i wake up around 11, sweating, because it is still deathly hot. i see mirages of giant cats until i realize that the giant cat sleeping in my face is very much real. her name is vanille and she is very, very fat and very, very orange. i am obsessed with her. she sleeps in my bathtub. we are best friends. i steel myself to go exploring in an unknown place with toast and espresso from the rather expensive, very much italian machine that jean-louis showed me how to use when i was a zombie. armed with my giant folding tourist shield/map, i step out into the cobblestones, careful to avoid the dog merde and explore! place de la victoire is full of students because it is the central hub of one of bordeaux's universities, and also restaurants (apparently on fridays all the bars are half price a la victoire to celebrate the end of the school week) and it is my tram stop to go home to the apartment or to leave for le fac (university). i walk up rue sainte catherine, the largest pedestrian shopping avenue in europe (still half the size of the king of prussia mall i swear) which is full of clothing stores, music shops, and restaurants. i stop in a huge fnac, a french chain that sells school supplies/books/magazines/cds, and listen to french music until the guy working in the variété française section started getting suspicious of me. rue sainte catherine pretty much has everything you would ever need in life, and it is my go-to avenue when i'm lost. the cobblestones on sainte catherine are different from other streets a la the yellow brick road (n.b. why are all my references trippy childrens movies? alice in wonderland, wizard of oz...), so it's easy to tell when i've found it, even when i'm convinced i've stepped into another dimension of the city and will never find my way home.
friday night is my first weekend night in the city, and sacha asks me if i'm going out "pour le week-end." i consider this, then realize i know approximately four people in the city of bordeaux. (five if you count the cat, but vanille can't go out with me, since she does not leave the house, too proud (embarrassed?) of her size to share it with others. i seriously think that if she leaves the apartment on the fourth floor, she wouldn't be able to get back up the stairs. i share this insight with vanille, as we have chats by the bathtub, and she merely glares at me and bites my finger.) (side note: every family i know in bordeaux has at least one cat. they are all fat.) before i have the chance to realize that i need to make friends so as to not continue these chats with the cat, sacha comes bounding into my room, followed swiftly by jean-louis, for sacha has upended his bag, prefering to wear it as a hat, and is leaving a trail of pencils and notebooks around the house to find his way back to the living room in case he forgets. "we're going swimming! we're going to the pool! do you know how to swim? did you bring a bathing suit?" he says all in one breath, very excitedly, entirely in french. sacha's english is limited to 'hello,' because you say 'allô?' when you answer the phone in france, so that's everything he knows. i shoot a questioning look at jean-louis, assume we're going to one of the public pools in the city, and grab my suit. the next thing i know, jean-louis opens a tiny door on the other side of the street that i never knew was there and a giant parking garage appears. i didn't even know the rullauds had a car. nathalie and jeanne are already in the minivan (french minivans are nothing like their american counterparts. the rullaud's renault - say that three times fast while drinking a glass of wine - is probably the size of my mom's toyota sedan, but it holds seven people. fancy that.) and we clamber inside and get on the autoroute, far far away from all the public pools. i wonder what i've got myself into. is this some sort of initiation into france or tourist hazing scheme? i would have jumped out of the car if a. they weren't so nice and so french b. i wasn't in love with vanille or c. if i knew how to deal with french policemen, so i stay put. we park at a farmhouse in the suburbs/countryside, and jeanne gives me the rundown of everyone that will be there - 8 adults, including me, and many kids. i am relieved... surely they won't burn me at the stake with so many witnesses?
we walk into this absolutely GORGEOUS house, giant kitchen, big wooden spiral staircase, with what i assume is a very very expensive recording studio in the next room, with enough instruments for my musically-inept self to realize that this is serious business. outside, there is a patio with all sorts of lights and, aha! the pool! i walk in behind jeanne and sacha, as they are my cover; clearly no one will notice the bewildered blonde american cowering behind an 8 (nine tomorrow!) year old. but they desert me and run off, not realizing they are my safety net into this adult french world that i know nothing about. approximately two milliseconds later, i am surrounded by the other five people who are talking over each other in very rapid-fire, heavily accented french, all asking me questions at the same time. how do i like it here? why did i pick bordeaux? what's america like? is new york really like they show it in movies? do you live near milwaukee? (the rullaud's last exchange student was from milwaukee - to this day i have absolutely no idea where that is.) jean-louis, thank god, fends them off for five minutes so i can sit down and maybe, just maybe, answer all their questions.
french dinner parties are an experience. there are approximately seven courses that all run into each other, lots of spirited discussion, and most imortantly, large amounts of wine. first order of business: there were three bottles on the table, one red, one white, and one pink. pierre, the host, gives me the option, and of course, my knowledge of wine consists of reading the labels when i had to arrange the bottles at market basket. when i tell him that i don't know very much about wine, he looks offended for two seconds, then laughs loudly, and says "oh, but you are an american, you are not supposed to know anything about wine." he then tips the bottle near my face - i don't know what i'm supposed to do. drink it from the bottle? smell it? look at it? - and lets me try a sip of each. i pick the pink because it was the first one, and apparently that is the right choice, for everyone cheers and tells me i picked bordeaux's best. i smile sagely and nod my head, acting like i knew this all along, while in my head i congratulate myself for passing initiation numéro un. first course is nuts, followed by salad, followed by cheese, followed by some sort of tomato pizza. now, it is completely dark, around 10pm. we have been here for two hours, and silly me, i think that it is almost time to go. but wait! time for the main course, le plat principal: le poulet. unbeknownst to me, pierre has been grilling the entire time, and offers me a giant plate of chicken. it tastes absolutely wonderful, and i tell him so, as he pours me more wine. i have white, others have red, apparently the french are not picky about what colors go with which foods. he smiles and gestures towards the shed. "you hear that?" he asks me. i listen to discover vague animal noises. "this morning, there were five chickens in that shed. now there is four. this is antoine," he says, poking at the plate with his knife. "i name them, it is more humane that way." MON DIEU I JUST ATE ANTOINE. but my shock is quickly subduded because the others seem to not care, and because antoine, le pauvre, was delicious.
the chicken is followed by cheese, followed by a fruit tart, as the conversation veers towards french politics. apparently, no one likes sarkozy, he is too bourgeois and caters only towards his rich friends rather than the general public, things i vaguely knew from my french polisci class last semester that was much like this dinner - loud and confusing but wonderfully french. but at least the dinner has wine. i eat my tarte aux poires in openmouthed fascination as nathalie and pierre argue about immigration, and i find that i am automatically loyal to nathalie, even though i have known her for less than 48 hours and am still unsure what her viewpoint is. every once in awhile she stops (i learn that her viewpoint is very rational and educated, whereas pierre's is a bit extreme, though i'm undoubtedly biased) and concentrates solely on me, asking if i'm okay, if i understand all the concepts, if i want more wine, which makes me all the more loyal to her. at this point, nathalie and pierre are clearly annoyed with each other, so jean-louis saves the day and starts pouring coffee. i am dead tired and i look at my watch under the table to realize that it is ALMOST 2AM. we have been here almost six hours, eating, drinking, laughing, being french. this is how you're supposed to have dinner. not any of the fast food american eat on the run business. one of the other guests made a joke earlier about me having my american driver's license so i can drive her home, a thought i laughed off at the time but that reappears in my head like one of those dreams where you wake up and feel like you're falling, even though you're still in bed. i am busy formulating blatant lies in my head in case she asks again - i cannot drive in birkenstocks, i cannot drive cars that are blue, i cannot drive after i eat chicken - while simultaneously listening to the immigration debate (still) when i realize that it is 2am and all the children, jeanne the oldest at 12, are still up and no one seems to care. sacha comes wandering out onto the patio and yawns impressively, our cue to leave. i find it absolutely fascinating that even though nathalie and pierre disagree and jean-louis is disgruntled (pierre accuses him of being a pétaniste - a follower of maréchal pétain who was loyal to hitler when france was occupied by germany during the second world war, possibly the highest insult in the french language, but i think pierre was a bit drunk) everyone kisses everyone else like nothing ever happened and wishes them a warm goodnight. i learn the kissing ritual the hard way when i first arrive, and stick my hand out as a typical gesture of meeting new people, and everyone stares at it as if it were blue, or an extra limb, before laughing, "oh, but she is an american!" and ignores it completely as they kiss me on both cheeks, a ritual called faire les bisous, or literally, to make kisses. we drive home, sacha leaning precariously on the window and jeanne on my shoulder, both fast asleep, and i marvel that i feel completely and utterly welcomed here, even among complete strangers, in a foreign language, eating food named antoine.
No comments:
Post a Comment