The Emperor, C'est Moi Read online

  Five yards: I lock my trajectory onto the little girl.

  Three yards: I can still miss her with a twist of the handlebars, but instead I accelerate.

  Only two yards left. She doesn’t even see me coming: what I am about to do is just that unimaginable.

  One yard: Last push of the pedal. My tire strikes the little girl. Her hand lets go of her mother’s. She falls. At that instant, as if to recall my brain to order, instinctively, I grip the handbrakes so as not to run her over. My infernal machine stops. The little girl is crying. Her mother rushes to her, helps her up, and murders me with her eyes and words. My mother, helpless, has seen the whole thing from a distance. She hurries over. I say nothing, exhausted. In the end, the child is more frightened than hurt. Luckily.

  I am seven. The age of reason.

  One other time, again on a bike, the same thing happened. I deliberately swerved into my mother as I went by. She fell on the pavement and her cuts and bruises were visible for weeks. I never told anyone this story before writing it here. Today, however, I’m well aware that this sort of thing can happen to anyone. Just read the police blotter section in newspapers. It’s also why video games are almost always based on violence and murder, without which they wouldn’t interest anyone.

  Those two experiences traumatized me so much that I could never pass my driving test. One day, perhaps . . .

  Caution: Public Menace!

  She is short, excitable, and she shouts nonstop. Her face is contorted, her eyes constantly about to pop. Her voice is strident and metallic. As soon as she opens her mouth, that voice grates on my ears and I don’t understand a word she says—or let’s say that I don’t wish to. I absolutely refuse to let her voice into my brain. I hear it, but it won’t get past my ears. I remember her voice quite well but would be incapable of recalling the slightest thing she said. My eardrums don’t like her, I don’t like her, and she doesn’t like me, either. What’s more, I think she doesn’t like anybody, but certainly not her pupils. She is nothing more to me than a permanent acoustic aggression that I strive to drown in an ocean of indifference. I must spend eight hours a day with her, in the same room. May I introduce you to Madame C., the teacher.

  I am seven and I am in the first grade. Seven, the fabled age of reason. They must have trotted that one out a hundred times after my birthday. I’ll be hearing it all year long. Everyone had a go at it. At school and elsewhere. “You’re seven, the age of reason! That’s wonderful!” Well yes, it’s brilliant. Why seven, and not eight, or six? Now that, they’ll never tell me. The age of reason is seven, they say. What’s this thing they have about reason? Have they all lost theirs? The faculty of reasoning that wins out always belongs to whoever’s in charge. I don’t understand that yet, even though my father has already told me, quoting one of La Fontaine’s fables: “The reason of the strongest is always the best.” From a practical viewpoint, I will learn this to my cost. At school, of course.

  I remember, in seventh grade, a teacher affirming with unshakable certainty before her class, “You know perfectly well: the teacher is always right.” At that moment, I understood. At that very moment, everyone knew that she was wrong, but she was right. Right—because she possessed the power.

  Here is one of the basic things I learned in school: reason, power, and strength are an indivisible trio. If one is removed, the whole thing collapses. At seven, I have neither power nor strength. So, seven as the age of reason, that’s hogwash. But never mind, go on saying it to keep your children believing that nice little lie. It’s like Santa Claus: they’ll figure out soon enough it isn’t true.

  REASON POWER STRENGTH

  Why don’t they inscribe that above the entrance to every primary, middle, and upper school? Or every city hall, ministry, courthouse, or government building? It would be so much closer to what’s actually found there rather than this pious civic falsehood:

  LIBERTY EQUALITY FRATERNITY

  Liberty. Equality. Fraternity. I never learned a thing about all that in Jules Ferry’s school.4 A vast political lie drummed into us ever since childhood.

  In short, I am seven. I’m seven and I must come to terms with Madame C. Since eight hours daily are clearly considered insufficient, Madame C., as she does every afternoon, dictates our homework assignment to us. If memory serves, here is a typical example: “Find and underline the direct or indirect object complement, which you will replace with the qualifying adjective in the juxtaposed clause, which you have already bracketed, by the subordinate clause in the given sentence.” In Jules Ferry’s school, that is what passes for a French language exercise.

  It’s nine o’clock at home. The whole family is at the dinner table and even my father—cancer specialist, eminent professor of medicine, researcher with diplomas from who-knows-how-many universities and laden with who-knows-how-many honors and awards of all kinds—has not understood how to deal with the assigned text. I’m really scared. I am scared because I know that if I do not complete the exercise or if I blow it, Madame C. will yell even louder and punish me. I have never yet been punished. I do not want that to happen to me. I am certainly an inattentive, run-of-the-mill student and I’m often off topic, but in conduct I excel: perfect grade. Always. In that department, indifference does seem to pay off. Fear is the subject best taught in our national educational system. Fear, competition, submission, graded from A to F. My father writes something in my notebook, a short text that, unlike the assignment, has the merit of being quite clear. In three lines it explains the reason why my homework assignment has not been completed. This way, I think, I’m off the hook and Madame C. will understand.

  The next day, 9 a.m. As on every morning, we must pass muster. General inspection. Each of us in turn must rise, walk up to the desk, and present his homework to Madame C. When Madame C. is not pleased with what she finds, she throws the notebook in the face of the student, who picks it up and returns to his seat. That morning, every notebook gets the treatment; it’s obvious that no one understood the assignment. It’s my turn. I dread Madame C.’s reaction, but tell myself that my father’s message will protect me. I place my notebook gently on her desk. She reads the note. I see her turn red and a whole stream of screeching insults bursts from her pinched and wizened little mouth. My notebook goes flying. I have earned an extra treat: the wooden brush used as an eraser skims my head. After I’ve collected my notebook and returned to my seat, she continues to scream at me as she throws the chalk my way. What I have felt coming since the beginning of the year has arrived.

  I am now the official scapegoat of Madame C.

  Madame C. is not entitled to my tears. I remember that at that instant, I began mentally to curse my childish state. I imagined myself as an adult, throwing notebook, wooden brush, and chalk back in her face. The slightest word I’d addressed to you, Madame C., was a mistake on my part, a huge waste of time and energy. You weren’t worth it.

  At that instant I wall myself up: it’s time to raise my armies, reinforce my ramparts, fortify walls to immediately construct a tower so high and so solid that I won’t even see you anymore, Madame C. The walls will be so massive that you’ll be welcome to yell your lungs out all you like, I won’t hear you, and my tower will be so high that its summit will pierce the clouds and you will disappear. I will close all the drawbridges and arrow slits I’d gradually begun to open. On my tower, you will see only the mouths of my cannons and the tips of my archers’ black arrows, and behind them I will even add catapults and giant crossbows ready to hurl flaming projectiles, and when my drawbridges open, it will be only to release hordes of maddened knights on furious chargers in bloody armor accompanied by fire-breathing, bloodthirsty dragons.

  Fortunately, my mother will not let me reconsolidate the foundations of my tower. A few days later, I will begin attending a different school with a single consolidated class for the rest of the year. Smooth sailing. A few days later, Madame C. went off on
extended sick leave for nervous depression. Good riddance.

  That is how, at seven, the age of reason, I came quite close to becoming a creature of hatred immured in suffering.

  Note:

  4Jules Ferry (April 5, 1832–March 17, 1893): A French politician and republican who championed laicism, the secular control of political and social institutions in society. Twice premier of France, his chief legacy as a reformer of public education policy was to make primary education in his country mandatory, nonclerical, and free.

  III

  THE BLACK YEARS

  From Resistance to Collaboration

  A page is turned. The end of one chapter, the beginning of another: lower secondary school. I was a big kid in my last year of primary school, and now I’ll be a little kid again. Our teacher had warned us: “Pay attention, because next year, they won’t be cutting you any slack.” How right he was.

  Over summer vacation, I savor my last moments of tranquillity. Over all too soon. It’s already the end of August. Mama has proposed that we register me in our neighborhood school, the one served by our local school bus. It’s simpler, and that way there will be no need to accompany me into town, which is more than seven miles away. It’s better for Mama and better for me. I don’t want to be a burden.

  My mother takes my sister and me to a department store. We have to buy school supplies. It smells good: newness and change. I’m pretty excited at the idea of changing my life. I’m quickly deflated. Once back at the house, with all the books, pens, binders, and notebooks slipped into my new school satchel backpack, I can hardly lift it. My mother weighs it on the bathroom scale: thirty-one pounds. I weigh eighty-eight.

  I’ve long wondered why, in the era of the computer, the virtual, and paperless processes, young students are forced to lug a bag that can weigh up to half as much as the scrawniest child. Today I believe I’ve found the answer: it’s a matter of political will. It’s a question of breaking the young, to keep them from rebelling. They thus learn in spite of themselves to bow beneath the burden of guilt and class assignments.

  Here is my new routine. I may have my little habits and rituals, but I hate routines.

  At 6:45 dreaming ends, alarm clock rings.

  At 7:30 I am showered, dressed, breakfasted. My mother walks me to the bus stop. In the winter, we drive there. At the bus stop, I see that once again, I’m in the wrong: the other children have come on their own. In the winter, they try to peer through the fogged-up car windows. Personally I hope that this fog gets thicker so I won’t see them anymore. I know that in a few minutes I’ll have to get out to climb inside a bigger vehicle, where I’ll be shut up with the others. Enclosed in the misted-over cabin of the car, I take advantage of these last moments with my mother, one of the few people in the world who love me.

  At 7:45 the bus arrives. Even if there is fog on the windows, I absolutely do not kiss my mother in front of the others: I know for sure that they would make me pay for that. So I simply shake hands with her discreetly down by the gearshift lever. A gentle pressure so she can send me her energy. I’m eleven and now know that all visible signs of affection are indecent and reprehensible. I must be a robot. A machine. A war machine. And that’s not a lesson my mother taught me. I figured it out myself and I apply it. I get out of the car. I have my thirty-one-pound satchel on my back. It hurts. I mustn’t let any effort show. I carry it with a super-straight spine. I’m strong. I exercised all winter, cutting wood with my father. I have tons and tons of cordwood to my credit. I’ve hefted and split logs a lot heavier than this miserable pack.

  I climb on the bus. The children have definitely gotten dumber, noisier, and more useless. Except that they’re tougher. The shouting resounds throughout the entire trip, over the background racket of the pop hit of the moment. The radio is always tuned to the same station: pathetic and full of junk. The small clique in command has easily spotted me as “the weird guy” who stands out from the crowd, the one who doesn’t submit to their rule, who stares back at them, who doesn’t grovel before their little militia. In short: the guy to get. The fun begins. I endure my daily torture session. Twice a day. There and back.

  “Lower your eyes,” they tell me.

  I don’t reply and I stare their leader right in the face.

  He slaps me.

  I raise my head and dart him my blackest, most murderous look. I have learned to look at people down to the depths of their souls, allowing them possession of a little of mine in return. That was very hard. And now someone wants me to lower my eyes? Never! I’d rather die! The entire bus lowers its eyes before this little gang. Not me. And yet I’m alone. I have neither gang nor army. My army is imaginary and it’s lined up behind me ready to crush these little dictators, these mini-bosses.

  “Eyes down, sonofabitch!”

  I channel all my fury into my stare.

  Second slap, harder than the first one. I pierce him with arrows of my hatred and rage. My eyes shoot daggers at them, flash lightning at them, my gaze is a hail of bullets and I hold my head high.

  Third slap. I will not submit. I want to leap at their throats to rip them out with my teeth, smash their testicles and throw them in their faces. But I don’t. I don’t hit them. I always avoid brawls: I know that if I fight, it’s to kill.

  They can see that ordering me around gets them nowhere. They can’t stand my defiant glare so they grab me by the back of the neck, forcing my head down while they spit at me. With their free hands they rub their fists roughly on my skull. That’s called a shampoo. They take turns doing it. I’ve become their favorite toy. When they let go of me, my burning eyes still confront their bovine stares so eager for violence and humiliation. I won’t let out one cry, one tear. Nothing. Then they decide to attack me from the back, flicking my earlobes with their fingers for the rest of the ride. Put like that, it doesn’t sound like much, but done repeatedly and hard, it’s really nasty. I patiently await the end of this torment, secretly dreaming of a battlefield where I dismember their bodies and hang the trunks from butcher’s hooks. Their heads are still alive. Obviously I don’t finish them off, so that they may contemplate the bloody spectacle of their mutilated bodies. Once they’ve had a good look, I’ll put out their eyes.

  These hellish rides will last for several months. A round-trip. Introduction and conclusion to my days in prison. One evening, my mother notices blood dripping from my earlobes. She asks me if anyone is pulling on them. I say no. I’ve had enough of being a problem. I am not a victim. I don’t need you or anyone to defend me against these brutes. When I’m big and strong enough, I’ll kill them all. I no longer wish to be protected by anyone.

  As I can’t walk very fast because of my heavy pack, the bus seats up front are often taken. So I wind up in the middle rows, where my band of jolly torturers waits impatiently. Not once will I lower my eyes. Then one evening, worn out, I compose a letter at home to the President of the Republic. I inform him of the deplorable attitudes and violence that reign in school transportation vehicles. I call upon him to come evaluate the situation himself or else send one of his ministers right away. I hand my first draft to my mother. Mama suggests a different solution. She looks up the phone number of the gang leader and calls him at his home to make him stop his harassment.

  The trips that follow will be calmer, but the respite will be brief. The lynching will begin again all the more viciously because they want to show me that they are the only ones in command and that nothing will stop them. And certainly not some “sonofabitch.” I have only my glowering looks to fight back with. To keep resisting, always. My mother then decides to alert the school authorities. I do not agree with that solution, but her mind is made up. After robust discussions in the offices of the principal, vice-principal, and head school counselor, the harassment will cease immediately, as if by magic.

  Naturally, as I’d predicted, dirty looks and whisper campaigns
replace the blows, insults, and spitting. They call me Monsieur Horiot. They use the formal vous with me. I’ve snitched. I’ve named names. On a list. Now, I’m an informer. All that because I’m incapable of defending myself on my own by exterminating five little rats with one fell blow. They call me a suck-up, a tattletale, a stool pigeon. I hate myself even more and can’t bear this new label stuck on my forehead. Branded by a red-hot iron. It’s true: now I’m a collaborator. A “collabo.” Me. And I’d wanted to be a resistance fighter . . .

  Reverse Discrimination

  Solemn declaration by our French teacher one autumn afternoon: “Middle school: these are the classes where you decide whether, later, you will be rich or poor.”

  Another one of those pious civic falsehoods. As if you’d have to do well in French class to become, for example, a great writer. My mother has written about twenty books, some of which have been translated into umpteen languages. My mother was lousy at French. Zero every time. She left school at fifteen, and yet she handles words and sentences immeasurably better than this puppet who claims to be teaching us the language of Molière. As it is taught (for the most part) in school, French serves on the contrary to make us sick of poetry, sick of the language. The idea is to flush out the brains of dreamers with great splashes of icy water, thus turning them into serious, competitive busy bees, ready to do battle for the first cause that comes along.

  The French teacher is very strict. He teaches us many very difficult and quite useless things. At the beginning of every class, there is a written quiz on the previous day’s lesson. Anyone who gets a below-average grade must stay after school on Wednesday afternoon, when we have only a half-day of classes. I usually get by with just barely average marks. Passing, as they say. Could do better. Well, no, I will not do better for you. You already steal enough of my time. Twelve hours a day, counting homework. And I don’t even get anything in return. I’ve neither the time nor the space to dream.