Billy Moon : A Transcendent Novel Reimagining the Life of Christopher Robin Milne (9781429948074)

by Lain, Douglas

Abby Milne arrived at the hotel on Rue du Four on the morning of May 20. She and Daniel paused at the entrance. Before she opened the door, before stepping from the cobblestone street into the cramped lobby, she glanced to the left at the apartment building built right up against the hotel, at the corner between the two buildings, and saw that she was being watched. A man was looking down at her from a small window, just large enough for the top half of his head to be visible. Realizing that she was being watched, making eye contact unexpectedly, she found that she couldn’t bring herself to go in.

  She stood on the doorstep, looked up and down the street, and then walked around the hotel to the right. She passed a much larger window, a window into the hotel bar and café where Christopher was looking for someone to serve him tea. Chris spotted his family as they passed but they didn’t see him. Instead of stopping Abby turned the corner, stepped between beige walls on a tiny street, a space from an older Paris.

  Standing there holding Daniel’s hand with her right hand and holding her green tweed suitcase with the other she took a deep breath and tried to consider. She and Daniel were both exhausted by the day’s travel. That morning she’d had to chase him across the deck of the ferry and had nearly dropped him into the channel. She’d set him down on the railing in order to get him at eye level and he was such a skinny little boy, so small, that when she’d set his rear on the rail and he’d squirmed she’d been sure he was going overboard. She’d held tight to his sweater, pulled him back onto the deck, and then cursed herself for her stupidity. She’d wanted to stop his running, wanted to tell him how dangerous it was, and she’d set him on the rail?

  After the incident she’d insisted they spend the rest of the journey in the enclosed passenger area. She’d parked herself in a plastic bucket seat and let Daniel run up and down the aisles, no longer caring if he was disturbing other passengers, but just glad he was relatively safe.

  Abby stood in the alleyway, with her little blond son on her hip, and silently chastised herself. She imagined that she wasn’t really in Paris yet. The train ride had been a blur and some part of her remained on the ferry, out on the Channel. When Christopher opened the employee exit in front of her, when he stepped out into the very narrow street with her, she was a bit bewildered.

  “I told you not to come,” Christopher said. “Who’s minding the Harbour?”

  She didn’t say anything, but put Daniel down and watched him run to his father. Chris picked the boy up and slung him onto his shoulders.

  “It’s not safe to run,” Daniel said. “Not safe to run.”

  Christopher bounced the boy on his shoulders and kissed his wife. “How was the journey? How are you?”

  The water in the English Channel was cold, the early morning sky had been dark green, and she’d convinced herself that they’d never see Christopher again. On the ferry, crossing over, she’d been sure she’d lost him. Why did he insist that they wait before having a child? She didn’t have the energy to raise the boy on her own.

  “Christopher,” she said. She was so glad to see him that she could hardly believe he was right there in front of her.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said. He started to turn around to go through the same door he’d come through before, but Abby grabbed his hand and turned him back. She kissed him, and then looked around, tried to get her bearings.

  “We made it. We’re in Paris,” she said.

  * * *

  The next morning Christopher and his family sat at a sidewalk table outside the hotel, picked up menus neatly placed between utensils, and prepared to order breakfast. Daniel sat in Abby’s lap, moving his spoon back and forth across the cloth napkin that was folded on the iron mesh tabletop, making the spoon talk to the table knife, saying, “Free our comrades” and “Welcome to the Woodentops.”

  Christopher watched his son and wondered if he could turn what had been a disruption of his established life into a vacation instead, but as they waited for someone to appear to take their order, when ten minutes ticked by and then a half-hour, the reality of the situation reasserted itself. The CGT had joined with the student groups and called a one-day general strike. Nobody would be coming to wait on them.

  Rue du Four was grey and cool. Christopher looked down at the cobblestones and his stomach grumbled. Daniel’s monologue with the spoon seemed to be deteriorating.

  “Stupid man. Stupid bad,” the spoon said accusingly.

  They would have to do something on their own about breakfast. He turned to Abby and shrugged, hoping she might have a better idea than his own, but as far as he could see they’d have to break into the café’s kitchen.

  “Let’s just hope the pantry is still well stocked,” Abby said.

  Luckily someone, probably one of the younger cooks or waiters, had left the kitchen unlocked and even gone so far as to leave a note on the door welcoming the hotel’s guests and suggesting they make themselves an omelet. The guests were asked to limit their consumption to one egg each. It was, the note explained, important to conserve resources during the strike. Abiding by the one-egg-for-each rule and limiting the consumption of cream was requested as a show of solidarity.

  Christopher grated cheese into the pan and had layered his disc of a crepe when Gerrard opened the door to the kitchen and shouted in triumph, “Here you are!”

  * * *

  Gerrard stood in the doorway and watched the Milne family cook breakfast. He joined them out on the sidewalk and at Abby’s urging ate two crêpes. Christopher sat silent, pushing the pieces of his crêpe back and forth, and eyeing Gerrard.

  “We’re going to the zoo today,” Gerrard said.

  “Are we?”

  Abby concentrated on her cup of espresso, raising it to her lips and taking sips, and Daniel used his fork and spoon to act out another small drama. The utensils were lonely, their papa had left them, and their mother was a butter knife on the moon.

  “We’re going to try again,” Gerrard told him. “You were right before. You can’t invent a new game on your own. You need your bear if you’re going to do anything.”

  “We’re going to the zoo to find a bear?” Chris asked.

  “That’s right. And we’ve got to get going,” he said. Gerrard stood up.

  “Wait a moment,” Christopher said. “Let’s clear the table first.”

  “Good idea,” Abby said.

  “Equality. Fraternity. Dishes.” Christopher took his wife’s empty plate away.

  * * *

  On the way to the Paris Zoo, Gerrard told them what was happening. According to newspapers nearly ten million people were on strike, not only in Paris but throughout the rest of France as well. Gerrard told him that the cross channel ferries were on duty, but the railroad and Metro workers were out. The department stores were closed; the nation’s television personalities were off the air. According to Gerrard even the undertakers were on strike. It was not a good day to die.

  Much of Paris was shut down, but workers’ councils were keeping what was vital running. The occupied power plants kept Paris alight. The radical newspapers were still printed and distributed, urgent telegrams could still be sent, food kept coming into the city, and the gates to the Paris Zoo remained open.

  Christopher felt calm. The three of them—Gerrard, Abby, and Daniel—stopped by the wrought-iron fence to look in at the grounds and Chris joined them. They admired the centuries-old botanical garden, Le Jardin des Plantes. Gerrard told them that it had originally been the Royal Medicinal Plant Garden created by King Louis XIII and had survived the revolution. All of them were quiet for a moment as they looked past the gate and at the domes of Gallery of Evolution, and then they opened the gate. Daniel set off running into the open space.

  “Slow down,” Christopher said. The boy darted forward between flower beds, along the asphalt paths that led to the National Museum of Natural History.

  “Speed up!” Gerrard yelled out to the boy in French.

  The zoo was to the left, hidden by an avenue of
symmetrical and severely clipped trees. Abby put her arm in Christopher’s as they walked along this garden avenue, and then insisted that they stop and watch the flamingoes on the other side of the fence that divided the zoo from the rest of the garden. Once through the gate for the zoo they found the place flooded with students. Young people were standing between the caged lion and tiger, staring at tortoises in a rocky tank, and ignoring a yak.

  * * *

  Inside the central building a zookeeper, a plump young man in overalls and a red cap, stood in front of a Plexiglas window and defended the penguins. About six students were shouting at him, and he was holding a ring of keys over his head and shouting back. A girl with long black hair wearing a paisley patterned blouse jumped up and reached for the keys while her friend with his bow tie and slicked-back hair lectured the zookeeper on class consciousness.

  The shadows cast down from the hundreds of window frames in the oval skylight overhead graphed the scene. The students repeated the same request again and again, and Gerrard intervened. He approached the zookeeper and was surprised to realize that the man was, in fact, relatively young. He was a fat man, but his round face was taut. The band of his cap was tight around his head, and it left a mark on his forehead that was clearly visible when he removed the cap to wipe his brow. He’d seemed older from a distance, but he was probably in his late twenties or early thirties.

  “Are you the only one on duty?” Gerrard asked.

  “I’m sorry,” the zookeeper said as he turned toward Gerrard. “What was that?”

  “Your coworkers are all on strike. You’re the only one still working?” Gerrard asked. Hearing this the other students stopped shouting. The zookeeper’s face turned bright red. He held up his arms in a gesture of exasperation and started flapping them, moving his forearms up and down like some kind of wounded bird. He didn’t say anything right away, but watching his face Gerrard could tell that he was working his way up to it.

  “It’s a very fine thing,” Gerrard interrupted. He turned toward the other students, to a kid in a green sweater and thick glasses. “It’s a fine thing that he should be working. What if he weren’t? Who would look after these animals if it weren’t for this singular zookeeper.”

  “The animals need me,” the zookeeper said to the kid in the sweater.

  And Gerrard agreed. Of course the animals needed him. What else could he do but come in to work, clock in, and collect his wage? While the rest of his countrymen fought de Gaulle, set up workers’ councils, and stayed out on strike, it was up to him, to this one zookeeper, to focus on something more important: the penguins.

  “I have to work. The animals rely on me.”

  “But why is that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Now Gerrard had to be careful. The point was that the animals only needed his support for as long as they remained in their cages. As long as they were in their cages then somebody had to feed them and clean up after them, but why should they stay in there?

  “What would you have me do? Let them out of their cages? All of you want me to let them go, but they can’t fend for themselves.”

  “He’s right,” Gerrard said to the girl in the paisley shirt. She flipped her long black hair out of her face and started to reach up for the zookeeper’s keys again. “No really, he’s right. What would a giraffe or an Asian elephant do with itself on the streets of Paris?”

  “Just think of it,” the zookeeper said.

  “And yet, you are breaking with the strike, and if you continue this way you’ll face more and more pressure. More and more pressure to open the cages as an act of solidarity.”

  “That would be terrible. The lion? The sea otter? Just where would they go?”

  “What you need is to do something symbolic. You need to make a statement,” Gerrard said.

  “What kind of statement?”

  Gerrard paced for a moment in front of the cage, he put his feet in between the lines of shadow on the cement floor making sure to keep them in the light, and tried to communicate thought.

  “You see that handsome middle-aged couple over there by the orangutans? He is a man named Christopher Robin Milne and that is his wife, Abby,” Gerrard said. He waited in order to let his words sink in.

  “Yes?” The zookeeper was interested.

  “Christopher Robin is an expert in bears,” Gerrard said. All Gerrard was asking for was one key, one animal. If the zookeeper would release a bear into the care of Christopher Robin, could trust a member of Les Détournés to take care of, say, one small black bear, then this would be enough. By turning over one bear to the occupation he would have met his obligation as a worker.

  “The bears are very sensitive. They have many needs. They have a special diet.”

  Gerrard pointed to Christopher and Abby. They’d moved on to the next cage, a room behind glass that appeared to be empty but that on closer examination contained a tiny owl that was roosting on a dead tree branch in the far left corner. Abby waved to Gerrard and the zookeeper waved back.

  “Sir Christopher Robin Milne is the son of the author A. A. Milne who famously chronicled many tales of animal adventures in the Ashdown Forest near London. Christopher has a very special understanding of bears. Tell him what the bear needs and I’m sure he’ll follow your instructions to the letter.”

  “Just one bear?”

  “One silly old bear.”

  24

  On May 24 Christopher and his family sat in their cramped hotel room letting the grey light outside lull them while they played twenty questions and drank tea. When the window was open they could smell tear gas and hear shouting and running footsteps, so they kept the window closed. From where he was sitting Christopher could see the Eiffel Tower poking up over corrugated tin rooftops with brick chimneys. He closed his eyes and held the image of the tower in his mind.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Is it an animal?” Daniel asked.

  “No.”

  “Is it a shooting star?” Daniel asked again.

  “It’s not a shooting star either.”

  “Is it an animal? Is it a shooting star?”

  When Daniel had asked his two questions ten times each Abby put down the newspaper, looked into Christopher’s eyes, and made her best guess.

  “Was it built for the World’s Fair on the one hundredth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille?” she asked.

  Earlier that evening they’d turned on the black-and-white television that sat behind cabinet doors in their hotel room and tuned in president de Gaulle’s address to the nation. The war hero, or as the students called him “the shit in the bed,” had a proposition and a plan for a way out of the conflict. He looked positively Victorian in his kepi and uniform, and while Christopher sensed that the general might be worried, he appeared confident. The French tradition would prevail. Even as the president agreed that the strike was legitimate, that the call for more participation in government was rational, he also asserted that the strike could only be settled by referendum. De Gaulle promised that if the people rejected his legislated fix he would step down from office. Despite this retreat, the core of the man, his enormous but somehow quaint confidence, was evident even in the flickering image on the television screen.

  “In industry, in agriculture, at the university, we will expand the role of the citizen of France,” de Gaulle said.

  “Is it an animal?” Daniel asked. He wanted to play again.

  Christopher refused to think of an animal. Instead he thought of a cut-up map of Paris that Gerrard had shown him, a map of the streets of Paris, each section its own island separated from the rest. He considered how each section represented a different idea, a different emphasis, a different bit of history, and wished he still had the map, wished he could make out where Rue du Four figured in the equation. He considered whether it would be de Gaulle or the students who would put the city back together again.

  “Is it a shooting star?”

  “No,”
Chris said.

  “Is it a shooting star?” Daniel asked.

  Abby took advantage of the distraction and began to clear the coffee table. She took the teapot and mugs to the bathroom sink and filled it with water. She left them there, in the bathroom sink, to soak until she could find more detergent.

  “Is it a bear?” Daniel asked.

  Abby nodded her head at this question, which she apparently thought was a good one. “Is it a bear, Christopher?”

  * * *

  They’d been keeping him in the cellar since he’d come back with them from the Paris Zoo. At first Christopher worried that the beast would destroy the hotel’s store of fine and mediocre wines, but by the third day he worried instead that the confined and now sedentary bear was being driven mad by the lack of stimulation. They left a light on for him in the hall outside the storage room, but even so the cellar was dank and dark. Even if Daniel and Abby hadn’t insisted, Christopher would’ve gone down to check on the animal. He had an obligation to the black bear, even if the animal had been forced on him.

  The zookeeper had told them the bear was named William.

  William moved out of his corner and to the middle of the room, stood in the circle from the flashlight, and reached for the ceiling. The bear let out a low groan as he stretched. Christopher crossed to him, clipped the metal chain to his red leather collar as a leash, and then opened his hand. He fed William a date from his palm and the bear took the food gently, using his tongue instead of his teeth.

  Then Daniel opened the green metal canister from the zoo, and tipped it, pouring feed onto the dirty floor of the cellar. The bear ate the mix of dried blue and red berries with yellow fish protein off the floor. William licked away the layer of dirt that had settled on the cellar floor. The bear exposed the white stone, washed it clean with his tongue, and then retreated to the far left corner to lick his paws.

  “Is it an animal?” Daniel asked. His high-pitched voice echoed off the stones.

  * * *

  Even though it was late, Christopher took the bear out for a walk down Rue du Four. Daniel went out with him at first, petted the bear on the forehead and then fed the animal some berries and walnuts from a Tupperware bowl. The boy leaned away from the bear and shut his eyes when the snorting and snuffling began, but kept smiling the entire time. He opened his eyes again when William stood up straight and stopped breathing in his face, and then Christopher sent him back inside the hotel. It was dangerous out on the streets.