I spend three months living in Paris. My family is only a husband and wife. Their son has joined the French military and is now training to fly helicopters to Afghanistan. My host father, Laurent, is sixty-five but quite vigorous and robustly French in all its stereotypes—he speaks not a word of English. His wife Philippa is a naturalized Norwegian whose fluent French, like her broken English, is overwhelmed by the rhythms and intonations of her native tongue. Since my arrival I am worrying about communication, reminded of what I have read in the translator’s note of a great novel: foreign languages are so difficult to translate not because of the differences between the words, but due to the incompatibility of their sequences. I tend to speak in basic sentences, noun-verb-noun, noun-verb-adjective, noun-verb-adverb, the simplest paradigms shared by French and English. Reduced to these three act tragedies, my first two months show me that my words no longer carry the texture of my thoughts.

Though Laurent is a retired engineer he is frequently traveling on weekends—“potential free-lance clients” he explains to me, though I have not asked. Phillipa is not fooled by this explanation, and when he is home she works to perturb him: He cannot open a container because his hands have lost their dexterity so she turns to me and snickers. She knows he has interest in something she is saying at the dinner table so she switches to the broken English he cannot understand. Laurent tells a story so she rolls her eyes and casts a long face. It seems that in a marriage too old to terminate discontent is aired in the form of these petty revenges.

Today is Phillipa’s birthday and Laurent has prepared hors d’oeuvres and purchased an expensive bottle of rosé champagne. They invite me to share this treat with them in their living room, a large rectangle with Guimard windows overlooking Place Jeanne D’Arc. Phillipa is smiling, waiving the bottle of champagne in the air while slowly removing the cork with her fingers. Laurent wheels around her, arms flailing, yelling his guidance over the sounds of giddy anticipation. The cork pops off like a gun shot and foam spills everywhere. We all laugh and drink up our first taste contentedly.

We talk coolly for some time, gnashing on morsels of bread and cheese and smoked salmon. Laurent gulps down his third glass of champagne despite Phillipa’s protestations. The more he drinks the more he speaks. Of their son and his service, of the troubles in Afghanistan, of the American election, of President Sarkozy and his new top-model wife. This leads him to the words “la vie moderne en France” and “aujourd’hui, la divorce est normale”—divorce is common today. He is focused solely on me, excited to give me explanations I can barely follow. He seems not to notice that his wife has stopped speaking altogether, that her eyes are starting to glisten with tears.

When it is time for them to leave for dinner Laurent is sprightly and flushed red from the champagne. He stands up, pounds the table with one fist and lets out a happy laugh; there is a kick in his step as he carries our empty glasses to the kitchen. Once he is out of earshot Phillipa speaks her first words for some time:

“Laurent n’etait pas là”—Laurent wasn’t here. I don’t know whether she is referring to tonight, a moment in the past, or their entire marriage. The remark has no context and it hangs in the atmosphere of the gray evening light like a dislodged entity. I have nothing to say, and I sense that my face betrays me. It knows only the force of the simplest of sentences, a reminder that they too can overflow with meaning.