La Femme du Boulanger

We live, we are constantly told, in bubbles. On social media, in politics, in our suburbs, our cities, our countries. Our class, our profession. Tribes, parochialisms, identities. Divisions, distinctions, distributions, detachments. Borders everywhere.

I suppose it’s true. Which is why we retreat to various comfort zones when the world is challenging us or scaring us or otherwise chipping away at us. We draw curtains, pull up hoods, turn away.

We also live in the grey, in the bleeding in-between, on the littoral, as waves of enquiry lap at our feet. In transitional spaces, transit zones, at turning points, in moments of transubstantiation. Trans, in general.

The big bubble I am walking around in at the moment is the English language. It bounces me off every sort of engagement and interaction. Shines a light on me. Casts me in shadow.

An America friend once told me he visited China and got lost walking around Beijing. He had a phrase book with him, with a pronunciation guide, and he was stopping people and asking them for directions to his hotel. No-one could figure what he was saying. One old man looked particularly perplexed as my friend rattled off his phrase, but fortunately, another man stopped who was bilingual and sorted things out.

My friend thanked him, but he wondered aloud why his efforts at communication had failed so badly. The bilingual man said to him, that last man you spoke to, he not only didn’t understand you, he didn’t think you were speaking words. He thought you were insane.

I am also insane as I stumble around this city.

For most simple things, most interactions here in Nice, I have enough passive French to figure things out, but I can’t respond. And even when I do, when I find the right words and phrases, my mouth and larynx are shaped the wrong way, the pronunciation is all wrong and the words become unrecognisable to the native speaker.

At lunch the other day, the woman serving us wanted to chat. She is probably mid-fifties. This is her place. Are we just visiting? How long are we here? Will you come back for dinner?

Tanya spoke to her in French and explained we are visiting our son, that he dances with Nice Opera, that we are here for three or four months. The woman asks Tanya what work she does, and they talk about public policy and management.

The woman has a little English and tries to include me in the conversation. Asks what I do. A writer, Tanya tells her, when I fail to comprehend the question.

Now, patiently, the woman is interviewing me, slipping between English and French and I am responding in kind.

What do you write about? The future. Technology. Ah, robots! Oui. Work. How work changes.

Will you write about Nice?

Bien sur!

Will you put me in your book?

Her workmate, her husband perhaps, I don’t know, comes out onto the terraced area where we are, delivering plates to a table about four down from us. The woman yells out, these people, they are from Australia. Their son dances with Nice Opera. This one is a writer. About the future.

Now they are both interviewing me and their whole clientele is following along.

Is the future going to be good or bad? the man asks. What do you think?

I shake my hand in front of me, gesticulating that it could go either way.

They nod. Look concerned. We struggle on, discussing the problems of the coming world.

So much meaningful information is passing between us, despite and because of the barriers between us. It is exhilarating and terrifying and frustrating: but meaningful. It is not pointless. There is a fluency of human contact, whatever the words say.

There is other work to be done by now; other people to serve and talk with.

L'addition, s'il vous plait. Even I can manage that. The man brings us the bill.

The woman drifts back inside, returns with plates of salad for the table next to us, but she shows them to us as she passes, attesting to the freshness of her ingredients, to the tastiness of her food.

You will come back? she asks.

We will.

La Femme du Boulanger, 3 rue Commandant Raffalli, 06000 Nice France