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‘You are thinking a thought in English and then translating it word by word into French,’ Madame Sentier pointed out. ‘Language does not work like that. It has a grand shape. What you must do is to think in French. There should be no English in your head. Think as much as you can in French. If you cannot think in paragraphs, think in sentences, at least in words. Build it up into grand thoughts!’ She gestured, taking in the whole room and all of human intellect.
She was delighted to find out that I had Swiss relations; it was she who made me sit down and write. ‘They may have been from France originally, you know,’ she said. ‘It would be good for you to find out about your French ancestors. You will feel more connected to this country and its people. Then it will not be so hard to think in French.’
I shrugged inwardly. Genealogy was one of those middle-aged things I lumped together with all-talk radio stations, knitting and staying in on Saturday nights: I knew I would eventually indulge in all of them, but I was in no hurry about it. My ancestors didn’t have anything to do with my life right now. But to humour Madame Sentier, as part of my homework I pieced together a few sentences asking my cousin about the history of the family. When she’d checked it for grammar and spelling I sent the letter off to Switzerland.
The French lessons in turn helped me with my second project. ‘What a wonderful profession for a woman!’ Madame Sentier crowed when she heard I was studying to qualify as a midwife in France. ‘What noble work!’ I liked her too much to be annoyed by her romantic notions, so I didn’t mention the suspicion my colleagues and I were treated with by doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, even pregnant women. Nor did I bring up the sleepless nights, the blood, the trauma when something went wrong. Because it was a good job, and I hoped to be able to practise in France once I’d taken the required classes and exams.
The final project had an uncertain future, but it would certainly keep me busy when the time came. No one would have been surprised by it: I was twenty-eight, Rick and I had been married two years, and the pressure from everyone, ourselves included, was beginning to mount.
One night when we had lived in Lisle-sur-Tarn just a few weeks we went out to dinner at the one good restaurant in town. We talked idly – about Rick’s work, my day – through the crudités, the pâté, trout from the Tarn and filet mignon. When the waiter brought Rick’s crème brûlée and my tarte au citron I decided this was the moment to speak. I bit into the lemon slice garnish; my mouth puckered.
‘Rick,’ I began, setting down my fork.
‘Great brûlée,’ he said. ‘Especially the brûléed part. Here, try some.’
‘No thanks. Look, I’ve been thinking about things.’
‘Ah, is this gonna be serious talk?’
At that moment a couple entered the restaurant and were seated at the table next to us. The woman’s belly was just visible against her elegant black dress. Five months pregnant, I thought automatically, and carrying it very high.
I lowered my voice. ‘You know how every now and then we talk about having kids?’
‘You want to have kids now?’
‘Well, I was thinking about it.’
‘OK.’
‘OK what?’
‘OK let’s do it.’
‘Just like that? “Let’s do it”?’
‘Why not? We know we want them. Why agonize over it?’
I felt let down, though I knew Rick too well to be surprised by his attitude. He always made decisions quickly, even big ones, whereas I wanted the decisions to be more complicated.
‘I feel—’ I considered how to explain it. ‘It’s kind of like a parachute jump. Remember when we did that last year? You’re up in this tiny plane and you keep thinking, Two minutes till I can’t say no anymore, One minute till I can’t turn back, then, Here I am balancing by the door, but I can still say no. And then you jump and you can’t get back in, no matter how you feel about the experience. That’s how I feel now. I’m standing by the open door of the plane.’
‘I just remember that fantastic sensation of falling. And the beautiful view floating down. It was so quiet up there.’
I sucked at the inside of my cheek, then took a big bite of tart.
‘It’s a big decision,’ I said with my mouth full.
‘A big decision made.’ Rick leaned over and kissed me. ‘Mmm, nice lemon.’
Later that night I slipped out of the house and went to the bridge. I could hear the river far below but it was too dark to see the water. I looked around; with no one in sight I pulled out a pack of contraceptive pills and began to push the tablets one by one out of their metal foil. They disappeared toward the water, tiny white flashes pinpointed in the dark for a second. After they were gone I leaned against the railing for a long time, willing myself to feel different.
Something did change that night. That night I had the dream for the first time. It began with flickering, a movement between dark and light. It wasn’t black, it wasn’t white; it was blue. I was dreaming in blue.
It moved like it was being buffeted by the wind, undulating toward me and away. It began to press into me, the pressure of water rather than stone. I could hear a voice chanting. Then I was reciting too, the words pouring from me. The other voice began to cry; then I was sobbing. I cried until I couldn’t breathe. The pressure of the blue closed in around me. There was a great boom, like the sound of a heavy door falling into place, and the blue was replaced by a black so complete it had never known light.
Friends had told me that when you try to conceive, you have either lots more sex or lots less. You can go at it all the time, the way a shotgun sprays its pellets everywhere in the hope of hitting something. Or you can strike strategically, saving your ammunition for the appropriate moment.
To start with, Rick and I went for the first approach. When he got home from work we made love before dinner. We went to bed early, woke up early to do it, fit it in whenever we could.
Rick loved this abundance, but for me it was different. For one thing, I’d never had sex because I felt I had to – it had always been because I wanted to. Now, though, there was an unspoken mission behind the activity that made it feel deliberate and calculated. I was also ambivalent about not using contraception: all the energy I’d put into prevention over the years, all the lessons and caution drilled into me – were they to be tossed away in a moment? I’d heard that this could be a great turn-on, but I felt fear when I’d expected exhilaration.
Above all, I was exhausted. I was sleeping badly, dragged into a room of blue each night. I didn’t say anything to Rick, never woke him or explained the next day why I was so tired. Usually I told him everything; now there was a block in my throat and a lock on my lips.
One night I was lying in bed, staring at the blue dancing above me, when it finally dawned on me: the only two nights I hadn’t had the dream in the last ten days were when we hadn’t had sex.
Part of me was relieved to make that connection, to be able to explain it: I was anxious about conceiving, and that was bringing on the nightmare. Knowing that made it a little less frightening.
Still, I needed sleep; I had to convince Rick to cut down on sex without explaining why. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I had nightmares after he made love to me.
Instead, when my period came and it was clear we hadn’t conceived, I suggested to Rick that we try the strategic approach. I used every textbook argument I knew, threw in some technical words and tried to be cheerful. He was disappointed but gave in gracefully.
‘You know more about this than me,’ he said. ‘I’m just the hired gun. You tell me what to do.’
Unfortunately, though the dream came less frequently, the damage had been done: I found it harder to sleep deeply, and often lay awake in a state of non-specific anxiety, waiting for the blue, thinking that some night it would return anyway, unaccompanied by sex.
One night – a strategic night – Rick was kissing his way from my shoulder down my arm when he paused. I could feel his lips hovering above the crease in my arm. I waited but he didn’t continue. ‘Um, Ella,’ he said at last. I opened my eyes. He was staring at the crease; as my eyes followed his gaze my arm jerked away from him.
‘Oh,’ I said simply. I studied the circle of red, scaly skin.
‘What is it?’
‘Psoriasis. I had it once, when I was thirteen. When Mom and Dad divorced.’
Rick looked at it, then leaned over and kissed my eyelids shut.
When I opened my eyes again I just caught a flicker of distaste cross his face before he controlled himself and smiled at me.
Over the next week I watched helplessly as the original patch widened, then jumped to my other arm and both elbows. It would reach my ankles and calves soon.
At Rick’s insistence I went to see a doctor. He was young and brusque, lacking the patter American doctors use to soften up their patients. I had to concentrate hard on his rapid French.
‘You have had this before?’ he asked as he studied my arms.
‘Yes, when I was young.’
‘But not since?’
‘No.’
‘How long have you been in France?’
‘Six weeks.’
‘And you will stay?’
‘Yes, for a few years. My husband has a job with an architectural firm in Toulouse.’
‘You have children?’
‘No. Not yet.’ I turned red. Pull yourself together, Ella, I thought. You’re twenty-eight years old, you don’t have to be embarrassed about sex anymore.
‘And you work now?’
‘No. That is, I did, in the United States. I was a midwife.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Une sage-femme? Do you want to practise in France?’
‘I would like to work but I haven’t been able to get a work permit yet. Also the medical system is different here, so I have to pass an exam before I can practise. So now I study French and this autumn I begin a course for midwives in Toulouse to study for the exam.’
‘You look tired.’ He changed the subject abruptly, as if to suggest I was wasting his time by talking about my career.
‘I’ve been having nightmares, but—’ I stopped. I didn’t want to get into this with him.
‘You are unhappy, Madame Turner?’ he asked more gently.
‘No, no, not unhappy,’ I replied uncertainly. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when I’m so tired, I added to myself.
‘You know psoriasis appears sometimes when you do not get enough sleep.’
I nodded. So much for psychological analysis.
The doctor prescribed cortisone cream, suppositories to bring down the swelling and sleeping pills in case the itching kept me awake, then told me to come back in a month. As I was leaving he added, ‘And come to see me when you are pregnant. I am also an obstétricien.’
I blushed again.
My infatuation with Lisle-sur-Tarn ended not long after I stopped sleeping.
It was a beautiful, peaceful town, moving at a pace I knew was healthier than what I’d been used to in the States, and the quality of life was undeniably better. The produce at the Saturday market in the square, the meat at the boucherie, the bread at the boulangerie – all tasted wonderful to someone brought up on bland supermarket products. In Lisle lunch was still the biggest meal of the day, children ran freely with no fear of strangers or cars, and there was time for small talk. People were never in too much of a hurry to stop and chat with everyone.
With everyone but me, that is. As far as I knew, Rick and I were the only foreigners in town. We were treated that way. Conversations stopped when I entered stores, and when resumed I was sure the subject had been changed to something innocuous. People were polite to me, but after several weeks I still felt I hadn’t had a real conversation with anyone. I made a point of saying hello to people I recognized, and they said hello back, but no one said hello to me first or stopped to talk to me. I tried to follow Madame Sentier’s advice about talking as much as I could, but I was given so little encouragement that my thoughts dried up. Only when a transaction took place, when I was buying things or asking where something was, did the townspeople spare a few words for me.
One morning I was sitting in a café on the square, drinking coffee and reading the paper. Several other people were scattered among the tables. The proprietor passed among us, chatting and joking, handing out candy to the children. I had been there a few times; he and I were on nodding terms now but had not progressed to conversation. Give that about ten years, I thought sourly.
A few tables away, a woman younger than me sat with a five-month-old baby who was strapped into a car seat set on a chair, shaking a rattle. The woman wore tight jeans and had an irritating laugh. She soon got up and went inside. The baby didn’t seem to notice she’d gone.
I concentrated on Le Monde. I was forcing myself to read the entire front page before I was allowed to touch the International Herald Tribune. It was like wading through mud: not just because of the language, but also all the names I didn’t recognize, the political situations I knew nothing about. Even when I understood a story I wasn’t necessarily interested in it.
I was ploughing through a piece about an imminent postal strike – a phenomenon I wasn’t accustomed to in the States – when I heard a strange noise, or rather, silence. I looked up. The baby had stopped shaking the rattle and let it drop into his lap. His face began to crumple like a napkin being scrunched after a meal. Right, here comes the crying, I thought. I glanced into the café: his mother was leaning against the bar, talking on the phone and playing idly with a coaster.
The baby didn’t cry: his face grew redder and redder, as if he were trying to but couldn’t. Then he turned purple and blue in quick succession.
I jumped up, my chair falling backwards with a bang. ‘He’s choking!’ I shouted.
I was only ten feet away but by the time I reached him a ring of customers had formed around him. A man was crouched in front of the baby, patting his blue cheeks. I tried to squeeze through but the proprietor, his back to me, kept stepping in front of me.
‘Hang on, he’s choking!’ I cried. I was facing a wall of shoulders. I ran to the other side of the circle. ‘I can help him!’
The people I was pushing between looked at me, their faces hard and cold.
‘You have to pound him on the back, he’s not getting any air.’
I stopped. I had been speaking in English.
The mother appeared, melting through the barricade of people. She began frantically hitting the baby’s back, too hard, I thought. Everyone stood watching her in an eerie silence. I was wondering how to say ‘Heimlich manoeuvre’ in French when the baby suddenly coughed and a red candy lozenge shot out of his mouth. He gasped for air, then began to cry, his face going bright red again.
There was a collective sigh and the ring of people broke up. I caught the proprietor’s eye; he looked at me coolly. I opened my mouth to say something, but he turned away, picked up his tray and went inside. I gathered up my newspapers and left without paying.
After that I felt uncomfortable in town. I avoided the café and the woman with her baby. I found it hard to look people in the eye. My French became less confident and my accent deteriorated.
Madame Sentier noticed immediately. ‘But what has happened?’ she asked. ‘You were progressing so well!’
An image of a ring of shoulders came to mind. I said nothing.
One day at the boulangerie I heard the woman ahead of me say she was on her way to ‘la bibliothèque’, gesturing as if it were just around the corner. Madame handed her a plastic-covered book; it was a cheap romance. I bought my baguettes and quiches in a rush, cutting short my awkward ritual conversation with Madame. I ducked out and trailed the other woman as she made her daily purchases around the square. She stopped to say hello to several people and argued with all the storekeepers while I sat on a bench in the square and kept an eye on her over my newspaper. She made stops on three sides of the square before abruptly entering the town hall on the last side. I folded my paper and raced after her, then found myself having to hover in the lobby examining wedding banns and planning permission notices while she laboured up a long flight of stairs. I took the stairs two at a time and slipped through the door after her. Shutting it behind me, I turned to face the first place in town that felt familiar.
The library had exactly that mixture of seediness and comforting quiet that made me love public libraries back home. Though it was small – only two rooms – it had high ceilings and several unshuttered windows, giving it an unusually airy feel for such an old building. Several people looked up from what they were doing to stare at me, but their attention was mercifully short and one by one they went back to reading or talking together in low voices.
I had a look around and then went to the main desk to apply for a library card. A pleasant, middle-aged woman in a smart olive suit told me I would need to bring in something with my French address on it as proof of residence. She also tactfully pointed me in the direction of a multi-volume French-English dictionary and a small English-language section.
The woman wasn’t behind the desk the second time I visited the library; in her place a man stood talking on the phone, his sharp brown eyes focused on a point out in the square, a sardonic smile on his angular face. About my height, he was wearing black trousers and a white shirt without a tie, buttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled up above his elbows. A lone wolf. I smiled to myself: one to avoid.
I veered away from him and headed for the English-language section. It looked like some tourists had donated a sackful of vacation reading: it was full of thrillers and sex-and-shopping novels. There was also a good selection of Agatha Christie. I found one I hadn’t read, then browsed in the French fiction section. Madame Sentier had recommended Françoise Sagan as a painless way to ease myself into reading in French; I chose Bonjour Tristesse. I started toward the front desk, glanced at the wolf behind it, then at my two frivolous books, and stopped. I went back to the English section, dug around and added Portrait of a Lady to my pile.
I dawdled for a while, poring over a copy of Paris Match. Finally I carried my books up to the desk. The man behind it looked hard at me, made some mental calculation as he glanced at the books and, with the faintest smirk, said in English, ‘Your card?’
Damn you, I thought. I hated that sneering appraisal, the assumption that I couldn’t speak French, that I looked so American.
‘I would like to apply for a card,’ I replied carefully in French, trying to pronounce the words without any trace of an American accent.
He handed me a form. ‘Fill out this,’ he commanded in English.
I was so annoyed that when I filled in the application I wrote down my last name as Tournier rather than Turner. I pushed the sheet defiantly toward him along with driver’s licence, credit card and a letter from the bank with our French address on it. He glanced at the pieces of identification, then frowned at the sheet.
‘What is this “Tournier”?’ he asked, tapping his finger on my name. ‘It is Turner, yes? Like Tina Turner?’
I continued to answer in French. ‘Yes, but my family name was originally Tournier. They changed it when they moved to the United States. In the nineteenth century. They took out the “o” and the “i” so that the name would be more American.’ This was the one bit of family lore I knew and I was proud of it, but it was clear he wasn’t impressed. ‘Lots of families changed their names when they emigrated—’ I trailed off and looked away from his mocking eyes.
‘Your name is Turner, so there must be Turner on the card, yes?’
