by Maude Julien
At night, one of us sleeps in the armchair, the other on the desk chair, our heads resting on our folded arms. We swap places sometime in the night. The most difficult thing is going to the toilet. Neither of us dares ask permission to go. We exchange furtive glances in the half-light until he releases us by asking for his pot. My mother takes the opportunity to slip away to the toilet, and I take my turn when I empty the pot.
Our task is to ‘watch over’ him, there is no question of our doing anything else, no reading, writing, drawing, tidying, chatting…The hot toddies I drink knock me out a little. And the immobility gives me stabbing cramps. Time seems to pass appallingly slowly. At the end of the third day, one of us goes out to check that everything’s all right in the house and garden, and to feed the animals.
One time we stayed shut inside for more than a week. I remember the strange feeling that I was imploding, then I was filled with a torpor that could have gone on indefinitely.
As soon as my father is better, he insists we ‘catch up’ on all the hours we’ve lost ‘doing nothing’.
Despite his giant frame, my father has a fragile constitution. He has asthma, and the chill that hovers over the barely heated house causes him frequent bouts of bronchitis. I struggle to understand how the fearsome superior being he is, this knight, this master of willpower who can dominate the world with his sheer strength of mind, should feel so unwell that he can’t get out of bed. Could it be my fault? Does he need to ‘recharge his energies’ regularly because he is exhausted by the considerable efforts he expends training someone as inadequate as me?
By contrast, my mother is solid as a rock and stays on her feet even when she has the flu. Only twice has she had to take to her bed with a high fever. My father then took charge of everything. He went to the kitchen, a room in which he never normally sets foot, and showed me how to make a hot toddy: heat a good measure of cognac, add a couple tablespoons of sugar and an egg yolk. The mixture looked revolting, and I saw my mother’s eyes roll in disgust as she drank it.
As for me, because I’m training to be a superhuman, sickness is inadmissible. If I ever have a stomach-ache, toothache or headache, it’s as if I’ve done something wrong. If I really have a very high temperature, my father gives me a couple of aspirin.
The same goes for pain; I’m not allowed to feel it. One time, when we were doing some building work, I fell onto a beam bristling with nails that drove into my leg. My father poured half a bottle of whisky over the area, making sure it got right into the puncture wounds that were spewing blood. ‘I’m sacrificing half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label for a silly little injury. I hope you realize how much you mean to me and appreciate the expense I’m going to.’
I can still feel my tongue pressing on the roof of my mouth, my limbs stiffening. It took an enormous effort to stifle my screams.
But sometimes I’m so sick that it’s hard for anyone to dismiss it as ‘acting up’. In winter, I get tonsillitis so badly I feel I have a pair of ping-pong balls at the back of my throat, and I’m delirious with fever. My father, who is always quick to point out that he is ‘the best doctor on the planet’, treats me with a special remedy which he keeps exclusively for me: a tin of tuna in oil, with a good slug of 1945 vintage white wine. The oil makes me feel nauseous, the flakes of tuna get trapped between my tonsils and my throat hurts so much it’s difficult to swallow. The dark yellow, syrupy liquid reminds me of my father’s urine in the pot. But I soon forget about this because I’m more interested in the sight of my father leaning incredibly close to me as he spoonfeeds me and holds my glass for me as I struggle to swallow.
I can’t believe my eyes: he never worries about me, yet here he is going to such trouble, being so patient, almost gentle, even looking concerned. As if I’ve suddenly become someone very precious who must be saved at all cost. It’s too much of a contrast with my day-to-day life. My head is spinning in amazement, while the rest of my body succumbs to giddying fever.
The 1945 vintage white wine must be working. I spend most of my time in a deep cloying sleep, emerging from the fog only when I hear my father’s footsteps. The moment he comes into the room he fills every inch of it. I automatically hold my breath. Then I remember I’m sick and my father is my doctor today. ‘You’re going to be fine, little gal,’ he says in a strangely gentle voice I’ve never heard before. I can tell he feels awkward, and I’m not very taken with that ‘little gal’. But it’s the only sign of tenderness he can manage, the only one he’ll offer me, and, oh Lord, it’s better than nothing! For a fleeting moment I look into his anxious eyes, then we’re both quick to look away.
He brings a hand to my face, rests his unusually long fingers on my forehead and checks my temperature. Every ounce of me hopes he will stroke my cheek. Just one caress with the tips of his fingers, and the house would disappear, the gates and walls would vanish, we would be outside, happy and free. But the caress never comes. His fingers have left my forehead. And the next minute he breaks the spell by yelling towards the doorway, ‘She’s awake, Jeannine. Bring the white wine!’
From Underground
Alcohol is now an important part of training my willpower. Since I was seven or eight, my father has insisted I have an aperitif and drink wine at mealtimes. The mind is stronger than anything else so I have to learn to hold my drink. Besides, difficult negotiations in life often go hand in hand with consuming large quantities of alcohol, so those who can handle their drink will prevail. It’s also really useful for getting information out of someone: I could encourage them to drink, drink with them, then after a few glasses they would be drunk and in my power. Because my head would still be clear.
Likewise, after competitions of bottoms-up, I have to be able to handle a gun in case I get into a duel. I wonder how on earth I could be dragged into a duel, but daren’t ask him. Duels may be the sort of thing I’ll have to face later, when I’m a knight.
As I grow up, I have to get used to putting away more and more alcohol. At noon I have to have a glass of Ricard with water before lunch. Then a generous glass of white wine during the meal, followed by a glass of red. And cognac to finish. We have only fifteen minutes for the meal so these drinks have to be knocked back swiftly.
My father claims that Ricard is an excellent remedy for any kind of infection, especially in the mouth. He occasionally makes me drink it neat. The smell alone feels like a rocket about to explode inside my head. The first sip burns my gums, then the fire travels down my throat and blazes into my stomach.
And that’s not all. We now have to start specific ‘alcohol and willpower’ training, carried out every month or two. For the purposes of this exercise, my mother and I have had to paint two long white strips—15 inches wide by 10 metres long—onto the cemented parts of the garden. The exercise entails downing a glass of undiluted Ricard, swiftly followed by a glass of whisky and sometimes a glass of cognac, then walking steadily the length of the 10-metre strip without stepping outside the line. I cling to that line with all my might. I don’t know how I manage it, but I seem to succeed in this exercise quite frequently.
I hate alcohol and I hate the smell of neat Ricard most of all. Obviously, I don’t mention this to my father, who thinks everyone—women, children, workmen—should drink as much as he does. My father attributes all sorts of benefits to alcohol, but I remember the ravaged alcoholics I’ve come across in literature: Dimitri from The Brothers Karamazov, the heartbreaking heroes of L’Assommoir. I’m obscurely aware that I would be in grave danger of losing myself if alcohol ‘took hold of me’. It’s mostly for my own sake that I concentrate so hard and outperform myself in these tests. I don’t need another ‘master’. I want to learn to stand up to alcohol, not so that I can manipulate or crush opponents, but to allow Abbot Faria’s beams of intelligence to reach me.
I sustain myself on images of salvation, and strong, charming heroes. I have an increasingly powerful need for books, which throw a glimmer of light into my darkness. Whenever I
have a moment to myself, I scour my father’s bookshelves. I find Zola, Maupassant, Daudet. My mother never reads novels and certainly not popular fiction; she raises her eyes to the heavens when my father sings the praises of Alexandre Dumas, and has the lowest opinion of Eugène Sue. I’m enchanted by Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris and adore Rodolphe, always ready to defend the widows and orphans: ‘I’ve suffered already in my own life; that explains my compassion for those who suffer.’ He takes me with him deep into the world of crooks and burglars. I’m touched when he can see good in the hearts of those ‘fallen wretches’.
When I discover The Idiot, it feels like I’ve stumbled onto a gold mine. I develop a passion for Dostoyevsky. I’m fascinated by all his characters. They’re so alive, so three-dimensional, such a mess! Exactly the opposite of the ‘perfect beings’ my father so loves; they literally throb with life. They hate, they love, they’re filled with enthusiasm. They stumble and struggle with mental chaos. They ask themselves endless questions, don’t think about their answers, and forge ahead with their longings and whims and mistakes. They’re exhaustingly beautiful. Dostoyevsky shows me that life is even more terrible than my parents have told me, full of violence, humiliation, revenge, betrayal…But still so worth living! Far from fearing life, being suspicious of it or erecting walls against it, his characters cherish it, dive headlong into it, and drown in it if need be. ‘Everything is worth living,’ they seem to tell me. ‘Stop being afraid.’
If my mother leaves the classroom for any length of time, I like to slip into the next room, which we use as a storeroom. It’s forbidden, but I love rummaging through the boxes, even if there’s nothing particularly exciting in them: bedcovers, old newspapers, the odd book. One day I come across a Dostoyevsky I haven’t seen before: Notes from Underground. I have time to read only a few pages. I can’t take it to my bedroom; that would betray my unauthorized exploring. I hide it under a pile of old tablecloths. I return to it over successive days, reading three or four pages at a time, caught up in the maelstrom of contradictory thoughts buffeting this extraordinary hero, who is frenetic, evil, bitter, selfish, tormented, cowardly…He’s cantankerous, he’s a loser who takes revenge for the slights he feels he has suffered, by pretending to be magnanimous with Liza, a young prostitute. He even gives her his address in case she wants to redeem herself.
When Liza comes to find him, he walks all over her. But she guesses the terrible suffering that lies beneath his loathsome behaviour, and offers herself to him. For a moment, he is thrown by her generosity, wishing he could believe it. But his demons soon regain the upper hand. She forgives him, but she flees.
I’m so shaken by the story that I read it over and over, still in secret, and still in small snatches. Over time, I come to understand that this hero who so moves me reminds me of my father. They share an impulse to reject other people, the world and its conventions; they have the same frenzied conviction, harshness and tendency to speechify…I wonder whether my father is also hiding an open wound beneath his inflexible exterior. Could it be that everything he says, thinks, does and insists on, that this whole world in which he imprisons us might actually be the result of some secret suffering of his, and not related to a higher understanding at all?
With every new reading, I’m gripped by the ending’s harsh lessons. ‘Don’t expect anything of him,’ it seems to be telling me. ‘Even if someday he realizes his own folly, he is dangerous and beyond redemption. Get out!’
The Pyramid
I sit motionless and silent, completely focused on a fork in front of me on the dining-room table. My mother is sitting opposite me, carrying out the same exercise. At the head of the table, my father issues his instructions in his deep voice: ‘Focus on the metal. Get psychically inside it. Take hold of it psychically. Now make it move. Push it.’
I’m taut as a bow, I can’t even breathe. Please move, metal, please. I’m going cross-eyed looking at this fork, I’m seeing double, triple; sometimes I even see it slide. But it’s not twisting, it’s not doing what my father wants. I can hear my mother’s breathing, calm and regular, while I’m in a state of apnoea. I’m frightened of failing. My father’s eyes are on me; it feels as if he’s delving right into my mind, getting inside my head.
I suddenly see the fork change shape. I did it! Then I relax the focus of my eyes and take a proper look. Now it looks just the same as it always was. And so does my mother’s. I’m disappointed.
My father tells me that at first the fork will just quiver. That is to be expected because I don’t yet know how to keep my mind under control. In fact, the metal did move very slightly, he says, but my mind was too inexperienced to notice it and is therefore still focusing on the same point. It is this discrepancy that causes the fork to jitter. The next stage, when I’ve learned to stabilize my ‘hold’, will be for me to move the whole thing. The hardest part is ‘achieving the first movement’. Once you have mastered that, the rest comes naturally.
Another variant of this exercise involves getting the hands to move on a watch that hasn’t worked for years. My mother thinks she’s very good at this game. She triumphantly shows us her watch hand, which has moved from 10 o’clock to 10.01. It’s a really small watch and the hands are quite hard to make out, but I’m almost sure she’s right. As with the fork, the hand dances before my straining eyes and I sometimes feel as if I’ve succeeded in making mine move too. At times I even think I’ve made it go backwards! Maybe I’ve practised so much that my mental powers have succeeded in controlling solid matter. Or maybe I’ve spent so long looking at those tiny hands that my eyes start seeing things that aren’t there. I don’t know but, despite his failing eyesight, my father is in no doubt. He inspects our watches and nods his head approvingly, which floods me with relief. I don’t fully understand but, seeing as he looks pleased…
I enjoy these hour-long exercises in mental concentration that require a profoundly calm atmosphere. For those sixty minutes I can be sure I won’t hear any yelling. And I certainly prefer them to the ‘nail’ exercises that were my first training in dominating solid matter. One day my father gave me a thick wooden plank into which my mother had driven a nail with a single hammer blow. The exercise consisted in driving the nail in further by hitting it every day with the palm of my hand. It did eventually happen after several months, and at the cost of a big gash in the middle of my palm. I admit I didn’t see the point of that exercise.
My father never stoops so low as to bend a single fork or move the hands of a watch. Those are exercises for ‘apprentices’. He has reached such heights in mental power that he could fold the Eiffel Tower in two if he wanted. But, of course, he would do no such thing because the Eiffel Tower is a symbol and a reference point for all Beings of Light: ‘Because of course, it’s a pyramid that shines a light from its summit,’ he explains. Besides, Gustave Eiffel was a Freemason and a great Initiate, just like Auguste Bartholdi, whose Statue of Liberty brandishes…what? A torch. What people don’t know is that these two edifices also serve another purpose, relaying vibrations and therefore allowing Beings of Light to connect through them to the axe of pure energy. Thus when Beings of Light are regenerating, this purity is diffused throughout the universe.
I’m astounded by the complexity of things around me, and the processes going on without my realizing it. To think that I can be dazzled by butterflies, birds and other such inanities. My parents are right to call me a ‘village idiot’.
There is one thing I have managed to grasp and remember from my father’s many teachings: it was the Egyptians, particularly the high priests of Memphis, who discovered the special capacity of pyramidal structures to concentrate light and vibrations, as in worship of Ra, the God of Light. Geometry generally modifies the circulation of energies. Of all geometric forms, pyramids are best equipped to ‘sustain the life’ of the newly deceased pharaoh. We need only remember the Masonic triangle, the first geometric form, and the pyramid which represents its three-dimensional elevati
on. This ternary acts as a generator of life, renewal and reincarnation, the exact opposite of the process of dying.
All the pharaohs are supremely enlightened beings who knew how to make the transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead: their servants, pets and wives were entombed with the mummy to help the master continue his life in the heavenly Field of Reeds while the young pharaoh perpetuated his work on earth. What the uninitiated don’t realize is that the pharaohs can make the journey in reverse should the need arise. They have fathomed the mysteries of the universe, and can reveal them or obscure them at will.
The teaching sessions about Egypt are held in the grandest part of the house, the vast billiard room. Occasionally I’m summoned to a room where we rarely set foot: the sitting room. My father is convinced that it transmits waves from the previous occupiers of the house, three ageing spinster sisters who spent their final years cloistered in this family room. They died there one after another, the survivors watching over the dead until the last one left this world and, according to my father, her spirit is still ‘trapped’ in the room. When we are in there he wears different coloured strings around his neck attached to a metal triangle on the end. I have to wear the same thing but with a white string.
He takes a wooden box from the bookshelves. From inside, he produces a dollar bill, on which he shows me the famous truncated pyramid in the centre of the great seal. The beaming triangle which crowns the pyramid is in fact the vibratory call of the God Ra. The founders of the United States who designed the bill, all Freemasons and outstanding Initiates, had the ingenious idea of including the call of Ra on banknotes as a way of ‘harvesting the vibrations’ of all that touched them.
Hardly surprising, then, that the United States is the most competent country in the world. My father doesn’t disguise his admiration for the country’s organisation, diligence and efficiency. When he talks about it, he stands taller and a note of pride comes into his voice, as if he himself were American. France, on the other hand, inspires only his contempt: ‘The Gauls were just a tribe of disorganized savages and Vercingetorix was a cretin. How could the French be anything but stupid…?’ He often compares nations with this parable: when something needs doing the French say ‘I’m going to do it’ without ever actually getting on with it; the Germans say ‘I’m doing it’ as they get on with it; the Americans, who don’t speak until the task is completed, say ‘I’ve done it.’