Poum and Alexandre

by Catherine de Saint Phalle

  My parents don’t consider it politic or safe to have their concierge, Madame Carmel, coming in to clean their apartment. Like many Parisians, whatever the depth of their pockets, they always have people working for them in their home. Parisians can live without bare necessities but not without a femme de ménage.

  In deep mourning for Monsieur Carmel, who died some twenty years before (about the time it takes for Odysseus to come home to Penelope, I calculate), Madame Carmel is decked out in black from head to toe. When I read about the witch Baba Yaga in ‘The Frog Princess’ or ‘Vasilisa the Beautiful’, I recognise her instantly. Her toad-like body and unblinking, bulging eyes lie in wait in her loge. In spite of its high windows and three comfortable rooms, light hides behind her looming black furniture.

  She is a true concierge. She knows everything and has plenty to say about everybody, except to children, to whom she never speaks if she can help it. Her door is always open just a chink. The happy chime of the little bell teetering on the top of this door is the ominous harbinger of her presence. Soon her wheezing voice will waylay you. Her implacable questions start up a conversation like a Harley Davidson. She hardly ever stoops to comment on the weather or your health but aims straight for the gut. Sex is her area of expertise. Of course the word ‘sex’ is never pronounced, but I rapidly fathom that it has to do with an underground organisation. People slip in and out of each other’s apartments at night and exchange the strange and secret information that Madame Carmel then repeats out loud at the street door. My mother always tries to slink past the loge but rarely escapes without being buttonholed into parting with her pound of flesh. Choice morsels invariably escape her grasp like wriggling fish from a wet hand to fall into Madame Carmel’s steel-trap mind.

  Something about my mother attracts Madame Carmel like a magnet. It’s awful to watch. Why doesn’t she breezily stalk by like my father? His hearty ‘Bonjour, Madame Carmel!’ rings out against the cobblestones as his footsteps carry him away. All she can do is slither back into her loge hissing an answer he doesn’t even hear. Stopping my father is like stopping the wind. Madame Carmel has met her match. He is probably the only person in the building who isn’t terrified of her.

  My mother, on the other hand, just stands there, her gaze locked on one of Madame Carmel’s black buttons. When Madame Carmel eventually releases her invisible claws and reluctantly steps back, I know she is retreating behind the high dark-brown cupboards of her den to lay her monstrous eggs.

  I don’t know that my parents have servants. Some ideas take a long time to percolate into my mind. All I know is that there is always a lady there, or two, depending on my father’s roller-coaster bank statement. ‘Money,’ he remarks, ‘is a good servant but a bad master. You pay your debts as soon as you can, but you never let money make decisions for you.’ I hear the word ‘servant’ much sooner than I understand its real meaning. It suddenly dawns on me that Marie Onion, the cook, is a servant. But it doesn’t change anything for me. We’re all still under her rule.

  One day she has me in her kitchen and tells me that some cooks cheat on the bills, but she is not one of those. This sticks in my mind in a funny way as if she were conveying some truth about herself, some message for me alone. Like so many other truths adults drop my way, I don’t understand it. Then one day she shows me a forest of bottles under the kitchen sink, like my father shows me his secret stash of liquorice or tells me about his mistresses from the time he was in America. With Sylvia’s absence, everything has turned into a thick fog. Busy dreaming of Sylvia’s return, I let these mysteries grow and deepen exponentially.

  Baffled by the smallest chores, the world of ‘things’ terrifies both my father and mother in different ways. They stare at the iron and the ironing board as if they are UFOs. They peer into the oven and the washing machine with the fascinated gaze some people have in front of an abstract painting. They raid the kitchen cupboard for biscuits and chocolate. ‘Easy to open!’ they scoff as they read the instructions and tear at the packaging. Marie Onion complains next morning, asking them if they have let a flock of birds into her kitchen.

  Marie Onion is their teacher. They listen conscientiously to their mentor’s homilies, nodding gravely, promising not to mess with her cupboard. Soon she is storing everything in screw-top jars, which they carefully screw back on as if they were thieves in their own home. She leaves severe instructions on how to manage on their own in the evenings. My parents are terrified of Marie Onion. They never go near the kitchen in the daytime if they can help it. They quarrel about it in whispers: ‘You go!’, ‘No, you go!’ My mother often finds herself running out of it. I once hear her timidly ask: ‘Your boeuf bourguignon is exquisite, but does it need five bottles of wine?’ From the other end of the house you can hear Marie Onion bellow back: ‘Are you going to teach me my job?’ But they don’t run into any trouble if they obey her to the letter. Again, as with the suitors, my mother looks like a child, there on sufferance. It is all about power. The one who is supposed to have it is afraid and alone. At school I live in fear too, but I know why. A child is not the mistress of the house like my mother. A child is supposed to be scared of teachers and bullies, maybe just not as much as I am. The other kids think I’m a loony and the American nuns disapprove of me. More than what I say or do, it’s as if I had a smell. My mother’s smell can’t have anything do to with it. She smells like a basketful of flowers, so many of them you can’t recognise them individually. Yet each one is there, a light in the darkness.

  Marie Onion’s nose is red and her Breton eyes are small and bright blue – from looking out at the sea off Brittany with the wind in her face, say my parents. Her tight bun of grey hair is tiny in proportion to her big body, which stomps around the kitchen. She keeps threatening to return to Quimper to keep them in line. For a long time I believe Brittany is another country where the Onion family rule their terrified subjects, instead of a French département only 500km from Paris.

  I never see my parents fire a servant. It is rather that they themselves are always abandoned. They wander disconsolately around the kitchen, bolstering each other with rallying comments. ‘It’s going to be all right. We’ll find a solution. And think! She has gone to a much better job. She is so clever. She was wasted here.’ This time with Marie Onion it is different. She becomes louder and louder, clanging round the kitchen in rages that sweep through the house like tsunamis (like Pange in one of his fits, I imagine). I often watch her ingest enormous quantities of bicarbonate of soda. She makes me swallow some too, saying it’s good for the liver.

  One day a gigantic Onion sister, even larger than Marie herself, appears out of the blue. Something has definitely happened. The femme de chambre, who hates her, tells me that she has been found in a drunken stupor on the kitchen floor. Her sister whisks her off. When I come home from school she has gone. My parents find all sorts of excuses for her. She was tired. She wasn’t so young anymore. ‘Oh,’ moans my mother, ‘poor Marie Onion, such a strong woman, she must have been homesick for Brittany!’ For weeks, they speak of her in hushed tones. But never once do I hear them admit she was a drunk.

  Days pass and my mother walks around thoughtfully with pink plastic gloves that reach right up to her elbows like ballroom gloves – because she can’t bear to touch raw meat or fish. Lunchtime comes and there is nothing to eat, but the fridge is immaculate so they rush out to a café and have a lovely time eating croque-monsieurs or hot dogs, until another set of ‘parents’ come along. The new cook rapidly has their number and a new order is established.

  It is a one-sided arrangement. The cook commands and they obey. Somebody has to look after them.

  I notice how other French people treat their servants. They are not even afraid of them; they don’t clap when dessert is chocolate cake. They never ask their advice. They never buy them flowers. They never watch them cook or clean with a fascinated eye. Why, they don’t even seem to need them. The word ‘servant’ takes on a whole new meaning.
They are replaceable people. They are there to do the tasks no one else wants to perform. They are ignored as human beings.

  Under Marie Onion’s rule, Poum hardly ever dared to cross the kitchen’s threshold, but now Marie Onion has departed, she loves to go to the kitchen and talk to la femme de ménage and la femme de chambre. It’s obvious she feels safe with them. She sits at the kitchen table and watches them clean, iron or sew. She listens to their lives and rejoices over the highs and deplores the lows of their families. Spanish women are happy near the smell of clean sheets, in the gynécée as my mother calls it, the harem. She can sit for hours, suspended in their talk. They move her from chair to chair like a child if she is in their way. She fingers what they have cleaned, she pats what they have folded. Sometimes I watch her and it feels so important, almost vital – as if they were saving her life. When I look at my grandmother I can understand Poum needs all the mothering she can get.

  Childhood is stamped out of the French as soon as possible. My parents’ innocence and lack of guile is obvious to anyone who looks at them carefully. And I look at them very carefully. In fact, everyone seems grown-up next to them, even real children. But Poum hates children. ‘They smell bad,’ she says, ‘they are little animals.’

  Poum is not an easy mother, either, but when I least expect it, with a glance, with a whiff of her scent as she passes, she pours gold in my cup. Of course, like fairy gold, it doesn’t happen very often or last very long – in a second it’s gone. But something of it stays with me because, as she quotes, my name is ‘written in the palms of her hands’.

  Irénée, her Spanish femme de ménage, comes to do the heavy cleaning. Tough with the broom and a devil with hidden dirt, she attacks the mould on the windowsills and scoops muck out of the drain. Her face has fine, intelligent lines and she smells so strongly of eau de Javel that when she hugs me I can draw the air right down into my lungs. She hardly speaks French and tosses words of Spanish at me, but Poum prefers to be alone with her and shoos me away. Poum loves Irénée, the woman who cooks tortillas, who slaves to keep her home clean. She nearly always walks her to the door and often begs my father to drive her home rather than imagine her tired out in the Metro. Thanks to Irénée, Poum finds the pluck to face her life in the other parts of the house.

  Irénée’s proud smell of Javel sweeps away the cobwebs of my mother’s past.

  9

  SPAIN

  Marie-Antoinette takes vicarious pleasure in her father’s land. She even professes to love bullfights. According to her, when a bull fights bravely, he can expect to be sent back to pasture. For the Spanish, she says, bullfights are like Mass in the sun. As enthusiastic about Spain as she is about the suitors, she behaves like an eager guest with both and speaks Spanish as fluently as she speaks her siblings’ gushing idiom of mon chéris and ma chéries in every weather. These catchphrases of endearment, so light and deadly, sizzle through the air like bullets.

  Languages are my mother’s thing. She has learnt Spanish, French, English and even Braille. She shows me how her slim fingers can read a piece of white studded paper. They feel their way as they do when handling her boxes. Now I understand why I thought her fingers had eyes. And so, Braille seems appropriate when there are so many things she doesn’t seem to see.

  Marie-Antoinette’s father came to Paris along with his brothers in Queen Isabella of Spain’s retinue. They were from a very old but ruined family from Ávila in Castilla. The only time my mother takes me there is when I am about nine. I have a memory of sombre fortress walls, lonely towers in cobblestoned streets, gigantic wrought-iron gates and a feeling of abandonment, loneliness and despair. Even her family coat of arms is a broken tower with its door kicked in. The whole family emigrated to France. My grandfather’s sisters also lived in France, as resolutely eccentric old maids keeping all the habits of the court of Spain, dressed in black from head to foot. Spanish old maids screech like parrots, have faces chalked with make-up, and an unforgettable smell. Poum was given to a wet nurse before being shuttled off to them. The sisters’ main influence was to teach her to embroider, and how to curtsey to a queen.

  She spent half her childhood in their company, while her younger siblings stayed with her parents. She tells me that when she was with the aunts she missed her parents and when she was with her parents she missed the aunts. The aunts obviously took on a parental importance, and long before she could speak or reason could set in, her heart and allegiances were torn. The Spanish side of my mother’s family is prone to disaster. One of her great aunts lost several children to cholera, and her last son died in her arms as they travelled away from the epidemic by horse-drawn carriage. She called out his name night and day and died insane. Another great aunt insisted on bringing cut flowers back to the place they were picked when they had wilted. She also put her jewels out on the windowsill at night because she believed the light of the moon was good for them. She never understood why they were no longer there next morning. She also liked to sit on the floor and her maid was tortured by the idea that people would think they didn’t have any chairs.

  My mother drops these clues about her sacred land without letting me enter it. She guards Spain from me or guards me from Spain; I am not quite sure which. The time she takes me there I meet one of her uncle’s widows. After her husband’s death, to everyone’s surprise, Tía Carmen worked at the Spanish embassy in Paris before retiring to Spain. She is bright and cultured, which is rare in Spanish women of that generation, and clever enough to consult with Pange’s doctor and stop Poum from marrying the village idiot. The story has spread in my mind like a Rorschach blot. She saved my mother’s life. Because everything is mysterious and elliptical, I do not ask why I am suddenly travelling to Spain to meet her only now, instead of seeing her while she still lived in Paris. After the plane, at some point, we are brought to a room full of Spanish voices. They speak very loudly, and even though I am used to my parents’ excited tones, this is like entering a birdcage. As soon as my mother points out ‘the Tía Carmen’ to me in awed syllables, I put up my arms to hug her, because I’ve heard so much about her. But my arms fall to my side; Tía Carmen does not hug me to her breast but pats me vaguely on the shoulder before turning to my mother. Yet I see her hug her other nieces. Poum rushes forward, kisses her fingers, embraces her, surrounding her in a crescendo of love and respect. I move aside and look at them. The aunt listens and nods her head. She is quieter than the rest of her family and exudes authority. From time to time, she extends a hand and caresses a granddaughter and the girl transforms herself into a young faun to submit to her touch. I am too fascinated to feel snubbed.

  Little by little I understand that I am here on sufferance. My mother sometimes throws me a glance, as if to say: ‘You are mine. I can’t help doing this, being like this.’ She seems to be chanting a mantra with them. The next day, she rushes me to the Escurial to visit the vaults. Because of her family, she can get in. As usual the guide falls instantly in love with her and they chat together as I follow them deeper and deeper into the belly of the palace. Their voices waft ahead as darkness closes in on us. The coldness and bloodlessness of the place is even worse than the Conciergerie in Paris – a different kind of cruelty. Black onyx coffins, dark sculptures, frigid corridors and barred windows preclude any thought of redemption in this country of religion. After an hour of earnest conversation and stalking of the dead, even my mother starts failing and, with one of her sudden decisions, leaves the place. The sunlight outside is hardly warmer. It’s winter. Poum is bubbling with information about tortured, beheaded, garrotted ancestors. She quotes the guide with ghoulish delight. ‘“As for that one,” he said, “he cannot have died a natural death, because when we opened the marble coffin, we found him with his head between his legs.”’ Poum finds this comment ‘sooo Spanish’. ‘They are sooo bloodthirsty,’ she giggles. ‘If he was in a Grandee of Spain’s way to a title, or to a place at court, a child, the last of a line, would not have much chance of sur
viving.’ I look at her. Sometimes I feel she is that child, her head down between her legs like an ostrich, refusing to see.

  I start hating this place. I feel unsafe. I want to get Poum out of here. One afternoon we go out with all her cousins and their children to a pastry shop wedged between obese columns, to which it seems to have found its sugary way. They all start eating cakes, their wrists jingling with bracelets. I notice suddenly that my mother wears none and often rubs her own wrists as if trying to erase the pressure of invisible handcuffs. Neither does she wear the ring my father has given her. Her freedom finds subtle ways to express itself. The atmosphere is nearly the same as in Tía Carmen’s drawing room. Empty when they walk in, the shop becomes crowded and noisy. The birdcage is transported wherever they go. They send me off to buy a bottle of wine. ‘And don’t break it,’ they cry. I walk away and I eventually bump into the cellar they have painstakingly explained how to find. I return with the bottle. As I lift it for all to see and say, ‘See I haven’t broken it!’, it crashes to the ground.

  In the midst of their cries and jeers, which freeze me deeper than Tía Carmen’s rebuff, I catch my mother’s glance. Her eyes are smiling at me as if to share some hidden ancestral joke. ‘Pour the wine in the sand of Spain,’ her eyes seem to say, ‘pour the wine on their heartless cobblestones.’ Her eyes always seem to know a deeper, balder truth that no other part of her is allowed to express.

  Once I am shown a photograph of World War I soldiers with no faces, no limbs, stuck in their beds. Their eyes are like windows of sadness and fear. They remind me of my mother’s eyes. Is there a collective pain, a bit like a collective unconscious, gathering on some forsaken beach of suffering? Maybe that is why I can feel my mother’s anguish under my skin. Sometimes I recognise its intensity in other people – exiled, banished gazes, looking out of desolate or even jolly expressions. One day, much later, Poum tells me that she has not lived a day of her life without experiencing utter terror.