Part 3: The World is My Oyster

When my wife and I arrived in France we moved into the basement of my belle famille’s house in a small town called Sarzeau on the west coast of France. We had the plan of staying there until we got on our feet.

My wife is a motivated and experienced bi-lingual professional who was energised by moving back home. I had a toe hold grip, on the bottom rung of the greasy ladder that is the French language.

Together, nothing could stop us. 

I’d only just gotten comfortable with being a customer in France, so the thought of being on the other end of the transaction made me nervous.

My wife was able to find a job quickly, I was not. Once again, my naivety at thinking that it will all just fall into place and I would absorb the language by osmosis alone was proven to be hubris. The reality was that I was an unskilled thirty two year old who didn’t know how to speak yet, and there isn’t a huge demand for those. 

As an unpublished writer, I had a full time job as a gardener In Melbourne. I used to wake up at 5.45am every weekday to make the first of three trams & trains to get to the eastern suburbs, where I would spend my day pulling weeds and mowing the lawns of rich people's gardens, all so that I had a few hours left in the late afternoon to get some writing in. 

I had managed to finish a full manuscript, which I sent out into the universe. I figured it might take a few months for the universe to respond, with royalties. Five years later I'm still waiting for that book deal, but on the plus side, I've gotten really good at gardening. 

My wife and I translated my now impressive gardening resumé into French and sent it through to the local recruitment company in the Morbihan region. I typed up an email, using google translate, to introduce myself and explain my somewhat precarious position. I attached my CV and hit send.  

The recruitment consultant got back in touch with me the next day saying that it will be worthwhile for me to come in for a chat, and see if there are any jobs available that might suit a man with my skill set.

The next day we drove to the recruitment office for my interview. On the way we drove through a city called Vannes and all the major arterial roads were blocked off by une manifestation (A protest).

French people love to protest, theres a new one every week, but this one looked particularly lively. 

“What’s it about?” I asked my wife.

Neither of us watched the news much, so she went on Twitter and trending was the recently broken news that a government whistleblower had leaked speculation of the age of retirement being changed from sixty-two to sixty-four. 

It hadn’t even been passed, or been brought to the house floor yet. It was pure speculation from a credible source and already people had rushed to the streets.

The bouchon (traffic jam) meant we had to charter a way around the city centre, making us fifteen minutes late to my interview. 

 I walked into the recruitment office with my printed out CV in one hand (and my wife holding the other). I might as well have been sipping on a juice box too. 

“Vous êtes en retard, monsieur,” said the lady behind the desk. Stopping me in my tracks. 

“Excusez moi?” I said, outraged. 

I didn’t have the words at my disposal, but something along the lines of: I know I'm late, but I really don’t think there’s any need for that kind of carry-on? Seemed in order. 

“Desolé. Les bouchons,” said my wife. 

I joined the dots together.  

“Bienvenue en France, partez toujours tôt pour un entretien,” she said, a wry smile curving her mouth. 

I smiled and tried to look professional, not picking up a single word that she’d said other than; Bienvenue en France. 

The lady offered me a seat and she was a little surprised when my wife pull up a chair and join us. 

“C’est ma femme,” I said, perhaps with a little too much pride in my voice. 

At this point my wife took over, saying that I was a very good gardener and that I am also very good at lifting things and placing them wherever they are needed.

She went on to say that the downside is that my French is terrible (terrible), but that getting a job will be a great way for me to apprendre la langue. 

The lady decided it was at least worth a chat, and so the interview commenced.

As per usual, the greetings are my bread and butter. Those are child's play, but once our arses were in the seats the conversation took off, like the infamous concord. Ironically the conversation took a similar flight path as the concord too, for me, crashing in an enormous fireball not too long after take off. 

The skill that I have since learnt, while being strapped into these chats, is looking at the person who is speaking and expertly nodding my head as they talk and even inserting a deftly timed; oui… ah oui. 

I have gotten so good at this that the person speaking will often be fooled into thinking that I know exactly what they are saying. 

“Vous comprenez le français monsieur?” The lady said, obviously impressed with my timing. 

“Oui, je comprends un petit peu. Je ne parle pas francais, mais, je compris un petit peu,” I said, taking a well deserved sip from my apple juice. 

I have since learnt that my strongest attribute is not my French or my CV, but the fact that I am from a little place called Nouvelle Zelande. If things turn sideways, or I find myself in a sticky situation then I can always resort to this fact. 

French people love New Zealanders. I’m not entirely sure why this is, but i’m not going to argue with them about it, i’ll happily take the credit. 

After reading my CV and seeing that I was from New Zealand she seemed to become nicer still. Though this kindness didn’t mean she would speak any slower. If anything she seemed to increase her speed a little, now that she was warmed up, giving me far smaller gaps in which to nod and say; oui. 

My wife turned to me and whispered: “She said she wants to have a quick conversation just with you, just to gauge your level of french and to see what jobs you might be suitable for.” 

“Ah ouai, bien sûr,” (of course) I said, flexing.

The lady looked at me, and my vision tunnelled. 

“Est-ce-que-vous-avez,” (Have you?) she started with. This meant she was asking a question. Bingo I thought, a yes or no answer. Too easy.

I didn’t quite gather the second part of the question but judging by her tone it seemed convivial, so I replied with an equally convivial; oui. 

I kept my oui casual and light, as if it wasn’t a big deal at all, just a run of the mill oui. 

My wife instantly interrupted and turned to me, the colour rising on her face.

“Nick, she asked you if you have any prior criminal convictions in France,” my wife said, sternly. 

“Oh no-no-no-no. Pardon, non,” I said. 

The ladies' eyes darted from me to my wife, inspecting us a little closer now. Was this a hustle? My wife apologised on my behalf and I tried to laugh it off. It would have been a great time for me to diffuse the tension with a joke. But alas, I didn’t have the presence of mind, or the verbage at my disposal. So Instead I sat there, looking more and more like a criminal pretending to be a gardener. 

She repeated the question again, and this time I gave the correct answer. 

“Non, non-non-non. Je suis un bon garçon,” I said. 

She continued on: 

“À quoi ressemblerait le travail parfait pour vous?”

I picked up travail (work) parfait (perfect) pour vous (for you) and I answered accordingly.

“Je voudrais un travail physique, jardinage peut-être? Just travail physique, exterior travail, pas interior travail,” I said.

The lady nodded her head from side to side, as if tasting a meal that she had expected to be revolting but was not as bad as she had thought it would be.

At the end of the interview, she seemed relatively confident that there would be something for me. I even managed to make her laugh a little when I asked her. 

“Quel salaire?” (what is the salary) I asked.

She looked up from her keyboard. 

“Minimum,” she said.

“Ah oui,” I replied.

After insisting on seeing a copy of my police record, she said that she would be in touch in the next couple of days once she’d had a chance to send out my CV. I was by no means confident, but there was half a chance that I'd get a job digging holes somewhere. 

Sarzeau is situated on a stretch of coastline which boasts some of the best fruits de mer (seafood) in France. There is a roaring oyster trade, satiating the ravenous hunger that French people have for their staple apéro for any special occasions, such as Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. 

Two days after my interview I received an email from the recruitment company and the first word was Felicitations. I excitedly copied and pasted the email into google translate and I was tickled pink to see that I had received a short term contract working on the Bateaux a Huitres (oyster boats). 

It was time to pop the cheap bottle of Chardonnay in the back of the fridge. I’d gained paid employment. 

I was told to meet at the docks at six a.m the next day, where I awaited my orders. I put the cork back in the Chardonnay bottle. I'd need to be fresh for my first day's work in France. I’d need all the wits I could muster.

I was told to bring a drink bottle and a good attitude. 

I didn’t sleep too well that night. A blizzard of awkward situations blew through my head. Beyond the inevitable awkward interactions with fishermen, I had morbid thoughts of getting pulled into a stainless steel vat filled with fish guts because I couldn’t understand the simple instruction yelled at me from the foreman. Of catching a fish hook in the eye socket and getting pulled under because I zigged when I should have zagged, or zagée’d.

The whole night I thought of creative ways that I could drown. I had endless thoughts of me sinking down into big salty. Old Davie Jones’s locker, where future generations of fishermen would sing shanties about me, shanties I would never understand. 

I decided that my only hope was to become the funny foreign guy in my first job. With my level of french I would never be taken seriously, so my only card was to play the comedian, maybe wear a badge saying that i’m from New Zealand? At least I had some cards to play, I thought.

My alarm put a stop to my musings. It was time to get up and start my first day of work.

Getting up early, even after a poor night of sleep, has never been a problem. There is great power to be found in good coffee. You’ve always got one day in the chamber, once you've got that cup of coffee in your hand.

A strong flat white with full cream milk is my coffee of choice. Two thirds full. Two big shots of perfectly chosen, roasted and ground beans, poured with a velvety full-cream milk made by the hand of a heavily tattooed hipster. I like the machine it came out of to hiss and blow steam and have six dials on it like some mechanical marvel from the steam age. When I look down at the cup, and I get a peak at that caramel coloured froth around the edges, I know that everything is going to be okay, for the next few hours anyway, but when that time comes, I can just get another one.

For some reason the French do not share the love of coffee like kiwi’s and ozzy’s do, and they seem completely un-open to trying to improve it. Coffee in France is something that squirts out of a machine. No enormous steam age contraptions. No tattooed hipsters at the helm. You get a hot cup of shut the fuck up. C’est ca.

They don’t care about your beans, they don’t give a shit about who puts the capsule into the machine and hits the button. You can have an espresso, a long black (alongé) or a cappuccino in a thin paper cup. C’est tout, bonne journée, au revoir.

It puzzles me greatly why the French, who pride themselves in quality, are so resistant to great coffee. Too often I will bite into my pastry and nearly be brought to tears by how glorious it is, then take a sip of my coffee and feel a deep sadness inside.

It was on mornings like this, heading to my first day of my new life as a fisherman, after not sleeping well, that I would have killed to have pulled into a cafe and paid $5.50 for a cup of spectacular coffee.

The drive to the docks was twenty minutes through agricultural land in the pitch black of night. Eventually I arrived at an estuary, with the bright lights of a fish processing plant providing the only illumination in the dark countryside. The sky to the west still had stars, but to the east it was becoming lighter with the arriving sun.

 I was told to ask for a man named Merlin. There was only one person there, a Senegalese man, whacking a crusty old oyster bag with a baton, getting the little bits of shells off the mesh before stacking them in a pile. I introduced myself, shaking his hand. He smiled when I spoke, I don’t believe he’d heard a kiwi accent before and it amused him a great deal. 

“Bonjour, je m'appelle Nick, je suis ici pour ma première journée de travail?” I said.

“Enchante’ Nique,” he said.

“Tu est Merlin?” I asked.

“Non, Je m’apelle Amadou,” he said with a warm smile.

He passed me a baton, and using the small amount of light from the floodlights in the factory behind us, we proceeded to work. I followed his lead, taking one of the full bags of oysters from the pile, unclipping them, emptying them into the bin, then whacking off all the little bits of shell and placing the empty oyster bag on top of the empty oyster bag pile. Hardly splitting the atom and well within my skill level language wise. 

I did this for about thirty minutes, before the headlights of a truck arrived, and entered the carpark. The purring of the diesel engine stopped and a grey haired and grizzled man tumbled from the deck, holding a paper cup of terribly tasting coffee in one hand and a pair of waders in the other. 

“C’est Merlin, c’est lui le patron,” said Amadou, pointing his baton at the man in the truck. 

“D’accord,” I said, putting down my own baton. 

“Bonne chance,” joked Amadou as I went to introduce myself. 

The man named Merlin (like the wizard) reluctantly shook my hand, before finishing the last sip of his coffee, wincing, and then tossing the paper cup into a bin beside us. 

There seemed to be an endless amount of bins around.

“Quelle taille de bottes?” croaked Merlin, nodding to my feet with sleep still thick in his voice. 

“Ahhh Neuf?” I said, having a crack. It seemed to work. 

“Attend ici,” he said. (wait here) 

I followed him into the warehouse. He stopped and turned around with an irritated look on his face.

“Attends la-bas!” (wait there) he growled, pointing to the spot where we had been talking previously. I snapped to it. I was back in David Bowie's arms. A baby being thrown around to the tune of some obscure pop classic from the eighties. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the puppets would show up and a new facet of the labyrinth would be revealed.   

The sun still hadn’t risen over the horizon, technically the day hadn’t even started, and I could tell it was going to be a long one. 

I was decked out in thigh high gumboots. I would need to earn my waders. I was then handed a pair of yellow water proof pants that went over the top of the boots and clipped over my shoulders. If it rained we had yellow jackets and hats we could wear.

I basically looked like Paddington Bear, if he had grown up and succumbed to alcoholism. 

It was off to work with me. My grumpy old bastard or batard of a boss lit up a hand rolled cigarette, coughed to the point of gagging, spat what looked like a small piece of his lung into the dirt and then pointed to the bins.

“Allez,” he said.

I did as requested, rejoining Amadou, picking up my baton beside the bins and cracking to it. 

I was a natural, by seven forty five I had a real knack for picking up bags, emptying them into a bin and then placing them in a pile. I even had a way with the baton. I was able to smack those pesky barnacles and shells that had grown into the mesh of the bag clean off. 

We finished the entire pile by the time the sun had come up.  

Inside the warehouse a conveyor belt was kick-started and the next step of my duties began. The oysters were cleaned and then returned to another converter belt where any non-oyster crustaceans that had become attached were removed with what looked like a small mediaeval weapon.

I was joined by a Somali man named Abdul and a Moroccan man named Habib. The hydraulics of the forklift kicked in and the bin of oysters was poured into a slightly bigger bin. 

When we’d processed the entire bin it was a little after ten a.m. 

 The conveyor belt whined down to a stop. 

“Café’!” yelled Merlin.

We sat at a picnic table overlooking the estuary. On the other side of the estuary was a seafood restaurant which had a steady stream of customers from twelve o’clock onwards.

The estuary was peaceful and quiet. Amadou didn’t drink coffee, he spent the cigarette & coffee break practising how to drive the forklift. I sat with my other colleague Habib, while Abdul handled what looked like a serious conversation on his cellphone. 

It was a good chance to practice my french with my new colleagues. 

“Merlin, il est un batard non?” I said to Habib. 

He smiled. 

“We can speak in English if you like?” he said. 

“Oh thank god!” I said. 

“Don’t worry about Merlin, we can’t even understand him half the time. All fishermen are rough around the edges, but they’re good people,” he said. “Where are you from?” he asked. 

“New Zealand,” I said.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said.

“Good question, I guess I just love emptying bags into bins,” I said. “What about you? Where are you from?” I asked.

“Morrocco,” he said.

“How did you get into the oyster business?” I said. 

“I’m a doctor, but none of my qualifications are recognised here,” he said. 

“A doctor?” I said in disbelief. 

“Yeah, bit over-qualified for this huh?” He jibed. “I don’t mind working in the fresh air. I sleep well after a hard day's labour,” said Habib. 

“I guess your skills will come in handy if one of us snaps and beats Merlin with our batons?” I said.

Abdul joined us at the picnic table. Sitting down with a thud, taking his coffee with a serious exhalation and downing it in one, shaking his head. 

“Ca va?” Asked Habib.

Abdul filled him in on the phone call, it sounded grim. He got another phone call, and quickly stood up to answer it. 

“What's up with him?” I asked.

“His wife’s visa hasn’t been accepted, they’ve changed some of the requirements,” said Habib. 

“How did he get one?” I asked. 

“He didn’t,” said Habib. 

“What do you mean?” 

“It’s a bit of a crazy story. He tried eleven times to get into Europe. He succeeded six of those times but five of them resulted in him getting arrested and spending time in Spanish and Italian jails, before being deported back to Somalia. The sixth time he got into Portugal then made it to France by foot. Once he was here they couldn’t deport him. The plan was for him to get here, get his visa, then bring his wife, but apparently things have changed,” said Habib.

“Jesus,” I said. “I thought my flight here was rough.”

“He was a civil engineer in Somalia, he designed the wastewater system in his city,” said Habib. 

“Now he whacks bags with sticks,” I said. 

I felt a bit foolish. I’d found one million reasons to criticise France without realising how lucky I was just to be here.

The bags full of sludge never ended. When we’d emptied the bin, another awaited, and so it went until Merlin turned off the conveyor belt and told us to go home. 

I’d never been more grateful for my apéro that evening. By ten p.m I couldn’t keep my eyes open. When I lay back in my bed I felt like I was floating. My body thrummed with exertion and I sank deeper and deeper, like a stone dropped into the ocean. 

I was gaffed back into consciousness by the infernal siren of my alarm at 5:20 am. It was time to empty more bags into bins. 

The next day, after emptying the bags into the bin, Merlin yelled at me to grab my sac (bag) and come with him. 

“Nous allons sur le bateau! Allez!” he yelled. (We’re going on the boat)

We got into a large Renault truck and drove the short five minute drive to the docks where the boats were moored. Oyster boats are long hulled vessels, designed to take large loads of stock, and to be able to be driven into shallow waters. Kind of like those fan powered boats that you see zipping through Louisiana swamps. 

There was a bouchon at the docks, with three boats backed up and a group of men standing around smoking cigarettes and talking. They were all grizzled fishermen, and what's more, they looked angry.

I hadn’t even earned my waders yet, I still had my thigh high gumboots. I was no-one on these docks, and I was treated as such. When I made eye contact, and instinctively gave the person the tip of the cap, as is custom in NZ, I was met with cold hard ambivalence.

I would need to earn my waders, then I would earn their respect. 

I heard the word retraite, yelled in among the indecipherable arguing of the fisherman congregated on the docks, and I remembered the bouchon in Vannes while going to the recruitment office.

Who knew even the suggestion of changing the retirement age could get everyone so revved up? 

Merlin pitched in his two cents with the group, I heard the words Massey Ferguson, and what sounded like a threat, before he pulled in his little wooden dinghy and rowed it out to fetch our oyster boat. 

He brought the boat close to the docks, and I jumped aboard. 

It was a Wes Anderson scene. Seeing the group of wader-clad fishermen all animated on the docks, I was waiting for Bill Murray to show up holding a glistening tuna in his arms to complete the image. 

I grabbed a hold of a metal pole at the edge of the hull, and Merlin kicked that old tub into gear.

The boat ride over the gulf of Morbihan was absolutely beautiful. Old fishing boats came and went but none of them looked commercial, they looked like something Pop-eye might take to sea. They weren’t for stocking the supermarkets, they were supplied the local fish markets and restaurants. 

The coastline was peppered with tiny little white and blue fishermen's shacks which soon gave way to sandy bays and rolling hills covered in golden brown scrublands. The water was calm and quiet, with the occasional oyster boat blasting over its pristine surface. Desperately trying to fill the never ending demand for des huitres.

When we arrived into the golden sanded bays, there were rows upon rows of steel structures built into the sand beds with full bags of oysters strapped on top of them.

It was low tide so the bags were exposed. My job was to flip the bags of the immature oysters, and load the bags which had reached size.

Each bag weighed between twenty to thirty kilograms. It doesn’t sound like much, but after wading through waist high water and flipping three hundred or so of the bastards you started to feel the burn. 

Every now and then the peace and tranquillity of the water lapping around me would be interrupted by the slurred words of Merlin barking another order. 

“Nique! Veux-de-voir-veur-voo-de-voovoolay!” He would yell at double speed. 

A couple of times I’d asked him; Pourriez-vous s’il-vous-plaît parler plus lentement (could you speak a little slower) but this seemed to piss him off even more. I was hot, wet and tired and Merlin seemed to smell my weakness, like blood in the water. 

After god knows how many blasts, I threw the oyster bag I had in my hands into the water and the bays of the Morbihan echoed with my wrath. I snapped. My boiler burst.

“Putain!!!” I yelled, slapping my hands against the water, as months of pent up frustration boiled over in a magnificent explosion of the purest rage. “Putain!!! Doucement! Parle doucement! S’il vous plait!!”  

To make matters worse, the sentence didn’t even really make sense, but the tone and the hand slapping against the water seemed to get the message across. 

Merlin looked at me from the deck of the boat, and I was prepared to be fired. I was welcoming it even. 

To my surprise, a salty smile spread across Merlin’s face and he began to laugh.

“Ahh tu parles bien français,” he said, laughing. 

I cooled off with a drink of water.

After my breakdown, to my surprise, Merlin treated me with un petite peu plus de respect. It was the first authentic French moment that we had shared together. We met each other halfway. He endeavoured to not talk to me like a sheep dog and I endeavoured to display a vocabulary which exceeded that of a sheep dog.

He was undoubtedly a grumpy old batard, but at the end of the day Merlin was a patriotic Breton and perhaps I represented the decline in a culture that he was so proud of. A few more years of people like me arriving into town and his beloved Bretagne would look like a Mcdonald’s in Paris, where the workers have to speak English just to be employed there. 

I picked up the buzz words, the words used often that were important. Things like: 

Oh Putain de merde tu me casses les couilles! (For f**ks sake you're breaking my balls.) That was a commonly used phrase.

That Friday at twelve o’clock we moored the boat early and headed back to the factory. Everyone had taken their waders off when we arrived back, and the team seemed in high spirits. 

“Tu aimes les fruits de mer?” Asked Amadou. 

“Oui, j’aime beaucoup les fruits de mer? Pour quo?” I said.

“C’est Vendredi déjeuner, Nique. On va manger des fruits de mer Vendredi pour déjeuner,” said Amadou, wrapping an arm over my tired shoulders and directing me towards the restaurant.

I followed him and the rest of the crew up a flight of stairs and into a small room attached to the side of the restaurant, away from the discerning diners. 

Inside a table was filled with any of the week's catch which had been abundant. Langoustines, crevettes, crab claws, bulots and of course plenty of oysters. There were two bottles of white wine and plenty of fresh baguettes and butter to go with it.

We had a long two hour lunch, eating and drinking our fill and for a moment, I honestly thought that the crew would bust out into a shanty. 

When the plates and bottles were empty, we had to all go back to the factory and we emptied the last two bins for the week, laughing and enjoying that Friday afternoon feeling, before finishing early. 

When I got back to my parent in laws place, my belle famille were all passionately engaged in a fiery argument. I heard the word retraite several times, and the penny dropped. It seemed that a storm was brewing on the horizon, and the winds were blowing it this way.