Vanessa Austin Locke: Puts her foot in someone else’s mouth for a change

I’ve spent the summer reading Les Misérables and I can confirm they are miserable. I reached the last few chapters and decided that the 1,500 page tome should be finished in its home city. I jumped on the Eurostar to spend a coupe of days wandering the streets I thought I knew well, only to discover that it had been entirely re-written for me. The depth and detail of Hugo’s hyper-realism brought Paris to life in a way that no history or guide book ever has.

I was on my way to the Jardin du Luxembourg, where Marius watches and waits for Cosette, when I went over on my heel. I felt something tear in my ankle and I saw stars. Feeling sickly and faint I hobbled over to the elegant iron chairs and sitting on one I elevated my foot onto another and slipped my shoe off. My ankle had swollen to almost twice its size. I was quietly reading and waiting for the pain to subside when I felt the young man on the next chair looking over at me.

“I ‘eard you talking on ze phone you are English?” I replied that I was, his face lit up and he dragged his chair over next to mine. I groaned inside, really not in the mood to be chatted up, but the young man drew out an exercise book and asked me if I could help him with his English translation homework. Feeling relieved I looked at the list of words which were all translated correctly apart from one – ‘sole’. I explained to him that the word sole had several meanings the last one meaning the bottom of your foot. On hearing this he expressed recognition, “Ahhh! Zis is where I know zis word. I am studying reflexology. Oh! And look at your foot! What ‘as ‘appened?” I explained that I’d sprained my ankle and he asked if he could take a look at it.

“Caught somewhere between English manners and genuine need I said he could look at my foot”

Caught somewhere between English manners and genuine need I said he could. He drew his chair up to my feet and began feeling the pressure points, explaining to me as he did so which part of my body each related to in an easy conversational tone. It had started to get a bit cloudy and I was cold. The reflexology session had turned into a foot massage and I was kicking myself for being too polite to say no and trying to think of a way to extricate myself, when my new friend said, “you are cold, no?” I nodded and at that moment I watched in slow motion as his leaned down and put my big toe in his mouth.

I yelped and yanked my foot away. “But you say you are cold!” He said with a surprised French shrug. “So to you that means ‘please suck my toes?” And then the penny finally dropped from my pain-addled, dullard brain. “You’re not a reflexology student at all are you? You’re a foot fetishist!”. He simply shrugged again and said, “Yes.” I knew I should storm/limp off there and then but I had to give the guy credit for technique, so all I could do was dissolve into giggles at the ridiculously clichéd meeting of French and English. Victor Hugo, I decided, hadn’t quite nailed the hyper-realism after all.

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