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Anjali wanted to learn lots of French. But the Rimbaud poetry wasn’t going that well. It taught her words like “abyss” and “hell” and tomber, which meant to tumble or fall. But they weren’t happy words, and she didn’t think that knowing the French word for “abyss” was going to be all that useful in everyday conversation.
So she had joined the Paris public library system and gone to the children’s room for books, looking for easier reading than Rimbaud.
In those books, she found that she was learning the words for “fairy” and “dragon” and “spell.” Not really any more useful in everyday conversation than “abyss” or “cadaver.”
So she’d decided to take lessons in conversational French. This would be her only extravagance. On the bulletin board at the legendary Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, Anjali found the name of a French teacher. They’d agreed to meet at a café in the Latin Quarter.
Christelle was brunette, with big brown eyes and a happy smile.
“Bonjour!” she said as she slipped into the café’s woven red and gold rattan chair.
“Bonjour!” Anjali answered. She was finding that learning French, in which sometimes nearly half the letters in a word weren’t spoken, was conducive to good writing. What to say, what not to say? That was the question every writer faced, word after word.
“Today we learn ze verb ‘to have.’ But first I tell you a story, to help you feel better about French pronunciation.
“When I lived in New York City, I work in an office wis, ‘ow you say, a dragon lady. One day I say to my colleague, ‘zat lady is such a beach’ and ‘e laugh at me. It’s not beach, it’s bitch, ‘e say.”
But Christelle was still saying ‘beach.’ She couldn’t make a short i sound.
“That’s the same problem I have with peu and bleu,” Anjali said. To do it right, you had to smile while puckering your lips into a “u.” She couldn’t get it right most of the time.
“Don’t you worry, dear. We begin.” And they went through the conjugation of the verb avoir, to have.
“Now watch yourself with ‘ils ont,’ ‘they have,’” Christelle said. “Sometime in French you make ze liaison between words, and sometime you don’t. For example, you don’t say ze ‘t’ in ‘ont’ when you say, ‘ils ont été,’ or ‘they have been.’ If you do, what you’ll really say is, ‘ils ont tété,’ which means ‘they have nursed.’”
They both burst out laughing.
“I don’t ever want to make that mistake,” Anjali said.
“Oh, people will laugh, but that’s all right, don’t you worry.”
They worked together for another forty-five minutes.
Then Anjali asked, hoping for a break from the intense concentration, “I’ve heard that French teachers are very hard on their students, that they kind of crush their spirit. Did that happen to you?”
Christelle’s face took on a serious air as she answered.
“Once I took an English vocabulary test. To answer the questions, I used a few words I had learned the previous year. My teacher marked them wrong, but I knew they were right. When my parents went to see her about it, she said, ‘I want her to only use the words that I teach.’”
“No!” Anjali said. “That’s terrible.”
“But true. Here’s another example. In high school, we had to write lots of essays. We were given a problem to solve. We had to list three reasons why the solution might work, and three reasons why it wouldn’t. In America, kids are just asked to write three ways to make it work. That’s the French system. It breeds negative attitudes and pessimism.”
Anjali had already been told “ce n’est pas possible” a few times in stores, in libraries, before people even took a moment to think. That was the standard reaction. She nodded.
Christelle said, “How do the Americans say it: it’s not all gloom and doom. I tell you a joke about the French before I go.
“God created the world, and Jesus took a look at the whole thing afterward.
“‘You have freezing cold in the North,” he said to God. “You have jungles, heat, humidity, and mosquitoes in the South. But in the middle you have this country. It’s not too hot, not too cold. It has mountains, ocean, fertile land. It’s perfect.’
“‘Yes, I call it France,’ God said proudly.
“‘Actually, it’s a little too perfect.’
“‘Okay. I’ll invent the French!’”
They both laughed.
Anjali thought, yes, that joke expresses some truth. And a Frenchwoman told it on her own countrymen, so I’m in the clear.
