Poum and Alexandre

by Catherine de Saint Phalle

  Poum has collapsed against the wall, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Did you hear what you said to her? “But that produces monsters!” Oh, Alexandre, I thought I was going to die! Her face! Oh, oh! I felt the laughter mounting, mounting … Oh, thank God the poor woman left before I, before I …’

  Alexandre looks at Poum severely as he always does when she has one of her lapses.

  ‘Poum, what I said was quite true.’

  ‘But Alexandre, you can’t say to a woman that her son is going to produce monsters!’

  ‘Her son!’

  When this dawns on him, he starts laughing too and soon they are holding onto each other.

  ‘Oh, poor woman,’ wails Poum.

  ‘Yes, well, she’s better off warned.’

  ‘No, no, oh, Alexandre, only you can say such things. Oh, the ache …’

  Seeing me in the corridor, she suddenly takes refuge in her bed with her book, saying she’s exhausted. It’s still very early dusk and my father decides to step out. He turns to me: ‘Let’s go and see Napoleon!’

  Soon his car door has slammed and I am in the front seat beside him.

  ‘Ah, these dreadful seatbelts, they’re always in the way!’

  Since they have been introduced, he refuses to wear them, and just slips, misleading the police with his poker face. ‘They would never imagine I haven’t got it done up.’

  He parks rather far from the tomb and we have to cross two avenues.

  ‘Do you know, little one, that each avenue has a number?’

  ‘A number?’

  He holds my hand on the edge of the kerb, pointing to the oncoming traffic. It feels like standing by a river with fish swimming past. Buildings stare at us from their slate roofs down, so infinitely grown-up, so lined and grey, so symmetrical and lonely.

  ‘It’s mathematical. On this avenue the cars come in spurts of seven, then there is a lull before the next surge of seven. So you count seven cars, close your eyes and cross. Shall we try?’

  I nod. Like Poum’s, my faith in Alexandre is total. So we both count seven, close our eyes and cross. When we are on the other side, he announces the next avenue is a five and we go through the same procedure.

  ‘You see!’ he says triumphantly.

  Soon we are walking up to Napoleon’s tomb. There is something bold about the gardens: their sparse golden emptiness seems to conquer the rest of Paris, to herald a return, to bank on triumph over any petty disaster. But as soon as you cross the arched threshold, you penetrate a vault-like gloom. Torn and desolate, enormous flags hang from the walls of the dome. As we walk under them, my father speaks of the Arcole Bridge, the Russian campaign, Waterloo, Elba island and finally Saint Helena. He tells me about the faithful mamluk, Roustam Raza, who slept at Napoleon’s door; about his generals who were devoted to him. Generals also seem to jostle for our affections, even if for me it’s a settled matter – no inspiring detail can make me love any of them as much as Julian.

  ‘The Arcole Bridge was Napoleon’s Rubicon, Catherine! That’s where he discovered he was good at risking everything. Just like when Caesar decided to disobey the Senate and move into Rome. There’s a time in a man’s or a woman’s life when you find what you are good at. That’s when you have to pounce.’

  Some part of me understands that Alexandre is explaining both life and himself to me. Aren’t Rubicons everywhere, springing up right under our feet?

  ‘After the Arcole Bridge, everyone knew he was a genius. With a gang of ragamuffins, this young Corsican had beaten the great Austrian army.’

  Around us hang the flags, burnt and torn. My father fills the air with battle cries and death rattles, with cannon thunder and the press of a thousand feet. He squeezes my hand tightly in the echoing gloom. Then we get to the enormous marble urn where Napoleon’s ashes are kept.

  ‘What made him win when he was Bonaparte in the Italian and Egyptian campaigns was the same quality that made him lose at Waterloo.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘He was a gamester, little one, a gamester at the start and a gamester at the finish. Even a master strategist like him was defeated by simple bad luck. He should have won Waterloo.’

  ‘But Wellington was a very good general.’

  ‘He was, Catherine, but not so good as Napoleon.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Genius has no nationality, little one.’

  He sighs.

  ‘Poor Napoleon! He nearly went mad at Saint Helena, cooped up on that tiny island. The English weren’t going to let him escape a second time.’

  My father’s eyes rest on the marble urn. However gigantic it is in its circular marble room, it feels cramped, as if the ashes were still dreaming of escape. We walk round and round him and our footsteps echo desolately. I ask my father if he misses America. His head jerks round to me and he stares with glazed eyes.

  ‘Little one, I am a man of the future. I always look ahead, over the next hill.’

  ‘Like Napoleon?’

  ‘Yes … He had so much fun, you see.’

  ‘Did he love Josephine very much?’

  ‘Napoleon had a passion for Josephine. He wrote whole pages on her bottom.’

  ‘Her bottom?’

  ‘Yes, he loved her bottom. We still have all his letters to her; it’s a literary jewel. You actually hear his cries on the paper. Do you know what he wrote to her once when he was away on a campaign?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Don’t wash! I’m coming!’

  ‘Why did he say that?’

  I still have a lot of Sylvia in me and find this suspicious.

  ‘Well, because he liked her smell when he slept with her, of course!’

  Sometimes Napoleon sounds a bit strange.

  ‘But poor Napoleon had to marry Marie-Louise of Austria to consolidate the empire with a political alliance and to have an heir.’

  ‘But what about Josephine?’

  ‘He managed to have their marriage annulled because she was divorced from Monsieur de Beauharnais. She heard the bells of Notre Dame ringing for his second wedding from her home outside Paris. He had looked after her very well, you know. He made sure she was comfortable.’

  ‘But she must have been unhappy.’

  ‘Yes, poor Josephine. And it came to no good, because he lost the empire anyway.’

  ‘Do you think he still loved her?’

  His glazed eyes suddenly focus, their blue light gleaming again.

  ‘Of course he did! She was the love of his life. There is no question about that. But his temperament didn’t let him stop. He just couldn’t help himself. I am sure he went to see Josephine in secret even when Marie-Louise had given him a son.’

  ‘But why didn’t he stay with Josephine?’

  ‘And live in a little cottage in the country?’

  I stare back at my father. He doesn’t bother to develop his answer. His mood has suddenly changed.

  ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  So we abandon Napoleon in the middle of his tattered flags, to walk out into the still-warm dusk.

  ‘Let’s buy a present for your mother to cheer us up! I’m in a prosperous period. I am sure Monsieur Doucet is open.’

  He jumps behind the wheel and revs the motor towards the Place Beauvau, near the Élysée Palace. He parks, whips himself out of the car and is already walking towards the shop. When he turns round, I see his white handkerchief peeping out of his pocket, the buckle of his belt, and his ears, slightly pointed.

  ‘Can you seen my pointed ears? Look, I can move them.’

  I run up and I see them obediently going up and down several millimetres on each side of his head. Then he is up the steps, pushing the big golden knob on the antique dealer’s glass door and disappearing inside as if he had gone forever. The people who followed Napoleon must have been flabbergasted not to see him anymore. Nothing would have been the same – Notre Dame where he set the crown on his own head and Josephine’s,
the Tuileries Palace, his soldiers who had followed him to Russia in the snow, his generals, his mamluk – all sucked into Neverland like Captain Hook. I follow Alexandre up the steps and push the door. The antique dealer lifts his eyebrows when he sees me on his threshold. My father turns around.

  ‘Ah! Catherine! Meet Monsieur Doucet.’

  Monsieur Doucet looks timid and disapproving. Our presence disrupts the subtle harmony of his candelabras, the gleam of his inlaid woodwork tables, the fragile splendour of his Chinese vases. He stares at our feet as they tread on his Aubusson carpets and squeezes his eyelids as if he were swallowing pure lemon juice. There is something about my father that will never be cleaned away in a bathtub, something in his eyes that runs over the consoles and statuettes as if they were already part of his booty. One movement of his hand and several soldiers will surge into the shop to take everything away. He has already decided what he wants without listening to a single word of the antique dealer’s spiel.

  ‘Yes, yes, Monsieur Doucet. Yes, yes, we are going to take those two big blue vases over there.’

  ‘The Ming period, Monsieur.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Perfect, just what we need. Catherine, here, go and put them in the car. Ah, a wonderful blue, isn’t it, Monsieur Doucet?’

  My father grabs the first enormous Chinese blue porcelain vase at hand and thrusts it into my arms. Speechless, Monsieur Doucet leaps forward with outstretched arms, but it’s too late. I’ve already disappeared under a huge Ming vase about twice my size. At the same time, with the same instant movement he uses to catch a towel in the bathroom, my father whips out his chequebook from his pocket and leans on the first Boulle cabinet at hand to sign a cheque. Its plaintive groan makes Monsieur Doucet swivel around on his heels.

  ‘How much do I owe you, Monsieur Doucet?’

  Distracted, the antique dealer gives the amount, then attempts to forestall the inevitable.

  ‘Do you think your little girl can …’

  ‘Yes, yes! Of course she can. Put them in the car, Catherine.’

  ‘I could pack them up in tissue paper …’

  ‘Oh, no need. The car is just down the street.’

  Monsieur Doucet, an expression of horror painted on his face, clutches his cheque and looks on as his second vase waddles out into the street. My father shakes his hand effusively, runs down the steps, wedges himself behind the steering wheel, slams the car door and pats my knee.

  ‘Won’t your mother be happy?’

  27

  CHARTRES

  Alexandre pushes the door very softly and stands on the threshold of our bedroom looking at me. He hasn’t changed into his tweed jacket. His pockets are all turned out and hang starkly white against the faintly striped midnight-blue flannel of his suit. He makes a face.

  ‘No Monsieur Doucet today, Catherine. It’s a period of lack. Let’s go and have a sandwich on the banks of the Seine.’

  I love the periods of lack. We walk along the river and eat sandwiches sitting on the quay with our legs dangling over the water. Being near water makes every sound, every moment, flow and belong. When he has devoured his sandwich he doesn’t say anything much, just holds my hand, thoughtfully sucking the toothpick he always has in his pocket. The water twinkles and glitters. Each passer-by seems part of some silent, lonely story. This reminds me of Josephine, walking around her garden on her own, missing Napoleon.

  ‘Poor Josephine,’ I murmur, staring at the water.

  Alexandre sighs. ‘Yes, it was sad. But you know, she wasn’t faithful to Napoleon when he was on his campaign. She loved men.’

  ‘Did she sleep with other people?’

  I have understood the bed thing by now. When people sleep in the same bed, it seems to change things, especially if they are grown-ups.

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘Maybe poor Josephine didn’t like sleeping by herself.’

  ‘To be fair, Napoleon didn’t like sleeping by himself either.’

  Suddenly he’s on his feet: ‘Come on, let’s go!’

  Soon we are sailing out of Paris as if the motorway has swallowed us. Other cars bob in and out of our path, ‘barking’ at us from time to time. The window’s open, the tweed jacket’s back on, we could be on our way to China. With my father every departure is a complete journey, a run for the hills. Destination is something of a luxury, maybe because he never decides where he’s going until he’s gone.

  ‘Look, Catherine! The cathedral!’

  And sure enough, the huge stone ship of Chartres is ploughing through fields of wheat. Both my parents love Chartres and go there as you would dash to the chemist’s. The clergy must have made a very tidy sum out of them. Soon after my birth, on their return to France, they both rushed to Chartres to have their child blessed for its whole life. I still have the paper. They needed luck in all its forms where I was concerned, as if no blessing were enough to compensate for their swaddled misdemeanour. From the start, Poum’s mother and sister called it the child of the devil. Soon, I discovered the devil was just a recycled god, Pan. Yet there was always something faintly ridiculous, lonesome, and rock and roll about the devil, which made me warm to him. It took me a while to understand they were referring to me. Then I wondered who they meant by the devil. My father? Or the real devil with the hooves, horns and bright red skin? Neither were frightening. One I loved, and the other I had a sneaking sympathy for.

  On his way to the cathedral Alexandre sobers up, as its benefits exponentially accumulate in his system – the mysterious stock exchange of the soul. He keeps on pointing at it with a happy smile on his face. Seeing the cathedral in the distance soothes him so much that his cloak of euphoria, like a ship’s full sails, can be folded down on deck for a while.

  Before you get there, you can see Chartres for miles. We settle into silence, punctuated by his happy sighs, his suntanned forehead, his careless hands on the wheel, his sudden grins as if an intense conversation were going on all the while, a conversation across the centuries, across the clouds above us, across the kilometres the car is devouring, across our separate generations, just to be together on the sunny road.

  Then it’s a shock. We’re already on the cobblestones, hunting for a restaurant. He walks into the first one he finds and, in seconds, voluminous serviettes and sleepy tablecloths are encasing us, steaming plates are put in front of us. I have the peas and he has the rest and we are both happy.

  ‘That was very reasonable. Come on! Let’s go and see the cathedral!’

  He says it as if he were saying, Come on! Let’s go home!, and after hurriedly paying the bill, throws his serviette on the table. A few steps later, we are in the big church that clasps its streets close to its flying buttresses. Strangely, the cathedral is empty: not a tourist, not a priest, not a parishioner in sight. Suddenly, the place is his. We walk around at first, then he halts in his tracks.

  ‘Sit down, Catherine! No, not there … directly on the floor. You have to feel Chartres.’

  I settle at his feet while he sits on a low velvet prayer stool, his hands on my shoulders. My bottom becomes icy and soon my legs are quite numb too, but only a part of me notices.

  ‘See that big round window? It’s called la rosace bleue. Do you know what stained-glass windows are made of?’

  He takes a deep breath. He could be at the seaside.

  ‘They were made of precious stones, feathers, liqueur, twigs, women’s milk and birds’ blood. The secret is lost; nobody knows how to make them quite the same today. They have tried, of course, but it just doesn’t work.’

  The enormous stone walls surrounding us have closed off the rest of the world. It just isn’t there anymore.

  ‘Listen to the music of the stained-glass windows, Catherine.’

  We could be near a creek in a forest. Whenever we find one, Alexandre always has me kneel to drink its freezing water. In the same way, we listen to the fine-edged vibration of crazy blue, blood red, emerald green, bird’s-beak yellow.

  ‘
The stained-glass windows, little one, create a luminous slope of light. Whatever the time of day, from dawn to dusk, the same dim glow is maintained within the church, whether it be bright sunshine or rain. That’s the stained-glass windows’ secret. Right now, they are sifting the bright afternoon glitter in the same way they will sift the pale light of dawn.’

  Leaning back comfortably on his prayer stool, his legs still stretched out in front of him, my father, with an indignant wave, shows me a row of light bulbs hanging from an iron rod above us.

  ‘Look at those ridiculous lamps! What a crime! These priests are utter idiots. Did you know that Chartres was built on a temple to Isis? In pagan and medieval times, priests weren’t constantly reciting from prayer books. The cathedral was a silent, sacred place. Go and shut them off. Look, all you have to do is pull that cord hanging under each one.’

  To hear is to obey. I run off to the central nave and, climbing onto the pews, execute one offending bulb after the other. Soon the sombre silver light of the stained-glass windows reigns again. My father was right. The cathedral heaves a sigh of relief.

  Suddenly, a door opens with a fishy flap and a priest pops out of nowhere and screeches: ‘What are you doing?’

  A hand in midair, still standing on the pew, I can’t say a thing. I think of my mother peacefully stealing roses in the Bagatelle Gardens … But our crime seems of a lower order. He starts walking towards me, swishing his brown skirts. He reminds me, in spite of his cassock, of the bossy student teacher at school who frightens me out of my wits. All of a sudden, I can see the monk’s knees pumping like pistons inside his robe. I can’t make out his features; they are swallowed by fury. As he moves closer, his face gets redder and redder.

  ‘Come down, little vermin!’

  I turn round towards my father, but there’s no one there. I look at the empty prayer stool he was sitting on – nothing. He has disappeared. So I climb down from the pew and, as soon as my feet touch the stone, run for my life, leaving the yelling priest behind me. Fumbling, I find the little door we used to come in and clatter down the stone steps. My father appears from behind a column.