The American Lady"
**Description:** "The American Lady" is a gripping tale of a determined woman from the United States who moves to a foreign land in search of purpose and adventure. Amidst cultural challenges and personal struggles, she finds herself entangled in a web of unexpected relationships and deep-seated mysteries. Her journey of self-discovery and resilience unfolds as she navigates the complexities of a new world, ultimately revealing the true strength of her spirit.
**Description:** "The American Lady" is a gripping tale of a determined woman from the United States who moves to a foreign land in search of purpose and adventure. Amidst cultural challenges and personal struggles, she finds herself entangled in a web of unexpected relationships and deep-seated mysteries. Her journey of self-discovery and resilience unfolds as she navigates the complexities of a new world, ultimately revealing the true strength of her spirit.
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TVTranscript
00:00The train passed very quickly a long, red stone house with a garden and four thick palm
00:07trees with tables under them in the shade.
00:11On the other side was the sea.
00:14Then there was a cutting through red stone and clay, and the sea was only occasionally
00:20and far below against rocks.
00:23I bought him in Palermo, the American lady said.
00:29We only had an hour ashore and it was Sunday morning.
00:33The man wanted to be paid in dollars and I gave him a dollar and a half.
00:39He really sings very beautifully.
00:43It was very hot in the train and it was very hot in the lit salon compartment.
00:49There was no breeze came through the open window.
00:54The American lady pulled the window blind down and there was no more sea, even occasionally.
01:01On the other side there was glass, then the corridor, then an open window, and outside
01:08the window were dusty trees and an oiled road and flat fields of grapes with grey stone
01:15hills behind them.
01:17There was smoke from many tall chimneys coming into Marseilles, and the train slowed down
01:24and followed one track through many others into the station.
01:28The train stayed twenty-five minutes in the station at Marseilles, and the American lady
01:35bought a copy of the Daily Mail and a half-bottle of Evian water.
01:40She walked a little way along the station platform, but she stayed near the steps of
01:46the car because it can, where it stopped for twelve minutes.
01:51The train had left with no signal of departure, and she had only gotten on just in time.
01:57The American lady was a little deaf and she was afraid that perhaps signals of departure
02:03were given and that she did not hear them.
02:07The train left the station in Marseilles, and there was not only the switchyards and
02:12the factory smoke but, looking back, the town of Marseilles and the harbour with stone
02:19hills behind it and the last of the sun on the water.
02:23As it was getting dark the train passed a farmhouse burning in a field.
02:30Motor-cars were stopped along the road and bedding and things from inside the farmhouse
02:36were spread in the field.
02:38Many people were watching the house burn.
02:42After it was dark the train was in Avignon.
02:47People got on and off.
02:50At the newsstand Frenchmen, returning to Paris, bought that day's French papers.
02:57On the station platform were negro soldiers.
03:01They wore brown uniforms and were tall and their faces shone, clothes under the electric
03:08light.
03:09Their faces were very black and they were too tall to stare.
03:15The train left Avignon station with the negroes standing there.
03:20A short white sergeant was with them.
03:25Inside the lit salon compartment the porter had pulled down the three beds from inside
03:30the wall and prepared them for sleeping.
03:34In the night the American lady lay without sleeping because the train was a repeat and
03:40went very fast and she was afraid of the speed in the night.
03:45The American lady's bed was the one next to the window.
03:50The canary from Palermo, a cloth spread over his cage, was out of the draft in the corridor
03:58that went into the compartment washroom.
04:01There was a blue light outside the compartment, and all night the train went very fast and
04:08the American lady lay awake and waited for a wreck.
04:12In the morning the train was near Paris, and after the American lady had come out from
04:18the washroom, looking very wholesome and middle-aged and American in spite of not having slept,
04:25and had taken the cloth off the birdcage and hung the cage in the sun, she went back
04:31to the restaurant car for breakfast.
04:34When she came back to the lit salon compartment again, the beds had been pushed back into
04:40the wall and made into seats, the canary was shaking his feathers in the sunlight that
04:46came through the open window, and the train was much nearer Paris.
04:51Ah, he loves the sun, ah, the American lady said, ah, he'll sing now in a little while.
05:00The canary shook his feathers and pecked into them.
05:04I've always loved birds, ah, the American lady said, ee, I'm taking him home to my little
05:12girl.
05:13There, he's singing now.
05:16The canary chirped and the feathers on his throat stood out.
05:21Then he dropped his bill and pecked into his feathers again.
05:25The train crossed a river and passed through a very carefully tended forest.
05:32The train passed through many outside of Paris towns.
05:37There were tramcars in the towns and big advertisements for the Belle Jardiniere and Dubonnet and
05:44Pernod on the walls toward the train.
05:47All that the train passed through looked as though it were before breakfast.
05:53For several minutes I had not listened to the American lady, who was talking to my wife.
06:00Eee, is your husband American too?
06:03Eee, asked the lady.
06:06Ah, yes, ah, said my wife.
06:09Shwe're both Americans.
06:11Eee, I thought you were English.
06:14Eee, oh, no.
06:16Eee, perhaps that was because I wore braces.
06:20Eee, I said.
06:22I had started to say suspenders and changed it to braces in the mouth to keep my English
06:29character.
06:30The American lady did not hear.
06:34She was really quite deaf.
06:36She read lips, and I had not looked toward her.
06:40I had looked out of the window.
06:43She went on talking to my wife.
06:46Eee, I'm so glad you're Americans.
06:50American men make the best husbands.
06:53Eee, the American lady was saying.
06:56Ah, that was why we left the continent, you know.
07:01My daughter fell in love with a man in Vevey.
07:05She stopped.
07:07Ah, they were simply madly in love.
07:10She stopped again.
07:12Eee, I took her away, of course.
07:15Eee, did she get over it?
07:18Eee, asked my wife.
07:20Eee, I don't think so.
07:23Eee, said the American lady.
07:25Eee, she wouldn't eat anything, and she wouldn't sleep at all.
07:30I've tried so very hard, but she doesn't seem to take an interest in anything.
07:37She doesn't care about things.
07:40I couldn't have her marrying a foreigner.
07:44She paused.
07:45Ah, someone, a very good friend, told me once, no foreigner can make an American girl a good
07:54husband.
07:55Eee, no, besaid my wife.
07:57Eee, I suppose not.
08:00The American lady admired my wife's traveling coat, and it turned out that the American
08:06lady had bought her own clothes for twenty years now from the same Maison de Couturier
08:12in the Rue Saint-Honoré.
08:15They had her measurements, and a Venduse who knew her and her tastes picked the dresses
08:21out for her, and they were sent to America.
08:24They came to the post-office near where she lived uptown in New York, and the duty was
08:30never exorbitant, because they opened the dresses there in the post-office to appraise
08:35them and they were always very simple-looking and with no gold lace nor ornaments that would
08:41make the dresses look expensive.
08:45Before the present Venduse, named Therese, there had been another Venduse, named Amélie.
08:53Altogether there had only been these two in the twenty years.
08:58It had always been the same Couturier.
09:02Prices, however, had gone up.
09:06The exchange, though, equalized that.
09:10They had her daughter's measurements now too.
09:14She was grown up and there was not much chance of their changing now.
09:19The train was now coming into Paris.
09:23The fortifications were leveled, but grass had not grown.
09:28There were many cars standing on tracks, brown wooden restaurant cars and brown wooden sleeping
09:35cars that would go to Italy at five o'clock that night, if that train still left at five.
09:42The cars were marked Paris-Rome, and cars, with seats on the roofs, that went back and
09:48forth to the suburbs with, at certain hours, people in all the seats and on the roofs,
09:54if that were the way it were still done, and passing were the white walls and many windows
10:00of houses.
10:03Nothing had eaten any breakfast.
10:06"'Gemericans make the best husbands,' ere the American lady said to my wife.
10:13I was getting down the bags.
10:16"'Gemerican men are the only men in the world to marry.
10:21How long ago did you leave Vevey?'
10:24I asked my wife.
10:26"'Two years ago this fall.
10:30It's her, you know, that I'm taking the canary to.
10:35She was the man your daughter was in love with, the Swiss?'
10:39"'Yes,' he said the American lady.
10:44"'He was from a very good family in Vevey.
10:48He was going to be an engineer.
10:51They met there in Vevey.
10:53They used to go on long walks together.'
10:56"'Ere I know Vevey,' ere said my wife.
11:00"'Ere we were there on our honeymoon.'
11:03"'Ere were you really?
11:06That must have been lovely.
11:09I had no idea, of course, that she'd fall in love with him.'
11:14"'Ere it was a very lovely place,' ere said my wife.
11:19"'If yes,' ye said the American lady.
11:23"'Ere isn't it lovely?
11:26Where did you stop there?'
11:28"'Ere we stayed at the Trois Courants,' ye said my wife.
11:33"'Ere it's such a fine old hotel,' ere said the American lady.
11:38"'Ere yes,' ere said my wife.
11:42"'Sure we had a very fine room and in the fall the country was lovely.
11:47Ere were you there in the fall?'
11:50"'Ere yes,' ere said my wife.
11:53"'We were passing three cars that had been in a wreck.
11:58They were splintered open and the roofs sagged in.
12:02"'Ere look,' ere I said.
12:05"'Ere there's been a wreck.'
12:07The American lady looked and saw the last car.
12:12"'Ere I was afraid of just that all night,' ere she said.
12:17"'Ere I have terrific presentiments about things sometimes.
12:22I'll never travel on a repeat again at night.
12:27There must be other comfortable trains that don't go so fast.
12:32Then the train was in the dark of the Gare de Lyons, and then stopped and porters came
12:39up to the windows.
12:40I handed bags through the windows and we were out on the dim longness of the platform, and
12:47the American lady put herself in charge of one of three men from Cook's who said,
12:53"'Ee just a moment, madam, and I'll look for your name.
12:58The porter brought a truck and piled on the baggage, and my wife said good-bye and I said
13:04good-bye to the American lady, whose name had been found by the man from Cook's on a
13:10typewritten page in a sheaf of typewritten pages which he replaced in his pocket.
13:17We followed the porter with the truck down the long cement platform beside the train.
13:24At the end was a gate and a man took the tickets.
13:29We were returning to Paris to set up separate residences.