I LAUGHED OUT loud when I read this piece, especially when I got to the part about the handheld shower head. I, too, have never understood what, if any, logic there is in this device. If the shower stall has a built-in bench, you can sit down, which is easier and makes some sense, but most of the time there is no bench—and often there is no shower door or curtain, so the water goes all over the floor, the walls, the sink, everywhere.
ANN BURACK-WEISS, who claims to have never progressed beyond high school French, is also the author of The Caregiver’s Tale: Loss and Renewal in Memoirs of Family Life (Columbia University Press, 2006). This piece originally appeared as the back-page essay in the travel section of the New York Times in 1996.
THE JOHN TRAVOLTA character in Pulp Fiction had it right about Paris—things there are the same as here, “just a little bit different.” His interest was piqued by the McDonald’s special (a quarter-pounder transformed by the metric system and nostalgia for the monarchy into The Royal). Having just returned from a month in France, I share his quotidian observations. Mine, however, are awash in puzzlement. Would a French person take pity on me and answer the following:
Do you really save money on those timers?
Paris was probably dubbed the City of Light in irony—by a victim of the timer (aptly called a minuterie) that is attached to many lights in hallways and bathrooms. I picture this person midway up a winding staircase, or perhaps otherwise involved in a sealed six-by-six room, when the light clicked off. The French have combined their twin passions for privacy and frugality into the diabolical construction of Les Toilettes. The stall has a floor-to-ceiling door and a light that invites you to enter and fasten the intricate lock before the light suddenly turns off, leaving you to grope through a succession of awkward acts in total darkness.
Do you carry flashlights? Candles?
Doesn’t it get expensive plastering up those holes in the wall?
Is there an expression for “penny wise and pound foolish” in French?
What do you do with the shower head while you soap and shampoo?
The French had to invent the shower à deux, not for its romantic possibilities but as a practical solution to an enduring national problem—the handheld shower. Alas, a shower partner is not always available. I have mastered the trick of never getting between the handheld shower and the wall in the curtainless tub. I accept that I will be standing in a foot of water, as tubs are short and deep and drains take their time. But I still don’t know what to do with the shower head when I need both hands.
Do you hold it between your teeth? Under your neck?
Do you have special knee-toning exercises at the gym to work up your grasping strength?
Are you free mornings at seven?
Is attendance at scarf-tying classes mandatory in the public schools?
Every woman in France, nymphet to granny, wears a scarf. Squares, tiny and huge. Streamers, thick and thin. Silk, polyester, chiffon, wool—with everything from jeans to gowns—all tied with insouciant elegance. Not for them our continuous instructional videos at the scarf counter illustrating three obvious maneuvers: the shoulder triangle, the twice around the neck, and the sailor’s knot. They intertwine two or more long scarves, they drape lightly and tightly, sling high and low. They wear scarves as hats, as belts, as hair bows. The men have only one style. And it is grand—very long, very trailing, very sexy.
Do you take off your scarves when you get home or do you keep them on till bedtime?
Are there any French people who just can’t get the hang of it?
Are you free mornings at eight?
Is la caisse a cultural icon?
I am in a department store and see a soap dish that I like. I have the one hundred francs right here, the package will fit into my knapsack, and on to dinner—not. The salesclerk takes the dish from my hand and gives me a piece of paper. With it I go to the opposite end of the floor and wait as the empty-handed shoppers ahead of me converse earnestly and at length with La Caisse. The French are not a superficial people. Several modes of payment are possible and the meanings attendant to each must be explored. Payment concluded, claim ticket in hand, I cross the floor once again to the bath accessories department and these possibilities: the clerk who holds the dish is nowhere to be found, the clerk who holds the dish has never seen me before in her life and can’t imagine what dish I’m talking about, the clerk who holds the dish remembers everything but where she put it. Pas de problème, here is another just like it. Well, almost—it is a bit larger and twenty francs more. A notation on the chit, another trip to La Caisse, a return to her and…voilà, the soap dish is mine.
Is this why the French dine late?
Are the motionless people in cafés recuperating from shopping expeditions?
How do you say “efficiency expert” in French?
Were the coquilles Saint-Jacques that Alice and Brad Hinkel of Des Moines enjoyed at Chez Claude (and asked Gourmet to get the recipe for) in fact … frozen?
Don’t deny that it is possible. The evidence is, as with Poe’s purloined letter, hidden in plain sight—260 Picard stores full of frozen food lining the streets of France. Oh, they are wily. They have named the stores Les Surgelés—one glance through the window at the white-clad salespeople and low, long cases that you can’t see into enhances the uneasy feeling that medical implements that you’d rather not think about are on sale there. Chef Claude may well have studied with Paul Bocuse—but don’t tell me that when he has one of those nonstop days, he doesn’t sneak into Picard for everything from soupe to noix. When the guests, ravenous from museum walking, rush in asking, “What’s for dinner?” he puts on his signature touch, a tomato rose, and produces the plate with a flourish. When they heap praises upon him, he stifles a knowing smile and thinks, “Just the way I’d do it myself, if I had the time.”
Can a dish consisting of potato noodles, cheese, and ham (gnocchi-jambon-fromage) really be Weight Watchers?
What’s the real story behind Croque Monsieur and Croque Madame?
Have you ever eaten a bad meal?
Can I come and live with you?
Your age, gender, and appearance are, as they say in the personals, not important. Oh, French person, I want to live your life. I want to walk kilometer upon kilometer every day—single file down narrow, curving streets and six abreast on large boulevards. I want to pay three dollars for a tablespoon of coffee with a chocolate wafer on the side. I want to order a tartine avec confiture (bread and jam) at a different café every morning and notice how the bread is always a different length and consistency, the butter thick or thin, salted or sweet, the jam apricot or strawberry, already spread on or in a dish to the side, the price never twice the same. I want to pay confidently with money I no longer have to put on my glasses to check the denomination of. I want to shop where the bottle with the red cap is whole milk and the bottle with the blue cap is double crème. I want to go to a dry cleaner who calls a suit a costume and returns the pants done up in gift-wrapping paper. I want to eat yogurt that sometimes tastes like sour cream and sometimes like sweet cream and is filled with fruits like rhubarb and figs. I want to stand in line for an ice cream cone where each scoop comes nestled in its own compartment.
I want to live where sitting is an activity that people get dressed up and go outside to do. I want to live where people who smoke don’t cough and people who eat fat aren’t fat and everyone looks as if they have secrets. I want to buy pierced earrings with those nifty European clasps.
I want to put my hand in my pocket and come up with a fistful of Métro stubs that were not required to leave the station last week and shuffle through them until I come up with the one needed for my release today. I want to stand midpoint on any bridge at any time of day, and store the sensations in every pore.