Paris in Love (54 page)

My children have inherited my regrettable genes: we’re the spear carriers of school productions, ready to swell a chorus or play an attendant lord, or even, if needed, the Fool—but nothing more ambitious. This year, for the Italian school’s production in French, Anna did not even achieve the level of the Fool. Luckily, her aspirations are commensurate with her thespian talents, so she was unperturbed when assigned the roles of a clock and a fly.

On the morning of the performance, she dressed all in black, as befits a fly. The only black T-shirt she has is emblazoned with
the Ramones, so we instructed her to turn it inside out before going onstage, to ensure that the audience wouldn’t think she was a punk insect. Her speaking responsibilities were small, but she did have to announce the time twice—in French, as she pointed out in a last-minute fit of nerves.
Tic-tac!

On the way to school I asked her what the play was about, but she didn’t seem to really know. She told me, rather uncertainly, that there was an old woman who died. It sounded like a Grimms’ fairy tale to me. Wasn’t there an old woman who ate a fly and died? But Anna assured me that she wasn’t eaten.

That afternoon Alessandro and I arrived early for the performance and found Anna buzzing around the gym in her black outfit, now rounded out by a purple beak. This seemed remarkably unlike the flies I have known, and on inquiry it turned out that she’d mistaken her role—she wasn’t a fly after all, but a little devil who buzzes around the dying woman as part of a bad dream. The plot was starting to sound oddly grim, even Kafkaesque. We settled in our seats to enjoy Dora the Dead as opposed to Dora the Explorer.

The ten-year-old “old lady” was recognizable front and center, wrapped in a blanket. But that was the last thing we understood. For one thing, Italian children babbling in French are none too intelligible. For another, the plot was made yet more obscure by the children’s creative interpretations of their roles. A rather disaffected young girl, for example, kept taking long drafts from an (empty) wine bottle. I never figured out what her relationship to the dying woman was, or why she was courting inebriation, although Anna later informed me she was the narrator.

The plot grew even murkier as the inevitable technical glitches occurred. The mechanism drawing the curtain got stuck and started banging. The actors glanced upward and nervously continued
jabbering in a way that suggested they comprehended about 50 percent of their lines, and really didn’t mind if we in the audience comprehended zero. Devils came and went, dancing angels appeared, the clock’s alarm went off (we enjoyed that), the drunk strode around the stage muttering. The audience began to have fits of laughter at inappropriate moments, which rattled the already perplexed actors.

The performance was slowly moving toward Anna’s big moment—the clock’s declaration of the time—when the “old lady” suddenly up and died. The other performers seemed rather surprised, but they gamely gathered around as she threw off her blanket and danced, in a rhythmic interpretation of heaven.

It turned out that the actress had grown befuddled and died two acts too soon. But by the time her error was recognized, it was beyond salvation. There was a general feeling (especially in the audience) that once the main character is dead, the play is over. It’s time to draw the final curtain.

Anna never did get to say her big line, so she announced it at dinner instead.
“Il est neuf heures.”
She said it very well.

The students in Florent’s middle school have started calling Pauline Madame Selig (his last name), because the two of them spend so much time together. This is an interesting development. Teenagers are wickedly astute observers of adults; they perceive these two as a couple already. Now only Pauline needs convincing.

Alessandro and I deserted the children for the evening and took ourselves out for dinner at a tiny new restaurant called Saveurs & Coïncidences, subtitled “The Cuisine of the Good Senses.” Our waitress was married to the chef; she told us that her husband had long dreamed of opening a restaurant where the food was so fresh that they had no need of a refrigerator. Some of the dishes were good and some were only so-so (Italian men—not to mention names—should just stop ordering risotto in other countries, because it
never
measures up), but the passion was unmistakable. And while Madame talked, a little boy in an appropriately sized chef’s apron poked his head out of the kitchen.

We went to a big sports store today to buy many white garments for the children to wear at camp. Anna used her painfully saved allowance to buy a hot pink spelunking lamp that straps to her forehead. “For reading Harry Potter books under the covers,” she
told me. Someday, just maybe, she’ll learn not to alert the policeman before she commits a crime.

Today I went online to try to rootle out some facts about Claude.
Pages from the Book of Paris
was his first book; after that he wrote novels and more nonfiction, including something entitled
Opinions
, which has—enticingly—chapters entitled “Pornography” and “Meditations on Woman.” I shudder to imagine what Claude thought of pornography, not to mention what he would have made of my novels. But I also found a review in which his Paris memoir was damned with faint praise for its “racy sketches.” My mother never liked my romances, which she labeled “that sex stuff.” Yet obviously my ignominious talent for “racy sketches” is hereditary—and stems from her side of the family!

Today we went to a fun, tiny museum, the Musée de la Vie Romantique, housing furniture and keepsakes that belonged to the writer George Sand. Frankly, the art isn’t noteworthy, though the reconstruction of her drawing room is fascinating and made the visit worthwhile. That, and sitting down for a cup of tea in the little tearoom in the garden. A lush flowering vine with orange-red flowers hung over a brick wall at our backs, as if Nature herself were taunting the artists whose work she’d outdone.

Florent told Alessandro about a terrific Vietnamese restaurant called Minh Chau, so we went there for dinner last night. Ten tables barely fit into the space, and the food comes from the
floor above, down a steep winding stair. It’s shabby, decorated with plastic flowers, and a bit claustrophobic—but the food! I had an amazing carrot and coriander salad to start, delicately seasoned and scrumptious, followed by chicken with ginger so good that we almost licked the plates. The bill? The equivalent of fifteen dollars!

Alessandro went to Austria to give a talk at a university there and brought me back a box of bonbons, with Mozart’s face on each one and marzipan cake inside. I asked, “These are good for my diet, right?” The professor assured me that they’re calorie-free, and who am I to argue?