Well after that, it was impossible to keep a straight face. Dad was trying to hold in a self-satisfied grin, because he knew no one else could come up with stories like that. Despite his huge girth, the Creep was shaking with mirth, and a minute later, I followed his lead. Soon we were all doubled over with laughter, trying our best to catch our breath, but we got carried away in a way that was quite unusual for a funeral. The priest was staring at us, with one hand on his head, locking his hair antenna down and blocking out its message from God. But we couldn’t stop giggling, and when one of us managed to calm down, he’d catch one of the others’ eye and burst out all over again. We were like three silly kids, although the Creep and my dad were grown men. In the end, we had to cover our eyes to keep our faces straight. The priest was dumbstruck, thinking it was just his luck to get stuck preaching to a bunch of lunatics out in the sticks.
When it was time to put Mom into her drawer, we put “Bojangles” on the turntable, and that was a very moving moment. Because the music was like Mom, happy and sad at the same time. “Bojangles” echoed through the cemetery, sounding both mournful and merry. The notes from the piano keys nearly brought us to our knees, but the lyrics whirled and twirled in the air, making us feel like she was still there. The song went on for so long that I had time to see Mom’s ghost dancing in the distance and clapping like she used to do. People like that never really die completely, I thought with a smile. I’ll see her again in a while. Before we left, Dad unveiled a white-marble plaque on which he’d had engraved, “I will love every woman you have ever been, eternally.” And I hadn’t added anything, because for once, he had spoken the plain truth.
When I woke up the next morning, Dad wasn’t there. The ashtray still had an ember of his sweet pipe tobacco, and the cloud of his smoke was still drifting in the air, but there was no one in his chair. On the terrace, I found the Creep, staring into space, his cigar finally lit. He told me that Dad had dashed off to be with Mom, he’d disappeared into the woods, just before dawn, so that when I awoke, he would already be gone. The Senator said he wasn’t coming back, not ever, but I already knew that; the empty chair had told me as much. Now I knew why he had been so focused and happy: he was getting ready to join Mom for a long journey. I couldn’t really blame him. That craziness belonged to him, too. It could only exist if they were both there to share it. Now I was going to have to learn to live without them. I was going to find out the answer to a question I had always wondered about: how do other children manage to live without my parents?
Dad had left all his notebooks on his desk. Our whole life was written in them, like a novel. It was truly a marvel, he had caught it all—the ups and downs, the dances and lies, the laughter and tears, the taxes, the Creep, Mademoiselle and the Prussian horseman, Air Bubble and Sven, the abduction and our great escape to the castle in the air—it was all there. He had described Mom’s outlandish outfits and outrageous outbursts, her crazy dancing and passion for drinking, her beautiful smile, plump cheeks and long eyelashes fluttering over eyes drunk with joy. Reading his book, I felt like I was reliving the whole thing all over again. Amen.
I called his novel Waiting for Bojangles, because we were always waiting for him, and I sent it to a publisher. He told me that it was clever and well written, that he could make neither head nor tails of it, and that that was why he wanted to publish it. So my father’s book, with its lies going backward and forward, flew to bookstores around the world. People read Bojangles on the beach, in bed, at work, in the metro; whistling as they turned the pages, they laughed and danced with us, cried with Mom and lied with Dad and me, so it was almost as though my parents were still alive. It was kind of far-fetched, but life is often like that, which is fine with me.
12.
“Look at the chapel, George, it’s filled with people praying for us!” she’d exclaimed in the empty building.
Then, skipping to the central nave, she tied her white shawl over her mane, turning it into a bridal train. Before us was a huge stained-glass window, to which the rising sun had brought a soft, mystical glow. A sudden gust blew dust from the cover of an old psalter, making it whirl and twirl above the altar.
“I swear before God Almighty, that all the people I will ever be will love you as my husband eternally!” she intoned, my chin between her hands—the better to hypnotize my enchanted eyes.
“Before God I swear with all my might, to love all those you will be day and night, to cherish you as my wife, and keep you company throughout your life; I hereby promise that I will always follow, wherever you choose to go,” I had replied, laying my hand on her face as she grinned with wild abandon.
“Do you swear before all the angels that you will follow me everywhere, really truly everywhere?”
“Yes, everywhere, really truly everywhere!”
About the Author
Olivier Bourdeaut was born in 1980 in a house with no television, so he has been a voracious reader since a very young age. He hesitated for a long time before deciding to write, because he felt so puny compared to the writers on his bookshelf. But a “surge of megalomania” (in his own words) allowed him to finish his first novel, Waiting for Bojangles.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Éditions Finitude
English language translation copyright © 2019 by Regan Kramer
Originally published in France in 2015 by Éditions Finitude as En Attendant Bojangles.
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition March 2019
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Interior design by Carly Loman
Jacket art & lettering by Elvis Swift
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-5011-4591-9
ISBN 978-1-5011-4592-6 (ebook)
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