The Shattered Sky

by Bernard Uzan

  God… God… Good…. Good

  God… Goody Goody… God

  Goody God… God Kong… King King…

  Yes, I think I prefer King Kong to God…

  Fabien, my brother you’ve been dead six years and it feels as if you never existed…I vaguely remember you like a friend I would play with during vacations, a friend I never had, and yet a long time ago there was someone somewhere who used to say, “My kid brother” in referring to me and I would say “My big brother.” Referring to you. Somewhere, a long time ago.

  Once for Christmas you gave me a fifty-franc note, it was in mother’s kitchen. We both blushed and hugged self-consciously; I was thinking “What’s going on with him? It’s the first time he done anything for me.” No that’s not true, I was embarrassed because we hugged I had hated you so much as a kid, I always rejected every form of contact!

  I must call his wife. After six years it’s been like a conspiracy of silence: it is all happening as though he’d never even existed.

  We never talk about it, I ask her no questions and she keeps silent! Is it out of modesty, or cowardice? I know nothing about him, nothing about them! Was he happy? Wasn’t he? Who was he? Who? I have to ask her who he was, she must know. I need to know something, to find out more about my brother, my brother…

  I’m going to write a book and once it gets published I’ll commit suicide…

  I thought that with time everything would be erased but on the contrary it exists more and more, time erases nothing. I don’t want my brother to be dead, I don’t want that, you hear! I don’t want it…You are all dogs and I want my brother. I don’t want to be reasonable, I don’t want to forget, I don’t want anything,

  I want my brother.

  If he could be here now we would be kings, but without him nothing is possible, nothing, nothing.

  It’s cold in Paris today, what strange weather for this season. The world is full of naughty boys.

  No one ever discussed it again, nobody, nothing, not a word, not a sigh, not even a hint…just gone… And in fact not a single word from anybody about anybody at all. I never saw the family ever again, not a single one of them.

  Not a word, not a sigh, nothing.

  Jews do help each other you know!

  Really? What a joke!

  I never saw them again, the uncles, aunts, cousins etc.… The whole tribe, not one gesture, not one word, not a sigh… They all vanished forever in the Paris fog and left us, my mother and me without a penny in Paris… Wandering just as I am wandering right now, without knowing where to go. Yes, but Jews have a strong love of family… Yeah, yeah, sure… They did nothing at all…nothing…nothing…

  They had their own problems, their lives, their anxieties… They were the forgotten ones of France’s rout in North Africa

  For the Tunisian Jews not a single penny not even a glance…

  The official magnanimous French response was: the Jews, the Tunisian Jews are not even French, after all, they are not our problem. We have enough problems with the Algerian Jews who were clever enough to become French, so then we shouldn’t be expected to take care of every kike in North Africa. Come on now! There are some limits to all this!

  Nothing, nothing, not a sound, not a look, not a word, not a single gesture coming from anyone.

  “He’ll never make it.”

  “But he will, you’ll see.”

  Shit, I’m dizzy, I’m going to throw up.

  It’s now almost one in the afternoon and I have been walking for a few hours heading nowhere.

  “Are you feeling all right young man?”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Come and have something in the café.”

  An older man elegantly dressed, with grey hair and blue eyes, tall and with a straight nose. He looks like a middle aged version of Fabien if he’d been given the time to get older.

  “Come with me let me offer you something and you’ll see you’ll feel better.”

  “If you insist.”

  He slips a soft, well manicured hand under my arm as though I were some broad while he kept his glove on the other hand. The pressure of his hand on my arm is very delicate, much too delicate even, and somewhat slimy.

  “Perhaps you’re hungry? How about having lunch with me? I do have some time to kill, and it is lunchtime after all.”

  “If you wish.”

  So, I did it! I’ve crossed the Rubicon, and why not, after all?

  In my condition…

  This is the only missing touch to the picture of the young man lost in Paris, the unemployed actor ready for anything.

  “Do you like a good steak? I know a restaurant around here where you can have the best steak in Paris.”

  Of course he would be the one to know all the top restaurants where you can order the “best” steak in Paris. People seem incapable of expressing any kind of clever thoughts. But he did sense that I liked meat, the cunning old man.

  Those old fellows always have an incredible sixth sense about people. They’ve been walking the streets for so long in their search for “the best meat” and young blood to liven up their old skin they can spot an easy prey from afar.

  “If you like.”

  “Yes and then you can tell me the whole story.”

  “What do you mean the whole story?”

  “Everything.”

  “Why? Are you some kind of priest or something?”

  “No! Not at all, I just said that to say something.”

  “If you are talking because you need to fill in the silence, don’t say anything. It’s much better… I’m not afraid of silence.”

  “You’re not a very nice person, you know.”

  He’s got the silly smile you’d expect from a playboy in Cannes on the Côte d’Azur hunting for company and youth.

  “I’ve already been told as much!”

  Fabien loved to go to Cannes every summer and liked to have people think he was a rich Spaniard on the make for starlets. He loved the movies but didn’t understand a thing about them and kept on pestering me by asking stupid questions.

  “Julien, have you seen Buñuel’s last movie, what do you think of it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean nothing, do you think I should I go and see it?”

  “Listen Fabien, just do what you want, ok.”

  “You’re not very nice you know.”

  “I don’t really care!”

  I mix everything up, the old dirt bag, Fabien, me and everything else…

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Who, me?”

  “Yes, you!”

  He really reminds me of Fabien it’s uncanny.

  “I don’t do anything.”

  “What do you mean nothing?”

  “Didn’t you understand me, nothing, nothing at all! Should I draw you a picture?”

  “But then how do you live?”

  “What do you care, in any case I’m not living since I’m in the process of dying.”

  “Ah! Yes, I understand.”

  He smiles, that bastard.

  “What do you understand?”

  “No, nothing.”

  We cross the street and walk into the restaurant with the best steak in Paris, his shirt collar is open on his bull neck, his shirt is made of blue and white silk just like the one Fabien liked to wear.

  “Fabien can I borrow your blue and white silk shirt?”

  “What for?”

  “To wear it!”

  “It’ll be too big for you! You’ll float in it!”

  Too big, too big, everyone knows you’re six feet tall and that I am stunted child but I also know you’re no good at school and that I’m first…no, second in my class. You’re six years older than I and you’re asking me to correct your homework. You’re pathetic, my big brother.

  I can memorize in ten minutes pieces of poetry that you repeat out loud for hours.

  I took everything in my head while you put it
in your legs.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven and you?”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “Fifty.”

  “Well, you’re a bit harsh, I’m actually forty-three.”

  He’s lying through his teeth, he’s at least fifty, but he is in good shape, he must really take very good care of his skin with massages and an entire day in a spa.

  …He looks somewhat ridiculous… But he also really does look like Fabien.

  “You know that you are very handsome!”

  “Yes I know! One is always handsome at twenty seven, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sure everyone likes your looks!”

  “Yes, that’s true, they do!”

  “Do you like to be admired?”

  “Yes, I do!”

  He smells of lavender and Amsterdamer pipe tobacco, just like Fabien.

  Maybe it is Fabien coming back to see what I have become and what I’m doing. He would be surprised and would admire me no doubt.

  He’d see how I made it and he’d be happy and I’d be pleased to see him happy as well.

  “What about you, what do you do?”

  He smiles, he must be thinking that I’m really interested in his wallet.

  He even smiles like my brother.

  “Me?”

  “Obviously, I’m referring to you, not to the guy crossing the street.”

  “You are very aggressive.”

  “Yes I know, I’ve often been told as much. Does it bother you?”

  “I never said that I didn’t like it, on the contrary, I like violent people who know what they want! Well here we are, this is the place.”

  Good, we are finally going to sit down and eat! Maybe with his mouth full he’ll keep quiet for a few minutes.

  The restaurant is pseudo upscale and stylishly chic, with a white tablecloth and the whole nine yards. The maitre d’ looks very fashionable with a white towel on his arm like a hospital nurse. He leads us to the table with a wry smile, he’s got the picture.

  “Would you like to have a steak for two, it’s more fun that way and it will put us in the right mood.”

  “What kind of mood?”

  “Yes…it’ll be more intimate? Don’t you think?”

  Really this guy will stop at nothing and he travels fast, he must be dying for it…for just about anything at all.

  “You haven’t answered me.”

  “Answered you about what?”

  “As to what it is that you do?”

  Again he gives me that self satisfied smile; he takes off his overcoat, the silk blue and white shirt is all mine now and I stare at it, he takes his time to answer me, clears his throat.

  “I manage an import-export company. Yes, I know it doesn’t sound that exotic or exciting but you know, you don’t always get to choose. I actually wanted to be a surgeon but…

  “You’ll lend me your blue and white shirt one day.”

  He looks at me, surprised…. He looks at me and mumbles:

  “I don’t think it will fit you too well!”

  There it is, all over again; when it’s all over it starts up again… Seven years after his death Fabien still won’t lend me his shirt.

  “And why?”

  “Because you’re much more heavily built than I am!”

  I burst out laughing; once again he gives me that dumb look of his.

  “It doesn’t matter, I’ll try it I’m sure it’ll fit me perfectly, yes, yes, perfectly.”

  “Well listen the easiest would be that I buy you one your size!”

  “No, I prefer yours, that’s the one I want! Do you hear me?”

  “All right, don’t get excited, I’ll lend it to you, don’t get angry I promise to let you try it!”

  There! Fabien is finally going to loan me his shirt, maybe I’ll even look like him! A blue and white silk shirt. I’ll be very handsome! I’ll look just like him! They’ll say that I’m handsome! How elegant! What a classy guy! He looks so good in blue!

  “Bordeaux or Beaujolais?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The wine… Bordeaux or Beaujolais?”

  “Bordeaux.”

  He orders a bottle and asks the sommelier a multitude of questions and details. He’s wearing a pinky ring with a family crest on his left hand. An unbearably large crest with his initials that is simply too awful to look at. And he goes on talking; he talks about wines which he knows well since his family comes from the Bordeaux region and that … I stop listening…

  One day I thought I saw him, I thought it was Fabien’s van that was at the red light on the rue de la Gaité, just behind the other car with the ridiculous advertising drawn on the sides: wear the Zou bra, pick the 3Z panties, keep your breasts well separated and you’ll be ready for life. Ready for what? Why? I can’t figure it out and they should be so courteous as to explain their offer better.

  I hadn’t seen him in three months at least, I ran behind the van, again and again, I yelled out:

  “Fabien!... Fabien!...” the van was going faster and faster, at every stop,

  At every red light, I thought I could catch up with it, and just when I was about to reach him, it was my bad luck that he’d take off once more even faster. He turned into the rue Delambre:

  “Fabien!...Fabien!...”

  He didn’t hear me, he never did hear me…he never really listened to me, he doesn’t have the time, he’s working in the family business, he’s off selling olives.

  The old beau gives me a look filled with lust, and with his mouth full and the juices from the steak dripping from his puffy lips, he asks me:

  “Isn’t the steak simply delicious?”

  “It’s very good.”

  “So, tell me everything about you. What’s your story?”

  “And you?”

  “Let’s see, where should I begin? The tragedy of my life is that I wanted to be a surgeon. You see I…”

  He’s off again into his wild imaginings.

  His words fall into the void of his stuffed mouth, and I lose the meaning of what he says.

  I’m no longer listening to him and now he’s just talking to himself, satisfied at the sound of his own voice.

  Fabien was selling olives and I am selling hot air…in any case, running after his van was a waste of time even if he’d seen me, he wouldn’t have really seen me. Who was that child with him? It couldn’t have been his since he couldn’t have children, my brother was sterile, his wife had a child three years after he died, the child he could never have, I will never forgive her… I hate the man who fathered that child, I should have been the one to have that child, me, the only person who could recreate my brother with our heritage, our heredity, our feelings… Was me! A child, my brother’s child…It meant recreating him, to believe that he never had died, that he was here. Now I’m here and he’s dead, I’ll never forgive myself for being, for living…

  “He’ll never make it. Yes you’ll see he will…”

  “…Yes a surgeon, I’d have had the feeling of doing something useful. You know that people like me are terribly lonely and useless. To be a surgeon even for someone like me I don’t know but… I could have…attempted…or whatever. I would have fought had I had a passion… I didn’t want to be what I have become…but with me it becomes a real sickness. Already as a child I would leave my window open and dream that Peter Pan would come and join me in my bed.”

  Daddy, I’ll dance, I’ll dance in the sky just like Peter Pan, right?

  “Peter Pan?”

  “Yes Peter Pan, I hope you don’t think that I’m being ridiculous!”

  “No, not at all, not at all.”

  To walk, to dance like Peter Pan. Dad?

  “Oh thank you from the bottom of my heart! Right after that I loved to play the games girls would play and…you know being originally from the provinces it was hard for my parents to understand me and allow me to follow my inclinations and…”

  He g
ets lost in the kind of explanations you find in romance novels and I get lost in my memories…

  Girl’s games? I played girl’s games too. So what?

  He’s just spinning these yarns so that I’ll feel sorry for him, for his sad fate and try to understand and console him.

  Everybody is the same and wants to feel sorry for himself and go on moaning about his own fate. They need to create excuses and justifications for themselves, for their passions, their vices, their failures.

  I also played girl’s games, I did and what of it? I played them almost every Sunday with my little cousin who used to come and spend the afternoons with me.

  “Julien, shall we play with dolls?”

  “No, Michele I’d rather play Mommy and Daddy.”

  “Or we could play doctor, that’s easier since you are sick, you’re really sick aren’t you? My parents always say I have to be nice to you because you are sick.

  “No, at Mommy and Daddy.”

  “All right! But to make it more fun I’ll be the Daddy and you’ll be the Mommy.”

  “If you want, ok.”

  Dear sweet Michele what happened to you? You brought me so much joy!

  My little Corsican cousin. I used to wait for those Sundays with such trepidation. You were almost joy in a world filled with terror. Michele you didn’t know what I was thinking or even what I was, you were just satisfied being a child in a world of drastic changes.

  I am twelve and I understand, I am the only one who understands…the others want to forget this world where our lives, our very existence is being questioned out of cowardice, laziness and ignorance. They all make believe they don’t understand.

  Where shall we go, we the forgotten ones of decolonization? Where is our home?

  In France? In Italy? In Israel? Where? Where?

  We Jews, are left behind, and ignored, in the panic that soon takes hold of everyone, everywhere... The Arabs hate us and are now the masters in their own country, what will they do to us? Are we to become second class citizens? Just like we treated them before?

  The French despise us, the Israelis have nothing in common with us…they are all Russian, Polish, German Jews.

  I hear them speaking in the living room, they believe in nothing, see nothing, live in rejection, in denial. After all, they proclaim with self satisfaction that we are at home here, we have made this country what it is, we have been here for generations and I hear them comment, agree, reassure themselves, even that moron Carmelo ventures an opinion. They’re blabbering just as they did with the Nazis in 1939 and they all ended up in a camp.…but the Germans in Tunis didn’t have the time to be completely German…They quickly occupied the country with no real attempt on the part of the French or the Arabs to stop them, they set up forced labor teams, confiscated property, took hostages, proceeded with extortion of all kinds. They imposed the wearing of the yellow star and started committees headed by Jews to enforce the Nazi laws.