In the student canteen, we stood at one of the cannabis-and-merguez-smelling tables with our thimbles of coffee from the automatic dispenser and discussed cinema, literature, music. All the while, I felt that we were skirting around the subject of school, of grades and exams, as though some tacit understanding influenced the course of our thoughts. I waited for him to say that he had noticed me staring at him in the auditorium, watching him from afar; instead, he said that students cheated during exams all the time, especially if one of their languages wasn’t strong enough. Without looking up from my empty cup, I asked him what he was suggesting. As long as you don’t get caught, it’s not a big deal, I heard him say. Everyone here does it, or practically everyone. Listening to him talk, I couldn’t help questioning my own obliviousness to something that had been going on all around me, right under my nose. And what about you? I asked. You don’t need anyone’s help. What’s in it for you? He seemed to think about my words before answering. I could use an ally, a like mind. A friend, he meant, though he didn’t say it. For a moment we were both silent, as though an angel had passed by. I asked him what he’d ended up with, after translating Moiré’s poem back and forth so many times. René smiled, then recited:
A crow / flew across a meadow / chasing its own shadow. / The bird was fine / it hadn’t lost its mind / it did it for the rhyme.
* * *
A week after the end-of-semester exam—or “passage exam,” in the school’s jargon—I came back to the school and there it was, my name among the students reçus en deuxième année. Just above it was René’s. Our names, on the bulletin board where exam results were posted, had never been so close together. I didn’t see Maryvonne’s name anywhere. I remembered the way she had stared at me from across the room, and suddenly I was convinced that it hadn’t been contempt but despair in her eyes that day. What would have happened if I had asked to see her translation of Marcel Moiré’s poem? I imagined her admitting—after some hesitation—that she had given up after failing to come up with a satisfactory English version on her own. Would she have been grateful if, at that moment, I had shown her mine? Now I would never know.
It was strange; though I must have continued, until the end of the first year, to catch glimpses of her—in the corridors, emerging from the elevator, seated at her desk—I have no memory of it at all, as though she ceased to exist in the waking world after appearing before me in my dream. More likely, it was I who had become increasingly preoccupied with my immediate future. I would do whatever it took to become a translator. By then, I had started sitting next to René during exams, the two of us in the same row, side by side. After all, what is so strange about two friends choosing to sit in proximity to one another? Absolutely nothing, of course.
The Impossibility of Crows
1. Henrik and Gém
I’m not sure at what point I first noticed the woman following us. Gém and I were at the big Monoprix in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and we’d just left the wine-and-beer shelf where I had picked out a six-pack of Grimbergen. Now I was pushing my little caddy towards the frozen foods and casting discreet glances behind me. She was pretending to look at the artisanal ciders. Mid-thirties perhaps, the cut of her blond hair fashionably asymmetrical. Could she be a social worker? An undercover cop? She was too well dressed for a cop. Or a social worker, for that matter.
It was a typical outing for Gém and me. Taking my goddaughter shopping for her favorite foods gave me a reason—an excuse—to spend time with her. I had only chosen this particular Monoprix because we’d been to see a puppet play across the street at the Crous, which I had frequented in my student days for the odd workshop. It told the story of a girl who, upon learning that her brothers were transformed into ravens when she was an infant, sets out to find them. There weren’t many fairy tales about little girls embarking on adventures, and I thought that an adaptation of “The Seven Ravens” might appeal to Gém. Since leaving the center, she hadn’t stopped talking about the play, walking alongside me with one delicate hand on the cart like a supermarket shepherdess. Suddenly, I noticed that the woman was no longer behind us. Had I imagined the whole thing? I stared at the spot where she had been just a moment ago. I should have been relieved, but I wasn’t. Once again I looked around. And that was when I realized that Gém had also disappeared.
After scouring the entire store, I finally spotted her near the cash registers. With her was the woman I had noticed earlier. Seeing them together, I was struck by how alike they looked, with their similar blond hair, their similar skin. Like mother and daughter. My first impulse was to go to them, but I didn’t move. Instead, I imagined myself turning my back and walking away. I would leave the Monoprix, cross the intersection, descend the steps of the métro, and melt into the crowd of commuters. Gém would never hear from me again. I would move to another arrondissement, change my phone number, disappear from her life. I would become a ghost in this city. The seven brothers, after they were turned into ravens, retired to a mountain made of glass, far from everything and everyone. That was what I would do. They had lived like that, all those years, until the little girl came looking for them …
I heard my name being called. Gém was calling out to me. When I approached them, the woman said pleasantly, “I found her wandering around and thought she was lost.”
“I wasn’t really lost,” Gém said in a patronizing tone. “My father and I like to play hide-and-seek when we go to the store.”
“And where is your father?”
“He’s right there.”
The woman looked at me, like someone unsure of a joke. “So she’s your…?”
“Yes,” I made myself say. Thanking her, I started to turn away when she held out a card, which informed me that she was a scout for an agency in Paris, recruiting children for a publicity campaign.
“She’s very talented, your … daughter.”
I looked up from the card, which had only her forename, as if she were a movie star or a variety singer. “Talented in what way?”
“Well, she’s very, shall we say, convincing. She convinced me, for example.”
“And what did she convince you of, exactly?”
“That you’re her father.”
* * *
When I was out with Gémanuelle, we would sometimes play a game. It was Gém herself who had been the initiator. One day, I had taken her to an exhibition on Samuel Beckett at the Beaubourg center, and we were in line when she pointed to a sign stating that parents didn’t have to pay admission for children under ten. She told me that she could be my daughter; then I wouldn’t have to pay for her. I told her I didn’t mind paying, but she was insistent, as if it were her money. (In passing, I always refused René’s offers to reimburse me for an outing: I wasn’t a babysitter; if I chose to spend time with my goddaughter, it was because I wanted to.) That day, as I was buying our tickets, Gém declared loudly that I was her father, but the woman behind the glass only smiled at her, as if she didn’t see me at all, and for the rest of the afternoon, while Gém continued to call me “Papa,” obviously enjoying the attention, I kept thinking: if I really were her father, would she feel the need to announce it to the world?
I had planned to tell René about the incident when I gave him the highlights of my day with his daughter, but for whatever reason I never got the chance. He might have come home later than usual and found me asleep on his couch, or perhaps I had been awake that night and he started talking to me, as he often did, about some problem at his work. In any case, the moment passed, and it became our secret, between Gém and me. For a child, she was very good at keeping secrets. If I told her not to say something, I knew that she wouldn’t tell René. Once, I had tested her: After we saw a dead pigeon on the Terrasse Lautréamont, I told her we should keep it between us. (This was at the height of her pigeon obsession.) A week later, I asked René if he knew anything about a dead pigeon on the Terrasse Lautréamont, and he had looked at me like I was crazy.
Maybe I was a litt
le crazy. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure which one of us turned the daughter-father thing into a game. I saw how much fun she’d had at the Samuel Beckett exhibit (did she notice that it brought me pleasure too?), and I suppose it made a certain kind of sense to play make-believe again when we went to the park or to the supermarket, even if it resulted in calling undue attention to ourselves. I could never say no to Gém. She was used to René being at work, or away on a business trip, or, when he was home, shut up in his room working on his newest project (at the moment, a film script). I, on the other hand, always had time for her. Was it any surprise that she should want to pretend that I was her father? Or that I might want to keep this little detail from my friend, at least for the time being?
In public, I tried not to notice the heads turning, the second glances we were the object of—even without the “Papa” routine. It wasn’t hard to see why. She was a strikingly beautiful six-year-old, tall for her age, with long blond hair, and I was her supposed father: of unremarkable height, shabbily dressed, unmistakably Asian. At a commercial center, seeing the two of us in one of the wall-to-wall mirrors, I had the thought that we didn’t belong to the same species. The oddest of odd pairings, we were like Charles and Cordelia, Léon and Mathilda, Alain and Joséphine … That said, why couldn’t she be my daughter? My own Danish parents, after all, looked nothing like me. In fact, Gém could have easily passed for their child—or grandchild, as though certain family traits had simply skipped a generation. But it went deeper than mere appearances. For the space of a few moments, she really was my daughter, or something more than a daughter, although what that “something” was I couldn’t have put into words or given a name to.
* * *
On the way home, there was an incident in one of the subway tunnels. “Incident” meaning someone had tried to throw himself onto the rails, the degree of success or failure reflected by the duration of the delay. We could remain where we were or take one of the RER lines, whose trains stopped less frequently than those of the métro. On the other hand, it involved braving the jungle of Châtelet–Les Halles, something I tried to avoid whenever possible.
I let Gém choose, knowing already what she would answer. She loved the long passageway with its moving walkway that led to the station. She seemed more animated than usual, glancing behind us like we were being followed and giggling to herself. I asked her what she found so funny, but she only shook her head, hiding her smile with her hand, as I struggled with my many shopping bags. We came to a stop on the “rolling carpet,” as Gém called it. On the walls was the same poster—repeated over and over—for an upcoming concert at the Zénith, showing a man with long greasy hair and a bloody nose and mouth, which was stretched upwards in a rictus. I reached into my pocket to make sure I had our tickets for the métro and felt something else against my fingers. I thought I had tossed it, but here it was, at the bottom of my pocket. I carefully set down the shopping bags between my feet and took out the card while Gém, with her back to me, stared up at the passing posters, one for a Danish film starring Paprika Steen alternating with another for Bonduelle salads. When I brought the card up to my nose, I detected a faint whiff of what might’ve been perfume. Back at the Monoprix, after asking me to call her if I changed my mind, she had placed a hand, briefly, on my wrist. I could still feel the weight of her fingers against my skin.
“Gaëtane said that I could become famous,” I heard Gém say.
“Who?”
By then, we were standing on the platform waiting for the RER. “Gaëtane. From the shop. You weren’t there when she told me.” She seemed to think about it for a moment, then looked up at me, almost shyly. “Do you think I could become famous, Papa?”
There was no one within earshot on the platform. And yet she had addressed me as “Papa.” I told her—stammering my words a bit—that fame wasn’t necessarily a good thing, or something to that effect.
“Really?”
Her expression was more curious than petulant. “She said that my face would be on posters.” Gém glanced around her, as though looking for someone. “But I don’t really want that,” she said, soberly.
I looked down at her. “You don’t?”
“What I want,” she went on, her voice suddenly very loud, “is to be in movies. I think that would be far better and far more interesting.”
The train pulled in. As usual, a number of people started to board as soon as the doors opened, instead of making way for those getting off, and a general tohu-bohu ensued. There were no available seats left in the compartment. I tried to shield Gém with my body as more people got on. For a while, the platforms had been decorated with couplets in the style of La Fontaine (“The one who, getting on, shoves another / Will not make the train leave any faster”), but it would seem that the slogans hadn’t had much of an impact on the general population.
Near the doors, an argument had broken out between two men. One seemed to be the aggressor, taking advantage of the other’s unwillingness to escalate the confrontation.
“We can talk about it later,” I said. “In the meantime, let’s not tell your … René about any of this just yet. OK?”
“But why?”
I thought about the dead pigeon on the Terrasse Lautréamont. “You know how busy he is. Promise me you’ll keep it between us for now?”
At that moment, the man itching for a fight decided to take things to the next level, and this time several heads—including Gém’s—turned at the unmistakable sound of a fist making contact with someone’s face.
* * *
We got back to René’s place and were greeted by a burnt odor noticeable even from the landing. In the kitchen sink I found several broken dishes and a blackened casserole encrusted with charred, embryonic remains that looked almost extraterrestrial in origin. I’m not entirely sure why, but the idea came to me that I was staring at my soul laid bare in all its somber and gruesome splendor, like a portrait of Dorian Gray or the image of a smoker’s lungs as seen in an anti-smoking poster. I heard René whistling Charles Trenet’s “La Mer” in the bathroom. With some difficulty, I tore my gaze away from the burnt remains of the casserole and went in search of my friend. He was hunched over a piece of plywood balanced across the tub. Atop it was an old Hermes typewriter and a mess of papers. For several long moments I watched him at his makeshift desk, pecking laboriously away, one letter at a time. He didn’t notice me standing in the doorway until I cleared my throat.
“Ideas,” he said, continuing to type, “they’re like dreams: you forget them if you don’t write them down at once…”
I realized that he was drunk. Only then did I notice a bottle of Tullamore Dew that had been partially hidden by the typewriter.
“Go on to your room,” I told Gém, who was still beside me, staring at René.
“No, no, it’s fine. She can stay. It’s not like she hasn’t seen me like this before.”
Gém turned from me to René, then back to me.
“Don’t look at him,” René said. “I said you can stay.”
“But I want to go to my room,” she said.
When Gém was gone and it was just the two of us, René sighed. “See that? She already listens to you more than she listens to me.”
I asked him what he was doing home so early, and he made a vague gesture, as though the question was too complicated to address.
“Did something happen at work?”
“Is that what you think?” He shuffled distractedly through the papers in front of him. “You know, sometimes, I think you’re her real father.”
It wasn’t the first time I had heard him say this, and each time, a part of me wanted to believe he was being sincere.
He started typing again. “It’s a funny thing, the idea of a godparent…”
“What do you mean?”
“My point exactly. It can mean something, or nothing at all.”
Without waiting for an answer, he turned his attention back to the Hermes, typing so
slowly and with such long pauses between key strikes that each letter could have been a word, an entire sentence. I stood watching him for a few moments longer, then went out to the kitchen. After all, someone had to make dinner.
* * *
When was the last time the three of us had sat down together for a meal? It was either Gém and me, or—if she was already in bed—me and René. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Gém fidgeting in her seat, and before I could say anything she announced to the table, “We saw a real fight today!”
René looked at her, then at me. “A fight? Really?”
“It was nothing,” I said, relieved that she hadn’t mentioned the woman. “Two idiots. Or rather, one idiot, who picked a fight with someone who didn’t want to fight. Typical, right? Then the one who didn’t want to fight suddenly knocked him out with one punch.”
“It was just like in a movie!” Gém said.
René leaned over to her. “Which one?”
She looked at him, uncertain.
“Who are you in the movie, Gém?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost Page 15
