Read Online Almost French by Sarah Turnbull - Free Book Online Page B

in an intelligible order—I fall apart.
    But my ‘pipe’ gaffe makes me more determined to improve. What’s more, mastering the language will surely help ease my loneliness. And so Frédéric and I vow to speak only French together, a decision which eliminates all possibility of semi-adult conversation. The language remains a mystery to me—a gorgeous, mellifluous gabble which I can listen to forever without identifying where one word ends and the next begins. Those sliding liaisons and smooth syllables, the to-die-for accent and controlled cadence; together they make an incomprehensible verbal stew.
    To speed up my progress, I enrol in a month-long French course at Alliance Française whose headquarters lie on Boulevard Raspail in the 6th arrondissement . It takes about thirty-five minutes for me to get there by metro because the trip means changing lines at St-Lazare—a manoeuvre involving a mini marathon through pee-scented corridors. The underground labyrinth is filled with surging crowds rushing to work. I love feeling part of them.
    The Alliance classes are hugely entertaining. Our professeur is a lively brunette with a provocative twinkle and plunging décolleté who clearly understands that we’ll probably never differentiate masculine from feminine nouns, let alone grasp the subjunctive. She flirts outrageously with the only male student, an awkward Hugh Grant sort of character with an Oxbridge accent who squirms and blushes under her persistent attention. ‘ Défends ton bifteck! ’ she commands, urging us to argue our viewpoints in class debates. Argue? We can barely make ourselves understood in our awful, halting French.
    Upon learning our discussion subject for day five, eleven backs suddenly straighten. This is far more fascinating than the imperfect or the imperative. As usual, the teacher starts the class by tossing us a topic. Today it’s ‘What Would You Do If You Walked in on Your Partner in Bed with a Lover?’ Made up of mostly English and Americans, the class erupts in a babble of unanimous indignation. Such betrayal would end the relationship. No question—the erring other half would be out on his or her arse. There’s a lot of girls’ talk about lopping off male body parts.
    ‘Ah, les Anglo-Saxons! Vous êtes tellement puritains!’ The prof is delighted by the quaint naiveté of our moral righteousness. The French don’t bother with such hypocrisy, she explains. They understand affairs put the frisson into marriage. In France, everyone seduces everyone— la séduction is the essential spice to life. Why do we think village shops shut tight for three hours at lunch? She winks wickedly at Hugh Grant. ‘So the butcher can sleep with the baker’s wife and the florist can seduce the fromager .’
    Although my French improves only marginally, the course is a huge success. There are some fun students in the class and afterwards we sometimes go out for a coffee and a chat. Most of them are only in Paris temporarily, though, and one by one these new friends soon leave. But the greatest thingabout my French course is that for one whole month I have something to do.

    ‘ I thought you were living in Paris . Then I saw your postcode on the back of the envelope …’
    This innocent, underlined observation in a letter from a Sydney friend comes as a complete shock. Two months have passed since my arrival and all this time I too thought I lived in Paris. It had never occurred to me that Frédéric’s apartment lay beyond the périphérique ring road which neatly separates the city from the sprawling suburbs. The rapid fifteen-minute motorbike ride into town had made me assume we were part of the fabulous capital.
    It might sound mad but this revelation makes me look at our neighbourhood differently. It provides a concrete explanation for niggling doubts I’d begun to have about Levallois—feelings which until now had been only abstract, nothing I could articulate. All this spare time on my