Conversation class in Paris. A sixty-year old man from Costa Rica with grown out short hair flat on top. Maybe ex-military. He described himself ironically as un Flâneur (one who strolls through life?). A smart, compassionate woman of forty something from Brasil, white skin. I didn’t catch her job or project. I thought I caught a slightly slavic accent. A young man, dark skin, of thirty-five or so from Cape Verde, an island nation off East Africa, quite a way off shore. Another white-skinned Brazilian woman, late twenties or early thirties, very white skin, writing a doctoral dissertation on Sartre. I asked her if she could say what existentialism was in one sentence. She responded, saying, We are condemned to a life of freedom. That’s as far as she got before the men jumped in. Her French was very good. The best among us. Then there was me (Pete). I walked my usual thin line between irony and serious contribution, and survived once more! Javi, to my left, from Spain, a face always a little on the red side. I keep forgetting what he does, some kind of research. I think sociology. He has a dim view of what will become of Spain. Then Ross, a Scotsman, who is learning to detect and track laundered money. That brought up a discussion of what kind of money was being laundered: drugs, arms, child-adult sexual slavery and traffic. Then came a Turk, who is writing a book on the Turkish general Cherif Pacha, exiled to Paris, where he survived an attack on his life in January, 1914 because he had opposed the Young Turks (Ottoman Empire) and won their wrath. Each day, the discussion leader is an older French person, with great variety, always a puzzle at first because of accent, clarity of voice, and political views and other presumptions. This man today, seventy-maybe, one pack a day, never once addressed the very decent black man from Cape Verde (or I think even looked at him), one of the smallest countries in the world, perfectly placed for the slave trade, later a Portuguese colony. The leader treated him as if he didn’t exist. I kept thinking his turn was coming up, but it didn’t. Our leader also gave a short discourse on the benefits French colonialism brought to Southest Asia. The older Brazilian woman exchanged a look with me over that. I love these classes. I get to communicate with people from the rest of the world in a third language. It makes me very happy.
Category: ~ Uncategorized
Learning French With Authority
A few years ago, in Montpellier, southern France, on a modern tram, a man stood like a wrestler at the head of the car, with his legs apart and with an expression on his face that said that he was some kind of system-wide inspector of the most feared kind and that he was about to find the one passenger in the car who had not bought a ticket. The Inspector looked at his watch every five seconds or so, as if it was also his job to be sure that time itself was functioning properly. When he was not checking the time or giving us intimidating looks, he repositioned himself in his wrestling stance, as if the tram floor were wet sand that had sucked him down a little. He also looked out the windows at the passing city, as if to check that everything there was also in order. It took a few moments to understand that a self-appointed state of authority had crept up on him when he wasn’t looking and, like an enchanted cloud, had taken possession of him.
A few days ago, in a bus shelter in Paris, near the Jardin des Plantes, we puzzled over illustrated routes. A man sat on the metal bench smoking and watching us. I asked him a bus question in French. I didn’t understand his answer. Perhaps he hadn’t understood my question. I thanked him anyway and turned back to the map. A man about fifty or sixty, in flood pants—trousers cut strangely high—wearing modern, waterproof sandals, a windbreaker, everything khaki color, as if he were a German retiree, began scolding the man I had not been able to understand.
“You cannot smoke here.”
The man who was sitting was unresponsive and continued to bring the cigarette up to his mouth.
“You cannot smoke here.” The scolder pointed to a spot on the sidewalk outside the shelter. “Step out there.”
The smoker mumbled something.
“Where are you from?” the scolder asked.
“Romania.”
“You cannot smoke in here. I am police.”
I do not know what makes me do these things. I had not been in France a week, but I said to the scolder, “You are police?” And then I held up my hand, cupped, in a gesture that said, “Where is your identification?”
The Authority turned his full attention on me. He came very close and warned me that police did not have to show their identification. He said it was against the law to interfere with the police. The situation had sped up beyond the speed of my language readiness, I suppose even in English. Relying on all the French police movies I’d seen, I held up my cupped hand again to show I still wanted to see his identification. Plus, the man, as I have said, was strangely dressed and a little too authoritative. Plus, the French smoke everywhere and no one thinks twice about it. Plus, I thought I might have seen something like this once before.
He demanded to know what country I was from. I said Mexico. He asked me whether I spoke French, German, or English. I continued in French. “You are police?” I held up my hand again.
“Your French isn’t very good,” he said. “Probably your English isn’t either.”
At that moment, the Nr. 89 appeared, I said as much, of course in English, to my partner and gave the Romanian a parting conspiratorial look. He held his cigarette suspended in front of his mouth and seemed mildly amused. I got on the bus with my friend, pressed my Navigo card against the green, jellyfish-shaped electronic button, got my electronic ding, and immediately forgot the man who claimed he was police.
Ray Bradbury’s Advice to Young (and Old) Writers
I highly recommend this good advice by Ray Bradbury for all those who want to be writers, or are writers. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the filmed interview. Delightful viewing and good tips for the digital age. http://culturacolectiva.com/12-consejos-de-ray-bradbury-para-quienes-quieren-ser-escritores/
The Dogs of Guanajuato
A friend who is a recent resident of Guanajuato said she had needed to talk to us, to someone, anyone. She had looked over her balcony and watched an adolescent Mexican boy strangle puppies, one by one, that had been kept in a bag. She had screamed down that he should stop it. He ran away, past our house. We saw none of it. We don’t know who it was, though we have ways of finding out.
A lot of people in my town treat dogs as beloved pets when they are small and love to carry puppies through the streets as some kind of cultural statement I don’t really understand. It would be like a culture that got a kick out of carrying parrots around on its shoulders. We occasionally see that here, but it’s rare.
A lot of other people in my town place dogs on their flat concrete roofs to scare away thieves. Often there is no shelter from sun, rain, heat or cold. The dogs are prisoners; and that why Guanajuato is famous for its howling by night—prisoner dogs seeking connection—and for its crowing roosters by morning—or perhaps all day long. For us, both sounds have become white noise and we don’t hear it.
Once, a few years ago, I was looking for a place to paint behind the Olga Costa Museum beside a lovely shaded creek when I came across a large dog hanging by its neck from a tree and very dead. It had taken two people to perform the execution: one strong person to hold the dog up and another person to tie the green string around its neck. The dog must have trusted them enough to let them hold it up in the air. Then they let it down, so that its feet didn’t quite touch the ground. And then watched the results of their work while the animal struggled and died.
What do we call that? Cruelty? A perverse, sick curiosity to see an animal die of asphyxia. I think it is like a hanging. Murder by sociopaths. We know that people do this, and some of us find it horrifying. I have a piece called “The Darkness in My Stories” which addresses this elemental horror in me.
I also wrote about the dog and the green string in my novel Playing for Pancho Villa. I quote the passage below.
“Frank climbed down from the boxcar. Doña Mariana and Manuelito were coming back from their walk along the arroyo. The boy spoke to her in short bursts and kept watching her, as if expecting a response. Doña Mariana answered him, but did not look at him. She saw Frank, but gave no greeting. Frank descended the slope and helped her up to the tracks.
“We saw a dog,” said Manuelito. “It smelled.” They walked toward the passenger car. “It had a green string around its neck,” he said.
Doña Mariana gave Frank a look. They climbed the iron steps at the front end of the car. She made a pillow out her canvas riding hat and had the boy lie down on it. She and Frank chatted a bit about the village, its poverty, the dusty paths and the possible reasons for the train’s stopping. The boy’s lids grew heavy and soon his mouth relaxed, and he was asleep.
The señora’s eyes rested on Frank. “How is the wounded man?” she asked.
“He needs a doctor.”
“I think he has one,” she said.
“He needs a hospital.” Then, after a pause, “You walked up the arroyo?”
She said, “Yes,” then looked out the window and said nothing else.
“And the green string?” Frank asked. Then he looked out the window toward the arroyo, as if he might see the dog.
“Farther back, at the base of an old wall, there are trees and shade and pools of clear standing water. I listened for the train whistle. We didn’t want to get left behind. The place reminded me of arroyos when I was a child. Peaceful, enchanted places, out of the hot sun, with just the barest sound of water. We always looked for pools to swim in. The perfect pool, in a spot of sun to warm us when we got out.
“When we started back toward the train, we saw the dog. A large dog. And probably friendly, because someone had been able to lift it up and hold it while someone else tied the rope, string really, to the tree. It took two people to do it, at least one of them strong. Its rear feet were able to touch the ground. The green string tightened. The creature struggled to hold itself up, but left alone, eventually slowly choked to death from its own weight.”
Frank looked at her.
“There were two men watching us from up above, where the houses are. As if they were waiting for our reaction. I looked back at them longer than I would have ever done with strangers, let alone men. I wanted to see if they were the killers.”
She paused again.
“I could not tell. There was nothing in their eyes to indicate whether they had done it.” She stopped again, as if considering.
“That is what troubled me. That you couldn’t tell one way or the other. All you could see was indifference. I called up to them and said there was a hanged dog and that they should bury it before it brought disease to the village. There was no reaction at all, as if that didn’t matter. At that point, I did not want to be there any longer, so we left quickly.”
Frank didn’t know what to say. Instead, he took his Winchester from the corner by the window and laid it across his lap.”
Obligations
My friend the newspaperman—he’s more of a distant acquaintance—asked me gently, or was it meekly, whether he could borrow….
“What?” I asked. It wasn’t clear.
“…a hundred pesos,” he repeated, speaking a little more firmly.
He stands behind his rack of magazines and newspapers. He folds the daily newspaper and hands it over the rack. You take it with one hand and give him eight pesos with the other. Behind him, there is a green metal box that houses more magazines, even some used books. He stores the rack and everything else in the box and locks it up like the Paris book stalls along the Seine.
I might have been sitting in the small restaurant opposite his stand, and he may have entered and asked for money there. I don’t remember exactly.
“It’s a loan,” I said, just to get that straight right at the beginning.
“Yes, yes,” he said, but with a voice that was less distinct. Maybe almost inaudible.
“When are you going to pay me?” I asked.
He took the 100-peso note out of my hand. I didn’t understand his reply. He tends to mumble in his natural state. I think he said tomorrow. But I could have been wrong.
I may have passed by two days later. I had given the 100 pesos readily; I expected an equally rapid and cordial repayment.
I leaned forward to hear him better. His two front teeth are missing. I thought that was perhaps why I missed what he said.
There was a problem. I listened for what it was. His dog ran away, his wife was sick, a Zeppelin crashed. I wasn’t sure which of those it was—or perhaps something entirely different. Whatever it was, you could tell by his expression that it was bad news and we would have to be patient.
The bad news lasted for a week. Each time I asked, his answers were equally indistinct, mumbled, filtered by the bland look on his face, as if he no longer knew me and wasn’t sure why I was talking to him.
One day, suddenly, he handed me fifty pesos, and I thanked him.
I asked him when I might expect the other fifty. I’m not sure what he replied other than that it had to do with time that would come, not with time that had passed.
Every few days, when I thought to or had to pass his stand, I would ask him if he had my money. I used precisely that possessive adjective – my, trying to keep the original ownership clear. Each day he became less interested in having to give me a reason for not repaying me; and each day I grew less friendly—which I think offended him, since he grew more unreachable, less diffident and felt, I think, that his financial responsibility had less standing, in fact may have ceased to exist at all.
Yesterday, I came upon a plan. I asked him whether he had a political magazine I read, politically on the left, but more importantly costing forty pesos. He could hand me the magazine over the rack, bless me with his bland face, and I would say thank you and walk away, satisfied with my trick. And he would owe me only ten pesos more.
But he said, “I’m sold out of those.”
In Spanish, it’s an impersonal construction – “Se acabó” – It has sold out.
I had no easy way of checking. I asked him for the most expensive national newspaper, La Jornada – also on the left side of the spectrum.
“Se acabó,” he said.
Whether that was true or not, my trick was not working as planned. I took the daily off his rack. Each one costs eight pesos.
“I’ll take one of these every day,” I said.
His face was pained. He was not happy. I am not sure why. Bad manners on my part? Perhaps something else. Perhaps his newspapers represented real value, whereas the fifty pesos he owed me had lost theirs.
My valued Mexican friend later told me I was behaving aggressively. He said I was more mature and more reasonable than the newspaperman; therefore it was my moral obligation to come to some sort of agreement with him that honored the poor fellow’s dignity. My friend has conducted the same kinds of negotiations with him over loans for years. I agreed with my friend. And also regretted my failing.
Today, I asked for another daily. He handed it over the rack. I took it with one hand and offered nothing with the other.
“I get four more,” I said, and started to walk away.’’
He came out from behind his rack, as if he was going to stop me.
“No,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s sixteen pesos in all. I get four more after this, at eight pesos apiece. That will make forty-eight pesos. You can keep the last two.”
“No,” he said. “The Sunday paper alone costs ten pesos.”
“Okay,” I said. “Eighteen pesos are returned.”
Whereupon he nodded halfway cordially, having found an opportunity to correct my math.
Epilog: Yesterday I passed his stand, he saw me coming, her reached for my newspaper, the AM out of León. I took it in my left hand and gave him my right, smiled and said, “Trato hecho!”—which isn’t quite the right expression, meaning more “a deal!” than “deal concluded!” Didn’t matter, he gave me a half smile, and we are back to normal.
L’achèvement de Moi et Mon Chien
(My first attempt at translating one of my short pieces into French, as a language learning exercise, with much help from my tutor, whose name I will not mention—to protect him from scandal if the translation is just too horrible, to the extent that it would make French cows fall over dead.)
Quand mon chien est mort—combien d’histoires commencent comme ça?—j’ai renouncé à essayer de trouver des nouvelles façons de vendre mon roman. Je pleurais par vagues, tandis que je creusais le trou, un endroit où un oranger avait vécu pour autant d’années que mes fils. J’enveloppai le vieux dans ma veste Harris préférée et je le glissai dans sa tombe.
J’ai pensé que j’aurais appris quelque chose de lui sur la mort, mais c’est plus difficile en n’étant pas le chien qui meurt. Je caressais sa tête et je lui disais, combien il me manquerait. Je tenais sa tête au moment où le vétérinaire s’est approché par derrière, en le touchant sur son épaule vers le haut, cherchant la place pour l’aiguille. Les yeux de mon ami étaient chaleureux et pleins de confiance, même lorsque l’aiguille entrait, et pendant encore quelques secondes après.
Son regard se reposa sur moi, même s’il m’avait déjà quitté.
L’homme qui est assis en face de moi, mon partenaire d’écriture, est en train de bricoler avec les sons que son téléphon peut faire, quand des appels et messages arrivent. Mon défunt ami ne m’appelle pas. Ni ma mère ou mon père le font. C’est l’âge et pas l’aiguille qui les a interrompus. Mais je peux voir l’avantage de la chose pointue. Ton amour te caresse le front avec une main qui n’est plus jeune, mais encore chaude et lisse, comme quand elle avait 34 ans.
“Es-tu prêt?” demande-t-elle.
“Non,” dis’je, avec un gémissement gâté et irrité, à la pensée d’être éteint pour toujours.
Ses yeux sont humides. J’ai accéleré ma respiration, j’ai durçi mon ventre pour l’effort qui venait.
“Es-tu sûr que c’est ce que tu veux?” dit-elle.
“Non,” lui dis-je avec, le meme ton désagréable. “C’est une decision impossible.”
Je sanglotai une fois, ensuite j’essayai de sourire. Je l’aime et la vie aussi. Je suis trop intelligent pour ne pas savoir ce qui va se passer.
“Alors, restes, si tu veux,” dit-elle.
“Combien de temps?” je demande.
“Tant que tu veux.”
Son sourire est chaleureux, ses yeux bruns, aussi profonds que ceux de mon chien.
“Quelques jours, une semaine tout au plus. L’aiguille marquera le moment,” dis-je.
Elle me regarde.
“Les deux aiguilles marqueront,” dis-je.
Nous avons toujours eu nos blagues. Un ami médecin a apporté l’aiguille et la potion fatale. Il s’approchera par derrière, en me touchant sur mon épaule supérieure. Je n’ai qu’à donner le signal.
Nous avons déjà deux fois atteint ce point. J’ai chaque fois choisi le sursis, incapable de tout quitter, d’entrer dans l’oblitération.
Mon vieil ami remuait la queue et il m’a fait confiance, sachant peut-être ce qui se passait, peut-être pas. Il ne pouvait pas me dire comment faire. Si l’acceptation est une sorte d’intelligence, je ne l’ai pas. Je pense que c’est Karl Gustav Jung qui a dit que l’inconscient ne peut pas imaginer sa propre extinction. Il a peut-être eu raison pour mon chien. Peut-être que c’est une bonne raison pour attendre jusqu’à ce que l’inconscient—la mer dont nous venons—se soit glissé plus près. Ou que nous soyons descendus vers lui.
Comme je l’écrivais: Peut-être que c’est une bonne raison pour attendre, mon amour aux yeux bruns, elle que j’ai déjà mencionnée, apparut sur les marches du deuxième étage de ce café deglingué où nous écrivons—chose qu’elle n’a jamais faite dans les dix années dans lesquelles j’ai rèncontré mon partenaire d’écriture, à qui je vais lire prochainement ce freewrite, selon notre coutume.
Je suis quelqu’un qui croit—plus ou moins—en la synchronicité, la théorie que les choses se passent en coordination les unes avec les autres, c’est à dire, pas tout à fait par hasard.
“J’ai besoin d’argent,” dit-elle.
Je sortis mon porte-monnaie.
“Je n’ai pas beaucoup,” dis-je, en observant qu’il se pouvait en fait qu’aucun de nous n’ait assez.
“J’ai juste besoin d’assez d’argent pour Donna,” dit-elle.
Donna es notre personal trainer. Nous disons chaque fois ces mots-là avec ironie, conscients de leur sonorité prétentieuse. Au lieu de rétrécir et nous ratatiner, mon amour et moi nous avons décidé de nous remuscler et pratiquer l’équilibre.
“Et pour le gymnase,” dit-elle. “Trente pesos.”
Je lui passai mon argent. Mon partenaire d’écriture tend la main, il veut sa part. L’ambiance a changé. L’océan s’est éloigné. Il ne faut plus pleurer mon chien imaginaire—au moins pas maintenant. Il est parti au trot par le champ de mes pensées d’automne. Et je suis assez heureux s’il ne revient pas tout de suite. Mon amour marche vers la salle de gym, un endroit aussi branlant que le café ou j’écris. Je suis encore la, tout seul.
Pas encore prêt.
Ute Lemper Sings Cabaret in Guanajuato, Mexico
A Fictional Interview with the German cabaret singer Ute Lemper, Guanajuato, Mexico, October 2013
Ute Lemper performed here in Guanajuato a few nights ago, for the Festival Cervantino. She will go on to the Belles Artes in Mexico City next. Here, she was a great hit with nearly everyone. This is how my fictional interview with her went.
Ute: You represent which newspaper again?
SB: Bennetts Blog—a highly influential voice on matters of artistic importance, read by thousands…
U: (A look of skepticism) Forgive me, but I don’t have a lot of time. Could you be as brief as possible?
SB: The audience loved you here in Guanajuato. That must feel good. I’m sure you are received with great applause wherever you go.
U: Not always. It depends on many factors—age, experience in the world, their knowledge of history, a concern for the voices of the past.
SB: It cannot be easy keeping up song and content for nearly two hours—one woman. That takes enormous courage, in my opinion…not to mention strength.
U: But? I hear a but coming…
SB: Not really—but it must be difficult to be the center of everything, one could even say self-referential—and at the same time honor the voices of great cabaret artists that came before you. Do you find that difficult?
U: Self-referential has a harsh edge to it. But I have been accused of that before…What did you say your name was again?
SB: Bennett…
U: Well, Mr. Bennett, you run risks yourself of being the typical critic, who puts nothing into my work, but after a few strokes at the keyboard begins to make observations surely headed toward fault-finding. Remember that no work of art is perfect, without flaws, that there are no works of art that are not open to correction—unhappily, often by those who have never attempted anything on a stage or anywhere else, certainly never faced an audience for two hours. Or who grew up in the culture I did.
SB: I admire your courage, I truly do. And I know it is easy to be the comfortable critic that always knows better what the artist should have done on stage.
U: Thank you….
SB: But…if you will permit me, may I return to my original question about the risk of being self-referential…?
U: Only if I can just insert, as I said earlier, that we are all self-referential. You are being self-referential when you presume to enter my world to tell me how to perform my art better than I do. Isn’t that true? I may have the patience to listen to your opinions—for a short while, I remind you—but I have as much right to tell you to mind your own business—whatever it is—and not to presume that you can press your adjectives on me when they probably apply just as well to you—as if dishing out criticism were going to be a one-sided.
SB: I agree, but let me try to characterize my remarks a little differently. You evoke Marlene Dietrich but without, I thought, telling us much about the real woman: who sided with the allies and not the Nazis, who reinvented herself over and over, a bi-sexual woman who—as powerful seductress—at her death had accumulated a long list of very famous persons who were her lovers. She often dressed as a man, which gave her an air of androgyny. Certain critics with psychiatric training, I think, chided her for the “fetishistic manipulation of the female image.” You clearly imitate Marlene with great accuracy. And, I repeat, it cannot be easy to evoke that woman and still be your own woman who attracts us largely by the force of her own personality.
U: Well, that’s a mouthful. But you have hit on something that I worry about: imitating Marlene and other others like Edith Piaf without becoming epigonic—without being the inferior imitator. Fetishistic? You mean wearing the top hat, showing leg, posing with one arm extended over my head Marilyn Monroe style, writhing as I slink across the stage? Where do you think all that came from? It comes from the need to please men. Prostitutes and cabaret singers recognized a niche market. Men were the ones who got excited by the androgyny, the slit in the dress that shows the leg, at a time when the leg was not supposed to be shown—along with the rest of the woman’s body. Have you ever seen a woman walk that is wearing a corset? Well, I haven’t either. But those men saw it all the time and paid to see a woman slinking. So, Mr. Bennett, who is it exactly that makes a fetish of the female body?
SB: Who are those big guys at the door that stare at me all the time?
U: Those are my bodyguards….
SB: I don’t want to upset them.
U: What about me?
SB: Sorry…could I mention, you didn’t have a lot of help from the technical staff. The volume was too high and your words got mushed. As you pointed out, singing and speaking in four or five different languages, there should have been translations on the usual screen over the stage. Plus, it was hot and the chemical stage mist made it hard to breath.
U: How do you think we feel with all those conditions? We try to get it right before we start, but local “professionals” often think they know better, and they screw it up.
SB: It would help me if you smiled at your bodyguards.
U: It would help me if you smiled at all once in a while…and you have about thirty seconds left.
SB: Let’s see, you follow a long tradition of setting someone else’s words to music—like Shubert setting Goethe’s poems to music: “Der Erlenkönig.” In your case, Neruda’s poems and the woman Ilse Weber who wrote “Wenn ich wandere durch Theresienstadt….”
U: You speak German?
SB: Yes.
U: I’ll give you an extra minute.
SB: Ilse Weber apparently was a night nurse in the children’s infirmary in the concentration camp Theresienstadt. When her husband was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, she volunteered join him with her son Tommy, to keep the family together. I am sure she arrived at Auschwitz believing they would be reunited. On arrival, she and Tommy were sent straight to the gas chamber. Please don’t call your guards, but if you leave all that out and just sing a song because it was written in a concentration camp, it seems—at least to me—like you’re only giving token recognition to the horror of that time. Almost trivializing it. At least, that’s how it seemed to me.
U: Let’s clear something up. We Germans have been chewing on the holocaust for nearly seventy years. Half of France was anti-semitic. Perhaps. Maybe still is. Your country has splattered blood all over Viet Nam, Irak and Afghanistan and countless other peoples since 1945, and called it “collateral damage”—always with a presumption of your own innocence and rectitude. Always larded with an insufferable air of triumphalism. Have any of your singers ever bothered to sing a children’s song composed by a woman who was then slaughtered at Wounded Knee?
SB: I suppose Buffy Sainte Marie…but the fact is, I don’t really know. I’m simply suggesting that cabaret and sentimentality may be like oil and water…
U: That’s it. I’ll think about it—but you’re time is up. Good-bye.
SB: (standing, possibly out of politeness)…I think you should at least know that, as you were singing the Theresienstadt song, that awful artificial mist was billowing out from stage right and was far too closely suggestive of what you were talking about….and maybe you should try to prevent that next….
Bodyguards: Sir, please step back….