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He attended the county grade school from age five until twelve, and just after his thirteenth birthday enrolled at County High in Charlottesville, rising every morning before dawn to commute from Crozet to the city. It was at the high school that something was to happen that would change his life.
Back in 1944 a certain GI sergeant had, with thousands of others, hauled himself off Omaha Beach and struck into the hinterland of Normandy. Somewhere outside Saint-Lo, separated from his unit, he had come into the sights of a German sniper. He was lucky; the bullet grazed his upper arm. The twenty-three-year-old American crawled into a nearby farmhouse where the family tended his wound and gave him shelter. When the sixteen-year-old daughter of the house put the cold compress on his wound and he looked into her eyes, he knew he had been struck harder than any German bullet would ever do.
A year later he returned from Berlin to Normandy, proposed, and married her in the orchard of her father’s farm with a U.S. Army chaplain officiating. Later, because the French do not marry in orchards, the local Catholic priest did the same in the village church. Then he brought his bride back to Virginia.
Twenty years later he was deputy principal of Charlottesville County High, and his wife, with their children off their hands, suggested she might teach French there. Mrs. Josephine Brady was pretty and glamorous and French, so her classes quickly became very sought after.
In the fall of 1965 there was a newcomer in her first-year class, a rather shy youth with an untidy shock of blond hair and a fetching grin, called Jason Monk. Within a year she could avow she had never heard a foreigner speak French like him. The talent had to be natural; it could not be inherited. But it was there, not just a mastery of the grammar and the syntax, but an ability to copy the accent to perfection.
In his last year at County High, he would visit her house and they would read Mairaux, Proust, Gide, and Sartre (who was incredibly erotic for those days) but their mutual favorites were
the older romantic poets, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Verlaine, and De Vigny. It was not intended to happen but it did. Perhaps the poets were to blame, but despite the age gap, which worried neither of them, they had a brief affair.
By the time he was eighteen Jason Monk could do two things unusual in teenagers of Southern Virginia; he could speak French and make love, each with considerable skill. At eighteen he joined the army.
In 1968 the Vietnam War was very much in full flow. Many young Americans were trying to avoid serving there. Those who presented themselves as volunteers, signing on for three years, were welcomed with open arms.
Monk did his basic training and somewhere along the line he filled in his résumé. Under the question “foreign languages” he filled in “French.” He was summoned to the office of the Camp Adjutant.
“You really speak French?” asked the officer. Monk explained. The adjutant called Charlottesville High and spoke with the school secretary. She contacted Mrs. Brady. Then she rang back. This took a day. Monk was told to report again. This time there was a major from G2, Army Intelligence, present.
Apart from speaking Vietnamese, most people of a certain age in this former French colony spoke French. Monk was flown to Saigon. He did two tours, with a gap in between back in the States.
On the day of his release, the C.O. ordered him to report to his office. There were two civilians present. The colonel left.
“Please, sergeant, take a seat,” said the older and more genial of the two men. He toyed with a briar pipe while the more earnest one broke into a torrent of French. Monk replied in like vein. This went on for ten minutes. Then the French speaker gave a grin and turned to his colleague.
“He’s good, Carey, he’s damn good.” Then he too left.
“So, what do you think of Vietnam?” asked the remaining man. He was then about forty, with a lined, amused face. It was 1971.
“It’s a house of cards, sir,” said Monk. “And it’s falling down. Two more years and we’ll have to get out of there.”
Carey seemed to agree. He nodded several times.
“You’re right, but don’t tell the army. What are you going to do now?”
“I haven’t made up my mind, sir.”
“Well, I can’t make it up for you. But you have a gift. I don’t even have it myself. My friend out there is as American as you and me, but he was raised in France for twenty years. If he says you’re good, that’s enough for me. So why not continue?
“You mean college, sir?”
“I do. The G.I. Bill will pick up most of the tab. Uncle Sam feels you’ve earned it. Take advantage.”
During his years in the army Monk had sent most of his spare cash home to his mother to help raise the other children.
“Even the G.I. Bill requires a thousand dollars in cash,” he said.
Carey shrugged. “I guess a thousand dollars can be raised. If you’ll major in Russian.”
“And if I do?”
“Then give me a call. The outfit I work for might be able to offer you something.”
“It could take four years, sir.”
“Oh, we’re patient folk where I work.”