Knowing French
This story was first published in the STORYCUTS series by Vintage Digital 2011
Taken from the collection The Lemon Table.
Copyright © Julian Barnes 2004
Julian Barnes has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
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Knowing French
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We hope you enjoyed this story. If you want to read more stories by Julian Barnes, try his other contributions to the Storycuts series such as
Bark / The Silence 9781448128709
The Revival 9781448128778
Hygiene 9781448128747
Alternatively, read the original parent collection, The Lemon Table 9781446448557.
KNOWING FRENCH
Pilcher House
18 February 1986
Dear Dr Barnes, (Me, old woman, rising eighty-one),
Well, so I read serious WORKS, but for light reading in the evenings, what does one do for fiction in an Old Folkery? (You will understand that I have not been here long.) Plenty enough ‘Fiction’ provided by the Red Cross. What about? Why! the doctor with the crinkled hair ‘greying at the temples’, probably misunderstood by his wife, or better still a widower, and the attractive nurse who hands him the saw in the theatre. Even at an age when I might have been susceptible to such an implausible view of life, I preferred Darwin’s ‘Vegetable Mould and Earthworms’.
So: I thought, why not go to the public library and go through all the fiction beginning with A? (A little girl once asked me: ‘I understand about the Stag Brewery but what’s the Lie Brewery?’) Thus I find I have read many entertaining descriptions of pubs, and much voyeurism on women’s breasts, so I pass on. You see where I am going? The next lot I come to is Barnes: ‘Flaubert’s Parrot’. Ah, that must be Loulou. I flatter myself that I know ‘Un Coeur simple’ by heart. But I have few books as my room here is trop petite.
You will be glad to know that I am bilingual and pronounce a treat. Last week in the street I heard a schoolmaster say to a tourist, ‘A gauche puis à droite.’ The subtlety of the pronunciation of GAUCHE made my day, and I keep saying it to myself in the bath. As good as French bread-and-butter. Would you believe that my father, who would now be 130, was taught French (as Latin then was) pronounced as English: ‘lee tchatt’. No, you wouldn’t: not sure myself. But there has been some progress: the R is frequently rolled in the right direction nowadays by students.