II. Winter

November 5, 2024

At one AM on election night I was hosting a watch party at my apartment with Allie and Thomas. There was a sense of necessity in the organization of the party itself, as if our seeking out of company was based more in preemptive consolation than any real optimism for what the night would bring. We drank from a bottle of white wine and watched the polygons on the screen shift from blue to red like chameleons sensing a threat. Potato chip crumbs dusted the scarlet sofa cushions. In Allie’s bag, an unopened bottle of champagne. At three AM the results had yet to be called and I remember looking up at Anderson Cooper’s permanent scowl, his brief comment about the fate of Pennsylvania, the closing of a door and a darkness after. 

The next morning, work. My head throbbed. I stood a foot behind myself, watching me rise, watching me clamber into the shower and out into the day. A fog had settled in upon Place de la Clautre, and through which a man on a bike approached me. He was silent for some time before I recognized him as one of my colleagues – an older man whose lectures about American politics had become somewhat of an expected affair on the schoolyard. I would listen to him and make brief sounds of agreement or dismay. That, or I would stay silent, not because I had nothing to say but because, in those moments, he seemed to enjoy having an American ear to talk into. I prayed to be left alone in the morning mist and, sighing, the man held his tongue. He made a small statement about the events of the previous night and, though it could have been condensed mist or sweat on his brow, his eyes were wet. He rode on. I walked to school, thinking about how the weather so accurately matched the feel of the day. At school I took a deep breath before my first class. The past few weeks had been pockmarked with brief conversations about the upcoming election – my colleagues being overwhelmingly liberal, our discussions would quickly transform into an echochamber of concerns about Trump’s proposed agenda and what it would mean for Europe. 

Sometimes I would bury myself into a book or a crossword puzzle and listen to the words that swirled around me: fou, dangéreux, fasciste. Sometimes I would enter a silent room and watch the topic of America arise, unfailingly, seemingly out of nothing. Sometimes I would retain the original silence of the room and listen out of an unproven conviction that the conversations were being held because of my presence. On election day, however, I was met with glances and small words of apology. I registered this as something like pity. They treated me as one treats a friend in mourning, and I did not much consider that they might too have been experiencing the grief of that day. The bell rang once, and then twice. The teachers moved from their chairs and wandered into a courtyard of screaming children who saw no reason to be any less than their usual energetic selves. They sprinted from their places on the playground, dropping their playing cards and hockey sticks, dropping their soccer balls and action figures, dropping their worries in a heartbeat and I felt achingly grateful to be a schoolteacher.

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The holidays brought with them their own challenges. Notably, I was expected to teach the students about American culture through specialized lessons on Christmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween. Despite the overt religious symbolism baked into many American holidays, French laïcité prohibits the discussion of religion and politics in the classroom. I had to find work-arounds – teaching Christmas meant showing pictures of trees, lights and reindeer, sans mention of angels or baby Jesus. The spattering of holidays from October to December also interrupted our regular grammar or vocabulary exercises (which necessitated multiple weeks of coordination so that the kiddos would soak it all in) with frantically arranged lessons about the pilgrims or pumpkin carving or jolly cartoon snowmen. It was a different type of learning on, when we threw noun and verb aside to learn about a faraway part of the world – their wide eyes reminded me that this was all new to them. 

The trees, though bare, never felt the touch of snow. The winter months saw Périgueux in a perpetual shiver and, on some mornings, a thick frost would settle over the windows of the downtown offices. With the arrival of the first cold morning, the city’s young men would don their parkas, which remained glued to their chests until mid-spring. The annual Christmas market was erected early and in the center of town. Its ice-skating rink, food vendors and live music offered relief from the humdrum of daily life. On weekends it seemed that the whole town would gingerly march into the square, breathing into their cupped hands for warmth. Parents brought their children to dance and sing carols, and more than once I was spotted by a student: Charlie! they would cry, strongly emphasizing the second syllable, c’est Charlie! I would utter a few words in English before they, flustered, would scamper back to their friends.  

The festivities came to a close. The giant pine at Place Tourny, a gift from the city of Strasbourg, was allowed to stand well into the month of January. The city was reluctant to let the holidays pass. There was an anxiety that hung in the air, and which only partially abated under the shining green and red lights of the market. Two contrasting things happened during this time: first, the world prepared for and hesitantly accepted a second Trump administration. Events in Washington had broad repercussions on life in Europe, and especially in France, whose political sphere has undergone a sweeping right-wing shift. The news from America was unrelenting and I was peppered with political questions by my friends and colleagues who, watching the disintegration of Franco-American relations, grew uneasy. 

Secondly, I began to appreciate the need for boredom. My job left me with a hefty amount of free time, and so came with it the very real threat of falling victim to media-induced hypnotism. I tried my best to disconnect and I did not entirely succeed – I deleted some social media apps but I retained access to them through my browser; I removed certain sources from my news diet but only became less informed. My goal was not a cleanse but to refocus, to give intent to my attention. It may be that complete disconnection is impossible if you seek to participate in meaningful discourse – any contribution to my colleagues’ conversations was at odds with my avoiding the news. So there I sat, endeavoring not to succumb to apathetic delirium while fulfilling my role as the American delegation in unending debates about the fate of western democracy. The conversations were mostly superficial.

I would think about the time when an older Frenchman at Place Coderc leaned into an ongoing conversation about small-talk. Someone had argued that American small-talk was superficial and unnecessary. They had claimed that the French do not engage in small-talk. The man had tapped his fingers on our table and politely interjected that the French do have small-talk. He claimed that though many Frenchmen admired conversations of substance, much of their day was occupied by shorter, surface-level talks about the state of things, and that this was small-talk. I wondered if he was right, listening to my colleagues, and on second thought understood his idea as unfair. Who has the authority to reduce the words of others to small-talk? The label itself implies simplicity or vacuity. The schoolyard conversations were not empty, but they were, maybe, restricted. They were thoughtful and thorough explorations, and there were limits to their depth. When an inquiry was thrown it would sometimes bounce around the room for some time before settling dead still on the floor and leaving me to question what shears could prune the growing limb of their discussions. Moments later the bell would ring and I would again be enfolded in childish laughs, mediating arguments about missing pencils and the thin line between acceptable and unacceptable shades of blue.