"Je ne parle pas français" is a short story by Katherine Mansfield.
Those are the first words spoken to Raoul on Mouse's arrival, and is also a phrase he found written on a table at a small cafe he enjoys.
He explains that he is a writer, lives in a rented flat, is "rich" and has never dated women.
He recounts how he met this friend, Dick, at a party, and how he was invited to dinner a few days later.
After being bothered by his concierge, Raoul arrives at the train station, where he meets Dick and the woman, Mouse.
The text is written in the modernist mode, without a set structure, and with many shifts in the narrative.
[6] The story was originally published in a large format paper edition in simple green wraps.
The title and the author's name, in all but one extant copy,[7] were on a pasted label on the wrapper.
"[8] The Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin asserts that of the "60 [that] were actually completed... perhaps 30 [were] distributed, mostly for review.
Waiting For Godot Bookstore (Hadley, MA) claims on an internet book sale site that "OCLC locates only 21 worldwide holdings (18 of which are in American institutions).
[11] Anthony Alpers writes that "this little private-press edition in which it first appeared is very rare.... Few know the story in its intended form.
"[12] The end of the story in the original version is considerably different from the story as it appeared in Bliss, as Constable's editor Michael Sadleir insisted on censoring sections, although Alpers said that they show the cynical attitudes to love and sex of the narrator Raoul (who was based on her lover Francis Carco).
John Middleton Murry persuaded Sadleir to reduce the cuts slightly.
[13] At first Mansfield, who was writing from Menton, was reluctant to see the story censored: "No, I certainly won't agree to those excisions if there were 500 million copies in existence.
But I was helpless here – too late to stop it – so now I must prove – no, convince people ce n'est pas moi.
One of the censored passages comes as Duquette describes his experiences as a ten-year-old with the African laundress.
The censored text is included in bold face: "One day when I was standing at the door, watching her go, she turned round and beckoned to me, nodding and smiling in a strange secret way.
When she set me down she took from her pocket a little round fried cake cover with sugar and I reeled along the passage back to our door.
"[20] Shortly afterward, Duquette muses about the fact he "never yet made the first advances to any woman": "Curious, isn't it?
When Duquette is bidding farewell to a prostitute on the street: "Not until I was half-way down the boulevard did it come over me—the full force of it.
‘Goodnight, my little cat,’ said I, impudently, to the fattish old prostitute picking her way home through the slush .
"[22] Alterations continue at the end of the story: "And so on and so on until some dirty gallant comes up to my table and sits opposite and begins to grimace and yap.
"[23] The story's original ending goes beyond the text as printed by Constable in England and Borzoi in the United States: "I must go.