Me Talk Pretty One Day

  People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American. France isn’t even my country, but there I was, deciding that these people needed to be sent back home, preferably in chains. In disliking them, I was forced to recognize my own pretension, and that made me hate them even more. The train took a curve, and when I moved my hand farther up the pole, the man turned to the woman, saying, “Carol — hey, Carol, watch out. That guy’s going after your wallet.”

  “What?”

  “Your wallet,” Martin said. “That joker’s trying to steal your wallet. Move your pocketbook to the front where he can’t get at it.”

  She froze, and he repeated himself, barking, “The front. Move your pocketbook around to the front. Do it now. The guy’s a pickpocket.”

  The woman named Carol grabbed for the strap on her shoulder and moved her pocketbook so that it now rested on her stomach. “Wow,” she said. “I sure didn’t see that coming.”

  “Well, you’ve never been to Paris before, but let that be a lesson to you.” Martin glared at me, his eyes narrowed to slits. “This city is full of stinkpots like our little friend here. Let your guard down, and they’ll take you for everything you’ve got.”

  Now I was a stinkpot and a thief. It occurred to me to say something, but I thought it might be better to wait and see what he came up with next. Another few minutes, and he might have decided I was a crack dealer or a white slaver. Besides, if I said something at this point, he probably would have apologized, and I wasn’t interested in that. His embarrassment would have pleased me, but once he recovered, there would be that awkward period that sometimes culminates in a handshake. I didn’t want to touch these people’s hands or see things from their point of view, I just wanted to continue hating them. So I kept my mouth shut and stared off into space.

  The train stopped at the next station. Passengers got off, and Carol and Martin moved to occupy two folding seats located beside the door. I thought they might ease on to another topic, but Martin was on a roll now; and there was no stopping him. “It was some shithead like him that stole my wallet on my last trip to Paris,” he said, nodding his head in my direction. “He got me on the subway — came up from behind, and I never felt a thing. Cash, credit cards, driver’s license: poof — all of it gone, just like that.”

  I pictured a Scoreboard reading MARTY O STINKPOTS I, and clenched my fist in support of the home team.

  “What you’ve got to understand is that these creeps are practiced professionals,” he said. “I mean, they’ve really got it down to an art, if you can call that an art form.”

  “I wouldn’t call it an art form,” Carol said. “Art is beautiful, but taking people’s wallets … that stinks, in my opinion.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Martin said. “The thing is that these jokers usually work in pairs.” He squinted toward the opposite end of the train. “Odds are that he’s probably got a partner somewhere on this subway car.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so,” he said. “They usually time it so that one of them clips your wallet just as the train pulls into the station. The other guy’s job is to run interference and trip you up once you catch wind of what’s going on. Then the train stops, the doors open, and they disappear into the crowd. If Stinky there had gotten his way, he’d probably be halfway to Timbuktu by now. I mean, make no mistake, these guys are fast.”

  I’m not the sort of person normally mistaken for being fast and well-coordinated, and because of this, I found Martin’s assumption to be oddly flattering. Stealing wallets was nothing to be proud of, but I like being thought of as cunning and professional. I’d been up until 4 A.M. the night before, reading a book about recluse spiders, but to him the circles beneath my eyes likely reflected a long evening spent snatching flies out of the air, or whatever it is that pickpockets do for practice.

  “The meatball,” he said. “Look at him, just standing there waiting for his next victim. If I had my way, he’d be picking pockets with his teeth. An eye for an eye, that’s what I say. Someone ought to chop the guy’s hands off and feed them to the dogs.”

  Oh, I thought, but first you’ll have to catch me.

  “It just gets my goat,” he said, “I mean, where’s a policioni when you need one?”

  Policioni? Where did he think he was? I tried to imagine Martin’s conversation with a French policeman and pictured him waving his arms, shouting, “That man tried to picka my frienda’s pocketoni!” I wanted very much to hear such a conversation and decided I would take the wallet from Hugh’s back pocket as we left the train. Martin would watch me steal from a supposed stranger and most likely would intercede. He’d put me in a headlock or yell for help, and when a crowd gathered, I’d say, “What’s the problem? Is it against the law to borrow money from my boyfriend?” If the police came, Hugh would explain the situation in his perfect French while I’d toss in a few of my most polished phrases. “That guy’s crazy,” I’d say, pointing at Martin. “I think he’s drunk. Look at how his face is swollen.” I was practicing these lines to myself when Hugh came up from behind and tapped me on the shoulder, signaling that the next stop was ours.

  “There you go,” Martin said. “That’s him, that’s the partner. Didn’t I tell you he was around here somewhere? They always work in pairs. It’s the oldest trick in the book.”

  Hugh had been reading the paper and had no idea what had been going on. It was too late now to pretend to pick his pocket, and I was stuck without a decent backup plan. As we pulled into the station, I recalled an afternoon ten years earlier. I’d been riding the Chicago el with my sister Amy, who was getting off three or four stops ahead of me. The doors opened, and as she stepped out of the crowded car, she turned around to yell, “So long, David. Good luck beating that rape charge.” Everyone onboard had turned to stare at me. Some seemed curious, some seemed frightened, but the overwhelming majority appeared to hate me with a passion I had never before encountered. “That’s my sister,” I’d said. “She likes to joke around.” I laughed and smiled, but it did no good. Every gesture made me appear more guilty, and I wound up getting off at the next stop rather than continue riding alongside people who thought of me as a rapist. I wanted to say something that good to Martin, but I can’t think as fast as Amy. In the end this man would go home warning his friends to watch out for pickpockets in Paris. He’d be the same old Martin, but at least for the next few seconds, I still had the opportunity to be somebody different, somebody quick and dangerous.

  The dangerous me noticed how Martin tightened his fists when the train pulled to a stop. Carol held her pocketbook close against her chest and sucked in her breath as Hugh and I stepped out of the car, no longer finicky little boyfriends on their overseas experiment, but rogues, accomplices, halfway to Timbuktu.

  I Almost Saw This Girl

  Get Killed

  ONCE OWNED A BOOK designed to provoke the imagination and help bored children discover constructive ways to pass the time. Though ultimately no great shakes, the projects were proposed and illustrated with such enthusiasm that even the most hardened ten-year-old could be tricked into believing he was in for some serious fun. “Why not construct ghosts out of leftover gift wrap?” the book would suggest. “Why not decorate your desktop with a school bus made from a brick!”

  I thought of this book when Hugh and I attended the Festival of Saint Anne, a local fair held in a neighboring village, not far from our house in Normandy. Here was an event that answered the question “Why?” with a resounding “Why not!”

  “Why not grab a hot glue gun and attach seashells to flowerpots?” asked the industrious grandmothers manning the crafts table. “Why not crochet long woolen sausages and lay them at the foot of the door to ward off drafts?”

  There were a few low-key rides, and a game in which players threw tennis balls at papier-mâché likenesses of Idi Amin and Richard Nixon. Then there was the feature attraction, which posed the
question “Why not build an arena and spend some time with angry cows?”

  The cows in question were lean, long-horned teenagers known as vachettes. Bullish in both appearance and temperament, they’re the juvenile delinquents of the cow family, the hardscrabble cousins who sleep in trailers and fight like men. Offer a vachette a shot of liquor, and she’ll probably take it. Mention a vachette to one of the local Normand dairy cows, and she’ll roll her long-lashed eyes, saying, “Well, really.”

  The woman at the gate explained that should Hugh and I volunteer to participate, that is, to spend time with one of these angry young cows, our admission fees would be waived. All we needed to do was sign a few simple documents, effectively clearing the festival organizers of any liability. Being a volunteer meant that in exchange for a possible spinal cord injury, we could each save the equivalent of four American dollars. “Come on,” the woman said, “It’ll be fun.”

  I pictured a handsome French doctor explaining the standard colostomy procedure, and then I disappointed the woman at the gate by pulling out my wallet. We paid our admission and joined the hundred-odd spectators seated on the collapsible bleachers. They were our neighbors, the people we saw while standing in line at the bakery and the hardware store. The mayor breezed by, followed by the postman and the train conductor, and each of them stopped to say hello. While others might find it stifling, I like the storybook quality intrinsic to village life. The butcher, the stonemason, the sheep farmer, and the schoolmarm: it’s as though these figures came in a box along with pint-size storefronts and little stone houses. In a world where everyone is known by their occupations, Hugh and I are consistently referred to as “the Americans,” as if possessing a blue passport was so much work that it left us with no time for anything else. As with the English and the Parisians, we’re the figurines who move into the little stone houses once the tailor flies out the car window or the cabinetmaker has his head chewed off by the teething dog. Sold separately, we are greeted with an equal mix of curiosity, civility, and resignation.

  The bleachers had been erected in what was normally a pasture, and they afforded a view of a spacious plywood arena in which a dozen young men engaged in a game of soccer. I thought maybe we’d arrived too late and had missed the main attraction, but then someone opened the door of the cattle trailer and a vachette raced down the ramp and pounded onto the field. She paused briefly to get her bearings and then she attacked, astounding the audience with her speed and single-minded sense of purpose. Unburdened by a dairy cow’s timidity and great bother of fat, she charged the soccer players as if seeking revenge in the name of oppressed cattle the world over. The young men scattered and ran for cover, occasionally darting from their protective barricades to give the ball another fleeting whack. This was pretty much the way things went for the rest of the afternoon. The vachettes charged, the volunteers ran for their lives, and the audience cheered. It differed from a bullfight in that there was no element of skill or pretense of two equally matched opponents. The playing field was clearly uneven, both figuratively and literally. A vachette might chip a horn or pull a neck muscle while throwing a volunteer over her head. She might scuff a hoof kicking someone in the skull, but otherwise she risked no real danger. The ambulance parked beside the concession stand was clearly not waiting for her, and she seemed to know it. On the other hand, it was hard to work up much sympathy for the volunteers who had knowingly agreed to torment a dangerous animal.

  The afternoon had just begun, but already I was wondering how I might feel if someone were to get seriously hurt — maybe not killed or paralyzed — but definitely injured. Just as important, how would I feel if someone didn’t get hurt? Wasn’t that the promise of spending time with a vachette? If it was cuteness we were after, they’d be playing soccer against a newborn kitten. My hopes had nothing to do with these men in particular. I had nothing against any of them and did not actively wish them harm. I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

  My conscience had been bothering me for about a month, ever since the evening Hugh and I had attended a large, headachy fair held each year in Paris. We’d been walking down the midway when I noticed one of the rides frozen in mid motion, several of the passengers just sort of dangling there. This didn’t strike me as unusual, as the creators of these rides seemed to have taken the extra step in making their attractions just that much more hideous than they needed to be. If something whipped back and forth, it also needed to spin on an axis, bob up and down, and hurl through a jet spray of filthy water. Every effort had been made to leave the passengers as nauseous as possible, and the crowds seemed to love it. On first seeing the broken ride, I’d assumed it was designed to pause at frequent intervals, allowing those onboard to feel the full effect of their discomfort. I turned to watch a blue-faced teenager projectile vomit against the side of a taffy stand, and when I looked back up, I noticed that the ride was still not moving and that a crowd had begun to gather.

  I don’t know what happens to people when this ride is working, but when it isn’t, the passengers hang in the air at odd angles, harnessed into legless metal love seats. A couple lay twelve feet off the ground, their seat back stuck in a horizontal position, staring up at the sky as if undergoing some kind of examination. Higher up, maybe fifty feet in the air, a young woman with long blond hair was hanging facedown, held in place by nothing but the harness that now strained against her weight. The couple at least had each other; it was the young woman who seemed the most likely candidate for tragedy. The crowd moved closer, and if the other three to four hundred people were anything like me, they watched the young woman and thought of the gruesome story they’d eventually relate to friends over drinks or dinner. In the not-too-distant future, whenever the conversation turned to the subject of fairs or amusement parks, I’d wait until my companions had finished their mediocre anecdotes and then, at just the right moment, almost as an afterthought, I’d say, “I once saw a girl fall to her death from one of those rides.”

  I estimated the hush that might follow my opening sentence and felt my future listeners leaning forward, just slightly, in their seats. The dead woman was nobody I knew personally, and this would free my audience from having to feel awkward or embarrassed for having broached the subject in the first place. They’d ask questions, and my detailed answers would leave them feeling shaken and oddly satisfied. I voiced these thoughts to Hugh, who denounced both me and the crowd, unironically characterizing the atmosphere as “carnival-like.” He left the midway, and I moved closer to the foot of the ride, pressing against others who, like me, watched the night sky while wearing an expression most people reserve for fireworks. The blond woman’s shoe came off, and we watched it fall to the ground. “And then one of her shoes came off,” I heard myself saying. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so cheap, but I rationalized it by reminding myself that it wasn’t my fault this person was trapped. I hadn’t told her to go on the ride. The management clearly had no plan for getting her down, but that wasn’t my fault, either. I told myself that my interest was compassionate and that my presence amounted to a demonstration of support. I didn’t know about the others, but I was needed.

  The police arrived, and I took offense when they shouted that this was not a show. Well of course it’s not, I thought. But that shouldn’t diminish my investment. I’d been there much longer than they had. I’d been waiting patiently for something to happen, and it wasn’t fair for them to herd me away just to make room for some alleged firetruck or ambulance. The crowd stood its ground, and then more policemen arrived, shoving and herding us back out onto the midway, where our view was soon blocked by emergency vehicles. I was ready to start crying, but everyone else seemed to take their disappointment in stride. The mob dispersed, and people headed off to other, equally dangerous rides where they were strapped into harnesses and jerked into the sky to tempt their own untimely deaths. On the way home that night I practiced saying, “I almost saw this girl
get killed.” I tried it both in French and in English but found my enthusiasm waned after the word almost. Who cares about almost seeing someone die? I blamed the police for ruining my evening and tried to imagine what I might have felt if I had seen the young woman fall.

  Morally speaking, the vachette arena felt a lot less muddy than the carnival midway. I wasn’t sitting in the stands because someone had been hurt. I was simply watching a scheduled event alongside other members of the community. If someone were to get killed, I wouldn’t be rubbernecking but just plain old flesh necking.

  I never quite understood the soccer match. The volunteers weren’t playing against the cow, they were just attempting to play in her presence. Nobody scored any goals, and I felt nothing but confusion when time was called and another, equally puzzling activity was introduced. In round two the contestants were given dozens of inner tubes and instructed to stack them into tall, puffy towers, which were immediately knocked down by the afternoon’s second vachette. Something about the inner tubes seemed to disturb her deeply, and she attacked them with frightening gusto. The young men raced about the field attempting to construct their separate towers. They tried to keep ahead of the animal, but when the clock ran out, they had nothing to show for their efforts.

  A break was called, and I was introduced to the man seated beside me, a retired roofer who explained that the vachettes were from a small town in southern France, not far from the Spanish border. Bred for hostility, they traveled from town to town performing what was called “the traditional vachette program.” It was the word traditional that got to me, the thought that inner-tube towers had been constructed for years and that it just wouldn’t be the same without them. I don’t know who came up with the traditional vachette program, but I’m willing to bet that he had some outstanding drug connections. How else could a person come up with this stuff? One game involved trying to pull a decorative bow from a vachette’s head, and another seemed to amount to nothing more than name-calling. The only ones who appeared to understand the rules were the vachettes themselves, whose instructions seemed pretty straightforward: attack, attack, attack. It wasn’t until the sixth event of the afternoon that two of the contestants were finally injured. For reasons that made no sense whatsoever, a sizable pool had been constructed in the center of the arena, made by laying a great sheet of plastic over a square foundation of hay bales. An enormous truck had been brought in, the pool had been filled, and the volunteers had been trying to coax their latest vachette into the water. She’d kept the majority of her opponents cowering behind their barricades until the last few minutes of the event, when a young man in a floppy hat decided to make a run for it. The vachette looked the other way, pretending to admire a herd of friendly cows grazing in the distance, and then, her head lowered, she charged, catching the contestant in the lower back and jabbing him, tossing him with her long, crooked horns. As the young man fell to the ground, I involuntarily grabbed the knees of both Hugh and the retired roofer. I grabbed them and then gave out a little high-pitched cry, similar to that of a rabbit. A second volunteer ran onto the field, hoping to create a distraction, and the vachette ran him over, returning moments later to deliver a few swift kicks that effectively broke two of the young man’s ribs. She looked ready to disembowel him and might have done so had her handlers not lured her back into her trailer.