A Life on Paper: Stories Read online

  "Psst! N'Mambo! Is that the ambassador?"

  Unhurried, N'Mambo crosses the courtyard, suitcase in hand.

  "N'Mambo! Psst! N'Mambo! If you go hunting, shoot an elephant for me!"

  The boy vanishes into the vestibule, that airlock decked with diplomas and potted plants, smelling so sweetly of freedom and furniture polish.

  N'Mambo's wandering gaze meets Fox's. Life's chosen one gives him a half grin, which N'Mambo vaguely returns. Fox slides down the bench toward the black boy. "Psst! N'Mambo!"

  "What?"

  "Your father-"

  N'Mambo's gaze returns to the issue of Coq Hardi open before him. "Please leave me alone. I am reading."

  "It's a lie! Your father's not the king."

  N'Mambo shrugs. Fox is dumbfounded. The words just came out of his mouth. "N'Mambo-"

  "Shut up. You're bothering me!"

  "I was just kidding. Your father is the king."

  "Leave me alone!"

  "He is the king, he is!"

  "Teacher!"

  The housemaster looks up.

  "Teacher, Carrot Top is bothering me!"

  All heads turn toward the culprit.

  "On your feet, Fox! Bothering our classmates now, are we?"

  "It's a lie, teacher! I didn't say nothing!"

  "I've got ways to keep you busy. Write this sentence down a hundred times: I will not bother my classmates. Now get started!"

  Fox sits down, but stands right back up again. "Teacher…"

  "What is it now?"

  "I don't know how to write."

  The class snickers.

  "Then draw tallies. I want two hundred, nice and straight in sets of five. You can count, can't you?"

  "No, Teacher," Fox whispers.

  The snickering gets louder.

  "Do it anyway! I'll tell you when to stop. Everyone else-silence!"

  Fox sits down again. He takes the penholder he's never yet used out of his desk. He tears a sheet of paper from his notebook. He dips the pen in the earthenware inkwell and draws his first tremulous tally line. On the third line, he makes a blot. He hasn't got a blotter. He tries to dab at the stain with his handkerchief but only manages to make it bigger. He rips the sheet up and tears another from his notebook. Another row of lines, another blot. Despair overcomes him; tears spring to his eyes, tumble to the paper, blur the lines and the blot. He huddles over the desk, hides his head in his arms. Soon he's asleep, cradled by the class' gentle clamor, nose pressed to his sickly lines.

  The Turk is only ten, but he's the strongest kid in the schoolyard. No one, not even the biggest boys, dares attack him. Strong as a Turk, the expression goes. The Turk, who's from Courbevoie, established his reputation once and for all by knocking an older student out the first day of class. The older student had been picking on the Turk. The Turk turned pale-everyone saw. He turned pale, and then he lashed out. Life's chosen one greatly admires the Turk. When kids attack Fox, he turns red. He turns red, and then he runs. That's no way to behave.

  Fights are among the students' primary concerns. Generally speaking, boys at the boarding school fall into two types: the weak and the strong, victims and their oppressors. A few individuals stand outside these basic classifications. The Turk, because he never abuses his prodigious strength, and N'Mambo, because in some vague way the others are afraid the king of Tanganyika will send his Zulus to lay waste to the school if his runt gets pestered too much.

  This morning, while waiting in line in the courtyard, the students saw a new boy go by, a blackamoor like N'Mambo, led by the caretaker. They noticed that the principal hadn't bothered to walk the boy to class himself, as he had N'Mambo. So the new boy wasn't a king's son: they vowed to have some fun at his expense during recess.

  With the exception of N'Mambo and the Turk, everyone got into it, even Fox. The big bullies didn't leave anyone else much of a chance to pick on the new boy. At last, when they were muddying his cap and emptying the contents of his satchel into the toilet, Fox had plenty of time to prance about behind them like the rest of the pack, shouting Bamboola-Ayaya-Bamboola at the top of his lungs. Then he saw the Turk standing to one side and watching him with a funny look on his face. Contemptuous, or disappointed, or both at once. And suddenly his joy at having finally changed sides evaporated. He chanted Ayaya- Bamboola-Ayaya a moment longer to himself before turning from their quarry and running off to hide in a dark corner of the playground.

  Now it's eleven at night. In his bed at one end of the children's dorm, Fox tosses and turns in his sheets without falling asleep. His misgivings have stayed with him since the incident. After what happened, he is no longer quite sure of being life's chosen one. Although he's told himself over and over that it's for keeps, and that the Turk has nothing to do with it, he no longer believes as much as before. He wonders, argues with himself: c'mon, he's got nothing to fear, life would warn him if it was going to stop choosing him! In any case, he'd have to make a lot of mistakes-worse, and bigger ones-for it to stop playing secret favorites. But it's no use: he worries, chews his lips, turns red beneath the sheets. He snivels a little, then falls asleep, shattered.

  Maman's whole body is shaking, and she crushes Fox's hand as they cross the street. In the shops where she takes him on Saturdays, her nose stings, her face is bathed in sweat. He often grumbles: he'd rather stay home and play.

  "No, you're coming with me." As soon as they're outside, she grabs his hand and squeezes it hard, very hard.

  "Maman, you're squeezing too hard!"

  She loosens her grip. "I'm sorry, sweetie. Did I hurt you?"

  Fox takes his crushed hand back. He wiggles his crumpled fingers, moist with his mother's anxious sweat.

  She takes his hand again a few yards later, and starts squeezing. He doesn't say a word.

  Maman throws up a lot. She can't keep anything down. The doctors have ordered tests that reveal nothing. One of them wanted to take out her gallbladder anyway, but another one said no, her gallbladder wasn't the problem. It was fear.

  When Maman gets too frightened, she sends the boy off to boarding school, or to the countryside with a nanny, or to her parents. As soon as she feels better she fetches him, and it starts all over. The mad dashes, the anxieties, the fatigue, and the memories-and by her side all the while, a living portrait of the one who left, whom she banishes time and again. Beneath a burden too great and too greatly beloved, she soon crumples. One morning she vomits up her coffee again, her hands trembling on the key to the small garret where they live. Nine by nine, it holds a table and two stools, two cupboards, a bed, a hideous corner divan with built-in shelving, and a bucket for necessities. Across from the door, the window opens on a dizzying balcony. Woman and child, betrayed, live up in the sky itself, but the sky reeks. Even without the bucket, odors rise from the building depths in summer and invade the balcony through a duct imperfectly plugged with cork. The woman locks the door and heads down the dark, narrow corridor with her son. She shoves him into the delivery elevator, which serves the rooms and stairs once used by maids. They cross the little courtyard and emerge on the boulevard-so big and noisy! — and suddenly her ears are buzzing, her heart hammering, fear knots her throat, she grabs the boy's hand desperately and squeezes.

  It is Friday night. Unless his luck takes a really bad turn, Fox isn't in danger of staying the weekend at school. He'll leave tomorrow at ten-thirty. Martian works Saturday morning. He will go back to the apartment alone. The concierge will hand him the key on his way in. He'll wait for Maman on high, flipping through his Mickey comics. That night, if she isn't too frightened, they'll go see a movie at the Regent. The next day they'll stay in. Martian will do her bills at home. If it's not raining, he'll play on the smelly balcony.

  But right now it's Friday night, and he's bored. Almost horizontal on the bench, he catalogues the contents of his cubby: a chewed-up pencil stub, two wads of gum (one pink, one green) stuck up against the top wall, a scrap of blotting paper. Nothing useful! Sitt
ing up, he spots N'Mambo's fuzzy head. He'd like to talk to him about his father, if he weren't sure it'd cost him his permission to leave this weekend. Stop! Don't say a word to N'Mambo!

  He shrinks back. A student has just sat down beside him. Changing seats in study hall is not allowed! But of course the Turk isn't afraid of anything. Fox is very scared of getting left at school. "You can't-we'll get punished!"

  "The prefect didn't see a thing. And if he pipes up, I'll say it was all me."

  "What do you want?"

  "Just to talk a little. You look bored"

  "I don't have anything to do."

  "You could read."

  "I can 't."

  "You're old enough. Didn't you ever learn?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, then you can."

  Fox shakes his head. He's always changing schools. He has come to terms with this nomadism. Quite simply, he always has to start from scratch. B-a ba, b-e be: like a nonsense song everyone sings.

  "Let's see." The Turk leans across the aisle, borrows a book, and opens it before them. "Here, try. Follow my finger, and read."

  "N-a… Na… n-o… no… Nano?"

  "Nano's the kid in the picture. Keep going."

  "Nano… and… Na… net… te."

  "Nanette. She's the girl:"

  "Nano and Nanette… are… in… the… va… yard!"

  By the time study hall is over, Fox has figured out eight lines. The Turk closes the book and gives it back to its owner. Out of instinct, Fox tries to stop him.

  "What's your problem? You've got the same one."

  "I do? It tells the same story?"

  "Open your satchel."

  Fox obeys. The Turk pulls out a book the same size as the other, flips through it, and then sets it down open before them. "Well?"

  "Nano… and Nanette…"

  Fox's face lights up. Nano and Nanette are still in the yard, and it's still summer, their dog, Pataud, is still a good dog, the sprinkler still leaking and wetting, leaking and wetting Nano's feet.

  As he heads up to the dorm, Fox is happy. He knows how to read. Nano and Nanette are in the yard, forever.

  Just behind the cage of the delivery elevator, in a recess in the lobby, two scalped Indians are hiding. They watch Fox, seedy and menacing, nodding their bloody heads in the shadows. Quickly, before they can catch him, he hurls himself into the elevator, slams the door, and pulls the accordion grate shut. Standing on tiptoe, he pushes as hard as he can on the button marked eight. The elevator tears itself away from the floor with a screech. Down in the lobby, the Indians are probably stamping their feet with rage, sticking out their tongues, shaking their fists at their escaping quarry. Fox shuts his eyes. His heart is hammering. But another terror awaits: after the third floor, he starts getting dizzy. People seem to take it for granted that elevators never go higher than the building's highest floor. For adults, at least, this is a rule without exception. Fox isn't convinced. The elevator, he thinks, could easily shoot right by the final landing without even slowing down. Hoisted by unthinkable pulleys, it'd keep going, bursting through the roof, scattering birds, zooming through the clouds, higher and higher, farther and farther into the frozen reaches of the sky. Fox holds his breath. At every landing, he hears a click from the rickety equipment somewhere under his feet. Click… six. Click… seven. And then… then? His knees tremble. He plasters his body against the wall. Click! The cage comes to a stop at last.

  A soft reddish glow bathes the room through curtains of printed cretonne. Fox is in no hurry to turn the lights on. The dangers are all outside; nothing can reach him here. An outer shell, an inner sanctum, a pitiful Eden he's routinely banished from, his mother's every relapse reenacting his own Fall.

  He puts his satchel on the bed. He crosses the room. He pours himself a glass of milk but spits it out at once: it's sour. He climbs up on a stool to pull back the curtains, a blood-red scrim that hides the sky. In vain, he searches for the sun. He turns his back on the window and sits cross-legged at the table. There are his toes, in a wooden box under the bed, but he doesn't feel like planing. Maman will be home soon. They'll eat together: ham and Floraline, like always. Maman puts his books in the cupboard-the big one, whose doors are blocked by the bed. He knows how to push the bed aside and open it. He's done it before. Once he even took down the ragged little book that holds all the secrets. It's a yellow book, with no pictures. He turned it over in his hands for a long time, before regretfully putting it back. But today he knows how to read it. He repeats the incredible words to himself: Today I know how to read! So the day does come when eyes are opened and secrets revealed, when order comes to chaos… Fox nods. How many such dawnings does a life hold? Can you die without having your fair share, without fathoming the marvelous truth? Fox is beside himself. What if he's about to die, right here and now, struck down before the very first veil is even rent? He scrambles from the table and races for the cupboard. The sound of steps in the hall, the rattle of keys in the lock; he stands petrified in the middle of the room.

  "Maman?"

  "Did you make it home all right? You know how worried I get…"

  Bures, Dec. 1981-Feb. 1982

  The Gulf of the Years

  n the train, the passengers spoke in hushed voices about the hard times. A young woman with a yellow star sewn to her breast briefly lifted her gaze from the dressmaker's pattern she was studying. The boy across from her pulled the latest issue of Signal from a worn satchel and unfolded it right in front of her face. She lowered her eyes.

  Through the window, Manoir watched the few cars, quaint and yet almost new, on the road beside the tracks. He started at the sight of a military convoy. He checked his watch, then settled back. It was still early. The bombing wouldn't start till later that morning. Far away, young men were waking in their barracks… or were they on their feet already, assembled in flight suits before a blackboard with their wing commander? Early rising schoolboys of fire and death. They were twenty, in fur-lined boots and leather helmets, blue wool and sheepskin. They drank tea and smoked gauloises blondes. Manoir's best wishes went with them. And yet, in a few hours, one of them would kill his mother.

  Manoir got off at S. He walked up the Avenue de la Gare, turned left at the town hall, and passed the post office, then the elementary school. He hesitated, but not over which way to go. As a child, he'd pretended he was blind in these streets. He'd try and make his way to school from home with his eyes closed. Sometimes he walked right into a lamppost, or someone's legs. He cheated, of course: from time to time he opened his eyelids just a bit, long enough to see where he was. But one night he'd managed to make it only cheating three times.

  He checked his watch again. In five minutes, a little boy would emerge from his house a few streets away. On the front steps, his maman would kiss him as she did every morning. Satchel in hand, he would cross the small yard. With one last wave, he'd head through the gate and be on his unhurried way to school.

  It was seven-fifty. School opened its doors at eight. Would it take him ten minutes to get there, or just five? If he missed him-God, what if he missed him? Manoir spotted a boy in a cape, then two more, an older one leading a younger one by the hand, and two more after that… they were coming out of the woodwork now. Still sleepy, eyes unfocused for the most part, pale and huddled against the cold morning, children were converging on the school. Manoir panicked. They were coming toward him down both sides of the street at once, the bigger ones sometimes hiding the littler ones from view. All he could see of some-hooded, wrapped up in scarves or balaclavaswas their eyes and a bit of nose poking out from the wool. He recalled a yellowish coat, maybe even a beret? Yes, he was sure of the coat. But two out of every three boys were wearing berets.

  The crowd of children grew, overflowing the sidewalk for a moment. Manoir almost wept with frustration. None of these children were the one he was looking for! The flood slowed; most of the flock had passed. He'd missed him; he'd let him slip by beneath a brown coat or
a black cape. All was lost. His heart broke. The street emptied. He ran into a few breathless latecomers… and over there, that shape! He dashed forward. An ugly yellow coat. A beret pulled halfway down his forehead. A loose-knit gray scarf. And that odd, almost moony walk, that dawdling step! He should've known. He slowed his pace, trying to still his beating heart. The boy was only fifteen yards away, now. Their paths were about to cross. The boy looked up at the man. Something-a familial air-had awoken his curiosity. Manoir stopped right in front of him.

  "Jean-Jacques?"

  The boy took a step back. "How come y'know my name? I don't 11 know yours.

  "You're Jean-Jacques Manoir, aren't you? Right? You don't know me, but I know all about you. You're eight years old, in third grade, and your teacher's name is Mr. Crepon. He's got a tiny mustache and is very strict. See-I know all about you!"

  At once intrigued by the stranger's omniscience yet worried about being late, Jean-Jacques hopped from foot to foot. "OK, but I'm going to be late. Mr. Crepon's going to make me do lines!"

  Mr. Crepon didn't make him do lines as often as he might have. His customarily iron rule softened for the three fatherless boys in his class.

  "C'mon, Mr. Crepon's not as bad as all that. If he punished you every time you were late or busy daydreaming instead of working-

  So the stranger knew that, too! The boy gulped. "Wh-who are you?"

  "I'm your cousin. Your father's cousin. Don't you think I look like him?"