen times before returning to the black turtleneck dress. As I struggled back into it, I broke out in a sweat. It was oddly muggy for mid-September. Little bits of black dress lint stuck to my face. I rubbed them off with a towel.
I still looked like a slut. I covered up with a fitted jacket. Now I looked like an undertaker. I put a run in my stocking when I bumped into the desk rushing to answer the phone. It was Bunny.
“Under the Volcano
is on cable. Wanna join me for Mexican food and a cocktail I call Lighter Fluid Surprise? My own invention,” he said.
“Raincheck? I’ve got a date,” I said. “And there is no good Mexican food here.”
“You are so wrong, my young friend. I got an Algerian guy in Boulogne who makes carne asada like you would not believe,” he said. “Are you in the freak-out about what to wear stage?” he asked. I cradled the phone between my shoulder and ear and ripped open another package of stockings.
“Yeah. What do you think, slut or mortician?”
“Mortician. That’s the look that always does it for me. In fact, I dated a mortician. New York, 1967—”
“Bunny!”
“Okay, okay. Mortician. It’s less obvious. Have fun.”
I pulled on a fresh black stocking, hoping both legs matched. All this dithering was very time-consuming: it was already seven-twenty. I rushed through my makeup, swiping on a couple of coats of mascara at the last minute. It was seven-thirty. I put my hair up with a barrette, stuffed my keys and some money into a beaded evening bag, and flagged a taxi. I would be late, but maybe only fashionably so.
The taxi pulled up in front of an imposing 1930s building on a
quai
in the Seventh. I walked through a marble and mosaic entrance with double-height ceilings. When I got to the top floor, it was so quiet, I thought I might have the wrong address, but I rang the doorbell anyway. A blond woman with a streak of white hair and hammered gold jewelry answered the door. I was relieved when I saw she was wearing an ivory silk dress that showed off her bronzed skin. I wasn’t overdressed.
“Bonsoir, madame,”
I said.
“Olivier Vallant m’a invitée,”
I added. She gave me a cool smile and led me into an enormous living room packed with people. It was decorated with taupe leather furniture, abstract paintings, and large arrangements of gnarled twigs. She said something
I couldn’t hear over the party chatter and walked away. As I searched the crowd for Olivier, I recognized a writer I’d seen on the talk show deep in conversation with a rock star who’d published a book of poetry. Then, my eyes connected with a familiar pair.
From across the room, Bernard Laveau frowned at me, his bushy eyebrows drawn together in two fierce slashes.
