JYA in Paris, Part I (of 2)

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I was recently given a good collection of recent memories of Paris, where I lived and studied for a year in 1962-63, my junior year in college.  The editors of this book had asked a large number of professional writers to write short pieces relating to how the great French capital had changed their lives, without necessarily analysing the nature of the change.  My own experience in Paris when I was 20 and 21 certainly did change the "me" I have become, so I decided to recall several especially vivid memories from that year in Paris.

1

Part I of this exercise involves some early experiences with learning the French language.  All the two dozen or so of us college students in my JYA group were first involved in a six-week language and orientation program, which began with the five-day trip via ocean liner.

The whole program was eventually littered with rules about speaking the language that may have had some logic behind them but no practicality whatsoever.  Hmmm, "logical but not practical": now that I think of it, maybe these rules were part of our orientation to French culture!

The first rule of this sort was that we were all supposed to converse with each other at our meal tables using French only.  I figured I would imitate a deaf mute, a stratagem I did later adopt for several months, as it turned out.  In a strange quirk of my course selection at college, I had ended my sophomore year having taken only one semester of French Language, followed by just one semester of French Literature.  Everyone else, not only at my college, but - as I discovered - everywhere else, took at least two semesters of Language before starting Literature, which itself took two semesters too.  

So I was significantly disadvantaged compared to everyone else in my program.  The so-called "beginners" had all completed two years of college French, compared to my one, and the "more advanced" students had started their French up to six years earlier, including all four years of high school French!

None of us knew each other until we first got on board in New York, and we were all pretty excited too, so to think we could confine ourselves to speaking French to our new American friends at any time was silly, especially during meals.  What saved the day was that our only supervisor - the wife of our program's director - attempted to enforce the ban on English only at her own one table, which had places for only four.  When all of us came to dine, therefore, three lucky folks got to sit and speak French with Mme S------.  For the most advanced students, this was in fact a good opportunity to polish their skills, and they willingly filled the three empty places at her table at lunch and dinner.

But we happened to pass within 100 miles of a little hurricane after a day or two at sea, which made the ship more unstable than usual... the result of which was that for a while, not a full complement of students actually showed up for meals.  Thank goodness sea-sickness was not one of my own problems.  Coupled with the fact that we all stayed up half the night having fun every night, the ship's pitching meant that the breakfast crowd was especially small.  I myself never missed.

Sooo, one morning I turned out to be the only person besides Mme. S------ who showed up for breakfast.  It was my turn to sit with her and speak (and hear) French.  Being a deaf mute was not an option. 

We managed to exchange a pleasantry or two and ordered our breakfasts (I in English), until there we were, face-to-face.  Somehow, by the grandest good fortune we ended up - Mme. S------ and I - having a rather animated conversation comparing Marilyn Monroe with Brigitte Bardot!  She had to repeat, slow down, and rephrase everything, of course, and I had to think carefully and haltingly grind something out, with coaching from her... So that was enough to get us through breakfast.  (By the way, my pronunciation was always pretty good, so it may actually have seemed I knew what I was doing better than I really did.)

When I told my new friends later than I'd been forced to have breakfast speaking French with our supervisor, everyone was especially sympathetic, sorry for me.  But I was able to tell them sincerely it had actually been sort of like fun.  Fortunately, the same situation never repeated itself!  (Could Mme. S------ herself have stopped getting up early enough for breakfast?)

2

Our first month in Paris, every day we spent three or four hours in class at our little Institute and, as we did all year, had lunch together there.  Mornings were spent doing language exercises; at least some afternoons were spent listening to talks by experts (really) on French culture: politics, existential philosophy, economics, some history, art, and so on.  We were divided into a beginner group and a more advanced group.   I couldn't believe it, but I ended up in the more advanced group.  (I figured it was because of my pretty-good accent and that conversation about Bardot and Monroe.)

The teachers switched around, we supposed in order to expose us to a variety of different voices and accents.  But we all agreed that by far the best teacher was a certain Mme. H---.  Her name was not recognizably French, and she eventually told us that her husband was an American businessman who had lived in Paris since the war.  She told us great stories, including one amusing anecdote showing how idioms were based on different metaphors in different languages.

It had to do with smoking (Mme. H--- being a smoker herself).  To ask for a light or a match  in French, you say, "Avez-vous feu?" [Literally: "Do you have fire?"].  During the war, when she was a young woman, Mme. H--- (Mlle. then, of course) had gone to a USO dance with American soldiers, a small group of whom she had approached with a cigarette between her fingers and said, in her best English: "Do you have fire for me, soldier?"  We thought it was great that she could tell that story on herself.

3

One of Mme. H---'s homework questions was for each of us to come the next morning with an answer to the question (in French, of course),  Why do I get up in the morning?  Yes, it was dumb, but it was a good enough question for the purpose of challenging us to talk.

As luck would have it, Mme. H--- called on three of us that next morning.  The first said something dumb but appropriate, like wanting to not waste valuable time.  Mme. critiqued and then called on someone else, who did the same, saying something dumb but okay.  Then, Mme. H--- turned to me, whom she had thus far left to my own devices.  "M. Derique, Why do you get up in the morning?"   My reply was a question: Comment dit-on en francais...? (i.e. "How do you say in French...?") then, in English, "a full bladder."

Everybody howled raucously, and Mme. H--- openly laughed too.  I had escaped again.


The other regular teacher in the Institute orientation program, by contrast, was just awful.  She was more scared of us than we were of her.  She was ditsy too, and barely prepared every day.  Mme. H--- seemed a professional, while Mme. la Comtesse (yes, a countess) did not.  Still, it was she who had been selected to give us an afternoon talk on the topic of the relation between the American and French Revolutions.  Unfortunately, her thesis was that there would have been no American Revolution if it had not been for the French Revolution.  The Americans had feebly imitated the French's democratic initiative, she maintained.  After 30 minutes of her lecture, no one had the heart to mention that by definition, in any language, to be a cause of an event, your event must come first.

4

Especially for me, one of the most memorable Paris events that year occurred on the first evening.  We had arrived at each of our various residences, mine and three others' at a small boarding house near the Eiffel Tower, in the early afternoon.  We were to gather at our little Institute near the Arch of Triumph for dinner (that day only) a few hours later.

A couple of weeks before I had left home for New York, my Dad had given me a guidebook to Paris that had been recommended by an old friend.  It was filled with detailed maps on the right page, with information about the sites in that area on the left page.  I took it with me.  I must have looked that guidebook over and over again: at home, on the ship, and on that afternoon in my room.   I especially didn't want to get lost on my way to dinner.

After our meal, about six of us decided to walk the couple of blocks up to l'Arc de Triomphe and take a look at the famous Champs-Elysees, which proceeded two and a half miles or so down from the Arch all the way to the Louvre Museum at the other end of downtown Paris.   We were all very excited.  It was obvious why Paris was known as the City of Lights, and everything seemed charmed. 

Pretty soon, it turned out that I was leading the way.  I was having an odd experience: as we came to each corner, I found I already knew what was there and what was near-by.  I didn't remember it; I knew it, just as I would have known each street on the main drag in my home town.

We had not intended to walk all the way to the Jardins des Tuileries outside the big museum, and along the way one or two dropped out of our fast-talking, slow-walking party.  At each street, I would say, "If you wanted to go to X, you would turn down this street to the left" or something like that.  I was giving the others a tour.

I especially remember drawing near Rue Royale at the Place de la Concorde and saying that l'Eglise de la Madeleine was just one block to the left.  When we got to the crossing and looked left, there it was, all lit up.  The thing is, it looked just like I knew it would.  It gave me the strangest thrill.

It gave me a sense that I was to feel the whole year to come.  I felt I had come home.



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