***
1
The short story I usually tell about the second half of my JYA in Paris in 1962-63 goes like this:
I withdrew from my program at the beginning of the second semester, after Mardis Gras in mid-February. The Institute returned my tuition and fees but continued my room at Mme. T----------'s flat near Boulevard Montparnasse at Rue de Sevres as well as my board in the student restaurants. I had accumulated enough overload credits that, together with the fifteen credits for the first JYA semester and small overloads in my senior year, I could graduate on time. My Dad took the reimbursement to pay off the loan he'd taken out, and sent enough monthly for me to finish the year within the cost of a regular semester at my midwestern university, including the return trip by sea.
I continued attending lectures at the Sorbonne and the Institut d'Art et d'Architecture (though not the ones at the JYA institute, obviously) but did not sit for any exams as the Institute had arranged for all of us at the end of the first semester. It was still clear, by the way, that my attendance was more regular than the French students who were sitting for the exams. Go figure!
From mid-February until mid-June, I was pretty much on my own all day, every day, walking almost everywhere, going to a play or concert or movie four to six nights a week. That was possible for me because of the deep discounts the French gave students and because I now had the time to research the cheapest venues and ticket deals (like sitting in the front row at the neighborhood cinemas and waiting in the line for unsold tickets at concerts and plays until five minutes before "curtain time" when they were released for two or three francs).
I read all the time, from public libraries: I belonged to the tiny library in my first neighborhood near the Eiffel Tower and to the only slightly larger one in my new neighborhood with Mme. T----------. I would often check out two or three books from each one every week. I especially liked reading the English Penguin editions of detective novels! But I also read biographies, histories of art and music, and some books on the French Revolution... though not in order to understand the causes of the American Revolution.
2
That's the shorter version of my story, but it leaves out the reasons why I withdrew. It wasn't exactly my own idea... at least not at first.
That short version also leaves out a silly little rebellion about lunchtime that three of us guys had led near the start of the year. After the orientation program was over, we were told that we should speak French to each other at lunch every day. I suppose I myself may have been content to eat in silence every day, listening to the others stammer away, but everyone else seemed to think the whole idea was absurd enough to be resisted. There we were, surrounded almost 23 hours every day by native French speakers, and we were supposed to learn from hearing each other? We just couldn't do it.
So one day, I loudly told the group - in my best French - what I had done the day before... only I didn't use the ordinary conversational past tense ("J’ étais..." or "J’ai été..."); I used the past tense used exclusively in classic literature ("Je fűs…")!
I had worked this speech out working furiously a couple of hours that morning. I had to explain the tense several times at lunch, which I did pretending to be angry. Slowly the others caught on, and three or four of them started in on the conversation. Whenever anyone used the usual verb form, we all shouted out the literary equivalent, to widespread hilarity. We had such fun that several came in the next day with set speeches like mine that first day. More hilarity. By the morning of the third day, word got around that we could just be ourselves at lunch.
We didn't do "high fives" in those days, but it was one of those kind of moments. And all in good fun, too.
3
One feature the Institute had advertised was that students would be housed with French families with whom they would have breakfast and dinner (lunch being between classes at the Institute itself). When we actually arrived in Paris, however, only about half of the students - all of them women - were in fact placed with families. All the men and one group of three or four women were in small pensions, large Parisian flats that had been divided into private rooms with bathrooms down the hall and large kitchens and dining rooms.
I myself had been placed in such a pension on Rue Sainte Dominique along with three other guys. Our landlord was a Polish count who had long since fallen on hard times. His somewhat younger wife ran the place and fixed the meals. The Count presided over dinner where the other boarders - three or four older French men - joined the party. They didn't know what to make of us at first, but seemed glad of the company and the novelty; conversations did not lag, the food was fine and interesting (my first match with artichokes, I remember), and the company agreeable enough. One of our crowd had made fast friends with the guys living in another pension across town. They went out every evening (partying, the rest of us thought); he grumbled about our accommodations a bit but the rest of us were satisfied enough.
The group of women in another pension, however, were hotly divided on the issue. Two of them, I came to understand, liked the greater freedom they had in the pension than they would have had with families; but three others and possibly some of the other guys elswewhere were also upset that they were not with French families, as promised.
The Directeur apologized and said all who still wanted it would be placed with families within a month. My guess is that their parents had called M. S------ expressing their outrage. Rather than trying to soothe the feelings of their sons and daughters, the parents were keeping the pot boiling as the Institute staff apparently kept trying to locate appropriate families.
At the end of our four-week orientation program, no one else had in fact been placed with families. At some point, I don't remember when, those of us in our pension were moved. K---- and I were moved to the flat of a "war-widow" (she was head of an association, no less) who was glad to have the rent and to give us breakfast, but who did not cook dinners. K---- and I got passes to the student restaurants instead. That suited us just fine. The other two guys were transferred to the pension where the three friends of the one were already housed. (The Comte de B---l-Pl----r was left with some empty rooms.)
4
At lunch, one began to hear that the complaint that the amount of room and board money we'd all paid was being unfairly distributed. We understood that M. S------ pooh-poohed this, but it must have been true. Apparently some parents had contacted the American headquarters in Chicago by this time expressing their concerns.
One day someone decided that we were all going to meet later in the day to discuss what we were going to do about this dreadful injustice. Even those of us who were satisfied with current arrangements were sympathetic to those who weren't. After all, living with French families was indeed supposed to be part of the deal.
The meeting - right there in the Institute room where we had lunch everyday, next door on one side to the Directeur's office and on the other side to his assistant's office - was fairly intense. The aggrieved women were soliciting the support of all the rest of us. Their leading sympathizers were those other women who had been placed from the beginning with families; even those who were with families knew they had a privilege being denied to others. So in the meeting they chimed in right away. The guys happy in that other pension climbed on board, as we all did quite readily.
The next question was, What were we going to do? Talk of a strike was mentioned, I believe, a petition signed by all of us to the Chicago headquarters, maybe some other things. Finally it was decided that a delegation of three of us - not including any of those most aggrieved - would go visit M. S------ to see what could be worked out to address the problem. I had felt up to this time like an outside observer: interested, more or less sympathetic, but not much caught up in the dispute. But I was commissioned to be one of the three.
5
M. S------ was good-looking, well-dressed, a smooth operator without seeming dishonest. By education he was an economist. I can't recall what was said at our meeting, but I do remember that one of the others took the role as our principal spokesman. He said what we had to say, and M. S------ seemed to take the matter seriously. As we were starting to leave, having completed our assignment, M. S------ took me aside to say quietly that he was counting on those like me to help him keep things running calmly while solutions could be found. I was surprised and more than a little intimidated. Why had I been selected? I wondered. There was a follow-up conversation with the aggrieved students, and talk of further action stopped.
By this time, I considered myself out of the controversy altogether. My role, as I had defined it, was to keep the others informed about what was happening in movies, concerts, theatre, and so on. I did happily this almost every day. But somehow it soon became clear that the staff (or at least M. S-------) blamed me personally for the whole upheaval. People began to ask me what I was going to do about it.
After Christmas break, it became impossible to ignore these rumors and the tension in the atmosphere any longer. I telephoned my parents. That itself was a big deal. It cost real money, Mme. T---------- had to loan me use of the telephone in the sitting room (where we were usually not allowed), arrangements had to be made about timing because of the difference in time zones... I explained to Mother and Dad that the program was having trouble placing all the students with families, there was some concern about the financial arrangements, and somehow I had inadvertently been selected leader of the opposition.
Dad was supportive, seemed to understand quickly. It was agreed that I would write a detailed letter to the Chicago office explaining the tensions as nicely and sympathetically as I could. I don't recall when and how, but it emerged between us that I could just drop out, stay on as had been planned, and still be able to graduate with my class. The idea was that I would ship my letter off to Dad and that he would call Chicago and tell them he was going to send it on.
That all happened, and when everyone got back from our Mardi Gras trips (we had a week between semesters; my little group of five went to Spain), I was no longer in the Institute. I think it was the Directeur's assistant - who had always been very nice and gracious - who explained the details to me, worked out after Dad's call to Chicago. None of us had seen M. S------ himself for a couple of weeks.
6
I never regretted being out of the program. I don't recall even being lonely; of course, I saw K---- every day, but we didn't actually do much together. I did keep in touch with the closest friends I'd made at the Institute, and we would go out together once in a while. I don't know how the management eventually made things seem all right about the housing.
There was a peculiar postlude to this little soap opera. One day several weeks after I had left the program, in the afternoon mail I got an invitation to dine with M. and Mme. S------ at their home in several days. Mme. T---------- let me use the 'phone again, so I called the number listed for my response and spoke with Mme. S-------. I thanked her for the invitation and asked if it would be inconvenient to invite F---, one of the three guys who had gone to that first meeting with the Directeur, to accompany me. I didn't say so, but I thought M. S------ would try to get me to agree to something that might not have been in my interest. Mme. S------- readily agreed. And F--- later said he would help me out.
Dinner that evening was completely uneventful. F--- was relaxed and charming; I tried to be too. Mme. S------ didn't say much but was gracious... And M. le Directeur was as nice as could be. We actually had a pretty good time, despite a little under-current of tension. When leaving, we all shook hands warmly and wished each other well.
*
I can't help wondering if M. S------ had thought I'd been the leader of the rebellious gang protesting about living arrangements simply because of that cute little joke about speaking French at lunch. At least, "all's well that ends well."
***
Here's a recent photo of where I lived in Paris in 1962-63. While the shops on Rue Mayet have changed, "my" doorway still looks much the same.
