I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do) Read online

I don’t get it and I don’t care. I’m getting five percent more than the bill I’ve submitted. It’s incredible. I shake his hand and I stand to leave. I’m even happier than he is—another first. I’ve never left an insurance agency with more money than my claim. I’m joyous and all in favor of state regulation of insurance, when he tells me two things: (1) I have to wait for the inspector to approve the claim, and (2) I need to go to the trésorerie, the tax office, in Loscoat. My first thought is I’m screwed—they’re going to give me a five percent supplement and make me pay the twenty-two percent value added tax on my entire claim. Then I remind myself all of my business dealings so far—with the bank, notaire, oil and floor guys, even the insurance guy—have been fair, honest, and positive, and have turned out well for me. Why shouldn’t this be the same? Just because it involves insurance doesn’t mean it has to be bad. This isn’t State Farm or Allstate.

  I wait for the inspector, hoping for the best and fearing I’m becoming delusional. He comes in a week, shakes my hand, spends ten minutes, and approves everything, including the new concrete base for the floor. He even points out a space in the closet under the stairs where there’s no concrete under the floor and builds it into the coverage. Who would believe it? Proactive, preemptive insurance. If the house floods again, the damage will be less and so will their cost. What a country!

  Still, I don’t want to go to the trésorerie. What good can possibly come from going to a tax office? I wait until I’m too afraid of what will happen if I wait any longer—interest, fees, penalties; I’m forced to sell my house at auction. I open the door and say, “Bonjour.” Nothing else. I’m deadpan. If this is a tax, I want them to know I’m not happy.

  For all it matters, I’m not there. The lady behind the counter out deadpans me. “Votre nom?”

  “Monsieur Greenside.”

  “Carte d’identité.”

  I show her my checkbook and California driver’s license.

  She hands me an envelope.

  I’m here. I have my checkbook. I might as well save the postage. I rip open the envelope to see what the damage is, how much I owe, and remove a piece of paper that looks suspiciously like a check. It has my name on it and deux milles francs, about $320.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “Un chèque.”

  “Pourquoi?”

  “L’inondation.”

  Now I really don’t get it. The insurance guy gives me a five percent supplement and the village gives me $320. I don’t know what it is, but I like it. If this is how insurance is handled in France, I’m thrilled. I can’t wait to make another claim. Meanwhile, I have a beautiful new chestnut floor with a new concrete base underneath it and the cleanest wooden furniture legs in France.

  After that, I gladly pay my insurance bill, though I never know when it is due or how much I owe because I never receive a bill. Sometime in mid-January I wake up panicked, thinking, my God, my insurance has lapsed, I’m not covered, there’s going to be a disaster—eighty-five percent of France’s energy is nuclear—I’ll lose the house, and I send him a check for last year’s amount. He always sends back a confirmation letter thanking me as only the French can, in long, sweeping, sincere sentences telling me I owe him more. I then send another check and he sends the same letter back to me and that’s the end of it for the year—only this time along with the second thank-you letter is a brochure with information about some new service I now have in my homeowner’s insurance, lucky me.

  In the U.S., I never read these notices when I receive them. But in France, where I can’t understand a thing, I’m curious and scared, curious about what it means and scared there’s bad news hidden in it somewhere and I better find out.

  I have three options. I could ask Monsieur and Madame Nedelec, both of whom read and speak English fluently, but they work full-time, have very full lives, and take everything I ask them very seriously. If I bring this to them, they will research it, check the library, the Minitel, make phone calls, and spend hours making sure they have everything right. I don’t want to ask them to do it.

  Option two is Jean and Sharon, who also are fluent in English—but they are lefties from the sixties, soixante-huitards, and they dislike and distrust “the system” even more than I do. I look at the French health system, social security, unemployment, all of the human resources provided by the state, and I marvel. They look and see diminishing returns. All of us, I know, are right. Once I said to Jean, “There are more gardeners here than cops. I never see the police, even at large public gatherings.” He said, “You don’t see them, but they’re everywhere.” If I bring this to Sharon and Jean, I’ll be even more frightened about what it says and what they, my insurance company, could do.

  Option three is Madame P, who doesn’t speak English but has the patience of Job and Sisyphus combined. She explains that as a result of having homeowner’s insurance, I now have traveler’s insurance too. The enclosed brochure provides an example: Monsieur C is traveling abroad with his family, for example in England, where one of them becomes ill—because of something he ate; she laughs. This insurance pays for the necessary care in England, then flies the person back to France for real treatment as soon as he is able to be moved. As an insured homeowner in France, I have this protection, because, as Madame informs me, I am Monsieur C.

  I’m delighted, but does it apply to me, a U.S. citizen? I ask Madame, who asks Monsieur. They confer and conclude, “Yes. But of course. You live in France. You’re paying for the insurance, how could it be otherwise? En principe…Normalement…”

  I decide to ask the insurance guy. I open his office door and say, “Bonjour.” He looks cheerful, almost happy to see me, but not quite as happy as last time, because last time he knew what I wanted to discuss and this time he doesn’t, a situation guaranteed to raise the anxiety of French people. “Bonjour,” I say again, shaking his hand and sitting down.

  “Bonjour.” He smiles, but he’s wary, so I get to the point, which makes him warier still, because it’s those little pleasantries about the sun, cold, weather, rain that puts everyone who knows how to speak French at ease. Since I don’t, I start right in. “Bon,” I say, “Je suis Monsieur C.”

  He looks at me and nods, though he clearly knows my name is Greenside.

  “Par example.”

  “Oui.”

  He’s looking more and more dubious, wondering, I can see, if this is some sort of fast-talking, city-slicker American trick. To put him at ease, I remove my insurance card from my wallet and hand it to him. He scowls, then takes a sheet of blank paper from a pile on his desk and writes my name on top: Greenside. I get it. He thinks the American’s making another claim.

  “Non, non, une question.”

  I hand him the brochure that was mailed to me and point to myself. “C’est pour moi?”

  “Oui.”

  I point to the example. “Je suis Monsieur C?”

  He stares at me.

  “Par example. Je suis dans les États-Unis et j’ai une grande malade. Vous êtes revenir moi aux France, le même aux Monsieur C?”

  “Oui. Bien sûr.” It’s a testament to French fortitude or intuition that no one attempts to correct my speech.

  “Mai j’habit aux les États-Unis tout la jour.”

  “Oui.”

  “Par example. C’est Décembre. Je suis dans mon maison en Californie et tombe et casse mon tête. L’assurance payee pour l’avion revenir moi aux France?”

  “Oui. Absolument.”

  “J’aime beaucoup France,” I say, shaking his hand and standing up to leave. I have no idea how they do it—making loans to strangers to buy a house, covering medical expenses, paying insurance claims as they do—but it’s wonderful and the right thing to do.

  It’s in this spirit of being truly grateful that I decide to tell him I rent my house, it’s a business, and I know I’ll have to pay more for insurance.

  I walk past his office several times over a two-week period, trying to get the gump
tion to tell him the truth and voluntarily pay more for my insurance. I’m also waiting to see him alone in the office, not working with someone else, because my French is so bad every encounter takes a lifetime. I find out later he thought I was stalking him, walking past his office, not waving or stopping, peering in. When I finally open the door and walk in, he leaps out of his chair and greets me with more enthusiasm than I’ve ever seen.

  “Bonjour,” I say, shaking his hand and taking my customary chair, facing him. I proceed to make small talk, about the weather, sun, coolness, clouds, to put him at ease, but I can tell I’m making him warier: like, He always just gets to the point, why doesn’t he get to the point…So I get to the point. “Bon. J’ai une question.”

  He flips through the in box on his desk and retrieves my file, which is odd. Usually he has to get it from the file cabinet. The fact that it’s on his desk tells me he’s been waiting for me. I proceed carefully, knowing I’m on dangerous ground.

  “Je louer la maison.”

  “Ouiiiiiiii.” He’s buying time.

  “Je reste ici un pur et après louer la maison.”

  “Ouiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.” He’s not giving an inch.

  So again I ask the question that I’d never ask in the U.S. and still causes me wonder. “C’est nécessaire je payee plus?”

  “Pourquoi?” He’s as puzzled as I am. Who is this guy who keeps wanting to give me money?

  “Je louer la maison.”

  “Ouiiiiiiiiiiii…Combien du temps vous êtes ici?”

  “Deux mois maximum.”

  “Deux.” He holds up two fingers.

  “Oui.”

  He removes a blank piece of paper from his desk and starts writing. He turns to his computer, pulls something up and reads it, is about to explain it to me and, stops. Why bother? He turns on the adding machine, enters a lot of numbers, goes back to the computer, prints it all out, and hands me the paper. The difference is 600 francs, about $100. “Bon,” I say. Not bad. I expected much worse. The price of honesty is $100, something I can afford. I take out my checkbook. “Je payee maintenant.”

  He shakes his head in disbelief, wondering how I survive at all. He underlines the figure and hands it to me again.

  “Oui. Six cents francs. Je payee maintenant—ou vous êtes prefer par envoie?”

  He closes his eyes in dismay, disappointment, despair, who can tell? “C’est réduit.”

  “Réduit?”

  “Moins.”

  “Moins?”

  “Oui. Je vous paie.” He’s smiling again, beaming, relaxed. It’s over, he thinks, and I’m going to leave.

  “Pourquoi?”

  His face falls. It takes him a full thirty minutes to explain to me that while I am there, all of my belongings—personal things like cameras, computer, clothes—are covered. But when I’m not there, the personal things of my renters are not covered. The house is covered, the furniture, my stuff is, but theirs is not. The result being réduit, a reduction, something I’ve yet to see in the U.S. In the U.S., I get new savings on my car insurance every year—for not smoking, not having any tickets, no accidents—and with every good driver award, my rates go up. Not in France. It’s another wonderful difference between a regulated and free enterprise system.

  I’ve now seen my insurance guy in France ten times more than I’ve seen my insurance guy in the U.S. I understand about one-third of what he says to me, which isn’t much less than when it’s explained to me in English. I know I scare him, my insurance guy in France, but I figure it’s better that I scare him than for him to scare me, which is how it is in the U.S. I dread calling my insurance guy in California, but in France, my insurance guy dreads me. Who can blame him? In the U.S., I’m afraid to make a claim because if I do my rates will go up or I’ll lose my insurance. In France, I’ve made four claims, two for cars, two for the house, and everything has been 100 percent completely covered. There has been no cost to me, no outrageous deductibles, no lawyers, everything has been promptly paid. In the case of the flood, they paid more than I claimed, all of which is absolute proof that a regulated economy will destroy my freedom.

  A few days before I return to California, I see him in the Bricomarché. I’m shopping for a new kitchen faucet. He walks past my aisle in a hurry, heading in the direction of paint. I follow him to say, “Bonjour, au revoir, merci, and à bientôt,” but can’t find him anywhere. It takes me a while to realize he’s probably avoiding me. I understand. I often feel that way too. I think about “accidentally” finding him to tell him it’s okay, but if I do I know he’ll feel worse. I go back to plumbing and leave him wherever he is, the winner. I buy my faucet, take it home, and wait for Martin or Jean to install it.

  Martin and Jean

  Martin is English from Cornwall, partnered to Louise from Guernsey. Jean is Breton from Nantes, married to Sharon from Montreal. They—Martin and Jean—are as different as England and France.

  Jean is an intellectual—a French intellectual—thin, slightly hunched and slouched, with longish graying hair, black-framed glasses hanging from a string around his neck, smoking, wearing frayed sweaters and shirts, always grumbling about the U.S., the French government, society in general, the way of the world. He can explain quantum theory and semiotics and quote Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Lao-tzu in English and French.

  Martin is a hunk, all sinew and muscle. Shirt off most of the summer, muscles rippling, lifting, hauling, pushing, banging—everything with him is physical. He speaks with an Australian accent (he lived there for a while) that’s harder for me to understand than French. Every woman who visits me wants to talk with Jean and sleep with Martin, which doesn’t make Louise or Jean very happy.

  Jean broods, worries, thinks, stays in his house, which is in the country, for days at a time. Martin is a party guy, social, funny, a drinker, boater, beacher, sun guy, going out every chance and moment he has. He drives a classic Indian motorcycle and a cherry 1938 Renault that he works on and maintains himself. Jean drives a twenty-year-old 4CV Renault van that he put together from two other 4CV Renault vans he’s cannibalized and stores at his house.

  “Everything is crap” to Jean. “Nothing works right. It’s all garbage, not worth fixing,” he says, as he fixes it, because the thought of replacing it with something new makes him feel worse.

  With Martin, everything’s “No problem.” The stairs wobble. “No problem.” There are moles in the yard. “No problem.” And even when there is a problem, like it’s nine o’clock at night and he’s run out of glue or tape or paste, and if he doesn’t immediately stick down what he’s working on everything will come undone, “No problem.” He manages with something else.

  Jean overstates and exaggerates impending doom and failure and collapse, inherent being and nothingness. Martin understates the problem. No matter how serious it is he tackles it with enthusiasm, as if it’s one more stop on his way to the beach. Martin apprenticed in England as a stonemason, Jean in France as an electrician and sound man for films. Both have traveled extensively, and both built and designed their own homes: Jean from an old barn, Martin from an uninhabited, dilapidated stone wreck. Each did everything—roof, floors, walls, wiring, venting, plumbing, windows, garden, heating, chimneys—and did it completely differently.

  Jean wastes nothing, buys as little as possible, and fabricates whatever he can: tools, parts, furniture. Tin cans become lampshades. Flattened, they’re windowsills. Bent, they’re troughs feeding rainwater to Sharon’s kitchen and living-room gardens. The house is insulated with empty wine bottles and cut-up tires cemented into the walls. The love seat in front of the fireplace is the backseat of a 4CV Renault. When he replaced the roof on his house, he hand-cut hundreds of pieces of slate using traditional tools and set the pieces in a six-part diagonal pattern, not because it’s pretty, which he couldn’t care less about, but because it’s the best pattern for keeping out moisture and bats. He built his own windows, including the frames, using found wood and old glas
s he salvaged from somewhere. Jean is French, yet a John Stuart Mill–like utilitarian to the core.

  Martin is French country chic. His house is like a manoir or hunting lodge with modern comforts and conveniences built in everywhere: a shelf here, drawers there, a closet, storage area, window, light, sliding door, extra toilets. The rooms are spacious and everything is spectacularly finished, including the ceiling beams, which are stained and varnished with a secret product Martin invented to bring out the texture and color of the wood. Walls are newly plastered and painted or covered with period wallpaper. Floors are refinished wood, pointed old stone, and newly laid tile, all refurbished and refitted by Martin.

  Jean has a mental plan, a blueprint for everything he does. When he builds a window, he wants to understand the properties of the wood, the glass, silicone, the zinc shielding, the weather, the direction of the wind, rain, and sun. He wants as few surprises as possible, knowing they are always there. Martin operates in reverse. He looks at something and knows exactly what it needs. He begins and lets the process lead him to the end. Jean starts with the end. Having both of them as friends willing to help me with my house is a miracle.

  One morning I turn the burner on to heat water to make coffee and I smell gas. It’s my worst nightmare, far surpassing overflowing septic tanks, leaky roofs, bats, and burst pipes. It’s primal, taking me back to Grandma Esther and her pleading admonitions to get electric, not gas, when we moved to our house on Long Island. “It’s not safe,” she said. “You can’t smell it, and then you explode.” She meant: gas chambers, Zyklon B, and Nazis—don’t do it.

  I turn the burner off, put my nose on the tank, run it along the rubber hose connecting the tank to the stove, and smell nothing. I turn on the left rear and left front burners and smell nothing. I turn on the right front burner, the one I started with, and smell gas. I turn it off, shut off the tank, and wait.

  Martin is still in Australia, not yet in Plobien. My choice is to call Madame P, whom I’ve already called about the oil tank and everything else, or Jean. I decide to follow Kipling’s advice and share the burden.