The best way to learn a language, I’d heard, was to have an affair with a native speaker, one who didn’t speak English. Clearly, I needed a new approach and this one did have a certain sex appeal. I gave it a try.
He was, I recall, rather cute — tall, blond, soulful eyes. Perhaps not an intellectual powerhouse, but given our linguistic limitations, I had no way of knowing. I wasn’t even sure of his name. I’m sure he’d told me, but I’d forgotten. By the time I knew it was a name I should know, it was rather too late to inquire. I rummaged through the papers on his desk and found both Alain Chausse and Chausse Alain, but neither had commas.
We both liked red wine and Bob Dylan. We smooched along the Seine, loafed about cafes, and partied with his friends. He spoke little English and my French did improve — but it still had a long way to go. It became my habit to spend the occasional night at his place.
Compared to Joan’s room, Chausse/Alain’s was grand. It featured an easy chair and a small refrigerator. The toilet was just down the hall and the floor had enough space for at least three air mattresses. It was on the top of a nine-story building and had only one flaw — no elevator.
On this occasion, Chausse/Alain had departed before dawn for a three-day trip, leaving me to prepare myself for another arduous day of being ridiculed. Dressed only in monsieur’s undershirt, I popped out for a quick trip down the hall. I returned to find the wind had blown the door closed. It was locked.
I pulled down the t-shirt, grateful it reached below my butt, and tried to make a plan. Even if I had known his name, I had no way to reach Chausse/Alain. Joan didn’t have a phone and, as might be expected, I could not remember her French family’s name. My only idea to avoid a long, t-shirt-clad, and barefooted march through Paris was to enlist the assistance of the building’s concierge — a woman not known for her friendly ways. I descended the nine flights of stairs, tugged down monsieur’s t-shirt, and sheepishly knocked on her door. It opened a crack.
“Oui,” snapped Madame Concierge, a youngish, bullish-looking woman with black hair drawn straight back.
“Wind close door,” I said in French with exaggerated wind-close-door gestures, hoping they and my funny American accent might win her over.
“Oui,” she said, unsmiling.
I continued with more wild gestures and sorry French.
“Ah je compris, Madame Chausse,” she said, indicating she understood and motioned for me to wait. She returned with an ancient wooden box of keys about the same size as the big baby boy she had perched on her other hip.
“Oh, merci, merci,” I cried, forcing a smile. I took the box and lugged it up the nine flights, which did, in fact, get dramatically steeper after the fifth floor.
The box was filled with literally hundreds of keys. First, I eliminated the long-shafted, curlicued, antique keys that might have unlocked the Bastille. Then, I eliminated the tiny keys for padlocks and safes. That left an encouraging two or three hundred Yale-type keys to try. Key-dither-discard, key-dither-discard, it was like a koan. I contemplated Alain’s name now that I knew it was Alain Chausse and not Chausse Alain. I reflected on how very French, and very worldly it seemed to me, to automatically call me “Madame Chausse” even though we both knew I was not. Key-dither-discard, key-dither-discard. I held out hope till the last dither, but not one key fit. I loaded them back into the box and plodded down to report to Madame Concierge.
“Oui, Madame Chausse,” she said with a sigh when I’d made myself understood.
She was not amused and I could tell she didn’t believe me. She shifted her baby to her other hip, I shifted the box to my other hip and we slogged up to Alain’s door. Madame Concierge began to repeat the key-dither-discard koan. While she dithered, I ruminated and the afternoon sun streamed through the skylight overhead. Voila! The answer was not in the box. It was over my head and had been there all the time. The wind that blew the door shut in the first place came through Alain’s open skylight. If I could get up to the hall’s skylight, a quick trip over the roof would let me drop right into his room.
Madame Concierge, already tired of dithering, agreed to this new approach. So, the baby, the box, the concierge, and I trudged back down to retrieve a ladder; and then the baby, the ladder, the concierge, and I struggled back up, stopping to gasp for breath on each landing.
Madame would not let me on the ladder, fearing, no doubt, she’d end up with both me and my broken leg on her hands. So, I sang “Frere Jacques” to her screaming baby, but quit when I decided the song might be his problem. I just held my breath. Madame made her ascent and, merci dieu, she made it. I thanked her repeatedly as she came out Alain’s door. I dragged the ladder back down the stairs, limped up the now K2-steep nine flights, threw on my clothes, and shot out of there.
At the nearest chocolatier, I bought a chocolate for myself and a box for Madame Concierge. I returned to the scene and gave her the chocolates.
“Oui, Madame Chausse,” was all she said. — Kate Crawford, in her story “Learning to Think Outside a Parisian Box” from Jennifer Leo’s book Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures: Funny Women Write from the Road (read for free)
