Poum and Alexandre

by Catherine de Saint Phalle

  I leave him in the street, avoid the lift and run up the stairs. When I reach the third floor, I burst in. Poum and Alexandre are both at home. The sleeping shepherdess clock, the Louis XIV skeleton clock, the sundial clock, the old English carriage clock and many others hold conference around them. My parents’ voices are used to weaving in and out of the discordant harmony, the encouraging ticks and chimes. They are bathed in sunlight, a tray with tea and biscuits between them. I tell them the funny story of just having been proposed to by Toulouse-Lautrec. They don’t find it funny at all: ‘A proposal. What a relief. Thank God for that.’ My father is smiling from ear to ear. He’s already ordering Champagne in his head. Poum even makes the sign of the Cross and murmurs an incantation in Spanish.

  I stare at my mother and I think of her being handed over to Pange, the village idiot. I don’t say anything but I know she warned me then. She can’t close a door, whether her bedroom door, the door of the fridge, the bathroom, or the door of her past. She lives ajar. I try to catch her eye but she looks away.

  It is spring. So I say no for us both.

  ALEXANDRE

  15

  LAMPS FOR THE DARK

  ‘We don’t have much time left, you know!’ my father announces with a big smile.

  ‘Why?’

  His pale blue eyes settle on me. ‘Why, Catherine, it’s obvious! I’m fifty-six years older than you and I’ll die soon.’

  ‘Oh, don’t die,’ I beg.

  ‘Nothing to be afraid of! When I’m dead, I’ll come and sit on the end of your bed every night. I promise.’

  ‘Couldn’t I die with you?’ I suggest. Surely death can’t be half as scary as school.

  He shakes his head and hugs me tight.

  ‘No, you have a long life ahead of you, my little one. Like I have a long one behind me.’

  Something in me knows he misses the Resistance, the sound of German boots on the cobblestones, the bombs on the back of his bike. During a wave of protests on the streets of Paris, he’s particularly excited. One evening he runs into my room, grabs me, saying to my mother on the way out: ‘She has to see this, Poum.’

  Poum, my mother, her nose in a book, nods gravely and waves him off. We follow a protest march, walking alongside burnt cars and barricades. Our eyes stinging with the tear-gas grenades, he heaves a small sigh of what feels like relief. I am the only child about. When people point at us, he just ignores them and, as we sidestep an upturned police van, comments conversationally: ‘You know, Catherine, for cavemen, winter didn’t seem to end. They were expecting the sun to leave altogether. Fire hadn’t been invented yet, you see. Huddling together, they thought night would never stop eating away at the light, making days shorter and shorter, until it petered out completely and left them in total darkness.’

  He chats through the cosy pim-pom of the French sirens, which have no stridency and seem to come straight out of a Noddy book. When we’re yelled at, he waves at students and policemen alike and ducks under banners, just as he does in museums when he wants to show me something behind a red cord.

  ‘Were they very afraid in the dark?’

  The darkness in my bedroom is already scary enough. Darkness in a cave in the middle of the forest sounds much worse.

  ‘They were terrified. Think of the bears, the wolves, the snakes which would come creeping up to eat them.’

  He looks at me thoughtfully.

  ‘Did the light come back?’

  ‘Why, Catherine, obviously! Winter ran its course, and then it was spring!’

  Things are always obvious to Alexandre, but not so much to me.

  It’s long past my bedtime when we stroll back to the apartment, both smelling of smoke. The red velvet armchair is still cradling my mother, who is reading in a pool of yellow light. As always, she waves my father back as if he were returning from the Crusades. He descends on her and I see her hands flutter ineffectually behind his head. Then she announces she’s going to bed. We both stare at her as she trots up the stairs with her heavy book under her arm. I go and curl up in her armchair to be in the smell of fresh flowers she always leaves behind her. Then I realise my father has moved on to the library, and I slither in after him. The small book-lined room has velvet curtains of burnished yellow. The grey corduroy armchairs and sofa all loom hugely. The high-backed wooden seat with twirly legs, upholstered in yellow velvet, is always askew as if left in a hurry. The table with its drawer and its own twirly legs has welcomed many elbows and the scratching sound of many pens on its shining, tortured wood. The copper lamp under its green shade shines a secretive light on the typewriter and the messy piles of books and papers. The room is a world in itself, a yellow womb of golden safety. It’s the warmest, cosiest room in the apartment. We can still hear shrieks from the streets behind the walls. But my father has forgotten all about the protests. They were a bit tame for his taste.

  ‘Look,’ he says, interrupting our silence to lunge forward and grab some brownish burnt-looking stones off his bookshelf. ‘Here are lamps that belonged to the people of the Palaeolithic.’

  He points at two tiny holes, one in the middle and one at the narrow end.

  ‘See, this is where they poured in the oil and this is where they lit it.’ He lifts them triumphantly. ‘When cavemen discovered fire, Catherine, their big problem was how to keep it. So they made these little lamps and felt much better.’ He looks at his watch. ‘You might as well go to bed now or we shall have Sylvia descending on us any minute.’

  My father is not afraid of Sylvia but he always obeys her. She has looked after me since I was two, but I think she has been there forever and always will be. Sylvia could just as well be my mother – but something always happens to make me remember who Poum is.

  Sometimes, at night, while Sylvia is in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea, my father comes to see me and starts growling in the dark. I laugh at first, but soon I am huddling in a corner, and my yells of terror bring Sylvia into the room. ‘It’s not good for the child to be scared out of her wits,’ she tells him, fumbling for the switch. Alexandre, still growling, catches me and hauls me upwards, high against his chest, laughing. When Sylvia turns the light on at last, he pretends to be penitent and, with one last hug, vanishes. She sighs. Sylvia likes him and disapproves of him at the same time.

  She is very silent when I get back to the room we share. She is cross, I can see. I slide into my bed. Tomorrow, I know, she’ll tell my father off. He will beam at her and she will shrug and shake her head.

  My head should be full of the screeching brakes of police cars, of fires, of people running and yelling, but all I can think about are the cavemen staring at the big, dancing shadows of their lamps on the walls of their caves. As I snuggle into my pillow and feel sleep coming to get me, I’m so relieved the cavemen managed to keep their fires alive and didn’t have to stay in the dark.

  16

  MR CROCODILE

  One Saturday morning, Sylvia is out and I’m upstairs for breakfast with my parents. My father hands me an envelope. ‘There is a letter for you, Catherine.’

  I can’t read yet, so I have to ask him what it says. He puts his glasses on, opens the seal, pulls out the paper and reads: ‘Dear Catherine, I hate you. I hope your Daddy gives you a sound spanking. Here is a letter full of my dirty push. Love, Crocodile.’

  Mr Crocodile is one of the people my father tells me about, when he isn’t talking about Romans, Greeks and Carthaginians. Crocodile is a low-down creature with scales and nasty breath. We have seen many pictures of him in books.

  My father points ominously to a little wooden box lying on my mother’s table.

  ‘This came with it,’ he adds with a disgusted sigh.

  We decide not to open it.

  ‘The nerve of that Crocodile!’

  Later on, we go to the Bois de Boulogne Lake. My father asks me: ‘Would you like to see Mr Crocodile this time? He’s very eager to see you.’

  He seems to have forgotten abou
t the awful letter. I gather every ounce of politeness I possess.

  ‘I’d rather not, thank you.’

  My father gives a discouraged sigh.

  ‘He was just asking about you again the other day, Catherine. I know you don’t appreciate him very much, but really, he’s rather lonely in that cave of his.’

  I shake my head carefully. We are walking nearer and nearer the water’s edge. Between the trees you can see dark openings in the rock. My father crouches and points towards one of them.

  ‘His home is just in there, see?’

  I give a tiny nod.

  ‘Won’t you say hello to him?’

  ‘Maybe he’s busy.’

  He shakes his head, taking my hand again.

  ‘I don’t think so. Every time, I have to find an explanation. No wonder his feelings are hurt. Poor Mr Crocodile, he’s always asking after you.’

  Now we are very close to the cave opening.

  ‘Maybe he’s asleep,’ I suggest.

  ‘Oh, no, he’s expecting you.’

  My father sighs again as he feels me pull back.

  ‘I really don’t know what new excuse I can find this time.’

  ‘Can’t we go next week instead?’

  ‘We? Oh, but Catherine, Mr Crocodile wants to be quite alone with you. Of course, it doesn’t smell very nice at first, where he likes it best, in the mud at the very bottom of his cave, but you’ll soon get used to it.’

  He turns towards the opening again. I stare after him in horror. But suddenly he swirls round, swoops down on me and carries me towards the twinkling lake.

  ‘All right, Catherine, let’s give him a miss. I’ll go and tell him you can’t come.’

  He puts me down under a big oak and weaves his way back towards Mr Crocodile’s cave. I see him bend down to enter the yawning cave mouth and soon I hear echoes of his conversation with Mr Crocodile, who only grunts rudely in return.

  I stare around me. Every tree, every leaf seems to share my relief. We all wait for my father’s return in the suspended wonder of escape. The Bois de Boulogne is a wood right in the middle of Paris. It has been ridden in, picnicked in, painted and written about. Prostitutes ply their trade there, children play and couples row on the lake or have lunch on the island. Every tree has known a murder, a declaration of love, a suicide. Wildness and death hobnob with balls and kites. My father is in his element. His step has become crisper, more fluid, jagged and alive, yet full of a powerful quiet. He knows the dense copses, the sandy paths, the short cuts, as if he had been active here with the Resistance. When we reach the lake, it glitters and glows in the sun. The cries and laughs from the rowboats and the splashes of the oars contain us in their watery song. Time has gone. It is no longer Saturday morning; it could be any morning in the world. If only Mr Crocodile didn’t live here.

  With Alexandre, it’s only a few seconds afterwards that you can take in what is happening. He has rushed us to the boathouse. He’s already knocking on its shabby door. Who else does he know here, apart from Mr Crocodile? Now he’s swirling round and calling out to a giant who’s straightening up from behind a boat’s hull. He seems to know people are there before they materialise. The giant is wearing a very thick jumper and a cap. He focuses on us slowly and disbelievingly, as if he were not used to being addressed in this manner, as if he were more used to scaring people. I notice the stone-grey curls against the back of his neck. He could be a gypsy or a smuggler – people I instinctively approve of.

  There are only a few boats left on the shore, but all of them are turned over on their empty bellies. The boat keeper has a pot of paint in his hand. My father points at the hulls – all bottoms up – expectantly.

  ‘Could we have one of your boats, please?’

  The man’s face is as closed as the door of his shed.

  ‘We rented the last available one five minutes ago.’

  For a moment the air vacillates between them, calm and whole and peaceful – a landscape before it becomes a battlefield. My father doesn’t move an inch, then begs, joyfully: ‘Can’t you rent us one of those?’

  For a moment, incredulity is a spasm on the boat keeper’s features. Then something changes in the chemistry of his body and he slowly rubs the nape of his neck with his free hand, before extending his other palm towards the furthest boat.

  ‘I haven’t started on that one yet …’

  My father beams. ‘I’ll help you turn it over.’

  The man rallies and runs to heave it upright without my father’s help, reacting to his warm, urgent voice. Almost everyone does. It could be their last chance to do something before a tsunami comes in, before Paris is burnt and the war is lost. All is settled so quickly the giant seems slightly out of breath and blinks at the money my father has stuffed in his hand as if it were hay or candy floss. Alexandre is already in the boat, calling me, his hand on the oars. The giant and I are left on the shore staring at each other, victims of the same sleight of hand.

  Then, in a twinkling, with a wave and a bright smile, my father has whisked us to the middle of the lake, safe from Mr Crocodile (hopefully asleep by now in the bottom of his cave).

  Rowing seems to come naturally to Alexandre. Again I have the feeling that he has been here before in other circumstances: his movements are oiled and economical, his hands know the nooks and crannies of the oars, which don’t make a sound when they drop into the water. Around us, the lake has expanded, making the sky enormous in response. When we reach the furthest point from the shore, the oars suddenly tumble higgledy-piggledy into the boat like drunken arms and legs. My father is throwing himself back comfortably, in spite of the chill, and putting his arms behind his head to gaze up at the clouds. All this makes us nearly capsize, but he doesn’t notice.

  I wait, hoping his mind won’t return to the subject of Mr Crocodile.

  ‘Do you know, Catherine, I was in a phone booth in New York once. It was night, it was raining, it was during the Depression. There was an old black man on the street corner. I leaned out and asked him if he could give me the change from a dollar to make a call. He answered: “I can’t, Mister, but thanks for the compliment.”’

  ‘I can’t, Mister, but thanks for the compliment,’ he repeats. ‘This man’s answer was the whole of the Great American Depression, Catherine, and the dignity of one human being.’

  ‘Did you say anything else to each other?’

  My father shakes his head sadly. ‘No, he just faded away into the night.’ He frowns. ‘That was the year I lost my dog Touts.’

  ‘Touts?’

  ‘Yes, that was his name. He was a black Scottie. You know, like the dog on the Black and White whisky label.’

  I nod. He often gives me the empty boxes to keep, so I can cut out the dog. Now I know why.

  ‘Well, one night, Touts disappeared. I don’t know if he was stolen or if he got lost. I spent weeks searching for him in New York, through the nights because I was working during the day, calling Touts, Touts! But I never found him.’

  We stare at each other. I whisper under my breath: ‘Touts.’

  In his eyes I can see New York, where I’ve never been, the streets shiny with rain, my father’s clothes getting wet and his voice crying out Touts! in the dark. Then I realise: ‘You never had a dog again.’

  He sits up and hangs his head. ‘No.’

  We both grieve for Touts, in the boat in the middle of the lake. The splashes of other rowers, even their laughter, have disappeared.

  He lets himself slide back again, his face turned up once more, drenched in sunshine. After a while, his gaze intent on the sky, he speaks again.

  ‘You know, little one, in New York, I also knew a woman called Marguerite. She loved me very much. I used to go and see her in her small flat.’

  Something in his voice reminds me of the old black man. ‘Did she fade away too?’

  He nods sadly, wearily – nearly ashamedly.

  ‘Did you love her?’

  He stares at
me. ‘She was a sincere, lovely woman. A sweet woman. She was sensitive, intelligent, well-read.’

  Women love my father. He has an enormous tummy, his skin is like satin and he smells of honey – maybe because he eats a kilo of it a week. I nod and ask again: ‘But did you love her too?’

  In my father’s stare there is no answer, but a sort of bewilderment instead.

  ‘I had to come back to France.’

  ‘But why? Why didn’t you stay with her?’

  He’s still looking at the sky. ‘She begged me to. I nearly … did.’

  We stay silent. The whole boat seems to be swallowed by the water. He shakes his head.

  ‘I had to go.’

  He doesn’t explain, not straightaway, not until a long time afterwards.

  ‘Didn’t you call her on the telephone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ever see her again?’

  ‘No, never.’

  There is an uncharacteristic slowness in his voice. His eyes, his whole presence, have gone funny. We wait. We don’t say anything anymore. The reflections on the water seem to have dimmed. The laughter in other boats seems strained. He lies back and stares at the clouds sauntering along on this cold spring morning. When I speak, my question seems to hang among them.

  ‘Did you live in America for a long time?’

  There it hangs, thin and threadbare above the water.

  ‘Haven’t you noticed I have an American accent?’

  During that boat ride, I discover that my father lived for twenty-four years in America. There is something about him that makes his past, present and future all now. Echoes of America, of the French Nivernais where he grew up, of his forthcoming plans, all pool out in large concentric ripples.