Le Grand Meaulnes

‘But you have read Madame Bovary?'
(I'd heard of the book.) ‘No.'
‘Not even,' she looked ratty now, ‘Hermann Hesse?'
‘No.' Unwisely I tried to dampen Madame Crommelynck's disgust. ‘I only really did English literature at school...'
‘“English”? Australia was part of the English Empire, England is European! No French? No German? You are Australian, you illiterate monkey of puberty! Thomas Mann, Rilke, Gogol! Proust, Bulgakov, Victor Hugo! This should be your culture, your inheritance, your skeleton! You are ignorant even of Kafka?'
I flinched. ‘I've heard of him. I've even discussed him on Goodreads'
“Goodreads?” she shrieked ‘This?' She held up Le Grand Meaulnes.
‘Yes, I've just finished it.'
‘Is one of my bibles. I read it every year. So!' She frisbeed her copy at me, hard. It hurt. ‘Alain-Fournier is your first true master. He is nostalgic and tragic and enchantible and he aches and you would have ached too and, best of everything, he is true.'

As I opened it up a cloud of foreign words blew out. Il arriva chez nous un dimanche de novembre 189...
‘Your copy. It's in French!'
‘Translations are incourteous between Europeans.' She detected the guilt in my silence. ‘Oho? Australian schoolboys in the less than enlightened 1970s never read a book in a foreign language?'
‘We never had French at school...' (Madame Crommelynck made me go on.) ‘...but we had Citizenship Education.' I said brightly.
‘Pfffffffffffft! Citizenship Education? What is that? When I was thirteen I spoke French and Dutch fluently! I could converse in German, in English, in Italian! Ackkk, for your schoolmasters, for your minister of education, execution is too good! Is not even arrogance! It is a baby who is too primitive to know its nappy is stinking and bursting! You Australians, Queenslanders especially, you deserve the government of Monster Joh Bjelke Peterson! I curse you with twenty years of Bjelke Peterson! Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is prison! You have a French dictionary and a grammar, anyhow?'
‘No but I have read and now finished Le Grand Meaulnes as translated into English by Frank Davidson' ‘And you like?' Madame Crommelynck asked. ‘Kinda' I said.
“”Kinda, kinda'” Madame Crommelynck sneered. ‘Is that this strine that you antipodean halfwits speak? What do you mean Kinda?' ‘It all seemed kinda clunky in parts of the translation' I replied and caught the outrage in Madame Crommelynck eyes. ‘And the story was just a little too sweet and cloying, saccharine one might say. For my tastes anyway but I do understa...'
‘sweet, cloying, saccharine?' roared the good Madame “out of my sight now and read....and read... read that David Mitchell....... Onzin!”

As I slunk away feeling a great sense of guilt that I could only give a French classic 3 stars I heard an exasperated ‘Ackkk' deep in the throat of Madame Crommelynck.