by Anna Gavalda
Oh . . . I melted with tenderness. I wanted so badly, in that moment, to kneel before him and hug him tight. Hug him tight and whisper in his ear, “It’s fine, kiddo, it’s fine. You have a secret to keep and you have to keep it, even when you’re threatened. You know I’m proud of you. I don’t know why you did this, but I know you have your reasons and that’s enough for me. I know who you are. I trust you.”
Of course, I didn’t move. Not out of a fear of displeasing the principal or protecting my son’s modesty, but out of respect for Maxime’s parents. Out of respect for the kind of suffering that had nothing to do with this stupid business about a tire. Out of respect for these people who only wished they, too, could kneel at their son’s feet, and hold him to their hearts.
I didn’t move, but some professional reflex got the better of me once again. In that very moment it became perfectly clear that it was time for them, for me, for Valentin, Maxime, and the entire academic institution as represented here by the principal, to proceed with an umpteenth expert’s report.
Yes, it was my duty to “define the conservational measures necessary to ensure the safety of the work, or to avoid any aggravation of disorder,” so I placed a hand on my son’s shoulder to stop him leaving the room. Thus, holding him against my legs, I swung around so that we were both facing Maxime’s parents.
I looked at them and said:
“Look. I am not defending my son. What he did was really not very smart. And what’s more, he is going to help me fix what he’s done because I have a tire patch kit in the trunk of the car and I am going to take this opportunity to show him, to show both of them,” I said, turning to Maxime, “how to repair an inner tube. It’s always a good thing to know and it might come in useful in life. So that’s one thing, let’s move on. This incident with the wheelchair is really of no great importance. However, what is important, and I know that what I am about to say may seem shocking to you, but I really believe this, is that Valentin behaved well toward your son this morning. He behaved well because he did not treat him any differently from any other kid. And do you know why? I imagine it’s because he does not see any difference between himself and Maxime. To Valentin, Maxime is neither weak nor vulnerable. He’s just a boy like all the others and who must, therefore, be subjected to the same tough laws of the playground as all the other kids. There was no discrimination on his part, not even any positive discrimination, as we say, we adults who are always trying to discriminate for and against everything. No, he treated him as an equal. For reasons we don’t understand, and we can’t understand because children’s secrets are sacred, Valentin felt obliged to go after your son. If he could have, he would have beaten him up, or tripped him, or punched him in the shoulder or who knows what else, but since he couldn’t, he took it out on his wheelchair. Fair enough. It was only fair and I would even go so far as to say it was healthy. Our children see themselves as being on an equal footing and it is wrong of us”—here I turned to face the principal—“it is wrong of us to make a huge deal out of such a banal event. If Valentin had come to blows with some other kid in the schoolyard,” I asked her, “would you have summoned the parents as if it were some state of emergency? No. Of course not. Whichever adult was there to keep an eye on things would have separated them and that would have been the end of it. Well, this is the same. The equivalent of tripping him, no more, no less.”
Then, turning back to Maxime’s parents:
“I’ll say it again, I’m not excusing my son, I’m not excusing him and I also want him to be punished, but I maintain that far from humiliating your son, by puncturing his tire he honoured him.”
As I was in a hurry to get back to work, and they were all getting on my nerves, these old adults who just don’t understand children, because they’ve already forgotten every last thing about their own childhood, I didn’t wait for any of them to comment on my long tirade and I went on with the task of shoring things up.
“Tell me,” I said to the principal, “where can I find a big bowl of water? And you, Valentin, push this deflated chair, slowly, and follow me out to the parking lot.”
While the others were coming to their senses, still somewhat stunned by my assessment of conditions in the field, I lifted little Maxime up by the armpits to carry him out to my object lesson.
He wasn’t heavy, I picked him up as if it were nothing, and I was the one, at that particular moment, yes, I was by far the most stunned of the four adults there in the room.
In that moment I was overcome by a dizziness of a sort I’d never felt in my entire life. It almost caused me to falter.
No, wait, careful there, “dizziness” is not the right word. When I picked that little six-year-old boy up, it wasn’t dizziness I felt, but such immense sorrow that the impact of it almost made me lose my balance.
Why such a slippage when not even a minute earlier I stood there as upright in my boots as in my convictions, lecturing my little crowd like some lawyer for the defense?
Because.
Because I am the father of three boys. Because for nearly fifteen years I have been taking children in my arms, hundreds of times. Hundreds and hundreds of times.
Because—and every adult who has often made this gesture will understand—if there is one thing that is gentle and reassuring and makes you feel safe, yes, that’s precisely it, safe (and God knows I am familiar with all the ways to reinforce structural walls so they’ll be safe), as safe in your soul as in your body when you’re taking a child in your arms, well, it has to be the “koala” instinct.
The moment you pick up a child, or any young mammal in a similar manner, I suppose, they will raise their legs and curl them around your waist. It’s instinctive. No sooner do you hold out your arms than their natural intelligence will tell them to prop themselves against you, and they will not seem nearly as heavy.
Wonderful nature.
Wonderful nature, but so incoherent, granting to one what it withholds from another: little Maxime with his dead legs weighed more than I do.
I didn’t expect it.
I instantly stopped acting the resident idiot know-it-all specialist who spouts his theories left, right, and center, I reached for the boy’s legs to tuck them up around my center of gravity, said goodbye to the principal, and humbly enjoined his parents to follow me out to the parking lot.
If we were going to stand there patching tires, might as well patch them all together, it would be more fun.
* * *
And it was more fun. Maxime’s dad was named Arnaud and his mum, Sandrine. They weren’t angry, they were tired.
Since I didn’t want to let go of their son’s warm arms—I suppose it was both an unconscious desire to expiate my earlier irritation and my sermon, and the presence on this earth of my three sound, robust children—it was Sandrine who found a container with some water and Arnaud who removed the tire. He also took over the task of showing the boys how to find the hole in the inner tube by watching the little bubbles rising, and how important it was to sand and clean the rubber carefully before applying the patch.
In the meanwhile I acted as crane, drag, forklift, and articulated boom lift for one very inquisitive little boy.
A role that enchanted me. I hadn’t felt that useful on a construction site in ages.
I had no time to take Arnaud and Sandrine up on their suggestion we go for a coffee, because my measurements were waiting, but we parted in peace and reinflated, so to speak, while Maxime and Valentin went back to work.
Maxime pushed his wheels on his own and Valentin walked by his side.
I was about to call out, “Push him, come on!” then thought better of it.
Show some logic, Mr. Assessor Man, show some logic.
* * *
“183 millimeters for the G1, 79 for the G2, 51 universal, and 12 along the axis,” announced François the minute I got off the phone, and hadn’t
even had time to put it (and all of Juliette’s anxiety) back in my pocket.
As I remained silent, he added:
“Are you surprised?”
The hatchback of his company car was wide open and, comfortably seated on a metal drum, he was typing on his laptop in the trunk before him.
“You’re not surprised?” he said, surprised, while I was again looking at the northern facades of the Résidence des Ormes.
This magnificent housing project, with fifty-nine apartments, empty, but available for immediate occupation—or so proclaimed the billboard there in front of me, in letters twelve feet high by nine feet wide—in July of the previous year.
“It, uh—” I murmured.
“What?”
He motioned to me that he couldn’t hear because of his hard hat.
“How much longer do you need?”
“I’m almost done.”
“Finish after. Let’s go get lunch. We’re not in such a rush now.”
* * *
To be honest, I never tried to uncover Valentin’s secret, and I probably never would have, were it not for Léo, Thomas’s best friend, who had a little sister who was also six years old.
This little sister was named Amélie and this Amélie was a real chatterbox.
She had told her brother about “the really naughty thing Valentin did”—a really naughty thing that had been the talk of the entire school, the only subject of conversation among all the pupils and all the adults who had been there that day, and it went without saying that Valentin’s misdemeanour would go down in the annals of that little schoolyard for centuries to come. Amélie was a chatterbox so that very evening, when we were all having supper, this is what Juliette and I overheard:
Gabriel: Hey, Vava.
Valentin: What?
Gabriel: Is it true you punctured the tire on the wheelchair of some dude in your class today?
Valentin: Yes.
The two older boys burst out laughing.
Thomas: You thought you were playing Mille Bornes or something?
More snickers.
Gabriel: What’d’you do it with, a thumbtack?
Valentin: No.
Thomas: A nail?
Valentin: No.
Gabriel: What, then?
Valentin: My compass.
Real laughter.
Thomas: Why? What’d he do to you?
(And I noticed, then, the wisdom of children: for a start, there was nothing respectable about wheelchairs per se, and secondly, in the schoolyard you never lash out at anyone without a good reason.)
No answer.
Gabriel: You don’t want to say?
No answer.
Thomas: Did he insult you?
No answer.
Gabriel: Did he steal your pencil case, the moron?
Valentin (shocked): He’s not a moron. Besides, he has all the Ariol comics and all the Kid Paddles.
Gabriel: No way. Well then, what’d he do to you?
No answer, and our little Valentin was once again on the verge of tears.
The big boys adored their little brother. To them, too, he was a gift, and they were upset to see him like that, all sad and on the brink.
Gabriel: Vava, tell us right now what he did, otherwise tomorrow we’ll go and ask him ourselves.
Valentin (who felt a tremor from head to foot at such a threat): I . . . I can’t . . . can’t tell you, (sobbing) because Mummy will scold me.
Juliette (amused, moved) (but above all moved): No, go ahead. You can say. I promise I won’t scold you.
Gabriel (triumphant): Oh, I know! I know what it is! Something to do with the Pokémon cards!
Valentin (devastated): Yee . . . ees.
This business with the Pokémon cards had become a very sensitive issue at home, because Valentin (introduced, infected, catechized, converted, indoctrinated, and guided by his brothers) was crazy about them, and he’d already been punished several times because of them. His mother had therefore strictly forbidden him from taking them to school where, in any event, they were already strictly forbidden. (And suddenly I understood why he had remained so stoic in the presence of the principal, preferring to be punished for cowardice rather than for disobedience.)
In the face of such sorrow and moral rectitude, I finally allowed myself to do what I had sternly refrained from doing much earlier that day: I got up and walked around the table to give my son a huge hug.
He was in my arms, with his smell of chalk, innocence, fatigue, chamomile shampoo, and childish despair. He was in my arms with his wet nose and his pudgy koala paws clinging to my hips, and from his perch on his daddy he hiccupped over at his brothers:
“He . . . he . . . lied. He made me tr-trade a su-super rare card for a . . . a stupid one . . . He . . . he made me believe that . . . that it was a . . . Legen-Legendary . . . ”
“Which one did you trade?” asked Gabriel imperturbably.
“My Heracross EX, with 170 aitchpees.”
“Are you crazy?” exclaimed Thomas, “you never trade that one, you should know that!”
“Which one did he give you in exchange?” asked Gabriel.
“Wigglytuff.”
Silence.
The two older boys were gobsmacked. After a few seconds of utter astonishment, Thomas repeated, incredulously:
“Wigglytuff? That rotten little Wigglytuff with 120 aitchpees?”
“Ye-yees,” sobbed Valentin, ever harder.
“But . . . But . . . ” Gabriel was breathless with indignation. “All you have to do is look at Wigglytuff to know he’s useless. He’s all pink and silly. Like some stuffed animal for girls.”
“Yes, but . . . but Maxime told me that . . . that he was a Le . . . Le . . . Legendary Pokémon.”
Thomas and Gabriel were in shock. To swap a Heracross EX for a Wigglytuff was already disgraceful enough, but to carry off such a heist by maintaining that Wigglytuff was a Legendary Pokémon: well, that was really the most rock-bottom down-dirty mean-and-nasty trick of any infamy ever committed on a playground. I looked at their crushed expressions—like fall guys whose wives had cheated on them to boot—and couldn’t help but roar with laughter. Two petty Mafiosi taken for a ride by one six-and-a-half-year-old Joe Pesci.
After a minute of tomblike silence, where nothing could be heard but the clatter of cutlery, Thomas said, as if ringing the death knell:
“You were too nice, Valentin. You were way too nice. You should have punctured both his tires, the big fat liar . . . ”
* * *
After tucking him in bed, a while ago, I asked him:
“Tell me, then, what does it mean, aitchpees?”
“Hit points.”
“Oh . . . I see.”
“The more HPs your Pokémon has,” he added, taking a card out from under his mattress to show me the number in the upper right-hand corner, “the stronger it is, you see?”
I knew that this wasn’t really the right time, but I couldn’t resist, and I added:
“Do you still have your Wigglytuff card?”
A shadow instantly went over his face.
“Yes,” he moaned, “but it’s stupid.”
“You want to trade it with me?” I asked him, switching off his bedside lamp.
“Oh, no . . . I won’t trade it, I’ll give it to you. It’s too stupid. Why do you want it?”
“I want to keep it as a souvenir.”
“A souvenir of what?” he asked, with a yawn.
* * *
Valentin drifted off before he could hear my reply, and it’s a good thing he did, because I didn’t even know it myself.
What could I have said?
A souvenir of you. Of me. Of your brothers and your mum. A souvenir of this day.
When I find out the answers, I write up reports.
I spend my life writing reports, that’s how I make my living.
Now it’s almost three o’clock in the morning, the whole house is asleep, I’m still sitting at the kitchen table, and I’ve just finished my first ever expert’s report without a conclusion.
I just wanted to make a record of what I went through today.
My family, my job, my worries, what still surprises me and what no longer surprises me, my naiveté, my privileges, my good fortune . . .
My foundations.
My hit points.
THE FOOT SOLDIER
Where are you, Louis?
Where are you, what have they done with you?
Have they burned you? Buried you? Can we still come and see you?
And if so, where? Where, exactly?
In Paris? In the provinces?
Where are you and how should I imagine you now?
Under a slab? Deep inside a tomb? In an urn?
Dressed, recumbent, wearing makeup and nearly decomposed,
or in ashes?
Or scattered, dispersed, spread
lost
Louis.
You were so handsome . . .
What have they done with you?
What have they done with you and who are they, anyway? Who are these people you never spoke about?
Did you have a family?
Of course you did. Every day I go down a boulevard that bears your name. I have forgotten what your connection was with the family of that victorious Marshal of the Empire, but you did have a family, of course you did.
What sort of family?
Who are they? What are they worth?
Did you love them? Did they love you? Did they respect your last wishes?