Billy Moon : A Transcendent Novel Reimagining the Life of Christopher Robin Milne (9781429948074)

by Lain, Douglas

  The rules of the university were why they were in Gerrard’s dormitory, even though Gerrard had a roommate and they might be interrupted at any moment. Boys were forbidden from visiting the girls’ dormitories, and other activities were forbidden as well.

  Gerrard put his hand between her legs, felt the coarse wool of her skirt, and she broke away from his embrace again.

  “We can’t go all the way,” she said.

  Life at Nanterre University was a kind of purgatory. In 1962 a minister of the army, a man named Mesmer, offered up an air force depot for the site. Paris X Nanterre was conceived as a means of integration, or at least as a repository, for the working-class youth growing up outside of Paris and in its poorer neighborhoods. There were too many children and limited space for them.

  The modern working classes needed higher education. They needed training in both the hard and soft sciences as they prepared to enter the workforce, and if there were no jobs for them, the university would be a kind of holding pen. As students they did not count as unemployed.

  Gerrard had first noticed Natalie in Neil Lemay’s course on social space and Karl Marx. The professor had been lecturing about love from his own book, The Critique of Everyday Life.

  “In antiquity, passionate love was known, but not individual love, love for an individual. The poets of antiquity wrote of a kind of cosmic, physical, physiological passion, but love for an individual only appears in the Middle Ages within a mixture of Christian and Islamic traditions,” Lemay explained. He resembled a French version of Einstein. If Einstein slicked back his wild grey hair he might look a bit like Lemay. The professor paced back and forth in front of a long desk on the platform as he refused to either sit behind one of the microphones like a television personality, or to take up the usual position at the lectern on the right.

  “Physical space is modified by representational space. The ultimate victory of representational space is this modification of physical space and all the other manifestations of the representational space. Representations of planning, in diagrams, in lectures, are nothing more than preparations for the modification of physical space. Once physical space is altered, once the real world is occupied by representational space, reclamation of any space for other than ideological use is constrained,” Lemay said.

  Gerrard imagined representational space as flat and blank, like space between characters in a comic strip panel or between actors on a television screen. Lemay was suggesting that Paris, that modern society, was already contained in exactly this sort of space.

  “The extent to which the individual’s imagination is kept at bay, kept out of social space, is the extent to which the individual is controlled. It’s axiomatic.”

  The first thing Gerrard noticed about Natalie was how her blond hair was short like boys’ hair, like Twiggy’s hair or Juliette Greco’s, without being stylish. She had short hair, didn’t appear to be wearing makeup, and when she raised her hand to be called on she didn’t wait but stood up and started talking.

  “What about you, sir? The space of this lecture hall is occupied by the ideology of mass communications and capital. The desk behind you, for instance, conveys authority and is wired with microphones to amplify it. The setup is like something from a television news program,” Natalie said. She paused and Lemay leaned on his desk, waiting. Then he turned and spoke into one of the microphones.

  “Do you have a question?” he asked.

  “I do, sir. What about time? You say that we live in ideological spaces, but it takes time to experience such places.”

  Gerrard watched Natalie as she listened to Lemay’s answer. She met his gaze and seemed to judge his every word. She crossed and uncrossed her arms and leaned forward toward the professor and Gerrard decided he wanted her to notice him, and so while Lemay gave his answer Gerrard formulated another question.

  “Would socialist space be rational?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You say socialist space would be directed by the imagination, and well … I don’t know about you, but my imagination is not always rational. You talked about dreams, and we all know how disordered dreams can be. So, I’m asking, well, is socialism, or is socialist space rational? Is it ordered? And if not, I guess, why not? Can we live with it if it’s not, or is it better that it is not?”

  “This is a semantic game you’re playing,” Lemay said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You think the imagination is irrational? That men can’t be free and stay sane?”

  “I wonder, sir,” Gerrard said, “if it’s possible. Wouldn’t a socialist space be an imaginary space, since it sprang from the imagination? Would it be a dream space?”

  “What’s irrational is not the imagination, but rather the false consciousness that is produced every day in these representational spaces,” Lemay said. “An imaginative socialist would, by definition, be working and living in real or physical space. It has nothing to do with dreams.” He stubbed out his cigarette on the desk and then noticed the mark he was making there and tried to brush away the ashes he’d burned into the finish, but to no effect. He looked up, saw Natalie with her hand raised, and called on her without thinking. “Yes, yes?” he said.

  “Sir, I wonder if—”

  “Wait, you’ve already asked a question. You don’t get to go again. Let somebody else ask.”

  “You called on me.”

  “I made a mistake.”

  “Sir, why should we listen to you about socialism or anything else when you aren’t advocating for a revolution?”

  Neil Lemay sighed and leaned across his desk, propping himself up with both hands and letting his head hang down. He feigned exhaustion, and then looked fiercely out at her. “Ms. Petrin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you would keep these internal squabbles out of my classroom. You can take your question back to Debord and his café, back to his drunken situation, where it came from, but I won’t hear any more of this here.”

  “In this space your authority can’t be questioned?” Natalie asked.

  “I wrote about situations and the spectacle a decade before Debord—”

  “Thank you, Professor,” Natalie cut him short.

  At first the professor was a bit stunned and didn’t seem to recognize that she’d overtly silenced him, but started shuffling papers on his desk as if he’d lost his place in his lecture. Then he looked at her again and his face turned red. He ran his right hand through his mane of grey hair and let out another sigh. “Okay. Yes. Thank you,” he said. “You may go.”

  The students in the lecture hall didn’t move at first, but waited for something more to happen.

  “Class dismissed!” Lemay shouted.

  Gerrard made sure to catch up with Natalie in the courtyard outside the Science and Humanities building. The building was a concrete block with round windows and a façade that was elevated on round pillars. It was a building that, once he got her talking, Natalie described as having space-age pretensions. Surrounded by glass and concrete, they shared a cigarette and talked.

  Natalie was a good talker. She was exactly the opposite of almost everyone Gerrard knew: his peers, his teachers, his mother. None of them believed they could really comprehend the world in its totality. Instead they all chose a part, a skill, a trade, or a thought that applied only to fragments. They did not seek anything whole, but embraced the absurdity of the world with determination. Natalie, on the other hand, explained that she was on the verge of something. She was certain that if she made the effort, if she followed the plot of Bonjour Tristesse, she could figure out free love and a lot else.

  Gerrard invited Natalie to his dorm room, and when they were behind closed doors, Natalie let him touch her breasts, but she protested when he wanted to go further.

  “If we’re found out like this it’ll be the wrong kind of scandal,” she said. “I don’t want a bad reputation. Not yet.”

  “I thought we had to transcen
d private consciousness.”

  Natalie kissed him again, but took his hand out of her lap. She let out a long breath and then stood and brushed herself off. “We can only escape the system through private acts,” she said. She leaned over, fiercely kissed him again, and then broke it off. “Private acts of refusal,” she said.

  * * *

  Nanterre was an American-style university outside of Paris in a suburb that was really a slum. Sunlight and rectangular green lawns defined the space between the cement walkways and the freestanding concrete and Plexiglas awnings at the university. The students were out walking, some of them with bare feet. They squinted in the light, seemingly determined to enjoy the moment, while Gerrard thought up excuses to go indoors. He was one step behind Natalie, watching the way her shoulders moved, the lines of her back under her grey turtleneck shirt.

  “I think this place, the educational track that we’re on, it’s a dead end. If things went on like this, the best I can hope for is to end up as a housewife for some boy I meet in Paris. I might pick up a husband from the Sorbonne. That’s the best future for me, the worst is that I end up like you. We’ll join each other on the unemployment line here in Nanterre,” Natalie said.

  “I can see that,” Gerrard said.

  “The solution is to say goodbye to this happy nothing called modern education and say bonjour, tristesse instead,” Natalie said.

  Gerrard took her hand and diverted her from the sidewalk. They tramped across the wet grass leaving tracks in the sod, and then stopped underneath an imported elm. Gerrard sat in the wet grass and then patted his lap indicating that Natalie should sit. He put his arm around Natalie’s waist and then leaned forward and whispered in her ear.

  “Where? You have some plan for where we should go to do this. Somewhere private?” she asked.

  Gerrard blushed, but then he ran his hands along her ribcage, feeling the nubs of her cotton turtleneck. He thought of the way it felt to touch her skin.

  “You were going to tell me about a different book. About a bear?” she asked.

  “Yes. A British bear. A stuffed British bear named Pooh.”

  “I’ve heard of him. But I thought this Pooh was American. A Disney character like Mickey Mouse.

  “No. He is a bear of letters. This bear is the product of the mind of the author A. A. Milne. Pooh is a character invented in order to entertain Milne’s young son Christopher Robin.”

  “Ah. And why do you want to tell me about Pooh? Do you think I’m a child?”

  “No, not at all. In fact I think you are grown-up enough to hear about how Pooh found the North Pole.”

  In the Pooh story Christopher Robin and Pooh set off to find the North Pole, even though they didn’t know precisely what it was. They brought along all of their friends: the donkey, the pig, the rabbit, and all of his relations. Along the way they ate all of their provisions: the thistles brought along for the donkey and an entire jar of honey. It was rough going, and then it turned for the worse when a baby kangaroo fell into the river.

  It was then, when things were getting worse, that Pooh found the North Pole. He rescued the kangaroo with it.

  “How did he find it?” Natalie asked.

  “He didn’t even know he’d found it at first. He just needed a stick and it was only after the fact, after Pooh rescued the kangaroo, that Christopher Robin decided that the stick was it. Christopher announced that they’d found the North Pole.”

  Gerrard hugged Natalie tighter to him, squeezing her around her waist. “We might not always know when we’ve turned a corner or broken free until after it happens.”

  Natalie turned to face him, gave him a quick kiss on the lips, and then started to stand up. She glanced toward the Plexiglas awnings and concrete walkways, back toward the patterned life of Nanterre, and laughed.

  “Do you want to find the North Pole?” she asked.

  “But of course,” Gerrard said.

  8

  Christopher and his family approached Cotchford Farm on foot, walking from where he’d parked their car. From the front gate his father’s mansion looked something like a jigsaw puzzle that hadn’t been put together properly. The front gable abruptly stopped where the architect had drawn a vertical line; this gave the estate a fractured quality. This disjointed appearance along with the tall chimneys, Christopher’s own nostalgia, and the smell of sod all combined to make the place seem fictional. They were headed into a house built under the name of Sanders, into Pooh’s corner, and as they approached Daniel started babbling.

  “Never,” Daniel said. “Never. Never go without a Capstan.”

  It was an advertising jingle for a cigarette. “What’s the matter, Daniel?” Christopher asked.

  “Never,” Daniel said.

  “Come on now.”

  “I don’t want to see Grandpa,” Daniel said. He could find his own words.

  “Oh. You won’t have to. You won’t see Grandpa. It’s your grandmother who is waiting. Grandfather is gone now.”

  “Never,” Daniel said. But, he started walking again.

  His father had been sick for a while, been very near the end a number of times, and now that it had finally happened Christopher wished that it could have come sooner. His father might’ve died in London last year. It would have suited him better. He could’ve died as a satirist and intellectual rather than as a children’s author, and in London Christopher could have escaped the memories just by walking.

  Stepping inside the foyer his mother told them she was glad to see him, to see all of them. She still wore her hair short, like a flapper girl, but her dress was orange polyester. She showed them to the guest room and Christopher almost expected that he’d find his teddy bear waiting for him on the quilted bedclothes, but of course the toys were on display in the office of Father’s publisher in America.

  Returning to Cotchford Farm, Chris found the place very much as it had been and yet, at the same time, entirely different. A smell of medicine clung to the air, an antiseptic sting, and there was something fragile seeming about the old estate.

  “It’s nearly teatime,” Abby said. She was only observing the fact of it and not commenting on any thirst or hunger.

  How was it that Christopher’s strongest memories of his father weren’t of him, but of his absence? Surely there were many times when they’d worked together on some project or other. There had been many instances when he’d been solidly present. Christopher could remember how his father had taught him the basics of cricket—how to bend one’s knees and extend the arm while bowling, how to swing the bat, and when Chris had found the bat to be unwieldy, when he’d been clumsy, his father had patted him on the head and told him that soon enough the game would find him.

  But, what Christoper remembered most clearly was seeing his father from afar.

  Christopher had been introduced to a journalist from London. She’d been quite impressed with the farm, had commented on the roof beams; she’d said the beams looked as though they might once have been ship’s timbers, and then she’d settled in on the yellow-and-gold sofa. Then his father had called Christopher over and introduced him to her as “our boy.”

  “How do you do?” Christopher said.

  He drifted out of the room while the reporter went on being impressed. Christopher changed into his Wellingtons and wandered out the back door to the duck pond. He and the cat, a black cat named Bianca, sat together on the edge of the pond and watched mallards dunk their heads and catch minnows in their beaks while in the house father held forth on the subject of Christopher’s toy bear. Father always complained about being asked always and only about the bear. He had written better books, new books, so why didn’t the pretty journalist from London ask about those books instead?

  Christopher must’ve found a copy of the interview later on. Perhaps he’d read it in the Times that very week, or maybe it had been years later when he’d come across the clipping in a drawer, but however he found it she’d asked his father whether being a hous
ehold name might be a burden for Christopher Robin, and his father had not been sure how to answer.

  Finally he said that the question had truly never occurred to him before, but that everyone had to live up to something or down to something.

  Sometime after the interview Christopher tried to lose the toys. He wandered across the bridge in Ashdown, stopped at the wood rail and looked down into the slowly moving water below, and then decided to leave the stuffed donkey behind. He propped the toy up so that the toy was sitting on his hind legs and the little animal’s head dangled down and rested on the wooden slats at the edge.

  Christopher left Piglet in a clump of thistle, placed Kanga by a desiccated tree stump, put Rabbit in a hole he’d dug up near the perimeter of Cotchford Farm, and placed the bear in a potted plant on the stone walk near the servant entrance. The bear looked back in the direction of his fallen friends. Pooh was concerned for them.

  Christopher went inside and let Nanny draw him a bath. He enjoyed the warm water, washed his hair and dunked his head, got back out of the tub and made sure to thoroughly dry himself. Nanny helped him. She tousled his hair. She rubbed and rubbed his damp head, until he stopped dripping. And it was only then, when he was changing into his nightclothes, that Christopher pretended to remember.

  “Where is my bear?” he asked.

  “Your what, Billy?”

  After Father’s storybooks had been so successful the toys that had inspired them had become his father’s toys even if they were still kept in the nursery.

  “What were you thinking? Where was your head?” Nanny asked.