And I can’t quite picture the words “and a happy New Year” in fancy gold script just above my two kids’ lumpy, shaggy-haired heads. It’s more likely to look like one of Reiser’s risqué covers for Hara-Kiri magazine than a Christmas card.
One day, seeing Josée trying to unblock a sink with a plunger, I told her I would buy another one.
“Why two?” she asked. “One’s enough.”
“You’re forgetting I have two children,” I replied.
She didn’t understand so I explained that, when we took Mathieu and Thomas for a walk and had to get them over a stream, it would be practical to use plungers. You could attach them to the children’s heads. Then you could just grab the handles to lift them up and get them over the stream without getting their feet wet. It was easier than carrying them in your arms.
She was horrified.
The plunger disappeared after that. She must have hidden it …
Mathieu and Thomas are asleep and I’m watching them.
What are they dreaming about?
Do they have dreams like other people?
Maybe at night they dream they’re intelligent.
Maybe at night they have their revenge and dream the dreams of gifted children.
Maybe at night they’re top engineers, scientific researchers … who find whatever they’re looking for.
Maybe at night they discover laws and principles, postulations and theories.
Maybe at night they do endless arcane calculations.
Maybe at night they speak Latin and Greek.
But the minute the sun rises—so that no one ever guesses—they revert to looking like handicapped children. In order to be left in peace they pretend they can’t talk. When someone speaks to them they act as if they don’t understand. They don’t want to go to school and do homework and learn lessons.
You’ve got to understand them, they have to be serious all night so they need to relax during the day. So they just muck about.
The only thing we got right was your names. By choosing Mathieu and Thomas we were going the safe route, with a nod toward the saints. Because you never know, and it’s always best to keep on the right side of everyone.
If we were hoping to attract God’s blessing on you, we kind of messed up.
To think of your feeble little limbs, you just weren’t built to be called Tarzan … I can’t really see you in the jungle, swinging from branch to branch, challenging bloodthirsty beasts, and dislocating a lion’s jaw or breaking a buffalo’s neck with your bare hands.
You were more like Tarzoon, the shame of the jungle.
Mind you, I prefer you to Tarzan and his arrogance. You’re so much more touching, my two little birds. You remind me of E.T.
Thomas wears glasses, little red glasses, they really suit him. Along with his dungarees, they make him look like an American student—a charmer!
I can’t remember how we found out he couldn’t see clearly. Now that he has his glasses, everything he sees must be in sharp focus, Snoopy, his drawings … For a while I had the extraordinarily naive belief that he would finally be able to read. First I would buy him strip cartoons, then children’s “early reader” books, then the classics: Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Le Grand Meaulnes … and why not a bit of Proust.
No, he’ll never be able to read. Even if the letters on the page are now clear, it will still all be a haze inside his head. He’ll never know that all those tiny lines and twirls covering the pages of books tell us stories and can transport us somewhere else. Confronted with them, he’s like me trying to decipher hieroglyphics.
He must think they’re drawings, minute drawings that don’t mean anything. Or perhaps he thinks they’re lines of ants, and watches them, amazed that they don’t run away when he brings his hand down to crush them.
To elicit sympathy from passersby, beggars display their misfortune, their clubfeet or amputations, their old dogs and flea-bitten cats, their children. I could do the same. I’ve got two good claims on people’s heartstrings, all I’d have to do is put my two boys in their threadbare navy blue coats. I could sit down on a cardboard box on the ground with them and look devastated. I could have a stereo playing rousing music and Mathieu could beat in time to it on his ball.
Look, I’ve always wanted to be a comedian, so I could recite Vigny’s stirring poem “Death of a Wolf” while Thomas did his star turn as a crying wolf, “Whooo, cries da wolf” …
People might be really moved and struck by the performance. They’d give us money to go and drink an absinthe to their old grandfather.
I’ve done something crazy, I’ve just bought myself a Bentley. An old one, a Mark VI, 22 horsepower, it goes through nine gallons of gas every hundred miles. It’s navy blue and black, with a red leather interior. The dashboard is burled walnut, with loads of little round dials and faceted indicator lights like precious stones. It’s like a beautiful old carriage; when it draws up to the sidewalk people expect the Queen of England to step out.
I use it to pick up Thomas and Mathieu from their special school, sitting them down on the back seat, like two princes.
I’m proud of my car; everyone gazes at it respectfully, trying to make out some famous passenger in the back.
If they could see what’s in the back, they’d be disappointed. Instead of the Queen of England, there are two dribbling, misshapen little kids, and one of them—the really gifted one—keeps saying, “Where we going, Daddy? Where we going, Daddy?”
I remember once driving along and not being able to resist the temptation to talk to them like a father who’s just picked his children up from high school. I invented questions about their schoolwork. “So, Mathieu, how did your homework on Montaigne go? What grade did you get for your essay? How about you, Thomas, how many mistakes were there in your Latin translation? And how’s the trigonometry going?”
While I talked to them about their schoolwork, I watched their tousled little heads and blank expressions in the rear-view mirror. Maybe I was hoping they’d give me a proper answer, that we’d stop the whole joke about handicaps, it wasn’t funny anymore, this game, and we were finally going to be sensible like everyone else, they were finally going to be like everyone else …
I waited quite a while for an answer.
Thomas said, “Where we going, Daddy?” several times, while Mathieu went “Brmm, brmm” …
It wasn’t a game.
Every weekend, Thomas and Mathieu come home from special school covered in scrapes and scratches. They must fight like dogs. Alternatively—now that cockfighting’s been banned, and to help make ends meet—I can see the teachers at their rural institution organizing child-fights.
Judging by how deep the gashes are, they clearly attach metal spurs to the children’s fingers. Which isn’t acceptable.
I’m going to have to write to the management and ask them to stop.
Thomas needn’t be jealous of his brother any longer, he’s going to have a brace too. An impressive surgical corset with chrome-plated metal and leather. His frame’s collapsing, he’s becoming hunchbacked like his brother. Soon they’ll be like little old men who’ve spent their whole lives harvesting beetroot in the fields.
These braces cost a fortune, they’re entirely handmade in a specialized workshop in Paris, near La Motte-Picquet, a place called Maison Leprêtre. Every year we have to take them to the workshop to be measured for new braces, because they’re growing. They always meekly let the experts get on with it.
When they’ve got their braces on they look like Roman warriors in breastplates, or characters from a science fiction cartoon because of the gleaming chrome.
When you pick them up in your arms it feels like you’re holding a robot. A metal doll.
It takes a monkey wrench to get them undressed at night. When you peel their breastplates off, you find purple welts left on their naked torsos by the metal stays, and all that’s left are two shivering little plucked birds.
I’ve directed several
television programs about handicapped children. I remember the first one: my opening sequence was stock footage of a beautiful baby competition, and the soundtrack was a song all about glorious, victorious youth.
I have an unusual attitude toward beautiful baby competitions. I really don’t understand why anyone congratulates and rewards people who have beautiful children, as if they did it on purpose. Why, then, don’t they punish and fine those who have handicapped children?
I can still see those arrogant, self-assured mothers, brandishing their masterpieces in front of the jury.
I wanted them to drop them.
I’ve just gotten back to the apartment. Josée is alone in the children’s bedroom, the beds are both empty and the window is wide open. I lean out of it and look down, vaguely concerned.
We now live on the fourteenth floor.
Where are the kids? I can’t hear them anywhere. Josée’s thrown them out the window. She might have had a moment of madness; you read about that sort of thing in the papers sometimes.
“Josée, why’ve you thrown the boys out the window?”
I only asked it as a joke, to dispel the image.
She hasn’t answered, she doesn’t understand, she’s speechless.
I carry on in the same tone of voice: “What you’ve done is very bad, Josée. I know they’re handicapped, but that’s no excuse to throw them out.”
Josée’s terrified, she looks at me in stunned silence, I think she’s frightened of me. She goes into our bedroom, comes back with the children in her arms, and stands them in front of me.
They’re fine.
Josée’s quite shaken, she must be thinking, “Hardly surprising the boss’s kids are crazy.”
Mathieu and Thomas will never know Bach, Schubert, Brahms, Chopin …
They will never benefit from the blessings these composers have to offer, blessings that help you get through those gloomy mornings when you’re feeling low and the heating has broken down. They will never know the goose bumps you get from listening to a Mozart adagio, the energy transmitted by Beethoven’s roaring crescendos and Liszt’s flourishes, the way Wagner makes you want to jump to your feet and go and invade Poland, Bach’s fortifying dances and the warm tears shed for a mournful Schubert song …
I would have liked trying out stereo systems with them and buying one for them. Acting as their first deejay, buying them their first album …
I would have liked listening to music with them, discussing its strengths and weaknesses, comparing different interpretations, and deciding on the best …
Setting them aquiver with Benedetti, Gould, and Arrau on the piano, and Menuhin, Oïstrakh, and Milstein on the violin.
And giving them a glimpse of paradise.
It’s autumn. I’m driving through the forest at Compiègne in my Bentley with Thomas and Mathieu in the back. The countryside is unspeakably beautiful. The whole forest is ablaze with color, glorious as a Watteau. I can’t even say “Look how gorgeous it is!” to them, Thomas and Mathieu aren’t looking at the scenery, they couldn’t give a damn about it. We’ll never be able to admire anything together.
They will never know Watteau, will never go to a museum. Those great joys that help human beings live … they’ll be deprived of them too.
But they do still have French fries. They love fries, especially Thomas, who calls them “Fench fies.”
When I’m alone in the car with Thomas and Mathieu I sometimes have weird ideas. I could buy a couple of bottles—one of camping gas and one of whiskey—and drain them both.
I think that if I had a serious car crash things might be better. Particularly for my wife. I’m more and more impossible to live with, and the boys are getting more and more difficult as they get older. So I accelerate and close my eyes, keeping them closed as long as I can.
I’ll never forget the incredible doctor who saw us when my wife was pregnant for the third time. Abortion was discussed but he said, “I’m going to speak bluntly. You’re in a hell of a situation. You already have two handicapped children. If you had one more, would things really change much? But imagine having a normal child this time. Everything would change. You wouldn’t be finishing on a bad note, it could be the chance of a lifetime.”
Our chance was called Marie; she was normal and very pretty. And why not, we already had two trial runs. The doctors, who knew about her predecessors, were reassured.
Two days after the birth, a pediatrician came to see our daughter. He examined her foot at length, then, out loud, said, “Looks like a club foot …” and a moment later added, “No, I’m wrong.”
I’m sure he meant it as a joke.
My daughter grew and became our pride and joy. She’s beautiful, she’s intelligent. Sweet revenge on our fate, until the day—
No, that’s enough messing around, she’s another story.
The mother of my children, whom I pushed to the limit, eventually had enough: she left me. She went to laugh somewhere else. Serves me right. I deserved it.
I end up on my own, adrift.
I’d love to start over again, young and handsome.
I can just see my lonely hearts ad:
“40-year-old teenager, 3 kids (2 handicapped), seeks cultured, pretty, young woman with a sense of humor.”
She’s going to need a lot of that, specially the dark kind.
I’ve met a few cute but rather dumb girls. I was careful not to mention my children, otherwise they’d have run.
I remember a blonde who knew I had children but not what state they were in. I can still hear her saying, “When are you going to introduce me to your children, it’s like you don’t want to, are you ashamed of me?”
Some of the teachers at Mathieu and Thomas’s special school are young women; there’s one tall brunette in particular who’s very pretty. That would obviously be ideal, she knows my kids and has the instruction manual.
In the end, it didn’t work out. She must have thought, “I can deal with the handicapped during the week, it’s my job, but if I have to spend every weekend with them too …” And maybe I wasn’t her type either and she might have thought, “This guy specializes in handicapped children, he could easily give me one too, so no thanks.”
And then, one day, once upon a time, there was a charming, cultured girl with a sense of humor. She took an interest in me and my two little kids. We were very lucky, she stayed. Thanks to her, Thomas learned to open and close a zipper. Not for long. The next day he couldn’t remember how, he’d forgotten everything, we had to start the learning process from square one again.
With my children no one need ever worry about repeating themselves, my sons forget everything. With them, nothing’s ever old hat, in a rut, or boring. Nothing goes out of fashion, everything’s new.
My little birds, I’m so sad to think you’ll never experience the thing that, for me, has constituted the greatest moments of my life.
Those extraordinary moments when the world is reduced to a single person, when you exist only for her and thanks to her, you tremble at the sound of her footsteps, the sound of her voice, and go weak at the knees when you see her. When you’re afraid you might break her from holding her so tight, when every kiss is bliss and the world around you melts away.
You will never know that delicious shivering feeling that runs from your head down to your toes, throws you into turmoil, more of an upheaval than moving houses, an electrocution, an execution. Turns you upside down with your feet off the ground, makes you feel lost, makes you feel found, picks you up and spins you around. It shakes you up inside, makes you hot and cold all over, makes you flutter and makes you stutter, makes your hair stand on end, drives you around the bend, makes you say the dumbest things, makes you laugh but also makes you cry.
Because, alas, my little birds, you will never know how to conjugate the indicative mood of the first person of the present tense of the verb to love.
When someone in the street asks me to make a donation for handicapped childr
en I say no.
I don’t dare say I have two handicapped children, they would think I was joking.
With an offhand smile, I allow myself the luxury of saying, “Handicapped children? I’ve got the T-shirt.”
I’ve just invented a bird. I’ve called it Grounded. It’s a rare bird, not like others. It’s afraid of heights. Which is tough luck for a bird. But it keeps its spirits up. Instead of feeling sorry for itself, it jokes about its handicap.
Every time someone asks it to fly, it always finds a funny excuse not to, and makes everyone laugh. It’s got plenty of nerve, too, it makes fun of the birds that can fly, the normal birds.
It’s as if Thomas and Mathieu could make fun of the normal children they see in the street.
Turning the world on its head.
It’s raining and Josée has returned from her walk with the children. She’s busy getting Mathieu to eat.
I can’t see Thomas, and go out of the room. His snow-suit is hanging on the coatrack in the corridor, still puffed up, still in the shape of a body. I go back into the room stony-faced.
“Josée, why’ve you hung Thomas from a coat hook?”
She looks up blankly.
I persevere with my joke: “Just because he’s disabled doesn’t mean you can hang him on a coat hook?”
Josée didn’t miss a beat and replied, “I’m leaving him to dry for a minute, he was soaked.”
My children are very affectionate. In shops Thomas wants to kiss everyone, young, old, rich, poor, blacks, whites, indiscriminately.
Where We Going, Daddy?: Life With Two Sons Unlike Any Other Page 3