A Conversation on the Train

By Michael Padnos The American couple pushed through the crowded TGV and paused when they spotted two empty seats, one facing the other. 

 

“Are these places free?” The American spoke French rapidly and correctly, and a plain-faced, middle-aged woman answered his question by jumping energetically to her feet. 

 

“Absolutely,” she said, welcoming the couple with a smile and an expansive gesture. “Sit down right here. I noticed an accent. Are you American? I love Americans! Let’s speak English!”

 

The American woman moved quietly into the corner seat. “I see you two are going to get on famously,” she said. “I think I’ll just have a nap.”

 

“Now tell me,” continued the Frenchwoman, “where in the States do you come from.”

 

The American continued to speak French. “We’re from Boston and Vermont,” he said. “But we live in Provence and in Paris. Have you been to America?”

 

“Many many times. I love America! I want to retire there and get out of this stupid country as fast as I can go.”

 

The people in the seats across the aisle heard the comment and began to squirm.

 

“Anyone who has an independent point of view in this country might just as well kill himself,” the woman added.

 

Sitting directly across the aisle was a strikingly handsome and elegant young man with a café au lait complexion. In his late twenties, tall, poised and beautifully dressed, he had been quietly working on his laptop, but he looked up with a frown when the Frenchwoman threw down her conversational gauntlet.

 

“Madame,” he said, in an accent that communicated both privilege and education. “Do you honestly believe France is such a terrible place?” 

 

The woman looked at him with scorn. “I’m three times your age, Monsieur,” she said, significantly exaggerating the difference in their ages. “When you have as many gray hairs as I have, you can express your opinions. Until then, you would be well advised to listen to your elders.”

 

The young man lifted an aristocratic eyebrow. “I was not aware that age had anything to do with wisdom,” he said.

 

“Well, now you know.”

 

French trains usually have a few seats arranged in blocks of four, two seats facing forward and two facing back. The foursome across the aisle was now listening intently to the conversation.

 

“I don’t agree with you either,” interjected a sad-faced blond woman sitting in the corner opposite the young man. “People in France are free to say anything they want. You shouldn’t be talking like that to people from abroad.”

 

“Let me tell you something,” said the woman. “My son could never get an education in this country because he was always a dissenter. He was thrown out of twenty schools, one after another: I finally had to take him to America to get an education. In America, you always have another chance. In America there’s always a fresh start, no  matter what.”

 

The woman across the aisle looked wounded. “My son has had problems too. I’ve tried so hard to help him, but he was never been able to fit in. And now, finally...” Her lower lip began to tremble. “And now, finally, I’ve had to have him hospitalized…”

 

“Well,” said the woman brazenly. “It’s entirely your own fault. The whole system here stinks. The French are totally opposed to anyone who is “different” or unique. You should have fought for him against the system. Everyone here should fight against the system!”

 

The woman across the aisle was no match for such assertiveness. She burst into tears and stumbled to her feet. “I can’t listen to this any more,” she cried, pushing past the other passengers. “How could you, how could you!”  And with tears streaming down her cheeks, she fled down the corridor and out of the conversation.

 

“I wish you would continue your conversation in English,” said the elegant young man. “Then the rest of us wouldn’t have to listen to it.” With an angry frown, he returned to his laptop.

 

“Now,” said the woman, turning a beaming smile on the American. “Tell me where you live in America.”

 

“We don’t live in America,” he answered. “We live in Provence. And I can’t imagine how anyone who had the luxury of a choice would choose to live in America rather than France. If you know America so well, you should know that it is an bad, bad place. Think George Bush. Think Iraq. Think of the thousands of people killed by the Americans. Think racism and discrimination and religious fanaticism.”

 

The woman frowned and pursed her lips. “Yes, I agree, that is a bad part of America. But Bush is only one president and the times will change. Overall, America is and always has been a tremendously open, democratic country. It has modern technology and modern ideas; it is therefore totally different from France, which is governed by a set of moldering, archaic rules of social behavior inherited from the court of Louis XIV.”

 

“Maybe yes and maybe no,” said the American. “But in my opinion the America of your imagination –the open, generous America that everyone in the world once admired—simply has ceased to exist. George Bush has used 9/11 to enact some of the most anti-democratic legislation in the western world; he has twisted the constitution and has multiplied and compounded the injustices and discriminations of a country that was only just beginning to move away from  injustice and discrimination.”

 

“Perhaps there is less discrimination and dire poverty in France than there is in America,” the Frenchwoman acknowledged. “But France has paid a heavy price for this so-called “equality.” Anyone here who is “different,” anyone who fails to conform to the dreary “norm”--anyone, in short, who is a real person--runs the risk of ending up, like that poor woman’s son, in the crazy house. In today’s France, we have achieved some kind of social equality: the price we have paid is universal mediocrity.

 

“In America, on the other hand, everyone can do what they want: how do you say it, “they do their own thing.” When I am in America I feel free to be myself. That’s a feeling I never, never have in France.

 

“And besides,” she added. “The French are deeply and profoundly mean-spirited. Have you ever watched an old lady haggle in the market to save two cents on a head of lettuce? Or been elbowed out of the way in check-out line in a supermarket? Or been told that you can’t come to your daughter’s wedding because you are divorced and “living in sin?” Those things never happen in America; they happen a thousand times a day in France.”

 

The American shook his head. “Not to me they don’t,” he said. “Maybe it’s just because I’m American, but I find the French to be almost universally courteous and cordial. People here revel in friendly human contact; Americans fear and revile it, and indeed spend their entire lives walling themselves off against any possibility of experiencing it. The ideal American man is strong and silent --i.e., wholly uncommunicative --;the ideal American woman is “not dependant” –i.e., powerfully independent and self-reliant –and therefore totally sexless; the ideal American town is what is called a ‘gated community’ –that is, a walled suburban enclave with a guard whose job is to rigorously exclude “them” –that is, everyone who is not one of  ‘us.’ It’s a horrible world in which loneliness and isolation have been canonized as civic virtue, in which  Blacks hate whites, women hate men and red states hate blue –and vice versa. in America, the Golden Rule is Hate and Fear Thy Neighbor.”

 

“Mais pas de tout!” said the Frenchwoman emphatically. “One of the best things about America is the way people are constantly getting together to help each other out. No matter what your problem, in America you can find an official or unofficial –what’s the phrase?--oh yes, support group. I took my son to America at a time when he was having terrible problems; I immediately found a group of people with problems like his, and it made a tremendous difference in his life. The idea of a support group is unimaginable to the French: all they want to do is tear other people down. If that poor woman across the aisle had been living in America, her son would probably be a college super-star rather than a mental patient. People here don’t understand that different is better, that all the great men were always different, that genius lies in individuality, not conformity. People here have subsided into a gray, colorless mass.”

 

The American shook his head vigorously. “Do you really think France is a country of colorless drabs? The land of The Sun King, of Napoleon and Picasso and Zola, the land of DeGaulle and yes, even the land of Chirac, the one world leader who had the courage to stand up to Bush on Iraq. I see France as a colorful, vivid, Mediterranean country; I think Chirac ought to get the Nobel Peace Prize for his Herculean effort to prevent this evil, murderous war.”

 

The woman snorted. “Give Chirac a prize? They ought to give him 20 years in jail. And that’s what they will do, the instant his presidential immunity is lifted. He’s one of the most corrupt men ever to be elected President.”

 

“And yes, I agree with you about France’s past.” she continued. “France was once a great country with courageous and visionary leaders. But that time has long since passed. Now it is a country obsessed with trivial consumerism: everyone has to have his own car, his own TV (which has to be larger than his neighbor’s) his own little house in the country. It is a place that has sacrificed everything to mediocrity, and the people get grayer and more mediocre every day.”

 

“And therefore you prefer the United States,” said the American. “because in the US there is no mediocrity. Indeed there is almost no more middle class, because it is being exterminated by the stupendous transfer of wealth from the pockets of the middle class into the pockets of the rich. America is heading downhill in a car without brakes, and no one is lifting a finger to stop it.”

 

The Frenchwoman shook her head. “I love the Americans. They help each other out, they value individual initiative, they reward energy and intelligence and talent.

 

“Here, anyone with a new idea has to move to America if he wants to exploit it. A Frenchman with a little energy or initiative is either crushed by the government or eviscerated by the sneers of his neighbors. This is a great country if you hate to work  (every Frenchman gets six weeks paid vacation!) and you like to sponge off the government; it is a horrible country if you are a little bit different, if you have your own ideas, if you want to change the rules. People with brains and ideas should all go to America, where they can flourish, like Bill Gates and George Soros. In America, anyone can get rich, In America, anyone can find a ‘support group’ and live happily ever after.”

 

“Right,” said the American. “Unless you happen to be Latino or black or some other minority. Unless you happen to be one of the 40 million Americas without health insurance and you get sick. Unless you happen to be a suspected terrorist--or have the same name as a suspected terrorist. Unless you happen to be poor and unemployed or elderly or sick or mentally handicapped…”

 

The train was approaching Avignon and the French woman had begun to prepare her luggage. As she stood up, she pulled a card from her wallet and handed it to the American.

 

“I greatly enjoyed talking to you,” she said with a beaming smile. “If you’d like to continue the conversation, give me a call: I’d be delighted to meet you and your wife again.”

 

“I should have known you were a professor,” said the American, glancing down at her card. “And of business administration no less. No wonder you love America.”

 

“I love America because Americans are kind and generous to each other, as they have always been to me. I love America because it is the land of the free, and everyone gets a million chances to start again.

 

“And it’s not just that I teach business administration. Everyone in France loves America!”


Then she was gone.

 

When the train started up, the young man across the aisle turned to the American. “People should not speak against their own country,” he said. “The French people on this train found that woman’s conversation deeply, deeply offensive.”

 

“Perhaps you’re right,” said the American. “But for me, one of the joys of living here is that people are so completely free to speak their minds. I love that about France.”

 

“Free expression is fine,” said the young man. “But courtesy and respect are an essential element of social discourse. That lady went far, far beyond even the most rudimentary bounds of courtesy and respect.”

 

The American shrugged his shoulders. “I disagreed with most of what she said, but I thought she was quite interesting and thought-provoking. Anyway, I don’t object to superlatives: maybe it’s just a professor’s way to make people think. I’ll  bet she’s a wonderful teacher. I liked her a lot.”

 

“Chacun a son gout,” said the young man politely. He glanced briefly towards the window as he felt the train begin to slow down for its brief stop in Aix-en-Provence; then he lowered his eyes firmly and definitively to his laptop.

 

The conversation, and the train trip, had come to an end.