The Emperor, C'est Moi Read online

  Once, Mama told me to be cautious with elevators and always check them with one foot as if judging the temperature of the water before a bath. It’s really thoughtless of Mama to enter a room before I’ve verified the reliability of the floor. I check the blue carpeting by flopping down full-length on my stomach. Nothing collapses; all’s well. There is a lady in the office. She’s wearing a white blouse and a beige skirt; she has white and gray hair, short, like her skirt. She is very clean and tidy. As for Mama, she has long hair and always wears long dresses. The lady seems to be the opposite of Mama. When she speaks, I don’t hear her. I think she takes me for a child. I am not a child, even if I look like one. It’s true, I am as small and crummy as they are, but I am not like them. There are toys in the office. They are dumb. They are toys for dumb children. Mama talks with the lady. I know they are talking about me. I don’t really know what we are doing here. This place seems to me like an isolated cabin, static, closed, padded, where nothing moves, where nothing can happen. Here, I am cut off from the world and infinity. I’m bored. In the reception area, where the green tiling is, I saw a store with other toys in its display window. They are better. They’re even very interesting. Especially a set including a four-door sedan, a 4x4, and a helicopter, all in dark blue. I want them. I know we’ll pass by that window again when we leave. I will show them to Mama so she’ll buy them for me.

  Faster than Light or Kindergarten for Jerks

  It’s a place called kindergarten. The building is overhung by a big silvery square thing with square design things in it. When you go inside there are lots of children running around. Mama leaves me there twice a week. She drops me off in the morning and picks me up at the end of the afternoon. In the meantime, I’m inside the square. The nannies who take care of us wear frumpy sweaters and try to make me eat. Once they put some meat in my mouth, so I kept it in my mouth all afternoon until the end of the day. When Mama came to get me, she thought I was acting funny. She understood: she put her hand under my chin and told me to spit it out, which I did, with relief.

  The nannies also want me to act like everyone else. For example, we have to sing, “That’s what the little puppets do, do, do,” while waving our hands. Ridiculous. Really pointless. So me, I don’t do anything. I simply want to be left alone. They always try to make me speak. They think I can’t speak. Personally, I have nothing to say to them.

  Once, I got very angry at them. So when Mama came to pick me up, as soon as I stepped outside the entrance door I opened my mouth and announced loud and clear so that they could hear me perfectly:

  “This kindergarten is for jerks! I don’t want to come here anymore!”

  Anger made these words come out of my mouth. My mouth that I immediately shut. I just wanted them to know that if I’m not talking, it’s because I don’t feel like it. From then on, the nannies finally understood and left me in peace. While they lead the other children in the Fluffy Chick Circle Song, I’m busy being the Ugly Duckling. It’s much more interesting. I make wheels go around all day long, but it doesn’t make the time pass any faster. So I concentrate on this rotary motion that propels me toward infinity, far from the others, far from that world.

  I leave. I go far, far away. I cover miles and miles with my wheel. I must have turned out millions of miles with that blue wheel, maybe even enough to leave the galaxy and put yet more distance between me and that stifling silvery square. Where I’m going, you’ll never catch me. You’d have to go faster than the speed of light, and so far, no one has ever managed that, unless it was by dematerializing into stardust. As for me, that’s where I’m going. I am four and I want to rejoin the stardust to start all over again from the beginning.

  But before the beginning, there is . . . what?

  The Red Telephone

  Today, Mama gave me a telephone. Red. I love Mama’s presents. They are always interesting and always very beautiful. Not like the toys the lady in the hospital showed me. The last time we went there, I gave the pile of toys a big kick. Because I didn’t want to play with her. She gets on my nerves. People must stop taking me for a child.

  Mama puts the phone down in front of me. I see her, but I do not look at her. Even so, I know that she’s smiling at me. I definitely know this. She wants to please me. I look at the floor. Mama leaves the room. I’m alone now, with the red phone. Nothing moves. I look at the phone. The phone looks at me. I am ill at ease. With a phone, you never know what might come along. And you never know where it might come from, either. The whole world can come to you over the phone. So I look at the world in front of me, shut up in that little box, and the whole world looks at me.

  The phone rings. I give a start. A little one. I get a grip. I must answer the phone. Someone is trying to reach me. It must be urgent. Perhaps this might even be coming from another world. My hand touches the receiver. My fingers close around it. I pick it up. I bring it to my ear. I listen to what’s inside it.

  A voice: “Hello?”

  I keep quiet. The voice continues.

  “Hello? It’s Sophie. How are you?”

  I want to know who this Sophie is whom I don’t know. What does she want to tell me? If she’s calling me it must be important, maybe even quite urgent.

  I open my mouth and say: “Hello?”

  Suddenly I sense a presence behind me. Mama is there, in the doorway, struggling to hide a faint smile. I quickly hang up the phone. I understand. I fell into a trap. Bravo Mama. 1–0 for you. You’re very clever. Lots more clever than I am. I will have to be twice as vigilant if I really want to get back inside your belly. That word I let slip pushed me farther back from my destination. Careful: from now on, no more mistakes. Nothing will distract me from my mission.

  Mama’s Belly

  In the bathroom, Mama is drawing large pictures on the ceiling. She’s painting strange shapes. I, who am always looking down, find myself looking up. My big sister Rebecca is there too. She’s painting with Mama. Rebecca loves colors and painting. She studies at the École des Beaux-Arts. She is often a bit sad. I’m hardly the one to make her laugh. I don’t know how to make people laugh, because I come from the depths of a lost world I will never find again. All I have left is a few scraps of memories that don’t exist that I try desperately to reconstruct in my head. And in my head, there is no room for smiles, humor, and jokes.

  Mama is pregnant and is painting a large fresco to welcome the baby who will come out of her belly. It’s a little sister who’s on the way. She already has a name: Hermine. So, Hermine will be able to see the fresco created in her honor whenever she has a bath. Mama’s belly is occupied; I will never be able to go back there. Now and then I press my ear against it. The little girl moves, she kicks, and I hear every kind of pipe noise in there. She must feel cozy.

  My little sister will be here soon. I have to love her; that way she’ll love me. She will surely tell me what it’s like inside Mama. I love her already. I’ve never really seen any babies up close, so I must get used to her being around. To rise to the occasion, I’m practicing day and night with a baby doll. I dress her, I rock her, I undress her. I take her for walks and give her baths. I sleep with her, or I place her in a cradle never far from my bed. I never let her out of my sight. I never leave her. When my little sister arrives, I will be ready.

  But here’s the thing: little sister is in a hurry to come out. Maybe she senses that we love her so much that she already wants to meet us. Right away. They opened up Mama’s belly at the hospital. Hermine arrived two months early. I practiced enough, I’m ready. She’s the one who isn’t ready yet. Now she’s in a glass cage, with pipes going in and out of her, and needles sticking into her everywhere. I know she’s suffering. No one can touch her without transparent gloves. They’re torturing my little sister in a glass cage. Mama tells me it’s an incubator and that if Hermine is taken out of there, she will die. Mama also tells me that she will be leaving it soon. Fine. I’ll wait
until she’s out before I smash the incubator with Papa’s ax.

  Welcome, Without Any Fuss or Fanfare

  Here it is: the great day has arrived. It’s evening. The fresco in the bathroom has been finished for a long while. I am waiting. The door opens. Mama and Papa are coming home from the hospital and are carrying a basket covered with a white veil. Their faces are happy. Mine is solemn and inscrutable. Time stands still: the longed-for moment has arrived at last. My little sister has just left her glass prison and made her first entrance into the family home. I stand tall and proud at the top of the big staircase, holding my baby doll. My parents are at the bottom. My little sister does not yet know how to speak, while I do not want to speak.

  I must show her with an impressive gesture that I am ready. With a swift and ample motion, I throw the baby doll, which lands headfirst on the stairs to shatter, completely dismembered, at the feet of my parents, who are visibly upset. This isn’t serious. I know that my little sister has understood. She can count on me. She is welcome. I am her big brother. I don’t need that plastic doll anymore.

  Hermine

  Little sister’s name is Hermine, like the ermine, that animal of the snows. She waves and gestures inside her cradle. She smells of baby. Her face and arms are dimpled. She has pudgy cheeks and tiny hands. She is smiling. When she moves her legs, she looks like a frog. A little frog that flails around and tries to swim in the air. She makes me feel like laughing and I resist the impulse. I never take my eyes off her. Inarticulate sounds come out of her mouth. She’s trying to say something. She is thirsty.

  I tell Mama: “Give her a drink.” Mama undoes her blouse and gives her the breast. Hermine looks happy. She drinks and closes her eyes. Time slips by. Like a lullaby. Music of happiness, music of my lost happiness.

  Imprisoned: Forgotten

  It’s been five years since I appeared on this earth and now I am too heavy for Mama. I do not want to walk. So I stay in the stroller next to my sister. We are in a park for children. Mama is pushing us. There are tiny colorful houses along the side. The doors and windows are wide open. They welcome everyone. Mama tells me that we ought to visit the houses. I agree. Perhaps the Seven Dwarfs are hiding in there? No, they are not.

  At the end of the lane, a house darker than the others. The doors and shutters are closed. No admittance. I know that Snow White is there. She probably doesn’t wish to be disturbed. Unless it is the witch’s house . . . I study it, searching for the slightest sign of someone’s presence. This house, definitely: someone is shut up inside and watching us. I am prepared to remain as long as it takes to find out who is hiding inside. My mother tries to bring me back to the colorful houses, but I don’t want that. I stay put. I want to discover the secret of the dark house. Has someone been forgotten inside? I knock and glue my ear to the door. No response. Locked up. I go all around the house. Dark windows, closed shutters. The encounter will not take place today.

  We retrace our steps. We come to a big birdcage. With no bird. I open the door and make myself a prisoner of the park. I am a prisoner too, like the person forgotten in the house. I could be forgotten in this cage. When the door of the dark house is opened, the corpse of Snow White will surely be found. And mine will be in the birdcage. Anyway, I can’t fly. Being in a cage is not that serious when you don’t know how to fly.

  My Tree on My Planet of Sand

  I am sitting in the courtyard in front of our house, on the sand pile. Above me, the weeping willow. It protects me and it weeps. Like me, it is sad. It’s sad because one day a man from the village came to say that it had to be cut down. Its branches stick out onto the road. They’re in the way of the trucks from the sand pits that drive by like crazy and make too much noise. I know that a different weeping willow by the village post office has already been cut down. I saw it. And now they want to cut down my tree so that their trucks can drive even faster and even more crazily. The mayor himself, who is the head of the village, agrees with them. One day I will be the President of the Republic. I will be above the mayor and above the law. And then, weeping willows will have right of asylum in my territory. As for trucks, they’ll have to drive on bigger, wider roads where there will be neither weeping willows nor houses. I will write this in my political program and in my laws. Let them come with their bucket lift and their chainsaws to cut down my tree: I’ll kill them.

  Today the weeping willow is nothing more than a stump. Cut up alive. Decapitated. Dead. The trucks, they’re still here. They make more noise, there are more and more of them, and they’re driving even faster, because they’re no longer afraid of my tree’s branches. I’m left with a certain bitterness. I am not the President of the Republic. I was not able to do a thing.

  I love sand. When I look only at sand, with nothing else in my field of vision, I am in the desert. My desert. My planet of sand in the shade of the one and only tree that grew on it. I plunge my hands in the sand and trace furrows. I excavate tunnels. I start at both ends at the same time until my hands meet in the middle, the center. The way it was for the tunnel under the English Channel. They dig in France. They dig in Great Britain. They dig until they meet right in the middle so that no one will argue afterward. I saw it on TV, on the news. I like the news, there are always plenty of stories I don’t know, and some of them, like the one about the Channel Tunnel, show up again as TV serials. At present, the tunnels haven’t joined up yet. I hope they connect exactly in the middle, because I wouldn’t like a war between the two countries. I’m following this very closely. I’m waiting impatiently for them to meet. But above all, right in the middle, at the same distance from both countries, the way I do with my hands in the sand.

  The War of the Kindergartens

  Here I am in the “upper level” of kindergarten. With the “big kids,” as they say. Before I was with the “little kids,” then the “middle kids,” and now I’m with the “big kids.” Frankly, it’s not that complicated. I’m still just as small, though, and the others are still just as stupid. My “classmates.” My “little classmates,” I hate you.

  I am the prisoner of my body and if I speak I will be the prisoner of you people. Forever. I prefer to observe you on the sly. I am spying on you. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, as my parents have told me, I could see yours, but that would oblige me to reveal to you part of my own. You will not see my soul. You see my body and that’s already too much. My body will be no more than a tombstone, a wall, I will give you nothing. I don’t like your world. I cannot do anything, decide anything; if I walk I’m forced to follow you, follow those worthless instructions, line up two by two, plus we have to hold hands. Forced to abandon my thoughts, my visions, my dreams. I refuse to swap my dreams for your smiles or your approval. I don’t want to be better than you in any way whatsoever. I don’t give a spit for you, for kindergarten, the school fair, and your field day contests. I will not be your friend and still less your toady.

  You want me to open my mouth? To repeat the nonsense you tell me all day long? Like the other children? Like a parrot? I understand everything you say to me and I don’t need to show you I do. I have nothing to say to you, nothing to prove to you. My mouth will open only to bite you! Anyway, my teeth are full of tartar because I don’t chew. They are gross-looking and smell bad. You still want me to open my mouth? Above all, send me off by myself! Set me aside with nobody else in my dungeon. Even if I must be a prisoner, I prefer being the master of my cell. I will be my own jailer. I alone possess all keys and I will not give you any combinations.

  “Go play with your little classmates,” they tell me. “Why don’t you go play with your little classmates?”

  Stupid question, simple answer: when they are let out into the playground, the big kids pick on the middle kids who pick on the little kids who don’t have anyone to pick on. So they wait patiently until the next year to join the middle kids and pick on the new batch of little kids. The big kids, they are the kings, but th
ey don’t know what’s waiting for them the following year. Next year, they’ll be the little kids again. Besides, kings though they are, they aren’t allowed to go into the playground next door. Much too dangerous. It’s for the prep-year, first-year, and second-year elementary school kids. Over there, it’s the same thing. It starts all over again. Also on three levels. I’ve watched them at a distance. Really not hard to understand.

  I’ve seen documentaries on TV. With animals it’s similar, except that they eat one another. It’s called the food chain. And the teachers chatting quietly in a corner of the playground, they want me to go get mixed up in all that? No! I have neither the time, nor the energy, nor the inclination to go play with my “little classmates.” There’s no point. One day I told myself that it would be interesting to change tactics. Now I am a big kid. I could hang out with the little kids, organize them into a resistance army against the middle kids and big kids, who are becoming increasingly idiotic and uncontrollable. We’d wait until they had spread out over the playground. In any case, they never move around in groups of more than four or five. Just small gangs without any structure or ambition. I’ve identified the clans; I know exactly who gets along well or badly with whom. I don’t know all the names, but I remember their faces. They are all cataloged in my mind, on little index cards, just like the ones used in class.