he speaks real, live French, the kind students are likely to speak when they land in France next summer,” I explained.
Cherbakoff also concurred.
As it happened, he said, there was a slot open for a part-time French-language instructor. One of the teaching fellows had had to resign owing to a complicated pregnancy that required extended bedrest.
Ten minutes later, I was back at Café Algiers telling Kalaj to go and see Cherbakoff right away.
I could tell he was nervous.
“Kalashnikov meets Cherbakoff,” taunted the Algerian, who’d overheard the conversation. Everyone laughed. Cherbakoff, Cutitoff, Cherbakoff, hadenough, Cherbakoff, Jerkhimoff. Parodies came breezing in from the kitchen area as almost everyone in Café Algiers clapped.
An hour or two later, Kalaj walked into the café bearing a large teacher’s edition of Parlons! with accompanying teacher’s manual, exercise book, reader, and lab book.
“Tomorrow at eight o’clock, Lamont 310.”
He looked at me more puzzled than ever. What was Lamont? The name of a building, I explained. He had never heard of it. Corner of Quincy Street and Mass Ave. He knew exactly what I meant. I explained to him that there was a periodical room in Lamont. After teaching, he could read all the French newspapers and periodicals he pleased without having to pay a cent. He liked the idea of reading newspapers and periodicals after teaching.
Where was he going to hold his office hours?
He thought about it.
“Here,” he said. “This way they’ll get a taste of French cafés.”
He said that Cherbakoff had mentioned something about an ID card, but Kalaj figured it would take too much time. He’d simply borrow mine when he needed it. It was useless arguing how this would have complicated matters for the two of us. I let him borrow mine. He said he had to prepare for his class tomorrow morning.
Had they suggested how they wanted him to teach French?
“I told them I already knew,” he replied.
This was not boding well at all. Suddenly I imagined a small village school outside Tunis where a local teacher, brandishing a long stick, walked around a classroom filled with cowering frock-clad boys. When one of them hesitated with the answer, whack!
“You can’t yell,” I said. “And you can’t hit anyone.”
He thought for a while.
“How am I going to teach them anything then?”
“You can’t yell, you can’t strike, you can’t even make them feel bad about themselves.”
“So, if someone is an absolute idiot, what do I tell him—that he’s a prodigy?”
Zeinab, who had overheard the conversation, started laughing at Kalaj when she realized that his teaching at Harvard was not a joke. “How can he teach them anything when he doesn’t understand the agreement of the past participle with the direct object?”
“I understand it well enough.”
“Prove it.”
“It would take too long and I don’t have the time.”
“Prove it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Because you don’t know.”
“What I know is that you’d do anything to go to bed with me—but it won’t work.”
Near us a couple was just about to leave. They hadn’t touched the huge wedge of Brie they had ordered.
The young man stood up and went to pay. The girl was already waiting for him outside the doorway.
Kalaj grabbed the piece of cheese and spread it richly on a slice of baguette, which he then cut neatly in two, one half for me, the other for himself. Zeinab cast an angry look at him.
“They throw away everything in this country. I, I, I, Kalaj, am not ersatz. And I’m not a thief. Food is food, and this one has already been paid for.”
“If you wanted food, Kalaj, all you had to do was ask me,” said Zeinab, who would have cut off her right hand and given it to him had he just stared at it long enough.
“You won’t even tell me how the past participle agrees with the direct object, and now you want to feed me?”
“I told you: I’ll do everything for you.”
“Back to that again! Just leave me alone. I need to study what I have to teach these ersatz minds.”
“Just mind your past participle. I’ll explain it if you could only learn to listen,” said Zeinab.
“Explain. But be brief.”
I left them, went home, and changed into better clothes. I had to be on Chestnut Hill for cocktails at Allison’s parents. I had originally thought of asking Kalaj to drive me there, but then remembered he’d had his license revoked. Besides, arriving by cab all the way from Cambridge would send the wrong message. Now, without his license, the question was moot. I was going