Perhaps it was as they claimed, they were tired of sugar pills. Having been sold versions of themselves, having read about their fictional counterparts in magazines and books, seen themselves misrepresented in theaters and on television screens, they no longer could stand the charade.
Chris couldn’t keep to himself through it. His body jerked involuntarily as one of the police struck a young man who wore round glasses and a fisherman’s cap. Chris found himself on his feet and moving before he actually decided to respond. A policeman used his billy club on the lad’s back, pushed the student’s face down onto the cobblestone with the toe of his boot on the back of the boy’s head. Chris pushed his way through, past a few girls in wool sweaters, under the placards and black flags, through the tear gas. He crouched behind a uniformed policeman, reached forward with both hands, grabbed the man’s ankles, and then proceeded to pull the policeman’s legs out from under him. Chris dragged the cop back several feet from the student before two more officers arrived.
Chris was acting like an idiot, he realized, by attacking an officer. He tried to make things right, to apologize, but other police started in hitting him. This caused him to feel doubly foolish, of course, and then he was angry. They were putting too much strength into it. When Christopher’s face hit the cobblestones he tried to complain in his best French, but his mouth was full of blood, his brain shaken, and everything came out in garbled English.
“We can’t all,” Chris said as the two officers hauled him to his feet and proceeded to march him toward the police van. “We can’t all, and some of us don’t,” he explained.
* * *
Gerrard found Christopher Robin in a jail cell underneath the police museum. The storybook character had a bag of ice wrapped in a green cotton towel, and he was pressing it against the wound over his left ear. It had taken Gerrard several hours to recognize him, to figure out that this middle-aged man who spoke halting French through a posh British accent was Christopher Robin, but once he was sure of the fact, Gerrard didn’t hesitate to introduce himself. He checked his pockets, found three paper drinking straws, and then laid them down on the wool blanket between them. The straws had red and green stripes up and down the side. Gerrard made a V shape with two of them and then laid the third across the angle.
“You recognize this?” Gerrard asked.
“Drinking straws.”
“These are just three straws to you, but to the truly educated these are a great deal more,” Gerrard said.
“They are formed into the letter A,” Christopher said. It was a reference from one of the stories. The owl had shown the others the letter A made from sticks.
Gerrard smiled. “The letter A. That’s right,” he said. He opened his mouth to say something more, and then closed it again when he spotted three girls congregated at the bars of the cell across from their own. They were watching him. Gerrard stood up and pressed his face against the bars to talk to the blonde.
“Do you have a 2CV convertible, Mademoiselle?” Gerrard asked.
“Yes, sir. Why do you ask?”
“Where is Natalie?”
“You’re Gerrard? Natalie told me that she isn’t seeing you anymore.”
Gerrard could feel Christopher growing impatient behind him. He heard him coughing and shifting on the cot, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to find out about Natalie.
“You’re a Catholic, right? You disapprove of me?”
“I’m not a Catholic anymore,” the girl said. “I’m a revolutionary.” She smiled again. They were all of them smiling and smiling. The blond girl pulled her long hair back, put her finger to her bottom lip as if to think, and then she shook her head no and smiled again.
Christopher tapped Gerrard on his shoulder. “You’re Gerrard?” Christopher asked.
Gerrard looked at the three drinking straws on the green blanket. Sunlight came into the cell through the barred window and created lines of shadow on the cement floor. There were lines on Christopher’s face, frown lines.
“I’d like to know why you … that is, what is it that I’m expected to do for you exactly?” Chris asked.
The point of derailing Christopher Robin, of cutting him out of Devon and pasting him down under the police museum, was to use him to disrupt Paris. He was a weapon in a battle that had seemingly been indefinitely postponed but had finally arrived.
Chris was a fake person and this was how he could help. Gerrard tried to explain it to him, to tell him how the Hundred Acre Wood was always waiting for him, to tell him about dreaming and how the past was inside the present, but he kept having to start over.
“This isn’t just about you or me. It’s like those straws,” Gerrard said.
“It is?”
“They’re just three stupid straws unless you know how to read them, unless you know that they make the letter A, and once you know it’s A you can’t unknow it. You’re here to show people a new letter A.”
“That’s very French,” Chris said. “Which is to say, I don’t have the first idea of what you’re talking about.”
“Listen, you know why I wrote to you. You are Christopher Robin,” Gerrard said.
“I’m not. Those books you’ve read aren’t, were never, about me,” Chris said. He peeled the blood-soaked green towel away from his skin and looked at the clot in the folds of terry cloth, the pool of dried blood there. Then he shifted the towel, found a clean patch, and put the towel back on the wound.
“Why should I take you seriously?” Christopher asked.
This made Gerrard laugh. Not derisive laughter, but as if he’d figured something out, and was pleased to know something.
“You already take me seriously,” Gerrard said. “After all, you’re already here.”
18
When the painter Donald Berreby approached her at the Café Charbon, Natalie let him pick her up. She’d been testing reality while Guy Debord whinged on the failure of the students to grasp the totality of their circumstances, and she’d been watching Alice Becker Ho touch Debord’s neck, soothing him. Natalie watched Alice and noted her jealousy. She could cite the page numbers in Bonjour Tristesse where Cecile was shown to be jealous, and there were many. Natalie even knew why Cecile was jealous. She turned to page forty-five, found the fourth paragraph, and read the final line:
We are all three on the terrace, full of unspoken thoughts, of secret fears, and of happiness.
Natalie held her nose closed, held her mouth shut, and was silently counting when Donald Berreby approached her. He sat down across from her and told her that she was beautiful. It wasn’t a come-on, he explained, just a fact. Another fact was that Donald required a beautiful companion to help him celebrate.
He pointed to Debord, who was frowning and drawing on a napkin, and then said it again, loudly, so that Debord could hear.
“I need a beautiful companion so I can celebrate our victories!”
Guy glanced toward Donald, and then turned back to the debate at his table.
Natalie left with Donald, who promised to take her to Café de Flore for gin and across the street to Les Deux Magots for burgundy. Donald Berreby was a British painter who had fallen out of favor with Debord and his gang a decade earlier. He was a known quantity. Old like Debord, but tall and good-looking, with straight black hair and bright eyes. She found him appealing in his perfectly pressed plaid shirt and blue jeans.
“Tonight we should enjoy what the wealthy enjoy, and see if we can taste the difference,” Donald said. He took Natalie by her arm; as they stepped out onto the street she wondered if she was participating in a charade. Berreby’s face was inscrutable. Once he was out on the street he moved with purpose, swept her along, but he stopped looking at her.
Standing in the street with his tan wool trench coat tossed over his shoulder he seemed impressive. He was even a little like Sagan’s Cyril who was “tall and almost beautiful with the kind of good looks that inspires one with confidence” even if he capsized his little sailboat or
, as was the case, took you to his friend’s apartment on Saint-Germain so that you could change out of what he called your proletariat house dress and into something more elegant.
The apartment belonged to a former friend of the Wright family, and while the apartment was on the top floor and had low ceilings, it was decorated superbly with an Empire chandelier, tapestries, and an ornate vanity table.
“I think you would look good in red,” Donald told her. “For myself, I’ll simply find a tie.”
Natalie stepped into the bathroom to change, grabbed the shower curtain to steady herself, and almost pulled the curtain down. She was already drunk. She managed to unbutton her blouse and remove it and then to turn on the shower so she could lean into the spray, but when she looked back at where she’d propped her paperback copy of Tristesse she saw that it had fallen from the edge of the tub. She picked it up and set it in the sink. Then she leaned back into the shower. She kept her hair dry, swallowed rust-colored water, turned the water off, and removed her skirt. Then she stood there, steadying herself, while considering what to do next.
She wondered how she should react to a strange man dressing her, but her manual was swollen with water damage. She went ahead and slipped into the red velvet evening gown and then looked at herself in the mirror again. The gown was very lovely and fine and she felt confident in it. She adjusted her hair with her hands, slipped her high-heeled sandal-toed shoes back on her bare feet. She took her paperback, shook it over the sink, and then held it gingerly in her left hand and opened the bathroom door with her right. Donald was outside the door waiting for her. Under his arm he held a painting that he was going to bring with them to the Café de Flore. A patron had agreed to meet him there. He would pick up some francs that way, and then he would buy Natalie, the beautiful woman who’d agreed to accompany him, a shot of the best burgundy in Paris.
Donald held the painting out to her for inspection, and Natalie thought of those children’s game books with mazes and connect-the-dots puzzles. It turned out that the painting was entitled “The Connections.”
“Just some lines,” she said.
“Very observant. Thank you. Are you thirsty?”
* * *
Once at the café, they found a table, and Donald left her to sit by herself while he looked for his patron who wanted the painting. After what seemed to Natalie a long time but was probably only a few minutes, he came back to their table with a fistful of francs. Natalie asked the waiter to fill a porcelain coffee cup with gin, while Donald ordered a bottle of Pinot noir. The gin was smooth and easy to swallow, but Natalie couldn’t be sure whether this reflected an improvement in the quality of the gin or not. The fourth cup of gin was always easier than the first few. She took another sip and then felt something at the top of her head, a tingle. She put down her cup and asked the waiter if she might have something to eat, some bread maybe? She wondered if she could have a glass of water.
Natalie ate and tried to set herself right, using her hand and elbow to hold up her head. She looked out the front of the restaurant, past the red booths and yellow lights and at the darkness settling on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. She marveled at how quiet it was outside.
Natalie was certain that Cecile from Tristesse would sleep with Donald. She would seduce him and leave him with the impression that it had been his idea from the start. Who knows, in this case maybe it had been. Donald had approached her after all.
Natalie put her hand down on her paperback and it was improving a bit, drying out on the table, but she knew it was going to be swollen like that forever.
Donald pulled a map of Paris from his jacket pocket and showed it to Natalie. The map was cut to pieces, rearranged and glued down on top of another map, an older map of Paris. Donald had been inspired by Debord and had been working on psychogeography for the last decade. After they’d kicked him out of the group he kept working. He told her that the police barricades around the Latin Quarter were facing bombardment. He wanted to watch as the city, the existing architecture, was transformed.
“You’ve got it all planned out?”
“Not at all,” Donald said, but then he looked at his watch and asked if she wanted to enjoy a drink at the other café before they had to leave the Latin Quarter.
“Why do we have to leave?”
“Shall we go? You ready for more gin?”
At Les Deux Magots the gin was sweetened with soda, and the waiter refused to provide her with a porcelain mug but brought her a glass with ice, soda, and gin. Looking around it was otherwise much the same, more Greco-Roman columns, yellow electric lights, and booths with red leather upholstery.
Natalie unfolded Donald’s collage of Paris. This Paris on an older map was smaller than the modern Paris that had been disassembled. The older map was denser. Natalie wondered if there might be dragons in the city.
“What year was the original map published?” she asked.
“1871.” Donald downed another glass of wine all at one go.
“Do you think that this is a revolution? Do you think the situation will grow?” Natalie asked Donald.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said. “It’s up to the students, people in the factories, and beautiful young women in borrowed evening gowns.”
The statues of the two Chinese merchants in straw bamboo hats for which the café was named looked down on Natalie and the rest of the tourists in the café with permanent condescending smiles. Natalie finished off her soda pop and gin and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m tired of waiting for Sartre and Simone to show up here,” she said.
“You don’t like it here?” Donald asked.
“I remember now why Debord found his own café. Café Deux Magot. Besides, I’m not like Anna Karenina who has to wait for her big break.”
Donald looked at his watch, and then shook his head. “We have another half-hour, are you sure?”
Boulevard Saint-Germain was lined with shop windows offering mannequins and posters of rock stars, antique commodities, and upscale disposables. They turned on Rue du Bac and crossed on Pont Royal. Donald took Natalie’s hand as they stopped to look into the water. He let go right away though, to light a cigarette, and Natalie felt a pang of disappointment. Donald didn’t really want to sleep with her, but really was only including her in his preconceived aesthetic moment. She wondered if Donald’s being older was the source of his indifference. Walking together in silence, they reached the Louvre, the garden and the grandeur that had been the monarchy’s but was currently the property of the people. There, as they wandered between palaces and enjoyed the fountains, she thought the best approach would be to be brazen.
“Why don’t you want to sleep with me?” she asked.
“We’ve just met,” Berreby said. “I’m a slow starter.”
“We’ve met before.”
“Did you hear about the French couple who set the world record?” Donald asked.
“No.”
“They beat the Americans for how quickly one could visit the art. They sprinted through the museum in just over nine minutes. I believe they were newlyweds. I heard them interviewed on the radio. The girl seemed quite irritated by the whole scenario, but she’d participated so she had to answer the questions.”
“That’s about how long I’d want to stay inside. Art should be here, on the street.”
Something caught Donald’s eye and he walked away from her, toward the Palais Royal. Natalie stumbled a bit as she hurried to catch up. She was surprised when she entered the courtyard and saw what had diverted him. The courtyard was paved over in asphalt and divided up by painted dotted lines. Each plot of space, each rectangle, contained a short white concrete pillar with uniform black stripes running vertically around the base.
“What is this?” Natalie said.
The columns were striped like an awning from a bakery might be striped. They were simple, minimal, modern. Donald took her by her arm and led her onto the chessboard. Natalie imagined how
they looked together arm in arm, a couple of beautiful people with licorice patterned novelties at their feet.
Natalie opened Bonjour Tristesse and found more lines about long caresses, passionate kisses, and bruised lips, but nothing about chessboards or licorice.
It began to rain, to mist, and Donald took off his overcoat and put it over Natalie’s bare shoulders.
“You’re lovely,” he told her.
“I think I’m drunk,” Natalie said. “Do you want to try to find us?” she asked him.
“What?”
Natalie held up the map of Paris that Donald had given her, spread it out on top of one of the taller columns.
“We could try to find ourselves on this map,” she said. “Try to figure out where we are?”
“I don’t think we’re anywhere,” Donald said. “We’re off the map.”
Natalie found Rue de Rivoli on the map, but it stopped before the Louvre. There was a cut.
Donald leaned over and pointed to all the places where he had drawn a circle, a blot. He ran his index finger along the lines connecting parts of the city to other parts, noted where they overlapped.
“That’s the frame,” he said.
“Do you ever test reality? Do you ever try to hold your breath or remember your childhood to make sure that what you think is real is actually real, actually true?” Natalie asked. She put her arms around his neck and her cheek against his. He had broad shoulders; his body felt hard but maybe a little thin against hers, and he was moving away from her.
“Damn,” Natalie said. She opened Tristesse again, looked at page twenty-three and reread her favorite passage to herself instead.
Billy Moon : A Transcendent Novel Reimagining the Life of Christopher Robin Milne (9781429948074) Page 12
