The Only Girl in the World

by Maude Julien

  I’m too heartbroken to shed tears. It pains me to think of the life Linda had. I don’t see why, with such a big house and such large grounds, the poor dog had to be tormented.

  My father decides we need another dog. He arranges to have another German Shepherd delivered, a female, of course, and she’ll be called…Linda. Are all beings interchangeable as far as the great Initiates are concerned?

  The following Saturday my father sends me down to the cellar to fetch a tool. Raymond is right on my heels. Just as he slips behind me to grab me, I turn around and face him. I don’t say a word but look him right in the eye. While I stare at him, I have flashbacks of the past: his arm outstretched, saying ‘Come closer,’ smiling at me. It was a strange smile but, being unused to smiles, I couldn’t recognize the toxic ones. ‘Come here, next to me,’ he said, with his hands on my shoulders. ‘A cuddle?’ he offered. I ought to have been happy, since I longed for someone to take me in their arms. But I wasn’t. I didn’t like the smell of him or his weird breathing. He would rub up against me hard, and I hated it. The next few times he would go further, much further. The full force of my hatred rises up inside me. Now all the horror, the shame and fear of these last seven years, all the threats made and reiterated, they’re all swept aside by violent rage. I stare at him and he starts to look frightened. What can he be afraid of? That I’ll tell someone? Who could I tell? No one would help me. But he doesn’t know that. All he can see is my fury. He backs away. He’ll never come near me again. Never. He’ll be the one having nightmares tonight.

  As I lie in bed that evening the dam holding back the tears since Linda’s death finally gives way. I cry for her, and I cry because I had to lose her in order finally to be free of that vampire.

  Guardian of the Temple

  As they do every summer, the builders return to construct new buildings on the grounds: a bread oven and a very small circular room that my father calls the ‘bar’, where he now spends most of his waking hours. He has an intercom set up in there so he can hear what’s going on in the music pavilion. Safe in the knowledge that he can monitor what I’m doing, he spends most days copying out German detective novels, writing them onto sheets of card-stock with a fountain pen in an increasingly wobbly hand.

  From one day to the next, my father’s crutches disappear. Every morning at 9 a.m. he heads over to ‘the bar’ where he spends his day. Every evening at 8 p.m. he heads back. A lavatory and a small kitchen have been added along with the bread oven. From now on it is there that my mother cooks and where we eat our meals.

  I don’t understand why my father stays confined in that small space full of smoke from the cigarillos he chainsmokes. He’s only seventy now, but behaves like a very old man. I have to sit him down on the toilet seat and help him pull up his pants afterwards. I’m ashamed of his smell, ashamed of being ashamed of him, ashamed of hating him, and of being ungrateful for his ‘sacrifices’. I’m getting migraines from the boiling cauldron of contradictory emotions in my head.

  I think my father, the king of knocking his drinks down in one go, now has trouble holding his liquor. He stumbles and has to be supported on his way back to the house. He puts this down to his ‘failing health’, but could it be due to a serious increase in consumption? I notice he pours himself big glasses of Chivas all through the day and frequently uncorks excellent champagnes. Twice a year he has hundreds of bottles of fine wine and spirits delivered. It’s as if he’s in a hurry to drink his money away.

  He washes less and less, sometimes every two weeks, sometimes every three. When he takes a bath I’m supposed to use the bathwater after him. What I actually do is make splashing noises by flicking my face washer around in the tub. Since my father finally had basins installed in the bedrooms, I use mine to wash every night. I run only a thin stream of water to be sure the pipes don’t make any noise.

  Normally I have to go to the bar at eleven-thirty every day for my ‘German lesson’. But today, for some reason, I’ve been summoned to the ballroom. This time the shutters are all closed. There’s a solemn atmosphere. My father is in pride of place in the centre of the room, looking serious, portentous. He gestures for me to sit on a footstool in front of him. My mother has also been summoned and is leaning against the door behind me.

  ‘You know that you are the guardian of the temple,’ he says. An alarm bell sounds inside my head. ‘When I die, I shall be buried in the garden. And it is you who will watch over my tomb forever.’

  The more he talks the more the panic rises inside me.

  ‘You won’t be alone. I shall visit you, I shall always be by your side to continue my teaching.’ He tells me where his tomb should be: where the bench in the garden currently stands, facing the verandah.

  On my way out I notice that my mother is ashen; she looks as shaken as I feel. We shut ourselves away in the schoolroom and whisper despairingly, ‘It can’t be! It’s not possible! Not forever!’

  Like me, she had always known that my mission would be to ‘guard’ my father’s memory after his death, but we thought it wouldn’t be for a long time. She didn’t realize I would have to guard his tomb and that his physical remains would stay on the property.

  ‘But I’m going to run away,’ I say. That has always been my mother’s obsessive fear: that I will run away and leave her here to face my father’s rage.

  ‘No, you won’t! That’s not going to happen, I won’t agree to that.’ It’s almost as if she’s begging me not to abandon her.

  That evening I mull over this latest announcement. Does he really think I’ll want to watch over his tomb and see him emerge from it after his death? Does everyone who is reincarnated need their daughter to watch over their tomb? Leonardo da Vinci didn’t have a daughter. Besides, before contemplating starting a new life, you need to make something of this one. I’ve never seen either of my parents do anything worthwhile. Great minds defend values—like justice in the case of Victor Hugo, and equality for Emile Zola. What does my father ever do, except copy out German detective stories that he doesn’t even understand?

  I struggle not to let him drag me down into this abyss with him. He doesn’t really have a life; it’s more like a living death, and we’re drowning in his smells and filth. It’s been twelve years now since he buried himself alive—taking us with him—behind the gates of this property. He can go ahead and build his mausoleum in the garden. He can put a pyramid on it if he likes. He can even take his wife into the hereafter with him, like the glorious pharaohs he’s always talking about…

  But I won’t be guarding that tomb. I make myself a silent promise to myself that I won’t.

  What were you thinking…

  Something exceptional is about to happen. In June I’m taking the French language section of my baccalauréat. Since my mother made me skip a year, things are progressing just as my father hoped: the French test at fifteen, the rest of the final-year bac at sixteen. My mother orders me a pantsuit in midnight blue velvet and new shoes. I also need an ID card so we have to go to the town hall in the village. My mother wears a scarf and dark glasses, and takes out a large handbag I haven’t seen for years—not since we used to go and see Madame Descombes. We leave through the small garden gate: ‘That way, we’ll be more unobtrusive.’ How long is it now since we’ve been outside? I try to count. Eight years, maybe nine? It’s strange, the air almost smells different. I’m startled by a passing truck, which feels as if it’s sucking me into its wake. We turn right and walk past houses with pretty pots of flowers hanging in front of open windows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen flowers in pots. I’m so used to cemented pathways that I find it hard not to trip on the uneven paving stones and I have to slow down. But my mother is hurrying; I can tell she’s anxious. Behind the houses there are fields as far as the eye can see. The horizon is so beautiful! No one should ever be deprived of a horizon.

  On the main square in front of the church is the town hall with its red, white and blue flag, just like in books. A kind woman gr
eets us and fills out a form: ‘Eye colour?’ she asks, looking at me, then says, ‘Oh, don’t you have pretty blue eyes.’ On the way home we don’t recognize the streets anymore, we go around in circles, incapable of finding our way. For a moment, I have a crazy idea that we could leave, the two of us, and never go back to the house. But my mother is in a complete panic. Her scarf has slipped off and she has bitten her lip so hard it’s bleeding. Suddenly we hear a train. She almost runs to the railroad tracks; we need only follow them and we’ll soon be at the main entrance to the house.

  Before stepping through the gate, I take one last look up the road that runs parallel to the metal fence and leads to Saint-Omer, far, far away beyond the horizon.

  My notification for the exam arrives: I have to be at Paul Hazard high school in Armentières at eight o’clock in the morning. My parents tell me what I have to do: go to the station, which is just 30 metres to the left outside our main gate, find the platform for trains heading to Lille, and get off at Armentières. From there I’ll take a taxi to the high school.

  The night before the exam I don’t sleep at all. In the morning I go out into the street alone because my mother has to stay by my father’s side. Alone! But I’m so anxious I don’t really feel like I’m outside. I look at my watch every ten seconds to check I’m doing as I’ve been told. Am I on the right platform? I feel so tiny I could disappear into the asphalt. But I also feel so big. I hate my size. I’m a giant compared to everyone else, and people are staring at me. I wonder fretfully whether I’ll be able to open the door to the train, and decide to tag along behind some other passengers. I copy what they do, climb into the carriage after them and sit down behind them. During the journey another panicking thought gnaws at me: How long will the train stop at Armentières? How will I get out? And how will I find the high school? At Hazebrouck I watch closely as other passengers disembark. It doesn’t look too hard.

  As the train draws into Armentières a lot of passengers stand up all around me. Aha, I hadn’t thought of that: I’m not the only one taking these exams. What a relief! I mingle happily with a group of teenagers and follow them without worrying, delighted that I don’t need to look for this ‘taxi’ thing. I’m finally realizing the dream I’ve had my whole life: blending with the crowd, going with the flow, being like everyone else. I’m walking along with a group of high school kids! Still, I’m struggling to settle into their rhythm. They all seem to be walking in time, and I can’t get my legs to adopt the same pace. In the end I count the beats, as I would with a piece of music; this helps and stops me from tripping. But why do I feel sad? Why do I feel so alone? I’m a breed apart, out of sync, weird in my too-big velvet jacket, my too-short pants and my shoes which, of course, are hurting me terribly. The other kids are in jeans, wear their hair loose, they’re all chatting and laughing. They’re beautiful and I’m ugly. We arrive at the high school and I walk through the gate; I should be brimming with happiness but I feel appallingly awkward and uncomfortable.

  I find my desk, and when I turn over the exam paper I’m surprised to discover I have to choose between three different types of question. There’s an essay (as I was expecting) and two other tests I don’t recognize: a ‘textual analysis’ and a ‘text summary’. The only one I know how to do is the essay, but I decide they must all be pretty much the same thing. I choose the ‘textual analysis’ because it’s about a pretty poem, ‘Si tu t’imagines, fillette’ (‘What were you thinking, little girl’).

  I’m even more nervous about the oral exam. I’m not used to talking at all, particularly with strangers. My voice doesn’t obey me; it wavers, croaks and squeaks. Sometimes no sound at all comes out. Luckily I’m examined on a Baudelaire poem that I love: ‘Le parfum’ (‘Perfume’). My examiner seems to like it too. I start off stammering but, thanks to the encouragement in her expression, my voice settles and in the end it almost feels as if we’re having a conversation. When I arrive home my mother reads through the notes I made and seems satisfied.

  The envelope containing my results arrives at last. Confident in her teaching skills, my mother opens it proudly. Disaster: I have a good 16/20 in the oral but in the written exam…2/20! My parents look at me as if I’ve murdered someone. I’ve just proved that I’m a ‘walking disappointment’. All the same, my father asks to see the comments on my written exam: ‘This is a fine philosophical essay, not a textual analysis.’

  I pray my parents will understand that the education they’re giving me is inadequate. I beg my mother to send me to boarding school. ‘How dare you ask such a thing?’ she says, sounding offended. ‘Don’t you know it would kill your father?’

  Monsieur Molin

  My father wants to buy a medium grand piano for the music pavilion. There’s no question of his going to choose one in a store, so my mother makes some enquiries over the telephone. She eventually comes across a Monsieur André Molin, who runs the best music shop in Dunkirk, and he offers to come to the house to discuss our requirements. I think I’ll always remember the sight of him. I open the door and there is a small man leaning on crutches. He is about sixty, has a bit of a paunch and kind eyes. He smiles at me and it feels as if a sunbeam is reaching right inside me. Even my father is captivated by his gentleness. He starts by inspecting our existing baby grand piano and is surprised to discover that my father never realized pianos need tuning. He defuses the problem with great tact: ‘Oh, it only needs doing every once in a while. Particularly in a beautiful house like this.’ As if the house could tune the piano!

  My father is charmed and asks him to see to the job anyway, adding, ‘If you could cast an eye over the other instruments as well…Besides the piano, Maude has been playing several other instruments for many years now: the accordion, the clarinet, the saxophone, the trumpet, the organ and the drums…’ As this list gets longer, my head droops lower. I feel as if I’m shrinking, reduced to my role as a performing monkey. ‘I sometimes make her study up to ten hours a day,’ my father says, and the man gives a noncommittal ‘hmm, hmm’. I can’t bear to look at him.

  ‘Bring the glasses, Maude,’ my father says.

  When I look up I notice that our visitor is peering at me with a sort of amazement mingled with concern. It’s an expression I’ve seen before: when Madame Descombes saw scratches on my hands.

  ‘You’ll have a whisky, won’t you,’ my father says. It’s nine o’clock in the morning; Monsieur Molin raises his eyebrows but hesitates for only a fraction of a second. While he stoically works his way through his glass, he tells us about his travels as a musician onboard the ocean liner France, where he ended up playing many different instruments. My father’s eyes light up: since Yves vanished—after borrowing money from my father—it’s been impossible to find a multi-instrument teacher.

  ‘And do you play the accordion?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course!’

  Just like that, Monsieur Molin is my new music teacher. And what a teacher! An extraordinary musician but also the personification of kindness. With him, even the accordion becomes a pleasure. I’m six inches taller than he is, but he calls me ‘little one’—no one has ever called me that. He tells me about the musicians whose compositions I’m studying, and at what stage in their lives they wrote a particular piece. Music comes to life inside me; it’s no longer just a succession of notes. Even Crystal Pearls, an accordion piece my father has insisted I learn, now feels poetic.

  My teacher arrives, limping along on his crutches, for two four-hour sessions a week. We work in the music pavilion, mostly on piano and accordion. His ears are as sharp as mine and he too can hear the click on the intercom when my father decides to listen in on us. Then he speaks more sternly but softens his facial expression so much that we both smile as he scolds, ‘No, really! You’re just not making good enough progress on the accordion… If you came to my studio in Dunkirk you’d understand what a bit of hard work means. Then you’d get somewhere.’

  I think Monsieur Molin understands. He has intuited
that I am on the verge of imploding. I don’t know how he worked it out as I haven’t told him anything. He must have a sixth sense. He can tell just by looking at me, and I think he can read my father like a book. I think he has decided to help me and has hatched a plan to woo my father. At the end of the lessons, my mother comes to give him his envelope, and nudges him towards the side gate.

  ‘Oh, but I must go say hello to Monsieur Didier,’ he says and heads off towards the bar, chatting merrily as if he hasn’t noticed my mother’s disgruntled expression. Even though he’s been officially warned by his doctor not to drink, he always agrees to have a glass of something. He must realize that my father’s respect depends on it.

  When the intercom clicks during our lessons, he has taken to saying harshly, ‘I can see you have an easy life here. You’d have it tough if you came to practise under my orders at the studio. I’d get you playing the double bass. Oh, you’d suffer for it. And I’d make you clean all the instruments, and the floor too…’ I have to stifle my laughter, he’s going too far, it’ll never work!

  But it does. The next time he comes, my father asks him, ‘Do you think the double bass would be a good idea for Maude?’

  ‘For Maude? I hadn’t thought of that, it’s a very good idea.’

  ‘In that case,’ says my father, ‘could you bring one next time?’

  Monsieur Molin must be pleased with himself. Then my father asks him whether, to his knowledge, there were any double bass players in the concentration camps. He stands speechless for a moment, then says, ‘Um, I’ll find out…’