He gleaned other information on the miraculous land across the Atlantic from his parents’ subscriptions to Paris Match and L’Écran. There was, as well, a large soft-covered book on the wonders of the world. There he learned about the Grand Canyon, geysers, Kodiak bears, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Lakes and the American Civil War—la Guerre de Sécession.
The magazines, however, didn’t answer every question. Jeanot found some things confusing, still. Puritans and settlers seemed interchangeable. Was George Washington still president, or was it Monsieur Roosevelt, in his wheelchair? Jeanot even heard some people say France had lost the war and it was American soldiers who had saved La Patrie, but that was patently ridiculous. The Germans, les Boches, had been defeated by men and women like his own parents, soldiers who had answered the call of the mythic Général de Gaulle, a giant of a man, three meters tall and strong as an oak tree.
Maman, who loved American motion pictures, would come home from shows raving about the latest film. She’d seen Oklahoma three times with Jeanot and from that show, he had deduced that everyone in America sang, and rather well at that. This was further borne out by the guitar-playing Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers. Maman never missed anything featuring Tyrone Powers, whom she maintained looked a lot like her Roland, though Jeanot could never see any resemblance between his Papa and the American movie star.
Personally, Jeanot enjoyed The Living Desert and saw much of America as a place of shifting sands, moving rocks, dangerous snakes and lizards, and flash floods. Obviously, l’Amérique was a place far more dangerous than peacetime Paris. Most days, Jeanot walked to school by himself, crossed streets, bought his own magazines at the corner kiosk, and once or twice a week was sent to the boulangerie to buy bread. He might not be able to survive a living desert, but he knew his own neighborhood as well as the courtyard of the building where he lived.
Occasionally, his father spoke of l’Amérique. Papa had been there as the traveling secretary to an important British person and had gone to such places as Chicago, New York and Saskatchewan, which was almost as fun to pronounce as Massachusetts. Maman always said, “Maches ta chaussette,” which meant, “Chew your sock,” but the joke was old and now Jeanot only smiled.
“Well,” said Papa, “You wouldn’t believe the buildings. They’re ten times taller than here, where we live.”
Jeanot knew his father was subject to exaggerations. Even his mother accused him of talking too big, saying things like, “Pft, Roland. What nonsense. Jeanot’s too smart to believe all this, aren’t you?”
Jeanot would nod yes, because he remembered the story his Papa had told once with a completely straight face about jumping out of an airplane.
Still, buildings that big? There’d been a story in Tintin about a building in New York City that was 381 meters tall, sixty meters taller than the Eiffel tower which, as every schoolkid in France knew, was 325 meters high. Maybe his Maman was right. In America, anything could happen.
Chapter 2
Events took a distressing turn when Jeanot and his family moved to the third floor apartment on rue de la Terrasse. Jeanot heard Mathilde, the maid, whispering about it outside the bathroom as he brushed his teeth one night. Oncle Yves, Maman’s brother, had apparently “become smitten” with Papa.
Jeanot wasn’t certain what that meant. Did men become “smitten” with other men? Surely not, or at least, not in the same way that Papa was “smitten” with Maman. Perhaps this was some sort of strange adult terminology with which he wasn’t yet familiar. Jeanot didn’t care about the state of Oncle Yves’ affections, but he was sure Papa would be mortified, if it was true. Not everything that Mathilde gossiped about, Jeanot knew, turned out to be real.
Oncle Yves was a charming man. He was the friend of famous people, and he claimed all sorts of connections to celebrities of whom Jeanot had never heard, but whose names apparently impressed everyone else in the room. Oncle Yves said that Ravel’s “Left Hand Concerto” had been written for him “to strengthen that side of my body. As a child, I was a naturally weak leftist.” He was ‘a horizontal friend’ of Cocteau’s, lunched with Poulenc, advised Coco Chanel, knew Frank Lloyd Wright and claimed to inspire Edith Piaf. Jeanot had heard, at least, of Piaf; who hadn’t? Papa was not impressed; Maman was and planned a party with Yves and his famous friends as honored guests.
Oncle Yves practiced the piano six hours a day, which to Jeanot sounded like the worst kind of torture. He read newspapers infrequently and listened to the radio only when classical programs were broadcast; programs which bored Jeanot to distraction. Yves was one of the rare humans Jeanot actively disliked. He’d once called Jeanot an idiot for using the salad fork to eat dessert, and Jeanot had not forgiven him.
On April Fool’s day 1952, Maman hosted the soirée. Mathilde hissed to Louise, another seasoned maid, that the party was “for Madame’s new friends, only to impress the old ones.”
Mathilde and Louise were driven to a frenzy of housecleaning. Two of the younger soubrettes, Solange and Corinne, were hired to serve; Monsieur Boyer, a former butler, mixed drinks, and Rémi-Pierre, the concierge’s adopted son whom Jeanot quite liked, found employment announcing the guests.
Babette and her parents were the first to arrive. She grabbed Jeanot by the arm and dragged him to a corner of the room. They sat on the floor and she told him about each of the guests as they entered.
Babette was Jeanot’s best friend. Two years older than him, she was full of information, self-assured, and inventive when necessary. He had known her since before he could walk, and remembered taking his first few steps with her help.
She knew all the guests. Her parents, she said, entertained the same crowd and were voluble in their gossip.
“That’s Dr. Bouzet,” she told him. “He’s a dentist and an alcoholic. His wife died three years ago and he drinks more and more.” Jeanot knew Dr. Bouzet as a dentist who had pulled the teeth of three generations of Févriers and as a builder of wooden model ships in bottles. Babette said, “Those are the Dumas. They tell everyone they’re related to The Three Musketeer Dumas, but my mother said that’s nonsense. They’re nouveau-riches and stuffy and their parents owned a boulangerie.”
A little later, she added, “Oh, look, the man in the wheelchair, the one being pushed by the lady with blue hair? Those are Maître and Madame Gaspard Vincent.” She mock-shivered in revulsion. “He helped prosecute Dreyfus.” Jeanot shivered too. He didn’t know what a Dreyfus was, but if Babette disliked the Vincents, he would too.
A few minutes after that, he said, “That’s Captain Walker and Mrs. Walker. They rent rooms down the hall.”
Babette squinted at them. “Trudy’s parents?”
Jeanot nodded. Babette made a snuffling sound of disdain. There had been a minor fashion incident when Trudy had been seen in the hallway by Babette, who swore the American girl was wearing diapers under her dress.
Hervé Bourrillot, a journalist for Le Figaro, had brought his son Dédé, a shifty-eyed and slightly hunch-backed kid Jeanot didn’t care for. Dédé, in turn, brought two potato guns, the novelty of the month, which his father had received free for plugging the item in his newspaper. Dédé, who smelled strongly of onions, gave Jeanot one of the weapons as a goodwill gesture, sealing a friendship that would last most of the evening.
The tip of the gun’s barrel was dug into a potato (or carrot, turnip or radish) to make a vegetable bullet. Dédé operated it by squeezing a rubber bulb built into the gun’s grip. When fired, the bullet traveled both very fast and very far before splattering on its target. Jeanot thought it was the most splendid thing he’d ever seen.
Each armed with a medium-sized