FICTION
The Tourist By Fredrik Soukup
S
ix years of French classes haven’t prepared Melody to explain to anyone why she left America. Could she translate, she would say she needs a break from the sedated, glossy and superficial, and that defection seems the only failsafe way to escape these traps herself. Could they translate in return, the French would inform her that such societal sins aren’t exclusive to America, but to modernity. Instead, she smiles and exchanges pleasantries with them, and construes them as bystanders to her journey toward greater inner strength and authenticity. Teaching English ten hours per week in a small village school, Melody has plenty of time to journal, smoke cigarettes and drink espressos, the Socratic triumvirate. Too much time. Though, she enjoys her long walks from her lightly furnished, tiny village house on the slick cobblestone slope, down through fresh fish and flower markets, through streets too narrow for cars, to the little bus stop that takes her to school. On her fourth day, however, she arrives at work to find that the teachers are on strike. “Will I still get paid?” she asks her supervisor. “You will continue to get your stipend.” “What am I supposed to do?” “About what?” “Do you have any work for me?” “You can’t work, you’re on strike.” “I understand.” Her supervisor smiles and speaks French too quickly for her to understand. “You’re talking too fast.” “I don’t know what to tell you. Get another job, maybe, if you’re bored. Go to the movies. Find a French boy. Enjoy yourself.”
44 | fluent
She travels to Marseille, Cannes and Nice. Bastardizes French cuisine. Ambitiously purchases the untranslated works of Camus, Flaubert and Sartre. Finishes Madame Bovary and even the introduction to Being and Nothingness. Writes dozens of emails home, careful not to suggest in any way that she made a hasty or foolish decision. Her friends are earning good money, securing significant professional connections, readying applications for MBA programs and med school. She sends half the emails she drafts. Assimilates her wardrobe with new European-style jeans, scarfs, shoes; trying to look the part, turn heads. Improves her French by striking up conversations with Moroccan men at cafés, one of whom, a young and handsome gentlemen, she naïvely leads on. At dusk he walks her to her house and tries to kiss her. She pushes him away and reaches into her purse for mace, but he quickly throws his hands up like a pinched bank robber and backs away. He runs off, and before going back inside she notices the neighbor woman staring at her and muttering. Melody can’t tell whom the woman’s disgusted more with. The more free time she has for mulling, the fewer good reasons she finds for having come abroad. By December it’s too cold to enjoy her walks down to the grocery store or laundromat. The end of the strike is nowhere in sight, and cabin fever sets in. She wants to get out and experience more, and she’s annoyed with herself for taking her trip passively. She has no stories, no adventures. She didn’t think she’d suck so much at being French. “It’d be better if I were a tourist,” she reasons. “Then, I’d have some stories to tell, I’m sure. At this point, I’m just a weird immigrant.” Her only contact in town is another teacher from New York named Julia, who constantly talks about her