One day, Mme Lourette approached Anthony and me after class.

"I have a friend who works for a local radio station. They're doing a program about F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. They need two French-speaking Americans to read the script, play the roles. I thought of you two, since you both speak French very well, but you still have a slight American accent. That's what they're looking for. There is no pay, but if you're interested, let me know. It could be a great opportunity."

I looked at Anthony. He seemed interested. Of course, I wanted to do it. The chance to do some acting in French, especially playing Zelda Fitzgerald! We both replied "Oui, bien sûr..."

"Bon, they want to record it next Thursday afternoon. Are you both free then?"

We were.

"I'll tell him you can do it and I'll let you know what time."

"Can we see the script in advance?" I asked.

"I'll ask him. Just don't mention it to the other students."

How exciting! She thought of me above all her other female students! Not that there were many female students to compete with anyway. There were only a few other girls who could speak French as well as I, and they weren't even in her classes. I always thought my French was good, but this opportunity confirmed my ability-I must really be good if I'm being offered an acting role in French! My imagination took flight...

Some big French producer or director will listen to the show and contact the radio station asking about this young actress playing Zelda, he's developing a film about the Fitzgeralds and is casting French-speaking Americans, he already has an American star to play Scott, but he's at a loss for a female Hollywood star who speaks French convincingly, so he's considering unknowns, the station refers him to the Institute, Dominique catches me in between classes and lets me know, the producer would like me to send a picture, I don't have any, I'll have to get some professional shots, where and how, Dominique knows a photographer in Avignon, I get some photos done and mail them, I get a call a week later, he wants me to come to Paris to audition, I take the train to Paris and find a 1920's dress in a vintage boutique, I read a scene from the script, he says I'm perfect, just the right look, the right voice, a natural, exactly what he had in mind, would I come back the next day to read with Leonardo DiCaprio who will be playing Scott, oui bien sûr, I never knew Leo spoke French...

I only had a few lines. For most of the session, I sat in the engineer booth while Anthony did a monologue. Afterward Anthony and I had lunch at a café. I told him about my fantasies.

"You have quite an imagination, but who knows…on ne sait jamais."

"On ne sait jamais...so I broke up with the guy from Montpellier."

"What happened?"

"We went to Paris together and he told me he was falling in love with me.

That was too much for me so after I got back from England, I wrote him a letter."

"Did he reply?"

"No, nothing. I think I broke his heart."

"Le pauvre..."

"Oui, le pauvre, I felt bad, but what can you do? You can't fall in love with everyone who falls in love with you. N'est-ce pas?"

"Oui. C'est la vie."

"Now I have to deal with the Italian...he's teaching me Italian some afternoons at the jardins des doms, but he keeps making moves on me. I keep making excuses. He's so touchy-feely. You're Italian. What's that all about?"

"It's a cultural thing, but he seems a bit extreme."

"Yeah, especially since I'm clearly unreceptive. What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Des femmes?"

"I like Kristen."

"Serieux?"

"Oui."

"Did you hook up with her?"

"No. She flirts with me."

"So she probably likes you. I don't flirt with guys I don't like, cheri." I suggestively raised my eyebrows. "But we're friends, toi et moi. It's friendly flirting."

"How do I know if she's really flirting or just friendly flirting?"

"Make a move. Kiss her. Her reaction will be your answer."

"I don't want to do anything stupid."

"You could laugh it off if she freaks out...I don't know, you won't know unless you make a move or drop some hints and see how she reacts or be blunt and say je veux te baiser."

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir."

"Exactement. As for me, none of these guys really inspire me, sure I like them, Michelli I like as friend even though he can be annoying, anyway, I want to meet someone who could inspire me to fall madly in love, so in love that I wouldn't give a merde about any other guys, I mean...you know what I mean, right? The British guy inspired me but he turned out to be a con, un salaud. Actually, no guy has ever really swept me away...maybe there is no such guy. Maybe it's just not possible for me to feel so much for a man. Do I sound jaded?"

"Join the club."

"Of course, I'm talking to a cynic."

"It's not such a bad thing to be."

"I'm a cynic too, but I'm still an idealist. I guess you could say I'm a paradox. Je suis un paradox."

Another weekend, another student excursion. A group of us met at the Institute to go to Saint Remy. We took a bus to another town to meet some French people who, through some arrangement with the Institute, were to join us as our guides on our exploration of Saint Remy. They had prepared a picnic lunch and volunteered their cars. We drove about twenty minutes and parked in a lot near a lake. It was a beautiful day, warm for winter. We feasted on le pain, le fromage, les crudités, le saucisson, le poulet, le vin and French conversation.

We were a small group: a middle-aged French couple-George and Catherine, teenage daughter Michelle, their dog (a German Shepherd), two other French women and four Americans-Jim, Anthony, Melissa-a sweet vacuous girl, and me.

George said, "Vous parlez très bien, pour les Américains," and his family agreed. It seems the French are always impressed when an American can speak their language, even if it's only a few words. We exceeded their expectations.

Jim talked a lot. He had lived in France before. I envied his fluency. He pitched stones into the lake, making them skip several times before they sank. I watched the rings expand, imagining them expanding all the way to the edge of the lake and beyond into the Mediterranean, reaching as far as the Atlantic.

After lunch, we packed the picnic things in the car. Then we started walking. A quarter mile down a dusty road, we came upon some Roman ruins. Plateau des Antiques. Two structures, an arch and mausoleum-four-sided, with a pillared cupola, stand isolated on this "plateau" of grass and plane trees. The bas-reliefs on the mausoleum depict eroded scenes of unnamed battles. Vague pieces of antiquity. Mysterious monuments with no explanatory plaques, no definable history, planted in the middle of Provence as if they had fallen out of the sky.

We continued walking along a hilly narrow road, alongside dry grass and more plane trees, with low blue-gray mountains in the distance, the Alpilles. An old church appeared in a shelter of pines.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" I asked George.

"That's Saint-Paul-de-Mausolée, the asylum where Van Gogh lived toward the end of his life."

"Can we go inside?"

"It used to be open to visitors until about ten years ago. That stopped because the tourists were disturbing the patients."

I imagined Van Gogh locked in his little room, painting what he saw through the barred window. Not such a bad place to be insane. But even the beauty of nature is hostile when you've lost your mind.

We continued down paths with green piney sprigs at our feet.

"It smells like an herb," I said. "I don't know what, but it's familiar."

"C'est le romarin," George said. Rosemary. He picked a sprig and handed it to me. "You can use this to flavor many Provençal dishes. A lot of it grows here, you don't have to go to the store to buy it."

I inhaled the rosemary, massaged it between my fingers, thinking of my burlap bag of les Herbes de Provence I had bought at Monoprix. The dog ran ahead. Jim followed. He was a lanky, outdoorsy type with long hair in a ponytail. I strolled along beside him.

"You have a dog?" I asked in French.

"Yes. I miss her."

"I love dogs."

We sat down on a rock and petted her.

I said, "It's funny to think that dogs understand different languages like we do. I mean this is a French dog. She wouldn't understand English commands."

"True."

"Sit," I said to the dog.

The dog just sat there panting.

"Asseye-toi," I said.

The dog just sat there panting.

Jim laughed. "Maybe she's German."

"Do you know any German?"

"A few words, not much."

"You speak French really well, unlike most of the students at the Institute."

"So do you."

We walked along together, away from the others. We stopped at a rocky precipice naturally formed into abstract windows and seats. There we sat and talked, but I was outside of myself. All I could think of was Van Gogh's insanity.

That morning I stepped out of a dream and into a perception of superimposed awareness. More than self-awareness...awareness of the minute, the unmentionable, everything that is normally unnoticed. It was not the first time. Otherwise, I would not know how to describe It, this subtle sudden oncoming of nonexistence. Or is it over-existence? I sensed It in the car on the way to the lake, looking out the window and seeing the invisible. Then while walking the trails, I was unnecessarily drawn to cracks in rocks, the choreography of rosemary in the breeze. Why, she seemed fine, you say. You had no idea. That's how it is-other people can't see when It's there, they see the mask of a healthy, normal, young woman.

Now I'm telling you. It has a name: anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder. I have been diagnosed, but they are only labels.

I am basically a disorder, from time to time. This is only the beginning. And every time It starts, I think-no, not now, anytime but now, but what is the use? There is never a good time for madness. I still believe in an innate ability to halt the progression, stop It in its wake, will It to oblivion, but the more I fight, the more It creeps into the forefront of my mind's life. The idea that I may one day create something larger than myself, or an extension of myself into something larger than life, like Van Gogh did in his sunflowers and stars, something more beautiful than what "normal" people can only imagine...this is my greatest consolation.

La vie quotidienne. Mme Laurette speaks of this as if it is a beautiful thing. La vie quotidienne sounds exciting in French; in English, it is daily life, every day existence. La vie quotidienne is everything and nothing. Les Jardins des Doms is the highlight of la vie quotidienne in Avignon. I adopted a spot on the sloping patch of lawn overlooking the Place du Palais. My spot for reflection, daydreams, reading, writing...

Le 22 mars 1997

A flutist plays Debussy in the Place du Palais. My stay laces are loose; I told Dorine to not tie the laces too tightly. The sun is grueling though it is only spring. I may faint, even without a clinging corset. I am waiting to meet my lover whom I have been forbidden to see. My father has arranged a marriage with a noble fop. My lover is poor, an artist, he makes love to me with poetry. My fiancé is a beast, trying to win my heart with gold. He is like the bridge: old, unmovable, wretched stone, a grave. O, but my love is like the Rhone, ever flowing, a vein pulsating, river of life!

Go to top