He smiles at me. Everything’s all right.
‘It was no use my staying there. It would only have made things worse. That little busybody priest couldn’t say anything to a little girl like you. But if he had known it was my idea, we would never have heard the end of it.’
I’m so relieved to have found him, nothing else matters.
‘Come on! Let’s go and have another dessert. We’ll never last until dinner with all these adventures. Aren’t you hungry?’
He grabs my hand and, all priestly matters forgotten, we scramble down the rest of the stairs. Soon we are in a pâtisserie where a lady with prosperous bosoms covers our table with brioches and croissants. In a few gulps, his share has vanished. Alexandre transfers his attention to the room and, eying the owner, raises his eyebrows:
‘An overcrowded balcony.’
I nod. This is the code word for big bosoms. My father likes them and always points them out to me in the street. Then he pushes his chair back with a sigh.
‘I could start all over again,’ he adds thoughtfully, eyeing the croissant on my plate. ‘Don’t you want any more?’
When I shake my head he downs that too, looks at his watch, pays and, before the lady can take another breath, we are out of her pâtisserie.
On the motorway heading towards Paris, I wonder why my father goes to noisy Masses where the priest’s voice interrupts the silence the whole time, instead of listening to the stained-glass windows made of precious stones, blood, feathers, wine, twigs and women’s milk. But he’s clearing his throat.
‘Y’know!’
For once he doesn’t look at me, but keeps his eyes on the road ahead.
‘Do you know, Catherine, that men have a little finger somewhere?’
I frown.
‘On their hand?’
‘Oh, no, somewhere else entirely – and they absolutely must put it into a lady every day and even twice a day. If they don’t, they get very sick! And, when it’s inside the lady, that finger becomes as big as a bottle of Coca-Cola! And then …’
He stops dramatically.
‘It explodes!’
‘It explodes? Doesn’t it hurt the lady?’
‘Oh, no, she’s very happy.’
This leaves me silent. I am wondering where men put their bottle of Coca-Cola, in their briefcase perhaps, or in their pocket. It’s a worry. I feel my father is expecting me to ask him some questions as usual, but I’d rather we spoke about the Carthaginians. Maybe the Carthaginian women were trying to escape the Roman bottles when they threw themselves from the top of the city walls into the flames. Carthage always makes things clearer for me.
When I’m uncomfortable I tend to think of the Carthaginians. Sometimes I imagine going to Carthage myself one day, forgetting that the Romans have poured salt all over its ruins.
28
THE ONES WHO DIDN’T MAKE IT
Catastrophe has a flavour for Poum and Alexandre, there’s no denying it. When things go wrong, when life takes a strange turn, they sit up. When kingdoms are lost, when people die, go bankrupt, divorce or fall down a flight of stairs, they look at each other and nod as if they were saying: Ready, steady, go. One night, we’re having dinner. My mother has tried her hand at cooking for the first time in her life. She has made a thousand-leafed pastry called a pâte feuilletée. She walks in with her towering oeuvre on a silver platter as if she were carrying the head of Saint John the Baptist. She presents it to my father and, as soon as he puts the knife through it, it collapses.
‘But Poum, there’s nothing inside it!’
‘Yes, but look how high it rose!’
He laughs.
‘My Poum …’
We end up at a café down the road. Ensconced in a booth, they have a bottle of Bordeaux to celebrate her cooking. It’s early summer, dusk is falling on the street, the café is nearly empty. Something must have gone wrong with the idea of a holiday. Empty Paris is fun, as if an army had just left, but the normal people haven’t come back yet. My mother and I share a mushroom omelette and Alexandre has a more substantial meal.
He crosses his arms in delight. ‘Why, we could come here in our pyjamas, it’s so close!’
They have moved to an apartment right near Napoleon’s tomb. The dome has just had its gold leaf refurbished.
‘Have you seen how it shimmers? It’s such a good sign,’ they both sigh. Luck is very much on the agenda.
‘You know, Poum, I’ve been telling Catherine about Napoleon.’
Soon they are deep in a history fest. They smile as if they were talking about old friends and my mind swims away …
A month or two earlier, we had walked along a moat and roamed inside its castle, which looked out onto desperately stiff French gardens. Sleepy guards observed us with disillusioned fondness as if we were their children from long ago. In spite of it being late spring, it was so cold we had to keep our coats on inside. The guards had hand-knitted woollen scarves around their necks like the man in the photograph behind my father’s desk. You could almost hear them think. Then, standing in front of a painting, my father, who had been frowning for a few minutes, snapped two fingers on his watch.
‘Damn!’
Like a bear who ambles slowly until it starts moving, before I knew it we were driving back in the warm car, eating kilometres of grey road. Paris galloped towards us. Instead of dropping me off at the apartment, he decided to take me along with him to his appointment.
‘It will only be ten minutes, Catherine.’
The car shuddered into a parking space at the foot of a building. Busy shoppers wound in and out of the plane trees and the boutiques that lined the avenue. Turning the ignition off with a sigh, he considered me and frowned again. After a few seconds’ silence, he shrugged.
‘You might as well come up with me!’
He went through the building’s hallway with a practised step and ran up the stairs. My father never has time to take the lift. On the first floor, he stopped on a landing, whisked a key out of his pocket and opened a front door without even ringing the bell. There was no light at all. You could hardly see the shape of things. He didn’t bother to turn on the switch, but walked into the room without hesitating in the dark; then he took me by my shoulders and guided me onto the floor behind a velvet armchair.
‘You wait here! Don’t move! Don’t say a word! I’ll be right back!’ his voice whispered, as his hands patted my elbows and knees to fit me snugly into the little space. Then he moved into the other room, leaving me alone in the dark. When my heart stopped thumping, I heard teacups and voices. He had left the door ajar. I could see a knife of light. A woman was talking to him. Their voices seemed to get louder as I got used to the dark. It was a desultory conversation about the weather and her health. I listened to them and to the click of the cups and the saucers and the rustle of the wrapping paper around the cakes getting ripped off, as you would listen to voices from a distant city in the mist, a sort of oral mirage, a verbal hallucination. I couldn’t tie his tone or hers to anything familiar. Suddenly, he was back whispering in my ear: ‘We’re going!’
Once we were in the car, he put his hands on the steering wheel and I heard him sigh.
‘You know, the lady up there – she’s the mother of your brothers and sisters.’
Now, sitting in the café between Poum and Alexandre, the memory of it comes back to me, making them look a little unreal, shaky, as if their world were as precious but as precarious as that shimmering gold leaf on the Invalides dome. Clouds would pour rain on it, birds would shit on it, and it would soon be as green and grey as it had been before.
‘Catherine! Do you remember about Maréchal Ney?’
I nod. Alexandre is looking at my mother. Stories are their mainstay; that’s how they function. A meal without a story has no nutritional value. Today, Maréchal Ney is needed.
‘When Napoleon escaped from the island of Elba, where the English thought they had secured him at last, he took a hundred days to
get to Paris. Ney, one of Bonaparte’s most faithful generals, had transferred his allegiance to Louis the XVIII and told him he would bring Napoleon back in chains!’
They are both looking at me. Things can change at any minute, tables can turn, only the unexpected is to be trusted, say their eyes.
‘Instead of that, as soon as Ney clapped eyes on Napoleon again, he defected. How could he resist? Napoleon opened his coat and cried out: “Go on, shoot your emperor!” Of course Ney cast his weapons to the ground, ran up to Napoleon and threw his arms around him. Poor Ney: when Napoleon was eventually beaten for good, Louis XVIII had him executed.’
Poum leans forward on her elbows. Any details about someone being put to death are always within her purview.
‘He gave the order to his own firing squad and was dressed as an ordinary citizen. His body was left facedown in the mud for fifteen minutes – that was the custom for military executions. I wish I knew why! Wellington had favoured clemency, but the duchess of Angoulême and Louis XVIII refused the pardon.’
‘Did Ney ask for a pardon?’
‘No, of course not! But his wife did.’
They both look at me speculatively.
‘It wasn’t so long ago, you know. Because children are born to older parents in both our families, Napoleon is only three or four of your ancestors away.’
Alexandre pours more wine into my mother’s glass.
‘But Rostopchin was the one who cost Napoleon his empire.’
She laughs.
‘Poor Rostopchin, both sides thought he was wrong.’
Like us! say their eyes, Like us!
‘What happened?’
I’m getting the bug: any loss, any catastrophe, any disaster or calamity has my full attention. As if all the rest of life were an excuse for this, rallying to save the condemned prisoner, dragging the wounded out of houses after an earthquake or hiding people during the war, tempting fate in one form or another, because that is the way societies and their mores, old aunts and vengeful cousins, are forgotten, and only human beings remembered. However high the price of tragedy and danger, it’s worth it to my parents. I know that is why they clatter down stairs or pop out of their bedroom to get to the news on time, that is why they devour the newspapers: it’s the hope of reaching a state worthy of the excitement. But failing that, they have stories.
‘So Napoleon, just like Hitler a hundred years later, entered the Russian steppes with a cumbersome army unused to the snow. Cossacks on small, fast horses would attack them on the sides, pillaging their rear guards and food reserves before disappearing into the mist, weakening them as the winter grew darker and colder.’ At this point, Poum and Alexandre look at each other. ‘They were, however, slowly aiming for Moscow. During that time, the Tsar was desperate to save his country from Napoleon. His governor-general, Rostopchin, your mother’s ancestor, had an idea.’
I know about Rostopchin. He was part Tatar and had changed his name from Rostopcha to Rostopchin to make it sound more Russian. That is why we have high cheekbones and maybe why Poum is so bloodthirsty.
‘What idea?’
I am torn. I hate the idea of Napoleon’s poor soldiers dying in the snow, but I also hate the idea of the Russians being vanquished. I have drunk too much borscht, eaten too many pirozhkis in tiny, dark Slavic cafés with Poum, been in too many Russian churches and seen her liven up to the tragic wailing and joyous despair of Russian chants, amid a forest fire of candles and golden vestments.
‘He told the Tsar that the only thing to do was to burn the whole place down, burn Moscow!’
Their eyes are gleaming.
‘But …’
My feeble comment is disregarded.
‘Rostopchin explained to the Tsar that Napoleon and his soldiers, exhausted by their march in the snow, would find no warm prize when they eventually reached Moscow, but a burnt, empty, freezing ruin! Rostopchin convinced him. So they set fire to their own city. Most of the houses were made of timber, so it was very easy. They got the population away safely and left. Rostopchin also burnt his summer palace in the hills outside of Moscow, to set an example. Then things happened exactly as Rostopchin had foretold. Napoleon arrived with his exhausted army and had nowhere to rest his men or keep them warm.’
He smiles at me, his eyes saying, Things aren’t so bad after all …
‘So the terrible retreat from Russia started with what was left of poor Napoleon’s army.’
Poum leans forward dreamily, and says: ‘But Rostopchin was in terrible trouble at court. The Tsar forgot the victory over Napoleon; all he remembered was that Moscow was burnt. So at the balls no one dared to invite his daughter Sophie to dance. She was sent to France to marry your great-great-grandfather Ségur. When she was an old lady, she wrote stories for her children, Les Malheurs de Sophie, which were really her memories of her childhood in Russia. Her dowry was lost, never arrived or was never sent, so she always had money troubles and her husband was unfaithful, so she was rather unhappy. She spoke French all her life, but on her deathbed she started speaking Russian again.’
My father takes Poum’s hand and holds it. It lies in his, like a bird flying to him from some blizzard. He and I look at it: it’s so fragile, so unconfiding somehow, a hand that doesn’t really stay or land, a hand that doesn’t belong.
He looks up at me blindly, as if her hand has reminded him of something.
‘Your eldest brother, Philippe, was killed by the English. Did you know that?’
My mother’s hand turns around and catches at him ineffectually. His face turns to stone before she can stop it.
‘Like your other brother Jacques, he crossed the Pyrenees to join Free France in London, to join de Gaulle. He managed it easily. He was a daredevil. He used to jump straight across the Metro lines from one platform to the other before the train came, just for fun. Before the war, I had sent him to Germany to learn German. When he reached London, he sent me letters signed Liebe, Philippe instead of Love … And the English, who were spy mad, thought he may have been a German disguised as a French Resistant … and they tortured him. When they realised their mistake, it was too late. It drove him mad. They sent him back to me in the country, clinically insane. He died in my arms there soon after. The English were very sorry, of course …’
Neither Poum nor I say anything. My father plays with my mother’s hand. It’s awful to see. He looks at it as if it were a dead thing and she lets him. Then, slowly, he takes his glass and swallows his wine.
‘One of your other brothers met an English soldier who cried out Philippe’s name as he was boarding his ship. He knew something, but his ship was sunk by the Germans. So we never found out.’
There is something going on that reminds my father of the darkest time of his life.
29
WATERLOO – TRIUMPH FOR SOME, DISASTER FOR OTHERS
Sylvia has long left for England and I have the key to the apartment. My free time is my own and I wander long hours in the street, thinking she’s going to come back and get me. When I finally realise she won’t, a strange, awful freedom pervades my childhood.
One day I come home from school and my mother ushers me up to her bedroom. She and my father both perch on the end of their high bed and tell me that he has to go to hospital or he will lose his eyesight. He has to lie three weeks in darkness after an operation on his retina.
They speak to me as if we were all on a train platform. Poum’s bedroom has the atmosphere of a Russian novel. We stare at each other. My father’s smile is already at a remove. I cannot imagine him immobile, not jumping up, not bursting in or out, not running towards something. It just isn’t real. He has to leave that very night. My mother’s eerily nimble fingers pack him a light suitcase. I stare as the necessary items are laid down gently, evenly, with no unnecessary comments, no fretting or taking everything out again at the last minute. The clasp is clicked. She’s calm and grave. All will go well, she knows. She has a new dignity, nearly a peace, as if a ca
tastrophe were, in a way, a relief. What she fears most has happened, and Alexandre is still alive – the chariot of fire is not going to take him away. Not now. Not yet. She knows.
The hospital where he is operated on is a nunnery. He lies there in a white bed the next day, separate, remote – a bandage over his eyes. He speaks, but as if it were not to me. Poum is there, still grave, still peaceful. They have distanced themselves together – as if they shared the bandage, the darkness, the long hours in the white room.
Once he’s home, he has to be calm and relaxed. He moves more slowly, more carefully. We amble in the park. I feel important holding his hand, as if only I were stopping him from falling, even though he is walking normally, just more pensively, more soberly.
Then suddenly, on one of those walks, his mood changes. He takes my hand and hits his chest with it.
‘You know, I’ve got the heart of a football player. The doctor couldn’t get over it when he took my blood pressure.’
So, to celebrate, he proposes: ‘Let’s go and see Napoleon!’
My mother is resting. She needs to rest in the afternoon, just as footballers need to exercise.
‘I’ll drive! Just tell me when cars are coming on the side.’
People blow their horns as much as usual. Alexandre blows a kiss at them and screeches to a halt at the Invalides. Soon we are in the marble church. I follow him around as he breathes in the air of death and defeat. The tattered flags hang, motionless, above. Yet it seems to invigorate him. His old step is nearly back.
‘Ah, little one, it’s so nice not to be lying in that bed anymore!’
It’s as if he’s suddenly realised. It reminds me of the story of a fish he once told me. Somebody once gave him a fish in a bowl and he drove all the way to the beach to put it back in the sea. Gently tipping it into the water, he stayed looking at it. It continued turning round and round in circles as if it were still in its bowl and then, suddenly, it shot off in a straight line.
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