18 August 2020
When you can’t travel to France, why not bring France to you?
Paris Match is one of those rare books that makes you laugh out loud, as von Sothen, an American living in Paris, attempts to understand what makes the French tick. Why do they take such long holidays with friends who ration snacks and mock you for sleeping in; why do French men turn to him (an American!) for fashion tips; what really is the correct way to cut brie, and how do you tell if you’re being invited to a super-exclusive secret society of intellectuals or a weird sex club? John von Sothen has found most of the answers and in this delightful, witty book shares his experience, insights and humour into the fine art of becoming everyday French.
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From the chapter She Had Me at Bah
The moment I realised I deeply wanted to marry Anaïs was the moment when she casually reminded me that we could always get divorced. She said it in that French nonchalant way, preceding it with the classic ‘Bah . . .’ opener I’ve heard millions of times from her since. Anything following bah is blatantly obvious to the person saying it; the tone contains a mounting exasperation with the one hearing it, who is usually me: ‘Bah . . . the drawer over there. Where else would we keep the batteries?’ ‘Bah . . . Gene Hackman, John. Who did you think I was talking about?’
I’ve always wanted to film Anaïs when she starts her bahs, then splice them together into one fluid bah, which I could then post online to show the world I married a woman who’s part French lamb. In this case, Anaïs’s bah was followed by the revelation that marriage wasn’t the be‑all and end- all I’d built it up in my head to be. She loved me, yes, and sure, we should try it, but if it didn’t work out, ‘Bah . . . we get divorced. What do you want me to say?’
At the time, we were standing on the medieval Pont-Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris, which crosses the Seine and links the Left Bank with the Samaritaine department store on the right. The Pont-Neuf is one of those places in Paris that’s so picturesque, you not only feel you’re on a movie set when you’re there, you’re tempted to act out the film you think is being shot. It’s been the backdrop for countless films, including the 1990s cult classic starring Juliette Binoche titled (not too ironically) Les Amants du Pont-Neuf.
Perhaps those walking past us that night felt the cinematic magic of the moment in that same ‘Paris is for lovers’ way. Anaïs and I were just another passionate couple caught up in the throes of romance. They expected us to embrace at any moment with a Bacall–Bogart kiss, and then attach a stupid lock to a nearby railing.
If anyone had overheard Anaïs, it might have ruined their moment. But, for me, it was an epiphany. She was right. We could always just get divorced. There was a fallback plan. All of a sudden, the pressure was off, so what was I waiting for? I kissed her then, realising no American woman I knew would ever have said that. Paris was my kind of town, cold and cynical, and Anaïs is as Parisian as they get.
Before this moment, I’d fallen in love with France through another woman, my mother, who’d lived in Paris for a year, in 1953, learning to paint at Les Beaux-Arts after she’d graduated from Vassar.
I know the date because I found among her belongings a dog-eared clipping taken from the Pittsburgh Press’s society section, which detailed Mom’s scheduled trip to Paris, where ‘cobblestone streets, art galleries and the picturesqueness of French life are luring this young Miss’. The piece was accompanied by a photo of Mom painting on the front porch of her family’s farmhouse outside Pittsburgh, and went on to announce she and my grandmother would be hosting a picnic later that week, and that both would be ‘judging hats’.
As a child I’d listen to Mom’s stories of France, snuggled into the nook of her neck, as we lay in her bed, she either reading aloud from a diary she’d kept during that year or staring at the ceiling and delivering the lines from memory, sometimes even in French. Often she’d start at the very beginning of her adventure on a slow steamer bound for Le Havre, during which she attended lavish dinners and dances, had drinks with Princeton boys, met a swarthy count from Montenegro and visited a tiger in steerage. Other times, she’d skip ahead and place us smack dab in the centre of Paris where she bunked with others in a tiny flat on the Île Saint-Louis, soaking up the free-spirit life of post-war Paris.
I knew these Paris characters by heart: Mimi, Mom’s roommate, who convinced her to captain a canoe on the Seine with two bottles of wine, which led to their capsizing and being fished out by the gendarmes. Or her starving artist friend, Hannah, who ate only onions because she wanted to save money, and eating a raw onion apparently cuts your appetite. Then there was the struggling writer who had the unfortunate curse of sharing the last name Hemingway. ‘Je me suis dit,’ Mom declared in French, ‘a famous writing career was not in the cards for Russell Hemingway.’
While she spoke, my mother would take on an exotic glow, as if she was inhabited by the actress Simone Signoret, and because I was keen on following each of her stories and descriptions, I’d latch on to certain words and phrases I knew as a way to cross the stream that was the rest of her vouloir courir comme ça French. During these nights au lit, me drifting off to sleep under France’s fairytale spell, I imagined it as a land full of wonderment, taste and refinement, a place where Mom once shone, and where, one day, maybe I could, too.