When Jonathan Died

by Tony Duvert

  ‘Yes, it will be fine. I’ve seen toads and grasshoppers, and there are two cats that come.’

  ‘What are they called?’

  ‘They haven’t got names, they’re wild.’

  ‘But where do they sleep then?’

  ‘Where they like, when people don’t chase them away.’ ‘Do you chase them?’

  ‘Oh no, they’re no bother. They bring the things they steal from the old woman here to eat, there’s an old woman who lives next door with a dog, she’s got chickens and rabbits. Vegetables too. She doesn’t talk to me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s all alone, she doesn’t like to talk, she told me to put poison down for the rats.’

  ‘Rats? Are they big, rats?’

  ‘Perhaps as big as that,’ said Jonathan, pointing to the pi­geons.

  ‘We’re going to eat rats,’ Serge shouted out. And he started to laugh again at last, the vulgar, hellish and raucous laugh that was his secret voice.

  Jonathan had put the kitchen table close to the fire. The nights were still very cold. He laid the table carefully on a bright red tablecloth. The boy became intoxicated by the smell of the meat and the frying fat.

  At the table, impressed by this artless decorum, Serge said: ‘You know at home? I used to break everything all the time. Now I don’t break anything.’

  ‘Ah, that’s good,’ said Jonathan, ‘You drink wine, do you?’ ‘No, I don’t. Come on, give me some! Give me! Give me, come on!’

  ‘Enough? You really don’t break things any longer? Can you show me?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘You can’t show,’ said Serge, roaring loudly with laughter, ‘I’m going to drink the wine! the wine!’

  ‘You can show me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘No you can’t!… Go on, show me.’

  ‘It’s easy. Here’s two plates. The first one, I drop. The other one I leave alone.’

  The plate smashed on the tiles. Serge shouted out in aston­ishment. Jonathan went to look for a dustpan and brush: ‘The second plate I didn’t break, did I? You see you can show you aren’t breaking something.’

  ‘Y…es,’ said Serge, ‘but you broke the other one.’

  ‘That’s not the same, there are plenty of them.’

  ‘Oh! Oh! Then I can as well? Hey, I can as well then?’ Serge called out provocatively.

  ‘Of course, we can eat out of our hands, it’s better.’

  ‘Well, that one then!’ and Serge threw his own plate to the other end of the room. Jonathan jumped. Bits of plate struck against the furniture, but what one really heard was the joyful hunter’s whoop the child uttered at the same time as the movement.

  ‘A pity it was empty,’ Jonathan said, holding out the broom to the young boy, who was already on his feet.

  ‘Mmm…,’ said Serge, ‘if there were… chips on it!’

  ‘Soup.’

  ‘Spaghetti!’

  ‘Peas.’

  ‘Oh yes! Peas.’

  Serge was down on his haunches, ferreting under a chest of drawers with the dustpan:

  ‘Soup! You got it. But… wait…,’ and his voice exploded, ‘something that stinks.’

  ‘That stinks? And you can eat it?’

  ‘I don’t really know what.’

  Serge said no more. He went like a good boy and put the pieces in the bin. Then, spattered all over with fat and red wine, they had a wonderful dinner by the wild flames of the fire.

  In the morning, Jonathan could hear his neighbour scratching away at the earth, behind the fencing that separated their two gardens. She must have put herself there to find out what was going on and where this infant voice was coming from.

  It was a bright morning. Serge had woken up at seven, and Jonathan had felt a slight constraint. They’d put on their clothes without washing. Serge got his shoelaces tied for him, saying he didn’t know how. Jonathan didn’t know, either. He noticed that the boy’s feet had grown; the toes were less short and less plump. Against the light, a golden down could be seen at the ankle; dense, regular, each hair slightly curved, it thinned out towards the calf without entirely disappearing.

  Serge insisted on going out into the garden straight away. Jonathan served breakfast on the ground, on the thick grass. Not quite wakeful, the child listened to the scraping of the hoe. He pulled limply at the grass around him and tossed it into his coffee-bowl, which he’d left half-full; then he tipped it upside down, stood up with a spring and approached the wire-netting fence. He pushed the little leaves aside:

  ‘Hello!’ he said, catching sight of the old woman.

  ‘Hnn.’

  She remained bent over. A wet black nose, surrounded by short greying hair, pressed itself through the netting and touched the child on the knees.

  ‘Is that your dog?’ asked Serge, pushing a finger through to be licked.

  ‘Get out of there, you tike,’ said the old woman. She gave the dog a prod with the hoe. Disappointed, Serge went back to sit with Jonathan.

  The old woman straightened up, and shouted through the fence:

  ‘I’ve still got rats! Put down more poison! Monsieur! They had two of my chicks last night! And you’ll have to pull up that bindweed, it’s getting to my turnips!’

  Without waiting for a reply, she bent over the bed and started hacking at the soil, but slowly and gently, so as to be able to hear. Serge murmured happily, ‘Your turnips! my rats! my chicks.’

  ‘I’ve put flowers in over there for the summer,’ said Jon­athan.

  A very small oblong patch of earth, dug over and sieved, where thin shoots were growing, tall as a hand.

  ‘Turnips?’ said Serge, rather louder.

  ‘No, they’re… I’ve forgotten the French name. They grow in the wheat. If you take off your shoes,’ he went on seriously, ‘I’d really like to draw your feet.’

  Serge accepted, unsurprised:

  ‘But I can’t undo the knot.’

  Jonathan helped him; then, on his back in the grass, his legs in the air, pulling at his socks, Serge gurgled: ‘Oh! my chicks! my chicks! my little rats! my turnips.’ Jonathan put his drawing board on a crate; he gave the boy a magazine, and got him into the right position for the light. ‘Are you doing both feet?’

  ‘Yes, all your feet.’

  ‘All my feet?’

  Serge, who read very badly but tirelessly, often moved about as he read. His feet moved too, and Jonathan followed. At the end of an hour there were ten or so feet on the paper. All his feet, thought Jonathan. He drew with a pencil, without retouching or rubbing anything out. It was something he could have done with his eyes shut — an old skill. But it moved him, this rearticulation of the academic outline in Serge’s proportions. He produced depth simply by varying the thickness of the line. The whiteness of the skin made him want to put a wash on the paper, and this surprised him; since he had lived here, he hadn’t touched colour.

  After the watercolour, the childish feet seemed lumpish and restless. Over there, Serge’s own were waving gently very near a clump of nettles. Sometimes, while reading, the boy would speak a syllable out loud, his voice toneless or resolute, as it might be.

  Jonathan looked at the paper, happy. These drawings weren’t his. This morning, simply, the chance play of sun and cloud had caught the young boy’s exorbitant likeness and held it, floating, on the paper. He showed the sketch to Serge, who paid it no attention.

  ‘That’s how you catch a cold,’ came a sharp voice, full of cold itself. The old woman had come out onto the lane, and taking advantage of the clear view from the front, was giving them a curious glance.

  ‘She’s interested in you,’ said Jonathan.

  Suddenly he pulled Serge towards him by his legs, and spent some time kissing his feet. He licked between his toes as well. The little nails were black The child laughed and shouted with pleasure. He thrashed about. The sketch had fallen to the ground, and got trampled and torn. The
n they had a rest, and in silence Jonathan and the boy looked at each other M a very particular way. They got up and went back into the house.

  As Serge disappeared barefoot in front of Jonathan, he seemed in a hurry, a little insubstantial, almost dancing.

  Serge never talked about his father, who was called Simon and whom he saw once or twice a month. Jonathan had met him the odd evening in Paris, and they’d got on well enough. Simon would have liked to be a painter or sculptor; he was some kind of technician in an architect’s office. He was a nice chap, but nothing special. He seemed to have loved Barbara very much, and not to have got over it; but Barbara thought him boring company, both in town and in bed.

  She saw him now and then, all the same. They made con­versation, or made love in a desultory fashion, or perhaps Simon would take Serge to the cinema or the zoo. His son inspired in him no more than a lukewarm kindness. He paid Barbara a small monthly sum as maintenance for the child.

  In Serge’s room in Paris, though, there was a big photo­graph of Simon, one of his pipes, a pair of shoes, very much worn, and a pair of jeans splashed with paint. Simon must have brought them to Barbara’s to do some work around the house. These things were mixed up with the toys and other things that Serge was in the habit of leaving lying about everywhere. At the age of six, he’d had a mania for changing his clothes right through the day. He’d invent or discover discomforts in this pair of shorts, that vest, or in one sock of a pair. He would pull them off furiously and try on other clothes, turning drawers upside down, shouting, crying, and then eventually quietening down. Barbara, insensitive to noise and disorder, would merely shrug her shoulders. But when she had friends round to think quietly and meditate, with incense sticks, green tea, and a Zen book within hand’s reach, she would shake Serge and hit him, reasoning with him in a measured voice:

  ‘Listen now, young man, it’s time to stop the play-acting, don’t you think?’

  Beside himself, the child would go and cry in a cupboard. Now Barbara and her friends could continue their exercises in serenity.

  Jonathan’s arrival changed all this. He didn’t know how to meditate. He followed Serge into his cupboard, and was as­tonished at what he saw. On a shelf fixed very high on the wall, curled up behind a heap of rumpled linen, there was a little animal gasping, rigid, savage, inaccessible, of which no more was to be seen than some ear and a bit of knee. Deeply moved, Jonathan desperately wanted to comfort him; to take him in his arms. Tears in his eyes, he waited and allowed himself to be watched. Then, suddenly, Serge overturned the rampart of linen and fastened himself about his neck. Later, he showed Jonathan how he managed to climb up into this den; it was very much more difficult to come down.

  They finished the evening in the boy’s room, so quiet that Barbara broke off the tranquility trials to see why everything was so calm. The two boys were on the floor; sitting on top of Jonathan, Serge was putting together, from the top of Jon­athan’s head down to his waist, the little blocks of plastic usually used to build bungalows and petrol stations. Shy, and hung about with these angular garlands, Jonathan didn’t know what to say or what to think. After that first evening, he felt a great distress. Then, after some weeks, he had to admit that Serge loved him, and he too rediscovered his peace of mind.

  Serge behaved as if younger than he was. He did dozens of imaginary little things for Jonathan; in return, he insisted that Jonathan dress him, button him up, do up his shoes, undress him, wash him, take him to school and back, hold his hand in the street, kiss him before and after, help him read the letters and draw even the most simple of them. He’d been so unman­ageable and fickle at table that Barbara had given up trying to make him eat; he helped himself from the fridge when he wanted. But Jonathan liked to cook, so Serge now liked to eat.

  Jonathan undertook each role so patiently and contentedly that Barbara, irritated, soon saw in these rituals so many de­testable habits being instilled into her son, and put a stop to them when she was present. That put Serge back in a bad mood: more disorder, with things getting broken, shouting, and retreats to the top of the cupboard. Barbara concluded from this, in accordance with her own private way of linking cause and effect, that Jonathan upset the boy and had a bad influence on him. Having fallen under the spell of certain writings, she didn’t put this down to any perversion on Jonathan’s part, but to the negative vibrations he put out without being able to control them. Experts in vibration, her friends confirmed the diagnosis:

  ‘You’re right; what this guy gives out, it’s just impossible. You shouldn’t leave the kid with him.’

  ‘Yeah, you know, I can feel it just here. Really.’

  ‘I’d say he hasn’t any orgone energy.’

  ‘You crazy or what? Everybody has.’

  ‘I know, but, you see, I don’t know, you know, he doesn’t accept it, he refuses it, like, he… well, I don’t know… but hey, it’s obvious, like, isn’t it?’

  It was thanks to Simon that Serge had escaped an affected Christian name. When he was born, Barbara had wanted to call her baby Sebastien-Casimir, or Gervais-Arthur, or Guil­laume-Romuald, anything like that would have done. Simon protested, and with such unaccustomed vigour that Barbara gave way. They were intending to get married, and she was worried about other disagreements. Serge was the name of Simon’s father, whom he admired.

  As for Barbara’s real name, it was Georgette. Her mother called her nothing else when she visited her in Paris. Inclined towards irony, Serge could have wet himself laughing each time his grandmother said ‘Georgette’, but he held himself back. On those days Barbara was in a stormy mood, and rows broke out between mother and daughter.

  In this old woman Jonathan had an enemy. She often found Serge with him and she didn’ t like it. She came to Paris to enjoy possession of her grandchild: this rival spoilt her plans. Serge was impossible with his grandmother; he kept his good manners for this quiet young man who wasn’t even French. The old woman thought Jonathan made such an effort with Serge so as to sleep with his mother. She found it disgusting: it was just too easy to please a child like that. Of course, Barbara would fall for it! The grandmother thought it revolt­ing that such calculation should rob her of the privileges and pleasures which by rights were hers alone.

  She lived in Peronne. She dreamed of taking Serge away from the dissipated life that Barbara led, to make him a part of her settled widow’s existence. She had brought up a daugh­ter, a husband and six poodles. This large number of dogs was the result of her having them put down as soon as their age meant they needed care or attention.

  When Serge was very small, he’d often been given to her to be looked after — for Barbara it was more important to get her son off her hands than to find him the right company. The old woman had made him wear straw hats, supervised his play in the squares, sat him down in front of the television adverts, offered him a Zorro suit with a black mask and guns for tiny tots; she’d taught him baby-talk, with its lisping speech and shrill shouts, for Serge’s own voice was rough and spoke only ordinary sentences, nothing to do with what comes out of a doll’s belly. However, Serge had loved his grandmother: at three or four years old, overflowing with liveliness, sweetness and confidence, he loved everybody.

  After one stay a little longer than the others, Barbara thought her son was being made into an idiot. For the time being, she decided he wouldn’t any longer go to Peronne.

  But Serge only needed a week to recover his coarse voice, his laughter and his audacity. Barbara liked to show off about this, as long as he remained happy with her.

  She had read, though, in a feminist book, that after three years children, both girls and boys, have had enough of their mothers. She watched him, checked it out, rejected it. The upbringing continued.

  The grandmother had never read anything like that. Nonetheless, she did what she could to combat Serge’s ten­dency to love whom he liked. This was the main reason for the wars between her and Barbara; the origin of such general ideas as Bar
bara had about Jonathan and the world as a whole; and the reason why, in those days, Serge reacted with a furious face and clenched fists to the seductive endeavours of the two women, and asked for no other pleasure than to be taken for a walk through the streets on Jonathan’s shoulders. If she was feeling up to going on the offensive, the grand­mother would go with them. Serge would take this opportu­nity, held firmly by the thighs, to stand up straight on top of Jonathan and pretend to jump. Then he really would jump: Jonathan would catch him beneath the arms before he reached the ground; he admired the boy’s courage, and he hugged him a lot. The grandmother would turn away her face, talk about broken legs, about ice-cream shops round the corner, and her rigid fingers trembled.

  ‘Where’s your junk-drawer?’ asked Serge, bounding from the garden into the kitchen. Jonathan, sitting at the table, was making a drawing in brown and red inks.

  ‘My junk-drawer?’

  ‘Yes, where you put things, you know, all your things.’ ‘Oh, right.’

  Jonathan got up. He quickly put his drawing out of sight. He opened several drawers in the dresser, which was painted in a veined chestnut colour, to imitate the wood of which it was made.

  ‘Will that do you?’

  ‘I’ll have a look.’

  Serge shook out the jumble of string, rubber bands, broken pens, odd cutlery, corks, screws and a hundred other little bits he knew people stored away.

  ‘What is it you want?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘I’m looking! You sit down, you!’

  Jonathan obeyed. The child put together a bulky collection which he took out into the garden, making several journeys. Then he disappeared. The door slammed.

  There was no rubbish collection in the village; everyone threw their rubbish into a hole dug at the bottom of the garden, or over the fence. Thus there developed a sort of compost mixed with plastic and old iron. At Jonathan’s house, this hole, at the edge of a field, was hidden by clumps of redcurrant bush, mixed up with borage, wild carrots, chervil run to seed, and the high wavy feathers of abandoned asparagus plants. It was here, ensconced among the dishev­elled greenery and the smells, that Serge had begun to dig a pond, patiently, with the help of an old spade with its handle broken off almost at the socket. First of all he kneeled down and uprooted the weeds one by one, pulling them up with a flourish. Soon he was panting. When he’d cleared a patch of ground, he outlined a rectangle there and started to dig. He hacked at the soil with the edge of the blade, and lifted it away with his hands. It was soft and close-textured.