by Colin Meloy
“I don’t want to go,” said Charlie.
“Hear me out,” said his father.
Charlie grabbed the last prawn, ate it, and said, “I don’t want to go.”
“There is an event, Saturday night, that I’m sure you’d enjoy. There will be a lot of children your age there.” Charlie’s father gestured to the waiter, who gracefully swooped by the table and whisked away the emptied seafood tower. “The Viscount of Falmouth’s son is in the city, and he’s having his ninth birthday party. I will be going at the behest of his father. You are invited as well.”
“No, thank you,” said Charlie.
Charles Sr. continued as if he hadn’t been given an answer. “I seem to recall them saying there will be pony rides there. And clowns.”
These temptations did not deserve a response from Charlie, who was, you remember, twelve. Pony rides had never really been his thing, anyway.
“And children. Around your age. Many of them. I will personally introduce you. They will all speak English, it’s assured.”
“No, thank you,” said Charlie.
“Charlie, at some point you will have to relent. You do have somewhat of an obligation to attend various functions in your role as the son of the American consul general to Marseille.” The waiter had arrived again. He set a bowl of bouillabaisse in front of Charlie Sr., an omelet and frites in front of Charlie fils. Charles explained, “You were late. I took the liberty of ordering for you.”
It was just as well that the lunch had arrived, because Charlie didn’t have an answer for his father. Why didn’t he want to attend? Who wouldn’t want to be a guest at a party for visiting royalty? It might go back to his mother’s betrayal or maybe his life of incessant vacationing that led to an aversion to these kinds of social gatherings. And it wasn’t like Charlie rejected them out of ignorance or fear: no, he’d been to plenty of them. Black-tie bar mitzvahs in Tel Aviv, garden parties on sunny Delhi terraces. Grand galas hosted by Argentine royalty. No expense was ever spared for the food and entertainment at these events. The attendants were impeccably dressed and impeccably behaved. Which was fine and radiant and exciting, but Charlie was never grouped with the well-behaved and well-dressed adults; instead, he was shunted to the kids’ tables, where the grossest forms of humanity alive would all be present: the offspring of the aristocracy.
Having met more actual princesses than might appear in your typical storybook, Charlie would assure you that they bore very little resemblance to their Walt Disney counterparts: they were spiteful and spoiled, to the last. They spoke in a kind of haughty, nasal way and they threw temper tantrums as if it were a competition. Their names were things like Eugenia and Lavinia and Elsinore. They rarely deigned to speak to Charlie for long, and when they did, it was always a very brief interaction in which they held their heads as if Charlie had just arrived freshly rolled in some rotting carcass. As for the princes—the Harrys, the Henris, the Heinrich van Spackleburgers—they were as far from Charming as you could imagine. They drove expensive sports cars, which they invariably wrecked as if they were Matchbox miniatures and, like die-cast toys, were immediately replaced with newer, shinier ones. They burped and slouched at dinner, and they were always carrying on about their various girlfriends in various places, counting them as if they were trifles they collected and threw away. They were savage to Charlie and his shyness; he was a commoner to them, the son of an American diplomat. A hanger-on.
Charles Sr. read his son’s silence well. This was not the first time Charlie’s antisocial tendencies had come up. “I know,” he said. “I know it’s hard for you. But you have to make an effort. You’re a very likable boy, Charlie. You just haven’t met the right kids yet.”
“Right,” said Charlie.
“And how will you meet the right ones, if you’ve just sworn off meeting anyone?”
“I know, Father,” said Charlie. “I just need a bit of time, maybe.”
His father nodded and quietly tucked into his fish soup. Charlie ate his lunch. The blithe hum of restaurant chatter filled the space between them, that particular brand of chatter that populates French restaurants, particularly in the south, during those late lunches of fish and shellfish and glasses of rosé, when the air is hot and the cool of the wooden interior is so welcome. The two Fishers ate without saying another word, apart from Charlie ordering a grenadine from a passing waiter. It arrived; he drank it. Charles Sr. took a last sip of his bouillabaisse, set his spoon down, and removed the napkin from the front of his shirt.
“Back to work,” he said. “There are papers to be signed, passports to be cleared, hands to be shaken, and backs to be scratched.” He gestured to the waiter. The check was brought and Charles Sr. laid out the correct cash on the tray. He then removed a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to his son. “It’s a hotel pen,” he said. “No replacement for a Sheaffer, I’m afraid, but it’ll have to do in a pinch. Try not to give it away.”
Charlie smiled and accepted the pen. His father gave him a wink and patted him on the back. Charlie watched his father leave and then motioned for the waiter.
“Oui, monsieur?” asked the waiter.
“Une autre grenadine, s’il vous plaît.”
When it came, he drank it in silence, toying with the new pen. He tried to spin it between his fingers as Amir had, but found that he dropped it with every flick.
Let’s keep Charlie seated there, elbows (rudely) on the table, the little plastic pen leaping out of his fingers like an escapee from an island prison. Let’s keep Charlie like that, but let’s move him. Now the scenery has changed. It is the next day, the next afternoon, and we are in a district of Marseille some ways south of the Vieux Port called the Prado. Ask directions: you will either be recommended to follow Rue Paradis away from the tangle of the port’s pleasure boats and fishing skiffs until the street T-intersects with that wide, tree-lined Avenue du Prado; or, alternately, you will be told to climb the hill overlooking the Fort Saint-Jean and the Palais du Pharo, with that noble, zebra-striped basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde standing like a birthday candle on the cake that is the great city of Marseille some many, many feet above you, and from there to follow the length of the Corniche, along the great Mediterranean Sea itself, a broad glassy green only interrupted, from your perspective, by the treeless islands of If and Frioul, and then southward until you’ve reached a giant replica of Michelangelo’s David, having been reassigned to the job of directing traffic on a dizzy roundabout where the Prado begins and the ocean ends.
Or maybe it would be best to take a taxi.
The Prado, during this time, was the most distinctive address to be had in all of Marseille. The wide avenue was lined with leafy plane trees, casting dappled shade on the stream of buzzing cars—only the finest makes and models—that cruised its length. On either side of the great thoroughfare was a parade of opulent stone villas, their baroque facades draped in blankets of hanging ivy and honeysuckle, their grounds protected by tall, wrought-iron fences. In one such home, the Fishers had taken up residence.
And there you would find Charlie, as if transported from his previous position in the restaurant Miramar to here, in one of the (several) drawing rooms of his immense three-story home. He still has his elbows (rudely) on a table and he is still fiddling with the pen. However: he has gotten a bit better at twining the pen through his fingers, you should know, owing perhaps to the amount of time he has spent practicing in the intervening moments between yesterday and today. Time he should be devoting to his schoolwork, something that his tutor, Simon, who is also here in this room, was trying to remind him.
“Can you put the pen down and focus for a moment, Charlie?” asked Simon.
“Yes,” said Charlie, navigating the plastic pen (Bienvenue! Hôtel Lutetia, Paris, FR) from his ring finger to his pinkie. It was the most difficult of the finger exchanges.
“You have not put it down,” said Simon, which was true.
Charlie didn’t manage the
transition from finger to finger; the pen fell with a clatter to the tabletop.
“Thank you,” said Simon, misreading Charlie’s clumsiness as obedience. “Now, I would like to point out one of the common mistakes you seem to make.” Charlie’s composition notebook was laid out in front of them, and Simon was busily dissecting one of Charlie’s short stories as if it were a frog on a lab tray. “You remember what a dangling modifier is?”
“Someone who modifies, hanging from a cliff?” asked Charlie with a grin.
Simon didn’t return the smile. Simon didn’t smile very much at all, actually. It was surprising to Charlie, this fact, because to Charlie, Simon seemed to be living the very lush life. He was a grad student—and to twelve-year-old boys, University Students, with their newfound independence and lack of real responsibility, were in the ideal situation. He was enjoying an extended gap year from his studies and was living, free of charge, under the Fishers’ roof while he gave thrice-daily lessons in English, French, and geography to Charlie. For this, Simon was given a healthy stipend and three-day weekends off. He wore a goatee and heavy black glasses, in the beatnik style. On top of this, he was from Manhattan, played the nylon-string guitar, and had recently been seen in the company of a young French woman named Cécile. Why he should be such a stick-in-the-mud was anyone’s guess.
“A dangling modifier is a phrase, a descriptive phrase, that is describing the wrong object in a sentence,” explained Simon dryly. He gazed out the large picture window. “For example: ‘Having climbed the fence, the distance to the ground was too far for the boy to jump.’ The phrase ‘having climbed the fence’ is wrongly modifying the word ‘the distance,’ instead of . . .” Simon paused and said, “There is a boy climbing the fence.”
Charlie followed Simon’s gaze and saw that the tutor’s clause, modified or no, was right: there was a boy climbing the fence. Or he had finished climbing the fence—a wrought-iron wall some ten feet high, crowded by a thick hedgerow that blocked the view from the busy avenue—and was now hanging from the top of it with his arm crooked around one of the fence’s decorative finials. Some forty feet of the Fishers’ manicured lawn separated the boy from the window to the drawing room, but even from that distance Charlie recognized the boy as none other than Amir, the pickpocket.
Before Charlie could say anything, Simon had already marched to the french doors that let out onto the lawn and shouted, “Hey you! What do you suppose you’re doing there?”
“Wait!” shouted Charlie, leaping from his chair.
“This is a private residence!” Simon continued, waving an accusatory finger in the air as only a professional tutor could.
Amir, hanging from the fence, was unthreatened. Seeing Charlie, he broke into a smile. “Hey there,” he said. He waved his free arm.
Simon was about to alert the security detail when Charlie ran up to his side and said, “Hold on, Simon. I know him.”
“You do?” the tutor sputtered incredulously. He looked back at Amir: unruly brown hair, dirty chinos, faded pink shirt, toothy smile. Somehow, despite this, his doubt was overcome. “Okay,” he said. “But what is he doing on the fence? Couldn’t he have just called at the gate?”
“He’s strange that way,” replied Charlie, and he ran across the lawn toward his friend.
“Wait!” shouted Simon from the open french doors. “Your lesson!”
“Having climbed the fence,” Charlie replied over his shoulder, “the boy realized the distance to the ground was too far! Modifier undangled!”
“It’s not too far,” said Amir, once Charlie had arrived at the spot below him. As if to prove this, he neatly undid his arm from the fence and leapt to the ground with the ease of a tree squirrel. He landed, crouched, and sprang upright, presenting his hand to Charlie in greeting. “Hiya, Charlie,” he said. “Nice place.”
“How did you know how to get here?”
Amir brushed at his arms, as if tidying himself, and gave a whistle. “I’m among the gentry here. You come from—what do you call it—good stock, Charlie Fisher.”
“Thanks. I mean, I guess.” Suddenly Charlie felt very sheepish about his social standing. “It’s my dad’s, really. It’s somewhat overly big for just us. I’d prefer something smaller or . . . But seriously: How did you know where to find me?”
“There are no secrets from Amir. Not in Marseille.”
Charlie studied the boy for a moment before saying, “Well, welcome to my house.”
“Thank you,” said Amir, but his eyes strayed over Charlie’s shoulder. “I think I have interrupted you.”
Simon appeared at Charlie’s side. “Oh, him?” said Charlie. “He’s my tutor. We were just finishing up.”
“Oh, were we?” said Simon. He introduced himself to Amir, who, in turn, eyed him suspiciously.
“Can we please be done?” Charlie asked Simon. “I told Amir we would meet up.”
Simon placed his hands on his hips and breathed in deeply, as if suddenly becoming aware of the warm afternoon and that he was outside in it. The cries of seabirds could be heard, not too far off, and the air smelled faintly of the ocean and jasmine vines. His resistance quickly dissipated. He checked his watch. “We do have only ten minutes remaining,” the tutor said. He looked squarely at his student. “You’ll finish up your reading for next week?”
“Fifty pages, yes, sir.”
“And start your essay. We need something to show for our work here, Charlie.”
“Not a problem.”
“That’s the spirit, Simon,” threw in Amir.
Simon smiled thinly. “Charming friend,” said the tutor. “Your father approves?”
“Better that Father doesn’t know.”
A breeze rustled the leaves of the hedgerow; music could be heard from an open window in a neighboring house. “Very well,” said Simon. “It is a beautiful day. You might be best out enjoying it. One mustn’t lose oneself entirely to study.”
“This one’s schooling has just begun,” said Amir, winking at Charlie.
Simon raised an eyebrow at the boy. Charlie quickly interjected, “What a card you are, Amir. Come on, let’s . . .” He was at a loss for words. “Let’s shoot some marbles.”
“Marbles,” said Simon. He turned and ambled back to the house, saying while he walked, “While shooting marbles in the boules court, the afternoon slowly turned to evening.”
“Dangling modifier!” shouted Charlie. “The afternoon slowly turned to evening while the boys shot marbles in the boules court!”
Simon waved an approving finger as he left their view.
The two boys watched the tutor disappear into the house. Amir then said, “You ready for a real lesson?”
“Let me get my things,” replied Charlie.
Chapter
FOUR
Following Amir through the streets of Marseille was like tracking a frightened snake through tall grass. Charlie did his best impression of an intrepid field zoologist, but it was all he could do to keep up with the pickpocket as the boy dove across streets awash with traffic congestion, shot down hidden alleyways, and leapt over guardrails. There were so many near misses with pedestrians and motorists alike that the two of them trailed a sizable wake of hollered epithets along the way, with Charlie, the responsible one, unfortunately tasked with shouting loud apologies as they went. Amir clearly cared very little what other people thought of him or what sort of consequence his actions might have to his environment. He seemed to Charlie to live like a bright spark. And Charlie could only be a kind of mirror, reflecting this luminescence.
“Keep up!” yelled Amir, after having nearly lost Charlie in the mayhem of a small street market. A group of Algerian women, wearing dark headscarves, watched the two boys disinterestedly. Amir had just passed the last stall and was standing at the intersection of several small streets, waiting on Charlie.
“I’m trying,” said Charlie when he finally reached Amir. The boy was about to spring away again when Charlie grabbed
his arm. “Hold up,” he said. “I need to catch my breath.”
“Charlie Fisher,” said Amir, who, it should be noted, was not in the least bit winded by this race through the warrens of Marseille, “you couldn’t catch a turtle in a mud puddle. How are you going to catch your breath?”
“I don’t get much opportunity to do this,” said Charlie defensively. “I’m not in the habit of running from people.”
Amir put his arm on Charlie’s shoulder. “This is your most important lesson. Running from people.”
“Right,” said Charlie, inhaling quickly through his nose.
“But you will only have to run from people when you’re made.”
“Made?”
“Means to be found out. Funny word, that, ‘made.’ Like, you don’t exist before. You are nothing till you’re made.”
The city rumbled about them, a weave of activity that seemed, while they stood still, to take absolutely no notice of them. “And that’s exactly what you are. You are nothing, Charlie, in Marseille. Nothing.”
Charlie shifted a little, uncomfortably.
“Ooh, yes,” continued Amir, “I forget. You are the son of the consul general, yeah? Big shot. No, no, no. Right here, right now, you are nothing. We are nothing. We are just part of the scenery.” Amir gave an all-encompassing gesture to their surroundings. A red car stopped briefly next to them and then, hugging the curb, disappeared down an alleyway that seemed scarcely wider than it. Two bicyclists on rickety black Gitanes clattered down the cobbled street, one chatting merrily to the other; their lunch, a pair of baguettes and a sausage, sprouted from their wicker panniers. A group of children, some yards up, in matching school uniforms, tussled over a comic book. “We are as good as wallpaper,” Amir said.
