In the Moon

by Alan Holmes

  I didn’t wait around for the slaughter of the other two pigs, and I could see that Michelle, too, was shaken. I told her I had learnt enough for one day and invited her to come to our house, something she had never done. When we reached the back of our garden, the two of us played listlessly on the swing that hung from a large weeping willow tree. We were both upset, and the fun had gone out of everything.

  Feeling as if my little paradise had been desecrated, I didn’t go back to the farm for several days. When I finally did, it was late one afternoon, and the purpose of my visit was to say goodbye. The summer vacation was ending, and we were leaving for Ville-d’Avray the next morning.

  When I told Madame Baichant of our imminent departure, Michelle started to cry. She begged me to stay, promising that she would never make me watch a pig slaughtering again. I put my arm around her shoulders and tried to convince her that the pig slaughtering had nothing to do with my leaving. When that had no effect, I tried reassuring her with the promise that I would be back the following summer.

  Madame Baichant asked if it were all right if she kissed me goodbye. “Oh oui! Bien sûr, Madame Baichant!” I replied, as I went to her and hugged her affectionately. Then I hugged and kissed Michelle, who, at this very moment, didn’t seem as tough as I had always taken her to be.

  I asked Madame Baichant if I could pull a carrot to give Lili as a farewell present. She assented but said she and Michelle were sitting down to supper and that I would have to go by myself. Michelle was still sobbing quietly, and Madame Baichant went to her, held her and stroked her hair. Putting my hand on Michelle’s arm and giving her a light squeeze, I said a subdued goodbye to her and left their house.

  I walked to the vegetable garden, pulled a couple of carrots, and went to Lili’s stall, which was quite dark because the sun had set. When I entered, the horse turned and took a few lazy, clopping steps towards me. Lili was facing the open door, and I could tell that she knew what I was holding, even though I held them behind me in one hand. I teased her a little before feeding the carrots to her and then watched her munch pensively. I stroked the soft gray suede of her nose, acutely aware of how much I enjoyed the feel of it. “Au revoir, chère Lili,” I said wistfully.

  Dan enjoying the quiet, Villa Champs de Mai, Condette, 1937

  Villa Champs de Mai, after addition of dormers, Condette, 1937

  CHAPTER 9

  An Elf in the Drawing Room and Watery Dangers.

  Not long after our return to Ville-d’Avray in the autumn of 1937, Brenda and I received by post an invitation to Monique’s birthday party. We hadn’t seen the Poujets since their dog had bitten Brenda and, not long after that incident, Madame Poujet had seen fit to ostracize me because I had been expelled from school on account of the face-inking incident. She had also rejected Brenda, who was completely innocent of any misdeed.

  Madame Poujet’s spurning the two of us had been rude and forceful, so Mother, Brenda and I were quite taken aback by her olive branch. Mother wasn’t sure we should accept the invitation, but I insisted that Charlie Poujet was my only friend in Ville-d’Avray and that we had suffered long enough. Mother gave in and bought an expensive doll’s dress for Monique’s birthday present. I thought it outrageous that the dress was far fancier than anything Brenda owned, and I told Mother that she was overdoing the forgiveness.

  Our reunion with Charlie and Monique was tense at first, but after a few minutes, the four of us acted as though nothing had ever happened. The party was unremarkable, except for the fact that Brenda and I were the only guests. If we had chosen not to come, there would have been no party.

  Six-year-old Charlie was not the most stimulating of companions for me; he was almost two years my junior and timid about playing most of the games I proposed. I longed for a larger circle of friends of my age, such as I had enjoyed during those two magic summers when we had rented villas in Hardelot.

  A few days after Monique’s dull party, a new boy closer to my own age appeared on the scene in the most unlikely fashion. I had never paid any attention to a property that was beyond a short section of our garden wall, for I had never noticed any sign of life coming from that direction.

  One day, however, while playing near that wall, I had the impression I was being watched. I kept glancing at the top of the wall frequently and eventually caught a fleeting glimpse of a small, much-tanned face, topped by a mop of curly blond hair. I called out and received no answer, but I was sure I had seen a boy looking down at me. My curiosity aroused, I ran to the tool shed and, with Raimond’s help, pulled out a ladder and propped it against the wall. When I reached the top, I saw a boy about my age staring up at me and looking as though he were expecting me. He greeted me casually, saying, “Bonjours, je m’appelle Jacob. Et toi, tu t’appelles comment?” (“Hello, I’m Jacob. And you, what’s your name?”).

  “Alain,” I replied. Jacob then apologized for spying on me and explained that his family had just arrived in their new house and he had been anxious to discover what his neighbors were like.

  Jacob’s new house was known in our household as “la maison Américaine.” Anything far-fetched or unusual was often accused of being American. This house certainly met these criteria. Its entire south side, which faced across the back garden towards our common wall and away from the street, was made entirely of glass. The large glass panes didn’t have the usual window framing, and there were no opaque panels separating the wide expanses of glass; nor were there any visible means of support, either for the glass or for the upper stories. From my vantage point atop the wall, Jacob’s house was just a glass box with no apparent roof. Through the glass façade I could see everything inside; armchairs, sofas, tables, beds, kitchen counters and the cooking stove were all on display as if in some large furniture shop.

  Until the day I climbed that ladder and met Jacob, I had never seen the house, but Raimond, while pruning our cherry tree near this wall, had given it careful scrutiny. As he served us lunch one day, he described the glass façade and the lack of a roof. “We all know that roofs must have a slope so the rain will run off,” Raimond said, “but I could see nothing by way of a roof above the third story. Through the glass I could see from the lighting of the third story that it must have an opaque ceiling—so, where is the roof?” Raimond asked, sounding perplexed.

  Mother replied that Father, while looking down from a skyscraper during a recent visit to New York, had noticed that most roofs in America were flat. He’d been told that these flat roofs were made of paper and tar, implausible and incredible as that sounded. This roof anomaly may be why Raimond had dubbed the mystery house next door “la maison Américaine.”

  We had seen a different aspect of the house from the street it fronted, the rue de Marne. From there, all we could see was a solid concrete wall, three stories high, about sixty feet long, and three small, square windows, set somewhat randomly in the wall. The two ends of the house were also flat, unbroken concrete surfaces with no openings visible from the street. A tall steel gate led into a garden that was completely hidden from our view. We couldn’t see any roof overhang or even a rain gutter from the street side of the house. Mother commented that the place looked like a bomb shelter and wasn’t exactly “pittoresque”.

  When Jacob peered over the wall into our garden, his vantage point had been from a small tree that grew beside the wall. He now proposed that I use this tree to descend into their garden. “Its branches are close together, ideal for climbing,” he said reassuringly.

  With some difficulty, I repositioned the ladder so that it was directly opposite Jacob’s little tree. Then I talked Brenda into joining me in this perilous crossing. When I reached terra firma on his side of the wall, Jacob seized my hand and shook it vigorously. The French are fond of shaking hands and do so at the drop of a hat. Jacob’s effusive greeting brought to mind the way Stanley was reputed to have greeted Livingstone in the heart
of Africa, a story Mother had recently recounted to me. Jacob’s more than cordial handshake gave my expedition into his garden the aura of a grand and daring exploration. Together, Jacob and I helped Brenda down from the tree.

  Jacob appeared to be as impressed by his new house as I was, and he was anxious to show it to us. It turned out to be even stranger than our original impression, for once inside, Brenda and I were amazed to see that walls between rooms extended neither to the floor nor to the ceiling. Instead, the walls, such as they were, cantilevered—or “sprang”—from the outer, street-side wall of the house, like partitions in a public toilet. These floating wall partitions were found on all three floors of the house.

  Passage from room to room (zones might be a better term) was along an unbroken aisle that ran the length of the glass façade on each floor. There were no doors to impede anyone moving from one area to another or to provide a modicum of privacy. The only rooms that had doors were the bathrooms, which were all at the front of the house and had small windows overlooking the street. The house design was the open plan style in the extreme.

  Many years later I learned that, far from being of American design, what we had dubbed “la maison Américaine” was actually an early work of the great French architect Le Corbusier and that this house was nearly the famous architect’s professional undoing. His clients hated living in it. It sat empty for many years before the first owners found a buyer for the place. In the end, they virtually gave the house away, probably to Jacob’s family. The first owners had tried to sue Le Corbussier but had been laughed out of court when they finally admitted that they had enthusiastically approved his design and all the details on the plans. Although Le Corbussier won the case, the publicity of the unusual trial was not good for his business, and he did not become one of France’s (and the world’s) most celebrated architects until the late 1940s, though he was well known among architects before then.

  Jacob’s room contained nothing more than a cot, a plain dresser, a chair, and a small table. The furnishings throughout the rest of house were as minimal as those in Jacob’s room. I asked him when the movers would arrive and was surprised to hear that they had already come.

  Brenda asked him where he kept his toys, and Jacob replied that he had none because his parents didn’t believe in toys and expected him to read books instead. “Playing with toys is such a waste of time,” Jacob asserted with conviction.

  I asked to see his books, and when he told me he didn’t have any, I volunteered, “I suppose your parents don’t want you to have your own books.”

  “That’s right,” Jacob replied smartly. “I get to read their books when they’re finished with them.”

  “Do you have many friends?” I asked, desperately trying to find common ground.

  “Yes, I had a friend when we lived at our last house in Paris.”

  “At that house, what did you do when your friend came over to visit you?” I persisted, almost sure I knew the answer.

  “He, too, liked to read books, so we were very good friends. The two of us sat and read my parents’ books, sometimes aloud to each other. Would you like to read the book I’ve just finished? It’s a good book. I enjoyed it more than many others I’ve read recently.”

  We walked to another room and, from a large bookshelf that covered the entire back wall, Jacob pulled out what, in those days, I called “un livre de grandes personnes” (“a book for grownups”). It had no pictures, not even an intriguing cover, just a single-word title which was meaningless to me.

  I riffled through the pages of the book Jacob handed me, searching for pictures. But, of course, there were none, so I put it down. Deciding I had gone as far as I could in this charade, I proposed that we all climb back over the wall so I could give Jacob a tour of our house. I was sure that when he saw my electric train, it would pique his interest and he would discover how much fun it was to play with toys.

  Jacob said that he was all alone in his house, but since he could probably make it back before his parents returned, he thought he could risk a visit over the wall. The three of us climbed the little tree, clambered over the wall, and descended the ladder on our side.

  As soon as we entered our house, Brenda lost interest in Jacob and scampered upstairs. Jacob made a beeline for a large bookshelf that he had spotted through an open door to our drawing room.

  I was quite taken aback; I hadn’t planned on showing Jacob the drawing room, which was unofficially off limits to me, especially if I were in the company of anyone my age. Jacob started a careful scrutiny of the titles on the shelves, pointing out a few which he said he had read or that his parents owned, and exclaiming with surprise at the large number of English titles. Then he found a book that intrigued him and asked if he could read it. When I told Jacob that I would have to ask Mother, he replied he wanted to sit down right here and now and that he wouldn’t bother anyone just sitting and reading in our drawing room; he couldn’t see why my mother’s permission was needed for that.

  Of course, I had to agree. I told Jacob that I was going to the garden to ride my bike; he could join me and ride Brenda’s bike or stay indoors and read. He chose the latter.

  That evening, Mother told Brenda and me that she had experienced the shock of her life. She had been upstairs when I had arrived with Jacob and didn’t know he was in the house. She had walked into the drawing room and gone straight to her desk to write a letter. “When I sat down at my desk I suddenly noticed this little blond elf sitting silently on the sofa reading a book—I couldn’t imagine who he was or why he was there! Any normal child would have said something when I came into the room. When first I saw him, the shock made me gasp, but that did not distract the elf from his reading. He was totally absorbed in his book and ignored me completely.

  “I sat silently at my desk, waiting to see what he might do or to see if I were dreaming and might perhaps awake from this strange dream. He seemed so real that I cleared my throat to see if he would look up. Still he didn’t move and continued his reading. Eventually, I said quite loudly, ‘Who are you, and how is it that you are here in my drawing room?’

  “He looked up, apparently not surprised to see me, and said, ‘I am Jacob Gourlain, and I am enjoying one of your books. May I take it home to finish it? I promise I will treat the book with care, as if it were one of my parents’ and I will return it as soon as I am finished. It was Alain who brought me here—are you Alain’s mother?’”

  Mother continued, “He was so calm—not at all nervous or shy—straightforward and completely natural. I have never seen a young child with so much composure. Jacob was reading Zola’s Germinal, which I hadn’t enjoyed reading and which Daddy didn’t care for either. So without hesitation, I told him he could have it—he was overjoyed.

  “‘Oh Madame,’ he answered in his soft, sweet little voice, ‘you are too good! I don’t want to impose on your generosity that much. I will return the book as I promised. I thank you a thousand times!’ He was a charming child, and I took an immediate liking to him.”

  At that point, Mother invited Jacob to have afternoon tea with us and called me in from the garden. During tea, Jacob and Mother talked about books the whole time. Mother was amazed at his knowledge of many current best sellers, and I was crestfallen that he was turning out to be someone who wasn’t likely to be much of a friend for me, however much Mother admired him. It was a strange feeling, for I had taken a strong liking to Jacob; I envied his calm self-assurance and couldn’t help admiring his lack of any conceit. I really wanted Jacob as a friend, but I couldn’t see how he would have the slightest use for me. I found the situation very unsettling.

  After tea, I insisted that Jacob come up and see my electric trains, which he did courteously but a little grudgingly. We watched my little locomotive go around its track five times, and I offered to let him control the train, but Jacob said, “It’s quite interesting at first, b
ut after a while, I find it a little monotonous.” It was obvious that he was not in the least interested in electric trains or play of any sort. He excused himself politely, explaining that he had better head home before his parents returned. I escorted him back to the ladder, which I climbed after him so that I could hand him Zola’s Germinal once he was safely in the little tree.

  A week later, Jacob telephoned Mother to say that he was coming over to return the book and to ask if Alain would please put the ladder in the same place against the wall. I had never used the telephone and was in awe of his prowess. Jacob stayed for tea, once again entertaining Mother and borrowing another book. This happened regularly, once a week until we left for the seaside that year.

  Sometime in May, Jacob invited Brenda and me, and Charlie and Monique (whom he had met at our house on one of his book-exchanging visits) to a party for his eighth birthday. I had celebrated my eighth birthday only a month earlier and, on that occasion, Jacob had gone to our drawing room after tea and read a book while the rest of us went out to play in the garden. The Poujets, Brenda and I now wondered how Jacob would entertain us, since he didn’t believe in any sort of play. Would the four of us arrive at his house, be asked to sit down on the floor and be expected to read grownup books as he sat absorbed in a book of his own?

  On the day of the party, Charlie and Monique used Raimond’s passerelle to come to our house before heading for Jacob’s house. We had decided to make our way to la maison Américaine using the back garden approach instead of the street entrance. The four of us were standing around the ladder discussing the merits of this plan when the persnickety Monique unexpectedly declared that she refused to climb the ladder, saying that we would all see her knickers as she climbed.