Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Thursday, July 15, 2004 MY JULY GARDEN
If anyone has any doubts about why it's nice to live here in the summer, this picture should set them at rest. Of course you have to add in mosquitoes on your arms, slugs under your bare toes, humidity, unpredictable weather and a short growing season, but midsummer in New England is pretty special. We came home to an explosion of hollyhocks - from yellow and pale pink to rose, maroon, and nearly black - I've never had such a crop. They make up for the dismal failure of most of my vegetables, neglected during the trips to Canada: the French beans, usually so reliable, are down to a third of the plants (slugs ate them); the carrots didn't come up; and the lettuce, tomatoes, and Swiss chard are late. But no woodchucks this year, and the neighbor's dog has learned to stay in his own yard.
Today I had to drive south on an errand, to a town that used to house highly successful tool-and-die industries and is now depressed. After completing my errand I stopped at the local Friendly's, ordered a BLT and coffee, and sat looking out the window at the shopping center parking lot, watching the people, listening to the conversations around me, and thinking of Tom Montag, who does this sort of thing a lot. I had to wait a long time for my meal. The waitress, a sturdy middle-aged woman with dyed blond hair and a worried expression, was running ragged, and came by twice to apologize for making me wait. The ice cream counter and cash register were being taken care of by an older woman, frail and slight but kindly, and much calmer than her co-worker. Behind me, a table full of men on their lunch break bantered about car racing, and a lone young man, wearing a reflective acid-green highway vest and a baseball hat, came in to pick up a take out order, slumping down in a seat by the window to idly read through the ice cream treat menu and soak up some of the air conditioning.
This part of the state is very different from where I live; it's far from universities or stable employment, but it is also closer to the way things used to be. The people are solid, kind, and hard-working when there is work; the young girls - of whom several showed up to go to work on the afternoon shift - are wholesome, tending toward the strong-and-hefty, with fresh complexions and guileless faces. A generation ago, they'd be milking cows. Now they're making milk shakes at Friendly's, or packing groceries at the local supermarket.
Thanks to some foresight and an excellent town planner, this particular town has started to come back from the exodus of the tool-and-die industry, and it's also managing to preserve its downtown. After lunch I drove slowly out of town, and stopped at a farm truck with a canopy parked alongside the road and bought two pounds of fresh peas in the shell, a zucchini still dewy from the morning when it was picked, and a couple of ripe, perfect tomatoes from a friendly, buxom woman with eyes that went in separate directions. Then I drove home through sun, a sudden rain shower, and sun again, listening to an old Rod Stewart tape, singing along and playing the steering wheel like a drum.
We're going back south today, and I had a number of errands to do before we left. Early in the morning I went on a croissant-and-baguette run to the best nearby bakery, about four blocks from here. It's a lovely walk, along the park and narrow streets where everyone's little garden is bursting with color and individuality. The bakery itself is a room about the size of our terrace, with croissants and pastries displayed in the window, baskets of freshly-baked baguettes on end, a counter for the cremes glaces that are the nightime allure of this place, a small, lighted display case for tarts and cakes, and another refrigerated glass case, near the cash register, filled with excellent cheeses and pates in little porcelain ramekins. Clearly, we have only just begun to make the acquaintance of this boulangerie and its offerings, but the baguette was the best we've had so far, and the croissants, eaten on the terrace with our morning coffee, were buttery and flaky and, in my estimation, nearly perfect.
Then it was back to setting this place in order, knocking down the plethora of IKEA boxes for recycling, watering plants, cleaning the kitchen, figuring out what I could make for unch out of the leftovers in the refrigerator. Then I went toward the main street to do three errands - go to the bank, the locksmith, and the fishmonger.
In this quartier, French is the language, and nearly only French. Left you think everything about coming here is croissants and chevre, there are other aspects that I have found disorienting and dismaying, not the last of which is simply finding oneself in a totally different culture, not as a tourist anymore, but as someone who intends to stay and try to fit in. It is a completely different experience and mindset, and not being fluent in the language that everyone is speaking is much more of a strain than I thought it would be at first. At the locksmith, a small neighborhood shop, like most of these, run by a French Canadian proprietor who has probably worked there his entire life, I was able to ask for three sets of keys copied from the ones I presented. He replied, in French, "Three of each." I said yes. Then he said, "For a total of nine." I thought a minute, because he had used a verb I didn't immediately know, and said, "Yes, that's right." Then the phone rang, twice in quick succession. He turned to me, as he was making my keys, and smiled and complained that the phone wouldn't stop ringing. I smiled and said, "Yes," and that was the end of the conversation, because I couldn't chatter anything back the way I would have done so easily in English. It was the strangest feeling, and as I watched him make the keys, studying his face in profile and the type of shirt he was wearing, and the sort of shop he had - old, and filled with locks and keys and lock sets of every type - I was getting a feeling for the sort of person he was, and wanting to be friendly, but feeling the distance of the communication barrier like a flush suffusing my body. I wondered how long it would take. It wasn't that I felt American, or stupid, or foreign, or different, or like I couldn't communicate who I was by the way I smiled or gestured - I just felt that distance sinking in more keenly than I have before. "Voila, Madame," he said, putting the keys in my hand. "Merci," I said, and left.
At the bank, everyone was bilingual, and there was no problem, just more ethnic diversity: the officer who helped me had a Muslim name that included "Sayed", which means a family descended from Prophet Mohammad. Her dark eyes and hair that made me think she was Iranian, so - I've learned by now that this question is perfectly OK - I asked if she was. No, she smiled, she was Lebanese. We talked a little, and I told her my husband's background. "But your family name..." she said, quizzically. "No, he has a different name," I said (mine is as Anglo as they get), and we both laughed. Different names for husband and wife are common; every couple in our building uses different ones.
The final errand was at the poissonerie, just two blocks from home. I've been studying a beautiful fish cookbook, a very thoughtful house-warming present from our Icelandic neighbors who knew I was looking forward to exploring a much broader range of fish species and cookery than I've ever had access to before. I had memorized the French names for halibut and haddock, the two fish I was looking for, and so when I walked into the shop, a concrete-floored room with a freezer case on one side and two long glass cases, packed with ice, and whole and cut fish, I was able to read the signs and be sure I was asking for the right thing - although halibut and haddock are pretty clearly themselves. "Je voudrais d'eglefin," I said, and the proprietor came over and asked me how much I wanted. "Quatre fillets," I said, and he repeated the number, which made me realize I had pronounced the end of the word instead of leaving it silent. "Quatre," I repeated, more correctly, and held up four fingers. The proprietor, a thin man in his forties with a chiseled face, dark hair, and bright eyes, looked closely at me. "Do you speak English?" he asked. "Yes," I said. "So it's better this way," he said. "Yes, but I am really trying to improve," I said, probably looking helplessly at him. I liked him. He smiled. "It's easy," he said. "I had no...school...but I learned French and English just from talking to my friends. You will learn." "I have to practice," I said. "Yes, of course!" he shrugged, while weighing the fillets and putting them in a white opaque plastic bag. "What is your native language?" I asked. "Portugese," he said. "Oh!" I said, smiling again. "Well, you will be seeing me a lot. I've just moved in nearby, and I love to cook, and there are so many new kinds of fish here that I want to learn how to cook." "I can...explain for you," he said, and blushed ever so slightly. I smiled and said that would be wonderful. "It would be my pleasure," he said, in French.
4:38 PM
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Monday, July 12, 2004
Thank you so much to all of you for your good wishes! I really do feel welcomed here, and encouraged, and it is much appreciated by both J. and me.
Ah! We've been working hard getting settled, and it has been tiring but also a lot of fun. J. and I have never really done this - we combined our two small households when we got together in 1979, and I moved into the house where he had been living. We've never left. So we've simply accumulated and sifted and rearranged, assimilating household gifts and occasional - but not many - purchases. The idea of starting almost from scratch, in a new structure rather than a century-old one in constant need of maintenance, is absolutely radical. And we are both still in a kind of disbelief at where we are finding ourselves, and the fact that everything in this apartment works.
In Canada, apparently, applicances are generally not left or even offered for sale in a house or apartment when the owner moves. So we had to find some. The prices of new appliances seemed pretty prohibitive to us, but within four or five blocks of here, there are probably twenty dealers in refurbished ones. So last week I set out to see what I could find. In the first shop, I was met by the owner, a large French Canadian man in dark green work clothes and thick glasses. "Oui, Madame, bonjour," he greeted me, and asked what I was looking for. "A stove and refrigerator, I said, in French, and then asked if I could speak English. "Non, Madame," he said, smoothly, "je parle francais seulement," and continued to chatter at me, barely taking a breath: "Here, Madame," leading me to a dented stove, "this one is very good, it has not very many years, very fine, also this one here, is this what you are looking for? You won't find a better one, only $250..." and on and on. The appliances were stacked together, chock-a-block, and they were all looking very old and very used. Monsieur Salesman was now shadowed by a gaggle of young men and boys who seemed to be family members and gad come out of the back of the shop, and every time he said, "Yes, Madame, this one is very good, a fine deal," they would all nod in agreement. I began to wonder if I was the only customer they had had all day. "Thank you, I'll come back with my husband," I told them, and backed out the door while the proprietor continued to tell me I'd never find better deals or a longer guarantee in all of Montreal.
A few doors down was another business, this one bright and airy, with the appliances arranged in long neat rows and good-looking, nearly-new samples in the window. I peered in, and saw the proprietor conferring with his salesman. They looked nice, and smiled at me - "bonjour, Madame" - as I walked in, but they left me alone and continued to talk. I took a quick tour and decided to plunge into conversation. "Je cherche un bon poele et frig," I said. "Oui, Madame," the proprietor said, and we continued, half in English, half in French, both of us switching back and forth as we needed words, although, as usual, he was much more fluent than I. (I find this sort of conversation wonderful: one of the most exhilarating and least predictable aspects of being here, and a situation in which I always learn something.) Eventually both the salesman and proprietor were involved, we were all having a good time, and I picked out a good-looking stove and refrigerator. I came back with J. an hour later, and we ended up buying a washer and dryer too, all for about $825 Canadian, with a two year guarantee on parts and three months on labor. An hour after that, they delivered and installed the appliances - and they all work just fine so far, except for one moment the first night, when the refrigerator made a screaming sound which finally stopped when we opened and shut the freezer door. The dryer was missing a handle on its door; today the proprietor called, as he'd promised, to say he had found one and we could pick it up - which we did. "Call me if the frig screams again," he said.
You know what this reminds me of? My home town, half a century ago.
9:19 PM
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Sunday, July 11, 2004 HIBISCUS sur ma terrasse
After our arrival in the city Thursday morning, we picked up the keys to the apartment from the owner a few hours before the closing – he had offered this so that we wouldn’t have to leave our car, full of personal possessions, on the street. How kind! So we were able to carry our things into the apartment, change our clothes, and take a deep breath before going off to the office of the notaire on Avenue du Parc.
The legalities of buying a piece of real estate here are very different than in the U.S. For one thing, there is a special class of lawyers, called notaries (as opposed to avocats, but very different from the officials we call notaries in the U.S.) who handle property transactions. Both parties use the same notaire, and he or she is responsible for researching the title to the property, going back a number of years, pro-rating the taxes or other fees, and making up the legal contract for the sale. We only had one telephone call with the office of our notaire, telling us what to bring to the closing, and until yesterday we had never met her. As it turned out, our real estate agent, who normally accompanies the buyer to the closing, got caught in traffic and couldn’t make it. We were waiting in the reception area talking in French and English with the seller, who we have talked to several times and like very much. So after the phone call from the agent the three of us decided to simply proceed.
The notaire read all of the documents – there were not many - in French and translated them into English, with the rest of us breaking in occasionally to ask questions, often about various customs such as the tax code and the famous “welcome tax” that is levied on every property sale in Montreal. It was an entirely congenial meeting, about an hour long, with a lot of mutual translating, since none of us were completely at ease in the other languages, and ending with a discussion about Vermont and Quebec. We presented our check, paid the pro-rated taxes and condominium fees, everyone shook hands – and that was it. We had a quick lunch, got in the car, and drove back here, in somewhat of a daze that has still not completely lifted. Although we’ve begun to move in, and have slept here, and eaten several meals cooked in our own kitchen, it still feels quite unreal that this is a place we own now and can call home.
Everyone has been very kind – the former owner left two beautiful hibiscus trees on the terrace for us, as well as thoughtfully leaving soap, tissues, and toilet paper – and we have already met two of our neighbors, who were both friendly and welcoming. “Well, bienvenue,” said one man, a native of France, after asking what our schedule would be and finding out we planned to be here fairly often. “We are happy to have some Americans here in our building.” I smiled gratefully and thanked him, wondering if this was politeness or a true sentiment, but hoping very much that it was true.
When we were packing the car, we found we had some extra room, and both of us decided that what we really wanted to bring was some of our own artwork – a few of my paintings and several of J.’s framed photographs. They’re here now: a painting of a valley in upstate New York on the mantle; two photos from London leaning against a wall; a photograph from Vermont; a watercolor self-portrait of mine over the only piece of furniture we have here, a new sofa-bed. I thought it was interesting that this was what we wanted to have with us, beyond the essentials, and now they are reminding me that home has much to do with the creative spirit we carry with us, as well as other places, and other times in our lives.
Tomorrow: buying appliances en francais.
3:23 PM
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