by Maude Julien
Monsieur Molin is my breath of fresh air. On my excursion to take the bac, I realized how out of step I am with the real world. I’m terrified this discrepancy is irreversible, that I’ll only ever have a semblance of a normal life and will always be on the fringes. So I feel the blood draining from my face when Monsieur Molin says he has to take some time off for an operation.
‘But I’ve brought you two Rachmaninoff preludes,’ he says. ‘You can start by sight-reading the one in C sharp minor, and we’ll work on it together when I’m back on my feet.’
I throw myself wholeheartedly into Rachmaninoff. Even in my room at night, I stop my secret writing to play an imaginary keyboard. I spend hours at the piano with the accordion on my lap; as soon as I hear the intercom click my hands leap to the accordion. When it clicks off again I go back to the piano. By midsummer I’ve more or less worked out the prelude in C sharp minor and turn my attention to the one in G minor. It’s harder and I end up thinking about it all the time. When my parents talk to me they sound far away.
Monsieur Molin comes back at last and I want to amaze him by playing both preludes. He certainly is amazed, but I can tell that he is also concerned. I beg him to order Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. ‘Maybe do something else for a while,’ he suggests. When I insist, he agrees, but on the condition that I also work on two other composers.
When he has to be away for a second operation to his hip following an infection, I throw myself into the concerto heart and soul. It is much longer than the preludes and I’m not up to it. I persist doggedly, becoming obsessed, losing myself in the notes, hearing them inside my head day and night. Luckily, Monsieur Molin comes back quite quickly and is alarmed to see the state I’m in: I’m playing too quickly, talking too quickly, struggling to control myself. And, to his astonishment, I put the accordion on my lap before playing the piano. It’s become such a habit that I don’t even know I’m doing it.
Very gently he starts telling me about Rachmaninoff, who suffered a four-year depression after the failure of his first concerto. He talks about Rimski-Korsakov, who was his master and role model. I could work on his Flight of the Bumblebee. I’d enjoy it, says Monsieur Molin. Enjoy—what a strange idea, I think. ‘Oh, but watch out,’ he adds. ‘It’s a difficult piece. And we could kill two birds with one stone because it’s been adapted for the accordion. That’ll please your father.’
I’m instantly charmed by The Flight of the Bumblebee, and I also discover Manuel de Falla: Monsieur Molin plays me his Ritual Fire Dance and I’m dazzled by it. He gradually draws me away from my obsession with Rachmaninoff. A few months later I return to the preludes and realize I’m playing them differently, more seriously. As for the Second Concerto, I give up on it with no regrets because we’ve now moved on to Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody: my ultimate dream since losing Madame Descombes ten years ago.
Marie-Noëlle
A year later I take the train to Armentières again—filled with even more apprehension than last time—for my full baccalauréat exams. My mother has told me, ‘If anyone asks why you’re home-schooled, say you have very bad asthma and can’t go to high school.’ But no one asks.
German as first foreign language: I’ve studied Schiller and Goethe, but I’m confronted with modern texts that make my head spin. It’s the same problem with English: I’ve worked on Shakespeare, but I’m supposed to tackle a subject taken from a book whose cover bears the American flag. The only consolation is the optional music paper: I play Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor and the examiner exclaims, ‘But you play beautifully! Why aren’t you taking a music baccalauréat?’ I didn’t know there was such a thing.
In the History-Geography oral I happen to get one subject I know well, ‘The Russian Campaign’, and one I know less well, ‘The development of Latin America’. The examiner sucks on his pipe as he listens to me talk, then seems to come to life and asks me about Brazil and King Pelé. I’ve never heard of a King Pelé.
‘You do know Brazil are world champions thanks to Pelé?’ he asks, raising an eyebrow. ‘You don’t? Or that the soccer World Cup just started in Germany?’
I’m speechless.
‘Studying is all very well, young lady, but you also need to take an interest in the world around you. And anyway, it doesn’t matter if you fail your bac at sixteen. In fact, it’s better. It’ll give you time to mature and develop a bit of curiosity.’
Unsurprisingly, my marks are terrible. Despite my 20/20 in music and 16/20 in philosophy, I’ve failed. My passport out of this place just expired. My dreams of studying at university instantly evaporate, and it feels as if the house is closing in around me. My parents give me the silent treatment; I can tell they’re more disappointed by the failure of their teaching techniques than they are concerned about my future. But as much as I beg my mother to send me to boarding school, she always refers to the fatal effect this would have on my father. But what about me? Who would protect me from a far worse incarceration—in a lunatic asylum?
I drift from despondency to a sort of inner hysteria where my nerves start jumping beneath my skin. I have to do something. Writing stories and playing music aren’t enough, I need movement. Since I’ve been outside it’s as if I’ve developed a taste for some drug: I’m just dying to do it again.
When I go for walks in the grounds at night I feel increasingly drawn to the metal railings that fence us off from the road. High and forbidding, their spikes point skywards. When I look at them I keep seeing the images of impaled bodies that my father enjoys describing in lurid detail. All the same, I climb onto the low wall, grasp hold of the railings, heave myself up and clamber over those deadly spikes. I jump down onto the footpath: there, I’m on the other side. My God, it feels good, it really does smell different out here…I look at the road as it rises up towards the horizon. No, I don’t want to die; this is what I want, to live. But I can’t shake off my fear. I’m like a prisoner chained to a post, and I can only move as far as my chain will allow. Eventually, I climb back over the fence and return to my room, torn between my longing to breathe freely in the outside world and my towering fear.
As I come downstairs one morning, I notice an envelope in the letterbox, and I almost fall over backwards when I see my name written on it in pretty handwriting. No one has ever written to me. My hands shake with excitement. I see on the back of the envelope that it’s from Marie-Noëlle, a girl I met during the bac exams, a girl full of joy and energy, and so pretty, her gorgeous black hair tied up in a ponytail. ‘Hey, we could write each other,’ she had said. ‘Could I have your address?’
I open the envelope feverishly and unfold two whole pages covered on both sides with blue writing and little flowers drawn in the margins. Marie-Noëlle tells me she failed her bac but it doesn’t matter, she’s having a good summer anyway. So it is possible to fail your bac and not feel like a walking disappointment. I remember her saying she was married at seventeen, but she now tells me she no longer gets along with her husband—she’s met another boy and they’ve kissed. Then she tells me about her holidays, about her ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, and how she’s really glad to see them because she has so much to tell them. She hopes I’ll write to her and that we’ll see each other again. If I’d like to go and see her, her parents would be happy for me to come and stay at their holiday home.
I’m flabbergasted that she remembers me. Her happiness and exuberance are contagious. Her letter fills me with hope. It proves that life goes on after failing the bac, that love keeps going, that there are parents who keep talking to their daughters.
What could I write to her about? I don’t have anything to tell her. Then I think, yes I do, I can tell her about the books I’m reading, about the garden and about Pitou, who’s just died after a good long life. I can tell her how in recent weeks he turned into a ‘lame duck’, and how I loved his limping gait. I realize that, even cut off from the world, I have plenty to say, that life goes on everywhere. In my head I write her a letter s
everal pages long: I don’t have a lover but I’m in love with life, with nature, with newly hatched pigeon chicks…I ask my mother for some pretty paper and some stamps. First she demands to read Marie-Noëlle’s letter and almost chokes: ‘You’ve been out once and you’ve already got involved with the local prostitution ring! A girl who marries at seventeen is a prostitute! And she’s kissed another boy too!’
‘But she’s getting a divorce…’
My mother confiscates the letter and strictly forbids me from contacting ‘that filthy whore’.
I feel discouraged. What to do now? I am pacing in my cage and hitting the bars on all sides. I am both irritated and hurt by the grand speeches that my mother gives me during mealtimes.
‘We wanted to mould you into someone perfect,’ she says, ‘and this is what we get. You’re a walking disappointment.’
My father chooses this moment to subject me to one of his bizarre exercises: He slits a chicken’s throat and demands that I drink its blood. ‘It’s good for the brain.’
No. Too much. Doesn’t he realize I have nothing to lose now? That he’s dealing with a kamikaze? No, he doesn’t. He insists, reprimands, threatens…When he starts yelling in the deep voice that used to freeze my blood as a little girl, I explode: ‘I said no! I won’t drink your chicken blood, not today and not any day. And by the way, I won’t watch over your tomb either. No way! And if I have to, I’ll pour cement over it so no one can come back out of it. I know all about making cement, thanks to you!’
I am staring right into his eyes, holding his gaze. I know all about maintaining eye contact too—more than he does, it seems, because he is the one who looks away. I am about to collapse, but I’ve done it.
‘You won’t get out of it like that,’ he says icily. ‘I’m stronger than you.’
But he has lost.
A few days later he says, ‘Don’t go thinking you’re off the hook. Even if you refuse to watch over me, I’ll never leave you and you’ll never leave me. Whether you like it or not, I control your mind.’
Monsieur Delataille
I have started double bass lessons with Monsieur Molin. I adore the instrument’s woody smell, the sensuality of the bow vibrating over the strings. What a pleasure it is learning to play an instrument without violence or threats. Twice a week he continues to ‘sing the praises’ of the implacably severe music studio in Dunkirk where he teaches. When he goes for a drink after the lesson, my father has taken to asking him whether it would speed up my progress if I learned ‘somewhere else’. Monsieur Molin isn’t very forthcoming: ‘Maybe…it might be possible…But maybe not.’ This is exactly what it takes to make my father insist he accept me in his classes immediately. And he definitely shouldn’t go easy on me. Monsieur Molin pretends to accept against his wishes: ‘Well, okay, I’ll see your daughter at 2 p.m. tomorrow at my store at 11 rue Nationale.’
I can’t believe my ears—I’m going to Dunkirk tomorrow! And I’ll be going once a week to have lessons at a real music academy. Monsieur Molin, you’re my saviour! When I think how much whisky and Ricard and drivel you had to swallow! After two years of patient work and diplomatic skill, you finally succeeded in prising open the gates of my prison.
My mother takes me to the station and buys me first-class tickets, so I don’t ‘mingle’, then she hurries home. I have to manage on my own and I have no idea how to get to rue Nationale. Luckily, Monsieur Molin is waiting for me at the station and he takes me to the academy. It’s a big building that smells wonderful and is full of people saying, ‘Hi! How are you?’ There are students of every height and weight and with every sort of hair colour. It’s beautiful, all these different people who look at ease with one another. The atmosphere in class is serious but cheerful: Monsieur Molin is a wonderful teacher; I’m very proud to have been accepted in his class and rather surprised nevertheless. Is this the dog-eat-dog jungle my father describes as the outside world? I’m also a little confused: why did Monsieur Molin fight so hard to get me here? He has plenty of other students who are much more interesting than I am.
Monsieur Molin still comes to the house for my piano and accordion tutoring. After lessons he makes sure I’m never with him when he goes to say hello to my father. I get the feeling he has a plan and is worried that having me there might cause it to fail. The next time, though, my father turns on the intercom and simply says, ‘Come here.’ When I arrive at the bar I see Monsieur Molin leaning on his crutches, his face inscrutable, and I fear the worst.
‘The time has come,’ says my father, ‘for you to confront life’s hardships. No more cocoon for you. Monsieur Molin has agreed to have you in Dunkirk three afternoons a week so you can study accordion and violin properly and improve your skills on the other instruments. You’ll also have to start working: you’ll spend all day Saturday as a salesgirl in Monsieur Molin’s shop, and do the cleaning.’
It takes a tremendous effort to mask my enthusiasm. When Monsieur Molin has left, my father makes me sit down facing him and he explains that it’s now time for me to start my mission in the world. I must marry; he’ll take care of that. After six months he’ll pay for me to divorce and I’ll come back to live in the house. In the meantime, I mustn’t get pregnant. I don’t really understand but I agree, I accept everything unconditionally. He looks me in the eye for a long time, and I know it’s vital that I don’t betray my excitement, so I don’t look away. I let him ‘probe my mind’ which is safely entrenched behind a wall lined with reflective mirrors—a recent improvement to my brick-wall technique.
Presumably in line with my father’s plans for me, an extremely rare event occurs at home: my parents are paid a long visit by a mysterious stranger, then they call me into the living room. My father introduces me to a very small, thin, peculiar man; he must be in his fifties and speaks in a shrill and emphatically snobbish voice. While explaining in detail how much he likes ironing his little lace handkerchiefs, Monsieur Delataille examines me from head to foot, then quizzes me about Plato, Aristotle and the Italian Renaissance. He asks me what I think of Machiavelli, whether I like Impressionism…I tell him I do, I’m very impressionable. To my astonishment he even goes so far as to touch my hair!
After he has left my father summons me.
‘It’s time to think of marriage,’ he tells me. ‘A married woman can do everything she wants in life; she is always respectable. She can even get divorced, it doesn’t matter. But you have to have been married.’ Then he tells me about Monsieur Delataille: he’s homosexual, rich and a Freemason. He too needs to be married, preferably to a pretty young girl, ‘for the sake of appearances’. So he won’t do me any harm and won’t mind if I live with my parents most of the time.
I’m stupefied, speechless. I don’t know what to think. Is this the biggest opportunity of my life, a chance to get out for real? Or am I risking being even more tied down if I marry my father’s friend? I don’t have to hesitate long because my mother intervenes forcefully: ‘No!’ she says. ‘No, I don’t agree to this. Maude can’t marry a homosexual three times her age!’ I look at her, stunned. It’s the first time in my life I’ve known her to defend me and stand up to my father. Has this weird scheme stirred buried memories from the days when, as a little girl, she watched adults sealing her fate without considering her wishes? My father’s reaction is even more surreal. ‘Oh, well,’ he sighs, and says no more about it.
An extraordinary victory. But such a bitter one! I’m grateful to my mother for flying to my rescue, but why did she wait such a long time? She could have tried to challenge his diktats long ago and she might have succeeded. I so needed her protection then…
But I’m still walking on air. I love taking the little train to Dunkirk, not that I travel first class as my father demands. I prefer going second class, where I sometimes meet up with a couple of railroad workers who have taken me under their wing and have even taught me how to play card games. They notice me looking up at each station, ready to jump out, and they say, ‘There’
s no need to watch every stop like that, Dunkirk is the end of the line.’
On Sundays I help my mother work in the garden. If it rains we stay in the bar and have to endure long sessions on ‘silence and impassibility’. My father explains that this is a way of ‘re-energizing’ myself through contact with him after I’ve been contaminated by all sorts of pollutants outside. He never asks me about my life outside the house. In the evenings he waits for me so that we can eat a runny omelette swimming in burnt butter, and still insists we drink as much alcohol as he does. My mother and I sometimes manage to empty our glasses into the sink. During his ‘teachings’, my father now skips from one subject to another and is increasingly incoherent.
Every morning I work on studying for the baccalauréat. My parents didn’t want to sign me up for the music bac, so I have to take the Latin and Literature exams again. I work alone; my mother refuses to exhaust herself on such a disappointing, ungrateful student. It’s not easy but I stick at it and I try to use my experience from last year to study more intelligently. I haven’t forgotten Abbot Faria’s lesson: I have to do everything I can to go to university, my freedom depends on it. Of course, I go outside the gate almost every day now—something I couldn’t even have imagined a few months ago. But that’s only because my chain is longer, and not because I am truly free. How can I possibly settle for that?
With no help preparing for the exams, my results aren’t brilliant and I fail my bac again. This time I dare to ask my father himself whether he will enrol me in a boarding school. I’m only seventeen and if I work hard I could pass my bac at eighteen. He tells me he has other, ‘far bigger’ plans for me, which fills me with dread. I have to face the facts: I won’t realize my dream of studying medicine. I have no choice: I have to put all my energy into Monsieur Molin’s solution. That is the route I must take to dig my tunnel to freedom.
