4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
First published in the US by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC in 2016
Copyright © Lauren Collins 2016
Cover illustration © Jessie Kanelos Weiner
Lettering © Christopher Brian King
The right of Lauren Collins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Excerpt from ‘FOR ME … FOR-MI-DA-BLE’ by Charles Aznavour, Jacques Plante,
Gene Lees © 1963 & 1974 Editions Charles Aznavour, Paris, France
assigned to TRO Essex Music Ltd of Suite 2.07,
Plaza 535, King’s Road, London, SW10 0SZ
International Copyright Secured.
All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
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Source ISBN: 9780008100629
Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008221621
Version: 2017-06-28
For Olivier
You are the one for me, for me, for me, formidable
But how can you
See me, see me, see me, si minable
Je ferais mieux d’aller choisir mon vocabulaire
Pour te plaire
Dans la langue de Molière
—Charles Aznavour, “For Me, For-mi-da-ble”
Contents
One: THE PAST PERFECT – Le Plus-que-parfait
Two: THE IMPERFECT – L’Imparfait
Three: THE PAST – Le Passé composé
Four: THE PRESENT – Le Présent
Five: THE CONDITIONAL – Le Conditionnel
Six: THE SUBJUNCTIVE – Le Subjonctif
I HADN’T WANTED to live in Geneva. In fact, I had decisively wished not to, but there I was. Plastic ficuses flanked the entryway of the building. The corrugated brown carpet matched the matte brown fretwork of the elevator cage. The ground floor hosted the offices of a psychiatrist and those of an iridologue—a practitioner of a branch of alternative medicine that was popularized when, in 1861, a Hungarian physician noticed similar streaks of color in the eyeballs of a broken-legged man and a broken-legged owl. Our apartment was one story up.
The bell rang. Newlywed and nearly speechless, I cracked open the door, a slab of oak with a beveled brass knob. Next to it, the landlord had installed a nameplate, giving the place the look less of a home than of a bilingual tax firm.
A man stood on the landing. He was dressed in black—T-shirt, pants, tool belt. A length of cord coiled around his left shoulder. In his right hand, he held a brush. Creosote darkened his face and arms, extending his sleeves to his fingernails and the underside of his palms. A red bandanna was tied around his neck. He actually wore a top hat. I hesitated before pushing the door open further, unsure whether I was up against a chimney sweep or some sort of Swiss strip-o-gram.
“Bonjour,” I said, exhausting approximately half of my French vocabulary.
The man, remaining clothed, returned my greeting and began to explain why he was there. His words, though I couldn’t understand them, jogged secondhand snatches of dialogue: per cantonal law, as the landlord had explained to my husband, who had transmitted the command to me, we had to have our fireplace cleaned once a year.
I led the chimney sweep to the living room. It was dominated by the fireplace, an antique thing in dark striated marble, with pot hooks and a pair of side ducts whose covers hinged open like lockets. Shifting his weight onto one leg with surprising grace, the chimney sweep leaned forward and stuck his head under the mantel. He poked around for a few minutes, letting out the occasional wheeze. Coming out of the arabesque, he turned to me and began, again, to speak.
On a musical level, whatever he was saying