People get quite embarrassed when they see a boy of twelve bearing down on them. Some back away, others let him get on with it and—as they wipe their faces with a hanky—they say, “He’s so sweet!”
And it’s true, they’re sweet. They see no evil in anything, like the innocent. They date back to before original sin, to a time when the world was good, when nature was well-meaning, when every kind of mushroom was edible and you could stroke tigers safely.
When they’re at the zoo, they want to kiss the tigers too. When they’re at home they want to pull our cat’s tail. Oddly, the cat doesn’t scratch them; he must think, “They’re handicapped, I have to be lenient, they’re not all there in the head.”
Would a tiger react in the same way if Thomas or Mathieu pulled its tail?
I’ll give it a try, but I’ll warn the tiger first.
When I go for walks with my two boys, it feels like having a puppet or a rag doll in each hand. They’re light, they have fragile little bones, they’ve stopped growing or putting on weight, at fourteen they look more like seven, they’re like little imps. They don’t say what they want in French, they speak Impish, or they mew, roar, bark, twitter, cackle, whinny, squeal, or squeak. I don’t always understand them.
What exactly is there inside my two imps’ heads? It’s not lead. Apart from the straw, there can’t be very much there, at best a birdbrain, or a bit of old junk like a crystal set radio receptor that no longer works. A few badly soldered electrical wires, a transistor, a flickering little bulb that often goes out, and a few recorded words playing on a loop.
With a brain like that it’s hardly surprising they’re not high-performance. They’ll never get into Polytechnique, a top-rated engineering school, which is a shame. I would have been so proud, given how terrible I’ve always been at math.
I had a huge surprise recently. I found Mathieu immersed in a book. Overcome with emotion, I went over to him.
He was holding the book upside down.
I’ve always loved the magazine Hara-Kiri. I once wanted to suggest a cover for it. My brother, who does study at Polytechnique, has an impressive uniform with a cocked hat; I wanted to borrow it and take a photo of Mathieu wearing it. I’d put some thought into the caption too: “This year our top student is a boy!”2
Sorry, Mathieu. I can’t help it if I have twisted ideas. It wasn’t to make fun of you, perhaps it was me I wanted to make fun of. To prove I could laugh at my own hardships.
2. The previous year, for the first time, the top student at Polytechnique was a girl, Anne Chopinet.
Mathieu is getting more and more hunched. Physical therapy, metal braces … nothing helps. At fifteen he has the silhouette of a little old man. When we take him out for a walk all he can see are his own feet, he can’t even see the heavenly blue of the sky anymore.
At one point I thought of fitting the tips of his shoes with little mirrors, like wing-mirrors to reflect the heavens for him …
His scoliosis is getting worse and will soon cause respiratory problems. They’ll have to try and operate on his spine.
They try, and he’s perfectly upright again.
Three days later he drops down dead.
In the end the operation that was meant to help him see the heavens succeeded.
My little boy’s gorgeous, he’s always laughing, he’s got beady little black eyes like a rat.
I’m often afraid of losing him. He’s only two centimeters tall … even though he’s ten.
When he was born we were surprised, rather worried even. The doctor set our minds at rest right away by saying, “He’s completely normal, be patient, he’s just a little backward, he’ll grow.” We’re patient, we’re impatient, he’s not growing.
Ten years later the nick we made in the skirting board to mark his height when he was a year old is still valid.
No school has agreed to take him, on the grounds that he’s not like the others. We have to keep him at home. We’ve had to hire a home tutor. It’s very hard finding anyone who’ll take the job. It involves a lot of care and responsibility; he’s so small, people are afraid of losing him.
Particularly because he’s such a practical joker, he loves hiding and doesn’t answer when he’s called. We spend so much time looking for him: we have to empty the pockets of all our clothes, search through all the drawers and open every box. Last time he hid in a matchbox.
Washing him is difficult, there’s always the fear he could drown in the basin. Or get swept down the drain. The hardest thing is cutting his fingernails.
To find out his weight we have to take him to the post office and put him on the letter scales.
He had a terrible toothache recently. No dentist was prepared to treat him, I had to take him to a clockmaker.
Every time friends and relations see him they say, “Look how much he’s grown.” I don’t believe them, I know they’re only saying it to make us happy.
Once a doctor who was braver than the others told us he would never grow. It was a hard blow.
Gradually we got used to it, we could see the advantages.
We can keep him on us, lay our hands on him at any time, he’s no trouble, you can just slip him in a pocket, he doesn’t need a ticket on public transport, but most of all he’s very affectionate, he loves checking us over for head lice.
One day we lost him.
I spent the whole night lifting up dead leaves, one by one.
It was autumn.
It was a dream.
No one should think it’s less sad when a handicapped child dies. It’s just as sad as when a normal child dies.
It’s a terrible thing, the death of someone who’s never been happy, someone who came and spent a bit of time on earth just to suffer.
With someone like that it’s a struggle remembering a single smile.
They say we’ll see each other again one day, the three of us.
Will we recognize each other? What will you be like? What will you be wearing? I’ve always seen you in dungarees, perhaps you’ll be in three-piece suits, or in white robes like angels? Maybe you’ll have moustaches or beards, to look grown-up? Will you have changed, will you have grown?
Will you recognize me? I’m likely to be in a terrible state when I get there.
I won’t dare ask if you’re still handicapped … Do handicaps even exist in heaven? Maybe you’ll be like everyone else?
Will we be able to speak man to man, and tell each other things that really matter, things I couldn’t say to you on earth because you didn’t understand French and I couldn’t speak Impish?
Perhaps in heaven we’ll finally be able to understand each other. And, more importantly, we’ll meet up with your grandfather. The person I could never tell you about and whom you never knew. You’ll soon see he was an extraordinary man, I’m sure you’ll like him and he’ll make you laugh.
He’ll take you for a spin in his sports car, he’ll have you drinking, they must drink mead up there.
He’ll drive so fast in his car, very fast, too fast. No one will be frightened.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, you’re already dead.
For a while we were worried that Thomas was upset by his brother’s death. At first he looked for him everywhere, opening cupboards and drawers, but not for long. His various activities—drawing, taking care of Snoopy—took over again. Thomas loves painting and drawing. His leanings are toward abstracts. He hasn’t been through a figurative period, he went straight to abstract. He’s very prolific and never touches up his work afterward. He produces series, and always gives them the same title. There are the “For Daddy” pictures, the “For Mommy” pictures, and the “For my sister Marie” pictures.
His style isn’t evolving much, it’s still fairly close to Pollock’s. His palette is bright. The format is always the same. He gets so carried away he often goes beyond the edge of the paper and continues the work on the table, directly onto the wood.
When he’s finished a picture he
gives it to one of us. And when we tell him it’s lovely he seems happy.
I sometimes get postcards from a holiday camp the children go to. It’s often an orange sunset over the sea or a glittering mountain. On the back it says, “Dear Daddy, I’m very happy and having lots of fun. I’m thinking of you.” It’s signed Thomas.
The writing is tidy and regular, there are no spelling mistakes, the instructor has taken her time. She thought it would make me happy. I understand her good intentions.
It doesn’t make me happy.
I prefer Thomas’s shapeless, illegible scribblings. Maybe with those abstract drawings of his he’s actually saying more to me.
Pierre Desproges3 came with me once to pick Thomas up from his school. He didn’t really want to but I insisted.
Like any newcomer, he was descended upon by lurching, dribbling—and not always very alluring—children wanting to kiss him. For someone who has trouble tolerating his own peers and is often quite reserved when confronted with his groupies’ exuberant enthusiasm, he succumbed to their attentions with good grace.
He was very moved by that visit. He wanted to go back. He was fascinated by that strange world where twenty-year-old children smother their teddy bears with kisses, come and take you by the hand, or threaten to cut you in two with a pair of scissors.
He’d always loved the absurd; now he’d found some masters of the art.
3. Pierre Desproges (1939–1988), outspoken and eloquent French humorist.
When I think of Mathieu and Thomas, I see them as two tousled little birds. Not eagles or peacocks, but modest birds, sparrows.
Their spindly little legs sticking out from under their short navy blue coats. I also remember, from bath time, their mauve transparent skin, like baby birds before they grow feathers; I remember their prominent breastbones and their ribs sticking out along their torsos. Their brains were birdlike too.
All that was missing were the wings.
Shame.
They could have gotten away from this world that wasn’t right for them.
They’d have gotten out more quickly, on the wing.
I’ve never talked about my two boys until now. Why not? Was I ashamed? Afraid of being pitied?
A combination of both. I think it was mainly to avoid the terrible question: “What do they do?”
I could have invented things …
“Thomas is in the States, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He’s studying for a degree in particle accelerators. He’s happy, it’s going well, he’s met a young American girl called Marilyn, such a beautiful girl, I’m sure he’s going to settle over there.”
“Isn’t that a bit hard for you, him being so far away?”
“America’s not the end of the earth. And what really matters is that he’s happy. We get all his news, he calls his mother once a week. But Mathieu, who’s interning with an architect in Sydney, never gets in touch anymore …”
I could have told the truth too.
“Do you really want to know what they do? Mathieu doesn’t do anything anymore, he’s no longer with us. Didn’t you know? No, don’t apologize, the death of a handicapped child often goes unnoticed. People talk in terms of release …
“Thomas is still here, lurking in the corridors of his special school, clutching a chewed old doll and talking to his hand with weird screaming noises.”
“But he must be quite big now, how old is he?”
“No, he’s not big. Old, yes, but not big. He’ll never be big.
You never get big when your head’s full of straw.”
When I was little I used to do the most outlandish things to attract attention. Aged six, I would steal a herring from the fishmonger on market day, and my great game was to chase girls and rub my fish over their bare legs.
In high school, wanting to appear romantic and like Byron, I wore floppy cravats instead of ties, and, wanting to be an iconoclast, I put the statue of the Virgin Mary in the restrooms.
Every time I went into a shop to try something on I only had to hear the words “They’ve been very popular, I must have sold ten of them yesterday” to decide against buying the thing. I didn’t want to be like everyone else.
Later, when I started working in television and was entrusted with small directing projects, I always tried—with varying degrees of success—to find an unusual camera angle.
I remember an anecdote about the painter Édouard Pignon, who was the subject of a television documentary I made. When he was painting the trunks of some olive trees a child walked past; after looking at the painting, the child said, “It doesn’t look like anything, what you’re doing there.” Flattered, Pignon replied, “You’ve just given me the most wonderful compliment, there’s nothing harder than doing something that doesn’t look like anything else.”
My boys don’t look like anyone else. To think I always wanted to do things differently—I should be glad.
At any given time, in every school, in every town, somewhere at the back of the class, usually near the radiator, there will always be a child with a vacant expression. Every time he gets up or opens his mouth to answer a question, the others know they’re going to laugh. His answers are always completely random, because he hasn’t understood the question, he never will. Sometimes the teacher is sadistic and probes the child further, playing to the gallery, livening things up and raising his own ratings.
The child with the vacant expression, standing there in the middle of his giggling and whooping classmates, doesn’t want to make anyone laugh, he doesn’t do it on purpose, quite the opposite. He’d like not to make people laugh, he’d like to understand, he tries hard to, but despite his efforts he says stupid things, because it’s not within his scope to get the point.
When I was a kid I was the first to laugh; now I feel tremendous compassion for that child with the vacant expression. I think of my own two boys.
Luckily, no one will actually be able to make fun of them at school. They’ll never go to school.
I’ve never liked the word “handicapped.” It’s got depressing overtones of the expression “cap in hand.”
I don’t like the word “abnormal” either, especially when it’s hooked up with “child.”
What does “normal” mean? How we should be, how we ought to be, in other words average, standard-issue. I don’t really like average things, I prefer things that aren’t average, things that are above average and—why not?—below; different, anyway. I prefer the expression “not like other people.” Because other people aren’t always that great if you ask me.
Not being like other people doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not as good as them, it just means being different from them.
What would it mean if a bird wasn’t like other birds? It could just as easily mean a bird with a fear of heights as one that could sing all of Mozart’s flute sonatas without the score.
A cow that’s not like other cows might know how to make phone calls.
When I talk about my children I say they’re “not like other people.” It leaves a glimmer of doubt.
Einstein, Mozart, Michelangelo … they weren’t like other people.
If you’d been like other people, I would have taken you to museums. We could have looked at great paintings together, Rembrandts, Monets, Turners, and more Rembrandts …
If you’d been like other people, I would have given you recordings of classical music and we could have listened to them together, first Mozart, then Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart again.
If you’d been like other people, I would have given you loads of books by Prévert, Marcel Aymé, Queneau, Ionesco, and more Prévert.
If you’d been like other people, I would have taken you to the movies, we could have watched all those old films together, Chaplin, Eisenstein, Hitchcock, Buñuel, and more Chaplin.
If you’d been like other people, I would have taken you to smart restaurants, I would have given you Chambolle-Musigny to drink and then some more Chambolle-Musigny.
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If you’d been like other people, we would have played tennis together, and basketball and volleyball.
If you’d been like other people, we would have climbed the bell towers of Gothic cathedrals together to have a bird’s-eye view.
If you’d been like other people, I would have bought you the latest clothes, so you could be the best looking.
If you’d been like other people, I would have driven you to parties with your girlfriends in my old convertible.
If you’d been like other people, we would have had a huge reception for your weddings.
If you’d been like other people, I would have had grandchildren.
If you’d been like other people, I might not have been so afraid of the future.
But if you’d been like other people, you would have been like everyone else.
Maybe you wouldn’t have achieved anything in school.
You’d have been a couple of delinquents.
You’d have taken the mufflers off your scooters to make more noise.
You’d have been unemployed.
You’d have liked Jean-Michel Jarre.
You’d have married dumb broads.
You’d have gotten divorced.
And maybe you’d have had handicapped children.
What a narrow escape!
I’ve had my cat castrated, without warning him and without asking his permission. Without explaining the advantages and drawbacks to him. I just told him he was having his tonsils out. I get the feeling he’s been sulking at me ever since. I don’t dare look him in the eye now. I feel remorseful.
I think back to the days when they wanted to sterilize handicapped children. Well, polite society can relax, my children won’t reproduce. I won’t have grandchildren, I won’t go for walks with a little hand bobbing up and down in my old bony hand. No one will ask me where the sun goes when it sets, no one will call me Grandpa, except for young assholes in the car behind telling me I’m not driving fast enough. The lineage will come to an end, we’ll stop there. And it’s better that way.
Where We Going, Daddy?: Life With Two Sons Unlike Any Other Page 4
