A minor mistake in wording can create a chain of events with unforeseen consequences. Daniel Lehman is 33-years old, and of average height. He is wearing glasses and has brown hair and a light beard. He is what most people would probably consider good looking. Where he sits on the one to 10 scale, he does not know. His misunderstanding of the meanings of j’taime, je t’adore and je t’aime bien is why in the September of 1982 he is sitting in his living room reading and rereading the last lines in the letter from Patricia he received earlier in the day.
Beside Patricia’s letter on his coffee table is another letter, one he is struggling to write. Next to his letter is the “Bescherelle” Daniel needs to navigate the intricacies of French conjugations and how to spell verb endings. He wishes he could write in English but he is not sure just how well Patricia can understand it. In English he could easily create the kind of nuanced message this situation requires. In English, he is sure he could make a bad situation seem like a good one. When he is not trying to write, he is asking himself why he is struggling with how to craft the right message for someone he barely knows. All he needs to do is nothing, and the situation he is in will slowly resolve itself. He can’t do that to that to the Patricia who has shown him so much ardour.
What has brought Daniel to this circumstance was his decision to attend an école d’été in France. Going to Strasbourg for summer school and meeting the very special Patricia was not something Daniel had planned on. It was his older brother Jack who convinced him that spending his time in France was a better idea than lying in bed sucking his thumb wondering who his girlfriend, Jan, was fucking.
“Come to Strasbourg and take a French class. I know you can speak a half-assed French. A month in school will give you a chance to improve it.” was Jack’s suggestion.
“I don’t have any money,” said Daniel
“Yes, you do. You have way more than enough money,” said Jack.
“I can’t take the time off,” said Daniel.
“You’re your own boss, so yes you can,” said Jack.
Jack was right on all counts, and a few weeks later, Daniel found himself in France.
When Daniel met Patricia at the école d’été, he was struck by her directness. What he said in class he can’t remember. But whatever it was, Patricia found it interesting enough to want to talk to him, and she asked Daniel to have coffee with her. Daniel knew better than to assume a 19-year-old, petite, bra-less, tight-jeaned, pretty, young woman with long brunette hair, a wide smile, and engaging blue eyes was interested in him romantically. Daniel rarely assumed that. He usually waited for a woman to make the first move or give some other clear indication of her interest in him as a man. Making the mistake of thinking a woman wanted anything more than friendship is a blunder impossible to come back from. But it didn’t matter to Daniel that it wasn’t going to turn into anything romantic. He wasn’t looking either for romance or for no-strings-attached sex. Classes were over for the day, and Daniel was happy to have company. If not for Patricia, he would just walk around aimlessly before returning his dormitory room.
Patricia took him to a café kitty-corner to the university where their classes were being held. He asked her about herself and why she was taking a course in French when it was quite clear she spoke French fluently. Her answers were perfunctory. She was half French from her father and half German from her mother. She lived in a city called Kehl across the Rhine from Strasbourg. She had dual citizenship and was entitled to go to university in France, but she needed to prove she had sufficient ability in French to study at a French university. Thus, the need for the French course.
During their first coffee together, Daniel waited for Patricia to ask him about himself. It became clear that no such questions were going to be asked. Daniel’s assumption was right. Patricia had no interest in him beyond a temporary friendship. What she was really interested in was “Qui a tiré sur JR?”
Her question about who shot JR made Daniel smile. Apparently, Dallas was a year behind in Europe. Though millions of North Americans had tuned in for the answer to that question, he was not one of them. He knew about the JR thing because it was difficult to avoid the chatter around the program, but he had never seen it.
Patricia was only momentarily disappointed that she was not going to be the first of her friends to know the answer to the burning question about Dallas. Instead, she quickly turned to talking about what she was really interested in. Movies.
She couldn’t have picked a better topic. Daniel will watch just about anything that flickers. When he was 13, he found a late-night television show that broadcast classics and foreign films and he would watch until the wee hours of the morning. The movies of Bergman, Truffaut, Fellini, and others were like discovering a whole new cuisine. Listening to the host talk about movies made him want to be a film critic and for years he watched every movie he could.
Just how into movies Patricia was became apparent when he inadvertently said that Bunuel had directed “Last Tango in Paris” instead of Bertolucci. She looked at him as if he had lost his mind Patricia could not believe he made such a mistake and began to lecture him on modern cinema. She told him when the movie was shot and where, how long it took to film, and the full names of the cinematographer and editor. She knew more about movies than any normal human being should. It was as if she had memorized every issue of Cahier Du Cinema.
During the next three weeks, Patricia and Daniel spent every afternoon together walking and talking. Mostly about movies. Patricia wanted to watch only BOF movies. Eventually, Daniel had to ask what that was. Bande Original du Film was a complicated way of saying in the original language, not dubbed. Patricia really wanted to go to the Le Grand Rex in Paris and see movies the way they were meant to be seen. According to Patricia it was an amazing theatre with a huge screen. She made Daniel promise to go there if he ever got to Paris. Daniel thought that was unlikely to happen. He had no plans to visit Paris, with or without Patricia.
The three weeks Daniel had planned on staying in Strasbourg went by quickly. The course ran another week, but he had pressing, personal business at home. Instead of going to the university and saying goodbye to the people he had met there, he spent his time packing and getting ready for the train to Frankfurt airport. He thought of tracking down Patricia to say goodbye, but he decided it wouldn’t matter to her one way or the other. It wasn’t like they were lovers. They were just two people hanging out temporarily.
Daniel was more than a little surprised when Patricia showed up at his dormitory room that last day. When he opened the door, Patricia just stood there silently looking at him. It was as if he had done something very wrong and she was waiting for an apology.
After an eternity of silence, she said, “I was looking for you this morning. But you weren’t in class.”
“Yes,” he said. “I told you I was leaving today. I didn’t have enough time to go to class and get ready to leave.”
Patricia looked at him as if he were talking gibberish.
“You didn’t think about saying goodbye to me? I wanted to find you earlier so we could make love before you left.”
Daniel did not know what to say. He had never imagined sex with Patricia. He had done all he could to remain in the friend zone. Once when they were on a bus and she was sitting while he stood, she leaned forward and her loose top afforded him a view of a small, perfect breast and its pink nipple. He immediately turned his head away. He did not want to think of her as a potential sex partner. He did not want to have sex with her. His life was already complicated enough and having another lover would only add to his challenges.
“We still have some time before I have to get my train. We can still make love if you want,” Daniel said without knowing why both he and Patricia were so willing to change the nature of their relationship.
Patricia’s face responded to his statement before her mouth did. She looked at him as if he were as dense as a potato.
“You think I want to make love with you and then say thank you and bon voyage? We could have spent the morning together if you had bothered to come look for me.”
Daniel did not know how to respond. Patricia shook her head and started to leave.
Daniel could think of nothing to say except, “Aurevoir.”
Patricia turned around and with inexplicable tears forming in her eyes said, “It’s not aurevoir; it’s adieu.”
The look on Patricia’s face made Daniel feel like shit and he didn’t know why. He hadn’t promised her anything. They had never even kissed. Daniels was pissed off with the French and their word that means goodbye forever. Daniel wanted to argue semantics and the differences between how French and English speakers express themselves. He did not know how to do that in French. What he did know was that he didn’t want Patricia to be unhappy because of him.
Again, he surprised himself with his response, “It’s not adieu; it’s aurevoir. I’ll come back to you. I promise.”
“When?” asked Patricia in a voice that also said, “I don’t believe you.”
“Soon,” said Daniel. “Give me your address and I’ll write to you and let you know when. It won’t be long. I promise.” She gave him her address and then asked for his.
On the train ride to Frankfurt, Daniel had a lot of time to think about what he had promised Patricia. He prides himself on not making promises he can’t keep. Would he keep his promise to Patricia? Would it really matter if he did or did not? He was sure the very attractive Patricia would quickly find herself different company. University is a breeding ground for far more than intellectual challenges. Soon Patricia would be swimming in a roistering sea of male hormones.
The onslaught of letters from Patricia caught Daniel by surprise. They arrived almost daily and were often augmented with mixtapes she made for him. The tapes contained everything from pirated movie soundtracks to incomprehensible German rock music from Cologne. Why the young, smart, and beautiful Patricia is investing such time and effort in him, he cannot fathom. Anyone listening to him speak French would have thought he was developmentally challenged. Daniel can only assume that was part of his charm.
One of Patricia’s first letters inadvertently encouraged Daniel to continue to think of her as a nice kid with whom there was no real future. At first, he thought she was saying he and his brother Jack were without equal. When he translated the letter properly, what she was actually telling him was, “You and your brother are not alike. He tried to start something with me. He is an old man and should not try to seduce young girls.”
The fact Jack is only two years older than him strengthened his feeling that Patricia was too young to be taken seriously. When he pointed out to her that he and Jack are close to the same age, she responded by saying that he was different. Daniel didn’t buy that. He was sure one day she would just look at him and wonder what she was doing with an old man.
Daniel wonders exactly who Patricia is enamoured of. She knows very little about him and his life. When they first met, she didn’t ask him if he was connected to anyone, and he has never given her that information. She didn’t ask a single question about his personal life. Experience had shown Daniel that when a woman asks about a man’s personal life it is often indicative of the asker’s interest in being part of that personal life. Not so with Patricia. If she had asked, he would have been honest with her. He would have told her about his complicated circumstances. He would have told her about Jan. He would have told her how miserable his life in Jan’s orbit had become, how he was struggling to figure out if he should end his relationship with her and how best to go about doing that.
If Daniel were going to be completely honest with Patricia, he would also have to tell her about what role he played in creating the misery he is experiencing. Fidelity has never been Daniel’s long suit. Before Jan, his relationships rarely lasted more than six months. Lots of passion and then, poof, nothing. Time to move on.
A woman who was on the receiving end of his cut-and-run behaviour accused him of wanting to kill the puppy. When he told her he had no idea of what that meant, she told him, “That is what my therapist called it when I was discussing my relationship with you. Killing the puppy is about a fear of intimacy and commitment. Starting a relationship is like getting a puppy and becoming so enamoured of it you fear the emotional damage that will befall you if it runs away or dies. The mere thought of that kind of emotional devastation makes people want kill the puppy before they get too attached to it.”
Though he shrugged off her comment and sent her on her way, he did not forget it.
With Jan, he was determined to make their relationship work by actually trusting her. It did. At least at first. He changed his behaviour, and turned down several opportunities for casual sex that were offered him. He wanted their relationship to work. He was just beginning to feel like he could really let down his guard and demonstrate their commitment to each other when he found a note from one of Jan’s friends expressing her condolences for the end of Jan’s brief love affair with a colleague. It was a gut punch, and it started a sexual tit for tat when it came to inviting other people into their lives.
But when it came to cheating, in Daniel’s mind, what Jan was doing was different than what he was doing. He was simply protecting himself. They had agreed to be exclusive, and for the first time, he kept his side of the bargain for more than two years. So smitten was he with her, so excited by her sexuality, it was not a difficult task. But Daniel was not one to put his hands by his side and let someone pummel him. After her first venture down a different path, he always had a plan B. He made sure he had someone else in his life to shield him from the hurts he knew were coming. On bad days, he would often wonder if he spent far more time and energy protecting himself from Jan than he spent loving her.
Daniel wonders if he should make Patricia his plan B. Should he use her as a shield? Should he treat someone who cares about him like that? He could make her plan A, but would she want to be with him if she knew she was not the only woman in his life? How would she respond if she knew his life has been a trainwreck since he was 17? Would she be horrified by the number of women who have drowned in the emotional tsunamis he can create? Even if he uncomplicated his life, he doubts Patricia would be happy with him for very long. He lives in a crappy, cold, city that would have very little to offer her. What would she do? She has just started university. Would she want to go to school in his city? Would she be able become the filmmaker she wants to be? Or would she stay with him just until she fledged and then fly off to somewhere else?
As Daniel sits, pen in hand, contemplating the reasons why it would be a bad idea for Patricia to connect with him and leave her home and country, he also wonders if he is coming up with reasons or excuses. Or are all reasons just excuses by a different name? He is being offered something quite special, by someone who apparently likes him just the way he is and not the man she would like him to turn into. Patricia is setting the tracks that can take him to a different kind of life, one that he keeps veering away from. Could he do marriage and children? Will she continue to care about him if he tells her exactly what is going on in his life? Daniel doubts that.
Daniel expected Patricia’s letters to be filled with the vacuous ramblings of a newly-minted 20-year-old. They weren’t. He thought she would eventually get distracted by someone younger and stop writing. She didn’t. She talked about European politics, art, and of course movies. She also had a way of talking about him that touched his heart. Especially when she quoted Pablo Neruda: “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.” The quote from Kahil Girbran, “When love beckons to you, follow him. Though his ways are hard and steep.” took him back to the 1960s and made him smile. He was sure if Patricia didn’t already own an I Ching he was certain she soon would. Daniel surprised himself by looking forward to getting Patricia’s letters and doing his best to respond in kind.
The issues between Daniel and Jan have continued to fester since he came back from France. Their relationship is not being helped by Jan’s need to temporarily relocate to another city for her job. The phone is the only way for them to connect and it does not connect them at all. It has also become clear to Daniel that she has started a sexual relationship with another co-worker. When he challenged her, she responded by asking him just what he had gotten up to in France and with whom.
After the argument that created, he decided he would go back to France and spend time with Patricia. He didn’t know how the visit would turn out, and he didn’t care. All he wanted was some time away. He didn’t know if sex with Patricia was going to be part of his visit. It wasn’t what he wanted. He just wanted to spend time with someone who did not have boxes that needed to be ticked before she could truly commit to him.
A few weeks later, Daniel was back in Strasbourg waiting for Patricia to arrive at the small hotel where he was staying. Eventually, there was soft knock on his door, and when he opened it, Patricia was standing there the same way she stood at his dormitory door. But it was different than the first time. They were no longer just classmates. He saw her in a different light.
Patricia was wearing jeans, some kind of flat shoes, a mauve, short-sleeved, knit cotton top, her hair in a ponytail. The army medic’s bag she used as a purse was resting on her hip. The strap was around her neck and not on her shoulder. She told him before that was the way a smart Parisian woman does it to make the purse snatcher or pickpocket’s life just a little more difficult.
Daniel stops trying to write and gets up to pour himself a whisky. He lights a joint, sits back down and begins to reflect. The world becomes soft and hazy. He begins to float toward an often-replayed memory of his trip back to Strasbourg and his second time with Patricia.
He liked what he saw whenever he looked at Patricia. There is nothing he would have changed even if he could have. He liked the smell of her. Not a purchased scent, but the smell of her. Whenever he looked at her, his heart began to beat fast. Looking at her legs her arms, her waist, his temperature rose and he could feel himself radiating heat. Patricia just stood there saying nothing which forced Daniel to talk first. “I told you it was aurevoir and not adieu.”
Daniel is enveloping himself in their first time together as a man and woman. She stepped in, and he closed the door. Patricia dropped her purse, and they started kissing. They kissed, long, slow, gentle. At first it was just lips. He wanted to learn her taste. He wanted Patricia to taste him and remember him forever. It has been said a kiss is a letter the lips write. Daniel wanted their lips to write a novel. After their lips introduced themselves, Patricia put the tip of her tongue in his mouth and his moved out to greet it. He could have stood there kissing her for a very, very long time.
He put his hand on the small of Patricia’s back and pulled her gently toward him. She drew herself into him and used her leg in a most naughty way. He ran his hand over her bottom and pulled her even closer. She stayed for a moment then broke away from the kiss.
“I would very much like you to fuck me, Mister Lehmann,” she said in English with her strong German accent.
Daniel continues to drift among the memories of their first days together in the old hotel. He was shocked at some of the cultural differences that surfaced. When he and Patricia were going out one morning, he asked her if she had any deodorant because his had run out. She was offended and asked him why he thought she needed deodorant. Once, when they were in bed, she asked him if he liked her seins. Daniel thought she was talking about her saints or the river that runs through Paris. Seeing his confusion, she pointed to her breasts and asked again if he liked them. He did. Then there was the time he used vous instead of tu when he was talking with her. She asked him if they had entered a business relationship and if he fucked all his clients. She was such a firecracker. A lot of their interaction was amusing wordplay. But one particular exchange always makes him smile.
After a morning of playful banter, Daniel said, “You are always making fun of me. We are not leaving this hotel until you say something nice about me.”
Patricia looked at him for a second, and in English, said in her heavy German accent, “I think you speak English very well.” He loved her for that kind of quickness. He thought of her as a kind of Franco-Allemande noix du Brésil. Like a Brazil nut, she had a tough shell on the outside, and a pleasant surprise inside. She also had a fierceness about her. “Je suis très fier. Je suis très fier,” she would say. She was indeed proud and nobody’s plaything.
Sometimes Daniel is a very slow learner. He realizes now that he should have known that he was more than a dalliance with Patricia when she took him home to meet her parents after instructing him on what he should do. She is how he learned to bring flowers when he visits. She told him to do that and he did. She told him he should buy a bottle of Armagnac for her father. He did. He didn’t even know what Armagnac was. He quickly learned that he was not the man-of-the-world-sophisticated-guy he thought he was.
Patricia’s parents were effusive in their thanks for the flowers and the Armagnac. One in German the other in French. They called him Monsieur Lehmann. He asked them to call him Daniel. They called him Monsieur Lehmann. He did his best with the tu and vous thing. Vous for the parents and tu for Patricia. He could tell by the way Patricia twitched if he was making a grammatical mistake or sounded like a complete idiot. Daniel imagined he sounded like he was speaking a sort of pidgin French. “Likey likey food food. Girl daughter I likey very much.” He expected Patricia’s parents to have some concerns about the difference in age between him and Patricia. They didn’t appear to. Daniel thinks now that perhaps they saw him as good thing for a pistol like Patricia. He thinks maybe they thought he was strong enough to keep her from dropping out of school and running off to make movies somewhere.
He spent the night in the guest room of Patricia’s parents because the two of them were going to visit her aunt in Troyes the next day. His linguistic retardation did nothing to reduce Patricia’s interest in him. She came to his room that night wearing just a tight white undershirt paired with white panties and wanting to make love. No makeup sullied her smooth white skin. Her breasts pushed her nipples out to say hello. She was all youth and energy and didn’t give a damn about her parents in the next room.
It was hard for Daniel to say no, but it wasn’t about her parents. He wanted it to be wonderful, not ok, not good, but truly wonderful. Their lovemaking in his hotel had been good, but not great. She accused him of being a froussard. Daniel wasn’t chicken. He just didn’t want to have her father or mother walk in on them, or bang on the wall. He didn’t want either of them to have to be quiet. He wanted noise and talking. Kissing and talking. Talking and kissing. He wanted to create a night neither of them would ever forget. They could not do that while trying to be quiet in a tiny bed in her parents’ apartment. Her aunt’s place in Troyes would provide a good setting for the scene he wanted to create.
Daniel and Tina arrived at her aunt’s three-hundred-year-old, half-timbered house in the old town and as they stepped out of the car, they were instantly seduced by the smell of chicken stuffed with morels. Before they went in, Patricia told him she did not know what the sleeping arrangements would be and that he might end up in a bed by himself. He told her that it was her aunt’s house and it was her call.
As Patricia explained on the drive to Troyes, her aunt, Marie, was someone she admired. She was her idea of a real rebel who stood up for herself. In the 1950s, Marie chose to live with a man without the benefit of marriage. It was a scandal of major proportions in her community, but Marie was not about to yield to public pressure and antiquated notions of the role of women. She created more community consternation by making it clear not only was she not going to have children, she was going to have a career just like men did and would not depend on anyone for her financial wellbeing. At the behest of her aunt, Patricia had begun reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. It was clear Patricia was not going be defined by any man either. Her nascent feminism did not create any issues between her and Daniel. He had no trouble understanding why women wanted social and economic equality. And he too thought traditional marriage was a trap for women.
Daniel also wanted a real partner not a dependent disguised as one. During supper, Marie held court on a number of subjects and peppered Patricia with questions about her studies and her plans for the future. Daniel had trouble following along the more complicated the discussion became. But it was clear that she was asking Patricia just how the man she was with fit into her life. At one point, Daniel caught the eye of Marie’s partner, Jean-Luc. Without saying a word, he told Daniel that Patricia was a lot like Marie and he had better understand what that would mean to him.
After Jean-Luc had finished feeding them, Marie said they were no doubt tired and could use their bedroom. Daniel and Patricia protested, saying they did not want to inconvenience them. But her aunt told them that they were young and in love and that is where they must sleep. After saying that, she looked at Daniel and sent a message that said he better be in love and not just messing with a young woman. At that point, it occurred to Daniel that Patricia had already talked to Marie about him and perhaps he was more important to her than he realized. And certainly, more important than he should be.
Her aunt’s bedroom was a thing of romance novels. Big, soft, four-poster bed. Fireplace giving the room a warm glow, shadows dancing on the wall. The two of them snuggled under a duvet. Her giving him a part of her she had given to no other. They spent that evening making love in that big bed stopping only to feed the fire when it started to get low. They kissed. They laughed. They communicated without words. They fell into each other. And eventually they slept. The next morning, Jean-Luc fed them breakfast and soon they were back on the road to Strasbourg.
Patricia was strangely silent during the return trip. When Daniel asked what she was thinking about, her answer was, “Rien.” Daniel knew that “nothing” was rarely “nothing” and he realized that their time together was coming to an end and that was probably occupying her thoughts. It was occupying his as well. He liked being with her and wished he could just stay in France with her forever.
The last few days of his visit flew by. They went to bed together. They woke up together. They ate together. Every day was magical. Every day except the last day. The last day makes him feel like shit as he remembers it now. He took the rental car back to the train station and bought a ticket to Frankfurt. They stood outside waiting for the bus that would take Patricia back to Kehl. She had tears in her eyes. But she did not ask the question he did not know how to answer.
Earlier that day, Patricia had asked him if he had seen ET, which had not yet been released in France. She was all a twitter about ET and wanted to know if he had seen it. He had. She asked him if he liked it. He had. Daniel told her he would do something that would make sense to her when she finally saw the movie. As the bus door closed and she stood there watching him before it pulled away, he took his finger and touched his heart and said “ow” loud enough for her to hear through the door.
Each letter he received after his return indicated that for Patricia his second trip to Strasbourg was the beginning of their story not the end of it. Distance and time were not lessening her attachment to him. In his last few letters, he has tried to nudge her toward the realization that they had a moment, and that moment had passed. That caused her to redouble her efforts at getting him to see they had a future together. And that produced the lines he has been reading and rereading.
“In your last letter, you told me you did not want to be the thief of my youth. Maybe it is not that you steal my youth, but that I give you back yours and we can walk a new path together. All you have to do is believe that and we can make it happen.”
That revision of his would-be exit statement reminds Daniel of how sharp and quick Patricia is and how fast she can turn a phrase. It makes him smile. Quick, sharp, and funny are things he values in anyone he spends time with. Patricia is the embodiment of those traits.
Daniel gets up and returns his whisky glass to the kitchen. He begins to pace about his living room. In his head, he can hear Patricia’s voice telling him she will give him back his youth. He lets warm thoughts of her wash over him. He sits back down on his couch and looks over at the letter he has started. He rereads Patricia’s letter and then begins to write.
Words 