At recess things went a bit better, but the king of the playground was definitely my brother.
Sunday school was worse, but that was because of my mother. She lectured me so much about how important it was to behave correctly with Abbé Chablet that whenever I had to appear before him I trembled from fear and did any number of silly things. I was concentrating so much on not making mistakes that I couldn’t pay attention to anything and took terrible notes during his lessons. Abbé Chablet would scrutinize me, pleased to have a ready victim, while his large head and beard bobbed up and down. Everyone said what a good man he was, but I always found him to be a terrible phony and rather sadistic. Mother’s praise for him never ceased, his religious title was enough to make him untouchable in her eyes.
Bible study was really torture for me. Gabriel was even more opposed than I was, but not for the same reasons. His smugness made him totally impermeable to the Abbé’s lessons. It’s true I was super shy. It took several dramatic incidents for me to become the old warrior I am today. But I was courageous and a small matter grew into an all-out war between the Abbé and me.
Madame Valence had assigned us lessons on syllogisms and I found myself very motivated by that topic. It was a reassuring form of clear reasoning for a wavering, doubting soul like myself. One just had to be sure of one’s starting point, then the predicate, and the solution arrived with infallible force. I got into the nasty habit of creating syllogisms all the time. Abbé Chablet enjoyed emphasizing his words on the blackboard with forceful inscriptions in white chalk. This took place in a sort of garage-turned-Sunday-school classroom off the sacristy. God is your father. God is perfect. While he was going on about God’s love and perfection, I’d be scribbling in my notebook: Papyrus is my father, Papyrus is perfect, therefore Papyrus is my God. I knew that something was not quite right in my syllogism, and that the link between the major premise and the minor premise was a bit shaky. While I was beating my brains to hit on the irrefutable proof of Papyrus’s perfection, Abbé Chablet silently came up to where I was sitting. I can still see his face and the snarl of the meat-eating predator before the poor lost lamb. With one violent gesture, he snatched my notebook, and after reading what I’d written he burst out laughing.
“Listen to this, it’s priceless: ‘Papyrus is my father, Papyrus is perfect, therefore Papyrus is my God.’ Amazing! You’re lucky to have a champion of formal logic here in the classroom with you!”
It’s well known that the group is always ready to be herded by the pastor. Everyone there echoed the Abbé’s laughter, and not simply to please him. There was that inevitable satisfaction of having escaped the pillory oneself and the morbid attraction of witnessing the mortification of someone else.
I understood two things that day: first, that any form of intellectual dishonesty would drive me to a sense of failure; and second, that in the future I would never force my brain to justify the blocked wellsprings of my heart. I would always cultivate clear thinking and my lucidity would be always merciless without seeking to do harm. I owe these character traits to Madame Valence’s lessons on syllogisms and to the shaming inflicted by Abbé Chablet.
I was able to put up with the general mockery fairly well until I saw that Isabelle was also laughing along with the rest, displaying all her beautiful white teeth while rocking back and forth in her chair. That was too much for me. My throat tightened to the point where it was like the worst sore throat and large tears started streaming from my eyes as I fell apart sobbing convulsively.
The village doctor’s daughter, Pascale Dagnan, had Down syndrome and was always seated next to me. She gave me the sad look of one who has experienced the cruelty of the wolf pack when it feels its superiority. She slid her hand into mine and I held tight to it with all my might.
The other thing I understood about myself that day was that I am capable of doing terrible, terrible things if I sense that they correspond to a group’s general expectation. Everyone was expecting me to cry, and I cried. That perverse link unites me with others.
On the other hand, my fear of the Abbé had turned totally into visceral hatred. He would see what it meant to cross me.
The occasion presented itself one early afternoon in May when I went to confession. It was unseasonably hot and the Abbé was in the middle of digesting his lunch. I could hear him yawning and answering in an increasingly distracted, sloppy way. Suddenly his big head fell against the metal screen of the confessional box and I saw he was fast asleep. Such a lucky opportunity was unlikely to ever happen again and I sprang into action to make the most of it. A few hairs of his long beard protruded through the openings of the screen. I gently took hold of them and braided them together into a tight knot. As I skipped out of the church, I heard Abbé Chablet calling loudly for someone to come liberate him. I have no idea how he got free, but I think he was rather ashamed of that incident because he soon cut off his beard and he never ever spoke of my prank in public.
Gabriel was rather proud of me: “For once I really have to take my hat off to you. Unless you made this all up, that is.”
“I swear it’s all true. I ran off and he was screaming as though the devil were after him.”
“Okay, well, let’s hope it’s true because it’s really quite a feat you pulled off there!”
“I swear it’s true,” I said again, raising my right hand.
“Okay, okay, I believe you.”
Already back then I had to fight for others to believe me.
Our mother glided through our lives like a shadow. One night I had a horrible nightmare and ran into her bedroom trembling. She was very kind and accompanied me back to my bed: “Wait for me here, honey, I’ll be right back.”
“No, I don’t want to be alone.”
“I’ll be right back, I just want to get my holy water.”
She disappeared and came back a few minutes later holding a carved Christ figure and a vial of holy water. She poured a few drops of the water on her index finger and made the sign of the cross on my forehead while holding the crucifix in her left hand.
“There, my dear, we’ve chased the devil from your room. He will no longer bother you because he fears Jesus Christ our Savior, who from now on will guard your sleep.”
The poor woman meant well, but her story of Satan sneaking into my room terrorized me. Especially since she returned every night armed with her crucifix and holy water. From my bed I saw her phantasmagoric shape approach while I pretended to be sleeping. She made the sign of the cross over me while murmuring a prayer and then slipped out without making a sound.
My mother liked Elodie. She found her to be kind and pleasant company. She never displayed her antipathy toward Bette, on the contrary. One day when it was just the three of us at the table because Papyrus was at his garrison, my mother announced that Aunt Bette would be visiting in the afternoon.
“Oh no, not her!” said Gabriel.
“What do you mean, ‘not her’?” replied my mother with surprise. “I forbid you to speak rudely about your aunt!”
“But what do you care? She’s not your sister!”
“First, she was my sister when she was married to my brother before he died. Second, she is my sister-in-law, and third, she’s a perfectly charming person.”
“And do you like her dancing too?” asked Gabriel in an insolent tone.
“Gabriel, that’s enough. I forbid you to mock. You are a child, let’s remember, and you are not permitted to judge your aunts.”
My mother was always perfect. Was that what made her so distant from us?
Then the summer of 1939 arrived.
Gabriel and I loved summer — having our house filled with friends and cousins, or going out with Papyrus on his motorcycle and sidecar to visit Uncle Geoffroy or Cousin Vincent. They both had children a little older than us but we got along well with them all. Gabriel in particular was fascinated by Michae
l, the eldest son of Aunt Bette, and did everything to imitate him. I would tease him and get beaten for it. The two of us would repeat our high jinks endlessly — me teasing him, him whacking me — as though we were two out-of-control puppets. Those were our rituals and we never tired of performing them.
We’d had a wonderful summer and the end of August came as a somber knell. Not that we had the least idea about what was really heating up. I was barely ten years old and Gabriel at twelve had a funny voice that would go from soprano to baritone in the same sentence. He also had a few hairs on his chin and now when I teased him, he wouldn’t hit me back so much. I understood that we’d come to the end of a certain chapter and it left me somewhat melancholy. There was one day in late August that we spent at the home of Uncle Geoffroy and Aunt Bette, who had organized a big picnic and a game of croquet. Gabriel and Michael had disappeared into some bushes and I hurried in the same direction with my cousin Laure to spy on them. Laure was the daughter of Cousin Vincent and was as bold as I was. I followed her into the little wooded area traversed by a small stream while trying to avoid the stinging nettles. She held branches aside as we walked on, turning toward me as she did so and putting her index finger over her mouth. We heard nothing but the gurgling of the water and the flight of some turtledoves as we walked along wondering where they could be — and then I spotted Michael’s back and the profile of my brother, who was passing him a cigarette. Laure looked at me wide-eyed with a mix of admiration and amusement. I told myself that it was good blackmail material to hoard up for a rainy day, and we turned and walked back to the house without them seeing us.
Guests had started returning home. Papyrus, Uncle Geoffroy, and Cousin Vincent were smoking around a table in the garden.
I was going to sit on Papyrus’s knees to get a hug, but I hesitated for a moment when I saw how pensive he looked.
“Are you sure of what you’re telling me?” he asked Cousin Vincent.
“I spoke with him. They’ve called up all the aviation reserves.”
“And he went?”
“He leaves tomorrow.”
“But why are you so surprised, Louis?” exclaimed Uncle Geoffroy. “You’re not going to tell us you weren’t expecting it?”
“What’s going on, Papyrus?” I broke in. “What are you talking about?”
“About a friend, you don’t know him.”
“And what’s happened to him?”
“Nothing, Christiane. Go play with your cousins.”
He lowered his knees to encourage me to get off his lap and gave me a gentle tap on the behind.
“Go on, hussar, dismount!”
I never dared disobey any order from Papyrus and so I moved away, though still curious to understand what was happening.
About ten days later, the three of them were called back into military service because France was at war.
Chapter Nineteen
I don’t know why I refused to go with my family to Tuscany, but I know it was the right thing to do. Catherine and Lorenzo were reluctant to be together without the protective shield of the family bubble. Luna would be spending little time with them and the prospect of being alone together must have terrified them, but I thought there was no way they were going to use me as a handy substitute for their daughter. Catherine and I were getting along well, but it was most likely because she was afraid to see me go. As for me, I was delighted to be with them in Milan. All traces of friction between me and my son-in-law had been smoothed out, I spent lots of time with Luna, and Catherine was being very agreeable. Lorenzo traveled a lot and my daughter clearly didn’t like that. Luna was finishing her thesis and told me often how helpful I’d been. I think she wanted to make me feel good.
“Listen to this!” she called out from a large armchair in the living room where she was slumped with her two legs draped over one side and a book in her hands. “Listen to what he says about technology: ‘Sub-Nature must be understood in this, its character of under Nature. It will only be so understood if Man rises at least as high in spiritual knowledge of that super-Nature which lies outside the earthly sphere, as he has descended in technical science below it into Sub-Nature.’”
“Oh, that’s not a problem I risk having. I can barely answer my cell phone.”
“Okay, but Papa, he has been waylaid by Ahriman and the technical civilization.”
“He’s not the only one. Kids today only know how to play with computers, consoles, and such. I should have paid more attention to poor Aunt Bette. Her Steiner said some interesting things! I was put off by all those esoteric theories, and since I can’t believe in anything that’s not empirical experience…”
“But Mamie, that’s just it. It’s in concrete experience that you understand the genius of Steiner! What happened when he died?”
“When he died, Aunt Bette was pregnant and as big as a house. Of course I wasn’t born yet. Marie von Sivers was on tour with her eurythmy group and she received a telegram that told her of her husband’s declining health and requested she return to Dornach. She let her friend Bette know as soon as possible and rushed to Steiner’s sickbed but arrived too late. Bette joined her two days later by train. She says she discovered him dead but radiating peace and serenity. He had worked hard right up to the end and had suffered terribly. I think that those who loved him were relieved to know he had attained that realm between death and rebirth.
“So you believe in that story?”
“What story?”
“That it’s the spiritual that renders us human? That in the beginning we proceed directly from the divine and that we’ve progressively distanced ourselves from it so as to approach the spiritual world in complete liberty? And that the same liberty threatens to see us delivered up completely to Ahriman?”
“Well, I find the materialist imbalance a little dangerous, it’s true, but I repeat that for me Steiner’s ideas were a continuous wellspring — a little ridiculous and fanatical I would add — for my aunt Bette. In truth, I’ve only become interested in them recently, thanks to you. I believe I had an overly superficial view of this poor Steiner.”
“And yet you just said, ‘he attained the realm between death and rebirth.’”
“Oh no, my dear, don’t give that any importance! I was only quoting Aunt Bette!”
“Was she sad?”
“No doubt, but I think she didn’t have much time to think about it, because, guess what, the evening she arrived in Dornach she gave birth to her son Michael. I always wondered why she gave him that name instead of calling him Rudolf. I never dared ask her why, though, because she probably would have thought that I was teasing her.”
“Really? The very same night? That’s absolutely incredible!”
“Yes it is. But no matter what I might think or say about her, Aunt Bette was incredible.”
“She made you give up your materialist certitudes?” asked Luna, laughing.
“I would never dare venture anything as conclusive as that, but despite all her extravagances she ended up saving my life.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that. Why do you think she saved your life?”
Luna’s cell phone rang and she answered excitedly. She then got up to go talk privately in her room. She wanted to be alone with that voice on the other end of the line. It was so nice to be loved, I’ll never forget that feeling. I still have tender feelings for all the love I received. It’s not nostalgia, it’s a form of gratitude for the men I’ve loved and who loved me back. For the caresses, the expectations, the trembling, the heart pangs, and enormous, crazy joys.
Ah, love, it’s beautiful. When I was young I inherited a lot of it as though it were a natural feature, like my green eyes or my fragile fingernails, and I still remember how surprised I was when I discovered that it had slipped through my fingers like warm water. I don’t at all regret what replaced it — affection, another
way of being alone, also peace. And in this new setup there was really only room for you, my husband, you alone could survive all this calm abdication. After all this dusty tumult and sighing had gone out the window and I turned toward the obscurity of our bedroom, I saw you: solid and silent but so present, and you gave me your hand. What remains of all the upheaval? We do. We’re all that remains.
Even after your death, we’re still all that remains.
“Do you know why your aunt Bette named her son Michael?”
Luna had returned and was trying to pick up the conversation where we’d left off.
“No, it’s odd, isn’t it?”
“Not at all. For Rudolf Steiner, man, once he had attained his autonomy, needs a guide to reunite with the divine. Just as Jesus Christ took bodily form to save us from the evil influence of Ahriman, the archangel Michael’s mission, according to him, was to help us get closer to the world of spirit. That’s why Aunt Bette named her son Michael.”
“But her son was hardly an archangel, all he did was get into trouble, with Gabriel right on his heels most of the time.”
The Devil's Reward Page 14
