Who put the ooh in the ooh-la-la?
When I think of Paris on grey days like today, I remember it glowing under leaden skies, bright with the illumination of sensory experience. I could write a book - and I will - about the effect of Paris on a hyper-literate 13-year old, on the shock of moving from Tang breakfast drink to pulpy freshly-squeezed orange juice. From salty to sweet creamery butter. From dried to juicy ripe apricots. From ballpoints to fountain pens. To linen sheets. And perfume. My family was ready -my mom was already serving steamed artichokes with butter at home, and fragrant rich bœuf bourgignon. So it was a short and easy crossover to escargots.
Food was not the only demonstration of the more sensuous life there. My sister and I had been growing up with an American standard of beauty. The acknowledged "prettiest gals in town" were always fresh-faced, athletic, sunny and stacked, and the handsomest men were lean and tall. But when I was thirteen, and we all moved to Paris, it was in the French school we attended that I first saw that prettiness wasn't all that necessary, that a plain woman could radiate intense, magnetic, and confident sexuality. I learned this from my first teacher at Cours Alfred de Musset, Mademoiselle Thériot.
None of my parents' friends back in Connecticut were anything like this woman. Mlle. Thériot had a gold tooth. I had heard French spoken before, but, outside of pirate movies, had never seen a gold tooth, and even in the movies never such a tooth in a woman’s mouth. Not even the most swashbuckling lady buccaneer – Maureen O’Hara in “Against All Flags”- had a gold tooth.
Mlle. Thériot spoke very quickly, and laughed often, an open-mouthed “look at my tooth” sort of laugh. She was small and stocky, with thick calves and ankles. I didn't think she was very pretty, but she dressed in sleeveless tops and tight tulip skirts, and walked in her clicking high heels as if she knew she was a knockout. Her physicality fascinated me. As soon as I could hear the melody and understood enough of the sense of the French language to feel comfortable, I began to observe how she walked and stood, and sat, crossing her legs, uncrossing her legs, opening a book, closing it.
The school was housed in what had been a rather elegant family home on Avenue Bosquet. The servant’s intercom and bell system was still in place, and using it, the headmaster, or Monsieur Le Directeur, regularly communicated to announce a classroom visit. We heard a buzzer, and then his voice sounded from a little round brass grill on the wall. Mlle. Thériot turned toward the grill, called out, “Oui, M. le Directeur,” and closed her book.
She told us to continue with our geography lesson, and she reached under her desk to seize her pocketbook and place it on her deskpad. From it she pulled a small brush, a gold compact, a lipstick, and a bottle of perfume. Opening the compact, she inspected her teeth, moving the mirror slightly from side to side to see them all. She moistened her index finger with saliva and ran it along her dark brows to smooth them. She powdered her nose, and reapplied her lipstick, always a strong dark red. Then, setting the open compact on the desk, she leaned over and peered into it as she brushed her coarse hair and then fluffed it up by running her fingers through it. Next, she raised her arms, one at a time, and brushed the thick hair under her armpits. A dab of perfume at the base of her neck and behind each ear, a twist of torso to check the straightness of her stocking seams, and she was done. She swept all the magic wands and powders back into the bag, replaced it under the desk, and waited for the knock on the door. When it came, she rose, we all rose, as M. Le Directeur entered, stood next to her, looked at her, then at us, and inquired about the class.
Taking a small step toward him, she assured him that everything was going very well, smoothly, properly. He stepped closer to her, and assured her that this report gave him a great pleasure. She looked up at him and told him the Cours Alfred de Musset students were perforce quite conscientious. He inclined his head toward hers to say this was evidently so, and again he had great pleasure, and furthermore, hoped to have the power to hear the same assessment tomorrow and have the same pleasure. She also hoped, they hoped together, and then he briefly turned toward us, said, “Good afternoon, my students”, and was gone.
Mlle. Thériot returned to her desk chair and, sitting, crossed her legs. With one eyebrow arching upward, she said, "Eh bien, mes enfants! Les rivieres?", and in unison, we sang out the names of the great rivers of France.
This map, and much more, can be found at this lovely site: http://about-france.com