Читать книгу L'Amerique - Thierry Sagnier - Страница 8

Chapter 2

Events took a distressing turn when Jeanot and his family moved to the third floor apartment on rue de la Terrasse. Jeanot heard Mathilde, the maid, whispering about it outside the bathroom as he brushed his teeth one night. Oncle Yves, Maman’s brother, had apparently “become smitten” with Papa.

Jeanot wasn’t certain what that meant. Did men become “smitten” with other men? Surely not, or at least, not in the same way that Papa was “smitten” with Maman. Perhaps this was some sort of strange adult terminology with which he wasn’t yet familiar. Jeanot didn’t care about the state of Oncle Yves’ affections, but he was sure Papa would be mortified, if it was true. Not everything that Mathilde gossiped about, Jeanot knew, turned out to be real.

Oncle Yves was a charming man. He was the friend of famous people, and he claimed all sorts of connections to celebrities of whom Jeanot had never heard, but whose names apparently impressed everyone else in the room. Oncle Yves said that Ravel’s “Left Hand Concerto” had been written for him “to strengthen that side of my body. As a child, I was a naturally weak leftist.” He was ‘a horizontal friend’ of Cocteau’s, lunched with Poulenc, advised Coco Chanel, knew Frank Lloyd Wright and claimed to inspire Edith Piaf. Jeanot had heard, at least, of Piaf; who hadn’t? Papa was not impressed; Maman was and planned a party with Yves and his famous friends as honored guests.

Oncle Yves practiced the piano six hours a day, which to Jeanot sounded like the worst kind of torture. He read newspapers infrequently and listened to the radio only when classical programs were broadcast; programs which bored Jeanot to distraction. Yves was one of the rare humans Jeanot actively disliked. He’d once called Jeanot an idiot for using the salad fork to eat dessert, and Jeanot had not forgiven him.

On April Fool’s day 1952, Maman hosted the soirée. Mathilde hissed to Louise, another seasoned maid, that the party was “for Madame’s new friends, only to impress the old ones.”

Mathilde and Louise were driven to a frenzy of housecleaning. Two of the younger soubrettes, Solange and Corinne, were hired to serve; Monsieur Boyer, a former butler, mixed drinks, and Rémi-Pierre, the concierge’s adopted son whom Jeanot quite liked, found employment announcing the guests.

Babette and her parents were the first to arrive. She grabbed Jeanot by the arm and dragged him to a corner of the room. They sat on the floor and she told him about each of the guests as they entered.

Babette was Jeanot’s best friend. Two years older than him, she was full of information, self-assured, and inventive when necessary. He had known her since before he could walk, and remembered taking his first few steps with her help.

She knew all the guests. Her parents, she said, entertained the same crowd and were voluble in their gossip.

“That’s Dr. Bouzet,” she told him. “He’s a dentist and an alcoholic. His wife died three years ago and he drinks more and more.” Jeanot knew Dr. Bouzet as a dentist who had pulled the teeth of three generations of Févriers and as a builder of wooden model ships in bottles. Babette said, “Those are the Dumas. They tell everyone they’re related to The Three Musketeer Dumas, but my mother said that’s nonsense. They’re nouveau-riches and stuffy and their parents owned a boulangerie.”

A little later, she added, “Oh, look, the man in the wheelchair, the one being pushed by the lady with blue hair? Those are Maître and Madame Gaspard Vincent.” She mock-shivered in revulsion. “He helped prosecute Dreyfus.” Jeanot shivered too. He didn’t know what a Dreyfus was, but if Babette disliked the Vincents, he would too.

A few minutes after that, he said, “That’s Captain Walker and Mrs. Walker. They rent rooms down the hall.”

Babette squinted at them. “Trudy’s parents?”

Jeanot nodded. Babette made a snuffling sound of disdain. There had been a minor fashion incident when Trudy had been seen in the hallway by Babette, who swore the American girl was wearing diapers under her dress.

Hervé Bourrillot, a journalist for Le Figaro, had brought his son Dédé, a shifty-eyed and slightly hunch-backed kid Jeanot didn’t care for. Dédé, in turn, brought two potato guns, the novelty of the month, which his father had received free for plugging the item in his newspaper. Dédé, who smelled strongly of onions, gave Jeanot one of the weapons as a goodwill gesture, sealing a friendship that would last most of the evening.

The tip of the gun’s barrel was dug into a potato (or carrot, turnip or radish) to make a vegetable bullet. Dédé operated it by squeezing a rubber bulb built into the gun’s grip. When fired, the bullet traveled both very fast and very far before splattering on its target. Jeanot thought it was the most splendid thing he’d ever seen.

Each armed with a medium-sized potato stolen from the kitchen, Jeanot and Dédé practiced their aim in the boy’s room, leaving large, wet marks on the wallpaper. Dédé shot Jeanot in the butt. It stung! Jeanot retaliated, leaving a sizeable red welt on Dédé’s forehead. They sprayed the mirror and windows, defaced one of Maman’s better aquarelle, and took pot shots at the light bulbs. This was particularly satisfying since the load sizzled and steamed when it hit the bulbs and the room was filled with the aroma of potato bread.

When Mathilde called them to dinner, she shook her head in disgust. “A waste of good food,” she said. Then, looking at the potato guns, she added, “Besides, I imagine there are better and bigger targets in the living room.”

Oncle Yves and his celebrities arrived around ten; a noisy, argumentative group that stuck together in a nucleus of fame. They were polite yet distant, drinking a great deal, eating messily from the buffet table, and pointedly not mingling with the less stellar guests. Conversation stalled; Maman’s friends suddenly seemed uncomfortable. Jeanot felt awkward in the heavy atmosphere; Dédé began yawning and even Babette was uncharacteristically quiet. It seemed that Oncle Yves’ famous friends had only ended what had started off as a rather amusing party. Jeanot was disappointed. He was concerned that if the guests began to leave, the gift of the potato gun might be untimely revoked.

It was at that moment that Oncle Yves suggested a leg contest; a party game all the rage some years before among “balletomanes,” he assured the group.

“In the old days, Nijinsky won the contests so often,” said Oncle Yves, “that after a while, Diaghilev refused to let him participate.”

He undid his belt and let his trousers fall to the ground. Babette gasped, covered Dédé’s eyes and had her hands batted away. Jeanot noticed that Babette didn’t think to cover her own eyes.

Hortense and Violette Beaumarchais, the 60-ish twins from the fifth floor, shrieked in unison. Oncle Yves shot them a withering look and extended a leg clad in flesh-colored ballet tights.

“What we need,” he said, “are bed sheets.” He looked around, “Where is the housekeeper… Mathilde!”

Mathilde had confessed to Jeanot once that she had never liked Oncle Yves. A man “without an honest means of employ, who slept late, loafed at home and went to the toilet while talking on the telephone,” was not a man she could respect.

“Get sheets, Mathilde. Three of them. The large ones.”

When she returned, Oncle Yves directed the sheets be tied together lengthwise to make a thin curtain which could shield people from mid-thigh to above the head. The women were gathered on one side of the curtain, the men on the other. Oncle Yves told them to remove their pants, socks and shoes.

“Now,” said Oncle Yves, “each man walks the length of the curtain so that his legs—and only his legs—are visible to our friends of the opposite sex. They may ask an individual to demonstrate some skill—a jump, a hop, an entrechat—to best reveal his attributes. Applause shall select the winner.”

Captain Walker looked shocked and chose to quietly fade away but most of the other men—save Dr. Bouzet who pleaded psoriasis, and the wheel-chair bound Gaspard Vincent—doffed their trousers. Dédé looked for a moment as though he might do the same, but a withering glare from Babette forestalled him. Jeanot had no interest in removing his own trousers, but he found himself fascinated by the ridiculous display.

The collection of legs revealed an amazing array of morphologies. There were fat ones, skinny ones, tendons and muscles displayed or swathed in rolls of lard, some hairy, some hairless, all a milky pallor.

The men capered behind the sheets, not at all like the gazelles in Jeanot’s bedroom; the women laughed, booed, cheered, called out orders and applauded. Monsieur Dumas’ turn to parade was met with an audible gasp, and whispers of “here, now, is a pair of worthy legs!” Monsieur Dumas, Jeanot had overheard during the party, played tennis, swam and was an avid collector of butterflies. He had been known to chase into exhaustion evasive species in order to pin them in his display cases.

Monsieur Dumas was asked to kick right, then left. He was told to stand on tiptoes, to turn this way and that, to bring his heels together, apart and together again. Piaf whistled loudly and Chagall whipped out his sketchpad. Oncle Yves stared shamelessly, leading Jeanot to wonder, for an uncomfortable moment, remembering what Mathilde had said about his Oncle Yves being “smitten” with Papa.

Dédé and Jeanot opened fire with the potato guns just as Monsieur Dumas attempted a plié.

Later, much later, Dédé Bourillot burst into tears when accused of vandalism and pointed a finger at Jeanot, sobbing, “C’est sa faute! Il m’a forcé!” After all the guests had left, Papa smashed the toy guns with a mallet and cursed the reporter for being such a thoughtless oaf. Mathilde had left, promising to return in the morning to clean up (while wearing a smile inappropriate to the situation). Jeanot, all four cheeks afire, was sentenced to the hallway closet—the direst of punishments.

It was totally, completely, irremediably dark in there and smelled of mothballs. He sat on a pair of Papa’s winter boots and played with the laces. He mourned the potato gun, now in several pieces, its rubber bulb cut into thin strips by his mother. Dédé, that spoiled baby, had sold him out without a moment’s thought. Now Jeanot would never get a real gun, or even one that shot caps; certainly not before next Christmas, an eternity away. It was all very unfair, and for the longest time, surrounded by shoe smells and drowned in darkness, he wondered if for the rest of his life all the good moments would merit bad ones.

While Jeanot sat in the closet, he listened to his parents having a violent argument, each accusing the other of inviting the Figaro reporter. The words were unclear but the boy could hear the rise and fall of voices and, finally, the slamming of doors. He waited a half-an-hour until everything was quiet, then let himself out. The apartment was still lit, the two large chandeliers in the party room ablaze. He could hear his mother’s soft snores coming from the master bedroom. He tip-toed into the living room that smelled of cigarette smoke, perfumed sweat and spent champagne. The place was a welter of overflowing ashtrays and half-empty glasses. Maman never cleaned up right after a party; she preferred to wait until the next morning, declaring that a good evening should not end in drudgery.

Jeanot was thirsty. He surveyed the surroundings, found a glass almost full of amber liquid and drank five large mouthfuls while holding his breath. The stuff fired his throat and hit his stomach like a depth-charge. For a moment, he thought he might vomit his supper on the floor, but he didn’t.

There were other glasses, different colors. Wine, he could recognize and stayed away from. His parents often served him abondance with his meals, mixing a centimeter of wine into a large tumbler of water, but he didn’t like the stuff’s coppery flavor.

He sniffed a few more glasses and settled on one shaped like a balloon and smelling like baba au rum. He swallowed its contents without gagging. A third glass, he knew, contained Pernod. He liked the ornate blue, green and silver label on the bottle and always watched when his father fixed one. The distinctive anisette aroma filled his nose, so he drank three large swallows of that too.

He slid under the big Napoleon III couch, then stretched out. The ceiling panels swayed slightly like gentle waves, and that was very restful. He stared at them for a while, decided he was still thirsty and finished the Pernod. He thought a big chunk of dark chocolate might go well with the anisette so he found the box from Belgium his mother kept on the piano and ate a few of those. Soon he was thirsty again.

Now the choice of beverages appeared limitless, so he sampled one, grimaced, and spit it back into the glass. Something honey-colored caught his eye. It smelled vaguely of oranges, which tasted good with chocolate. It was smooth and the tang filled all the spaces beneath his tongue and between his teeth. He got drowsy and knew he should go to bed but his legs were thick and rubbery and he decided it would be a lot of trouble to take his clothes off, so he didn’t. He curled up on the couch. He thought again about the potato gun and giggled at the remembered image of Oncle Yves jumping at least a foot off the floor when the potato bullets hit him in the back of the thighs. He fell asleep in mid-laugh, trying to stifle the sound so he wouldn’t wake his parents.

In the morning, Maman found him. She was not angry, and she didn’t preach. She had Mathilde fix him tea with a dash of rum, which he drank happily—three cups—before falling asleep again. Mathilde offered to make tea for Maman as well, but Maman said she preferred a glass of water with her morning pills.

Papa was more worried and didn’t seem to care much for Maman’s remedy. There’d been drinkers in his family, he told Jeanot with a serious look in his eyes. His older sister was a sequestered drunk. He’d dealt with intoxicated soldiers during the war, and had come to realize there was no greater danger to groups or individuals than someone incapable of holding his liquor.

Jeanot listened, but his head hurt and it was hard to pay attention.

There was a lot of whispering back and forth, with Mathilde for once taking Maman’s side. “A drink never hurt anyone,” she said, though she seldom drank herself. “Where I come from, you start the day with a little white wine, and it carries you through the worst weather. Everyone knows that. Leave the boy alone; there’s no harm done.”

By the time Jeanot felt well enough to stand, trundle to the bathroom, puke, dress and make his way to the street with Mathilde, it was nearly mid-afternoon. The school day was almost over, and though his eyes hurt from the sunlight, he felt the evening had, all in all, been a success.

Later, he helped his Oncle Répaud walk Soldat, the three-legged dog, ran an errand for his Tante Jacqueline, spent an hour in the cellar rearranging his magazines and covered three sheets of paper with doodles. He started a poem but couldn’t quite make it rhyme or move the way he imagined it should, so he gave that up. He wished he could be a poet like Minou Drouet, the 8-year-old genius who had recently been featured in Paris Match. It galled him that a girl could get that much recognition doing something he should be able to do. He was, after all, very good at placing words next to one another, not that it impressed anyone. When Minou Drouet did it, everybody noticed. Even his teacher at the école maternelle had said Minou was an enfant prodige, a one-of-a-kind and didn’t she wish she had students like Minou instead of a bunch of slow-witted children who couldn’t remember how to spell ‘Napoléon?’