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

  I knock on the door at the prearranged time, expecting the worst. If Monsieur is grave and not forthcoming, what would Mrs. Monsieur be like?

  The door opens, and a dark, petite Liza Minnelli in Cabaret lookalike smiles at me and says, “Hello. Welcome. Come in,” in English English. Standing behind her is Monsieur. He’s dressed in black pants, a gray shirt, and polished loafers, and he’s looking me over carefully. Madame leads me into the kitchen to the table, on which sit a glass vase of dried flowers, a white teapot, and three black cups. “Sit down,” she says, pointing to the chair facing the window, looking out at the trees, the blooming red rose bush, and the river, where two swans float by as if on cue, and pours me a cup of tea.

  “You’re a writer?” she asks. Monsieur doesn’t say anything. A sailboat glides upriver. I’m suspicious. This could be the normal way French people do business, and it could be a trick: drink tea, make small talk, get friendly, butter me up, and take advantage. Dad told me about rural cunning. “These people may live in the boonies, but they’re not dumb. Be careful.” I decide to play along, answer their questions, and bide my time until it is time to deal. It isn’t until months later that I realize this was the deal.

  I tell them I write fiction, short stories, that I’m a college teacher, a professor, and that I’m American, not English, because I know it matters, and that my father emigrated to France from Hungary when he was a boy, and to the U.S. from Marseille after living in Strasbourg for several years in the 1920s, and that he’d recently died. Madame tells me she and Monsieur are Breton. She also tells me the house is an old farmhouse built in the 1870s, and they are selling it because they’ve recently been given a very old house from Monsieur’s family that they want to fix up and live in, and it is too difficult to do from here. I like her. I feel sympa, though I’m not exactly sure what it means. We talk for almost an hour, none of it about the house. Finally, after three cups of tea, Monsieur says something in French. She laughs. It’s the first time I’ve seen him happy.

  “Voilà,” she says, “Would you like to see the house?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Oui.”

  Madame stands, I stand, Monsieur stands, and in that order we march up the stairs. “The stairs are old,” she says, “original to the house.” I immediately begin looking for loose boards, cracks and chips in the wood, blemishes of any price-reducing sort, but I don’t see anything. The lights are all off and the shutters half closed—and I wonder what they’re hiding. The walls need paint and so does the banister. It’s impossible to see what else. It needs light fixtures.

  We turn on the first-floor landing and head up the stairs to the attic. I’m surprised they’ve made no attempt to fix it up, make it look like a kid’s room or a study or nook. It looks exactly as it did yesterday, a long, sloped, low-ceilinged dumping ground filled with clothes, a mattress and box spring, papers, books, and the clothesline/garrote. The lightbulb hanging from its wire in the middle of the room looks like a hanged man. Behind it, under the skylight and against the wall, is the leprosy sink. “Is there water in the sink? Hot, running water?” I ask, ringing one up for Dad.

  Madame looks at Monsieur, then walks to the sink and touches it—something neither Monsieur nor I have the courage to do—and turns the faucet. Water sputters, pours, steams forth. “Voilà!” She points to the floor. “The wood is original, but unfinished.” I look at it. The floor is primitive, ten-inch-wide, half-inch-thick, rustic-cut planks of white pine. I’m in trouble. Yesterday I saw this room as a horror chamber and a personal-injury lawyer’s delight. Today it represents the most dangerous word in the real estate buyer’s lexicon—potential. I see a study, a writing place, my master bedroom with private bath. The bad news is it would take me years and a fortune to build. The good news is it will never happen.

  Madame leads our procession back down the stairs to the first-floor landing, which has the same ten-inch-wide plank floors as the attic, only these are finished and stained dark cocoa brown. I happily note the hallway walls are dun and need painting. We turn left on the landing and Madame opens the door to the cave room. Monsieur reaches in and turns on a lamp with a 40-watt bulb. In the dusk-light I see loose wires for an overhead light fixture that’s not there, a beamed ceiling at least twelve feet high, a fireplace, radiator—central heat?—a closed and shuttered window that must face the river, and the same original wood floor.

  Monsieur turns off the lamp and closes the door. Madame leads us across the landing to the room on the other side of the stairs and stops in front of the closed door. “This is our bedroom,” she says. “It’s the same as the room you just saw,” which I actually didn’t. She opens the door and we’re enveloped in light. I walk through the room, straight to the window—a moth to the light, or a sunflower?—and look out over the thicket of trees in the front yard, at the two swans in the river, the cotton-ball sky, evergreen hills, and the horizon. Then I turn around and look at the room. It needs paint, some plastering, and there’s no overhead light fixture, but it’s large and cozy at the same time: large because of the window and the light and the twelve-foot ceiling; cozy because of the fireplace, the beams in the ceiling, and the dark, cocoa-brown floor.

  “I love the light here,” I say. “I love the light.”

  “Yes,” Madame says, “it’s magic.” Monsieur says nothing. I had no idea a French person could be so quiet. It must be some sort of trick. He closes the door when we leave.

  Facing us, on the landing, are two more closed doors. I’m starting to feel as if I’m in a French version of Let’s Make a Deal—I’ll take door number three. Madame opens the door nearest us and steps back for me to see the shiny white toilet sitting alone in a narrow, dark, windowless room with a twelve-foot ceiling, looking like an objet d’art, or a throne, or the electric chair. She closes the door, then opens the second one: the bathroom. It’s as light as the toilet is dark. It has the same window as the bedroom, the same light and view of the trees, sky, river, and horizon. The room is blue—the Blue Room—navy blue carpeted floor, swirly royal blue and white tile walls, navy blue ceiling, with a big old white porcelain bathtub, a shower, a sink, a radiator, and a bidet. If I were in the U.S., I could stand in the shower luxuriating, look out the window, and be in the sky. But this is France, rural France, Brittany—the end of the world—and probably, like Chez Sally’s and every other shower I’ve been in, the hot water will run out in ten seconds, and I’ll freeze my nuts and hurry out. I note the ceiling needs painting and a few tiles around the side of the tub are missing. One of the panes in the window is cracked, and the radiator looks rusty and dangerous and probably doesn’t work.

  Monsieur takes over and leads the way down the stairs like he wants to get me over with as soon as possible. Madame follows him, and I follow her. At the bottom of the stairs he turns left, into the small, dark, library-reading-hunting room that he and I walked through yesterday with its built-in bookcases and gazillion books. He turns on the light, an overhead light, albeit a 60-watter, and I say, “I like overhead light,” and he turns on another light, a sconce on the wall. In the far corner, I see a pink flowery couch and a fancy stereo system with speakers the size of a cow. Record jackets and cassettes are all around it, all kinds of music, classical, French, opera, chanteuse, world, jazz, blues, Arab, rock, country, much of it American…. Monsieur may not say much, but he thinks, reads, and listens. Hmmmm.

  “Do the fireplaces work? All of them?” I see amorous fires and candles and heavy red wine and oysters in winter—and using the bidet for something other than laundry or washing my feet. I have no girlfriend, lover, or prospects, but being in France fills me with hope.

  “Yes,” Madame says, “but we never use them.”

  “The radiators work?”

  “Of course,” Monsieur says, as if I accused him of being Belgian or trying to trick me and sell me a pig in a poke. “The house has central heating. Oil. I will show you.”

  He leads us through the cozy nestlike room, under
the five-foot doorway, over the step, into the cathedral ceilinged, forty-foot-long stone medieval garden-party room and points out the window to the tiny stone shed. “The oil tank and heater are over there,” he says. “Oil heats the radiators and all the hot water in the house.”

  I want to ask if everything works, how old it is, when it was last checked, how much it costs to heat, repair, replace, but I don’t. I follow Monsieur as he walks us through the medieval garden-party room, to the other side, where he opens another five-foot door cut into the stone wall, and we’re back in the kitchen.

  Madame directs me back to “my” chair and pours me a cup of tea. Ha, I think, and start to go over my list: bedrooms, halls, the whole house really, needs painting and plaster repair; overhead wires are exposed; drainpipe is loose and not connected; chipped and missing tiles in the bathroom; worn and scratched wood; cracked window; rusty radiators; dingy shutters; the tetanus attic; and the garden needs work—not that I’d know it or do it, but gardens always need work so why not claim it? Before I can say anything, Madame says, “French law requires me to tell you everything about the house, and I will.”

  In the U.S., that sentence alone would trigger calls to lawyers, plumbers, engineers, electricians, roofers, architects, and exterminators. In France, I have no one to call, so I listen. Madame tells me the electricity is an old system and needs upgrading, and the drainpipe is loose. She says the rest is cosmetic—painting, plastering, sanding, polishing. They’ve taken care of everything else, including draining the septic tank, which I didn’t even know existed. “Oh!” she adds, “We have extra tiles for the kitchen, bathroom, and back-room floors if you want them.”

  If I want them! She assumes I’m buying, which is not a good sign and goes directly against Dad’s tried-and-true tell-them-what’s-wrong-and-how-much-it-will-cost-to-repair-or-replace strategy. I’m about to say, What about the garden? And, Everything needs fixing up. It’ll cost a fortune. The house has been on the market for months. It will never sell at this price…. And offer them $10,000 less. Why not? I don’t have the money to pay either price, and saying all this will kill the deal. To this day, I don’t know why I didn’t say it or counter with a lower price. Instead, I said, “Do you mind if I walk through the house again?”

  “Of course. Take your time.”

  I walk through each room, sit in each room. Feel it. Practice feng shui before I knew such a belief system existed. I move furniture, face it in different directions, touch the stone walls, look out the windows, open the skylights. I sit on a chair in the medieval garden-party room and look at the two fireplaces and granite and slate walls and see how the stone was recently pointed and set, how much work and love they’ve given the house. I see parties and pageants and my family here. I want it, which I know from Dad is the worst time to buy. But I feel it in my heart. I see myself here, in this house, this village, with these people, in Brittany. It’s crazy, I know. Place has never been important to me. In my fiction, place—home, town, village, state—is rarely specified or identified. My characters hardly leave their heads or look out a window. What moves them is desire and love—fear of it, loss of it, attaining it, missing it, accepting it, wanting it. And love is always a person (someone to love you back if you’re lucky), not an object or state of being or a place, but here I am wanting, desiring—loving—this place. The fact that it’s six thousand miles from home, in another country, a country that speaks a language I don’t understand, and that I have to fly ten hours to get here doesn’t seem to matter a whit. What does matter, though, is that I still don’t have a dime.

  I went through this once before, two years earlier, in Wyoming. I spent two months in a village of twenty-five people about eighty miles north of Sheridan and never wanted to leave. Again it was the light, the sky, the space, the majesty, and the price. Houses could be bought for what people in California were paying for Hondas or trips to China. I looked at two places and wanted one badly, but finally decided against it for three reasons: (1) If I had a house in Wyoming, I would drive there, meaning it would take me three days to get there and three days to get back; (2) the food would be frozen and processed and junk; and (3) for entertainment I’d go to the neighborhood bar on weekends and get the shit beaten out of me for being too short or eastern or western or liberal or Jewish or hippie or Democrat or Green or antigun, pro-abortion, whatever.

  France has none of these obstacles. I can go door to door, Oakland to Plobien, in twenty hours. As for food, it’s France. The food is fresh, new, and delicious, eaten in season, à la Alice Waters. I can eat for a week—fresh oysters, Atlantic salmon, Breton lobster, langoustine, mussels, halibut; local farmer’s chickens, eggs, butter, cheese, honey, pork; juicy apples and pears, sweet melons, vine-perfect tomatoes—all for less than the cost of a high-end dinner in San Francisco. And unless you’re a chicken or a pig, violence and fear of violence are not factors in your life. (Fear of loathing, though, is something else.) If I get hungry or sick or lucky enough to be old, this is the place to be. It’s crazy. I have no money, but I’m certain as I rarely am about anything that I want to be part of this house, this village, these people, and Brittany.

  “Okay,” I say, walking into the kitchen. “I’d like to make an offer.”

  They both look at me blankly.

  “I’m interested. Now what do we do?”

  “We agree.”

  “Who?”

  “We.”

  “You and me?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  I explain to them how houses are sold in the U.S. Two real estate agents, inspectors, lawyers, banks, proof of this, assurance of that, insurance, fees, fees, fees, and points. They look horrified.

  In France, the notaire represents both parties and is an official of the state. He’s also a lawyer, banker, and a broker. His fee is fifteen percent of the sale, and the buyer—me—pays. He essentially makes a private agreement, a compromis de vente, public. He verifies that the village is not about to build a bridge over the house or a nuclear plant in the backyard, the seller has the right to sell the house and no distant cousin can claim it, and no neighbor has the right to run a herd of sheep or pigs through your living room once a year.

  Madame walks me through the house again, making sure I’ve seen everything I need to see. We return to the kitchen and reach an agreement: they agree to fix the drainpipe, I agree to pay their price. It’s the only time in France I paid more than fifty dollars for anything and didn’t bargain. The only stipulation is the exchange rate. It’s 6 francs to the dollar when we agree. If it falls below 5.7, I can call the deal off. The whole thing is contingent on my getting a loan, which is my out if I wake up in a day or month and want out. That’s it, the whole deal. On my way out, I ask them to leave me what they don’t need—as I have nothing—and regret it as soon as I say it, remembering the attic, convinced they’ll leave all of it, and I’ll have to clean it out.

  I walk back to Chez Sally giddy, frightened, and perplexed. I’ve been in the house twice for a total of less than three hours, have had no inspections, no experts, only the word and guarantee of the owners that nothing is wrong. Six thousand years of shopkeepers, bankers, and lawyers and it’s come to this. My father and his father and his father’s father—all the way back to Egypt, Adam, and Australopithecus must be shaking their heads.

  Two days later I’m sitting with Monsieur and Madame Nedelec in the notaire’s office, where he hands me a document to sign. I drop it on his desk and explain my scheme. Twenty percent of the price of the house is taxes. If we “lower” the price, I explain with a wink, the taxes would be less. I’d pay Monsieur and Madame their price and the notaire his fee, but I’d only have to pay the state 30,000 or 40,000 or 50,000 francs, and I’d save $5,000 to $10,000. They’d get their money and I’d save mine. Quel deal! I was finally doing right by Dad. I explain all this to the notaire, who doesn’t understand a word I say. Madame Nedelec translates, and as she speaks, the notaire smiles, nods, taps his head wi
th a finger to indicate I’m either smart or nuts, then when she finishes, he speaks, and she translates for me.

  “It’s illegal. He’s an official of the state. He says to say this in front of him is a crime. You could be arrested.” Holy shit! I’m going to jail with Papillon and Dreyfus. “Besides,” she explains, “the transaction involves transferring large sums of foreign money and is easy to trace and impossible to hide.” I take the document I can’t read and sign it, committing me to buy a house when all I have is ten thousand dollars I borrowed from my mom. The notaire then writes a note and hands it to me. It looks like a high school pass to go to the bathroom. I look at him and Madame blankly.

  “It’s for the bank,” she says.

  “The bank?”

  “Yes, you need it to open an account in France.”

  All of a sudden, this is becoming real. We’re talking honest-to-God dollars or francs or whatever. I look at the document I just signed. At its best, it commits me to $85,000 for a house, fees, taxes, and whatnot, none of which I actually have. At its worst, who knows what penalties I’ve agreed to if the deal falls through. All I know is, they are all happy, and I’m scared out of my mind.

  I take my copy of the document and the scribbled note and leave, bewildered. I go back to Chez Sally and show Madame P the document and the note. She reads it, confers with her husband and son, and acts as if all is correct. C’est propre. C’est normal. Then she takes my hand and says the word I’ve come to hate, “Allez.” In the U.S. it’s “Honey, we have to talk.” In France, it’s “Allez,” because the result is the same: I’m about to lose control.

  We get into her car, where she all but buckles me in. If there were a car seat, she probably would have sat me in it. She then proceeds to drive 100 kilometers an hour on a two-lane country road back to Loscoat. I’ve never gotten there so fast, though I still have no idea where we’re going.