When Mathilde called them to dinner, she shook her head in disgust. “A waste of good food,” she said. Then, looking at the potato guns, she added, “Besides, I imagine there are better and bigger targets in the living room.”
Oncle Yves and his celebrities arrived around ten; a noisy, argumentative group that stuck together in a nucleus of fame. They were polite yet distant, drinking a great deal, eating messily from the buffet table, and pointedly not mingling with the less stellar guests. Conversation stalled; Maman’s friends suddenly seemed uncomfortable. Jeanot felt awkward in the heavy atmosphere; Dédé began yawning and even Babette was uncharacteristically quiet. It seemed that Oncle Yves’ famous friends had only ended what had started off as a rather amusing party. Jeanot was disappointed. He was concerned that if the guests began to leave, the gift of the potato gun might be untimely revoked.
It was at that moment that Oncle Yves suggested a leg contest; a party game all the rage some years before among “balletomanes,” he assured the group.
“In the old days, Nijinsky won the contests so often,” said Oncle Yves, “that after a while, Diaghilev refused to let him participate.”
He undid his belt and let his trousers fall to the ground. Babette gasped, covered Dédé’s eyes and had her hands batted away. Jeanot noticed that Babette didn’t think to cover her own eyes.
Hortense and Violette Beaumarchais, the 60-ish twins from the fifth floor, shrieked in unison. Oncle Yves shot them a withering look and extended a leg clad in flesh-colored ballet tights.
“What we need,” he said, “are bed sheets.” He looked around, “Where is the housekeeper… Mathilde!”
Mathilde had confessed to Jeanot once that she had never liked Oncle Yves. A man “without an honest means of employ, who slept late, loafed at home and went to the toilet while talking on the telephone,” was not a man she could respect.
“Get sheets, Mathilde. Three of them. The large ones.”
When she returned, Oncle Yves directed the sheets be tied together lengthwise to make a thin curtain which could shield people from mid-thigh to above the head. The women were gathered on one side of the curtain, the men on the other. Oncle Yves told them to remove their pants, socks and shoes.
“Now,” said Oncle Yves, “each man walks the length of the curtain so that his legs—and only his legs—are visible to our friends of the opposite sex. They may ask an individual to demonstrate some skill—a jump, a hop, an entrechat—to best reveal his attributes. Applause shall select the winner.”
Captain Walker looked shocked and chose to quietly fade away but most of the other men—save Dr. Bouzet who pleaded psoriasis, and the wheel-chair bound Gaspard Vincent—doffed their trousers. Dédé looked for a moment as though he might do the same, but a withering glare from Babette forestalled him. Jeanot had no interest in removing his own trousers, but he found himself fascinated by the ridiculous display.
The collection of legs revealed an amazing array of morphologies. There were fat ones, skinny ones, tendons and muscles displayed or swathed in rolls of lard, some hairy, some hairless, all a milky pallor.
The men capered behind the sheets, not at all like the gazelles in Jeanot’s bedroom; the women laughed, booed, cheered, called out orders and applauded. Monsieur Dumas’ turn to parade was met with an audible gasp, and whispers of “here, now, is a pair of worthy legs!” Monsieur Dumas, Jeanot had overheard during the party, played tennis, swam and was an avid collector of butterflies. He had been known to chase into exhaustion evasive species in order to pin them in his display cases.
Monsieur Dumas was asked to kick right, then left. He was told to stand on tiptoes, to turn this way and that, to bring his heels together, apart and together again. Piaf whistled loudly and Chagall whipped out his sketchpad. Oncle Yves stared shamelessly, leading Jeanot to wonder, for an uncomfortable moment, remembering what Mathilde had said about his Oncle Yves being “smitten” with Papa.
Dédé and Jeanot opened fire with the potato guns just as Monsieur Dumas attempted a plié.
Later, much later, Dédé Bourillot burst into tears when accused of vandalism and pointed a finger at Jeanot, sobbing, “C’est sa faute! Il m’a forcé!” After all the guests had left, Papa smashed the toy guns with a mallet and cursed the reporter for being such a thoughtless oaf. Mathilde had left, promising to return in the morning to clean up (while wearing a smile inappropriate to the situation). Jeanot, all four cheeks afire, was sentenced to the hallway closet—the direst of punishments.
It was totally, completely, irremediably dark in there and smelled of mothballs. He sat on a pair of Papa’s winter boots and played with the laces. He mourned the potato gun, now in several pieces, its rubber bulb cut into thin strips by his mother. Dédé, that spoiled baby, had sold him out without a moment’s thought. Now Jeanot would never get a real gun, or even one that shot caps; certainly not before next Christmas, an eternity away. It was all very unfair, and for the longest time, surrounded by shoe smells and drowned in darkness, he wondered if for the rest of his life all the good moments would merit bad ones.
While Jeanot sat in the closet, he listened to his parents having a violent argument, each accusing the other of inviting the Figaro reporter. The words were unclear but the boy could hear the rise and fall of voices and, finally, the slamming of doors. He waited a half-an-hour until everything was quiet, then let himself out. The apartment was still lit, the two large chandeliers in the party room ablaze. He could hear his mother’s soft snores coming from the master bedroom. He tip-toed into the living room that smelled of cigarette smoke, perfumed sweat and spent champagne. The place was a welter of overflowing ashtrays and half-empty glasses. Maman never cleaned up right after a party; she preferred to wait until the next morning, declaring that a good evening should not end in drudgery.
Jeanot was thirsty. He surveyed the surroundings, found a glass almost full of amber liquid and drank five large mouthfuls while holding his breath. The stuff fired his throat and hit his stomach like a depth-charge. For a moment, he thought he might vomit his supper on the floor, but he didn’t.
There were other glasses, different colors. Wine, he could recognize and stayed away from. His parents often served him abondance with his meals, mixing a centimeter of wine into a large tumbler of water, but he didn’t like the stuff’s coppery flavor.
He sniffed a few more glasses and settled on one shaped like a balloon and smelling like baba au rum. He swallowed its contents without gagging. A third glass, he knew, contained Pernod. He liked the ornate blue, green and silver label on the bottle and always watched when his father fixed one. The distinctive anisette aroma filled his nose, so he drank three large swallows of that too.
He slid under the big Napoleon III couch, then stretched out. The ceiling panels swayed slightly like gentle waves, and that was very restful. He stared at them for a while, decided he was still thirsty and finished the Pernod. He thought a big chunk of dark chocolate might go well with the anisette so he found the box from Belgium his mother kept on the piano and ate a few of those. Soon he was thirsty again.
Now the choice of beverages appeared limitless, so he sampled one, grimaced, and spit it back into the glass. Something honey-colored caught his eye. It smelled vaguely of oranges, which tasted good with chocolate. It was smooth and the tang filled all the spaces beneath his tongue and between his teeth. He got drowsy and knew he should go to bed but his legs were thick and rubbery and he decided it would be a lot of trouble to take his clothes off, so he didn’t. He curled up on the couch. He thought again about the potato gun and giggled at the remembered image of Oncle Yves jumping at least a foot off the floor when the potato bullets hit him in the back of the thighs. He fell asleep in mid-laugh, trying to stifle the sound so he wouldn’t wake his parents.
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