Foreign Tongue (33 page)

Estelle replied that, now that she was in her thirties, she understood
her previous relationships had been shallow. “It is true,” she mused, “that you do things differently when you get a little older. You waste less time, but you are more cautious—you’ve learned enough not to expect the world.”

She went on to confess that the first time they’d spent a weekend together, she’d had a terrible nightmare. To comfort her, he’d told her about a summer he spent as a child with some relatives in Brittany who owned a small farm. He’d never been away from home, he barely knew his relatives, and in the middle of his first night there, a large spider had crawled on his face.

In his sleep, he’d slapped it, flattening the spider to his cheekbone. The sound had woken him, and he’d fled in a panic to the kitchen, running into his eldest cousin, a young woman who’d snuck in after a late night. She’d cleaned his face and made him hot milk.

“‘To this day,’ he’d said, ‘the smell of hot milk and vanilla brings back that night, a roaring country fire, the kind of comfort you could get as a child.’

“When he told me that,” Estelle said, “this successful, dynamic man, when he shared this story, I knew I loved him.”

I gripped the magazine, my fingertips sweaty on the glossy cover.

Hot milk and vanilla. A spider, squashed on his cheekbone. I knew this story.

I reread the paragraph.

Cette femme merveilleuse
. The woman who’d made the hot milk and vanilla was
cette femme merveilleuse
. I don’t know why I knew that, but I did. It rang a bell. Not in a hackneyed, figure of speech kind of way but in a distinct, familiar way: a cowbell.

I would need to look at my computer files to confirm it, but I knew. It was an early chapter, the one about his childhood friend, the kid with the hot mom, staying at their country house, waking up with the insect on his head. My author.

I knew who my author was. He was married to Estelle.

As calmly as I could, I walked to the table where the owner sat. Without a word, I handed him the
Figaro Madame
and the
Vogue.
The Yorkie yapped at me again.

“Ça suffit! Couchez!”
he said to the dog and coughed, making a honking sound, thick with phlegm. I vowed never to smoke again.

“Vous avez trouvé ce qu’il vous fallait?”
he asked.

“Parfaitement, monsieur,”
I said. He charged me only eight euros for the
Figaro Madame.
Dirt cheap.

I walked to the Italian place for a cone of
stracciatella
and crossed over to the place des Vosges to savor my discovery on a bench in the late-afternoon sun.

My author was Monsieur le Ministre, Romain Chesnier. Eve was Estelle. It was probably the minister’s second marriage, as I was betting he’d previously been married to a woman very much like Daphne, but that would be easy enough to verify.

Funny how Olivier didn’t show up in the book. The minister had to know about him, especially if he’d gone to the hospital to be with Estelle in her hour of need. Unless he was the sculptor in London in the third ending, a very minor role indeed.

Did Estelle know what her husband was writing about? They were already a celebrity couple.
Quel scandale
if anyone ever found out!

I wondered why Chesnier had written it, why there were four different endings, and why he didn’t want to publish it anymore. Had something happened, aside from the “minor cardiac incident”? Cold feet? Was he afraid its subject was so obvious that people would recognize him even if he published anonymously or under a pseudonym?

Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be a scandal. Literature was a big deal in France—it would probably be a feather in his cap: aging politician publishes sensational, thinly veiled account of his love life with glamorous actress. He’d get invited onto all the literary and pop-culture shows. I could picture Estelle in the audience, beaming in Prada or vintage Saint Laurent. Media picnic! The press would try to get him to say it was the
story of his life with her, he’d avoid answering in that eel-like, evasive way of politicians—which in France always includes repeating the interviewer’s full name
(“Je vous dirais, Michel Denisot”)
—and everyone would assume it was rooted in fact.

Which it probably was. Though the best word for it, I thought, licking a dribble of melted ice cream from my thumb, was “juicy.” I pictured the look on Bernard’s face when I told him I knew. He’d be so very, very annoyed, and I knew what very annoyed looked like on him, I’d seen it often enough. “Hah!” I said out loud, as if I’d been clever instead of freakishly lucky.

The downside was that I couldn’t actually share my secret with anyone aside from Bernard. I could hardly tell Olivier. No doubt Antoine and Victorine would relish knowing, but I wouldn’t betray Monsieur X to them. My friends might find it interesting, but I couldn’t see any of them getting excited about it.

Except Bunny. Of course, Bunny. Bunny always loved a scoop; even surly retirement couldn’t take the newspaperman out of him. I finished off the cone. The sun cast long shadows across the seventeenth-century square.

On the lawn, a man in baggy pants and a sweatshirt counted out steps, practicing some kind of balletic martial art. I watched as he balanced on one leg, leaped through the air, and landed in a warrior stance. He was lithe and sinuous as he repeated the routine.

“He’s good,” Bunny murmured, leaning over the back of the bench.

“I was just thinking about you!” I exclaimed.

“Shh,” he said, walking around to sit next to me. He dropped his WHSmith bag on the ground, stretched his legs out, and folded his arms across his chest, his eyes focused on the dancer in the distance.

The setting sun backlit the dancer’s dreadlocks, giving him a fuzzy, golden halo. He dove, rotating fluidly in the air, and landed in a somersault. Two couples, crossing through the park, also stopped to watch. He
continued dancing after the light faded, until the streetlamps came on around the square. Then he gathered his jacket and backpack and left.

“Fermeture du jardin,”
someone called out. Park closing.
“Nous fermons, mademoiselle,”
intoned a uniformed park guard behind me. Bunny and I walked out.

“What are you doing this far east?” I asked.

“I hadn’t been to the place des Vosges in a while. I miss the old square,” he said, looking at the red-brick façades, lit by streetlights. We turned onto the rue de Turenne.

“Listen, have I got a scoop for you!” I said, gleefully pulling out the magazine.

“She is one fine-looking creature,” he remarked, gazing at Estelle in the pink gown. “I mean,” he corrected, catching the black look I gave him, “for an old bat.”

“Whatever,” I said. “But isn’t it wild? I’m translating Romain Chesnier’s life story!
Le Ministre de l’Education Nationale!
Amazing, no?”

“Hold on! No one says it’s autobiographical,” Bunny cautioned.

“But it has to be!” I put the magazine back in my bag. “Remember what Bernard said? How it was the story of his great love?”

“Yeah, but maybe this was some other guy she was in love with back then,” he suggested, then shook his head. “Nah, they’re a famous couple. Been together for years. Still,” he added, “Laveau could be misleading you, and you could be jumping to conclusions. It’s still
fiction,
remember? That means he made it up. Besides, how great can the love story be if his wife has your guy on the side?” he asked.

“He’s not my guy,” I muttered. Bunny peered into an art gallery. “Maybe he’s writing it for Estelle,” I suggested. He made a rude sucking sound, pushing air through his teeth. “Like a declaration, a testament to all they’ve been through. A present,” I said.

“Give me a break,” he said. He pointed at an oil painting of a barbed-wire fence. “Do people pay money for that?”

“C’mon, Bunny,” I pleaded.

He thought for a moment, his mouth working. “Maybe,” he said. “But you can’t know for sure, you have to prove it.”

“I can’t prove it!” I wailed. A French couple in front of us, carrying groceries and a baguette, turned around, startled. “I just know,” I said. “I have a hunch.”

“Well, I ain’t gonna argue with a hunch.” He gave me an indulgent smile. “Funny, I always thought Chesnier was a sour old windbag. Never read any of his books on ancient Gaul. Who knew, eh?” We stopped in front of the République métro entrance. “Here’s where I leave you,” he said and went down the stairs.

I walked the rest of the way home thinking about Eve and the author, Estelle and the minister, the four of them, the two of them, Olivier a footnote.

I was a footnote, too, in a way; a footnote to a footnote. How funny that Olivier had wanted to turn the novel into a film; how funny that Laveau had deliberately misled him. Once you knew why, it made sense. How funny, too, that I’d ended up translating it, and that my nemesis turned out to be my heroine. Good old Bernard. Wile E. Bernard.
“Ce sacré Bernard,”
Olivier had called him. He didn’t know how right he was.

I
spent the next morning checking and double-checking the translation. Maybe he didn’t want to publish it anymore, but I wanted it to be as close to perfect as possible. I printed out a rough draft, read it aloud, made a few more corrections, and set it aside.

I called Editions Laveau and left a message, saying I would swing by later. I didn’t mention I knew who the author was; I was no longer sure I would. Bernard wouldn’t congratulate me on my intrepid sleuthing, and I didn’t want to piss him off.

I Googled Romain Chesnier. He and Estelle had gotten married two months after the
Figaro Madame
article, and sure enough, he’d been married before, to an Italian news reporter. In his younger days, he’d been handsome, but from the recent photos I’d seen and the brief TV news clip, I knew he’d put on a paunch, and his eyes seemed to sink behind his glasses. I read that his father, a prominent businessman, had died of a heart attack, so heart disease ran in the family.

He’d written a half dozen books on ancient Gaul, including a forward to an anniversary edition of the Astérix and Obélix comic books, but none of them were published by Les Editions Pas de Mule. His most
famous book,
Vercingétorix à Alésia,
had been translated into twelve languages. Like nearly every other French politician, he’d been to ENA, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, France’s elite school for senior civil servants, but he’d also read history at Cambridge.

I looked at the rough draft one more time, made one correction, and hit Print. As the pages spewed out, I kept seeing Chesnier’s face. Before, the author had been a shadowy presence, lurking somewhere beyond my reach but vibrant, a radio station transmitting a voice I could hear but not see. Now that I knew what he looked like, it was hard to picture him as my author. He was just an identity pasted onto a page, a passport photo superimposed on my text.

I put the translation in my bag, next to the
Figaro Madame.
I showered and searched my closet for something stylish but
sobre
. I ended up in black, as if handing in the last chapter meant I was going to a funeral.

When I got to the bookstore, there was a young, pixielike woman with light brown hair sitting behind his desk, chewing on a pencil as she studied an old book.

“Il n’est pas là, monsieur Laveau?”
I asked.

She looked up.
“Il sera de retour dans quelques minutes, madame,”
she said. I tried not to flinch. To Bernard, I was always
“mademoiselle.”
It felt as if I’d aged overnight.

“Ah, bon,”
I said.
“Parce que j’ai amené une traduction…”
I explained, pointing to the envelope in my hand. She smiled, revealing a gap in her front teeth.

“You are the translator?” she asked in accented English. “My uncle told me you would come. He will arrive very soon. Would you like a coffee?”

“No, thank you,” I said firmly. I would drink my
café
with Bernard.

“Are you sure? It’s very good,” she said. “Very high-tech,” she added. Turning, I saw the old espresso machine was gone. In its place was a playful yellow contraption with chrome knobs and buttons, an ap
pliance from the Teletubbies’ kitchen. “Please let me make you one,” she said. I nodded and sat down.

“What are you reading?” I asked, glancing at the desk.

“Traité d’anatomie et de physiologie,”
she said. “It’s an antique book. The illustrations are quite wonderful.” I glanced at the open page. It showed an intricately crosshatched diagram of the foot muscles. She placed a cup of coffee in front of me.

“I am at the Ecole des Beaux Arts,” she explained. “We are studying
la morphologie,
so my uncle found me some books.”

“You’re an artist,” I stated, trying to picture Bernard as a doting uncle, picking out books for his niece.

“One day, I think. Yes.” She nodded happily.
“Ah, le voilà!”
she exclaimed as Bernard came in.
“Ils sont géniaux,”
she said, pointing to the pile of books. She bounded up to him and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Je te remercie.”
His face softened, his eyes dancing with pleasure. It was a look I hadn’t seen before, and I felt a twinge of envy.

“Elodie, tu nous laisses deux minutes?”
he asked. She left, closing the door.

“Alors, mademoiselle,”
he said, turning to me. “You have the final chapter! Let me write your check,” he said. He sat heavily, not removing his coat, and took his checkbook from the desk.

“Uh, Bernard…since it’s the last chapter, I was sort of hoping,” I began. He didn’t look up. “I was hoping we could go to lunch, or something.”

His hairline moved back as he raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Je suis désolé, mademoiselle.
I am having lunch with my niece,” he said apologetically. “But perhaps you would care to join us?” he added. The offer was phrased with just enough enthusiasm that I couldn’t tell whether it was genuine or excellent manners. I was too embarrassed by his look of surprise to accept.

“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of imposing. But perhaps you’ll be available another day,” I ventured. I had manners, too. I knew enough to
say this, even though “another day” sounded a lot like a euphemism for “never.”

“Mais bien sûr,”
he said. “It would be my pleasure. I will be in touch about future developments,” he said, cocking a significant eyebrow. I stood up.

“Ce fut un plaisir, monsieur.”
It has been a pleasure. I held out my hand.

“Et pour moi, mademoiselle,”
he said, shaking my hand, his lips twitching with a small smile, either at my solemn tone or my use of the simple past. I turned and left the office, walking as if I were on liquid sand, striding away from the ocean while the water receded, not sure whether I was going forward or backward as I moved through the bookstore and out the door, ringing the cowbell for what was, perhaps, the last time.

I put distance between me and Editions Laveau, me and Bernard, me and the translation, the author, the minister, Estelle, Olivier, everything, away from me. I walked east, not slowing until I got to the end of Saint-Germain, as the pink-gold light of the setting sun faded.

Later, in the métro, I overshot my stop. I got out at the Gare du Nord. As I trudged down a long, tiled hallway, I saw a man in a gray suit distributing pale blue cards with shiny navy letters. I picked one off the floor for my collection and read:
“Maître Seydi, marabout Africain.”
The card promised results in less than twenty-four hours, with a specialty in deliverance from all manner of ghosts, evil spirits, and bad dreams.
CAUCHEMARS
was printed in bold, all caps.

He came over to me. “You don’t need that,
mademoiselle
.” I looked up at him. Tall, with tired, brown eyes, he smiled and reached for the card, but I held on to it. Something in my face must have startled him, because his expression changed. “If you do need help, my brother is a very wise man.
Il n’est pas comme les autres,
” he said. His gaze was gentle, despite formidable raised scars on his cheeks, and I didn’t want to stop looking at him. “Tell him Souaré sent you. You won’t have to wait.”

I walked home along the canals, watching the wind whip the water against the concrete banks. A seagull squawked, circling overhead. I picked my way over the uneven cobblestones and sat on a bench. Under a darkening sky, I stared at the water, bending the blue card back and forth between my fingers.

I made an appointment for the next day.