Tita

by Marie Houzelle

  In the evening, Mother doesn’t come to our room to kiss us good night. Coralie doesn’t notice. She’s reading Buck John, whose covers always feature a man wearing a cowboy hat, with a little yellow scarf around his neck and a gun in his hand. When she’s finished, she strokes the cover and sighs. Her eyes are bright. “When I grow up,” she says, “I’ll dress like him. With a red shirt, a yellow scarf, a cowboy hat. And a star!”

  “Do you know what the star means?” I ask.

  “Yes! It’s a sheriff’s star. I’ll be a sheriff!”

  I’m going to tell her that there are no sheriffs in France, but I stop myself. Maybe she’ll live in a country where she can be a sheriff.

  I tell her a story I make up where Sophie and her cousin Paul go to America like at the end of Les Malheurs. There’s a murder, and the sheriff needs the children’s help to find the murderer. I’m in pretty deep water, as I have no idea what a sheriff is supposed to do, or what Americans are like. But Coralie falls asleep after five minutes, and I go back to Jean Santeuil.

  Jean doesn’t go to school, not because his parents are snobs like Henry Brulard’s, but because he’s considered too fragile. He’s not shut up at home, though. “In Paris, with his legs bare to let them get tan, he stayed all day on the Champs-Elysées, sitting on a bench. Little boys invited him to play, little girls approached him, his maid threatened him, but he kept desperately silent, hiding his face against the back of the bench.” This goes on until he falls in love with Marie Kossichef, “a Russian girl with long black hair, clear mocking eyes, pink cheeks, and the sparkle of health, life, joy, of which Jean was deprived.” But his parents think that Jean’s surexcitation about the girl is dangerous for his health, and they decide that he shouldn’t see Marie any more, shouldn’t go to the Champs-Elysées. Instead, he will have a lesson with a private teacher. Jean starts yelling, “Not go to the Champs-Elysées! Not to the Champs-Elysées! Yes, I’ll go, I don’t care about the teacher, if I run into him I’ll kill him, that hideous monkey, I’ll kill him, do you hear me?”

  This is not the only time Jean becomes very angry at his “cruel” parents. He often shouts and curses in such a way that they think he might be crazy. When his father tells him that he is going to Henri-IV (a school), Jean says “I won’t set foot there!” and “This is the last Latin translation I’ll ever write!” But in the end he has to do what his parents want, so I wonder if all the drama is worth it. Maybe it is, though. Maybe it’s better to show that you don’t agree.

  The next morning, when we come into the classroom, Pélican doesn’t tell us to sit down, so we all remain standing as she gives us a long lecture. A terrible misdeed has been committed, and the only way for the culprits not to remain in a state of sin and risk going to hell is to confess immediately. I reflect that she shouldn’t have used the word “confess”, because it reminds me (and probably all of us) that we have another way of dealing with our sin: we can just tell the priest at our next confession, which is tomorrow. So even if we’ve committed a mortal sin (which I don’t think is the case), we’ll only risk hell if we die within the next twenty-four hours. And the priest couldn’t tell Pélican: seal of confession.

  We all keep silent, and Pélican finally tells us to sit down. But at break time she says, “I’m sorry to announce that there will be no breaks for this class until the culprit of the terrible deed I alluded to earlier has come forward. Meanwhile, all breaks will be spent in the Sacred Heart room kneeling with your rosaries”.

  Okay, she wins. What’s the good of having everybody kneeling in front of the Sacred Heart? I’d rather do that on my own. I put up my hand.

  “I did it,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “You stay here,” Pélican says. “Everybody go down to the yard.” When the rest are gone, she makes me stand in front of her desk. I look down, of course.

  “You of all girls,” she says, “who should know better. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

  “Yes, M’selle,” I say. I watch her out of the corner of my eye as she sits for quite a while glowering at me. I try to imagine what she could do to me. Beatings are out. She could give me a thousand lines, but I wouldn’t care. I get lines more or less every day, and I manage to do them in school mostly, between exercises. I’d hate to get so many lines that I couldn’t play with my friends in the evening but, if she tried that, Father would object. So I wonder. Maybe she too is wondering. What if I got myself expelled? I’d stay at home, like Jean Santeuil and Henry Brulard. Read all day. Learn Latin with Father, and English with mademoiselle Verdier. I’d be rid of Pélican, all her works and her pomps. But I’d miss my friends!

  “We are going down to the schoolyard,” Pélican finally declares, “and when we get there you’ll do exactly as I say.” What’s going on? I was ready for the Sacred Heart, the rosary, endless detention. She must have thought up something worse.

  When we get to the middle of the yard, she says, “Now you are going to get down on your knees in front of me and ask my forgiveness.” The games around us have slowed, and all the girls surreptitiously look in our direction. Anne-Claude rolls her eyes and makes as if to clap. I look at the ground: yes, I can kneel. If that’ll make the woman happy. But I don’t feel like it right now. So I don’t move. “I’m warning you,” Pélican says, “you’d better comply or…” I glance at her for half a second. She’s trapped. She has no “or”. She’s staring at me with stern eyes behind her round gold-rimmed glasses, but she’s cornered herself and she knows it.

  She steps towards me and tries to push my shoulders down to make me kneel, but I resist. She pushes harder. I don’t kneel but keel over and fall. My left knee hits a stone and starts bleeding. Not a lot. Madame Riu, the downstairs teacher, comes up to us, takes my hand and says, “Come with me, I’ll clean that, put a plaster on it.” As we go to her classroom I notice that, under her dark-blue gathered blouse, her body doesn’t have its usual clear shape. She bends over my knee to disinfect it, but not easily. Something’s going on around her waist. Yes! I remember when this happened to Cami. Madame Riu must be pregnant. Good for her!

  I don’t get any lines, don’t have to kneel in front of the Sacred Heart. The next day, I add to my scanty list of sins, “At school, I took unconsecrated hosts that didn’t belong to me,” which is the most specific sentence I’ve ever pronounced in confession. I go on to describe the opening and eating and inciting. The priest responds as usual, “My dear Euphémie, my little friend, you will say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys”. He absolves me in Latin, both of us making the Sign of the Cross.

  Black

  Everybody looks at me askance because I don’t eat cheese, hate the smell of cheese, can’t be near cheese. I don’t know why people are so much more exercised by cheese than by the other foods I shrink from — liver, kidneys, snails, beef tongue, andouillette. Maybe it’s nationalistic.

  Even Father. He knows there’s no hope with Camembert, but this morning as we’re getting ready for a picnic, he says, “It would be so nice if you could eat a little cheese. Not the fusty kind. A bit of Emmental. Could you try? If you do, I’ll give you a reward. Whatever you like. Book, toy, board game… ”

  Father asks nicely. Not like Maxime and his friends, who used to pursue me with chunks of fetid cheese in their hands, squealing, “Choose between eating this wedge of Brie and being scalped (whipped, strangled, drowned, burned at the stake)!” That’s how I learned to run fast. Mother never tries to make me eat smelly cheese, but she sighs and shakes her head a lot. Father once told me in confidence that, as a child, he didn’t like cheese either. Now he’s inciting me to explore, and I feel ready to defy grisly threats to get… what? I know what. Something strange, as strange as the idea of eating Emmental.

  “I’d like a black baby,” I say. “Small. I saw one in the toyshop in Narbonne.” Not too expensive, I think.

  “Black?” Father asks.

  “Yes, I already have quite a few pink dolls.”

  “It
’s a deal!” he says.

  We have lunch along the canal, and nobody pays much attention to what I eat: two celery sticks and half a small melon. I’m saving my appetite for the Emmental. Father cuts me a thin slice, I stick it between two hunks of baguette, and I divide this into tiny bites. I chew them, one at a time. Swallow. Emmental is too salty but dry, tart, not soggy like cream cheese. Not too bad, actually. I don’t let on, though. I keep very quiet. Only Father notices and, when I’m done, gives me a small nod and a smile.

  We stop in Narbonne on the way back and visit the toy store in the rue Droite. Mother tries to make me take a blond doll, she says it’ll be so much more fun, she’ll help me make dresses and suits for her. What do I want with a black doll — a boy too? He won’t wear any interesting clothes. But I’m adamant. Father says, “I promised”.

  My black baby’s name is Aurèle, after Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor who didn’t like complainers. He wrote: “Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there brambles in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not add, ‘Why were such things brought into the world?’”. I found it in a notebook where Etienne copies quotations.

  Mother gives me a leftover ball of blue yarn to knit an outfit for Aurèle, but I don’t feel like knitting, and he looks good with just his diaper, like an Infant Jesus in the crib. “You can’t take him out half naked!” Mother says.

  “Why not? It’s blazing today.”

  I’ll need to make him some clothes for next winter, though. I go to the dining room and look up “Africa” in the first volume of the big red Larousse encyclopedia. There I find a cross-reference to a “costumes” article, which has a full-color page on the way people dress in various parts of the world. It shows men and women of all heights, widths, skin colors, hair colors, with their clothes, ornaments and headgear. I decide that Aurèle’s outfit will be a long robe, which I’ll embroider around the neck with backstitch.

  I look at all the men on this page and try to think which ones I’ll choose when I grow up and have children. My original plan was to have four children, but now I realize that I should have more, there are so many shapes and styles of men to have them with. I’d like them to be as different as possible from each other. For the time being, I single out a few: Tuareg, Nuer, Trobriander, Khoikhoi, Samoan, Kalahari, Iroquois, Dogon... I copy the names of their countries into my notebook, and look them up in the atlas.

  “What are you doing?” Grandmother asks. She’s knitting in her armchair near the window. “Geography?”

  Grandmother often asks me about my schoolwork, she wants to know everything. That’s because she didn’t go to school much. She grew up on a farm in the Jura. The school was two hours away on mountain paths that were impassable during the winter months because of the snow. Then in the spring there was a lot to do on the farm.

  “Well,” I say, “not exactly.” And explain my project.

  Grandmother shakes her head. “You should have all your children with the same man,” she says. “With your husband.”

  “Father had his with two different women,” I object.

  “Two, not eight! And it’s better to stay with one, if you can.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  Grandmother sighs. “Why why why!”

  “I’d like to experiment. See what kind of baby comes out of the mix, every time. And it would be fun for them, to be so different from each other.”

  “It isn’t done,” Grandmother mumbles, “and that’s that.”

  Yes, I guess it isn’t done much, and not bonne façon (one of Grandmother’s special expressions), but why should I care? Father said I’m not going to live here anyway. Maybe I’ll live in New Guinea, or in the Sahara. I could also move to a new country each time I change husbands.

  And maybe I don’t even need to change husbands. I could stay with the same man and just have children with various others. It’s probably not bonne façon either, but I know it is done. I heard Berthe and Simone discuss the fact that Philippe Vié is not Bertrand’s son. Of course he is, officially, but Estelle had a lover at the time, a blond man who was the director of the distillery, and Philippe looks like him. Philippe’s older brother seems to be Bertrand’s but about Mireille they weren’t sure. And Simone says that she herself was conceived with a grape picker from Andalusia during the grape harvest. Her father (the legal one) was not happy at first, but he himself was fooling around at the time so there wasn’t much he could say. And Simone was always his favorite. “Maybe because I’m different,” she said, “with my curly hair and darker skin. And more outspoken! You don’t necessarily want your children to be like you.”

  Intense attraction is essential if you are going to get close enough to a man to have children with him. But Justine is right: it doesn’t last. I’ve been very attracted to several men or boys already, and it passed. At the moment there are three: Luis Mariano (whom I’ve seen only once and from a high box far away from the stage, but his voice is enough), Bertrand Vié, and Jordi Puch. My predilection for Bertrand is pretty obvious. Last year, I was such a baby I didn’t think anything of declaring my love to him every chance I got; he laughed, kissed me, reminded me that he was too old for me and directed me to his son Philippe. I’m more sensible now. Luis Mariano is even further out of my reach, but he completely inspires me as I bicycle into the hills among the lavender and pines, alone, singing La Belle de Cadix at the top of my lungs. Sometimes I am the Belle de Cadix, with her languorous eyes, sometimes her disappointed lover.

  Nobody knows about my penchant for Jordi Puch. It’s not even a secret, it’s something that cannot be told, because it’s unimaginable. How can I, almost eight years old and in Group Two upstairs with all the older girls, be attracted to a younger, tinier boy who’s still in the infant class? Grandmother’s “It isn’t done” doesn’t begin to say how impossible this feeling is. But it’s real. I love Jordi. He smells of trees and pine cones. His little body exudes fresh energy, the “sparkle of health” Jean Santeuil sees in Marie Kossichef. I want to touch his chestnut curls, feel their springy texture.

  His father is a carpenter. Whenever I can, on my bike, I swerve into the back alley, near the bowling ground, where he has his workshop. The Puch family lives above the shop, but I don’t particularly look for Jordi. What I like is that the whole width of the quiet street is covered with wood shavings. Under my tires, in the heady smell of resin, I crush the cracking wood.

  Reports

  July 12, last day of school, which also happens to be saint Olivier’s day, i.e., our priest’s name day. In the afternoon we’ll celebrate with a goûter in the downstairs classroom, which is more than large enough for all of Sainte-Blandine’s denizens.

  Before we go down to the party, Pélican reminds us that, during the summer vacation, we shouldn’t forget to say our prayers (at least a whole rosary every day), go to mass on Sundays (mortal sin if we don’t) and take communion at least once a week, preferably twice. She also encourages us to read only the right kind of books and — her voice tight and dark — warns us about magazines. The devil is always out to entrap and confuse our souls, so we need to remember: Coeurs Vaillants (for boys) and mes Vaillantes (for girls) are highly recommended, but Vaillant is something we should avoid at all costs, as it’s an organ of pagan Communist propaganda.

  I’d never heard of Vaillant, and now I’d like to take a look at it. mes Vaillantes I’ve seen around, and it didn’t look attractive at all — more like an organ of Girl Guide propaganda. But Pélican has already gone on to her next subject: today’s celebration. We need to walk down the stairs in an orderly file and, one by one, on our way to our seats, congratulate monsieur le curé, who will be sitting in the middle of the room in front of the cold stove. We should then wait until everybody is served before starting to eat and never, never look at our neighbors’ plates to check if their portion is bigger or smaller than ours.

  “This is extremely important!” Pélican insists. “You should be grateful for what you are
given, and never compare it with what the others get, for that is the beginning of Envy, one of the Seven Deadly Sins!”

  Envy. I’ve never thought of that sin before, and I don’t think I’ve ever envied anybody — especially not for getting a bigger piece of cake! What a funny word. Where can it come from? Latin, I guess. Video, “I see”? Yes, invideo, exactly what Pélican was describing: I look into (my neighbor’s plate).

  By the way, for “neighbor”, i.e., the other students, Pélican used the word compagne, literally “someone with whom you share bread”. It’s the official word at Sainte-Blandine (and nowhere else, in my experience — but maybe it’s normal for Catholic schools, I need to ask Justine). At the école laïque, and in the wider world, one says camarade (literally, “someone with whom you share a room”). But camarade is avoided at Sainte-Blandine as a godless Communist word.

  Downstairs, I curtsey to the priest, who holds my hands for a few seconds. He’s wearing a white cassock with gold and brown embroidery: flowers, leaves and letters. He looks benign, and tired. Everybody likes him, but I don’t think he has much influence on the school. Or on anything else.

  Each large, plump, crown-shaped brioche has already been cut into a dozen clearly unequal pieces. They’re all capped with candied fruit, and lie on lacy paper mats, the trademark of pâtisserie Cassagnol. Anne-Claude’s parents donated the Cartagène, a sweet wine they make, in which you can smell the grapes just as if they were being crushed in front of you. Cami and another mother are pouring full glasses of the golden liquid for the priest, the teachers and themselves. For us, two fingers, which they top up with water.

  “What’s this green thing on the brioche?” I ask Cami. “It looks like leek.”

  “It’s angelica stem. You only eat it candied. And look at this.” She shows me a pale yellow cube. “Citron. You don’t eat it raw either. But candied, it’s delicious.”