Travel

La Bonne Merde: Paris and Patrick Star

by Cara Van Le

“In order to be a true Parisian, one must suffer in Paris.”

It was the first day of our French language practicum and the professor was handing back the dictation from our placement exam, an excerpt of an entirely depressing piece about Paris by Julien Green.  I looked down at my neatly torn half-sheet of paper filled with vocabulary I didn’t know existed.  Soupçonne, côtoie, saisir, souffert.  How could anyone who saw my exam think that I belonged in the advanced section?  I didn’t even know the words coming out of my professor’s mouth.

My professor, a born-and-bred Parisian, sat with his hands neatly folded on the table, waiting for input on the piece.  His eyebrows were raised, as if shocked at our stupidity.  Do you not know suffering? his eyes pleaded with the class.

I stared intently down at the sheet, at the carefully bolded and italicized title of Julien Green’s piece.  Une Ville Secrète. I clearly recalled having labeled the dictation “Une Ville Sucrée.”  Paris, a Sweet Village.  I had it wrong from the beginning.

By the second day, I was pinned as the class jester.  I spent the first day avoiding being called upon, which was easy since the teacher didn’t know my name.  This changed the next dreary morning.

Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé le week-end dernier? he asked.  Nobody volunteered to share their weekend exploits.  Thirty awkward seconds passed before he consulted a roll-call sheet that had our names and ID pictures.  He repeated the question to my picture, then stared me dead in the face.

I hesitated.  I stumbled through an account of my trip to the Eiffel Tower.  He accepted this messy summary but wanted more.

Did you go to the upper levels?

No...  there was not... to have... a lot of money.

I pursed my lips to keep more random French words from bursting out of my mouth.  My professor scoffed.  He kept my name in mind, always ready to invoke it when it came time to read or to assign extra homework. Why me? my eyes would plead, but, too embarrassed to try Pourquoi moi? I would merely sulk, undoubtedly sending signals that said, J’accepte.  J’accepte.

My teacher drew a large oval on the board. Qu’est-ce que c’est? Everyone mumbled oval or circle.  He shook his head, adding what looked like a giant frown onto the board.

Paris, I mouthed.  Call it intuition, but I knew what this absurdly depressing image resembled.  Paris was the face and the frown was the Seine.

Paris, he said impatiently, not seeing that I finally got an answer right.

When we read Jacques Prévert’s Familiale in my French class at UCI, my teacher had the class fill out a brief explanation of the symbolism in the poem. The next day, she had us act out the poem. I knitted, one guy slashed a sword made out of foil, my classmate Doug carried a tombstone that said “R.I.P. Jean Claude van Doug” and someone baked cookies to share with the class.

What, does, this, poem, mean? My current French teacher pouted.

After much teeth-pulling, in which the class generally agreed that the poem had anti-war sentiment and that “faire du tricot” means “to knit,” my teacher told us that through the poem, we know that we are too accepting of societal values. No one said much, and when he was too frustrated to get us to do anything but agree, he jutted his lower lip out. “Puh.”

This is the Paris that I have come to accept.

My teacher enjoyed laughing at our mistakes. He especially enjoyed shaking his head and underlining “non” on our papers.  But one day, while learning French table manners, we discovered his Spongebob Squarepants keychain. He pulled it out of his leather man-purse nonchalantly, trying to find a makeshift knife for our imaginary table setting. We giggled at Patrick, the retarded starfish, dangling from his apartment key.

Later, Natalie, Jill and I imagined him buying the keychain. Qu’est-ce que c’est? He wondered aloud, jutting out his lower lip, shrugging, and then tossing it on the counter for the cashier. Or maybe he recognized the starfish from the show, laughed the cigarette smoke out from his nose and knew that this had to be his. Or perhaps a misguided girlfriend gave it to him, and he, still loving her despite her mistakes, used the keychain as a sign of his faith that next time, she would get it right.

The three of us looked at each other.  He is human, we nodded.

A month later, Natalie and I found ourselves on a weekend vacation in Ireland, able to communicate feelings that Paris seemed to lock inside of us.  We saw the Book of Kells at Trinity College, its expansive campus stippled with ancient cobblestone and green, green grass.  I frowned at the recollection of the UC campus in Paris, with its tiny courtyard shared with furniture-makers.  We eventually found ourselves drunkenly skipping around Dublin with charming, dorky Irish men.  Throughout our first day, each of us secretly wished we had chosen to study in Ireland.  As went to bed that night, we couldn’t help but think that Paris really did suck.

The next night, we were confronted with what seemed to be a giant frat party.  The music was too loud, the streets too crowded. Suddenly, I began to recognize strangers; the city was so small.  As some guy approached me, I realized that I was no longer comfortable in Dublin.  I needed my personal space.  Paris, me manque, I sighed into the smoke of the cigarette I redeemed from the guy for groping my ass.

Recounting our times away from Paris, Natalie, Jill and I wondered at our similar longing for the city.

“Why?“ Natalie demanded, balling up a fist at Paris in general.

We thought of the metro system, the food, the familiarity with the city.  Then we thought about our French teacher, who seemed cold and condescending before, but with the advent of the Spongebob keychain, seemed like he could even be one of us.

“You know, if we were studying abroad in Australia, nobody would warn us that we were going to have downs,” Jill remarked.  Pretending to be an Australian study-abroad program enthusiast, she shouted: “Welcome to Australia!  You’re going to love it here!”

In contrast, she sat up straight, wiped the smile off her face, and took upon the role of a French study-abroad program enthusiast: “Welcome to Paris.  You are going to suffer... and you are going to like it.”

We all nodded our heads in d’accordance.