Houseboat on the Seine: A Memoir

by William Wharton

  Dr. Avignat drops beside me in the street. She has her black bag and pulls a large compress out of it. She takes my hand and moves it from over the wound up toward Pierre’s heart. She shouts something to the bystanders. One turns and goes back to the café. She gives the number of the clinic up the hill. She’s wrapped a large compress all around Pierre’s stomach and jammed several large gauze compresses under it, but the blood keeps seeping out. I look at her. Her face is white, too. How do doctors do it?

  I hear the ambulance coming down the hill. It’s not more than five minutes after she’d asked someone to call. Perhaps the same smart woman, Mme. Colombe, who took down the license-plate number and called the doctor, also called SAMU, the emergency help number. When the ambulance arrives, two white-coated men jump out and, at a sign from the doctor, attach a bottle of what looks like plasma to Pierre’s arm. Dr. Avignat also gives him an injection in the other arm. She has out her blood-pressure cuff, wraps it onto Pierre’s arm and pumps. She’s also checking Pierre’s pulse. She looks into Pierre’s eyes by lifting his closed lid. She’s shaking her head. I can’t believe it either.

  We slide the stretcher under Pierre and the doctor climbs into the ambulance with the others. The horn is beeping the French emergency ‘hee-haw’ sound, and the blue lights are flashing. In a minute, the ambulance doors are closed and they’re gone. I look over, and Sebastian is sitting up. Mme. Colombe, who lives in the same apartment building where Pierre and his wife live, is talking to him softly. It’s only then I realize it’s probably she who called the doctor and the ambulance. I help her get Sebastian across the street and into the family restaurant. In the kitchen we find his mother. She’d been so busy she hadn’t heard all the excitement.

  I ease Sebastian into one of the chairs. He’s very pale and crying. Nicole, Pierre’s wife, is worried about Sebastian; he looks ghastly. Mme. Colombe is trying to explain what has happened.

  Then, Nicole almost faints. For a minute she runs in erratic circles, first burying her hands in her apron, then untying and taking the apron off. Now Sebastian is worried about his mother. I tell Mme. Colombe that I’m going for my auto and I’ll drive them up to the hospital. It looks as though each of them will be needing some medical care, as well as information about the condition of Pierre.

  As we go by the corner, Pierre’s car is still there. Mme. Colombe is trying to explain to Nicole what’s happened. There’s blood all over the street. Somebody has taken sawdust from somewhere and spread it over the blood so it looks like a spontaneous street butcher shop. I try to drive carefully, but quickly, up the hill to the hospital. I’m awfully shaken myself.

  I leave them off at the emergency room door and go park the car. My family should be home in about an hour. I park and dash into the emergency room. They stop me at the desk; my French has completely abandoned me. Mme. Colombe, in the waiting room with Sebastian, calls out and they let me in. Sebastian is crying again. His mother isn’t there. He’s trying to explain to Mme. Colombe what’s happened as he saw it. He keeps asking me if it isn’t true. C’est vrais, monsieur, n’est-ce pas? I nod, but he’s observed more than I did.

  He tells how he was walking along the street when he saw his father in their stopped car, waving for him to come over. He’d just started across the street when the automobile behind his father started honking his horn and yelling out the window of his car. Sebastian dashed across the street. At the same time, his father climbed out of his car and moved toward the car behind him. The man back there jumped out, and the two of them started shouting at each other, the man in the other car shaking his fist at Pierre. From there, it was as I saw it. Madame Colombe tells how she got the license number and called the police.

  When we’d waited two hours for some word about how things were going in the operation room, I feel I should go home and tell the family where I am. I promise to come back. It all seems so crazy, so sudden, I still can’t put it together.

  My family’s at the boat. I explain what’s happened. None of them can understand any more than I can. I tell them I’d promised to come back to the waiting room of the hospital. Rosemary gives me a kiss.

  ‘I’ll hold dinner until you can come back, dear. Tell Nicole and Sebastian how sorry we all are.’

  Up at the hospital, Nicole and Dr. Avignat are sitting with Sebastian and Mme. Colombe. Dr. Avignat is explaining carefully the medical situation. She says Pierre will be all right but he’ll need to be in the hospital for some time. He’s lost much blood, but the artery has been repaired.

  ‘Only a strong person, such as he, could have survived the loss of so much blood.’

  She turns to me.

  ‘Did you see what happened? How did this come about?’

  I try to tell what I’d seen. She keeps shaking her head.

  ‘I must go back to my practice and see my patients. Could you drive me down, please, M. Wharton?’

  I volunteer and Nicole says she’ll call a friend to come for her and Sebastian. She thanks me. We leave the hospital and I drive Dr. Avignat to her office.

  ‘M. Wharton, I did not think he could live, but he has a remarkable constitution. We must help the police find this man who did this. He is obviously insane.’

  Well, it turns out they do catch the man two days later. He is a psychiatric patient who escaped and stole a car. Pierre is home after three weeks in the hospital. He’s lost much weight, but seems in good form.

  ‘For three years I’ve been trying to lose those five kilos, M. Wharton, and now I’ve lost it in three weeks.’

  ‘Yes, Pierre, but mostly in blood.’

  ♦

  So, this, for me, was the end of it. Pierre quickly puts back on his five kilos. It is difficult to lose weight when you run a quality restaurant such as his. We remain good friends, in fact, he’s the one who arranges a garage for us where we can keep our auto in the winter.

  Dog Genius

  Another exciting event, but not quite so bloody or traumatic, is the case of the floating pups.

  One morning, I look out the window from my desk in the hull and see a burlap bag floating past. Something inside is wiggling and whining.

  I assume someone has thrown in a sack of puppies or kittens to drown them. I dash up on deck. I grab my grappling hook and try retrieving the sack, but can’t reach it. I climb down my ladder and into my small dinghy. I’m just pushing off when I see Mr. Cox, the Englishman who sent me the letter about my boat being coule. He’s already cast off and fished them into his small skiff. We wave to each other. He rows back to his boat. I know he and his wife are great animal lovers. I tie up my dinghy and walk down the chemin de halage to his large barge.

  He and his wife have already gotten the sack untied and found five puppies, not more than a few days old, in there. Two of them are already drowned. Mr. Cox is enraged. His wife is in tears.

  ‘Ah, M. Wharton, it is events like this which makes one lose faith in humans. How can anyone know what these small living creatures might have become? They might well have been the beginnings of a new race of genius dogs.’

  He pauses. His wife has hurried down into their galley and comes up with quickly warmed milk. She even has a small baby bottle into which she’s hastily pouring the milk. I suspect this is not the first batch of abandoned animals they’ve rescued.

  ‘Yes, M. Wharton. There could well have been the Albert Einstein of the dog world in that sack. What a waste.’

  I point out that there were three of them.

  ‘They couldn’t all have been Albert Einstein, Mr. Cox, now, could they.’

  I’m getting into the spirit of things, all the way to an English accent. He looks at me with a glint in his eye.

  ‘I shall name them. This one with the white spot on its head is Einstein, the one with the white on its paw is Zweistein, and this one with the white on the tip of its tail is Dreistein.’

  The three puppies grow up into huge, more or less black, somewhat Labradorish, brutish, vicious hounds. Mr
. Cox tries to give me one, but I’m not a dog person. In the course of my life, some people have called me an S.O.B., but I’m not a dog. Also I have a strong aversion to keeping fellow creatures as pets, especially after my canaries. It isn’t good for the kept animals or the people who keep them.

  Mr. Cox, who is most persuasive, manages to talk two other boat families into taking two of the dogs. He keeps Einstein for himself. The Palstras, an Australian couple farther downriver, take one, the Toys, a Dutch couple, their next-boat neighbors, the other. None of the French boat people are interested. The Le Clercs have recently purchased a gigantic Great Dane, and so are more or less overwhelmed with dog. The Palstras name their dog Simba, appropriate.

  Those three sibling dogs grow into a pack. Neither Mr. Cox, nor the Palstras nor the Toys, are great animal keepers, so these animals mostly range freely. That’s all right with me, but they hunt as a pack, and often their quarry is me. Whether I’m walking, jogging or riding my bike along the chemin de halage, they’re after me, nipping, snarling, biting, hackles up, making charges, and in general not living according to the heritage Mr. Cox has bestowed upon them.

  I speak to each of the owners about it, but receive thrown-up hands and the usual insistence of most dog owners that their dogs don’t bite and I have nothing to worry about. But I’m worried.

  One day, after a harried skirmish through a gauntlet of about two hundred yards, I’ve had it. I buy a small water pistol and fill it with water along with fine red pepper, actually paprika. The next morning when I’m taking my usual bicycle ride, they’re waiting. I’m prepared. I bike along slowly; the animals have dispersed in their usual attack positions to surround me. I squirt left and right, aiming for the whites of their eyes. At first there’s only surprise, then confusion, then absolute mayhem, as they start rubbing their eyes with their paws, yelping and running in circles. I continue my bicycle ride in peace.

  When I return, they’re out there waiting for me. I glide slowly into the midst of them. I’m becoming concerned that there isn’t one functioning brain cell in the pack, despite Mr. Cox’s claims, and they won’t learn, but as soon as I pull out my trusty squirt gun, they retreat, barking. I squirt the ones I can reach as additional negative reinforcement. I don’t want to carry a squirt pistol the rest of my life, running shotgun on myself.

  I do the same routine while pursuing each of my usual modes of locomotion: walking, running, jogging, biking. By the last trial, they’re ducking and ‘ky-yi-yi-ing’ back to their respective boats as soon as they see me. Success. I visit with each of the owners and explain what I’ve done. There’s no resistance except from Mr. Cox.

  ‘But that’s cruel, Mr. Wharton. They’re only dumb animals doing what comes natural to them.’

  ‘It’s you who insisted they weren’t dumb, Mr. Cox; I won’t debate that. But I’m an animal only doing what is natural, too, protecting myself from wild animal packs with which I come in contact. Surely, I have the same rights to act naturally as dogs do.’

  He turns his back to me. I can live with that. After all, I’m still concerned about why an Englishman would send an emergency telegram to an American in French. That doesn’t seem very smart. Nice, yes; smart, no. I think Herr Einstein himself would agree with that.

  Unwilling Baptism

  We have a young French couple two boats upriver, toward Paris, on the other side of the pirate boat. They are recently married and have a lovely little boy. They are very Catholic and conservative.

  They are members of a church in Port Marly that has a reputation throughout France. The church is in pure Jesuit style architecture, but that isn’t the reason for its fame. It is the only church in France where the Mass is still conducted in Latin.

  This is because the pastor of this church is a very good and old friend of the archbishop. The archbishop, an elderly, conservative man, has been given some kind of special dispensation to continue the Latin Mass despite Vatican rules. French people for many miles around come especially to this church on Sundays for the ten o’clock Latin Mass. These are some of the most conservative people in the country, both religiously and politically. Our neighbors, who seem so much like the ordinary French young, are part of this French Catholic subgroup that is primarily made up of older people – people for whom the only real Mass is said in Latin.

  The old archbishop dies. When the new archbishop is installed, he cancels the dispensation and insists that the Mass in this church now be said in French. The priest bows to the desires of his scattered parish, not the archbishop, nor the Vatican, and continues saying the Latin Mass.

  I don’t know all the details of the confrontation, but somehow, there comes a Sunday when, during the Latin Mass, the CRS, a paramilitary police group much used by the French authorities for crowd and mob control, charges into the church and pulls the pastor off the altar in mid-Mass. When the communicants, the participants at the Mass, start to object by throwing chairs around, the CRS begins bopping parishioners on the head and throwing them into the Black (now blue) Marias outside. It’s quite a scene.

  After that, for many months, one side or the other would barricade the church from the other, sitting vigils through the night to see the wrong Masses won’t be said, wrong depending on which side you back. Young François, since he lives so close to the church, stands many of these guard duties, protecting his church against the godless who want the Mass in French. I suggest to him one time that one Mass could be in French, the other in Latin, but he only frowns at my simplicity as if I were an infidel. Which I probably am, by his standards.

  This is only to show what a good family man François is.

  ♦

  One late spring morning, I think it was a Saturday, I’m on the bank beside my boat, pulling up nettles. These nettles start growing in spring, and even though I pull them out by the roots, they come up every year. They can take over the entire bank and grow to more than four feet high. Because they really sting, I’m wearing gloves, hanging on to the bank and pulling them out from the bottom so as to get the roots, one more time.

  I look up and, dashing past me on the chernin de halage, is François, running like mad and pulling off his clothes and tossing them as he goes! He runs past me, then up our gangplank onto our front deck. I run with him, figuring maybe this is some extension of the church battle up the street and they’re about ready to take over our boat to hold services. I want to tell him it’s the boat next door, the Le Geres’ boat, that’s the one they once fitted out as a church for the river people.

  When I reach him, he’s hopping up and down, pulling off his shoes, staring out into the water. Now I hear the screaming from his boat. Also in the water, swimming toward us, is another man. He’s swimming downstream like crazy. I’m completely confused. At this moment, François climbs to the edge of my deck and throws himself into the water. I look down and he’s swimming furiously out toward the center of the river. Then I see it, rising briefly from the water, a small body.

  François sees it too, and moves forward with a burst of speed. He goes under for what seems forever, then comes up, pulling what I can see is a small child behind him.

  I’ve come out of my trance and I’m down the ladder and into my dinghy. I row toward them as they drift downriver. I yell out to François and bear onto the oars. I position the boat downriver and François hands the baby up to me. He’s coughing out water and crying. François tries to pull himself into the boat, but is too weak and waterlogged. His friend, who was also swimming in this race against death, has worked his way over to the bank and pulled himself out in dripping wet clothes, shoes and all. I put the baby into the bottom of the dinghy and pull François in. He struggles and falls to his knees in the dinghy with the baby between his legs. He starts pumping on the baby’s chest. I row toward shore.

  When we get there, a crowd is waiting. Someone has gone for Dr. Avignat, someone else takes the baby and starts artificial respiration. It’s François’s little boy. I haven’t done anything,
but I’m pooped. I tie up my dinghy and climb onto the chemin de halage with everyone. I hear the baby cry. François’s wife is holding the baby now over her knees and patting him on the back; she’s white and close to fainting. Dr. Avignat is checking everything and smiling. All’s well that ends well.

  Alicia, François’s wife, will not live on the boat again. She goes to a hotel in town. François moves their things out and sells the houseboat. The baby is fine. A year later, Alicia has another baby, a little girl. They keep in contact with their friends on the boats, but Alicia never goes on one again. François, for two years, helps keep the faith with the church, standing guard. The archbishop has the church closed down completely as a place of worship until things calm down, if they ever will.

  ∨ Houseboat on the Seine ∧

  Twenty-One

  Impatience

  Neither my wife nor I are great gardeners, but like most people, we enjoy flowers and shrubs. We both have a weakness for roses. Early on, we buy six roses and plant them just inside the fence, next to the end of the gangplank. The first year they do well, so we decide to expand. We drive to a pepiniere, a place where they sell bushes and flowers. We do go a bit overboard! Maybe that isn’t an appropriate description for someone living on a boat!

  When we leave, we are the proud owners of a flowering Japanese cherry tree, six more rosebushes, two hundred tulip bulbs, plus an assortment of other bulbs. We have ten flats of impatiens of varying colors and about fifty pounds of grass seed guaranteed to grow in the shade, of which we have much on our bank.