Poum and Alexandre

by Catherine de Saint Phalle

  He sighs.

  ‘You see, I have certain habits. I never went to school. Your grandfather taught us at home, so I don’t understand all these tricks. The honourable thing is that those who trust you, those who rely on you, don’t lose a franc. These legal intricacies are a waste of time!’

  ‘You mean the dogs bark but the caravan passes?’

  He smiles.

  ‘Yes! You see, I slap someone’s hand and the deal is made. Like in the country. No one in their right mind would betray that. Do you think we had time for papers in the Resistance? Not a franc was lost, everything tallied. The waste of money and energy these bureaucrats create! Anyway, this poor man wants to take some money to Switzerland, and if you go with him, they will take him for your grandfather or your old uncle and leave him in peace. Then you can say goodbye to him, stay a night in a hotel and come back the next day. Will you do that for me?’

  I have no more hesitations than Napoleon’s mamluk would have had.

  ‘Well, that’s settled. The plane is leaving at eight. Let’s have something to eat before I drop you there. You can stay in your school uniform. Yes, that’s even better. The hotel in Geneva will give you all you need. It’s all organised.’

  He’s patrolling the smaller streets of the seventh quarter, absent-mindedly scanning the buildings, trying to locate some sort of bistrot. He grinds to a halt and finds a park all in one breath.

  ‘We’re in luck! Look at that little place. Just what we need! Aren’t you hungry?’

  I don’t have to answer. He’s already hurrying towards an open doorway. We walk in, there’s no one; just here and there, a cluster of little tables with red-and-white chequered tablecloths and extremely shiny glasses. It’s still rather early for dinner in Paris. My father prowls round the empty room, holding his wrist in the small of his back, until he suddenly finds a bunch of grissini. A tall waiter dressed in black and white appears out of a solemn void. He looks like the forbidding actor Michel Jouvet, a sort of French Jeeves, who plays judges, butlers and dignified criminals.

  He’s contemplating us with a stern, disapproving eye, but before he can open his mouth, my father shakes his breadstick with enthusiasm: ‘Ah, we’re so happy to see you! May we dine? We’re very hungry!’

  ‘Dinner, Sir? For two?’

  My father turns round, suddenly vague, as if he were looking for his mamluks. In fact, he’s probably looking for my brothers and sisters. In little things like that, I realise he’s probably used to having a troop with him – instead of just me.

  ‘Eh, yes. And can you give us the wine list, please?’

  His smile is happily unaware of any disapprobation. Without waiting to be led to a table, he casts his fancy on the closest one and flings his napkin open with a flourish.

  ‘Ah, the serviettes are nice and large. You can tuck them under your thighs, just as when I was a little boy at your grandparents’! This little place is just what we needed! Ah, Catherine, we’re going to have dinner at last! And you’re going to drink some very good wine, better than at the Mont Saint-Michel. That’s something Sylvia couldn’t teach you.’

  I nod. Often with my father you don’t really have time to answer. I’m very thirsty anyway.

  ‘Ah, thank you, we’ll take this one. Let’s taste a Saint-Amour, Catherine, a Beaujolais, a wonderful year.’

  Hardly looking at the menu, he makes the rest of our order at lightning speed.

  ‘Vegetables for my daughter, yes, and a boeuf bourguignon for me, yes, thank you.’

  He glances around him with satisfaction and takes a sip of wine. An abstracted mood overtakes him as he waits for our dinner. But his frown is more than hunger.

  ‘Things are not so easy at the moment, little one.’

  I take a sip of wine too, as if that could lead me into his thoughts.

  ‘Do you remember Fausta?’

  ‘The awful Fausta? Of course!’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit like this: Someone has acted like Fausta instead of acting like Crispus.’

  The horrible Fausta was the Emperor Constantine’s wife. He heard she was unfaithful to him. So he asked two soldiers to go to her bedroom, behead any man who was with her, and bring back his head. They returned with a bag. In it was his favourite son’s head: Crispus. Crispus was his illegitimate child who went with him on all his campaigns and was already a military genius. His sons by Fausta, Constantine II, Constantius and Constans, were good-for-nothings. Crispus had been lured by the dreadful Fausta and had refused her demands on him. When Constantine realised he had killed an innocent and the person he loved most, he had Fausta tied to the middle of a fountain, surrounded by his soldiers, and had them throw lances at her until the fountain was red with her blood.

  I need no more explanation to know that something terrible has happened, something that will not come out in the open. Fausta is enough to fill me in on my father’s state of mind, to know he feels betrayed, anxious, alone at heart, much worse than I am at school, much worse than Sylvia going away, a pain I cannot fathom, that leaves us staring at each other without words or consolations. But somehow he climbs out of it, smiles at me and takes my hand. Then he squares his shoulders and pours us more wine. When his boeuf bourguignon arrives, he takes a first mouthful, frowns, and eats it with small moans of surprised pleasure.

  ‘This is really very good, mmmm … And the Saint-Amour is like velvet.’

  I nod. He’s right. If stained-glass windows were liquid, they would taste like this, of blood and rubies, of peacock feathers. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the waiter. He’s folding his arms in the dark. He doesn’t like us. He wishes we’d go away. Suddenly I’m sleepy. My father pours me some more wine and looks at me attentively.

  ‘Do you feel a bit funny?’

  With my periscope, from the bottom of the sea, I notice everything: the gleaming glasses, the stark white serviettes even whiter than the ones in Chartres, and the man’s two eyebrows, getting more and more like two dark prison bars holding us in custody. I can see my father’s happy smile as he plunges his knife and fork deep into the meat and tightens his pale blue eyes slightly to observe me.

  ‘Catherine, by now I’d say you are as drunk as a wheelbarrow. I want you to remember it well. I don’t want any other man after me to see you like this. Even your husband. It’s a threshold you must know. You can drink as much as you want just as long as you don’t cross it. Do you understand?’

  I manage to nod.

  ‘And now, let’s order a good dessert to make us better. Garçon!’

  He lifts his arm to the ceiling with a bright smile. The menacing waiter is instantly at my father’s elbow. He swings round in his chair towards him.

  ‘Listen, this was delicious! Don’t forget to tell the patron. We are delighted to have discovered you. What a lovely little bistrot you have! You have treated us royally.’

  Mysteriously the man relaxes and becomes quite summery. He even smiles. Yet I would have sworn he didn’t like schoolgirls or people who ate his grissini without asking him. My father isn’t like other people who try to frighten or impress each other. He rolls up, enthusiastic, hungry, sleepy or content. Like the dogs he loves so much, never doubting his welcome, he’s at home everywhere. It never crosses his mind to wonder if he’s admired or despised.

  One day, when I was three or four, I was pointing at a poodle and laughing at him. Three children had put a little hat on his head and a little cape on him. My father came up, whipped the hat and cape off him and knelt down, speaking to the dog tenderly. Then, ignoring the others, who scattered in terror, he caught my arm, lifted me off my feet and beat me hard. Then he put me back on the ground and looked at me with contempt.

  ‘Never do that again, do you hear? Laughing at a dog is the most dishonourable thing you can do.’

  Dessert arrives. He’s rubbing his hands expectantly.

  ‘Now, what do you have for us? Another wonder?’

  My head is swimming so much I can’t finis
h my ice-cream, so he has to help me.

  ‘Let’s ask for the bill! Garçon!’

  He hates staying at the table when there is nothing more to eat. The man comes up with a little chest, before disappearing again. My father opens the lid, throws an indifferent eye on the bill, then suddenly sits up in his chair, before getting his glasses out. He shakes his head gently:

  ‘There must be some mistake. Garçon!’

  The man comes back, patient, nearly friendly. My father smiles at him.

  ‘I think there must be a little mistake.’

  ‘No, Monsieur, not at all, if Monsieur would care to check the prices on the menu …’

  My father bends over obediently, pushing his glasses firmly back on his nose.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right. Well, Catherine, I think we had lunch in a much more elegant restaurant than we had bargained for!’

  His eyes twinkling at the waiter over the top of his glasses: ‘It will be good for her education, don’t you think?’

  ‘Certainly, Monsieur.’

  The man sees us out with a warm smile on his face. We are back on the sidewalk which seems to be swaying strangely between the shafts of sunlight.

  ‘Well, Catherine, without even knowing it, I think we’ve just had dinner in a cordon bleu restaurant.’

  Seeing my worried look, he puts his arm around my shoulders.

  ‘Don’t fret, little one, in a period of lack it’s good luck. A gift from the gods! Now to the Champs Élysées and off to the airport! The baraka is back!’

  31

  DUTILLEUL AND THE FOUR-LEAF CLOVER

  The photograph of a blond man hangs on the wall by my father’s desk. He has a knitted scarf around his neck and a mysterious smile. Who is he? One of my mysterious uncles living in New York? Why don’t we ever see him? One day, I ask. My father hesitates before answering me.

  ‘Because he’s dead, Catherine. He was my friend. We were in the same Resistance cell.’

  ‘Your friend …’

  He slows his breaths as if he were breathing some other air. When he finally makes up his mind, his eyes narrow and their pale light becomes as blue as a knife.

  ‘Dutilleul didn’t say anything much. In the cell, people didn’t talk to him as they did to others. There are not a lot of people around of his sort, Catherine. You’ll meet two or three in your lifetime, maybe fewer. He had an angel’s face, but it wasn’t only that. Some men come to earth but they are not from here.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘The Germans caught him …’

  His words get stranded in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘… But if I’m here today, it’s thanks to Dutilleul. If you’re here today, it’s thanks to Dutilleul. They tortured him, Catherine, and he didn’t speak. If he had, I would have been killed and all the others in the cell too. And you would not exist, little one.’

  We both stand very quiet, my father and I, we who are both here thanks to Dutilleul. I now know that my father had a friend. For, unlike other men, he never goes out for a beer or gets calls from a cheery male voice. Every day before leaving for school, I come and say hello to Dutilleul. I wonder who knitted his scarf. I don’t even know his first name.

  Soon things start happening again on the outskirts of my perception. The bank is not going well, there are articles in the paper about it. Instead of reading and trying to understand, I stay in the cumulonimbus in which I have lived up to now. But I can feel Alexandre’s anxiety as keenly as Napoleon’s soldiers felt his loss at Waterloo. Even when the end was close, everything must have gone on just the same for Napoleon’s intimates. People try to prick my bubble and tell me things, but the information stays on the fringe of my consciousness and I can’t make sense of it.

  At night, my father comes and sits on the end of my bed and tells me I must get married soon. I am fourteen. I must go to balls, he explains. He will take me to one next week. I have never been to a ball before and somehow it doesn’t feel like a party, but more like a necessity.

  A dress is bought for me in a terrible hurry while I am at school. It is red and blue, a bit like some bright Napoleonic flag. Something in me lies low, says nothing. I am told to put it on and wear it around the sitting room in front of anyone who may be there. The agony of it reminds me of the English general walking in front of his own cannons so that his men won’t shoot at the French galloping towards them – until the very last moment. Poum makes the sign of the Cross at odd moments.

  One night, my father appears in my bedroom.

  ‘Do you know, your sister Clothilde is beautiful, clever and very brave. She found an English parachutist wounded behind a tree. She could speak English, of course, because she had been brought up in New York. She dragged him up behind her on her bike and managed to cross the German lines and bring him home to me in Cudot. We patched him up, hid him and got him away safely, thanks to her.’

  ‘How did the Germans not see him?’

  ‘They saw him, of course. She told him: “Hug me tight as if we were lovers,” and waving happily to the Germans, pedalled as fast as she could.’

  I am overawed by the dash of it. During that period, tales of female bravery come thick and fast. My other sister Marie-Alpais is younger and even prettier. According to my father, all Saint Phalle women are as beautiful as day, brave as men and don’t move an ear – which means they are also faithful to their husbands. This sister makes my father very proud too. All the young men of Paris were running after her. She would get them to take her to fun fairs and ask to go on the highest, scariest roller-coaster; being absolutely fearless, she thought it was fun. They, on the other hand, went completely green.

  ‘All your sisters got married at eighteen. You could get married younger. You are quite ready to have children. Saint Phalles are extremely fertile! We could get a dispensation.’

  Then he becomes thoughtful.

  ‘You know, if anyone says anything about me, just raise your head and smile. Anyway, I’ll be there. But at the other balls, where I won’t be, just remember that the dogs bark and the caravan passes. They are just crows, my little one.’

  The night of the ball inches forward. It’s organised by one of my father’s clubs. He never goes there because the people in it bore him, but these people organise balls at the drop of a hat, he explains. The night before, he takes me for a walk to the Avenue Gabriel, which has a thriving stamp market, where shrivelled men and women are selling their wares in little plastic tents, exchanging tiny bits of paper with tweezers. My father paces past them towards the trees.

  ‘Your sister Thérèse, Catherine, she went to work, which none of your other sisters did. She started out as secretary for a writer, then she wrote novels herself, then she became a publisher, too.’

  He rubs his hands gleefully as if it were bitterly cold, but he’s not trying to get warm – he’s always warm because he’s a marcou.

  ‘You see, she was cleverer than all those men put together!’

  Happily, he starts walking again, jabbing the high grasses with his umbrella like d’Artagnan. I don’t dare interrupt his joy, as I didn’t dare interrupt his sadness. I feel rather dull, like a drum with no sound. Something is grinding to a halt – perhaps it’s my childhood. Maybe my father feels it too, because he leans against a plane tree and crosses his arms.

  ‘I knew another man in the Resistance who haunts me.’

  ‘Was he your friend like Dutilleul?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘I never had a friend like Dutilleul. After his death, I never had a friend again.’

  ‘Like Touts?’

  He smiles sadly.

  ‘Yes, like Touts. This other man I knew was caught by the Germans. He was not in my cell but we sometimes had to meet. He told me how he escaped. He was walking around the prison courtyard, thinking this was probably his last day. He knew he was going to be tortured. Suddenly he saw, between two cobblestones, a four-leaf clover and he picked it up. I’m going to be
all right, he told himself. But he was tortured all the same. He said the pain was so wild, he knew nothing for a while; he was in a kind of limbo. It came in excruciating waves. His eyes felt full of blood. But, strangely, worst of all was their questioning, the unrelenting voice repeating the same thing, over and over again. They were asking him where the cell’s meeting place was. But the Resistance had recently started changing meeting places each time, so no one could give the location under torture. “I knew this,” said the man, “so I gave them a random location: the sixth tree after the corner of two roads in the Bois de Boulogne. It was pure invention. During the time they went to check it, I would have a breather.” After an hour, a German officer came back into the room and set him free. By an awful stroke of luck, he had unknowingly given them the right place.’

  ‘So sometimes it’s better not to have the baraka?’

  My father shakes his head sadly.

  ‘Sometimes I wish Dutilleul had found that four-leaf clover.’

  We, who usually have so much to say to each other, walk back to the apartment in silence. He pats me on the back encouragingly, like he did when I was on the merry-go-round.

  ‘You have to go to bed! Balls are very tiring.’

  The next day is a Saturday. No school. To my surprise, my mother’s friend Pilar arrives. She is to go to the ball with us. Not my mother. This has to do with the situation. I don’t like it. It feels wrong. Though, since the age of three, I have loved Pilar over and above any of my mother’s other strange pals, over and above any of my own. I try to say something but my mother herself overrides me.

  ‘No, Catherine. We have to do it this way. Pilar is very kind to take my place. I cannot, do not wish to, go myself. I’m perfectly happy here with a book.’

  She squeezes my arm and stares through me with her shipwrecked eyes and her strange unholy strength. It is a barrier, an impossibility. I feel uncomfortable, and though I don’t get along with my mother at this time, she having belatedly discovered the delights of motherhood, crowding me with rules and regulations from a vanished world, I want her there. I feel I am leaving a lung behind.