The Fish of April

When we arrived in the classroom where we had our French lessons I always felt the presence of the children who were there before us. Apparently part of their school day was for music. There was a small drum set pushed into a corner and in the back of the room some music books. Some time between their departure and our arrival I suspect the teacher tried to erase all traces of the children - no papers, no doodles. The board was wiped clean. Even so, there would be little clues what their day was like.

On the evening of April 1 I noticed a small pile of paper fish cutouts the kids had made. They were on a table in the corner. Some were marked "Poisson d'Avril." I discovered that in France it is a tradition to pin or tape a small paper fish, like a "Kick Me" sign, on the back of someone else as an April Fool's joke. In general if you've pranked someone and they fall for it on April 1 you can yell "Poisson d'Avril!" literally Fish of April. As they say here: bizarre. What is this all about, I wondered.


"HAPPY NEW YE . . " HANG ON
My research turned up a lot of confusing explanations as to how this all came to be. The most common one was something I found on a French website which lays the whole thing at the feet of King Charles IX. The story goes that the calendar year used to begin on April 1 but in 1564 Charles switched it to January 1. In those days it was a tradition to exchange gifts at the beginning of the year. When the calendar changed, some jokers thought it would be funny to also exchange gifts in April as well. Wacky gifts.

YEAH, BUT WE'RE STICKING PAPER FLOUNDERS ON PEOPLE'S BACKS BECAUSE . . .
Why a fish? It depends on whom you ask. One site said that April comes at the end of Lent when traditionally no one ate meat, only fish. Because of that, people used to give fishes to each other. (Hey, don't judge. They didn't have cable in those days.) Another source claimed it was because the moon in early April was in the zodiac position of Pisces. Yet another explained that the icthyological gesture was inspired by the fact that in early April it is forbidden to fish because they are breeding and are too vulnerable and dumb (when were fish smart?) and easy to catch.

Yet another - and in my opinion, the most lame ass - explanation offered by a British author who said the fish was because the baffled face of the victim of a joke has the bug-eyed look of a hooked carp.

THEREFORE . . .
But it all seems to circle back to Charles IX. Many citations say it sprung from his decision to adopt the Gregorian Calendar, which puts the beginning of the year at January. Except there is a little problem with that. The Gregorian Calendar was formally launched in 1582, not 1565 and by then Charles IX was dead. (He died in 1574, eight years before the Vatican rollout.) The only thing that might save this explanation, say Charles theorists, is that the idea of a January-first calendar had been around since the Council of Trent in 1545.Maybe the king decided to adopt it early, to show up the rest of Europe. It would not have been the first time the French launched a global trend.

Why is there blood all over my homework?

Two nights a week we would trudge over to rue l‘Arbre Sec, which I came to think of Hangman’s Alley, for class. Every session would begin the same way. Mlle. G., our dynamic teacher, would start on the dot of 6:30 and immediately plunge into the grammatical thickets of the Futur Simple, the Futur Proche and the Passé Composé.

That’s what I think was going on. For the first 20 minutes or so, until my French ears kicked in, what I heard was: “Murmur Murmur Murmur Murmur. Voila. Murmur Murmur Murmur Murmur. Voila. Murmur Murmur Murmur Murmur Murmur Murmur. Ce n’est pas grave (which sounded like one word – Cepasgrave ) . . .” I could deduce what she was talking about mostly by what she wrote on the blackboard.

Around the 40-minute mark a hazy comprehension began to seep through. I was thinking about what a friend who had lived in Paris for years once told me, “If you didn’t grow up speaking French, it’s like listening through cheesecloth.”

PARIAH
I had cheesecloth issues. The biggest was the Pariah Effect. Each desk accommodated two students. Every class I sat in the same spot – second row, front, left of center. Every class one of my fellow Francophiles would sit next to me - once. In one it was the girl from Cuba. In the following class it was the costume designer from Hungary. After that it was the young Australian woman working in TV, followed by the self-possessed Spanish architectural student who was replaced the following week by the intense tri-lingual young Chinese businesswoman, to be eclipsed by the male nurse from Sri Lanka.

It didn’t take long for me to see the pattern. After one session of sitting with me and trying to comprehend my frightening French, they picked a seat as far away as possible in the next class. After a few weeks the back of the room was packed, and the front, especially near where I was, looked like a tiny neutron bomb had gone off.

MLLE BUTTERFLY

Somewhere around the eighth session I got a permanent deskmate. She was a Japanese woman in her 40s. I thought of her as Mlle. Butterfly because she was not married and always seemed lost in a sad memory. I realize now what I thought of as tristesse was merely bafflement at my odd pronunciation. Why she stayed, I don’t know. Weariness is my guess. She came to the evening class after work and I supposed that after a long day on the job she was simply too tired to walk to the back of the room and join the others, even after she realized her mistake.

I thought of her and the very depressed seeming Japanese woman of the first class after I read about something called the Paris Syndrome. This afflicts Japanese tourists and ex-pats, especially women. According to a Japanese psychiatrist who lives in Paris, the syndrome is a paralyzing state of ennui that overwhelms his fellow countrymen and women who come to Paris expecting a cinematically romantic experience and instead are traumatized by the brusqueness and emotional outbursts of Parisians. It can get so bad that some have had to be flown back to Japan accompanied by a nurse . He estimated some 12 Japanese a year succumb. How it justifies a full-blown syndrome is beyond me, but Japan is not a large country so maybe 12 people is a big deal.

At any rate there were days when I wondered if Mlle. Butterfly was a victim, or at least a carrier. But after a while I decided she was more likely afflicted with something more mundane: Job Fatigue.

THE BLOODIED PAPER

One of our assignments was to interview our deskmates and write up a short report on what they told us about themselves. We were not allowed to use our dictionaries, which I thought was not fair given my French vocabulary is about 12 words, but I gave it a shot.

The following week I got the paper back. Mlle. Butterfly glanced over and her eyes literally bugged out with horror. The paper was covered in blood-red inky corrections [see above]. Even so, I got a feeble "Bien!" for my effort. I was impressed by the thoroughness and professional brutality of the teacher’s work, and depressed that I didn’t even know enough French, say, to write a ransom note to a moron. [“I have dog. You give money or dog die.”] Mlle. Butterfly offered some sympathy, I think. Or maybe she suggested I join a Special Ed class. I couldn't really understand. The cheesecloth effect.

A Fashion Innocent Abroad

I was not prepared for how woefully out of place I felt as I strolled down the boulevards of Paris. The sidewalks were teeming with intimidatingly chic women, slim as whippets, carrying tiny shopping bags, often accompanied by sleek men radiating insouciance and effortless disdain. My look, by contrast, screamed: “Say Bonjour to Monsieur Doofus.”

THE SCARF
Believing the devil is in the details, I tried to deconstruct the Parisian look. I started with accoutrements, like scarves. Back home I considered a scarf an article of clothing, associated with mittens and wassailing and scraping the ice off my windshield. But in Paris a scarf is a statement. Eskimos may have one hundred words for snow, but Parisians each own about 1200 scarves.

How they wear them is the result of subtle confluence of many factors: sex, age, height, attitude, posture, time of day and, for all I know, shoe size and the phase of the moon. Air temperature and weather are only marginally relevant. I’ve seen people wearing them with T-shirts and shorts, while jogging, even indoors teaching class. Knotted, double knotted, draped, tightly wound around necks like an attacking python, it doesn’t matter. Parisians look dashing in them. When I strove for the same panache, I resembled a deranged lumberjack.

THE SHOE
So I moved on to shoes. I decided I would buy what was popular. And what was popular were Converse sneakers. These are perfectly adequate coverings for feet, but I could not bring myself to spend the equivalent of a meal in a three-star restaurant for what is essentially canvas glued to a slab of rubber.

Then one day I noticed a shoe boutique around the corner from me. I knew the store was dangerously expensive because it had in its window a single shoe. Nearby, mounted under plexiglass like an information plaque in a museum exhibit, was an exegesis of the exotic piece of footwear [See above].

The item was a “mocassin fétiche” – a shoe which had a fanatical following among “collégiens américains.” In my country, I was informed, it was known as: “Le Penny Loafer.” And in Paris it cost the equivalent of a semester at the Sorbonne.

I should have been pleased. I own a pair of “Loafers de Centime” and even a pair of “Sneakers Converse.” The problem was they were in a storage container in Nouvelle Jersey.

THE EPIPHANY
Plus this brought me no closer to solving the fashion conundrum. So I switched to analyzing the gestalt of the Parisian look. My epiphany came from my stylish daughter who had lived here. Parisians, she noted, do not wear a lot of color. I decided that if I dressed as though I were going to the memorial service of a casual acquaintance – dark but not overly somber clothes which say, "I am marginally sorry Bob is dead, so I'm dropping in, but I will be running a few errands afterwards" – and wore a scarf, I would get by. And I have.

Entre Les Murs - Our Version

If you Google "French lessons, Paris," you get roughly 485,000 suggestions. I figured if I took a one-week sampling of each it would come out to roughly 1300 years of conjugating verbs. I didn't have that kind of time so I decided to narrow it down to a two-class a week, one-semester offering by the city.

I learned there are five levels in the French for Foreigners course. To get slotted into the system you have to attend what is a combination registration/audition session where you take a quick written and oral test. I had no doubt where I would be placed. I was, as they say here, a débutant.

A few weeks earlier I was trying to order lunch in a cafe. The young waitress stared at me as peculiar, strangled noises came out of my mouth. I was trying to speak French. She probably thought I was having a seizure. Eventually she figured it out and sweetly suggested, in perfect English by the way, "Would you like an English menu?"

WELCOME TO LANGUAGE HELL
Fast forward to Registration Night. It had that First Day of School feel, which is what it was. The sidewalk outside the school building was crammed with excited people all of whom seemed to be in their twenties and most of whom were chattering in fluent French. Which raised the obvious question: why are they here?

Registration started with a talk from one of the teachers, a serious young fellow who gave us the ground rules: we could not eat or drink in the classrooms; no cell phones; promptness required - the doors would be locked ten minutes after class began; no talking in class. I began having flashbacks to my school days at St. Francis parochial school, every one of which I loathed.

He handed out forms and asked if there were any questions. That was when a young American woman walked up to the desk and said quite loudly and in English, "I can't speak French well but I understand it with no problem; so I don't think I should be in with the beginners." He gave her a kind of "Un-huh" look and suggested she take her seat.

As the finale we were each given a paper quiz which even I could understand. Then we sat patiently as our mentor and another teacher went from potential pupil to potential pupil, reading our papers and then talking to each of us. It was like speed dating.

THE TEST
My interrogator was a chic, slim woman with big dark eyes. She was a wearing a plain white blouse casually unbuttoned to reveal more than any nun ever showed, the obligatory scarf and tight black leather jeans. She was like no teacher I ever had at St. Francis. She was like no teacher I had, ever. Her questions were blunt and simple: where was I from, why was I taking the class, how many years of French did I have, how long did I plan to live in France, what did I do.

When I said I was a writer, her eyes sparked. Really? She leaned forward. What was I working on? Who did I write for? She gave me a flirtatious smile, made a note on my test and moved on to the nervous young Brit sitting next to me. I would never see her again.

THE CLASS
Two weeks later we were back at the building and to my horror and confusion I learned I was in the Troisieme Niveau. Level Three. The same as Louise. That made sense for her. She had been speaking French since she was a child. I, on the other hand, was one of those Americans they make fun of in the movies, an uni-lingual. I could not believe it and wanted to appeal my rating.

One problem. In order to get transferred to a lower ranking French class I had to explain why I wanted the transfer in a language I could not speak. So I had no choice but to stay.

Out teacher was Mlle. G. a sturdy, energetic woman who could talk for hours about the subjunctive with an intensity and enthusiasm I found scarily impressive.

It seemed like the whole world was in her class. There were young people from Japan, China, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Cuba, Hungary, Austria, Italy, England, Ireland, Australia. And they all spoke much better French than I.

MONSIEUR LE BUFFOON SPEAKS
To make us comfortable Mlle. G. broke us out into groups of four and asked us to introduce ourselves to each other. My ensemble consisted of a young woman from Australia, a young woman from Spain and a very well-dressed and very depressed looking woman in her 40s from Japan.

Things went smoothly until it was my turn to introduce my seatmate to the class. I got her name wrong, her nationality wrong and her job wrong. All I got right was her sex. This has to get better, I thought. Has to.

Life in the Hood

Way back at the start of this year I stopped in a small English language bookshop and was talking about the economic state of things with the owner. The dollar was losing ground almost daily against the Euro.
Matters were not helped by the dismal failure of my carefully laid plans to network with editor friends and line up some assignments. Within weeks of my arriving in Paris they had all been fired, leaving me without a net or a network. Never mind that their careers were dead in the water.

Americans living in Paris were going through sticker shock, the bookstore man was telling me. “I know an older American woman who says she can no longer afford to stay in Paris – and she has been here almost 20 years," he sighed. "I’m afraid we’re in for a bumpy ride.” And this was in January of 2007. How prescient was he?

“Where are you living?” he asked.

“In the seventh,” I said.

His eyes widened. “That’s the most expensive neighborhood in Paris.”

"So I am discovering," I shrugged.

I thought of the cheeky window displays [see above] with their cheeky prices. Shoe boutiques selling women’s chasseures for 500 Euros, men’s riding boots in another for 1800 euros, restaurants with wallet-draining formules. Visitors came. One Sunday morning we had four coffees at a cafe. I'll get this, said my magnanimous friend. L'addition was 45 euros. My friend squealed, "For four coffees!!!"

Across the street from where we live is a restaurant with valet parking where, I had read, George Clooney was seen dining. Every evening a convoy of black, tinted-glass Mercedes glided up. Out waddled some plump men and their expense account colleagues, or well-dressed wives, or other women of a certain age. The uniformed valet, who I first thought was some sort of cop because his outfit was so elaborate, would slip behind the wheel and drive the car backwards up our side street to park it. The annoying whine of cars going too fast in reverse became part of the evening sounds outside our apartment. I prayed for someone to come equally fast going forward from the other direction. So far no luck.

During the day I would see thin, stone-faced women brush by carrying shopping bags from Bon Marché which was around the corner, on the rue du Bac where Jean Seberg, the lovely, doomed star of Breathless, once lived or tiny little shopping bags from other nearby boutiques.

Down the street from the aforementioned BM was a glacier that sold ping-pong ball sized, one-scoop cones of ice cream for the price of a heart transplant. Around another corner from us was Barthélémy, the most famous cheese shop in town where the clerks dressed like pharmacists, or surgeons, in starched snow-white lab coats.

The reason I was in the bookshop was to buy a French-English dictionary. It was for a French course we had enrolled in. There are not many bargains in Paris but one was the city’s adult education classes, particularly the French language courses for foreigners taught at the local schools. For 80 euros non-French strangers could attend a semester’s worth of lessons in French grammar taught by certified French teacher. We filled out the application and sent it off. An acceptance letter rocketed back two days later. We were thrilled. The school we were going to was in the 1st Arrondissment. On a street called l’Arbre-Sec. Classes were two nights a week, in two hour sessions each.

We were told by French neighbors who looked up the history of the rue that the “dry tree” in the street name was a euphemism for the gallows. “They used to hang people there,” Monsieur G. our upstairs neighbor read from his encyclopedic history of Paris streets. I hoped it wasn’t an omen.

French fact: The arrondissements of Paris are arranged in a spiral pattern like the whorls of a chambered nautilus, with the first at the center of the city and the higher numbers progressively moving out towards the edge.

Le shock of the culture

We quickly discovered that the country that always gave Mr. and Mrs. Colligan, the Tourists, a cheery Bonjour did not open their arms quite as readily for Mr. and Mrs. Colligan, the would-be Residents. Since we were planning to stay for at least a year, French immigration laws mandated that we get a Long Stay Visitor Visa before we left the U.S. To qualify, we had to assemble a plump dossier of paperwork to present to the local French Consulate.

In addition to obvious stuff like marriage certificate and proof of U.S. citizenship, we had to demonstrate:

o that we had enough money to support ourselves in France for a year

o that we had an address in France

o that we had our own health insurance

o that we had a the correct attitude. We had to write a letter saying why we wanted to live in France. (We said it was because we admired the culture. And the cheeses. And the baguettes.)

And since we also had to sign a letter promising we would neither seek nor accept work after moving to France, we lined up work beforehand.

About two months later, the visa was approved, and so on a chilly January afternoon, jet-lagged and in a state of disbelief, we were dragging our overweight suitcases into a one-bedroom sublet on the Left Bank.

At first I wandered the streets pleasantly bedazzled by where I was. But after a few days I could no longer ignore the nearly dark sky which greeted me in the morning when I opened the shutters of our ground floor apartment. And the early, early sunset which cast a funereal pall over the city around four in the afternoon. Then even when the sun was out there was the unrelenting 40 Watt dimness, the damp chill, the dogs crapping on the pavement outside on the street as their owners looked the other way. As David Sedaris might say, it was Parisian darkness, Parisian chill, Parisian dogshit.

As I walked around in my ex-pat daze, little observation slowly forced themselves on me such as:

Why do so many very small children wear glasses?
Toddlers no older than one year were wearing spectacles. Optometry must be a huge business here. Is there a high percentage of nearsighted/farsighted Pre-K kids just in Paris? And how do you give a small child who can barely speak an eye exam, I wondered. How do you get a little kid to respond to "Better? Or worse?" "Better? Or worse?"

How hard does it have to rain before people use umbrellas?
Of course I knew umbrellas exist. There is a famous, very fancy umbrella shop - Alexandra Sojfer - on the Boulevard St. Germain not far from our apartment which sells umbrellas that cost as much as a small car. But on the rainiest afternoons, Parisians seem content to lean into windswept downpours hatless, umbrella-less, perhaps in the hope that it is merely a quick misting and will pass. And when they do use umbrellas -- literally after the deluge -- it seems as though they are still mastering the technique of carrying them, spastically clonking into each other on the streets, bouncing off other umbrella holders, lamposts, parked cars, buildings, muttering what may or may not be apologies before pressing on. And it seemed to rain almost every day.

How cold does it have to get before everyone wears hats?
Freezing, nasty days. Bitter winds knifing off the river. Narrow streets become icy wind tunnels.Ice cream headaches was part of the pedestrian experience. Yet few wear hats. Older, dapper men wear Borsalinos. One day I passed the Borsalino boutique on Rue de Grenelle and it was packed - which is to say about four customers. But no one below a certain age wears hats. Oh wait, one day it was 16 degrees Fahrenheit and I saw one guy wearing a hat. He must have been from out of town.

How long does it take to learn to be an injury-free pedestrian?

It took me weeks to figure out how to walk around here. I used to live in Manhattan and thought I knew how to cross a city street, but that experience was totally useless. For one thing crosswalk etiquette is anti-pedstrian. The red crossing light says "You may not cross . . . unless of course you can't see any vehicles coming too fast. Then give it a shot. Courage, mon ami."

Conversely the green pedestrian light means, "OK now you can try to cross, but be aware traffic does not necessarily have to stop if the driver thinks he or she can beat you through the crosswalk - even if you happened to be in the way." In which case be prepared to be run over. And it would help to know how to say in French, "Hey asshole, I'm walking here."

I learned that second lesson the hard way while attempting to cross hectic rue de Vieux Colombier near St. Sulpice. The instant I stepped off the curb a dusty little red car came whipping around the corner. The driver came straight at me, without bothering to slow. Dead-eyed, hands firmly gripping the wheel he had his foot firmly depressed on the accelerator. Prick. I wimpily stepped back and instinctively put out my hands to protect myself. The car slammed against my outstretched palms as it whizzed by and bounced me back onto the curb (Boing-oing-oing), like a cartoon character. I left my two handprints on its dusty chassis as it shot down the street and, I hoped, straight into a telephone pole. A French guy standing next to me looked very, very, very shocked, and impressed. I know because one eyebrow went up ever so slightly. Then he resumed talking on his cell phone.

Pedestrianism is also tricky because people do not walk in straight lines. Ever. Never get between a Parisian and a shop window. Eight out of ten will stop abruptly to study what is on show. There is no way to predict this. I've seen men stop to stare at women's shoes, and, memorably, one woman who stopped before a dental supply windows with a fascinating display of drill bits and tooth enamel color samples. Unless she was a dental hygienist, which I doubt, there was no earthly reason to look at any of that stuff. All I can surmise is that there is something about the experience of viewing displayed goods that Parisians find deeply satisfying.

Why are so many people on crutches and with their arms in slings?
There are days, I swear, when the streets of Paris resembles Lourdes. People of all sexes and ages wobbling down the streets on crutches, arms in slings, legs in casts. One woman stopped and asked for directions. When she turned her full face to me she had a giant eye patch. (Maybe she got whacked in the eye by an umbrella toting Parisian, I thought.) Forgetting my bad French, I said, "Holy shi . . ." but instantly corrected it to merde.

One night we were in a bar and in limped a young man with one leg in an elaborate brace and both arms in casts. My wife decided that he had been in a motor scooter accident. Not necessarily, I thought. Maybe he was just trying to blend in.

Intriguing French fact: The French are the highest per capita consumers of anti-depressants in Europe.

The Last Stage to Paris

WHY NOT . . .
These are the two most dangerous words in the English language. It has always been a pet theory of mine that where you are is not necessarily where you are supposed to be. Where we were was in a tidy house in the suburbs, at the beginning of the worst economic meltdown of this short century. Where we were supposed to be, I thought, was Paris.

The way it came about was my wife, Louise, and I decided to sell our house. She asked where we should move next.
I said I didn't care.
"You must have some idea," she pressed.
I shrugged. "Hawaii."
Be realistic she said.
I have been realistic, I thought. That's why we've lived in the same house in the same town, doing the same thing for 27 years. So I continued being unrealistic, "Let's move to Paris."
She sighed. "You've been saying that for years."
"Yes I have," I admitted.
She looked thoughtful. Then: "Why not."

So with an uncanny sense of timing we put our house on the market at the precise moment home sales all over the United States began plummeting to a 30-year low. Not to worry, our realtor assured. Unlike all the other places all over town with their weather-beaten FOR SALE signs forlornly dangling in their front yards, our place was eminently saleable. All we had to do was spiff the place up a bit. That meant doing something called staging.

I discovered I was the last person in America not familiar with this term. Basically, I learned, you are supposed to redecorate your house to look the way you would like it to look if you didn’t actually have to live there.

Apparently it’s a two-part process:

1. Erase all traces of yourself
It is not unlike having your house join the Witness Protection Program. Professionals Stagers universally agree a well-staged home is an anonymous home. It should not be marred with family photos, sullied with memorabilia like your Oscar or your Pulitzer Prize, or tricked out with quirky personal items such as my telephone in the shape of a motorcycle.

2. Channel Martha Stewart
All the souvenir magnets came off the refrigerator. The kitchen counters were cleared of anything remotely useful, and in their place appeared a small espresso pot and a couple of delicate hand-painted demitasse cups, a cookbook on a wrought iron stand casually opened to a recipe for a dish whose name I could not pronounce, and a basket of fresh fruit I could not touch. Winsome objets were artfully scattered around the living room. Tasteful picture books fanned out on the coffee table. We angled our chairs and couch just so, to energize the room’s feng shui.

We painted over everything, including the dated pencil lines on the doorframe of our daughter’s room marking her growth spurts. Shampoo, toiletries, shabby bath robes disappeared from our bathroom. Pristine show towels and charming little baskets filled with those cutesy guest soaps shaped like woodland creatures and acorns took their place. Like the Japanese, we took our shoes off when we came in the door. We even walked around the edge of rugs so as not to leave footprints.

With all trace of us erased, I felt like I had moved into the house of a stranger, or to put it more accurately, that the house of a stranger moved in around me. It was a little disorienting at first, but after a few days I was enjoying the pleasant befuddlement of stepping into one neat, unfamiliar room after another. It was like going off to a B&B without having to get in the car.

SOLD
The experience didn’t last long. To our astonishment the house sold in a matter of weeks. Now we had to vacate for the buyers.

Speaking of whom, I should mention this: all the staging, all the daily rituals of moving like ghosts through the showplace our home had become so as not to disturb the fantasy tableau, was, in the end, irrelevant. The people who bought the place never noticed the fancy soaps, were oblivious to the cunning placement of objets and were impervious to the feng shui of the rooms. They wanted the house because it was near the grandkids.

For our part, we were officially homeless and very pleased about it. Now all we had to do was get permission from the French government to move to their country, find a place to live and learn French. No problem, I thought.  

French mystery: Why are the words for "bottle" and "carafe" feminine, but the word for "glass" masculine?