The Virgin Blue (8 page)

‘I –’ But this was not the moment for modesty and I was too tired to argue; my anger at him had faded the moment I sat back down. Reluctantly I shrugged my jacket off. ‘I've got psoriasis,’ I announced lightly, trying to pre-empt any awkwardness about the state of my arms. ‘The doctor says it's from stress and lack of sleep.’

Jean-Paul looked at the patches of scaly skin like they were a curious modern painting.

‘You do not sleep?’ he asked.

‘I've been having nightmares. Well,
a
nightmare.’

‘And you tell your husband about it? Your friends?’

‘I haven't told anyone.’

‘Why you do not talk to your husband?’

‘I don't want him to think I'm unhappy here.’ I didn't add that Rick might feel threatened by the dream's connection to sex.

‘Are you unhappy?’

‘Yes,’ I said, looking straight at Jean-Paul. It was a relief to say it.

He nodded. ‘So what is the nightmare? Describe it to me.’

I looked out over the river. ‘I only remember bits of it.

There's no real story. There's a voice – no, two voices, one speaking in French, the other crying, really hysterical crying. All of this is in a fog, like the air is very heavy, like water. And there's a thud at the end, like a door being shut. And most of all there's the colour blue everywhere. Everywhere. I don't know what it is that scares me so much, but every time I have the dream I want to go home. It's the atmosphere more than what actually happens that frightens me. And the fact that I keep having it, that it won't go away, like it's with me for life. That's the worst of all.’ I stopped. I hadn't realized how much I'd wanted to tell someone about it.

‘You want to go back to the States?’

‘Sometimes. Then I get mad at myself for being scared off by a dream.’

‘What does the blue look like? Like that?’ He pointed to a sign advertising ice cream for sale in the café. I shook my head.

‘No, that's too bright. I mean, the dream blue
is
bright. Very vivid. But it's bright and yet dark too. I don't know the technical words to describe it. It reflects lots of light. It's beautiful but in the dream it makes me sad. Elated too. It's like there are two sides to the colour. Funny that I remember the colour. I always thought I dreamed in black and white.’

‘And the voices? Who are they?’

‘I don't know. Sometimes it's my voice. Sometimes I wake up and I've been saying the words. I can almost hear them, as if the room has just then gone silent.’

‘What are the words? What are you saying?’

I thought for a minute, then shook my head. ‘I don't remember.’

He fixed his eyes on me. ‘Try. Close your eyes.’

I did as he said, sitting still as long as I could, Jean-Paul silent next to me. Just as I was about to give up, a fragment floated into my mind. ‘
Je suis un pot cassé
,’ I said suddenly.

I opened my eyes. ‘I am a broken pot? Where did that come from?’

Jean-Paul looked startled.

‘Can you remember any more?’

I closed my eyes again. ‘
Tu es ma tour et forteresse
,’ I mur-mured at last.

I opened my eyes. Jean-Paul's face was screwed up in concentration and he seemed far away. I could see his mind working, travelling over a vast plain of memory, scanning and rejecting, until something clicked and he returned to me. He fixed his eyes on the ice-cream sign and began to recite:

Entre tous ceux-là qui me haient
Mes voisins j'aperçois
Avoir honte de moi:
Il semble que mes amis aient
Horreur de ma rencontre,
Quand dehors je me montre.
Je suis hors de leur souvenance,
Ainsi qu'un trespassé.
Je suis un pot cassé
.

As he spoke I felt a pressure in my throat and behind my eyes. It was grief.

I held tightly to the arms of my chair, pushing my body hard against its back as if to brace myself. When he finished I swallowed to ease my throat.

‘What is it?’ I asked quietly.

‘The thirty-first psalm.’

I frowned at him. ‘A psalm? From the Bible?’

‘Yes.’

‘But how could I know it? I don't know any psalms! Hardly in English, and certainly not in French. But those words are so familiar. I
must
have heard it somewhere. How do
you
know it?’

‘Church. When I was young we had to memorize many psalms. But also it was in my studying at one time.’

‘You studied psalms for a library science degree?’

‘No, no, before that, when I studied history. The history of the Languedoc. That is what I really do.’

‘What's Languedoc?’

‘An area all around us. From Toulouse and the Pyrenees all the way to the Rhône.’ He drew another circle on his napkin map, encompassing the smaller circle of the Cévennes and a lot of the cow's neck and muzzle. ‘It was named for the language once spoken there.
Oc
was their word for
oui
.
Langue d'oc
– language of
oc
.’

‘What did the psalm have to do with Languedoc?’

He hesitated. ‘Well, that's curious. It was a psalm the Huguenots used to recite when bad things happened.’

That night after supper I finally told Rick about the dream, describing the blue, the voices, the atmosphere, as accurately as I could. I left out some things too: I didn't tell him that I'd been over this territory with Jean-Paul, that the words were a psalm, that I only had the dream after sex. Since I had to pick and choose what I told him, the process was more self-conscious and not nearly as therapeutic as it had been with Jean-Paul, when it had come out involuntarily and naturally. Now that I was telling it for Rick's sake rather than my own, I found I had to shape it more into a story, and it began to detach itself from me and take on its own fictional life.

Rick took it that way too. Maybe it was the way I told it, but he listened as if he were half paying attention to something else at the same time, a radio on in the background or a conversation in the street. He didn't ask any questions the way Jean-Paul had.

‘Rick, are you listening to me?’ I asked finally, reaching over and pulling his ponytail.

‘Of course I am. You've been having nightmares. About the colour blue.’

‘I just wanted you to know. That's why I've been so tired recently.’

‘You should wake me up when you have them.’

‘I know.’ But I knew I wouldn't. In California I would have woken him immediately the first time I had the dream. Something had changed; since Rick seemed to be himself, it must be me.

‘How's the studying going?’

I shrugged, irritated that he'd changed the subject. ‘OK. No. Terrible. No. I don't know. Sometimes I wonder how I'm ever going to deliver babies in French. I couldn't say the right thing when that baby was choking. If I can't even do that, how can I possibly coach a woman through labour?’

‘But you delivered babies from Hispanic women back home and managed.’

‘That's different. Maybe they didn't speak English, but they didn't expect me to speak Spanish either. And here all the hospital equipment, all the medicine and the dosages, all that will be in
French
.’

Rick leaned forward, elbows anchored on the table, plate pushed to one side. ‘Hey, Ella, what's happened to your optimism? You're not going to start acting French, are you? I get enough of that at work.’

Even knowing I'd just been critical of Jean-Paul's pessimism, I found myself repeating his words. ‘I'm just trying to be realistic.’

‘Yeah, I've heard that at the office too.’

I opened my mouth for a sharp retort, but stopped myself. It was true that my optimism had diminished in France; maybe I was taking on the cynical nature of the people around me. Rick put a positive spin on everything; it was his positive attitude that had made him successful. That was why the French firm approached him; that was why we were here. I shut my mouth, swallowing my pessimistic words.

That night we made love, Rick carefully avoiding my psoriasis. Afterwards I lay patiently waiting for sleep and the dream. When it came it was less impressionistic, more tangible than ever. The blue hung over me like a bright sheet, billowing in and out, taking on texture and shape. I woke with tears running down my face and my voice in my ears. I lay still.

‘A dress,’ I whispered. ‘It was a dress.’

In the morning I hurried to the library. The woman was at the desk and I had to turn away to hide my disappointment and irritation that Jean-Paul wasn't there. I wandered aimlessly around the two rooms, the librarian's gaze following me. At last I asked her if Jean-Paul would be in any time that day. ‘Oh no,’ she replied with a small frown. ‘He won't be here for a few days. He has gone to Paris.’

‘Paris? But why?’

She looked surprised that I should ask. ‘Well, his sister is getting married. He will return after the weekend.’

‘Oh.
Merci
,’ I said and left. It was strange to think of him having a sister, a family. Dammit, I thought, pounding down the stairs and out into the square. Madame from the
boulangerie
was standing next to the fountain talking to the woman who had first led me to the library. Both stopped talking and stared at me for a long moment before turning back to each other. Damn you, I thought. I'd never felt so isolated and conspicuous.

That Sunday we were invited to lunch at the home of one of Rick's colleagues, the first real socializing we'd done since moving to France, not counting the occasional quick drink with people Rick had met through work. I was nervous about going and focused my worries on what to wear. I had no idea what Sunday lunch meant in French terms, whether it was formal or casual.

‘Should I wear a dress?’ I kept pestering Rick.

‘Wear what you want,’ he replied usefully. ‘They won't mind.’

But I will, I thought, if I wear the wrong thing.

There was the added problem of my arms – it was a hot day but I couldn't bear the furtive glances at my erupted skin. Finally I chose a stone-coloured sleeveless dress that reached my mid-calf and a white linen jacket. I thought I would fit in with more or less any occasion in such an outfit, but when the couple opened the door of their big suburban house and I took in Chantal's jeans and white T-shirt, Olivier's khaki shorts, I felt simultaneously overdressed and frumpy. They smiled politely at me, and smiled again at the flowers and wine we brought, but I noticed that Chantal abandoned the flowers, still wrapped, on a sideboard in the dining room, and our carefully chosen bottle of wine never made an appearance.

They had two children, a girl and a boy, who were so polite and quiet that I never even found out their names. At the end of the meal they stood up and disappeared inside as if summoned by a bell only children could hear. They were probably watching television, and I secretly wished I could join them: I found conversation among us adults tiring and at times demoralizing. Rick and Olivier spent most of the time discussing the firm's business, and spoke in English. Chantal and I chatted awkwardly in a mixture of French and English. I tried to speak only French with her, but she kept switching to English when she felt I wasn't keeping up. It would have been impolite for me to continue in French, so I switched to English until there was a pause; then I'd start another subject in French. It turned into a polite struggle between us; I think she took quiet pleasure in showing off how good her English was compared to my French. And she wasn't one for small talk; within ten minutes she had covered most of the political trouble in the world and looked scornful when I didn't have a decisive answer to every problem.