This afternoon I went to an impromptu concert at N’s house.
The musicians were a French boy and girl preparing for a concours next month. The young violinist played amazingly well and
wore a pair of slinky transparent black trousers that not many people could have worn as well as she did. The young man had a blond
ponytail and seemed like a nice fils de bonne
famille who had been made to practice a lot. But with the dissonant music he was
playing, I couldn’t really tell if it was him or the piece.
After N got a divorce, I thought she would be poor, as so
many women are. 
I was surprised the first time I saw her gorgeous apartment
with its view across the roofs of Paris. Afterwards we drank champagne supplied by a family friend in the business. Another American woman there, whom I have
known for years, told me she was getting a divorce from her French husband. It’s
not another woman, he says, and she still hopes he will change his mind. How
sad. I always thought he was sweet, although a bit boring. What makes a man like that suddenly want out?
So many times the clash of cultures ends by making a marriage more difficult, rather than more exciting as it seemed at the beginning. I have seen it over and over through my years in Paris: the pretty (usually blond) culture-hungry American, British, Australian girl, and the charming French guy. They meet, fall in love, marry, have a child or two, and then discover that their ideas of what normal life should be are completely different. He expects to have lunch with his grandmother every second Sunday at the very least, and spend half of August with his family, and every New Year’s Eve with his best friends from the fac. She expects to take the kids home every summer and is horrified when the teacher slaps them or tells them they are nul (a regular occurrence). He thinks her manners and cooking are bad and that she should put more effort into how she dresses. She doesn’t want to be a dame du 16e (see previous post) and sometimes wants to sit around in jeans with a glass of beer with her girlfriends, telling dirty jokes and laughing loudly. I hope they work it out, for their children’s sake. But so often, they don’t.
Comments