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Victor and The Women Final 2011
Victor and The Women Final 2011
a novel by
Pierre Delerive
CHAPTER ONE
When I think of my early teens, I see naked women. Their breasts, thighs and
sexes filled my dreams and left me breathless. Enhanced by a powerful sense of sin,
terror and this is linked to the memory of my mother. There is no logical link between
these two poles of my youth and yet I know they are united.
I was terrified of my mother. The years haven't been able to erase the memory
of her descents into abysses of depression. I cannot forget her sarcasmsshe laughed
cruelty or fits of rage. Even her occasional proclamations of maternal love scared me
by their excess.
Tall and beautiful, long-legged and shapely, my mother could also be ugly.
Sometimes her beauty disappeared in dark shadows as suddenly as the sun can vanish
behind a cloud. I watched then, fascinated and terrified, as she put on what I called
"the mask": a thin white line drew itself where her smiling full pink lips had been a
minute before and her periwinkle blue eyes lost their brightness. Suddenly, she looked
at me from far away, a muscle in her jaw started twitching and her pinched nostrils
turned white. She also seemed to be cold and rubbed her arms furiously. Being near
her wasn't a good idea at those moments, but I was seldom able to escape.
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Nothing, no one, resisted my mother. I'll never forget the Sunday when, angry
at having been "had"one of her favorite expressionsby her butcher, she rose in the
middle of our family lunch, grabbed the dish on which the roast beef sat surrounded
by potatoes and green beans and ordered me to follow her. I wasn't even ten then and
the expedition was labeled as formative: "Remember Victor, you must never allow
I remember running behind her as she strode down the Avenue Mozart,
oblivious to the bewildered stares following this tall and beautiful woman, her roast
beef and her son. At the Boucherie Jasmin, my mother stormed in as the butcher, a big,
ruddy redhead with a handlebar mustache was helping his last customers of the day.
Too shy to follow her, I stood at the door, shuffling my feet in the sawdust. Ignoring
the line, my mother planted herself in front of the butcher and laid her dish of roast
beef, potatoes and green beans on the marble counter. "Have some!" she ordered.
"I said, have some. Eat!" my mother thundered. The big man seemed frozen.
At a total loss, he looked around and saw nothing but laughing or horrified faces.
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Defeated, the butcher handed my mother his knife. She carved a slice of beef
and shoved it under his nose; "Eat this now! Eat it and tell me if this is the tender meat
you promised me. I should take it to the cobbler; he'd make soles out of it."
As we were walking home, I remember being both ashamed and deeply in awe
of my mother. I didn't know anyoneand some thirty years later, still haven't met any
man or womancapable of such heroics. I forgot what we ended up eating for lunch
that Sunday.
Very much aware of the men leering at her in the street, or so she maintained,
my mother was on a crusade against all sins of the flesh. And if I must choose an
example of her relentless war, I have to recount her discovery of a copy of Playboy
under my bed.
As I came back from the École St. Jean Baptiste, one late afternoon, I found
my mother waiting for me on the landing outside the apartment. Her blouse and the
carpet around her feet were covered with white ash from the cigarettes she had been
chain-smoking. As soon as I stepped out of the elevator, she dragged me by the ear to
my room and confronted me with the corpus delicti open at the centerfold page. A
voluptuous creature was shown lying down on a crimson sofa, her long white thighs
dressed in dark stockings. She held a pearl necklace between her gleaming white teeth
and her smiling eyes told me that she knew how the round, large breasts she cupped in
her hands would make my blood boil. "Can you tell me where you got this piece of
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Shaking as I did each time she held me under her stare and more terrified of
her devastating words than of the slaps in the face that only burned my cheeks, I
remained silent.
She was right. In fourteen years, I had not learned to fight back. Unconditional
surrender was the only conceivable outcome. "I ... I bought it."
"With the allowance your parents give you as a reward for being lazy and
filthy?"
dragged to the little store where every week I bought France-Football magazine from
Monsieur Jean. Seeing me slip Playboy between the covers of France-Football, the old
man had only smiled. Storming into the store, my mother elbowed her way through
the waiting line and threw the magazine on the counter. "You're the one who sold this
Old Jean scratched his head through his beret. Around us everybody was silent.
As for me, I was dying, pilloried and exposed to the glare of the crowd, burning with
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"We'll see about that," my mother said before dragging me out of the store
business relations that only became clear to me several years later. The following
morning, instead of going to school, I was taken to a precinct near the Opera where
the formidable Ferrandi interrogated me and issued his verdict: my police record
I had no reason to suspect that the whole charade had been staged by my
mother, and wouldn't have been in the least surprised had I been handcuffed, shackled,
and sent off to a far-away penitentiary. The official notices and pictures of wanted
criminals on the walls, the uniformed cops, the steel furniture, the smell of cold
tobacco, all the details of this horrible moment are forever engraved in my memory. I
can still feel the commissioner's hand pressing my fingers down to register my little
prints.
From that day on, I took a longer route to school in order to avoid walking by
the bookstore where I had been branded by shame. When my mother happened to
accompany me however, she pretended to ignore the terror that had me turn right upon
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"Victor! What are you doing? You know very well that this is the shorter way."
I died as I walked at her side, staring down at the sidewalk, knowing full well that she
would soon slow down and pretend to develop an interest in the books and magazines
in Monsieur Jean's window. Sometimes she would suggest, "Let's go in. Maybe they
still have last week's Paris-Match." I shriveled and fought to free my hand. Always in
vain.
Years later, a middle-aged man now, conjuring up these memories still make
me shake. Only a few weeks ago, I walked down the street of my childhood. From
afar I saw the bookstore illuminated by a new neon sign. A new management, to be
sure. My whole being refused to go another step further, and I turned around.
expected so much, a day I even sometimes looked forward to and which, I'm
I finish shaving; I reach for the bottle of lotion. My most ordinary gestures are
solemn. In the mirror, I see the charcoal-gray suit, the white shirt, and the black tie.
For years I convinced myself that this day would set me free. I would be sad, I
thought, full of remorse no doubt, but liberated. It is not happening and the past is
stubborn. I might as well make peace with it, extend my hand and smile, hoping that it
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I am fond of the little boy I was and cherish those years of exquisite sexual
torment in spite of the misery that came with them. Adulthood allowed me to satisfy
my cravings, but never again did I feel the juice of the forbidden fruit moisten my lips
and run down my chin. Never again did I savor its sweetness, a taste I owed as much
to the priests of the École Saint Jean-Baptiste as to my parents who, I always believed,
Sex was never discussed at home and when my sister indulged in her med
student humor, she was quickly silenced. "Lucie, please! Not that! Your brother!" Did
it never occur to my parents that the brother in question had nothing but THAT on his
mind? One evening, having found a Larousse dictionary open at the letter "V" under
my bed, my mother grilled me as she knew so well how to do: "What are you looking
Yes, I'd like to be a vagabond when I grow up." My mother sat down on the edge of
my bed. "A vagabond! My poor Victor! Is that what you want to be? A drifter? Won't
you ever have any kind of ambition in you? A vagabond, an object of contempt!
Wouldn't you rather be a great lawyer or a great scientist?" Why did she always
entertain dreams of greatness for a son she despised and tormented so relentlessly?
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As soon as my mother left the room, I aimed my torch lamp at the dictionary.
A few entries below vagabond was vagina. The words I was discovering overwhelmed
me. I could stare for hours at the little black signs on the page. They set my
imagination afire and pointed toward other mysteries: passage leading to the uterus
from the vulvatheir mere presence under my eyes quickened my heartbeat. Those
printed letters had a hypnotic power. I cannot feel it anymore, but I remember how
On the fringe of such a sinful universe, a princess reigned over my heart. Her
name was Sophie. De Marennes de Lucet, if you please. She lived two floors below us
and was in every way out of my reach, but there was no place for realism in my life.
Sophie was at least five years older than me, a generation at that age, and her beauty
left me breathless. With her swan-like neck and almond-shaped eyes, she reminded me
of Audrey Hepburn whose "Roman Holiday" I had seen three times. Like her, Sophie
was a princess running free among the hoi polloi before returning to her palace.
Whenever we found ourselves together in the elevator, I knew I didn't exist for her.
Her nod in answer to my stuttered hello was nothing more than the mechanical
acknowledgment of the humblest of her subjects. During a few brief moments, I was
allowed to breathe the same air as her. From her point of view, all I did was pollute it.
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humiliated, hoping that no one would inquire about my red face. Later, seated at my
little desk, some school manual open before me, I would relive those precious seconds
during which exhilaration and frustration had inhabited me. I could see Sophie's
delicate profile as she looked up at the floor numbers and the nape of her neck when
she had turned her back to me. If I had been tempted to extend my hand toward her
then, it would have been pure and unmitigated veneration, the gesture of a pilgrim
My head between my hands, looking very much like the studious pupil, I
staged in my mind our next encounter. Having arrived first, I would stand facing the
elevator and pretend to take notice of Sophie de Marennes de Lucet only at the very
last minute. Stepping back, I would then sweep the ground with an imaginary
musketeer's feathered hat. Or I could be somewhat aloof and just say, "Hi, there!" My
finger on the button panel, I'd say, "Fourth floor, I believe?" as if there had been a
doubt in my mind. Leaning against the wall, ankles crossed, I would toss a few coins
in my hand, all coolness. Accustomed as she certainly was to suitors down on their
Never, not once in the five years during which we shared the same address,
was I able to utter two intelligible words in the presence of Sophie de Marennes de
Lucet. I was ten when we moved into the Avenue Mozart apartment and fifteen when
the de Marennes de Lucets moved out, headed, no doubt, for a residence more suited
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Such was the purity of my feelings toward my princess that I took to exploiting
her presence in my life during my Saturday morning confessions. The Fathers had
scheduled the purification ritual on the last day of the week to guarantee us a spotless
soul for the Sunday morning communion. At first, I sincerely attempted to keep away
the lustful thoughts that haunted me; it was only twenty-four hours, surely it could be
done. Never did I succeed. Therefore, if I summoned Sophie's image in the oppressive
darkness of the confession booth while wiggling uncomfortably, it was in order to lie
more than just a holy concern for my soul. Full of understanding for the sloth and
many lapses which constituted my weekly account, he showed far more concern for
what he called the "impure thoughts." When such dreams began to visit me, I
confessed to them. At the time, my resolve to fight Satan was such that I honestly
believed I could win the battle. Soon enough the enemy's power overwhelmed my
and embarrassed by the frequency of my defeats, I decided to ignore the matter, pure
and simple. If God loved me as much as they said He did, then He would have to take
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Week after week, Father Minot attempted to catch me out and bombarded me
with questions. Did I think about girls sometimes; did I ever try to imagine their
bodies (was he serious?) was I tempted to touch myself where...you know...where one
shouldn't? No, Father. Never! This tone of absolute sincerity I owed to Sophie whose
image accompanied me in the confession booth. With Father Minot's each question, I
focused intensely on our most recent encounter in the elevator. All I had to do was
evoke her hair flowing down her swan-like neck or her delicate fingers when she had
pushed the door, and my soul instantly became immaculate. If there was a body under
her blouse and skirt, it could not conceivably generate the depraved thoughts that
other women did. Thinking only of Sophie at confession, I wasn't even guilty of lying,
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CHAPTER TWO
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puberty in our 9th grade class? Most probably, but I felt different. While many
invented a love life for themselves and recounted their imaginary exploits, I was
happy exploring alone the wild forest of my obsessions. They would talk of this or that
girl at the neighboring high school who had gone all the way. ALL THE WAY! Oh, the
mystery of those words! Another girl was easy; she "wanted it." One had only to see
how she looked in our direction. A whore, a slut! I can still see their lips move as they
Those tales fascinated me and I envied their assurance, but we didn't live in the
same world. Besides, something else set us apart: while my schoolmates were unruly
and bursting with energy, I dozed through the classes. Father Vincent, the vice-
mother wouldn't have trusted a regular doctorand I was forced to swallow daily
spoonfuls of a lemon-flavored syrup. I wasn't at all ill; all I needed was sleep. How
could I have told the great specialist that I was leading the life of a night watchman,
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The nocturnal visions for which I lived conflicted sharply with school hours.
Having left my curtains half-open, I'd lie in darkness waiting for a window to light up
or a ray of light to appear under a door. Lucie worked hard into the night in the
neighboring room. I could hear the chalk run on the blackboard across the wall as she
lined up her cabalistic formulas. When the noise of drawers being shut and the rattling
of her chair announced the much-awaited moment, I'd rush to the door and put my eye
to the keyhole. Sometimes, I thought that my sister was looking in my direction. She
even seemed to smile at me as she took off her blouse, unhooked her braher breasts
were tiny, with flat nipples so pale I could hardly see themstepped out of her
corduroy pants and finally, at long last, took off her panties. What a beautiful sight!
She tousled her red bush with the tip of her fingers and ran a nail along her perfectly
shaven triangle. She then paraded in the nude for a moment, offering herself to me,
disappearing for a few seconds, coming back as if for an encore, then stepping away
again to finally appear wearing a knee-long shirt. She then went to our bathroom. For
Janine, the maid, was less predictable. Blonde and twenty, twenty-five years
old at the most, she had eyes the color of porcelain and her skin was as rosy and bright
as that of a piglet. She put on airs as if she was innocence incarnate, but often returned
to her room at dawn. The following day was hard for both of us. She never suspected
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Janine's room across the street was one floor below mine. All I could see of her
was a headless body and that was perfectly fine by me. All night long, I struggled to
stay awake, waiting for the rectangle of yellow light to come on. I would then jump to
my feet and aim the telescope that was supposed to foster my interest in astrology. I
remember being torn between resentment and anticipation. I was angry with Janine for
the sleepless night, but I also knew that she wouldn't worry about privacy at this early
hour. Surrounded by blind windows, certain to be alone in the world, she didn't bother
When Janine walked around, I could see her from her feet up to the middle of
her breasts. Her thighs were thick and her belly fat, but my eyes were glued to the pale
bush, light as a chick's down. Sometimes, she would sit on the edge of her bed, facing
me, and rub her tired feet. When I first caught a glimpse of the darker pink flesh deep
And, of course, there was the fear, the terror. Any moment, the door could
burst open and my mother would surprise me. She would scream, hurl insults, and
remind me of how vile a creature I was. She would turn to God and ask Him what she
had done to deserve such a despicable son. And deep down, I would agree. I was bad,
hopelessly bad.
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I often wished I could hate my mother, for life would have been easier, or so I
fantasized. And yet, as corrupt and misguided as it was, some kind of love against
which I was utterly powerless united us, I knew it. Whenever I was choked with tears
of pain or rage and a wave of anger swept me, each time I longed for revenge, some
perturbed than the horror against which I was slowly learning to defend myself.
No memory can better illustrate this confusion than that of the New Year's Eve
that my mother and I spent by ourselves. "Like two lovers," as she said in a moment of
grandmother, was also there, but, as she was first to admit, she counted for nothing. I
was twelve that year and my father, who had been sent to Canada by his company, was
snowbound by a storm. On the telephone, he had described the wild New Year's Eve
he was getting ready for, munching snacks in front of the TV in his airport hotel room.
As for Lucie, she was skiing down the slopes somewhere in the Alps. Janine had gone
silence, smoking cigarette after cigarette, furiously brushing the ashes off her robe,
prostrate for a while on the couch and then jumping up the next minute to walk from
room to room as if looking for something of utmost import. Around noon, she opened
a bottle of Johnny Walker. My grandmother was biting her lower lip and rolling her
As soon as I finished my yogurt at the lunch table, I pushed back my chair, but
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democratic spirit. "Would you like to go to a restaurant tonight or would you rather
have the New Year's Eve dinner here? I could buy some oysters or foie gras and, of
It was exciting: "I'd like to go to a restaurant, Maman. There's one near the
subway station; they have a special menu for tonight. I see it every morning."
"No! That isn't good enough. What I had in mind was a three-star restaurant."
I jumped with joy: "I'd like that even better!" Without a precise knowledge of
During the few moments it took my mother to crumple her empty pack of Pall
Mall into a ball, take a new one out of a carton, tear it open and finally burn her
fingers with a match, I observed how her face changed. In only seconds, and for some
mysterious reason, her chin became heavy, the edges of her mouth dropped, wrinkles
appeared on her brow, and her eyes became dull, almost dead.
The mask.
"Don't be silly. We'll pretend it's a day like any other day. There's some ham in
the fridge and pasta from yesterday. We'll have cookies and jam for dessert. This way,
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At that precise moment, the telephone rang, allowing me to blow my nose and
wipe my tears without being called a capricious wimp. From my mother's words, I
understood that Mrs. Wilson, our new downstairs neighbor, who had learned from the
concierge about my father being trapped in Canada "by the storm they showed on
TV", was inviting us to share their New Year's Eve dinner. My parents didn't socialize
with this recently relocated American family, but I knew that the father worked at the
American embassy, Place de la Concorde, and that the two sons, broad-shouldered
mystified to hear my mother answer, "This is very kind of you, Madame Wilson, but
we're having a big party tonight and I'm not about to call it off just because my
husband isn't around." Then, after a silence, she concluded, "Very well. Why don't we
do this one of these days? Me too. And thank you again. Happy New Year to you too,
Madame Wilson."
My mother hung up and exclaimed, "I don't believe these people! We hardly
know each other and she'd like us to spend the evening with them. What was she
thinking?"
I don't have precise memories of the afternoon that followed. I do know that I
was given permission to go and see a movie, a forgettable western. And yet, I can still
see myself, staring at the New Year's Eve windows filled with delicacies, foie gras,
smoked salmon, caviar and, of course, the incredibly mouth-watering cakes. I kept
hearing what my mother had said"To morrow morning, it will be Thursday, whether
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When I returned home, late afternoon, I was shocked to discover the apartment
parents owned as lighting devices had been plugged in and switched on. My mother
was down on her knees in front of the stereo. "Ah! There you are at last!" she
exclaimed, "I need your help. We must have some music, something to dance to. Why
don't you look into these records? Make yourself useful for once."
She rose, took my hand, and led me to the sofa, where we both sat down. Her
voice was joyous. Her eyes, so dull and dark when I had left, were now sparkling like
the sky on a summer night. "Don't tell me you have forgotten," she said. "We're having
a big party tonight with dozens of guests. That's what I told Madame Wilson. We need
to stage it."
"Stage it?"
"You don't want your mother to be called a liar, do you? Look, I already took
care of the lighting. This candelabrum, here, I don't know if you noticed, I found it in
the basement. You're in charge of the music. And there are thousands of other things
"Like what?"
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Full of excitement as I had seldom seen her, my mother laid out her plan. She
had thought of everything, from the up and down rides I would have to take in the
elevator"Don't forget to slam the door as hard as you can!" to the carpets that had
to be rolled up to let our heels make more noise and the cries with which we were
going to welcome the New Year at midnight. "But Maman...there's only the two of
us."
"Still!"
I vividly remember that "my darling," for it was followed by a hug, during
which my mother pressed my face against her bosom and stroked the back of my
neck. I can still feel her fingers. Then she jumped to her feet and ordered, "Now go
"First, you might very well meet somebody in the elevator. Second, and much,
much more importantly, never forget that there's no theater without costumes and
I was game. "Like it's going to be the most beautiful New Year's Eve party in
"Good! Now you understand everything, my little Victor. But first, we have to
"What packages?"
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"Victor! Please use your brain. The guests will bring presents. We have to
prepare the wrappings, the ribbons, all the stuff we'll throw out in the trash later on.
And by the way, why don't you go to the basement where your father keeps the empty
"But Dad always says he wants to return the empties to his friend in Rheims."
For one moment, my mother looked at me sternly, but I wasn't scared, for I
"There are times in life where you have to make exceptions and break the
rules, Victor." Then she started unrolling a spool of bright silver ribbon, saying, "Get
All these years I have kept in my mind a collection of vignettes from that
evening which none of the disappointments, tears, or punishments that were my daily
fare can ever erase. I still see my mother laughing loudly between forkfuls of spaghetti
and ham, waving her hand at me to orchestrate my cries and laughter while Bonne
Maman stubbornly refused to play along and kept rolling her eyes, muttering to
herself.
I can feel the floor shake while my mother drew me into a dance around the
living room to the sounds of the blaring stereo. She looked gorgeous in her midnight-
blue taffeta evening gown. I remember how we dragged the chairs on the floor and
jumped up and down. I can still taste the sweet orange flavor of the mixture of mineral
water and Cointreau that made my head spin and had me giggle. I can hear the dozens
“Bonne Année, Bonne Santé. Happy New Year! Merci Monsieur et Madame!"
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But the most vivid memory, the one that always stopped me from hating my
mother, was the way she looked at me while we were laughing. She loved me that
night as much as I adored her, and nothing will make me believe otherwise. In fact,
after I had traveled up and down in the elevator well after midnight while my mother
kept calling, "Thank you for coming and drive safely and Bonne Année again!" she
took my hand and led me to the couch, where she sat me on her lap and whispered,
Without leaving me time to repeat my question, she said, "I called you my
lambkin, because that's what you are. Mine and no one else's." And then she added -
word for word, I swear - "I only have one lambkin. Lucie's not even my daughter, but
"You must understand one thing," she added. "You're the only real love of my
life. Nobody, you hear me, nobody, will ever love you the way I do. You must believe
me."
"I do."
"And that's why I must watch out for you, make sure you don't fall into the
Her voice was shrill all of a sudden, and I heard the intonations I had learned
to fear.
"You're weak, Victor. It's my job to protect you. I know their kind. Sluts."
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Between these words of love and the wild imprecations, I was utterly lost. The
She had been sleeping, too, and her mascara circled her eyes, making her look like an
The following morning, the first day of the year, Bonne Maman and I had
breakfast by ourselves. My mother wasn't feeling well, I was told. I wanted to bring
her a cup of coffee, but she wouldn't let me in. When she finally did come out, late
afternoon, disheveled in her robe, and I ran toward her, she froze me dead in my tracks
with her glare. The lambkin had lived only a few hours.
A woman smiles at me amidst the memories of those years. Her name was
Mireille, and she was some thirty years older than me. Sometimes, I think that she
may be dead now, or worse, an invalid in a wheel chair. I hate to think of her that way.
In my memory, she's very much alive. I recently found a photograph she gave me. On
it she's seated on a stone wall by a river and wears a light cotton dress. Her smile is
quizzical and she waves at the camera. I must not lie to myself: with her bland
features, her fat nose and frizzy hair, Mireille was not pretty, I can see it now, but I
was blinded by the sun that shone for me under that dress. At the back of the picture,
she had written: To Victor, my lovely sex maniac. Enjoy it, for it won't last. Soon, you'll
be a grown up.
Mireille was wrong. I grew up and even reached middle age, but I didn't really
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CHAPTER THREE
My father had two faces. One, cheerful, all smiles, always with a friendly word
and a joke at the ready, was reserved for his clients. I met some of those when he
called on hotel managers on the way to our family vacations, to "stoke the fire," as he
liked to say. The other, distant and stern, he saved for his family. When I summon my
father's memory, I see him sitting ramrod-straight in his leather armchair, eerily still,
like a wax museum exhibit, his Figaro open on his lap at the page of domestic
politicsthe Algerian war, most likely. He's chewing on the tip of his spectacles and
stares at the ice cubes in his glass. The glass in question is made of finely-chiseled
crystal and engraved with the coat of arms of the Ritz hotel, a memento from his first
professional success. It's the only one from which he drinks his daily scotch on the
rocks. Nobody else is allowed to use it, and it must be hand-washed by his wife. Such
is the law.
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My mother never confided in me, but I spent enough hours watching her to
know that she cried frequently. I remember her one day having criticized one of
Lucie's friends for leaving the parental nest to live with a jazz pianist who "couldn't
even offer her a decent lifestyle." I heard my sister snap back, "A decent lifestyle!
That's what you married Dad for, isn't it? So why don't you let other people take a shot
at happiness instead?" From the shadow of the corridor where I was standing, I
expected another of my mother's angry outbursts, but when I saw her bow her head
silently and bury her face in her hands, I wanted to run and hold her in my arms. I was
hotels and hospitals. When my mother complained about his silence, he'd answer that
he had just been smiling for a living on the roads of France. He expected the family he
was working so hard to feed, to show some degree of understanding. Was peace at
mother sometimes fought back. I had the misfortune of being a witness one evening
when she went on the attack and insisted on knowing what my father could possibly
see in his glass. "I'm lost in my thoughts," he answered without looking up.
"One wonders how you can get lost," my mother snickered. I couldn't refrain
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When it came to Lucie, his daughter from a first marriage, my father was ready
to forgive anything. In his eyes she was nothing short of perfect and he shared the
credit with his saintly late wife. "You only find a woman like her once in your life,"
he'd say. Such statements were the matrimonial equivalent of billiards; they allowed
For his son, he showed nothing but contempt. When he wasn't ignoring me
anything. To him I was a wanker, an epithet I admittedly deserved to the fullest extent.
What my father meant, though, was that I was a totally worthless individual.
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And yet, there must have been happy times. In an attempt to convince myself
of it, I spent hours poring through the photos in our family albums. Pictures can lie, I
know, but those images sometimes bring back memories of laughter and even
tenderness. There were few such moments, to be sure, but I want to believe they
existed. They remind me of a time when my mother allowed me to sleep in her bed
when I had nightmares and my father was away on business. I was eleven, twelve
We didn't cuddle, that wasn't my mother's style, but I'd inch toward her as soon as she
started to snore softly and I felt loved. Those romantic interludes came to an abrupt
end when, one night, I undertook to explore the warm body lying next to me. With
finally reached the top of her thighs. My heart was pounding; I was in a state of apnea.
When I finally put my fingers on the soft and curly tuft, several thousand volts went
through me and I jumped so violently that my mother woke up and switched on the
lamp at her side. She never suspected my misdeed, but after wondering why I was
feverish and damp with sweat, she noticed the wet stain on my pajamas and started
screaming, "It's disgusting! You had one of those filthy dreams again. That's really all
you have on your dirty mind, isn't it? I don't want you in my bed ever again."
trickery wasn't available at the time, I must accept this aberration. In another photo I
stand next to Lucie. My sister who usually ignored me and referred to me as "him"
when she really had to include me has her hand on my shoulder. Go figure!
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Page after page, I was struck by the fact that those mementos of family
happiness have all vacation locations as backgrounds. And, in fact, it was in St. Briac
one summer that I met Mireille. As the expression goes, she could easily have been
my mother and in a way she was, for she too brought me into the world.
where we were vacationing like every other summer. Her husband was a massive bear
of a man whose back was covered with a fur so thick that when he went into the
ocean, he looked like he had forgotten to undress. An officer at the Caen air base, he
Mireille always sat on the same spot in an aluminum folding chair just above
the few square feet of sand my parents claimed as their own. Covered with sunscreen,
my mother waited for an unlikely ray of sun while my father read detective stories.
Lucie was somewhere with her friends. As for me, I was bored to death.
The water was gray and cold, the weather dull, distractions were few. I had a
companion in my misery, a boy from Lyons named Jeannot with whom I sometimes
played ping-pong and swapped comic books, but he wasn't around much because his
parents liked to take him for drives around the countryside. He didn't seem to have
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Sometimes I went alone for long walks along the beach, jumping from rock to
rock. My favorite pastime consisted of imagining myself changing the world through
extraordinary discoveries. Among them, a powder that, sprayed over the clouds, would
dissolve them. Brittany would have been my first customer. I also thought of a remote-
their memories; I would immediately jump to the top of the class. My favorite
invention was a special kind of sunglasses allowing one to see through women's
bathing suits. For some complicated technical reason, this optical breakthrough had no
knows that.
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representing a Paris métro ticket when, raising my eyes, I saw Mireille looking at me.
She was seated in her usual chair, her hands flat on her knees, wearing a yellow
cardigan and a white skirt with a flowery design. She was drawing circles in the sand
with the tip of her toe. Did she see lust in my eyes? Did she notice how they were
trying to make their way under her skirt, or was it my imagination? Did I read an
invitation in her smile, I don't remember. Be that as it may, we allowed our eyes to
meet, disengage, and then meet again, not unlike fencers in their initial exchanges.
Finally our eyes locked. My heart pounded, I was short of breath. Nothing in the
world mattered, except for the narrow corridor of space between us. Then, after an
unbearably long moment, her smile changed in a very subtle way, becoming
deliciously mischievous. A strange light came on in her eyes. Without moving her
hands, she put her fingers to workthey moved like the legs of a spiderpulling her
skirt up a few millimeters at a time until its hem finally reached her knees. I was
petrified. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she then opened her legs, revealing first the
inner side of her knees, then her thighs, until she finally let me see her panties. I don't
know if she was still smiling, for my eyes were glued to this narrow white strip at the
heartbeat reverberated through it. Common sense tells me today that this episode
cannot have lasted more than one or two minutes. Patrons of the hotel, heroic bathers
coming out of the ocean, must have walked by, and she certainly did not remain with
her legs wide apart in front of a crimson-faced boy for long, but that moment of total
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fascination burned itself so deeply into my memory that I don't recall it having ended.
From that day on, and until the end of the week, Mireille and I became
inseparable. I still didn't know her name, and we hadn't exchanged a word, but each
time I raised my eyes from my plate in the dining room, I could see her smile in the
mirrors covering the kitchen doors. We were then the actors of a psychedelic show for
our reflections kept swinging to the kicks of the tray-carrying waiters. I would catch a
glimpse of her smiling lips, then hear a foot kick the door and was immediately
Our ocular flirtation went on at the beach as well. When it became too much to
bear, I would sigh heavily and rise, yawn loudly, stretch my arms, hamming it up,
pockets, I whistled a tune and kicked shells by the water's edge. I hoped she would
follow me and that we would meet behind a rock or somewhere in the dunes, but she
never did. When I came back, she would be there in her chair with the same
back. When Mireille walked by me, her hand in her husband's without so much as a
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We were finishing our breakfast on the hotel deck. My father had rented a
fishing boat complete with equipment and captain for the day and was waiting for the
lunch basket he had ordered when I ventured a question, which had been on my mind
First, there was a moment of silence, then my sister burst into laughter before
being interrupted by the sound of my father's fist on the table. Cups and saucers flew
"And you, Yvonne, don't you have anything to say?" my father barked at my
mother.
"I don't know what to do about him," she sighed, "Boarding school, that's the
only solution."
"Well, I'll tell you what," the head of the family declared. "These two won't
come with us to day. Lucie, how many times have I told you not to let your brother
read your medical books? And you, little swine, that'll teach you to keep your mouth
clean."
Having spoken, my father stood up, signaled for my mother to take the basket
that had just arrived, and headed for the harbor, unconcerned by the fact that they were
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"I really don't care," my sister said as she pushed back her chair. "I don't like
sailing anyway and besides, I'd rather spend the day with my friends. Tell you one
I watched Lucie walk away and went down the stairs leading to the beach
where, seated on the sand, I contemplated the rest of the day. I wasn't any more
frustrated than my sister about the loss of the maritime expedition, but still, it was
going to be a long day. Not that my parents provided much distraction, but their
presence and routines marked the passage of time like a Swiss cuckoo clock. My
boredom had taken a new dimension. I was pondering my situation when a voice
I turned around. Mireille wore, I'll never forget it, a purple and yellow dress
"I heard everything, you know. I was having breakfast just behind you.
Personally, I think it's normal to want to understand things. A young man your age is
"Victor."
"Seventeen."
Never had a lie been told with more spontaneity. I cannot imagine for one
second that Mireille believed me, but she was kind enough to pretend.
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"My name's Mireille," she said. "I, too, am alone. Would you like us to spend
I looked down. Suddenly I had lost my voice. My cheeks and forehead were
afire.
"Or if you prefer, I could show you the books I brought here for the holidays.
I felt like I was trapped in one of those amusement park huge drums that spin
at a zillion rotations per minute. We were gaining speed and the centrifugal force was
"Would you like to come and have a look at them in my room this afternoon?
I was stuck against the wall of the infernal machine. My temples were
throbbing, my head was about to explode any moment and my eardrums were going to
burst. I didn't have the strength to raise my eyes or utter a single word. When I finally
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It was exactly two o'clock when I knocked at Mireille's door. I had spent the
lunch hour walking along the water's edge, struggling to control the surge of emotions
that overcame me. I knew that I was getting perilously close to the abyss. I was torn
between panic and the call of the unknown, an indescribable exaltation. When the first
cosmonauts neared the moon and looked at the planet earth, a far-away blue ball,
when they realized that mankind's dream was about to come true and that the world
would forever be different, they cannot have been, I am not afraid to say, more
Mireille had changed into a pink skirt with large tropical flowers and a flimsy
eggshell blouse, under which I could see her breasts sway and their dark brown
nipples jut out. She had made herself up: her eyelids were dark and her mouth red. A
fist squeezed my throat. As I stood paralyzed at the door, she extended her hand,
which I shook feebly, muttering a hardly audible bonjour, and she pulled me inside her
room.
"Don't stand there." she said, "We don't need to share our little secret with the
letterswhile, from the corner of my eye, I could see Mireille, seated on the corner of
the bed.
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Before even looking toward Sodom, I had turned into a statue of salt. I shook
my head.
"How about sitting here then? Isn't it time for us to get to know each other?"
I sat down where her red-nailed hand was patting the bed cover.
"Your room is larger than mine," I said, staring ahead. My words sounded like
the caw of a crow. Mireille didn't answer and let the silence hang in the room for what
seemed like an eternity. Then I felt her hand take mine and pull it gently toward one of
her breasts where she let it rest. Never had I imagined such sweetness. The warmth of
this breast, its weight, its soft firmness took me totally by surprise. To feel its hard
nipple in the center of my palm made me feel sick with bliss. Slowly but firmly,
Mireille slid my hand under her blouse. Skin against skin. I was close to fainting. And
when her hand left mine to rest on my penis, which was stretching the front of my
shorts, I started shaking like a leaf in the wind. Never before, in my most torrid
"Why don't you take off your shirt?" Mireille suggested. "You'll be more
comfortable."
I nodded, mute as well as paralyzed. She was standing in front of me now. Her
smile was the same as the first day on the beach. A few buttons later, she brought her
naked breasts a couple of inches from my face. They were heavy, somewhat sagging,
today I know it, but so wonderfully magnificent. Then she let her skirt drop at her feet
and I saw that she was nude. I had seen pubic mounds during hundreds of night
watches, but this one was being offered to me. I only had to raise my hand to touch its
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As I struggled to free my head from my polo shirt, I felt Mireille's nails run on
my chest. When I finally emerged, she unzipped my shorts and pulled my briefs down.
Then she lay down and, spreading her legs, opened her arms. I felt terribly clumsy as I
let her guide me like a dancer on his first night on the ballroom floor. Incapable of any
conscious thought, I shook with a violent spasm as soon as our bellies touched and
collapsed, shaking, on her. I could feel her stomach under mine, wet and sticky. When
the last aftershock waves had finally subsided, I attempted to get up, sad and
embarrassed, aware as I was that I had in some way failed, but Mireille held me down
and stroked the back of my neck with the tip of her fingers. Then she said softly,
"Well, at least that's a question you won't have to ask your dad anymore!"
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CHAPTER FOUR
My transformation didn't escape my mother's keen eye. Upon returning from the
maritime expedition, she bombarded me with questions. "What have you been doing
today? You look sick ... And how come you're not hungry? Finish your potatoes! And
show me your hands. Are you sure you washed them before dinner?"
I remained mute and kept my eyes down. I wanted to keep Mireille's scent on
After dinner I left the dining room and went for a solitary walk. Mireille's seat at
her usual table was empty; she hadn't come down for dinner. As I reached the door
Jeannot ran after me, wanting to swap comic books. I ignored him. Couldn't this
Mireille had warned me that our afternoon in heaven wouldn't be repeated - "I'll
be going back home soon," she had said. "It's just as well."
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Still, I hoped against hope that another miracle would reunite us. Awake at night
in bed, hands crossed under my head, I imagined my parents being summoned back to
Paris to take care of some crisis - a fire at home maybe or my father's business
suddenly bankrupt, I wasn't shy about the cause of their departure. Lucie and I would
then be left alone for several days at the Hôtel du Promontoire. I saw myself sneaking
out of my room and running into Mireille's arms. The words "night of passion"
fascinated me; they evoked a new dimension in sensual discovery. I couldn't really see
why or how nocturnal ecstasy could be that different, but so many songs had been
Unfortunately Mireille had been right. Coming down to the lobby one morning
to buy my father's Figaro, I saw her on the sidewalk, dressed for travel, overseeing the
loading of two suitcases into the trunk of a taxi. As the driver held the rear door open
for her, she turned around and saw me. After glancing toward the upstairs windows,
she brought two fingers to her lips and blew a kiss in my direction. Several minutes
after the white taxi had turned the corner, I remained at the top of the stairs, unable to
take my eyes away from the spot where the first woman of my life had waved good-
bye. "You will know many women and forget most of them," she had said, "but I can
assure you that you'll always remember me. When you're a very old man, you'll still
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Back home in Paris, I realized how deeply my life had changed. As I stood,
suitcase in hand, at the door of my room, I surveyed the striped wall paper, the beige
curtain with its ink stain in the shape of Cyrano's nose, the bed, the cluttered desk, the
the map of Europe on one wall, that of the Americas on another, the telescope. I saw
the familiar environment as a sort of measuring bar, like the one against which the
doctor at École Saint Jean-Baptiste had me stand twice a year. I had undoubtedly
grown up.
Later, when I heard Lucie close her drawers and prepare for the night, I rushed
to my observation post. But as I watched her move about through the keyhole at which
I had spent so many hours, I realized that the magic was gone. I had certainly not
grown tired of the flaming red triangle, but it no longer represented the sum of my
obsessions. The veil had been lifted off the mystery; my appetite was different: more
vacation memories. As always the boundary between reality and fable was thin. Not
once was I tempted to mention Mireille. I still hadn't reached my fourteenth birthday,
but part of me felt out of place among this group. I found those boasts tedious.
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As for my mother, she was watching me more closely than ever. Her antennae,
whose accuracy she often praised, warned her of the imminent peril of losing her son.
I was the object of her passion, as well as the target of her persecutions. She needed
me, I can see it now. She would circle me like a tiger does her prey, watching my body
language, my reactions. Across the dinner table, her lips pinched, her eyes narrow
slits, she kept casting glances at my father as if to say, “Watch your son. Don't you see,
My father however, either ignored her or simply shrugged his shoulders. His
newspaper folded next to his plate, the head of the family, as he liked to call himself,
was only interested in "the situation". General Massu was getting Algiers under
control; the Fellaghas would have to run for their lives. There were rumors that de
ready to give up; she was smelling blood. Sometimes she would enter my room and
aim her glare at me. "Don't you think you can hide anything from me," she would hiss
before leaving. I knew that she was standing behind the door, her ear glued to the
***
Returning from the St. Jean-Baptiste chapel, one Saturday morning, with a
partly purified soul, I found my mother seated at my little desk. The carpet under her
feet was white with cigarette ash. The mess in my room wasn't mine, she had searched
the premises; I saw it immediately. Her eyes were ablaze. I wanted to turn heels and
run.
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"Sit down," she said, pointing her chin at my bed, above which a crucifix
watched over my improbable salvation. "We have to talk. Did you confess?"
"Yes, Maman."
"You've changed a lot lately and not for the better, I'm sorry to say. Your father
"Don't you dare lying to me, Victor! You're just back from confession. You are
still very young and need our advice. We are your parents and we have a duty."
What was she getting at? I had been lying low since our return from Brittany,
"It's all good and well that you confess your sins at St. Jean-Baptiste, but the
truth is, your parents are the ones who need to know of your misdeeds. It’s the only
I nodded silently. I saw only too clearly what she had in mind.
"Very good! From now on, each and every week, you will tell me what you
confessed to Father Minot. Then we'll be able to talk about it and draw conclusions.
For your own good, you understand. Actually, we're going to start today. I remind you
that you cannot lie to me, even by omission, since you will take communion
Quite satisfied with her plan, she lit up a cigarette with the stub of the previous
one.
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There was turmoil in my head. I was trapped. God, the church, my mother, the
communion, mortal sins, Baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary; it was all too much. I felt
utterly helpless.
"So?"
Never before had I resisted my mother. Where the strength to hold my ground
came from, I don't know, possibly from the vague understanding that the dice were
loaded.
"I'm waiting."
My mother was shocked! Her jaw slacked, she leaned forward and drilled her
stare into me, as if wanting to make sure she had heard correctly. Soon however, her
eyes lit up with excitement, for she was back on familiar ground, that of repression.
"Repeat what you just said. Did you say, ‘No Maman?’"
As I remained silent, she rose, leaning forward, her hands flat on my desk.
"Very well, you leave me no choice. You still don't understand that your father
and I only want to raise you as well as we possibly can. Since you won't allow us to do
that, I will cancel your weekly allowance. And I won't buy you those new soccer
shoes."
"But Maman, the old ones are too small now. We must change them."
"We must! Don't you tell me what we must do. A son must tell his mother
And with those words, she slammed the door shut behind her.
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In the past, I had had more than my share of punishment and had suffered worse
injustices. This incident however, pushed me into passive resistance and I decided not
***
Spring came late that year. Low clouds and icy rain formed an appropriate
background to the state of prostration in which I buried myself. Neither sermons, nor
threats, nor inducements had any impact on me. My silence drove my mother crazy,
but her outbursts of rage only reinforced my resolve what other weapon did I have?
At school, I was only physically present and slid down deep into an abyss of
mediocrity.
The cold war had its climax on my fourteenth birthday. Seeing an opportunity,
my mother opted for a sharp change of strategy. Having declared a day of festivities,
she put on airs that, according to Lucie, made for the worst piece of acting ever
"My son is fourteen," she kept repeating. "Twice the age of reason, no longer a
child. We have to celebrate." Urged to join in, my father groaned behind his Figaro,
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The best table linen and china were taken out for the occasion. My mother
isolation. I felt like one of those World War I poilus Bonne Maman had told me
abouther older brother had been killed at VerdunI too was spending a long and
cold winter in the trenches. The more advances my mother made, the deeper I
retreated behind my wall of silence, watching coldly as her smile became more
Over foie gras, my mother suggested spending the Easter holidays in the Alps,
but her glowing description of the snowy slopes only triggered a polite nod. Stealing a
glance at her from time to time, I watched how her face carved itself deeply while her
cheekbones reddened with each glass of the Bordeaux in which she sought a boost of
energy. My sister was tense, looking up each time our mother's voice rose to the
higher octaves and became staccato. As for the head of the family, he was somewhere
Then came dessert time. My favorite chocolate cake and a beautifully wrapped
package were presented to me. As I blew out the fourteen candles and untied the
golden ribbon, my mother pushed her chair next to mine, her face close, much too
close. Her stare was vibrating like hot air on a summer day, filled with rage or despair,
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I opened the box. A beautiful stopwatch lay on a cushion of white satin. It was
shiny and had numerous dials and buttons. Almost every day for the past two years, I
had stopped on my way to or from school and admired it in the jeweler's window and I
wanted to jump up and hug my parents, assure them that I had never seen anything
more magnificent, that I loved them and would try to be a better son, but the wall I
had erected during these long winter weeks had grown too high. All I could muster
stopped. My father gazed at me over his spectacles. His raised eyebrow and thin smile
seemed to indicate that I fully deserved what was bound to follow. Lucie had pushed
her chair back and looked like she wanted to flee. My mother emptied her glass of
"That's all?" she said, putting the glass down, her voice toneless.
"I heard you. Thanks for nothing! That's all you have to say?"
"You're damn right you should thank me. I'm the one who convinced your father
not to say anything tonight about sending you to boarding school, I'll have you know."
"Why tell him now, then?" Lucie asked under her breath.
"We’ve decided to send you away next year. That'll teach you."
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"That is, if you don't pass your exams at the end of the school year," my father
said.
So, they had decided and the threat was finally going to be carried out. I didn't
know whether I was afraid of exile, frightened of the unknown, scared of the harsh
the escape.
Suddenly, I felt tired of the aggression. Strangely, it didn't matter anymore. "I
My mother's eyes narrowed, then she slapped me in the face with such strength
that I almost fell off my chair. And since I wasn't reacting, just wiping the tears that
had sprung from my eyes with the back of my hand, she grabbed my arm and ripped
the shiny watch from my wrist. She then ran to the window and opened it in a grand
theatrical gesture. For a moment, she dangled the watch in front of my eyes. "You
won't need this in reform school," she hissed before sending my birthday present out
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Lucie had buried her face in her hands. I was petrified. When my mother
grabbed my hair and pushed my face down into the chocolate cake, I didn't even fight
back. I thought I heard Lucie burst into tears, and the noise of her chair falling echoed
eyelashes my mother walk out and slam the door shut behind her.
that shook me had the same soothing effect as sobs. I went to the mirror on top of the
fireplace and saw a clown's face in my reflection. As I wiped away the brown
chocolate make-up, I uncovered the livid marks that my mother's fingers had left on
my cheek. The face I saw in the mirror was grotesque. I laughed and laughed, stopping
That fireplace brought back a memory. In a way, we had already lived this
evening's drama. Maybe that was the reason why I hadn't reacted more. It was on a
Christmas day. How old was I then? Seven, eight, perhaps. In the morning I had found
giant tin soldiers under the decorated tree, six commandos equipped with futuristic
weaponry. Four inches tall, they were splendid. I had spent the whole morning
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My crime that day had been to insist on bringing my soldiers to the lunch table.
Deaf to my mother's orders, I had laid them in front of me for review, three on each
side of my glass of milk. Suddenly, my mother had gone into a rage. I had watched,
incredulous, as she grabbed the tin soldiers and threw them into the fire. For several
minutes while I watched them twist and melt in the flames, I had refused to believe
that the disaster was really happening and it had taken me some time to finally burst
into sobs. The following night, I had awoken from a tears-induced sleep and sneaked
into the dining room. There I had fished the pieces of melted metal from the ashes.
I finished wiping my face with a napkin and sat in front of the fireplace. Oddly
enough, the loss of the beautiful stopwatch didn't really hurt. The memories of the tin
***
grandmother has hardly been included in my memories so far, in spite of the fact that
she lived with us. Bonne Maman was there on that horrible day, I know that, no doubt
muttering and shaking her white-haired head while the fracas was happening, but I
don't see her, and I wonder why. Does it have to do with the quasi-permanent silence
imposed on her by my father as a condition for her lodging? I have another theory: it
is easier for me to talk about my parents whom I associate with so few happy
smile I miss and who left a gaping void in me when she passed away.
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Bonne Maman Morel's house near Lille had burned down several years before.
One of the candles surrounding the coffin in which her dead husband lay had set fire
to the curtains while she was keeping a dozing vigil. Awakened by the smoke, she had
found herself surrounded by flames and had had to make a dash for the door, without
having the time to bid farewell to "Monsieur Morel," as she called her departed
husband. She was also deeply remorseful for having accidentally incinerated him
Homeless and deeply perturbed, Bonne Maman had found a temporary refuge
with my parents. The arrival of a check from the insurance company had prompted my
father to make an offer he too often qualified as honest to be trusted: he would invest
and manage his mother-in-law's money in exchange for permanent housing in the
room. For this lavish accommodation and food he would only charge a modest
contribution. Alone in the world and aimless, Bonne Maman had agreed, a decision
she often bitterly regretted. She didn't have the energy to reopen the debate, though.
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Through some genetic mystery, Bonne Maman Morel whose squat figureshe
was nearly as wide as she was tallevoked a barrel, had given birth to a slim woman
who grew up to be at least a foot and a half taller than her mother. My father's subtle
explanation had to do with a local mailman. I loved it when Bonne Maman hugged me
and held me tight. There was no fault line between her voluminous stomach and her
bosom and I liked to kiss the top of her head where the pale pink skin showed under
her thin white hair. I can still see her wink at me when a storm was brewing, and I
remember the pearls of wisdom she dispensed as a commentary on life's events when
She had a way with the French language, and served its words with little regard
for their official meaning. "I know what I mean," she would say whenever her
Yes, of course, she was there that day. I see her now, her chin shaking as it
always did in times of great emotion. I can hear her mutter, "Eh bah, eh bah!" an
expression of hers, used in relation to all kinds of unsettling facts in her life, chief
I remember now: I sneaked out of the apartment through the kitchen door and
climbed up the service staircase. Its wooden steps were carved in the center and
polished like the pebbles of the beaches in Brittany. Bonne Maman cleaned my
chocolate-filled ears and washed my hair in a tin basin. She asked me if my parents
were aware that I was visiting her, but shrugged before I had time to answer.
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Later, she pulled a metal suitcase from under her bed. In it was an old-fashioned
iron biscuit can, which in turn contained a steel deed box. Triple protection.
"When fire has struck once, it can strike again," she explained. "Just like the
Germans!" The deed box contained various personal papers and artifacts rescued from
the fire. Among them was my grandfather's old steel fob watch.
"It stopped when Monsieur Morel had his accident at the factory," Bonne
Maman explained. "It was in my apron pocket when the fire happened."
On the back of the watch, Leon Morel's name was engraved above solemn
words recognizing twenty-five years of diligent service with the Filatures Réunies.
"I want you to have it," my grandmother said. "It doesn't work anymore, but it's
dead accurate twice a day. That's more than you can say about those expensive
watches."
All these years, I have kept the precious present. Today, it lies on the table in the
living room, next to the pen, wallet, and money clip that I will soon put into my
pockets.
CHAPTER FIVE
actually taken pleasure in them; they gave her a sense of identity that "the head of the
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family" denied her. Whenever such conflicts eruptedan acid remark, a sarcasm, a
bill thrown across the dinner tablea morbid fascination inhabited me, in spite of the
These exchanges followed a three-act structure. After the opening salvo, the
casus belli was quickly forgotten and old, bitter resentments were voiced, the if-only-
I-had-known, the to-think-I married-you, and some allusions to a nut house which I
didn't understand at the time, before moving on to the final act. Then my father would
proclaim himself the voice of reason, call the situation to order, urge everyone to cool
Having once been the unexpected beneficiary of one of these bouts, I still have
a precise recollection of it. The mid-winter school break had come to an end. After a
few days of boredom, I had gone back to St. Jean-Baptiste, where my position at the
bottom of the class remained unchallenged. At home, silence had become my second
nature and my mother's attacks had lost their virulence. Her son, the disappointment of
her life, would soon be sent away, and only the memory of a failure would remain.
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"Did you see this?" my father asked, pushing a telephone bill across the table.
The falsely bland tone immediately put my mother on the defensive. "Of
course not. You know very well that I don't look at these things."
"I can see why. If you did, you'd see how much your mindless chatter is
costing us."
"My mindless chatter? As if I was the only one here who uses the phone."
"If you're talking about Lucie, please leave my daughter out of this. When she
calls her friends, it's for her studies; I call it an investment. Besides, she tells me she
"I know how she was raised. Her poor mother had principles, spending wisely
"Your words, not mine. I'll let you be responsible for them."
man, Monsieur doesn't have time for details. And who ends up doing the chores, huh?"
"What chores? Last time I checked you had help. Do you know how much
Janine costs me every week? Do you have the slightest idea? And I'm not even
counting the room I must rent for her across the street because your mother occupies
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"And who has to deal with Victor's education? You think raising him is easy?
He makes my life hell, anyone can see that, but you don't care, do you? I can't wait for
I was shrinking in my chair, but it was time for my father to open the final act.
"This boarding school thing; I jotted down some numbers. Sure, if his marks
remain so poor, he'll leave us no choice, but it might be wise to try a new avenue."
"Such as?"
She is a retired math teacher, but could also deal with the other disciplines. And she
lives less than fifteen minutes from here. Very convenient. But, of course, she wants to
"I thought you were concerned about expenses. Would this woman tutor Victor
for free?"
My mother's cheeks were bright red. She drilled her glare into me.
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"I wouldn't rejoice now if I were you, Victor. It's much too early, trust me."
***
The Residence Ranelagh, where Madame Laquaire lived, was different from
all the other buildings in our neighborhood, the 16th arrondissement. It was a tall,
block-like modern structure composed of four buildings, each facing one side of a
rectangular basin. To reach the central patio, one had to go down a long corridor
lace curtain hung over the window occupying the center of the door.
then knocked at the concierge's door. A finger lifted a corner of the curtain, then the
door opened a few inches and I saw a woman's face, an ebony-black face with huge
dark eyes.
fascination, detailing her full lips and wide nostrils, her dark skin shiny like satin, her
high forehead.
"Are you the boy she expected at 6?" the woman finally asked.
I found her stare intimidating, but I liked her warm voice and her accent, the
"She had to leave. She went to the dentist. Last time she went, she didn't feel
too well afterwards, so my son went with her. She shouldn't be long."
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I hesitated, looking around, somewhat lost in this foreign universe, but she
I then saw that she was wearing a flamingo-pink robe, which she kept firmly
"Nora was about to dress," she said. "Nora doesn't like keeping her work
clothes on after the cleaning's done." It took me a while to realize that she was talking
about herself.
A dresser, a dining table and four chairsa set obviously, same faux-
Scandinavian styleoccupied much of the space in the small room. A wide window
opened onto the street. A black sofa, made of some sort of shiny-looking material, was
covered with heaps of women's magazines. It sat in front of a TV set, on top of which
framed photographs were lined up: a smiling black kidmy own age, it seemed to
mea mustachioed police officer holding his képi against his chest, and a group of
"You sit down here," the woman said. "Nora only needs a minute."
I watched her as she pushed the magazines aside. She was Mireille's age, I
decided. Tall, at least my father's height, she exuded a voluptuous nonchalance. Her
gestures were controlled and she seemed to be moving in slow motion. She looked
like the African women in my geography manual, women who walked miles and miles
across arid plains with a basket balanced on their heads, huge rings hanging from their
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"Victor."
"That's a nice name. Me, I'm Nora." It sounded like Noha to me.
She was about to leave the room when she noticed a gift-wrapped package on
the dresser.
"Good Lord," she said, "We don't want my Roland to see this. It's the present
my Jacky bought for his dad's birthday." The package quickly disappeared in a drawer.
My eyes followed Nora as she walked down a narrow corridor and walked into
what I assumed was the bathroom. She didn't close the door properly, however, and it
swung open slowly. A mirror covered the inside of the door, and I saw Nora as she
took off her robe. It was just a glimpse, and the vision of the black body dressed only
in tiny white panties lasted only a couple of seconds before she turned around and saw
me. I thought I saw her amused smile as she closed the door, leaving me gasping with
emotion. I was going to relive that moment over and over; I already knew it.
The tip of a golden ribbon was visible from the drawer where Nora had hidden
the gift-wrapped package. My mother had told me a story oncehow old was I then,
eight, nine?It was the sad story of a little boy. His name was Petit Louis and his was
a poor family. He had no toys; he wasn't spoiled like a certain Victor. But Petit Louis
loved his father and mother, and unlike Victor, acknowledged the sacrifices that
parents make for their children. So much so that one day he decided to buy a present
for his father's next birthday, even though he was so very poor. The birthday was still
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Well, Petit Louis offered his services around the neighborhood. Up before
sunrise, he performed all sorts of chores. And when he came back from the local
public schoolunlike Victor, Petit Louis wasn't lucky enough to attend a good
Catholic schoolhe ate a piece of stale bread without jam or butter and ran errands
for the neighbors. Finally, one day, Petit Louis had enough money to buy his father a
present. For months, he had seen a beautiful razor, with a chromed handle and a
shaving brush in the pharmacy window. So, one evening, he proudly brought home the
gift-wrapped package, which he hid under his bed until the big day.
Petit Louis' mother had made sacrifices, too, but isn't that what mothers do
even if no one ever shows them the least gratitude? She prepared a special meal for
the celebration, thanks to the money she had saved by not buying anything for herself
for months. She needed a new dress, but no, mothers don't think about themselves.
The birthday dinner was a success, and the time came for Petit Louis to go and
fetch his present. Needless to say, his father was surprised. Petit Louis watched his dad
with his big blue eyes as he untied the ribbon, opened the box and took out the
beautiful razor. And do you know what he said, Victor? What did the father say to
Petit Louis?"
"He said, “You're so stupid, Louis. Don't you know I decided to grow a
beard?"
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This story had broken my heart when I heard it and I had burst into tears.
Finding my reaction amusing, my mother told the family at the dinner table. To her
surprise, as she once again recounted the father's ugly response, I cried again. I could
see the scene and shared the little boy's heartbreak. I was Petit Louis.
Delighted to have found a new weapon, a dagger she could plunge into my
heart, my mother soon learned to use it. Whenever she had guests for tea in the
afternoon and I would come home from school, she would stop me from tiptoeing to
my room and call me: "Victor! Victor come and say hello, please."
I had to pay my respects and flash a bland smile as the ladies marveled at how
quickly I was growing up. I would then try to sneak out, but my mother always
ordered me to take a seat: "Don't tell me you don't have five minutes to spare from
your studies, Victor. Learn to be polite, will you? Sit down and have a cookie.
I was trapped, and the stage was set for my mother's new game. "Oh! I have to
tell you a story I just heard," she would say. "A sad story."
Since I knew the tale by heart, I tried to think of other things, anything at all, or make
my heart deaf, but I never succeeded. As the father opened the box and discovered the
razor, I wanted to protect Petit Louis. Even better, I wanted to make a smile appear on
his dad's face. I wanted the father to open his arms, hug his son and smother him with
kisses, exclaiming, "How did you guess, Petit Louis, that I wanted this beautiful
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But, of course, there were no kisses and Petit Louis left the room in tears. As
for me, I was furious to have once again been caught in my mother's snare. I hated her
Yes, I hated her as she faked concern and asked, "What's the matter, Victor?
Don't tell me you're crying. You are not a little girl, are you? Look at me. Look at me,
I said."
And then she would turn to her friends and say, "I don't believe this. He's really
crying. Isn't this ridiculous? Go to your room Victor, you're embarrassing me."
More than forty years later, I still feel sorry for Petit Louis. I stopped crying a
long time ago, but I'd like to have a word with his asshole of a father.
***
stocky fourteen-year old, Jacky didn't possess his mother's regal elegance; he didn't
have her long legs. But his face was delicate and his ears, little and perfectly shaped,
were at once the object of my envy. He had the same mischievous smile as in his
picture. His skin was markedly less dark than his mother's.
For some reason, I had created an imposing and terrifying image of Madame
Laquaire, and wasn't expecting a tiny white mouse of a woman. Barely taller than
Bonne Maman, but with one third of my grandmother's weight, one could easily
imagine her being blown away by a gust of wind. Her gray hair was tied in a bun, and
her pale complexion set off her piercing black eyes. She kept a small hand on her
swollen cheek.
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"Don't stare at me like this," she told me. "I look like a sick rabbit. A wisdom
test, and she only confirmed that she would see me every Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday after school. She promised to contact St. Jean-Baptiste to make sure I wasn't
kept in on these days, since, for the last few months, I had been a regular in detention.
"Then you have time to come with me," said Jacky, waving the shopping list
his mother had just handed to him. We had met only a few minutes ago and yet he
spoke as if we were long-time pals. I knew at once that I would be more comfortable
be his friend. When he laughed about a joke, a prank, or just a ray of sunlight, his face
was all lines, and his otherwise big, wide eyes, became just slits, but he could be
serious, too, and his view of the world was that of a mature man.
We were walking by a taxi that had just stopped at the curb when a man
stepped out. He was elegantly dressed and his dark hair had streaks of gray around the
temples. He was also crimson-red with rage. A young woman inside the taxi was
Having finally set himself free of her hand, he prepared to slam the door, but
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Jacky nodded. "What's a mystery to me," he said, "is how a woman would
I was following Jacky from aisle to aisle in the mini-market, when I saw him
nobody was looking, then grab a small bottle and slip it swiftly into his pocket. He
"You do that often?" I asked, once we had returned to the safety of the street.
knew, but I figure it's all right, because it's not for me."
"For Madame Laquaire. I tell her they're free. Advertising, you know. She
Apart from our ages, Jacky and I had little in common. The color of our skin,
our tastesmine for the movies and soccer, his for automobilesour place on the
wanted to be the first black man to win the Twenty-Four Hours of Le Mans, while I
had no idea of what life had in store for me. Almost everything made us different, but
I soon granted him precedence over me, for I was aware that he already had a
foot in adulthood. I also envied his assurance when it came to women. He was neither
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crude nor spiteful, nor even hateful of girls like some of my comrades. Neither was he
feverishly obsessed like me. He just liked women, wanted their company in the
healthiest of ways, and they felt it, so they smiled at him. Just as I had skipped a grade
four years ago, Jacky seemed to have skipped puberty. Me, I felt like I would be
staying down.
From that first day on, I never had any problems confiding in Jacky. In less
than one hour, he knew more about me than any of my schoolmates, or even Father
Minot.
"Isn't it hard to be a mute at home?" he asked. "Don't you ever want to talk to
your mom?"
"Carry this a while; it's your turn," he said, and then added: "If you ask me,
"Why?"
"As long as you act like this, your mother knows you're hurting. That way she
"Tell me."
"Smile. Laugh. Even if you don't feel like it. Be normal again. Yes, Maman,
no, Maman, thanks Maman. Just like I do when Roland's after me. In my mind, I say
to myself, ‘let it pass, it doesn't matter one shit. After all, he's not even my real dad.’
And so, I give him a big smile. It really drives him nuts. You should give it a try."
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When my mother opened the door that evening, I surprised her with a
resounding "Bonsoir Maman!" She looked bewildered. Jacky had been right.
CHAPTER SIX
Madame Laquaire's small apartment was a mess; books, folders and boxes of
various sizes and colors were piled high in every available space. One of the first rules
she laid out for me was to never, repeat, never, under any circumstances, touch any of
what she called her archives, lest she never be able to find anything again. To free up a
chair for me, she moved a couple of atlases to the top of an already dangerously high
pile.
The old woman was a serious smoker. She carefully cut her sweet-smelling
Turkish cigarettes in two before inserting one half into a cigarette holder. It was gold-
plated and had belonged to her late husband. She often broke into fits of coughing,
"You don't want to become like me, so stay away from those things."
As tiny, sweet and seemingly defenseless as she was, Madame Laquaire was
capable of anger. Whenever her neighbor played his record player too loudly, she
would bang against the wall with the handle of a broken broom, which she apparently
kept for that purpose. She would shout, "Show some respect to those who work, you
lazy worm!" and then come back to the table as if nothing had happened.
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Madame Laquaire quickly found her way into my life. As I laid out manuals
and copybooks on the purple felt that covered her dining room table, she chatted about
this and that, evoking her years as a high-school math teacher in Aix en Provence, and
She had just told me how her mother, an uneducated farm worker, had taken
courses by mail in order to help her with her homework, when she asked in the sing
song accent of her native south, "And what about your mother, Victor? I'm told she
"You'll think me a nosy old woman, but I have to understand you in order to
help you. When one plummets suddenly to the bottom of the class, there's always a
reason."
Later, as I was glumly staring at an allegedly simple equation, while she boiled
water on her stove in the tiny kitchen, she asked, "Do you at least know why you don't
I didn't know what to say. I watched her stand on the tip of her toes as she
reached for a can of tea. Her profile was visible to me in the part of a mirror that
wasn't covered with postcards and I saw her take a quick sip from a bottle. I wondered
"One doesn't become stupid overnight, I know that much," she added, turning
around. "You've built thick high walls and a moat around your castle. You'll have to
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I watched in wonder as she poured tea from a kettle high in the air. "Chinese
style," she joked. Her hand shook badlyonly years later would I learn the real
reasonand yet not one drop fell outside of the cups. It almost looked like a circus
act.
She offered me a cookie and chuckled: "In fact, it's just as well that your
"Just as well?"
Her mischievous smile, and the way she wrinkled her nose, made her look like
"Sure! Nobody expects you to make a come back. Wait until you see their
She really seemed to believe. Something was telling me that this mouse could
move mountains. When she offered me her cheek on her doorstep, I took in the sweet
scent that I came to recognize as a combination of powder, Turkish tobacco, and liquor
and went home with the vague intuition that she might indeed, in some way, change
my life.
"I hear you get along well with Jacky," she said.
"He's not doing too well in school, either. What would you say if we worked
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"The thing is, his parents cannot afford my services. So we would have to keep
it a secret, and not tell your parents, if you see what I mean. Could you keep your
mouth shut?"
It didn't take any more than that for me to lower the drawbridge.
***
I was playing a game of ball in the courtyard during recess one morning when
I slipped in a pool of water and fell, head-first, onto the hard concrete ground and
nearly passed out. An assistant teacher helped me back on my feet. Stars were dancing
in front of my eyes and blood was dripping on my shirt. "Can you walk?" asked a
asking me how I felt. Poor thing, he had no idea of the reception awaiting him.
When she opened the door, my mother took a step back, her eyes wild, and put
a hand over her mouth. With the deep moan of a wounded beast, she groped for the
wall and leaned against it for a brief moment. I was almost as surprised by this
dramatic display as my companion. Sure there were bandages on my nose and brow,
my right eye was swollen shut, and my cheek was scraped, but my life wasn't in
danger. I even had the cocky smile of the warrior returning from battle.
My mother's face went in an instant from chalk white to crimson red. "My
God," she exclaimed, "What have you done to my son this time?"
The young mana kid, I realize this todaywas too taken aback to analyze
the strange accusation. All he could do was to retreat while stuttering, "It was an
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"If you expect this case to be closed like this, you're deluding yourself, young
manner. Get the hell out of my home now. The principal will hear from me."
And on that note, she pushed the bewildered young man out and slammed the
childhood. Suddenly, my mother was all sweetness. I was the center of her universe.
She lavished kisses, cuddles and caresses on me, all the while issuing orders: "Janine,
drop whatever you're doing and go to the butcher's shop right away. No, not in five
minutes, I said immediately. I want a big juicy steak. Very thick. With all the blood he
lost … And you, Mother, take some chocolate from my cupboard, here's the key, and
make a mousse … Janine, before you leave, bring me a couple of pillows over here,
smiled and had the audacity to declare that "this little thing" was "nothing serious," it
And there was the situation with my father. When his secretary failed to reach
him on the road, he was accused of never being present when needed.
"You could have died, my darling lambkin, but your father is driving around.
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defuse the drama, saying, "You know, Maman, it's nobody's fault. I slipped.
"Are you sure it's not one of those thugs again? I'm ready to pay a visit to their
As I was shaking my head with conviction, she added, "You can't understand,
lambkin; a mother is like a lioness. You'd better not touch a single hair of her cub."
I was much too busy savoring this orgy of love to wonder about the
incongruity of it all. As if by miracle, our dark history no longer mattered. It was all
That evening, after dinner in bed, I got up and joined my mother in the kitchen.
She had been following a new diet lately on the advice of one of her
the following morning, a mixture of Bulgarian yogurt and some miracle powder in a
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As she raised her hand I prepared to step back, but saw in her eyes that I had
I felt the moment was right and said, "I'd like to ask you something."
"Go ahead."
"Did you see the time?" my mother barked, in lieu of a good morning. "Don't
***
My mother had said yes, and I wasn't going to let her forget. I had this
irrational desire to introduce my best friend, the only real friend I had ever had, to my
parents. Had I thought one minute about it, I would have seen that I was courting
disaster, but I had this need deep inside me. So one evening, I invited Jacky to dinner
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As soon as my mother opened the door, I realized how misguided I had been.
Even though Jacky was dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a crisply ironed short-
sleeve shirt, he didn't look like any of my St. Jean-Baptiste schoolmates. The shocked
expression on my mother's face said it all, but she thought it justified to add a
commentary.
"Would you like a glass of milk, some juice? Or something else maybe. I don't
know what you … I mean you people … drink," was the opening salvo delivered in
After my mother had brought two glasses of lemonade and helped herself to a
glass of "iced tea" which owed more to Johnny Walker than Lipton, she launched
herself into a series of questions. Her smile could be misleading, but I recognized the
lines around her mouth, the flashes in her eyes; she was sharpening her claws.
"Where are you from, young man? I mean, in what country were you born?"
Jacky was the epitome of poise. He looked my mother right in the eyes, but
without a trace of arrogance. From her rising voice and the increasingly staccato
delivery, I knew too well how Jacky's calm was driving my mother crazy.
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My mother rose, the smile on her lips contrasting with her mean stare. A
cigarette in hand, she walked around Jacky's armchair. She acted as the friendly
"I presume you are good at sports," she said. "Aren't you all?"
"Not really Madame. I'm sure Victor is much better than me."
"Really! And what do you intend to do after school? Assuming you intend to
Her tone of voice, her smile and choice of words were making a clear
statement: Jacky and I weren't destined to the same future. Although she despised and
berated me all the time, she seemed to entertain dreams of greatness for her son, a
My father's arrival marked the end of that round. Personally, I awarded Jacky
the victory. When my mother went to open the door, my friend winked at me. Don't
you worry, his smile was saying, I expected this. I'm cool.
I rose. Not to kiss my father, for he disliked that sort of sappy behaviorhis
wordsin front of strangers, but to take Jacky to my room, when I saw my mother
offer him her hand. Her smile was wider than ever. "Well, young man," she said,
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"Said what? You know very well that your father had a long and hard day at
work and it's time to have dinner. I'm sure your … friend doesn't want to be late."
"But his mother isn't expecting him. You had promised … the dinner …"
"Oh! Please, Victor. You're a fine one to talk promises. How many times did
All the while, she had her hand on Jacky's back and pushed him toward the
"It's not what your mother might have said, or what you think she said that
It was over. I had to witness Jacky's departure. Through the fog that covered
my eyes, I could see that the insult had finally gotten to him. His chin was quivering.
Overwhelmed by rage, I rushed toward the door, determined to push my mother aside,
but a violent slap in the face stopped me. "What are you trying to do now? Hit your
I didn't have dinner that night. Instead I went straight to my room, ignoring my
mother's pleas to "sit down and talk about it." Still, giving up wasn't in her nature. She
entered my room a couple of hours later as I was lying in bed, trying to ignore my
starved stomach. My face against the wall, I pretended to be asleep. She switched on
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"Are you awake?" she asked, sitting down on the edge of my bed.
I remained silent, but she shook my shoulder. "I know you're up. We have to
"I know that you don't recognize our effortsyour father's and mine. You
don't understand that we only have your well-being and future at heart. One day, you'll
regret not having loved us back while we were still alive, and it will be too late. But
that's all right, it's just your ungrateful nature; there's nothing we can do about it. Are
I turned around: "You had promised that Jacky would have dinner with us."
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"Must I explain? I'm not even alluding to the fact that his mother is a caretaker.
We are above such considerations. No, it's more serious than that. Your father and I
know too well what's going to happen. We invite this boy, and then his mother will
feel obligated to invite you back. He'll introduce you to other … like him. Don't get
me wrong Victor, I have nothing against these people, but we're not alike. Everybody
can see that. We have nothing to gain by socializing. It wouldn't be good for them
either, let's face it. And you, weak as you are, you'll get involved with them. Who
knows, they might even throw one of their girls at you. Very likely in fact. And then?
You want to find yourself one day married to a black woman? Do you think your
father and I are making all these sacrifices to have grand children looking like Aunt
Jemima's kids? You are not to see this boy again. That's an order. We're not alike, I'm
telling you. Look at yourself, you're sleeping in sheets, not on the ground under
banana trees."
I don't know what mechanism of survival made me sit up and burst out
laughing. I'm not even sure that I realized the full ludicrous obscenity of my mother's
tirade, but what could I do? Cry again? A first slap in the face didn't make me stop.
Nor did the next one or the one that followed. The more my mother hit me, the more I
was shaken by laughter. I knew I was going to collapse at any moment, cry uncle, or,
at the very least, raise an arm to shield my face, but I had reached a quasi-hypnotic
"Little bastard," she screamed before running out of my room and slamming
the door shut. I could hear her burst into sobs and bang the walls of the corridor with
her fists.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
I only remember one moment of intimacy with my half-sister, but it did leave a
mark on me. How often since that day have I heard our dialogue again, carefully
I had left my pen and pencil wallet at St. Jean-Baptiste that day. I tiptoed into
Lucie's roomI could hear her voice on the telephone in the living roomand
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climbed onto a stool to reach for the box in which she kept a stock of pencils, erasers,
markers and the like. It was perched on top of the book-laden shelves.
which Séraphin and Amélie, Lucie's beloved goldfish, were leading a hitherto quiet
life. The poor souls were sent flying onto the carpet, the notebooks and sheets of paper
spread on my sister's desk were drenched and the bowl itself exploded on the floor.
Lucie appeared immediately. For a brief second, she remained at the door, her
eyes wide, a hand over her mouth. Then she recovered enough to slap me across the
face.
Never before had Lucie laid a hand on me. To her, I simply didn't exist. My
cheek burnt like hell and I could feel tears swell in my eyes.
"Go ahead. Go and rat on me. She'll give you another one of these and say I was
right."
"You cannot hit me. She's the only one who can."
Lucie was on all fours, picking up Séraphin and Amélie, which she slid into the
carafe of water on her bedside table. Then she threw a towel on her notebooks.
"You're not even her daughter," I insisted, "while me, I'm her only son, so …"
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"I don't see what it has to do with this mess. And it's only half true anyway."
"Yeah, you're right. I am mad at you, so I just made it up. Forget what I said."
But it was too late. Suddenly, I didn't care about the disaster or my sister's anger.
"After all, you're old enough to know. Secrets are like poison. Besides, the fact
"It's history I told you. He died one week after he was born."
And that was how, seated on the wet carpet amid shards of glass, I learned that
my mother had almost married a painter, the father of the child in question. Suddenly,
Lucie smiled.
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"His name, the painter, I mean, was Gabriel, and he was as handsome as a Greek
god. Maman showed me a picture. She was crazy about him. He was married, but had
filed for divorce. Maman was seven and a half months pregnant when …
"Of course not, why aren't you listening? With another baby boy. She was six
weeks away from her due date when Gabriel finally got his divorce, but instead of
"Well, you can imagine … or maybe not, you're too young. It was a tragedy,
believe me. She tried to kill herself, but failed. The baby was born prematurely and
didn't live long. Drama again. She spent weeks in a psychiatric hospital. Now you
know everything. You see, it has nothing to do with you. No big deal."
Well yes, it was a big deal. In a troubling manner, my already uncertain identity
and ill-defined place in our universe were once again under question.
"Because it was before you were born. And anyway, Papa fixed everything."
"How?"
Act three. My father was an army buddy of the painter in question. He had lost
his wife two years before, was raising his little girl by himself and was secretly in love
with my mother. So when his pal Gabriel took off with the Italian model, he wasted no
time and offered his services. It was Papa who found Maman with her head in the
oven and took her to the hospital. Several months after the baby's death, the failed
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"She loved Papa, then," I said, seeking reassurance. For some reason it was
"Not really, if you want to know. She liked him, and she was grateful, but that's
not the same thing. Besides, she wasn't over Gabriel. But she needed someone and
"She told me. Between women, you know. Maybe the fact that I'm not really her
daughter, she feels more free to … What's the matter with you now? You're not going
Why was I suddenly so sad? Because my mother had been so miserable that she
had wanted to die? Because I was only number two now, a replacement in a way? God
knows, I had few reasons to cling to a status which had brought me so little happiness,
but still … Suddenly, in a very confused and vague manner, the faint hope that
everything one day would be fine between us had vanished like a flickering flame in a
draft.
Lucie must have understood, for she helped me get up and sat me down on her
bed next to her teddy bear. For the first and last time, she took me in her arms.
"I'm sorry for the slap," she said. "You're a moron and a nuisance, but I shouldn't
"Maybe. How would I know? It's in her genes, too. Her father was an alcoholic,
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"I'm telling you. That's how he had his accident at the factory. He was so drunk,
Bonne Maman had showed me the picture of their wedding. A tall, wiry man,
Bon Papa was imposing, with his handlebar mustache and bushy eyebrows. They
looked funny on the steps of the church. The groom was more than one foot taller than
his bride.
"You didn't miss much, believe me. When he was loaded, he'd beat his wife with
"Maman?"
It was a lot for a single day. My world had been destroyed, and I was feeling lost
in the midst of the rubble. I made a feeble attempt at salvaging some of the
foundations.
"I know. She's reinvented her past. I'm sure she believes it now. The truth is, the
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"Like what?"
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"No, that I can't tell you. You're really too young. If Maman knew that I had told
"One day, you'll understand everything," was all she would say.
Yes of course, years later, I learned and understood everything. I can't say it
***
Once a month, I was called to God's service. Up at five thirty in the morning, I
rang the bell of St. Jean-Baptiste at six fifteen. Once Jules, the hunchback janitor, had
opened the heavy front door, I crossed the deserted courtyard, reached the little ivy-
covered chapel and entered the vestry. Father Minot would welcome me with a nod.
There was total silence at this hour. I would put on the red vestment and the white
surplice that hung in the closet next to the piles of missals, then make sure that the
cruets were filled and the wafers ready on the golden paten. I moved about noiselessly
and watched Father Minot as he put on his chasuble and kissed his ornaments, all the
while reading the big book of gospel that lay on a lectern made of carved oak.
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Father Minot's lips moved silently. A pungent smell filled the little room, a
sugary combination of incense and mould. Together with the silence, this odor created
a sacred space isolated from the rest of the world. I was transported. Neither the bad
mood of the early morning rise, nor the interdiction to eat breakfast before
communion, or the cold, the wind and winter rain mattered anymore. I was a
privileged participant in a mysterious and intimidating rite. I was part of God's secret
"Did you sin since your last confession?" Father Minot would ask, and I'd shake
my head with total conviction. The obscene tsunami that broke loose day after day in
my imagination, the images and fantasies that set my mind, my sex afire, the pleasure
that I was too weak to deny myself, the whole subject was simply too vast, and defied
description. Since God had his eye on me, He had to know. On this issue, He and I
Father Mesnardin believed in the virtues of terror on our tender souls. The eternal
suffering, the unimaginable pain "far worse than the most horrible torture or death",
the charred bodies of the sinners thrown into the flames, the screams, all that was too
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"They offend God so much that they cause the death of the soul, the sinner's
"Yes Victor, because He's all kindness. Having said that, I'm personally
convinced that some sins cause Him more pain than others."
"Yes, he does, I told you so, Victor. But only if you confess them, if you truly
One morning however, I pushed the issue, asking, "What is the worst sin,
Father? I mean, which one would God find it the most difficult to forgive?"
"I'd just like to know. What would make God really angry?"
"In my opinion Victor, if you ever commit such a sin, you'll know for sure. Now,
let's go, time is up. Open the door and bow your head."
***
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Three afternoons a week, I would leave St. Jean-Baptiste at five, run up the rue
des Vignes, catch my breath at the red light before crossing the rue de Boulainvilliers,
and then race down the Avenue Mozart. I was saving precious minutes that I wanted to
spend with Nora before my lesson with Madame Laquaire. Jacky would come home
Unbeknownst to her, Nora had invaded my daydreams. I kept revisiting the brief
vision of her body, and built torrid scenarios around that vision. My favorite was a
She would be on her way to a movie and suggest that I accompany her. It just so
happened that some epidemic had struck all the teachers of St. Jean-Baptiste, so I had
the day off. In the darkness of the theater, I was supremely bold and I took Nora's
hand. She turned to me. The light from the screen bathed her face; she smiled and
offered me her lips. They were warm and the tip of the tongue caressed mine as
Mireille's had done. I unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra. Her breast was
heavy in my hand, its nipple hard. Her skin was soft as silk. I lay my hand on her knee
and pushed her skirt up. She took my hand and guided it between her thighs. I pushed
her panties aside, felt her bush, which I imagined to be as coarse and fuzzy as her hair,
and finally reached her sex. It was warm and moist. She moaned as my finger found
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Or … or I would arrive at Nora's just as she was about to go and water the plants
of some tenants who were away on vacation. She asked if I could help her carry a pile
of linen she had washed and ironed for those people. Bed sheets as it turned out. Yes,
it was important for us to find ourselves in a bedroom. Together we were making the
bed and our eyes met across it. Nora then declared herself tired; it had been a long day.
She lay herself down and didn't object when I took a place next to her. She turned to
me, smiled and offered me her lips. They were warm and the tip of the tongue
caressed mine as Mireille's had done. I unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra.
Her breast was heavy in my hand, its nipple hard. Her skin was soft as silk. I lay my
hand on her knee and pushed her skirt up. She took my hand and guided it between
her thighs. I pushed her panties aside, felt her coarse and fuzzy bush and finally
reached her sex. It was warm and moist. She moaned as my finger found its way
inside her.
There were many other scenarios, all similarly credible: a leak in her bathroom
that I helped fix, a splinter in her foot that she begged me to have a look at … As clear
and precise as my directions were for the opening sequencesNora's dress when I
met her on the street, the title of the movie or the furniture of the deserted
apartmentI always lost control over them as soon as Nora allowed me to touch her
body. Sometimes I considered briefly a never-solved mystery: what color was her sex
when she invited me inside her? Then the question quickly lost all relevance, the
evening prayer, I begged God for his forgiveness and promised to never do it again. I
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myself with Nora. My heart swelled with joy when she opened the door and offered
me her cheek. I watched her with delight as she prepared a cup of cocoa. She almost
always wore a robe at that time and didn't bother to hold it tight around her anymore.
In my memory, those moments are connected to those I spent staring at the fruit
pies and chocolate cakes in the windows of the Coquelin patisserie. Speaking of
chocolate, I was entranced by the sight of her long dark legs. My eyes also followed
the curve of her neck, the slow movements of her hands. Her hair intrigued me and I
wanted to touch it, let my finger follow the line it formed at the nape of her neck, and I
could never get enough of her smile, her full lips, or her dazzlingly white teeth.
"Yes, Nora.
"Everything OK at home?"
She knew everything of my predicament, but never, not once, did she allude at
From Nora, the lover, the mistress of my dreams, I only wanted sweetness when
we were together. All I wanted was to cuddle in her arms and purr. "My mother likes
He burst into one of his big fits of laughter, his face suddenly crisscrossed by
dozens of lines.
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"What's so funny?"
"I just saw you. You'd look pretty funny with a black face."
***
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Glob supervised most of the detentions. And so, without ever exchanging a
word, Glob and I spent many hours together. His real name was Joël de Précigout and
nobody knew where his nickname had come from. He was a tall, gangly, bespectacled
young man with the head of an arrogant bird, and reigned over the detainees, armed
with a ruler which he used to whack our desks and a booklet of pre-stamped pink slips
of paper, the currency for additional hours of detention. The hatred that we lavished on
him didn't trouble Glob a bit. Deep in his manuals, this future professor of physics had
I was paying for a series of dismal marks in history and geography that evening
when Josselin, a feared bully seated at the desk in front of me, turned around, picked
protest when he winked at me and put a finger to his lips. I was shocked because
Josselin, a rugby player at least two years my senior, and I had precious little in
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I had to put the magazine back in my satchel before Glob could see it, but
clean-shaven sex. She was lying on a sofa, clad in a black garter belt, a pair of long
lacy gloves and fishnet stockings. Her left thigh rested on one of the arm rests, the
other was wide open to the camera and she presented me with a tiny, shiny button of
flesh, round and polished like a pearl, which she held between two fingers. With her
other hand, she was pulling one of the rings serving as ornaments to her labia, thus,
inviting my eyes to penetrate her. I was in a state of apnea. Even more than the
woman's gaping vagina, it was her eyes looking at me from behind the mask that made
"Delorme!"
I froze. After a whack of his ruler, Glob repeated my name. "Delorme! Bring me
that at once!"
I rose and slowly made my way toward the big desk, behind which the hated
tormentor was watching me over his glasses. I had visions of shameful punishments.
Glob held his hand out across his desk. Without even attempting an explanation,
I gave him the magazine. I died slowly as Glob's contemptuous eyes scanned the
cover. I watched in agony as his finger started to lift it. Some divine intervention
however, stopped him. Shaking his head, he opened a drawer and slipped the
"You really are hopeless, Delorme," he said. "You'll do another two hours."
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***
The following two days were the longest of my life. I couldn't live with the
threat. Sooner or later, the photograph would be discovered and I would be humiliated,
pilloried, expelled. Worse, I would also have to face again the terrible police
And so, out of despair, the idea of a commando expedition was born and, with it,
the courage to carry it out. One Friday morning at five, I rose noiselessly and arrived
"You fell off your bed?" remarked Jules as he opened the door.
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The school was still asleep. Two isolated windows cut out yellow rectangles in
the grey walls. Instead of heading for the vestry, I went to the main building and
opened the door. I was tiptoeing but it seemed as if my footsteps were shaking the
walls as I went up the stairs and followed the dark corridors. A few bluish night-lights
in the classrooms made it all even scarier. When I finally reached the detention room, I
entered it and went to the infamous desk. The drawer wasn't locked, but what if my
The young men who took turns supervising detention had amassed a vast
collection of seized objects of all kinds. There were two sacks of marbles, a whistle, a
Swiss army knife, a collection of comic books, a ping-pong ball that I remembered
having seen bouncing from desk to desk a week before as we all collapsed with
laughter and even a lipstick, a surprising item in this context. Most importantly, my
France-Football was there, waiting for me. Perspiration dripped from my forehead as I
opened the magazine. There it was, the most overwhelmingly outrageous picture I had
ever seen. I was immediately relieved, but I was also hypnotized, unable to take my
eyes away from that sex being so brazenly offered. Common sense tells me that I
cannot have stayed there more than a couple of minutes, for I was also very conscious
I was sick with arousal. At last, I was able to close my eyes and pocket the
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Before leaving, I also grabbed a bunch of the infamous pink slips, as well as
several form cards the text of which I knew only too well. The same message in italic
letters was printed on each card: We regret to inform you that your son … was
detained tonight for the following reason …. Please have … return this card signed by
With a serene heart, I headed for the vestry. I would have to add breaking,
CHAPTER EIGHT
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The Easter holidays were upon us. While at St. Jean-Baptiste my schoolmates
were sharing their vacation plansskiing in the Alps for manyat home it was a
morose time. For Lucie and me, there was nothing to look forward to. She would
prepare for her exams at her friend Suzanne's in Versailles and I would stay in Paris to
work on the program that Madame Laquaire had designed at my father's request, a
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most prestigious clients, was about to reopen after a year of renovation and he had
been invited to the festivities planned for the long Easter weekend. "With your better
"Three days isn't much," the half in question commented, "but it will take me
out of here."
I agreed wholeheartedly.
The next two weeks introduced me to a new mother. A permanent smile on her
face, she hummed popular tunes from morning to night, patted my head whenever we
She obsessed about what "women wore in Cannes these days." Dresses, bags,
shoes, it had been such a long time since she had bought anything for herself, she
reminded everyone. One evening, she paraded and whirled in front of me, elegant in a
long, light green taffeta dress, lifting it slightly to show off her new shoes.
"If you were a man, Victor, and you saw me dressed like this, would you ask
me for a dance?"
She giggled like a little girl, covering her mouth with her hand.
"Your father is angry with me because I spent too much, but we only live once,
don't we?"
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Bonne Maman was both in awe of her glamorous daughter and in shock, for
she had been named guardian of the castle. Her chin quivered frantically, a sign of
deep agitation. As for me, I was making plans with Jacky. He and I were going to
Alas! Shortly before leaving, my father laid down the rules: no guests, no
outings. He would call at unscheduled times, he warned, to verify that his orders were
being heeded.
From the balcony I waved at my parents as they stepped into a taxi. Then, as
soon as they had disappeared around the corner, I led Bonne Maman in a dance around
the living room. Short of breath, she soon collapsed on the sofa.
"Now tell me what you have in mind, Mr. Up-to-no-good," she said, a plump
She was an easy sale. Besides, she had been horrified by Jacky's expulsion.
And so it was that my friend arrived two hours later with a box of pralines, the
same brand that had Bonne Maman drool as she watched her daughter open the locked
The first evening was peaceful. After dinner, Jacky and I invited Bonne
Maman to a game of Monopoly. I discovered then that she was a very sore loser.
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"I win all the time; how come you have all the money?" she protested, angrily
sweeping the green miniature houses with the back of her hand. Then she added, "It's
"Of course. I know how they make money. They lose on each article, but they
Later, I made a mattress of blankets and pillows next to my bed, which Jacky
had won in a coin flip. We chatted late into the night and didn't sleep much.
The shelves were loaded from floor to ceiling with boxes, tubes, jars and
bottles of all sorts. Having grown up in this environment, I didn't share his surprise. I
was used to seeing my mother come back from her weekly trip to the pharmacy with a
bagful of drugs. "Maman suffers from everything in the medical encyclopedia except a
"And this?" Jacky asked, retrieving a half-full bottle of Gordon's gin from
behind a stack of boxes. "I suppose that's what they call over-the-counter, right?"
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"Tell you what," Jacky offered, "I'll make my world-famous gin-fizz. I've seen
Without further ado, Jacky ran to the kitchen to prepare what he called his
"special lemonade" for my grandmother's benefit. "My mother's secret recipe," he told
Bonne Maman while offering her the first glass. "It'll cure your headache."
Indeed, it didn't take long for my grandmother to feel a lot better. "The
Germans can come back, they won't have this one," she declared, smacking her lips.
A second glass triggered girlish laughter I had never heard from Bonne
Maman. Her eyeglasses kept getting all fogged up, and she wiped them with the
handkerchief she kept in her sleeve. The mood grew more festive by the minute. A
third glass of "lemonade" followed. Bonne Maman, Jacky and I intoned the
All caution forgotten, I went to my father's barI knew where he kept the
keyand fetched a bottle of vodka. A wind of madness was blowing. The last
memory I registered was the sight of Bonne Maman waltzing with Jacky and the two
of them stumbling and collapsing on the sofa, howling with laughter. What a strange
couple they formed! Around me, the walls were spinning dangerously.
***
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None of us heard the elevator, nor the opening and closing of the front door. I
was sound asleep in the toilets, my face buried in my arms over the toilet bowl, the
bottle of vodka next to me on the tiled floor, when cries of horror roused me. Next, my
father's beet-red face appeared above me. Nothing seemed real. What had happened?
What day were we? They weren't supposed to be back so soon, or were they? My
father yanked me to my feet and helped me come to with a hard slap across my face,
Haggard and stumbling, trying to protect myself with my raised elbow, I was
pushed, slapped, and shoved into the living room. From the hallway where my parents
had left their luggage, I could see Bonne Maman snoring on the sofa. Her bun was
undone, her grey hair half-covering her face, and her black dress raised up on her
thighs, revealing a pink garter at the edge of a gray woolen stocking. When my father
"For fuck's sake," my father yelled, "will someone tell me what happened
here?"
He sent me flying toward his bar, whose doors were wide open. "Will you tell
froze, his hand in the air above my head. Seconds later, my mother appeared dragging
Jacky by his ear. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, and just as
bewildered as I was, but he wasn't resisting. I felt my stomach churn and thought I was
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"On my new carpet, just what I need," my mother exclaimed. She needed not
"You take care of … that," he told his wife, pointing his chin toward Bonne
"And you … you get the hell out of here. Go back to your jungle for all I care."
More powerless than ever, unable to think straight, I could only witness the
disaster. I didn't even worry about the impending punishment. The world was falling
The door had just been slammed shut behind Jacky when I heard a deep moan
behind me, like the cry of a wounded beast. I turned around. Crimson no more, white
as a ghost now, my father was pointing a finger toward the carpet near the sofa. He
wanted to talk, his lips were moving, but no words were coming out.
Then I saw the object of the commotion: my father's glass, the one nobody was
allowed to use, the crystal glass from the Ritz hotel was sitting on the floor. In it
My mother's laughter gave my father back the use of his vocal cords.
I didn't have time to reflect on the new division of tasks. My father had already
done the ultimate damage. With a kick, he had sent his precious glass crashing against
the wall.
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"You don't think that I will drink my … in my … after this disgusting shit," he
screamed.
My mother was still laughing. Lying on the carpet in the middle of the room,
***
sent to bed without dinner, I was intrigued by the angry voices coming from their
bedroom and tiptoed through the darkness of the corridor. My ear glued to their door, I
listened to the screaming match. My mother was on the attack, while my father
"I saw you. I saw you with my own eyes," my mother yelled. "You had your
"You're mistaken, I'm telling you. She had dropped her napkin and I picked it
"Any gentleman. Any sex maniac, you mean. I had been watching the two of
you."
"No, not that. I don't care whose wife that slut is. You called me crazy, didn't
you? And if I am crazy, who made me that way, I'm asking you? You know what
"How would I know? And who's that one? Another shrink of yours?"
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"He says that if I was happy at home, I wouldn't have to take all these drugs."
My father laughed dryly. "But of course. How didn't I guess? It's my fault now
if you're losing it. As if this was new. You're forgetting where I had to go to get you."
"A hospital."
"A nut house, that's what it was, so please don't blame me. And what am I
going to tell Monsieur Renardier now? You don't give a shit, I know. You seem to be
forgetting who's putting food on the table and a roof over your head. Does a contract
for 320 TVs. mean anything to you? Everything was going smoothly, Renardier was
telling me about another 150 TVs for Marseilles, but you had to fuck it all up, throw a
glass of wine, and force us to leave in the middle of the dinner. Fuck, fuck, fuck, do
It went on and on. I didn't want to take sides and didn't care who was right or
wrong. I should have gone back to bed and buried my head under the blanket, but
some force was keeping me there, compelling me to listen to words I didn't want to
hear.
There were moments of silence during which I wondered, what are they doing
now? Is it all over? Have they made peace? And then the angry voices again. My
mother's was strident, my father's deep, hardly audible at times, with tones alternating
"What do you think you're doing? You don't think you're going to sleep in my
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Soon after I saw my father, in his pajamas, throwing a sheet and a pillow on
the sofa where his mother-in-law had enjoyed such a good sleep. I was afraid he
would see me, but the corridor was dark, and he didn't even look in my direction.
"And why should I sleep on the sofa?" he screamed. "Why don't you? You're
"I'm not the one who had a hand on that whore's thigh."
"You're really crazy. Oh, and don't give me that look. You want to know what I
think? What I really think? I believe that I married a nutcase. You can tell your
Professor what's his name that I said that. And I'm not speaking out of anger. I've
known for years that you're crazy. Reminds me of poker: I paid to see. Lucky me!"
"Who else? How long has it been since we've had sex?"
"Bastard!"
obsessions, busy with the enormous task of growing up, I had never measured the
violence of the conflict at the edge of which I lived. It felt as if a heavy hand was on
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me. I slid down to the floor, relieved that I was being ignored for a moment, but
deeply troubled.
There was a long silence punctuated only by the muffled sound of my mother's
sobbing, after which my father spoke, his voice deeper and softer now.
"Calm down," he said. "Take a deep breath. Let me give you your pills. We
both need a good night’s sleep. It's stupid. We get angry and say things. I didn't mean
"But it's not true. Will you listen to me for Christ's sake? I didn't do it, I swear."
"You swear?"
"On Victor's head! That's a good one. What a bet! My husband is gambling big
tonight!"
Having thought so often over the years about that moment, I still wonder how
words I did not really understand, whose exact meaning and implications went far
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CHAPTER NINE
I only saw Jacky three afternoons a week at Madame Laquaire's. The other
days, I would stop at a phone booth on rue de Passy and call him before going home.
We always had so much to talk about! My friend was passionate about cars. He spent
hours in a garage of our neighborhood, where they paid him a pittance for chores like
inflating tires or emptying oil basins. From that world, he brought back anecdotes,
One day, a Wednesdayyears later, all the details of that afternoon are still
vividI was walking away from the telephone booth when I heard a voice.
I turned around. A girl with smiling blue eyes and braids as golden as a field of
wheat was holding out a Bic. For a moment I remained paralyzed, dazzled by that
divine apparition. Then I gradually discovered the charming button of a nose, the
perfect white teeth, the skin that seemed to glow. Under her half-open gray overcoat,
she wore a blue uniform sweater with a crest over a white blouse and a gray pleated
skirt.
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It wasn't mine, but I wasn't thinking, my brain was frozen. I stepped forward,
took the Bic, muttered a barely audible thank you and walked away ... only to stop at
the next street corner, struck by the realization that I had just met the most beautiful
girl in the whole world. Sure, Sophie de Marennes de Lucet had once been the object
of my adoration, but my former princess was aloof, haughty even, while this sublime
I cannot say that I actually decided to walk back; my feet just seemed to carry
me. As I approached the telephone booth, I saw the girl hang up and slowed down,
just as she pushed the glass door open and stepped out.
Raising a surprised eyebrow in the worst ever piece of acting, I said, "Hey!
Hello again!" and froze, my face burning, at a total loss for further words.
She smiled and replied, "Hello again!" then added, "Is there something
wrong?"
Her head slightly tilted, her smiling eyes curious as she waited, she finally
I don't know where I found the nerve to say, "No, we haven't, but it sure would
There must have been something comical in the way the words came out,
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Then, with those words, she walked away, leaving me in a state of total
paralysis. Fifty feet or so later, she turned around and called out, "So! What are you
Her name was Colette and she was older than me by a few weeks. Although
her name was somewhat old-fashioned and associated in my mind with a mustachioed
aunt, I decided that it was deliciously romantic, and had no doubt that it would be part
of my life for the rest of my days. She made a lovely little shrug when she introduced
Colette was in ninth grade at the Lycée Molière. Her parents were divorced,
and she lived with her mother, a stomatologist. She took drawing lessons, but didn't
think she was particularly gifted and played tennis at the Racing Club de France. She
loved movies, especially comediesbut there weren't many good onesand romantic
Today, it is clear that the honest answer should have been, "Me, I'm growing
up!" but everything seemed so complicated at the time. "My father is a businessman
Me! That was the problem. I didn't know who I was and the main, if not sole,
"Yes, soccer. I play defense. I'd rather play offense, but I'm not fast enough. I'm
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"Why?"
I shrugged." The fun's gone." I wasn't about to tell her that my feet hurt like
was terrified that this wonderful creature would realize how unworthy of her attention
I was. The more I searched for a topic with the potential to hide my deficiencies, the
more the gelatinous mass of my brain solidified. I needed a joke, a witty remark about
a store window or a passer-by, quick, any subject that might interest her, anything to
break the silence, which threatened to last forever. Any moment now, she would see
through me. She would walk away and I would die. "Do you believe in God?" I asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
I had no idea where those words had come from. Today I suspect that doubt
"Ah! I see."
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"Mother says there's probably something up there, but certainly not what
religion, any religion, wants us to believe. Me, I don't know really. What about you?"
When we reached the bottom of the Avenue Paul Doumer, near the Trocadero,
Colette stopped in front of a modern building with a huge glass door and lots of
marble. She pointed at a plaque which read: Docteur France Knudsen, Stomatologiste,
"Ah!"
She extended her hand and said, "Thanks for walking me home."
Then she pressed the buzzer and pushed the heavy door. A fraction of a second
"No. Of course, I haven't. It's just that ... I was wondering ... I was thinking
maybe ... well, I don't know how you'd feel about it but ... do you think I could see you
again?"
A pretty girl like Colette could have been forgiven for being choosy, but her
"Sure," she said, before adding, "But you'd have to meet my mom, it’s a house
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The Knudsen apartment was sumptuous. Tapestries hung from the walls,
Chinese urns sat on Louis-the-something furniture. I was awed. Colette put a finger on
her lips when we passed a room where four or five people were reading magazines. A
long carpeted corridor led to her room; its walls were covered with a sky-blue paper,
on which Walt Disney cartoon characters danced. Two teddy bears sat on a bed among
multicolored cushions. On her balcony, geraniums were waiting for the first warm
days.
We were seated at Colette's white deskthe door was left open, it went
poring over her sketch-book, when France Knudsen walked in to greet her daughter.
She was a beautiful woman, in her forties, with a stern, almost brusque
manner. Her blonde hair was done up in a strict bun, her eyes were an icy blue, and the
almond-green blouse under the white coat was buttoned up to her neck. She looked me
up and down and her thin smile told me that I had just been given a C-minus. With one
eyebrow slightly raised as she turned to Colette, she seemed to be asking, "And where
I couldn't blame her. My jeans were worn out and the sleeves of my blazer had
become too short a long time ago. I must have looked utterly out of place in their
universe where the antiques, tapestries and paintings on the wall seemed to have come
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"Is that so? And what would your area of expertise be, young man?"
"I'm pretty good at English," I said, summoning the memory of a brief brush
Colette quickly jumped in, saying, "And that's precisely where I have a
Dr. Knudsen gave her daughter a long, thoughtful look before returning to her
cavities. Colette was so adorable as she giggled, with her face half-buried in her
"Are you really any good at English?" she asked. We both burst out laughing.
totally, desperately in love. Colette's laughter was still in my ears; my lips could still
feel her warm and deliciously soft cheeks when I had kissed her goodbye. The way
she had to stroke her forehead with the tip of her fingers when searching for a word
played again and again in my mind. Never before had I felt such rapture, never again
to my room, where I set out to write the first in a series of passionate letters.
***
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Nothing escaped the attention of the women who surrounded me. My mother,
for one, wasted no time before going on the warpath. She bombarded me with
questions. Evenings, at the dinner table, I could feel her stare as I kept my nose down
and pushed my food away. "Are you on a hunger strike?" she asked.
Nora, too, sensed something important had happened. "Either you won the
I shook my head. "I can't talk about her." I was torn between the urge to share
"Nora doesn't need to know her name. You're going to marry her, Nora is sure
"My dear Victor, I don't know where your mind is today, but we're both
"You're daydreaming."
"Tsk, tsk! You should say ‘I assure you.’ You can only promise about the
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Moments later, as I was watching the frail figure on the tip of her toes,
reaching for the can of cookies she always put in front of me, next to a cup of tea, I
decided to trust the old lady. My secret had become too heavy to bear, my heart could
Madame Laquaire sat down and offered both hands across the table, as she
liked to do.
"Colette."
"Oh no!"
"That's what I thought. In any event, this is good news for both of us."
"Well, I'm sure you won't want to go to boarding school now. You don't want to
Once more, she had found the perfect words, and I decided to deal in earnest
with those two racers bicycling toward each other, one starting from town A at 10
miles an hour, the other from town B at 20 miles an hour. Having successfully
As for Madame Laquaire, she poured herself a small glass of green liquor, and
***
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bag heavy with books, I saw her waiting for me on the opposite side of the street.
Elegant in her beige coat with the fur collar and a cigarette in hand, my mother!
"Hello, Maman."
"I thought it was about time for me to meet this Madame, what's her name
"You've been quite cheerful lately, something isn't right. You're hiding
something from me, I know it. Let's go now. You don't want to be late for your lesson,
do you?"
My mother grabbed my elbow and set the pace. I prayed that she wouldn’t
meet Jacky. I would have wanted to warn Madame Laquaire; she was only a tiny white
I needed not have worried. Madame Laquaire showed no surprise when she
saw my mother at my side. "Madame Delorme," she only said. "I've heard a lot about
you."
She ignored my mother's burning starewhat horrible lies did Victor tell about
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The tone in Madame Laquaire’s voice was unknown to me. Her eyes, too, were
different. The old lady knew who she was dealing with, but wasn't intimidated.
I was afraid to breathe and watched my mother as she inspected the small
room. The lacy curtain, the napkins, a picture of a young Madame Laquaire in a white
dress, at the arm of a handsome officer, the canaries in their cage, the pile of papers on
the tired armchair, the books on the floor; nothing went unnoticed. I braced myself for
When my mother finally returned her attention to Madame Laquaire, she saw
in her eyes a calm and vaguely amused determination that took her aback. This sweet
old woman, who encouraged and cajoled me into working harder, could also project
an icy strength. It was amazing to see my mother losing her aggressive assurance.
"Well … I just wanted to make sure that … I mean, to meet the person who …
"Absolutely. I'm very satisfied with Victor's progress. We've come a long way,
"He's so lazy."
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It was like a game of tennis. My mother's services were weaker and weaker,
"One moment, please," Madame Laquaire said, while rising. From the corner
"You have the wrong apartment, Sir, " Madame Laquaire said. "You must be
"I find it hard to believe that you could be pleased with Victor. You must be
pretty lenient. I guess it's not easy to find students to tutor these days. Especially at
these rates."
"Well, I wanted to see for myself how you conduct your lessons."
"Absolutely. Victor, would you please tell me what you know about the Thalés
theorem? Only a few minutes, then we'll be able to work seriously. I'm listening
Victor."
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I didn't think it necessary to point out that we had spent the last lesson on the
theorem in question.
"Would you like me to draw the ABC triangle and the MN line?" I asked.
"We will do that, of course, but for now I'd simply like you to enunciate it for
me."
"Well, angles at the base of a triangle having two sides of equal length are
equal. And, of course, opposite angles of intersecting straight lines are equal."
"Not bad Victor, and to think that all this was like Chinese to you only a month
ago."
I smiled modestly, while Madame Laquaire rose and said, "I'm going to walk
your mother to the elevator. When I come back I want you to tell me about Molière.
"Correct. You'll also tell me what you know about The Imaginary Invalid."
While speaking, Madame Laquaire had walked to the door, which she held
I never learned what they discussed in the corridor. When she returned,
Madame Laquaire went straight to a cabinet and took out a bottle of Cointreau. She
poured herself a small glass and lit up one of her Turkish half cigarettes. Then she sat
"I shouldn't smoke and I certainly shouldn't drink, at least not in the middle of
the day, but I believe I've earned it," she said with a smile.
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An hour later, as I was closing my books, she held her hands out to me across
the table. They were cold, but they warmed my heart. "You mustn't be sad," she said.
"I'm not."
"Not now, maybe, but often. I know you quite well already, you know."
"I'll be fine."
"I know you will, but it hurts you the way your mother is, doesn't it? You think
"I'm sure she does love you. She'd show it to you if she could, but she is, how
"She's probably been always sick, as you say. But I saw her eyes, and I heard
her voice. Believe me, Victor, I'm pretty good at reading people. The truth is, she's
deeply unhappy. The meanness in her … it's not her fault. It’s like a demon, you know,
Later that evening, at the dinner table, my mother barked at me, "What's your
problem, Victor? Why are you staring at me like that? You want to take my picture?"
I shook my head and lowered my eyes. I had only tried to see the demon.
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CHAPTER TEN
To see Colette, and spend precious moments with her, required a permanent
exercise in creativity. My catalogue of excuses and bogus reasons for being late
coming home was quickly exhausted. How many times can one witness an autobus
The solution was two-pronged: first, I would avoid punishment at St. Jean-
Baptiste at all costs, and then use the stolen pink slips to convince my mother that I
had been detained. At school I turned into a model of assiduity and obedience and
during a few heavenly weeks, I came to believe that I had escaped my mother's
scrutiny.
Time went by like a dream when Colette and I were together. A few moments,
or so it seemed, after having met her at her Lycée Molière, it was already time to say
goodbye. Later, as I ran back home or lay on my bed, I replayed in my mind the vision
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of Colette's smile and the adorable sparkle in her eyes. I relived every moment spent
with her, our giggles and laughter, as well as the serious time going over the grammar
reality were cries of passion. I thought about our next encounter, counted the hours
and convinced myself that soon, the following week perhaps, I would summon up the
courage to say "I love you, Colette", four little words that sent my imagination
spinning. Maybe I would even take her in my arms for our first kiss. Wasn't it the way
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Madame Knudsen never saw in me the shining knight to whom she would one
day give her daughter's hand, but she slowly seemed to accept me. "I have to admit
"It's the, ‘I have to admit,’ that I like best," Colette told me the following day.
"That's so Maman."
One afternoon, when there had been an epidemic of patient no-shows, I was
questionsKnudsen, what kind of a name is that? that I hung up the telephone and
said that I had to finish my homework. Colette, who knew about my mother's reign of
"Your mother is right, Victor,” she said. "I should be more like her and I'm sure
"I'm sorry you can't stay," Colette said at the door. "I would've liked it."
Running home, I repeated those words, which, I wanted to believe, had been a
declaration of love.
Night after night, I wrote about my passion in letters I never sent. I pledged
eternal love and described our many years of bliss. These torrid letters were addressed
to Mademoiselle Knudsen, and when I placed them under my pillow, I was determined
to drop them in the mailbox on my way to school. But everything looked different the
following morning. Suddenly, Colette seemed utterly out of reach and my love letters
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In the last letter I wrote, I reminded Colette how I had taken her hand hours
earlier to protect her from a taxi running a red light: I kept your hand in mine
afterwards and you didn't take it back. My mouth was as dry as sandpaper. I wasn't
aware that I squeezed your hand so hard, and I'm sorry that I hurt you. It was only
***
Catechism classes were optional, but my mother made sure I attended. It had
more to do with her vision of the church as the moral police than it did with her shaky
So, every Friday after lunch, I had to sit with other unhappy souls in a dimly
lit, musty classroom and endure dreadfully boring lectures. Outside, in the courtyard,
It was after one of those classes that a vision changed my faith forever. Unlike
St. Paul about whom we had just heard, what I saw marked the beginning of its
disintegration.
We were lined up in the second floor corridor before the beginning of the first
regular class of the afternoon. My head full of Colette, I was paying no attention to the
chatter around me when, without thinking, I turned to the window and looked down to
mother!
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Yes, I had to believe my eyes. She wore her grey coat with the fur collar, and
was engaged in a conversation with Father Minot. What was she doing there? What
was she up to? Had she discovered the stratagem of my detention slips? Was she
the end of the year were really as good as Madame Laquaire had claimed. Of course
not, this was not Father Minot's domain. One thing was clear, this visit could only be
bad news.
I watched as Father Minot, his white hair covered by a beret, nodded, all
smiles as usual, and how he kept my mother's hand in his as they said goodbye. The
words they were exchanging sealed an alliance, it was all too obvious.
Later that day, at the dinner table, I felt my mother's stare. A feeling of
Anxiety still haunted me the following morning when I knelt down in the
confessional on the narrow board covered with worn-out red velvet. After a while, the
panel slid aside, allowing a ray of dusty light to make its way through the darkness.
On the other side of the latticed window I could make out Father Minot.
I bowed my head, but instead of making the sign of the cross and muttering the
first words of the Latin ritual, the priest addressed me, saying, "Good morning,
Victor!"
"Before your confess, child, is there not something you want to talk about?"
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"Whatever. My task goes beyond forgiving you for your sins in the name of the
Lord. It is also to help you. Is there anything new in your life? Something important?
Or somebody, maybe?"
Slowly I began to see the light. I asked Colette for her forgiveness and replied,
"No, Father."
especially the sins of the flesh. You understand that, don't you?"
"Yes, Father."
"Your age is a difficult one, my child. We all want to help you, but you must
talk to us."
"There are things a child might find difficult to discuss with his parents, but
"You are about to confess, Victor. I can only absolve you if I am certain that
From the Lord or from my mother? If those two had formed an alliance, who
***
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Day after day, Madame Laquaire performed miracles, making me climb down
from the rosy cloud on which I had established residence. After offering me her cheek,
she would ask about Colette. Granting legitimacy to my passion was the mark of a
genius. Being allowed to talk about my beloved, her latest bon mot or the paper cut on
her finger on which I had put a band-aid, made me pliable. Once admitted in my secret
universe, it was easy for the old lady to remind me of our goals and lead me into a
"We're not about to allow them to separate you, trust me," she would say as she
opened a manual.
My mother, on the other hand, never gave up. The more she felt she was losing
her grip on me, the more aggressively she pursued me. Her imagination was fertile.
I remember one Sunday lunch at the end of which Janine brought a chocolate
Fishing a wad of St. Jean-Baptiste pink slips from the pocket of her skirt, my
"The occasion? We are celebrating Victor's twelfth detention since the Easter
father, then Lucie, to hold out their plates before pushing the dish toward Bonne
Maman. Turning to my father she added: "I don't care what the old goat you're wasting
your money on says, Victor is setting new records for his last year with us."
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Lucie then intervened, exclaiming, "You mean you went all the way to
"I can't believe this," my sister said, pushing her plate away.
Ignoring the glares from my parents, she rose, and left the room. Her gesture of
solidarity carved itself more deeply into my memory than the torment invented by my
mother.
***
When I arrived home one Tuesday evening, my heart was singing, my mind
replaying the bliss shared with Colette. Nothing could have prepared me for the horror
that awaited me. I didn't even have time to take my keys out of my pocket; my mother
had heard the elevator and opened the door wide. Her broad smile was the first sign
In fact, such a cheery atmosphere reigned in the apartment that alarms quickly
started to sound in me. Far from making me relax, the sound of my mother humming
in the kitchen filled me with panic. I had no clue as to the source of such joy, but I
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Janine had just served one of her specialtiesovercooked veal with a gooey
and tasteless sauce, accompanied by the hated spinachwhen the first salvo was
fired.
"Did you read this article in Le Figaro about Proust?" my mother asked in her
most innocent tone. "I like Proust, of course; Remembrance of Things Past is a
My father and Lucie exchanged puzzled looks and didn't bother to answer,
while Bonne Maman muttered silently to herself, as usual. But my mother didn't mind
their lack of cooperation. It was me she was staring at, and her eyes belied the
"I like Colette better," she went on, "She's one of our best authors. Most of all,
the Claudine series and of course Gigi. What do you think, Victor? Don't you agree?"
I could hardly breathe. With a circular glance, my mother made sure she had
everybody’s attention.
"He loves Colette. You might even say, he’s in love with Colette. Aren't you,
Victor?"
My blood went cold, my palms were damp with icy sweat, my heart was
dying. I wanted to get up, leave, and run away, but my legs wouldn't have carried me.
I often thought about how perplexed my father had looked that day, and came
to the conclusion that his wife hadn't let him in the ploy. Quite satisfied with her first
act, she fished a sheet of lined paper from the pocket of her skirt and, taking her time
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"Colette my love," she read aloud, managing to make every word sound dirty,
"I waited whole day - all, a-l-l, Victor, not whole - for the moment when I could see
you at the Lycée Molière, but when I had to leave, you still had not come out. Or
maybe you came out early, I don't know. But it's all right. When I waited, I was close
to you and that was almost enough. I love you so much, my Colette, that I'm not sure
My mother looked around the table. "Well, well! Seems to me we have a Don
Juan in the family," she concluded with glee. "And there's more. There's a whole
But no truce was possible. I could see in my mother's eyes, in the mad fire that
burned behind them, and in the hard lines around her mouth that she would have no
mercy; she was going for the kill. This realization gave my legs the strength they had
My closet had been searched from top to bottom, and all my letters were gone.
I locked my door and wept for hours on my bed. Several times, my mother ordered me
to open the door, saying, we had to talk, she only had my best interest in mind, one
day I would see what she meant, but I didn't move. I also ignored her threats of
punishment. What else could she do to me? Finally, I fell asleep in my clothes, my
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
The following afternoon I left Saint Jean-Baptiste as soon as the bell rang and
ran all the way to the Lycée Molière. I just had to see Colette. Not that I had any
intention to tell her about what had happenedthe shame was still burning, and
besides I couldn't tell her about the lettersI just needed to be near her, to make sure
When I arrived, out of breath, at the corner of the rue du Ranelagh, the little
girls of first and second grade were just coming out, under the supervision of a head
mistress. I stood at my usual spot, near a fire hydrant, where Colette had learned to
look for me. When I saw her, my heart swelled with joy and relief. Suddenly, all the
Colette smiled broadly when she saw me. God, she was beautiful! Nothing,
nobody, mattered anymore. I leaned forward to kiss the cheek she was offering me,
I turned around, petrified. My mother was all decked out in a navy-blue dress
and perched on stiletto heels. I would have found her beautiful if I hadn't read so much
"Colette how?"
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I stepped forward as if I had the power to protect Colette. "It's Danish," I said,
"Well that's most interesting," my mother sneered. "We'll keep her in mind
She then grabbed my arm and lashed out, saying, "Why don't you go home,
Mademoiselle, the sidewalk is no place for a young woman. Oh! And please don't
guess I could have fought back and set myself free, but the thought didn't even occur
to me. All I could think about was the hurt on Colette's face as she held her hand over
down. For a few minutes she didn't speak, but I could feel a storm coming. People
"You'll never see this little slut again," my mother finally hissed between
clenched teeth.
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"How would you know? I do, believe me. I know her kind. Those little whores
are cunning. They pick a boy who will then spend all his life regretting it. The only
I had spent enough time trying to answer that question myself to know not to
argue.
"Let's face it. It's not as if you were smart or even good-looking with those ears
of yours. Anyway ... it's my duty as a mother to protect you, even if you don't deserve
it and don't seem to be grateful for my efforts. Consider yourself lucky that I was able
to intervene."
"What filth?"
From the corner of my eye I recognized "the mask". My mother was rubbing
her arms, and shivering. Her voice went up in its highest octaves as she recited, "'My
love, I would like so much to hold you in my arms, to feel your body against mine' ...
It wouldn't be too bad if it was only ridiculousafter all you don't know what you're
talking aboutbut it's disgusting which doesn't surprise me in the least, coming from
you."
"Anyway," my mother concluded, "this is all over. In the future I'll watch out
more closely for you. You're never to see that little slut ever again, do you hear me?"
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"And what if I want to see her again? It's my life after all!" I said, sounding
almost resolute.
"Must I remind you that you have a criminal record? Will you force me to call
her parents and reveal that you were once convicted for pornography?"
Game, set and match. I was beaten and never saw Colette again.
***
I didn't cry that night, didn't shed a tear. Something had snapped, allowing a
newly discovered rage to overwhelm me, so powerful that I hardly felt the pain. Never
before had I known this urge to hit, destroy, eradicate. I could only think of
vengeance. Gone was the helpless, meek little boy, I was an angry warrior. I had lost
Colette. I knew I would never see her again. Sooner or later I would feel the pain, the
loss, and I would cry, but for now, I was thirsty for revenge. All I could think about
Locked in my room I had declined to sit at the dinner table. Several times, my
mother had knocked, and then finally banged at my door, shouting, "Victor, open up!
What could she possibly explain? What did we have to talk about?
hands crossed behind my head, I had watched the windows go dark, one after the
other, on the other side of the street. My jaws were so tight they hurt; I only relaxed
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Never before had I felt such anger. I was shaking with a rage I didn't know I
had in me. I saw myself shredding my mother's most beautiful dresses or, even better,
I must have fallen asleep a few moments, because it was almost four when I
opened my eyes. Perhaps my inspiration came from the erection that accompanied my
coming to. Be that as it may, I knew at that very moment how I was going to exact
vengeance. At last, I had a plan. "Yes, that's it. That's it!" I heard myself say.
I got up, noiselessly opened the door, and tiptoed to the kitchen. My uneaten
dinner was in a Tupperware container in the refrigerator, but I had no interest in it. I
took the bowl containing my mother's famous vitamin-loaded yogurt and carried it to
my room. There, I climbed on a chair and found the photograph rescued several weeks
earlier from Glob's desk. Hidden under the cloth lining the upper shelf of my closet, it
had evaded all searches. For a brief moment, I imagined my mother's reaction had she
found this photograph. After all, she had dragged me to the police for a far more
innocent picture. She would have had a seizure, no doubt. She would have dropped
dead. Too bad, I thought, I would have liked to see her go that way. It would have
been appropriate.
Thighs spread open, her mound clean-shaven, her sex agape, the woman stared
Since meeting Colette, I had had no desire to look at that picture, for my soul
had been pure, in spite of the torrid dreams dampening my pajamas. After seeing
myself penetrating females in my sleepNora was a frequent guest star I had been
filled with shame for having been in some way unfaithful to Colette.
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Tonight, however, everything was different. Rage and lust fed off each other.
The sight of this woman made my blood boil. I was so hard it hurt. I could hardly
My penis throbbed in my hand. I knew I was going to come any second now,
but would have liked to delay the moment of vengeance. She had had me convicted of
pornography, hadn't she? She had called Colette a slut, hadn't she? She had sullied my
love, hadn't she? Well, this is what I had for her. When I ejaculated in a hot spurt and
felt myself shaking from head to toe, I struggled to keep my eyes open for I didn't
want to miss my target. I watched intently as gush after gush of sperm landed on the
yogurt, white on white. And when the eruption slowed down, when I had finally
regained some sort of composure, I squeezed carefully the head of my penis. We didn't
want to waste even a drop, did we? Satisfied, I took a pencil on my desk and used it to
Back from the kitchen, I went to bed, set my alarm clock, and fell asleep with a
smile on my face.
***
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Sleeping in was a sacred weekend ritual for my father. The telephone would be
off the hook, and noises of all kinds were no-no’s; Janine who had dropped a pile of
plates in the kitchen, one Saturday morning, never forgot her ensuing dressing down.
As soon as my mother woke up, she had to leave the bed because feeling that his wife
was awake "spoiled" the master's well-deserved rest. That didn't mean she was
allowed to shower, however, lest the noise of running water disturb him. Neither could
she have breakfast before her husband. "We are a family, we do everything together,"
he would often say. Even then I recognized those words as a monument of hypocrisy.
I got up at 7 that Saturday and ran all the way to school, in order to be the first
for confession. I recited the usual litany of sins: sloth, anger, lack of respect to my
parents, which I might or might not have committed; I had stopped bothering about
that. The list was well received; it was worth a few Holy Fathers and Hail Marys.
I didn't waste time on my way back home, either, didn't stop at the baker's
window, didn't even call Jacky. As I arrived my father was just stepping out of his
bathroom.
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I sat down at the table as Janine entered, carrying a tray loaded with baguette,
toasted brioche, strawberry jam, a smoking pot of coffee, a jar of milk and my
mother's bowl of yogurt. Lucie had her bad mood face on, Bonne Maman was
struggling with her napkin, which she liked to tuck into her blouse, my father was
checking the morning headlines, and my mother was pointedly ignoring me. She
moved to kiss her. I was being punished for having denied her the pleasure of a last
act.
My father helped himself first and kept the basket with the toasted brioche in
front of him.
"Would you mind very much sharing with us?" Lucie asked.
Bonne Maman looked as if she desperately wanted to stay out of trouble and
my mother brought the spoon to her mouth. An icy rivulet of perspiration ran down
take, my heart stopped. With her lips pushed forward, she wore the same expression as
when she questioned the expiration date of one of her medications. But my
imagination was probably playing tricks on me, because she soon swallowed a second
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prepared me for lightning to strike in our dining room, or the floor to open under our
feet, but nothing was happening. Nothing. There was only the clatter of plates and
cups, the crisp noise of knifes buttering toasts, and the silence of my parents, who had
When my father pushed his chair back and rose without a word, I still hadn't
started to eat.
"What is it to you?"
***
that it dawned on me: I was about to be tested, as I never had been. The somewhat
bogus confession of the previous day hadn't mattered much. I had been there before
But everything was different now. I had stepped over a line, there was no
denying it. God had seen me the other night. He had witnessed my mother's breakfast.
He had to be beside Himself. I was overwhelmed with sacred fear when I sat down on
a sixth row bench, next to the aisle. All the doubts that had developed in me lately had
to do with the Church and it's officers, not with God himself, and certainly not His
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I went through the service in a quasi-hypnotic state. The prayers and orisons,
Father Moisnard's sermon, the hymns; to me they were all part of an indistinct
background rumble. I stood up, knelt down, and sat down with my comrades at the
command of the bells in the same state of resigned numbness as a prisoner living his
last minutes before execution. For one brief moment, I tried to convince myself that
sincere remorse could buy me His forgiveness, but I had to accept reality; not only did
I not feel one bit sorry for what I had done, I was determined to repeat my deed as
line and moved toward the altar, while watching my comrades walk back to their seats
with their head bowed. They were at peace. God wasn't angry at them even when He
saw the smiles and winks they exchanged, for they hadn't committed the unforgivable.
Like every Sunday I knelt down in front of the golden rail. From the corner of
my eye, I saw the priest's embroidered chasuble as he came nearer and nearer. The
holy murmur became more and more distinct. I opened my mouth when the black
shoes and the hem of the alb stopped in front of me and held my breath. Each muscle
of my neck and shoulders was on a state of high alert. I didn't know what to expect.
The worst, the most severe punishment, it went without saying. And yet, the dull
contact of the wafer on my tongue was the same as ever. It stuck on my dry tongue.
Gathering what was left of my strength, I swallowed. If God was going to strike, now
was the moment. I wasn't ready - how can you be? - but I was resigned.
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I was almost surprised to find a cool breeze and a ray of sun welcoming me
when I came out of the church. Something Father Minot had said came back to my
memory.
"If you ever commit the ultimate sin, I think you'll know."
CHAPTER TWELVE
I don't have much memory of the weeks leading to the year-end exams. My
heart was in a coma. The rage-induced anesthesia had subsided, quickly replaced by
cruel and merciless pain, and I was in a state of deep mourning. I cannot possibly
imagine what I would have done without Madame Laquaire. Maybe I wouldn't have
thrown myself under a train, as I first contemplated, but I would certainly have
returned to the abyss of ignorance from which she had worked so hard to rescue me.
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My old tutor always welcomed me with a smile. Almond cookies were waiting
forcing the accent she had once struggled to get rid of, for effect.
"When my husband was transferred here, I had to learn how to speak Parisian,"
she recalled. "You can't be a half-decent teacher if the kids burst out laughing every
She would tell me stories about her first classes and her too brief marriage to a
man who could only see the sunny side of life until the very last days of his fight with
cancer.
"His real illness was optimism," she would say whenever we visited her photo
albums and their faded pictures. She would then heave a long, deep sigh and pour
herself a little glass of sweet liquor. It was good for her "condition," she always said
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The old lady also knew how to listen. She never wasted her time assuring me
that I had my whole life ahead of me or that I would meet other girls and fall in love
again. No, she used all her talent to channel my emotions and reorient them. Moments
later, I would find myself, pencil in hand, trying to solve an equation, totally unaware
of the transition she had engineered. I could feel how eager she was then to
congratulate me. Only when the neighbor played his trumpet records did she lose her
patience. She would bang the wall with the broom handle and call him names that she
"Books aren't for me," he had declared one day, to Madame Laquaire's dismay,
I still saw Nora three times a week, though. She prepared my bowl of Ovaltine
as soon as she saw me through her window. She kept repeating that a little bit of sun
would do me good.
"I'm not saying that you must be as tanned as Nora," she would say with her
deep throaty laugh, "but you're as white as a ghost. Such a pretty boy, what a shame!"
I let her cuddle me and purred when she stroked my hair with her long red-
nailed fingers.
longer called it my hometo St. Jean-Baptiste, where I kept my nose to the ground, to
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Finally, the first day of the dreaded exams arrived. Up long before the alarm
rang, I jumped out of bed. My mother and Lucie were arguing in the kitchen when I
ran out of my room, ignoring the cup of cocoa that Janine had prepared. They raised
to ignore how crucial the day was for me. I slammed the door behind me and ran
Out on the street, I walked quickly up the Avenue Mozart to the Vrai Saumur
café, near the subway station. There, seated at a table by the window, Madame
“The croissants are just out of the oven," Jacky said, pushing a basket toward
me while, on a signal from Madame Laquaire, a waiter hurried over with a cup of hot
"So?" the old woman asked, "were you able to sleep a little?"
"Not much."
"Nothing to worry about," said Jacky. "What can they do to you? They can't be
attempt to look contrite. "I know, I know," he said. "There are things you shouldn't say
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Around us, my schoolmates were all saying farewell to their parents. I wasn't
jealous of them, because their families couldn't have been better than my new one.
***
The publication of the results was cause for neither triumph nor despair. My
mother had been right and I wasn't admitted to the next grade. My score was high
enough, however, to qualify for a second chance in September, and this took my
parents by surprise.
learned of a disaster.
A few days later, I was told of my fate. I would spend the summer in Paris as a
"It's costing me an arm and a leg," my father commented, but another year in
barrel."
The holidays were upon us, and my father laid out the plans. In exchange for
the free rental of 40 TV's to a small hotel in Brittany, my mother would get to spend
two months by the sea as a non-paying guest. My father would join her for long
weekends in August and a full week in September. As for Lucie, she was headed for
the Alps. Her friends had rented a chalet close to the Mer de Glace.
My grandmother was in a good mood, for she had been granted permission to
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I didn't know what to expect from the boarding school program, but didn't
really care. I was slowly learning not to think of Colette, which made life both easier
and emptier. I watched without much attention as the family prepared for the big
departure. They talked of boots, and sweaters for the mountain, and bathing costumes
raised voice, I tiptoed toward the living room. My parents were facing each other, only
separated by two open suitcases at their feet. My father was shaking his head and
rolling his eyes. In an effort to stop the accusations hurled at him by his wife, he kept
"I know why you're sending me away for two months," she yelled. "To get rid
of me, so you can have a good time in Paris. That's what you really want."
"But ..."
"Oh, yes! And don't you make faces at me. I might be crazy, as you say, but I'm
"I can see you, only minutes after my train has left the station. ‘Good
riddance,’ isn't that what you'll think? You'll be free to party with your whores."
"You'll never change. You like them easy, don't you? Willing to do all the
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"And I'll be alone with other wives just like me, bored stiff in a miserable hotel
while, back in Paris, our husbands do in broad day-light what they do in secret the rest
of the year."
My father had to kick one of the suitcases so hard that its contents flew across
"Shut up!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "Shut the fuck up! I can't take
fascinated. Now my mother had changed her act. No longer on the attack, she choked
"At least these other women," she moaned, "will have their children with
"Lucie is going away with her friends. But she's a grown up now, and she's not
truly my daughter, as you remind me all the time. But my Victor … it will be the first
My father's eyes went wide with stupefaction. "Are you saying you'll miss
him?"
"How dare you? Let me ask you a simple question. Do you have a picture of
your children when you travel? Of course you don't. I'll show you what I mean."
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The head of the family was at a total loss for words. My mother knelt down
and started to remove blouses, cardigans, dresses from her suitcase, finally exposing a
framed picture, wrapped in a sweater. I couldn't believe my eyes. She had, indeed,
packed a picture of me that had been taken the previous summer. In it, I was standing
My father shook his head, raised his arms in a sign of defeat, and left the room.
"I don't believe my ears," he muttered as he walked by me. Raising her head,
I hesitated a second or two before going to sit down next to her. Smiling, she
pulled my head on her bosom. I don't know how long we stayed like that. The moment
was both brief and eternal. Suddenly my mother intoned Le p'tit quinquin, a nursery
rhyme from the patois of her native north, and then laughed softly.
"Do you remember lambkin? That was what I used to sing for you when you
were a tiny baby. And years before, my father used to sing it for me. Ah, well …"
Those minutes, that song, her laughter, and her words never left my memory. I
wasn't sure what to believeand still don't know reallybut she had packed my
Each time I think about that day, I hear a voice inside me. "If only you had
known then!"
***
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Behind the walls of St. Jean-Baptiste, days went by under a cloud of boredom.
Up at 6:30, we were marched from the dorm to the bathroom, then to the dining hall
and the classrooms, a dull and obedient flock. We had all been denied the sunny
beaches, mountain peaks and idyllic landscapes pictured on the postcards taped inside
our lockers. The mood was one of glum resignation. Neither the walks in the Bois de
Boulogne nor even the Sunday afternoon movie at the nearby theater were able to
misery headed for the library, I ran as fast as my legs would allow toward Nora and
Madame Laquaire. Jacky was spending the summer with his uncle, the owner of a bar
in Toulon.
Madame Laquaire was waiting for me, but she knew how much I loved
"Take your time. Have your lemonade or whatever she prepares for you," she
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Yes, it was a hot summer and cold lemonade had replaced the cup of cocoa. An
electric fan stirred the air and Nora walked about in a nylon slip through which I could
make out her tiny panties. When somebody knocked at the door, she put on a white
robe. Nora was perfectly comfortable with her own body and didn't seem to notice the
emotion it stirred up in me. After my first heartbreak, my senses had come alive again.
Nora's long brown thighs, her curved behind, her heavy breasts, naked under the slip
lit a fire in me. I stared at these beautiful breasts, whose nipples pointed through the
fabric and wanted so much to touch them. Later, in my bed I revisited these moments
of delicious frustration and often, oblivious to the snores and whispers around me, I
Mid-August brought the first test exams, designed to make hardened veterans
out of us and with them came a momentous surprise: a contingent of girls from Notre
Dame of SomethingI forget what. They arrived early one morning at breakfast time;
some twenty of them, prim and proper in their neat pearl-gray uniforms and white
blouses. They waited a while in the courtyard, stealing furtive glances at the
surroundings, under the watchful supervision of four nuns with their winged coifs. We
fought for the best observation points at the dining hall windows. Behind the back of
It was then that I realized that Colette had been the exception; I wasn't into
girls my own age. Only women, true women, interested me. They were neither
awkward nor unfinished like the new arrivals; they were elegant. The assurance of
mature women excited me. At times, on the bus or in local shops, I gazed at them with
fascination.
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"Don't you stare at people like that, young man. Didn't your parents teach you
Of course I was curious and hungry for their sexes, their skin, their breasts, all
those treasures the priests of St. Jean-Baptiste wanted to keep my mind off of, but it
was their femininity as a whole that kept me in awe. I was discovering their hair
flowing down to their shoulders, the minuscule wrinkles around their eyes when they
laughed, the feet swinging at the end of their legs as they crossed them over their
round knees, the silkiness of their skin, their made-up eyes, their long eyelashes. I
could have spent my days and nights learning about women. They were the keepers of
the mystery.
I was consumed with desire, but there was more. Of course, the sight of Nora's
half-naked body set fire to my imagination, but her mere presence, the sound of her
voice, the way she glided rather than walked like the rest of us, the most insignificant
of her gestures enthralled me. I marveled at the way she touched the tip of her nose
when searching for a word or how she marked the beat of her sentences with her
handsone time black, the next pink. All these marks of femininity made up a
kingdom into which I was proud to be admitted. When Nora hummed while filing her
nails or applied lipstick on her wide, full lips, nothing else existed for me.
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of the inside of her thighs while getting out of her car. The brief vision of white flesh
beyond the border of the stockings made me shake. Often I would dream that the
woman had invited me to sit down next to her. I wanted so to smell her fragrance or
admire her long, red fingernails as she smoothed her skirt. She would take a filtered
cigarette from a silver case and hand me her lighter. Oh! The line of her neck as she
leaned over toward the flame! And what about her long hair, falling like a theater
curtain down her lovely face? I didn't see what the young girls of Notre Dame of
Something had to offer. I found their airs as pointless as the raunchy boasts of my
comrades. Yes, I was passionate about women. Everything about them fascinated me,
including the way they had of ignoring me and walking away on their high heels,
unaware of the boy they had just left, overwhelmed, in their wake.
***
Finally, the big day arrived. In spite of Madame Laquaire's repeated claims of
There were some thirty of us, one per desk, in a large room. It had been
painted over during the summer recess in a dull yellowish green that still managed to
look old and dirty. As we sat down, we exchanged forced smiles and fatalistic shrugs.
Some of those who had escaped imprisonment sported a vacation tan and made fun of
our pale faces. Among us, and not a bit more comfortable, were a few girls from Notre
Dame. One of them was sitting across the aisle from me.
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The first thing I noticed about her was the way she played with the blonde hair
on the nape of her slender neck. The memory of Colette stung. I thought I had
forgotten her, but this gesture brought her to life again in my heart. The girl must have
had often kept me awake, "this is no day to play the ladies man."
At last, the exam forms were distributed. Dead silence reigned. I quickly went
over the questions and immediately felt a wave of relief. Two trains were running in
opposite directions, nothing new there … a series of equations, which only two
months before would have made my mind numb, now seemed simple enough. A
problem of interest ratios seemed to spread consternation around me, but Madame
"Step back," she had said, "and learn to recognize one of the simple structures
Father Marcoux rose frequently from behind his desk and walked up and down
the aisles, stopping behind such or such student, glancing over the poor soul's
shoulder. He then resumed his inspection, poker-faced, with just a vaguely amused
I dropped my pencil and leaned down to pick it up. "a2 minus 2ab plus b2"
"Delorme!"
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Later, as I was crossing the courtyard on my way to the dining hall, the blonde
girl caught up with me. "Thanks for the algebra," she said. "My name's Marine."
"I knew the answer, you know, but I drew a blank. I wasn't sure whether it was
"I know the feeling. Are you ready for this afternoon?"
"They say it's going to be on the causes of World War I," she said. "If it's true,
"Rumors," I said. "Nothing more. But if you want, I can tell you a few things
after lunch."
Marine smiled and I realized that she was pretty. I liked her wide, green eyes
and the dimple on her chin. She ran to catch up with her friends, her skirt swirling
"So, Delorme, at least the day won't be a total waste of time for you," sneered
Vacher.
I didn't answer.
Later, under the shade of an elm, I told Marine about Sarajevo, the
assassination of the Archduke, the alliances and domino effect across Europe.
"I'm sure there's a lot more," I concluded when the bell rang, "but that's
basically it."
"We could be friends," she said, before answering the call of one of the nuns.
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Friends, she had said. Was it at all possible? For some reason, mere friendship
with her, it didn't take me long to complete the test. The second subject, the rivers of
France, were more of a problem, but I still managed to leave twenty minutes early. As
I crossed the courtyard, it occurred to me that I could wait for Marine whose savior I
was after all, even her hero possibly. No urge, however, was stronger than that of
I started running.
***
I woke up at three on the morning of the publication of the results, and was
unable to go back to sleep. Eyes wide open, I stared at the narrow window in front of
me, waiting for the first rays of light. In the bed on my left, Vacher was snoring away.
At ten o'clock sharp, Louis, the hunchback caretaker, came out, clad in his
usual gray overalls, and opened the heavy door. A crowd of anxious parents was
admitted into the courtyard. The previous evening, I had begged Madame Laquaire not
to come. I knew how devastated the likely failure was going to leave me, and wanted
"I don't like this kind of talk, Victor," she had said. "But we'll do as you wish."
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On a nod from the Father Superior, Louis opened the gymnasium door and the
crowd gathered in front of the boards where the ominous lists were posted. I
desperately tried to act cool, but I certainly bore the same expression of anguish as
everyone else around me. As in a dream, I heard the cries of joy, the moans of
disappointment while I elbowed my way through the crowd, feeling a tight hand
around my throat. Suddenly, my blood started to boil and I felt the heat on my face.
Delorme, Victor! With the crowd pushing and shoving around me, I kept staring at
these two words as if expecting the mirage to disappear any moment. But it didn't, it
did look like it was true. Delorme, Victor; for once, my name was among the
victorious. How wrong I had been to want to be alone! I couldn't wait to see the smile
on Madame Laquaire's face. And what about Nora? She, too, would be proud. I looked
around. There were many somber faces. I saw Vacher walk slowly toward the door, his
head bowed.
A white-haired man with a limp turned around and barked at him: "Are you
coming or what?"
I had never been fond of Vacher; for one brief moment however, I felt sorry for
him.
“Delorme!”
priest said. He was smiling and looking away at the same time, as if embarrassed, then
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Deep down I had never really believed in my chances and wasn't ready for my
moment of triumph. As I walked briskly past buildings that had seen me so often
dragging my feet, dejected, I reviewed the possible lines that could accompany my
return home.
"Good morning, Papa, good morning, Maman. Did you hear the news on TV?
How about something cool, and detached like. "Did you have a nice time? You
look rested. Me? Nothing special. Ah yes, I almost forgot. I passed my exam."
Why not go all the way then, mime a herald at the court of Charlemagne,
reading from an imaginary parchment. "Ta-Da.! Oyez, oyez, good people. Victor
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avail; in spite of my efforts I just couldn't see my parents. My father would probably
be satisfied, even if he wouldn’t show it, but what about my mother, what mood would
she be in? I considered climbing the eight flights of the service stairs up to Bonne
Maman's room and ask her what to expect. But no, I couldn't wait, I was dying to tell
them. A simple "Good morning, Papa and Maman. I want you to know that I passed"
would do. They would be surprised, no doubt. They might even be proud of their son.
utensils from the kitchen. I was fishing my key out of my pocket when my father
opened the door, looking exhausted, haggard with his tie undone and his hair
uncombed. Behind him stood a nurse in a white uniform, a stocky, unsmiling woman
in her fifties with a strong jaw conveying a sense of authority and whose grey hair was
"Ah! It's you," my father said in a tired, barely audible voice. Suddenly, none
"What?"
"You heard me. They pumped her stomach at the hospital. Now she's here and
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"I travel all the time and I cannot rely on your grandmother."
My father grabbed my elbow and said, "Certainly not! They gave her a
He then led me to his study, where he let himself fall into his favorite armchair.
"I guess I was dozing," he sighed. "I didn't sleep all night."
Bit by bit, I learned what had happened. Often my father repeated himself and
there were times when he made no sense at all, but I was able to put the pieces
together. Their vacation had not gone well, he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling.
Never before had he spoken to me like this. He didn't seem to realize how incongruous
"She accused me of looking at the other women in the hotel. Making passes at
them. She even claimed that I had slipped a message to the woman at the next table.
You should've seen the woman in question! As if I was going to do something like that
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He stopped and remained silent for a while, then sighed. "I wasn't even
allowed to take a walk alone on the beach. She thought I was meeting somebody. And
then, one evening, she turned hysterical. She had gone up early to our room, one of
her migraines. When she felt better and came downstairs, I was helping the barmaid
with a case of bottles; the gentlemanly thing to do, you know, the case was too heavy
for that poor girl. Your mother started to scream. She hurled insults at the poor kid; she
wanted to hit her and the owner had to intervene. There were people in the TV room,
and they all came in to see what was happening. I was so embarrassed, it was
horrible!"
When they arrived in Paris, she was wearing "her bad days face."
"And then, last night … it was about two in the morning, I woke up. She was
groaning. First, I thought she was having a bad dream, so I shook her shoulder, but she
kept on moaning so I turned the light on. Her eyes were wide open, but I could see the
whites. She was drooling, it was awful. And there was this stench too, like alcohol and
vomit. I jumped off the bed and that's when I saw the bottle of gin and the two tubes
From the corner of my eye, I saw Bonne Maman. I wanted to run to her and
give her a kiss, but she put a finger on her lips and shook her head before disappearing
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I was too shocked to care about the double insult. At that moment, the nurse
My father rose to accompany me, but the nurse stopped him with a raised
***
The curtains were drawn. A purple scarf, draped around the lamp on the
bedside table, added to the sinister ambience. My mother's head rested on two pillows.
Slowly, step by cautious step, I approached the bed. Her eyes had sunk deep into her
skull, and her dyed hair was matted on her temples by perspiration, the dark roots
forming like a crown. The summer tan contrasted with her gaunt features. With a
feeble gesture of the hand, she beckoned me. Unsure that she wanted me to hug her, I
Instead of answering, she pulled back her hand and turned her head toward the
wall. I sat down on the edge of the bed. Minutes elapsed without a word. I was going
to remind her that she had called for me when she spoke her first words, still staring at
the wall.
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In an oddly hoarse voice, she recounted the most horrible vacations of her life,
her words. My father had been chasing women in the very hotel where she was
staying. He had preyed on those women left alone for the summer by their
philandering husbands.
"I was an object of ridicule. He was prancing, smiling left and right. A woman
even came to complain to me. If I better controlled my husband, she said, he would
I was lost. I didn't want to choose between the two versions. It wasn't up to me
to decide where the truth lay. One of them was lying. Maybe they were both lying. Or
perhaps they were both telling the truth. I didn't want to know, I was terrified of
having to judge. I also wondered how and why I had become their confidant of choice.
"One night, I was very sick, one of those ophthalmic migraines, the worst, but
he chose to stay downstairs. I mean, I was in bed in such pain, any husband would
have stayed at his wife's side, but no, not that man, he wanted to have a good time. In
fact, he was quite happy that I was stuck in my room. And when I felt better and went
looking for him downstairs, I found him behind the bar, with that slut."
I hadn't meant to take sides. I just wanted to calm my mother down, because
she was becoming so agitated. She briefly glanced at me, her eyes suddenly so alive,
"Ah, he told you his side of the story, didn't he? Why don't you ask him why he
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I nodded, unable to think. The air in the room was suffocating. A few weeks
without them and I had almost forgotten. I wasn't sure I could go back. Besides, I had
"He's always been like that. How many times did he return from one of his so-
called business trips with lipstick or perfume all over his dirty shirts? He always had
an explanation. The only woman he had no time for was his wife. Mind you, I wasn't
"I passed my exam," I repeated in a firmer voice. "I haven't seen my scores,
but I must have made a killing in math. I'm sure I got all the right answers."
"So you reach a point when you say, I can't take it anymore. God didn't put me
It seemed to me that my mother was offering me her hand and I wanted to take
it, but she pulled back. "Promise me not to take those drugs again," I said.
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Again she turned toward me, her eyes burning with anger. I thought she was
going to yell, "and now you're calling me a liar", but she just sighed and shrugged her
shoulders, saying in a barely audible voice, "How can you know? You're just a child."
"You'll all be pleased when I'm locked up. Good riddance, you'll all say. You'll
invite all the friends you want … including that black boy … and your father will be
I didn't know what to say. With a movement of her hand, my mother dismissed
"If I become really good in math," I said, "maybe I'll be a great financier."
***
"I can't eat this pasta," my father groaned, looking disgusted at the spaghetti
Bonne Maman had made for dinner. "Janine wasn't a world-class chef, but she never
It was only the climax of a rant that had started as soon as he sat down at the
"No napkins tonight? Maybe it's my job to set the table! And how long has this
wine been in the sun? And why don't you bring the dish to the table instead of serving
us in the kitchen?"
Nothing seemed to perturb her legendary appetite. Personally, I found nothing wrong
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"She won't be back. Your mother fired her the day before we left. Apparently, I
"In any event, as bad a cook as she was, she never put so much salt in our
food."
Not getting any reaction from Bonne Maman, he turned to me and said, "I
I shrugged my shoulders.
"I'm not surprised, given how late you went. What about dessert? Don't tell me
"No they weren't, but they were out of pastries," she said. "All they had was
My father rose, sending his chair to the floor, and threw his napkin on the
table.
"You know damn well that I don't eat fruit. Thanks for a shitty meal!"
I was certain now that sparkles were dancing behind Bonne Maman's thick
glasses.
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"I hope you like the spaghetti, my little Victor," she whispered as soon as my
laughter.
"And I didn't add too much salt either," Bonne Maman went on.
I got up and knelt down next to my grandmother, who pulled my face against
"I swear. French, math, mostly and history and geography, as well. I passed,
"I'm proud of my Victor," she said. "In that case, the surprise you'll find in your
"Behind your pajamas, on the bottom shelf. There is a little tart. Pear and
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One day, when whisky had made my father philosophical and he had noticed
my presence, he had said, "Remember what I'm going to say, Victor. You cannot win
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
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I spent the next few days at home, wandering from room to room, feeling
empty and lost, lying on my bed with Le dernier des Mohicans, a present from
Madame Laquaire. I would have liked to be such a hero and imagined myself resisting
torture, all the while remaining stoic. Why wasn't I more like Hawkeye and his valiant
warriors?
I was living in limbo. My father was at work, Madame Robillard, the nurse,
had informed me that my mother wasn't seeing anyone and Bonne Maman was busy
with what had been Janine's work, running errands, cleaning, cooking. I would have
liked to go out and spend time with Jacky, but was afraid to leave even for a moment.
Bonne Maman left the table as fast as her corpulence allowed her, while I
"What now?"
you?"
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"Everything's going to be different. I don't know how long your mother will
stay in that place. Months, years, who knows? She might never come back. For the
moment, they all agree, she cannot live alone. They even fear she might get worse."
"You're too young to understand. The fact is, I'm always on the road and you're
not going to stay here by yourself. I can't even trust …" With a jerk of his chin he
pointed at the object of his scorn, who was busy with a suitcase. "So, you're going to
boarding school."
All I could do was stutter, "But … but I wanted to tell you … I couldn't with
… with everything happening with Maman and … and you didn't ask, but I passed my
"Really?"
During one brief moment, with one eyebrow raised, my father looked
surprising him.
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"Well, that's good, but it doesn't change a thing," he said at last. "There's no
other solution. You're going to Ambroise Paré in Tours. I sent your application off this
education?"
He gave me a long, grave look above his reading glasses, and then added, "I
will reorganize my life, move maybe. I've been offered a position in Strasbourg. I
"If she comes back. And then, whether we live in Paris or Timbuktu, what
"Your sister has her own life now. She only comes here for her laundry."
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"Here! This is a list of the things you must take along. Ask me if you need to
buy anything."
had been just that, mere illusions, and I had fought so hard for nothing. I was
struggling to decide if I should run away or go back on the attack when the doorbell
rang. Twice.
I watched from afar as Madame Robillard led two white-clad ambulance men
which a gray blanket was folded. When they appeared again minutes later, my first
impulse was to run toward my mother, but when she turned her face, the look in her
eyes stopped me cold. Such anger! "Eh bah, eh bah!" my grandmother muttered
behind me. I threw myself into her arms, my knees bent to be at her level. "She'll get
She patted my cheek. I sniffled, but then I thought of Hawkeye. No, I wasn't
going to cry.
***
It was my last day in Paris. Bonne Maman had been retreating to her room
after her daughter's departure, and my father didn't pay attention to my comings and
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"We said dinner," Nora insisted. "It's only half past five."
"I know, I know, but I was with Madame Laquaire. Look at what she gave
me."
Nora untied her apron. I opened a box with a worn-out red leather cover.
"The nib is real gold," I said proudly. "Her mother bought it for her when she
"She said the pen is to make sure that I never forget her. As if there was ever a
risk of that."
"I know. That's why she asked me to leave. She wants to rest and make herself
Jacky had finally been hired at his favorite garage. It was the first step on his
"That's a surprise."
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Nora went to check her oven and then came back. When she sat next to me, a
ray of sun through the curtains gave her brown thighs a coppery hue. Her robe opened
and I caught a glimpse of a breast. How I would have liked to hold it in my hand! I
"Nora prepared you a nice dinner," she said, "but she didn't have time to buy
The words came out of my mouth before I had time to think. "I know what
She looked at me, intrigued. My face was burning, all of a sudden. I couldn't
take my eyes off her breast. She quickly closed her robe, maintaining it into place with
"Victor," she finally said, after a silence that seemed to last an eternity, "did
confession, I was unable to utter another word, but my silence was all the more
eloquent.
Nora stared at me, her eyes half shut, slowly shaking her head. Then she
I had crossed a line. There was no time or room for reserve any longer.
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"That's sweet of you to say, and Nora would've liked it too, but that's not what
she means. There are things that aren't … and what exactly did you want?"
My mouth was dry and I could almost hear my heartbeats. "To touch you …
there," I said, my eyes still glued to her breast. "I'd like that so much!"
"Victor! You've got all your life ahead of you. Plenty of time."
"Just a little kiss. A memory for me to take to boarding school. Please, Nora!"
She combed my hair slowly with her long fingers, then smiled.
I thought I would faint. These breasts were even more magnificent now that
they were offered to me. They were heavy, slightly sagging maybe, and splendidly
round. Their dark skin looked like the most delicate silk. The areolas in their center
Slowly at first, overwhelmed by awe, I held my fingers out, then put the palm
of my hand under Nora's right breast. It felt as if a dove had just landed in my hand.
Nora smiled at me. She was intrigued, amused, but also full of sweetness. I leaned
over and lay my cheek on her left breast. Her skin smelled of pepper. I wanted to keep
my eyes open, but how could I withstand so much delight? I don't know how long I
stayed like that, with my eyes closed and my heart beating hard. A fraction of eternity.
Then, as Nora was gently stroking the nape of my neck, I took a nipple between my
lips.
"We said just a little kiss," Nora protested as I felt her nipple harden. I raised
my head briefly and lay my lips on her other breast. "It's heaven," I said.
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Nora closed her robe and drew me into her arms. She looked down at my lap
and sighed: "Look at you! You're in a state. What are you going to do now?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't care," I said, and I was almost sincere.
***
My father stopped the car and double-parked behind a van unloading a group
of kids. "Your train leaves in thirty-five minutes," he said. "You didn't forget anything,
"One day you'll understand," he finally said in a low tone of voice. "Life isn't
that simple. You do what you can with the cards you've been dealt. It's easy to blame
"I know, I know, but all the same. Hopefully, you'll tally it all up one day and
you'll see how much I spent for your education. I've got all the numbers, in case you're
ever interested."
He sighed and said, "I'm not expecting a thank you, mind you. Children don't
Then he stepped out of the Citroën and walked back to the trunk. He handed
me my suitcase and backpack, then shrugged his shoulders and attempted a smile.
"Well, there's nothing more to be said, is there? Good luck, I guess. I'll call you tonight
to make sure everything's all right. And I'll see you in November, won't I?"
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"Yes, Papa. For two weeks. Let me know how Maman's doing."
"Yeah, right!
"I've got to go now," my father said. For one brief moment, I thought he was
"My son is no longer a baby," he said, as if answering some voice in his head.
I was climbing the first steps toward the station when my father's voice
stopped me.
"Victor!"
I turned around. My father was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking
more uncomfortable than I had ever seen him. In his hand was a wad of folded
banknotes.
"After all," he said, with an apologetic shrug, avoiding my eyes, "Why don't
Then he turned around, waving at the angry taxi driver. I stayed motionless,
banknotes in my hand, waiting for my father to turn around, but he just sat down
The hall of the Gare St. Lazare was teeming with travelers. I looked for my
train on the departure board and then headed for Platform 7. I wasn't as sad as I had
imagined I would be, I wasn't even afraid of the unknown. Instead, I felt anesthetized.
Perhaps Nora's rum punch still had something to do with my numbness, but I felt as if
I was in an invisible deep-diving suit, while shapes and faces floated all around me,
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for light and fresh air. I wanted a moment of respite and freedom without having to
account to anyone. At the information desk I learned that several trains would be
leaving for Tours before the end of the day. The man also told me where to find and
how to use the automated lockers for my luggage. A few minutes later, I was running
down the stairs, and crossing the parking area to finally find myself on a busy street in
a neighborhood I didn't know. I didn't have anything specific in mind. I just wanted to
feel alive.
A light breeze was blowing in my face. I let my feet lead me among the crowds
of shoppers scurrying around the neighboring department stores. At first, I was filled
with the joy of freedom, but gradually, I began to feel vulnerable, finding the
unsmiling faces threatening. Instead of the exhilaration I had expected, I was losing
the sense of identity for which I had fought so hard over the last months. I had hoped
for some excitement, a sense of adventure, a last bright memory before boarding
school, but it had been an illusion. The walk had been a bad idea. I turned right onto
the next street, then right again, figuring I was heading back to the station.
Moments later, I realized that I was lost. A blue enameled sign told me that I
was at the corner of the rue de Provence, but that wasn't enough and I looked for a
friendly face, someone who would point me in the right direction. It was then, as I was
turning around and around, that I noticed the women on the other sidewalk.
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They were heavily made-up, and they wore short skirts, with blouses that
showed a lot of cleavage. Many of them were smoking and they all smiled and waved
at the cars that were slowly driving by. I realized that I had found myself at the frontier
of a forbidden world. Suddenly, finding the station was the least of my worries, I had
Not daring to stare at those women for whom I barely existed, I walked slowly,
my hands in my pockets, keeping my head down, discovering the shiny legs in their
nylons up to the hems of the short skirts, before raising my eyes at the last second to
steal a brief glance at their half-naked breasts and red lips. My feet were heavy, my
forehead afire, my blood was beating in my temples. I watched furtively as, at times,
after a brief exchange, one of the women disappeared, a man on her heels, into the
narrow entrance of one of the many small hotels that lined the street.
In one of the mirrors that bordered the window I watched two women chatting on the
sidewalk across the street. The taller one, not-so-young-anymore, with a bleached
mane and a mask of rouge and eyeliner, wore a yellow dress at least two sizes too
small. I couldn't see her face very well, but she seemed vulgar to me.
The smaller and younger woman, on the other hand, was a slim brunette and
wore far less make-up. If the slit of her red skirt hadn't revealed an inch of white skin
above a stocking and if her blouse had been more modestly buttoned, she could have
been any of the pretty young women who used to turn my head on my way to St. Jean-
Baptiste. I liked the way her short, black hair framed her kitten-like face.
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A black Mercedes came to a halt. The tall blonde leaned into the window on
the driver's side, then ran around the car as quickly as her stiletto heels allowed.
Slowly, I turned around. The young brunette saw me and smiled. There was nothing
provocative in her smile, but I felt myself blushing and walked away.
Several minutes later, I realized that the woman's smile wasn't going to leave
me. I was going to take it with me to boarding school. I would see it every night like
an unkept promise and be filled with hunger, just like I was now. How sorry I was
going to be!
I turned around and crossed the street. I was no longer thinking, pondering, or
"What can I do for you, sweetie?" the woman asked when I stopped in front of
her.
Her eyes were laughing while mine were glued to her blouse.
"Let me see."
I opened my fingers.
She hesitated.
"That's not much. Don't forget you have to pay for the room, too. Is that all you
have?"
I lowered my head.
She sighed, then said, "What can I say? You sure are cute and you look like a
"Eighteen."
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"She laughed.
My mouth was dry when we stopped at the front desk, where a fat man with a
glass eye handed the woman a key. I followed her up the stairs registering vaguely the
dirty wallpaper, the worn-out carpet. My eyes were glued to the calves, thighs and
buttocks that were leading me to paradise, or hell, I wasn't too sure which, but didn't
really care.
An acrid odor of disinfectant floated in the air of the little room. The curtains
were drawn and the light came from three lamps, one on each side of the bed and one
over the washbasin. One wall was covered entirely with a mirror. The woman threw
"Victor."
She unzipped her skirt and let it fall to the floor, then took off her black panties
and sat down on the bidet next to the washbasin. As she let the water run, tested the
temperature with the back of her hand, then splashed herself, I watched, enthralled, the
naked white buttocks, the thighs, the black stockings and garter belt, the red shoes
She grabbed a towel, then got up and turned around. "What are you waiting
Feverishly, I undressed, all the while staring at Violette's black triangle. "Now
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Minutes later, Violette spread a towel on the bed cover and lay down. I was
standing at the foot of the bed with my hands crossed in front of me. She opened her
arms. "What are you trying to hide?" she asked laughing. "Isn't it what we're here
for?"
I approached. Violette unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra, releasing
two pale breasts with nipples like raspberries. "Come here now," she said.
I let Violette guide me. It was burning hot inside her. When she saw me close
my eyes and shudder, she gave me a little tap on the head and let me rest a few
moments before pushing me back gently. Without a word, she went back to the bidet. I
lay on the bed, unable to believe that such a bottomless void could follow the burning
A few minutes later, Violette was all dressed and ready to go. She checked her
"Take your time," she said, "but not too long. They turn the rooms over here."
I lay there with my hands crossed behind my head and stared at the ceiling.
The thought that my father's money had been put to good use brought a smile to my
face. Then I realized that I had turned a page and was now a castaway, thrown by a
powerful wave onto a foreign shore. Far behind me now was a house that I had once
called home, and ahead of me was the great unknown, but I was not afraid. Never
before had I known such peace of mind. There was total silence in me. I had come
here in search of pleasure, and had found serenity. I felt as if I had finally reached the
end of my childhood.
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EPILOGUE
I'm wearing the same black tie I had on at Marthe Laquaire's funeral. Her heart
had stopped a few hours after I had driven her home and her doctor assured me she
went quietly from sleep to death. Twice a month I used to take my former tutor to one
of the restaurants she liked, warm, casual bistros where she enjoyed being welcomed
as a regular. That night we had dined at Le Clocher du Village in Auteuil, one of her
favorites. "It's like home cooking here," she had remarked, "except it's much better
than mine."
We had our ritual, honed over the years. I would go up to her apartment for a
drinkgin and tonic for me, port for herand we would then take my car to Les
linger over a cup of herbal tea and then take a walk, weather permitting, before driving
back. Those walks had become somewhat symbolic toward the end. A few steps and
back to the car, rarely more. Parkinson’s disease made her cold hand shake in mine.
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"My hand may be cold, but you keep my heart warm," she would comment,
her voice weak, but still singing with the music of her native south. She claimed the
It's been fourteen years already, but I remember our last dinner, in all its
She had taken a terrine of salmon and a trout with almonds that evening.
"Isn't it amazing that I was never able to swim, with all the fish I've eaten all
start by asking about my parents, but didn't really seem to listen to my answers.
"None! My last letter was returned with an unknown at this address stamp.
She didn't insist and that was just fine with me. I didn't feel like describing my
"And what about the last one - what's her name again? Claudia? Clara? Is she
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that living with a woman is not for me. It's all too difficult, too painful.
"Don't take it too hard, no marriage is perfect," Marthe often remarked when I
the deal."
Yes, I know, and I understand, but as soon as I hear a voice rise in anger, I am
propelled into the past. Then I start shaking, and running away is my only salvation.
In a way Marthe Laquaire was the woman of my life. No other woman ever
offered me such peace. I tried, though, I did. I wanted so much to believe that marital
bliss was in my future, but after the exaltation of the first date, the delight of the first
embrace, once the mating dance was over, there always came a moment when I would
get burned.
though. I see Nathalie over lunch every Wednesday. She's a ballerina and currently
lives with a Norwegian boyfriend of the bohemian kind. I'm proud of her and help and
encourage her as much as I can. Our lunches together are often fun, although
I can smell the coffee brewing in the kitchen. Outside, the sun is making an
appearance between the heavy clouds and its rays strike the dome of the Pantheon
across the square. Why is my heart so cold? This question has been with me for the
When Bonne Maman passed away, I was still a young man. I remember how
horribly sad I felt, but her death was somehow part of the greater scheme of things. A
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part of me was ready for that loss, and the pain was bearable. Lately however, I started
missing her badly, as if she had, after all those years, re-entered my life, and I've been
catching myself recently, thinking of her more than I did when she was alive.
I see her bewildered look, I hear her muttering "Eh bah, eh bah!"
Only last month, as I was coming home after having bought my yearly supply
of shirts on sale at the Galeries Lafayette, I heard myself thinking, "You were right,
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Then, Marthe Laquaire was taken from me and I suffered my first real
heartbreak, naked and brutal. I screamed in anger. Against all reason, in spite of the
advance of Parkinson's, I wasn’t ready. I even broke my thumb while banging my fist
And then, Jacky was badly wounded in an accident in Monte Carlo. He was in
the mechanics pit, when the wheel of a racing car literally flew toward him. We hadn't
written or spoken in a long, long time, but I received a telegram from Nora who now
I immediately flew down to be with her. Nora has gained weight, lots of it, and
her bearing is no longer regal, but when she took me in her arms and squeezed me
against her voluminous bosom, her peppery fragrance took me many years back. The
Jacky lost an arm from the accident. Several times, I wanted to visit him, but
"Give me time," he would only say on the phone. "I'll call you when I'm
ready."
He never did.
My point is, pain is no stranger to me. Why is it then that I feel like a cold
stone sits in my chest where my heart is supposed to be? If I don't shed a tear today,
then when?
I finish my cup of coffee and glance at my watch. Time is up. I put on my dark
gray jacket and navy-blue overcoat. Just as I walk to the door, the telephone rings.
"Allo, Victor?"
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"Good morning Lucie. I was just leaving. Two more seconds and I would have
been out."
"I know, I know. After five years, you'd think I wouldn't screw up the time
difference, but I was never good at math. I'm not like you."
Indian Ocean, where her husband heads the rheumatology department of a hospital.
"I really don't have much time. What did you want to say?"
A silence. I can see her, eyebrows raised, with the look of a surprised bird.
"What do you mean, what do I want to say? It's a difficult day for both of us. If
"Victor!"
I have nothing against Lucie. I envy her family life, the two boys she insists on
calling "your nephews," even though our only communication is one yearly Christmas
card. I respect her sense of duty, her commitment to the community, and that sort of
thing, but the fact is, we never were on the same wavelength. Whenever one of us
"Are you serious?" she says. "You really don't believe I'd have come?"
"It's not that I don't believe. I just don't know. She wasn't even your mother,
"Very funny. You weren't even born then. Did you write to Papa?"
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"I don't know. The last one, maybe. It might have been forwarded."
"Well, I do. Last time we talked was two years ago when Maman was admitted
to St.Vincent. He said to me, 'sorry Victor, you'll have to deal with your mother,
"I see. Victor is protecting himself. He doesn't want to feel the pain. You go
I hang up, suddenly puzzled. Never before has she called me little brother.
I drive the Renault up the garage ramp. It's a company car. On the passenger's
seat I see the Export Division's budget and five-year plan that I forgot last night.
When I come back from the cemetery this afternoon, I really must take a hard
look at next year's budget. The sales forecasts are always too optimistic. I am
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I only became a "great" director, as the woman I'm about to bid farewell to
would have said, after Marthe Laquaire's death. As her health began to wane, I turned
down all offers of transfers to foreign subsidiaries of the group, the only path to
promotion in the Syncom universe. When she passed away however, I caught up with
my career, spending time in Belgium and Germany. I even lived one year in Brazil.
While in Sao Paolo, I almost got married, but no, I had once again confused sex and
love.
In the hospital parking lot I remain a few minutes in my seat, with my hands
flat on the steering wheel, a habit developed over years of weekly visits. Getting ready
to see my mother, hear her tirades, accusations, stories about the past, from which she
always knew how to dig out some painful detail, I could feel my heart racing with
anguish. I would lay my hands on the wheel and watch them, waiting patiently for
them to stop shaking. I would try to make fun of myself then, saying aloud, "Look at
you, a man well in his forties, a nice car, a corner office, they call you Monsieur le
Following the old routine, I cross the hospital lobby and take the B elevator.
Only as I walk up the icy corridor on the eleventh floor do I realize: of course, she's
not here anymore. The chapel is in the other building. The last time I was here, only a
"I think this is the end," Doctor Franchet whispered to me, after beckoning me
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"Is she in pain, Doctor? The way she moves her head, she looks like she's
fighting something."
I stayed at her bedside, aware that my presence served no purpose, but unable
to think of a better use of my time. It was too late to go to the office and I didn't feel
like going back home. A movie, maybe? No, I finally realized that I wanted to enjoy a
Yes, I thought, this could be a first, better later than never. She wouldn't accuse
me of various misdeeds, wouldn't start a tirade against those who had ruined her
lifeher husband and her son, her son and her husband wouldn't make fun of my
divorce, wouldn't throw her tray at me. I could spend, without fear, a moment with the
Sitting at her bedside in soft lighting and silence, I remembered our last cuddle
so many years ago when she was packing before going away on vacation. She had my
And then I caught myself, thinking, "What? What if you had known? What
I also evoked my mother's last words, from a few days before, as she was
traveling back and forth through that mysterious space between what remained of her
life and … and what? She had opened her eyes, and with a gesture of her withered
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"You were the love of my life, Victor," she whispered. "Your father, that was
different, but you, you were my passion. Why did you make me so miserable? You
It had been a mother's farewell to her son, words so outrageous that just patting
her hand and smiling had been my only response, a matter of survival really.
The chapel looks like a bunker, with only two narrow stained-glass windows to
let in weak rays of light. It is a concrete cubic structure, its only decoration a crucifix
and, next to the simplest of altars, an urn, filled with artificial flowers.
Funeral masses are usually held in real churches. The benches here could seat
Véronique offered to come along, but I said no. We've only been together for a
"It must be terrible to lose a mother," she said. I just nodded and changed the
subject.
A young man with a bad case of acne welcomes me, and points at the open
coffin.
"Father Charles thought you might want a moment with her by yourself. He'll
Then he disappears.
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I walk up the aisle. My mother's snow-white hair has been pulled back. Her
skin is the color of the candles on the altar. Lately the drugs had made her puffy, but
her features are precise again, and the waxy skin is taut on her bones. It is possible to
remember that she once was beautiful. I take her wedding band out my pocket. She
I don't really know why I'm doing it, but I put the band between her crossed
fingers. That's where it belongs, after all. I stand frozen in front of this body that my
mother used to inhabit. Where is she now? I don't know what or whom to believe.
I whisper, "I hope that you're finally happy, Maman, wherever your are."
And then I feel a cleft running along the dam, behind which I have taken
refuge for so many years. Is it the fact that I heard myself say the word Maman? I
don't know, but a wave is about to roll over me, and there's no resisting.
Tears swell from deep inside me, as brutal as nausea. I can barely make out my
mother's face. A yawning chasm opens up in my chest. I am sobbing now, sobbing like
Suddenly, I am filled with rage. I don't even know why. It's destroying me. I
scream in silence. With a violent kick, I knock a bench over, sending it crashing with a
loud thud.
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