It’s A New Dawn, It’s A New Day

I’m happier and I will communicate easier – will I really have to stop caring altogether before this happens?
The diaries of Nina Simone

I’ve been in France and I was renting out a place which didn’t have enough sheets.

I tried to call the landlady but I couldn’t get my phone to dial out so I left the family and drove over to her house. All the way on the road, through the cornfields, over the hills and under water towers I ran through a list of what certain words were in French. I’m a little rusty with the old parlez-vous and I had been in the country for an hour and a half.

“Excusez-moi Madame, on n’a pas assez de draps a la maison.” Draps. Boom. I remembered the French word for sheets. If I ever need sheets in a Francophone nation, I’d be fucking set. I could travel the world, too. I’d go to Ile de la Reunion, Indochina, West Africa. Senegal.

“Aussi,” I add, clearly nailing it, “il n’y a pas assez de couvertures…” Arse. Duvet covers. I’m pretty sure the French for duvet isn’t duvet.

It sounds French, but then marmalade sounds French and it’s not.

So I’d be fine for sheets, but I’d be stuck for duvet covers. I wouldn’t need duvet covers in West Africa anyway. I’d be just fine.

I say duvet cover in English, defeated. “Ah,” she lights up, “douvet coveurs.”

“Oui,” I return, ” exactement.”

“Entrez, entrez,” she says.

I peer at her dog, which has been barking at me throughout the whole stilted conversation. She assures me he’s not going to bite me as she turns and disappears into her house.

Now, reader, I know I talk a big game but sure as oeufs are oeufs this is how it happened, word for word. It’s a big game anyway, and talking about it or not isn’t going to change a thing.

I walked through the gate into their garden and the dog runs up to me. His tail is wagging and it almost belies the fangs he’s bearing at me. Her husband walks out of the house and sees me trying to make nice as the dog runs around me.

“Un chien Anglais,” he says.

I don’t know the word for duvet or many dog breeds. I might need that in Northern Quebec. I know Berger Allemand, but that’s an easy one. Is it still huskey? And do they pronounce it “oo-SKEE”?

I could end up on an expedition to explore the Northern Passage with little more than sheets and labradors.

“Setter?” I say.

“Exactement.”

The dog goes to get me a slipper and teases me with it while he circles and bends around the birch saplings.

“Viens voir ce que j’ai tuer.” I don’t know if you speak French yourself, but literally, this means “Come and see what I have just killed.” I don’t think there is a figurative meaning in either language.

But I know that if anyone says this to you, you will look.

I poke my head around the doorway he has just walked through and he is pointing up at the wall at a pair of antlers about three and a half feet across.

I make an impressed noise. It’s like an intake of air, but with a whistle. I throw in a raise of the eyebrows.

“Where do you hunt?” I ask.

“This one here,” he says, “was in Normandy. I got two. This was the biggest.”

“How much did it weigh?”

“One hundred and sixty eight kilos.”

I’m terrible at small talk at the best of times, but I make more of an effort with killers.

“Quel sorte de pistolet?” I ask.

“Une carabine,” he says. A shotgun.

I realise I have just asked him what kind of pistol he used. As in a handgun. Like he put a cap in a deer’s motherfucking ass. Right after he pistol-whipped a boar.

What I meant to say was “fusil” – rifle.

“Did you eat it?” I ask.

“No, you don’t eat BLAHBLAH. You can eat deer, but not BLAHBLAH.” BLAHBLAH is the name of the animal I didn’t know, but can’t remember what it is. It had antlers.

His wife emerged with the sheets and her husband asked: “Was there some kind of problem?” He said it to her quietly.

“No,” I say. “It was my fault. The kids changed their sleeping arrangements and now we need more sheets.”

“Ah,” he says.

“I would have called but the number didn’t work. I think it was my phone.”

Right now I just want to get my sheets and go before he invites me to go hunting with him.

“Your phone?” he says. “Try it now.”

“How do you mean?”

“Try it here and call. We’ll see if they phone rings.”

“It’s probably me dialling it wrong. It’s OK.”

“No, really. Go on. If the phone rings, we’ll know that it works. Try it.”

I get my phone and dial the number but it doesn’t go through.

“You know what?” I say, ” It’s probably me. Actually I got no signal in the valley anyway. It’s fine.”

They look at each other and one says “Ah, OK. No signal.”

“There’s no signal in the valley,” says the other one.

“That’s why,” they said.

“Probably that,” I add.

They look satisfied and I thank them for “all this” (raising the sheets I’m holding) I pocket my phone and head back to the car.

I’m happier and I will communicate easier.

I am feeling a little better and have appreciated the break almost as much as I needed it.

Every time – every fucking time – I have a break coming up I’m just about hanging on by the time it comes up. I start craving quiet and the thought of unwinding with a good book. Or even a bad one. Or just unwinding.

But I’m back now, my heart a little less hard and my feet a little less tender, both in a more natural balance.

Will I really have to stop caring altogether before this happens?

Maybe, Nina. Because when you’re depressed, nothing matters at all. When you’re sad, everything does.

The entry continues:

Maybe I’ll have to get so hard that I don’t care at all. Then there’ll be NO hope for me and I don’t want to reach that point.