Читать книгу Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa...and Me - Tony Cointreau - Страница 15

Night had already fallen when we pulled into the station, and I clutched the hem of my mother’s tailored grey suit with my little hands so that I would not fall down the steps and under the wheels of the train. It annoyed her when I wrinkled the hems of her dresses, but this time she didn’t seem to notice.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw a cluster of elderly figures dressed in black, as in a funeral cortege, coming towards us. The men all wore black armbands, a symbol of mourning, and the women’s faces were hidden behind heavy black veils. I turned my head away, hoping that these ghostly apparitions would disappear. One was even more frightening than all the rest—my father’s mother, Geneviève, who coldly appraised me before moving on to my older brother, Richard, who was eight.

I was six years old in 1947 and had enjoyed my first trip from our home in New York City to France on the magnificent British ocean liner, the Mauretania. I already adored traveling first class and meeting movie stars such as our shipmate Rita Hayworth. Richard, however, couldn’t have cared less about the glamour that surrounded us. He felt it was a waste of time to dress up every evening in the little white jacket, short black pants, and black tie that made up our formal attire. We would first sit with our parents in the bar drinking ginger ale with a dash of grenadine, and then move on to the grand dining room to start our dinner with all the caviar our little hearts desired.

After the Mauretania docked at Le Havre, we had a long train ride to Paris. My parents passed the time at a table with cocktails and a leisurely lunch, while I stared out the window at the devastated cities and the charred remains of homes. But there was one house that affected me more than the others. The only thing left standing was the chimney, and I wondered what had happened to the family that had called that house their home.

At first it all seemed unreal, as though I were still in the comfort of the United States, watching a newsreel with my aunt Tata at a movie theater in New York City. But by the time we reached Paris, I was consumed by the devastation and somberness of post-World War II France.

This was my introduction to the Cointreau family, and to Paris—the “City of Light.” As far as I was concerned, the light had gone out of this city and the ravages of war terrified me.

All I could do was cling to my impatient mother and silently beg her not to abandon me. For the first time that I can recall, a cloud of deep depression descended on me and I had no possible defense with which to fight it.

The drive down dark streets and past ornate buildings to my grandmother’s home in the Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris did nothing to allay my apprehension. It may have been during that ride that I took a profound dislike to anything old or antique, associating it all with the aura of war. One of the most beautiful cities in the world was rapidly becoming my worst nightmare.

My grandparents owned an entire six-story apartment building, but had kept the largest apartment on the top floor for themselves. When we reached the lobby, it was in total darkness; the light went on for only a few minutes when you pushed a button. If you had luggage or fumbled for your keys, you had to find the button and push it again for a few more moments of light. In the center of the lobby stood a tiny, ornate brass cage that turned out to be the elevator.

Once we entered the apartment, I had no more excuse to hang on to my mother and ventured into a dimly lit foyer. My independence was short lived, however, when I walked straight into a life-sized figure of a Chinese warrior dressed in full battle gear. He was not very tall, but he was large enough to tower over and terrify a small six-year-old boy. After I realized that he was only a statue, I looked around in the semi-darkness and saw that much of the apartment was filled with my step-grandfather’s collection of war memorabilia and the heavy, ornately carved Oriental furniture he had acquired during his years as a French general stationed in China as an army doctor during the Boxer Rebellion.

Afraid to lose sight of my parents amid these relics of another war, I followed them to their bedroom. It had white walls, Louis XV furniture, and some lamps that seemed to give off the only light in the apartment. The nicest part of the room was that my mother would be in it, but even as frightened as I was, I was not invited to share it with her.

Instead, my brother and I were taken to a dreary room in the back, overlooking a dark courtyard. It had two single beds, faded flowered wallpaper that was peeling off the walls, and a bare light bulb of dim wattage in the center of the ceiling. I was already depressed, but my heart sank even lower at being trapped in this squalid room.

The next morning, the sunlight streaming into the front of the house slightly improved my mood, but by midday I was aware that in a few hours, when evening came, my parents would go out with their friends, leaving me alone with my fears.

In the afternoon, after lunch, my parents opened the large French windows in their sunny bedroom, which overlooked the Eiffel Tower, and took a nap. I lay down between them and waited, afraid to fall asleep—I was convinced that after they woke up, got dressed for the evening, and left the house, something terrible would happen and I would never see them again. I tried to be Mother’s perfect little boy and not show my increasing panic. I didn’t scream or cry, but I was sure my parents could see the silent terror in my eyes as I watched my mother prepare to leave me.

As distant and as impatient as she sometimes was, I loved my beautiful mother—with her oval face, large blue almond-shaped eyes, and a natural white streak in her hair, starting at the widow’s peak—more than anything in the world. She was my lifeline. If I were to lose everyone else in my world, I could have survived. But if my mother were to go away and never come back, there was no way I could go on living.

As far back as I could remember, when my mother went out for the evening, I would lie awake and wait for her to come home. Still dressed in her evening gown, she would always bend over my bed and envelope me in the scent of her perfume and cigarettes. Sometimes she would sing silly songs she had learned from her mother. Then she would lean down to kiss me goodnight and cover one ear with a blanket. I don’t know why she covered my ear with the blanket; I think it was something her mother had done for her. After she left me, I would burrow deep down to the bottom of my bed and lie perfectly still for the rest of the night so that the kidnapper in my nightmares would not see me when he climbed through my bedroom window.

The nights in Paris were agony, but the days were not much better. The only time I dared to relax was in the early morning, when I knew that my mother had returned during the night and was safely in bed.

The deep depression and constant terror of losing my mother in Paris continued for two long weeks, until we finally left for Château Brillant, my grandparents’ summer home outside the city of Angers in the Loire region of France. The castle is actually named Château de Châteaubriant; but my grandmother had seen the sun shining on it from afar and decided that she would always call it Château Brillant, which is the name that I have always called it.

Even when we traveled by car, Mother made sure that it was in grand style, and an old admirer of hers put his ancient Rolls Royce at my parents’ disposal for the summer. The Rolls, a relic from another age, even had little bud vases for roses on each side of the back seats.

It was already dark outside when the Rolls rattled through the massive iron gates and onto the graveled courtyard of my grandmother’s château. The servants, who had last seen my mother, my father, and my brother at the outbreak of World War II, were lined up outside the front door. They eagerly greeted my parents and hugged and kissed my brother and me on both cheeks.

Mother attempted to be gracious, but she was tired after the long ride from Paris. At the first opportunity she tore Richard and me away from the friendly crowd and hustled us inside.

I looked around the entrance gallery and saw a massive stone staircase on my right, winding up to the second floor. Facing us was a statue of a Grecian woman; on the left was a huge fireplace.

I was not allowed to linger for long and was taken up to the second floor, where my brother and I were put into a large corner bedroom called the “Throne Room.” It was beautifully decorated, with an enormous four-poster bed that had a tapestry canopy and corner drapes. Large windows opened on the front and side of the house. This place was certainly more to my liking than the dismal room I had been assigned to in Paris.

I was asleep in a heartbeat but it seemed as though only a few moments had passed before Richard and I were awakened by the sound of birds singing—the most beautiful sound I had ever heard in my life. We looked at each other, ran to the window, threw open the shutters and looked out in awe at the endless expanse of woods and gardens. Without a moment’s hesitation, we put on our bathrobes and hurried downstairs, where we unlocked the front door and ran outside to explore.

Our greatest mistake on this first morning was an attempt to tiptoe across the wide swath of gravel in front of the house. Had we been smarter we might have looked for another, less noisy, route. After a few steps we heard Mother’s scolding voice from the second floor: “What are you doing outside at this hour, and waking everyone up by walking on the gravel?” We immediately froze, but as soon as we thought she had gone back to bed, we stepped onto the grass at the side of the building and circled around the property.

Over the years, as we returned from June to September, this vast property would become as familiar to me as the back of my own hand. But on that first day at Château Brillant, there was so much to discover, and every inch was exciting.

Behind the house we found a formal garden that covered an area larger than a city block. There were statues, manicured trees, and mazes of paths lined with pink roses. In the center sparkled a pond with large goldfish. At the far end of the garden there was an eighteenth century pavilion; inside, its high roof was painted like a blue sky with gold stars and drifts of white clouds. Later Mother told us that this was where our great-grandparents would sit and have tea brought to them in the afternoon. I wondered how the servants had managed to keep the tea hot, since the pavilion was so far from the kitchen.

To the right of the house we discovered a tennis court, and next to it, a huge jungle gym. We were still too close to the house to make any noise, so we decided to explore two trails going into the woods. Both trails led to an open circular temple made of marble, with tall columns supporting the roof. It was at the highest point of the property and had benches to sit on to admire the surrounding countryside. From there we followed a manmade stream that crossed through the woods and emptied into an old-fashioned wading pool surrounded by an intricate waist-high wrought-iron fence.

On our way back to the house we came upon the gardens, which contained every imaginable kind of flower, vegetable, and fruit tree. Three greenhouses, each a city block long, were filled with tomatoes and grapes of all colors. It was almost impossible to tear ourselves away from the sweet grapes, warmed by the sun.

Our last stop was at two enormous stone buildings facing the château. Their interiors had been destroyed during the war, and now they were mainly used to house cars. Even what had once been the chapel had been turned into a garage.

It was getting late so Richard and I crept into the house, carefully relocked the front door, and tiptoed back into bed before Mother could discover that she had been disobeyed.

I was usually a shy little boy but on my first day at Château Brillant I enjoyed meeting the head gardener, Auguste, who had started working at the château at the age of sixteen. He and his wife, Maria, a plump red-faced woman who ruled the kitchen, had lived and worked on the property for almost fifty years.

In New York I was never allowed into the kitchen but Maria instantly welcomed me into her domain. She chatted with me while she supervised a kitchen staff of four, who cooked for as many as thirty people a day on an immense woodburning stove. The intricacies of the old-fashioned ways were all that she knew.

Maria told me that during the war, the gardeners and servants had all been forced to stay on at Château Brillant to care for the Germans, who had taken over the château. My grandparents had moved into what had been my parents’ home, three kilometers away in Angers. Once a week the Germans allowed them to come and retrieve food from the garden.

During one of our afternoon chats, while Maria prepared seemingly endless vegetables for the evening meal, she gave me a real insight into the heroism of the farmers who had lived and worked on my grandmother’s farms surrounding Château Brillant during the Second World War.

On a beautiful spring day just before the liberation of France, a young American soldier slipped into the area without being caught. The farmers all knew about it and hid him in various places around their farms. The Nazi soldiers suspected his presence in the neighborhood, and gathered up all the families who lived on the farms. Among those courageous folks were, of course, Maria and Auguste. Mothers, fathers, children and grandparents were lined up against the long white wall across the road from the large gates of Château Brillant.

The Germans aimed their guns at the line of people and demanded, “Where is Johnnie?”—the name they used for any American soldier.

No one said a word. I could imagine it must have been difficult for them even to breathe, knowing the ruthlessness and cruelty of the Nazi regime they had lived under since 1940.

These brave and simple people remained silent as the German soldiers cocked their rifles and demanded once again, “Where is Johnnie?”

Just as they were prepared to annihilate whole families, an elderly grandmother dropped to her knees, with tears streaming down her tired cheeks, and pleaded with the soldiers.

“Please, we have no idea where the American might be. Please, don’t kill my babies. Take me, if you must, but we know nothing about the American!”

For some inexplicable reason, the commander called a halt to the execution and allowed the farmers and their families to go back to their homes in peace.

And the Nazis never found “Johnnie.”

On the other hand, shortly after I heard Maria’s heart-wrenching story, I was having tea with my grandmother and a lady friend of hers when the lady began telling us about the hardships that she had endured during the occupation.

“My dear,” she told us, “you won’t believe the horrors we lived through because of the sales Boches! [Dirty Germans!] Can you imagine, I had to eat the skin of the Camembert cheese!”

My grandmother wanted to choke me when I spoke up and said, “It really doesn’t sound nearly as terrifying as some of the other war stories I’ve heard.”

I was asked to leave the room.

When the Americans reached Angers in the summer of 1944, General Patton and his soldiers fought the Germans on our land. Many of the Germans fought from the safety of the château but were soon outnumbered. The next morning when my grandparents entered the gates they were elated to see dozens of American soldiers asleep in the fields next to the house. They approached to greet the men with open arms before they realized that they were all dead. In the château they found General Patton, in what would later be my bedroom, mapping out his next military strategy.

By 1947, the only traces left of the Germans were the bullet holes and, in one of the two living rooms, bloodstains where one of the Germans had been shot in the leg and had bled on the flowered tapestry loveseat. Every summer Maman Geneviève would bring out a bucket of water and soap and try to scrub away the bloodstains, but she refused to ever have the bullet holes in the boiserie and mirrors repaired.

At Château Brillant some of the fears I had experienced in Paris began to disappear. Once we arrived in the country, I knew that my mother would not be going out at night without me. My grandmother’s château would be a self-contained world where we would only visit other members of the family in the surrounding countryside, together.

Although the surroundings were everything a child could dream of, there were two things that less than thrilled me. In the evenings, after dinner, we would sit out back on the terrace and watch flocks of birds overhead. My nocturnal visits with the family outside ended abruptly when I discovered that these were not birds, they were bats. The other fear I developed at that time was when I went to my room one night, looked in the mirror, and saw a huge spider on my neck. From then on, this slightly neurotic child had to search his room with a fine-toothed comb every evening before he would climb in bed. Each article in the room, including paintings, had to be thoroughly inspected, front, side, and back, to be sure that there were no creepy-crawlies in the vicinity.

One night, a bat got into Château Brillant. Maman Geneviève captured it—I don’t know how—and I saw her place it in a glass dome on the mantel over the fireplace in my bedroom. I was both horrified and angry and told her that I would not sleep with that creature in my room, and insisted that she take it away.

In Paris, I had been so concerned with losing my mother that I had given little thought to Maman Geneviève, a strong-willed woman who at an early age had learned to wield her power for her own advantage. She had offered me scant comfort in my moments of fear and panic in Paris, but at Château Brillant, she became a force to be reckoned with.

My grandmother, Geneviève Cointreau, had been born into a small family of newly acquired wealth and privilege. Maman Geneviève and her brothers, Louis and André, were the only heirs of Edouard and Louisa Cointreau, who had built the family liqueur business into a major enterprise.

In the 1890s, Geneviève Cointreau had married Maurice Mercier, a well-known artist who created stained glass windows (some seventy years later, in the cathedral in which her funeral was held, the light on her coffin was filtered through the stained glass windows that he had made). They had two sons, Jean and Jacques (my father).

In 1906, when Jacques was four and his brother Jean was six, their father died, leaving Maman Geneviève alone, with two little boys to bring up.

Jean was determined to be an artist—art was his life—and he had a long and successful career. Watercolors, flowers, children’s books, posters, movie posters, Cointreau posters, stained glass windows for a cathedral in France—he did it all, and worked until he died, at the age of ninety-five.

My father wanted to be a surgeon, but when he graduated from school, he was the only direct descendant of Edouard Cointreau of his generation who was old enough to enter the family business, and so he did.

My father’s uncles, Louis and André Cointreau, who had acted as surrogate fathers, groomed my father for a career in the Cointreau company, and his uncle Louis took him around the world with him as they promoted the liqueur on an international basis. From the beginning André and Louis insisted that it was important for business reasons that Jacques add his mother’s maiden name, Cointreau, to his father’s name, Mercier, thus becoming Jacques Mercier-Cointreau.

It was around this time that Maman Geneviève met Dr. Henri Coullaud, a General in the French Army who was a Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur, and had been awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was living on not much more than an army salary when he asked for her hand in marriage. Before the wedding, the General insisted that his future bride sign a paper that all but disinherited Jean and Jacques from her fortune, in favor of any children they might have together. They eventually had one son, Denis, so I consider myself fortunate that the document became worthless when the General died several years before Geneviève.

The General turned out to be a great intellectual with a remarkable library that he would retreat to every afternoon. I appreciated his wry sense of humor and the fact that he did not appear to be intimidated by Maman Geneviève. At the dinner table he would often, in front of the family and guests, turn to her and exclaim as a statement of fact, “Geneviève, tu est une enmerdeuse!” Loosely translated it meant, “Geneviève, you’re a pain in the ass!” He always said it with a laugh, but I suspected that he really meant it.

Maman Geneviève got up at seven o’clock every morning, marcelled her hair with a curling iron, and pinned it up in back. She always wore one of two white summer dresses—alternating them each day. Maman Geneviève’s frugal habits were a family trait that my mother always referred to as “l’economie Cointreau.” At Château Brillant, she cut up newspapers that she doled out to be used as toilet paper (Mother, of course, brought her own from America), saved small pieces of string and paper, and kept little pieces of soap. From sunup till sunset Maman Geneviève ruled Château Brillant, as well as the surrounding farms, which she also owned, with an iron hand.

In those days French servants were often considered no more than slaves, which suited my grandmother perfectly. At 8:30 one morning, I was having breakfast in my mother’s bedroom when I heard a commotion down the hall. I saw Mathilde, one of several housemaids, running towards my grandmother. Tears streamed down Mathilde’s face as she begged Maman Geneviève to allow her to go to her mother, who was dying in a nearby town.

My grandmother coldly replied, “You may go after lunch has been served and your work finished for the day.”

Even though I was only six years old, this struck me as so blatantly cruel that I ranted and raved until she finally relented. But in the end Mathilde was so frightened of Maman Geneviève that she only dared leave later that evening after her work was done.

The next day Maman Geneviève asked me, “Why don’t you come with me this morning while I tour the property?” I was a bit wary as I followed her obediently through the gardens and past the chicken coop to the rabbit cages. There I saw about two dozen white rabbits, many of them fluffy babies. Maman Geneviève pointed to a nice plump bunny all alone in a cage set apart from the others, smiled at me, and asked, “How would you like to have this one for your very own?”

I would have preferred one of the cute little babies, but I loved animals more than anything in the world and I was not going to question my sudden good fortune.

That night, when I sat down to dinner with the family, my grandmother turned to me and said, “Jacques-Henri, you have displeased me, so your dinner will not be like everyone else’s.”

Then Maman Geneviève rang the bell and the butler entered with a large silver platter. On the platter was my bunny rabbit. My dinner had arrived.