Last August, while I was still living in the country, my neighbor shouted from his kitchen window, “Retourne dans ton pays de merde.” I am not going to translate his injunction word for word. It contains one of those terms American newspapers cannot print. Let’s just say he told me to go back to where I came from.
My neighbor was what the French call “un pauvre type,” what I’d translate as “a loser,” though he’d not done so badly for himself. He’d worked as a truckdriver, piloting an 18-wheeler all over Europe till he retired. He lived in a small stone house smack up against mine, with a window that shouldn’t have been there according to French law, but was and it gave him full dominion over my life. He could see me, inside and out, and he could torment me from his rising up to his lying down with war movies and quiz shows at full volume on his TV.
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| The window of my discontent |
This man had a lady-friend. They were not married and on paper did not live together, each one having a separate residence. His lady-love lived over the local pharmacy in a big, two-storey apartment, with high, wide windows opening onto the village square, converted in the 1970’s into a macadam parking lot.
Ancient French villages ignore the grid. Their organization is closer to a labyrinth where unimaginable connections become reality. Climbing up and down stairs, groping through dark passageways, my neighbor and his lady-friend could travel between their respective lodgings without ever stepping outside. Incredible but true—it took me a while to catch on.
Like her companion, “un pauvre type,” the woman was “une pauvre fille,” but not in the same sense. She’d been born into a good bourgeois family. Both her parents had been pharmacists and that’s probably how she got her apartment. It belonged to a retired village pharmacist. If my neighbor’s lady-love was “une pauvre fille,” it’s because she was handicapped, mentally and physically.
These two were a strange couple. She was broad-shouldered and tall and because of her physical handicap, tottered from side to side when she walked, much like Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein. He was short and though not fat, had an impressive beer belly that preceded him wherever he went. First thing in the morning, that meant a trip to the bakery and then to the village café. In the bakery, he bought an apple pastry. At the café, he washed it down with a beer. He sat at a table facing the entrance and stayed there, reading the café’s newspapers, having a couple more beers, surveying village life, till his lady-love rousted him at noon. Baguette in hand, she led him to the dinner table for a home-cooked meal.
This couple spent a lot of time watching TV, their own shows, in separate apartments. The lady-love broadcast her soap operas from her open windows to anyone passing on the square. My neighbor broadcast to me. At bedtime, the TV’s were turned off and my neighbor felt his way through the maze till he reached his lady’s bower. Yes, on paper, they lived separately but each night slept side-by-side.
At dawn my neighbor would rise and hurry back home. He turned on the TV, sat down, and waited. It was imperative that he be at his address when a home-health worker showed up to give him his daily dose of insulin. He could not be late, he could not sleep in. Otherwise, “the jig would be up,” their subterfuge exposed. The State would know they lived together and their social security benefits would be reduced accordingly. Two single people, two households, neither one benefiting from other financial support, brought in more money than a couple living under the same roof.
In the village, their arrangement was common knowledge and it raised no eyebrows. After all, nearly everyone had some little secret they were hiding from the State.
The French have a taste for petty fraud, and after living with them for years, I can understand why. We pay a lot of taxes (yet so do middle-class Americans), and it always feels good when you can hide a few euros from the taxman. This is especially true in a country where, compared to my “pays de merde,” the United States, salaries are surprisingly low. All those years I worked as a university professor, I kept quiet about mine to family and friends stateside. I was afraid they’d worry about me.
In exchange, however, social benefits are high, beginning with guaranteed state health insurance. While we work and even beyond into retirement, we pay for it, yet no one can ever take it away. This insurance removes a burden of worry well worth the price of a dozen McMansions and endless stretches of perfect green lawns.
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In France, during the pandemic, there was little debate about helping businesses, renters, or those who found themselves fully or partially unemployed. Aid was quickly put into place. Though there are cracks in the system, the French still aspire to a state that protects citizens and residents alike.
In a few days, on September 2nd, French children return to school. Based on income and the number of children, many families receive benefits to help pay for clothes and school supplies. This money is allocated not only to the poor but to many middle-class families, who are not made to carry an unreasonable tax burden, as is too often the case in the United States, where tax breaks go to the rich and super-rich.
I love my “pays de merde” in a visceral way I’ll never love France. I am grateful to France because it enables me to live a fairly stable life. Things may change, but as they stand today, a health emergency cannot wipe out my savings or put at risk the ownership of my home. Such things happen, as readers know, in the United States.
Because of people like my neighbor and his companion (she’s the one who put a lamb-skinned-covered fist through my front window in a fit of acute paranoia), I left the country village where I’d hoped to settle. I made a mistake. I didn’t fit in, but that’s OK.
On this late August day, back in the village, my neighbor is probably at the café having another beer while his lady-friend prepares the noonday meal. Frankly, that is the way things should be and I’m glad the French state is taking care of them.
