Suddenly - for nothing travels as quickly as memory - I am transported back to 1965 and find myself in a bar in St Gervais-les-Bains, near Mont Blanc. VR and I, with my brother, Sir Hugh, have just been served a cheese fondue by the patron, a youngish chap who's disposed to talk. I look up at the b&w TV and see John le Carré being interviewed on one of the French channels. "What's his French like?" I ask the patron. "Pretty good," he says. Although I'm unaware of it, wheels start to turn and I'm now a different person than I was then, fifty-two years ago.
No big deal and of no consequence to anyone else but me. A decade later, back from the USA, I start French lessons and they've continued ever since. Two more decades pass and, after a couple of false starts, I buckle down to improving my prose. No doubt far far too late.
So am I merely and belatedly aping John le Carré? Yes, but less obviously. I admired his success as a novelist and his fluency in French but there was something else: his ability to pass through Europe without immediately trumpeting his nationality, discussing things other than being foreign, being accepted as a member of a polyglot community. It would have been foolish of me to want to be a citizen of the world, but a citizen of Europe would have done me just fine. To feel at ease in Bordeaux, Cologne and Gothenburg and to profit from this easefulness.
Should VR and I see if that alpine bar still exists? Never. But I'd like to buy the patron a drink.
In a bar on Friday, a patron noted (jokingly) that we might be "shirted and one-punched" if we weren't discreet with our chatter. Luckily he warned us in English, and evidence of what he meant festooned the walls and the live TV screens.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: I may have misled you. Patron in French (thus the italics) means "boss". Of course you may been chattering in a bar with more than one owner/manager: one purveying hospitality the other urging you into greater expenditure resulting in ivresse publique. "Shirted" baffles me, either you came in wearing one and were threatened with having it torn from your back, or you arrived bare-chested and some puritan insisted on clothing you. I left the USA in 1972 and was under the impression I did so privily. Given this present emphasis on shirts I would have been entitled to have aped either Mme. de Pompadour or Louis XV when she/he said, "Après moi (nous), le déluge."
ReplyDeleteHockey bar. Ice hockey brawl tactic - pull your opponent's jersey up over his head, both blinding him and binding his arms. Partner and I were warned after brazenly exposing our ignorance regarding a poster featuring vintage Zamboni machines and their parent NHL clubs. All in good fun. I spotted a chip on the rim of my glass, and after draining the beer from the glass I brought it to the bartender's attention, just to save someone else a cut lip. She rewarded me with a wooden disc, redeemable for one drink. I cheerily passed the "chip" to the young fellow who had invited us oldsters to converse. I will insert appropriate parts of your re-com into a translator....later.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: A lot of new stuff there. Forced me to look up Zamboni. Liked the idea of being given a wooden disc as currency, proof that the US has moved ahead of Easter Island re. these matters, but only just. Partner must be "a good sport" to enter a hockey bar; don't think I'd have had the moxie.
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