“They all wear hats. Except the Indians, of course, who wear feathers and mink tails in their hair,” he assured the boy. That sounded good. Jeanot saw himself in a hat like Gene Autry’s, or wearing a Blackfoot headdress made of eagle and pigeon feathers. He wasn’t sure about the mink tails. Tatie, his great aunt who lived in St. Germain and visited twice a month, wore a ratty fox collar with tails and heads attached and he wouldn’t be caught dead in that.
“And they’re all rich,” said the Russian. “But then,” he made a face the boy had seen whenever France was mentioned, “it’s easy to get rich over there. Not like this damned shitty hell hole of a country.”
Kharkov had a wide-ranging collection of books, magazines, photographs and records dedicated to America, which he allowed Jeanot to inspect.
He referred to these often when declaring his expansive knowledge of the United States. Thoughts of that almost mythical nation—he sometimes called his library “The Church of America”—softened his usually harsh features. He smoked American-made Camel cigarettes when he could afford them and when he couldn’t, filled empty Camel packs with hand-rolled mixtures of Turkish, Algerian, and Gitane tobacco. He field-stripped the butts, kept what was smokable and re-rolled them so that he gave off a smell Oncle Répaud likened to a barnyard on fire after a rainstorm.
Back in the concierge loge, Jeanot hung onto the Russian’s every word about America. Kharkov looked around as if making sure no one could overhear him and whispered, “But the great secret of Americans is that they have very tiny zizis. It’s a fact. One centimeter, maybe two if they’re fortunate. And that,” he paused for emphasis, illustrating a two centimeter span with his thumb and forefinger, “is why American women always want to come to Europe.”
This made no sense to Jeanot, who nodded his head anyway. He knew what a zizi was, but the relationship between zizis and women was unclear. As far as Jeanot was aware, zizis were the province of men only, although in America, of course, things might be different.
“A lot of Americans have six toes,” the Russian concierge continued, “which is why they run so fast. The extra toe makes them more stable. Jesse Owens has seven toes on his right foot; that’s how he won the Olympics. It is also why Hitler hated him. Hitler only had four toes, and one tiny ball that, according to what I’ve heard, never worked at all.”
Now that made perfect sense. There was a kid in Jeanot’s class who was thumbless and had the devil of a time writing without making huge ink spots all over his notebook. The kid shook so much no one wanted to sit next to him; he sprayed ink in all directions. It was said his palsy came from mono-ballism.
“The Americans come from all over the world,” said the concierge. “But it’s easy to tell them apart. The short ones who smell bad are either Italian or Greek, though sometimes they’re Irish. If they smell bad and work in a restaurant, they’re Italian. Most Russians are teachers or musicians, unless they’re Jews, in which case they sell clothing in the streets. I have photos of this. Generally, it’s very cheap clothing, nothing a civilized man would wear so they sell them to the Chinese and to the Africans. In any case, the Russian Jews are very good business people, so watch your pockets. There are a lot of Africans and Chinese, but not in the big cities.”
“And the French?” asked the boy. “What do they do in America?”
The Russian shrugged his shoulders. “The same as they do here. Next to nothing, the lazy bastards. Des bons à rien.”
Jeanot felt he had to defend his countrymen, an easy task since that week’s Tintin had been devoted to the greatness of French inventions. “But we invented the airplane, and the telephone, and radium, and cheese.”
The Russian scoffed. “All those are Russian, except maybe the cheese.”
Kharkov apparently knew everything there was to know about America, France and Russia.
Once a month or so, Papa drove Kharkov around to impress the less affluent emigrés, and on two or three occasions Jeanot was permitted to ride along, provided he kept his mouth shut. Dressed in his best clothes and topped with a faded black homburg that gave him a sinister look, Kharkov would treat Papa like a chauffeur, projecting so much hauteur that Jeanot pictured him as a Russian Czar. Papa drove to the Russian épicerie, where Kharkov gossiped with the owner and bought a small bottle of cheap vodka, to the pharmacie for pills that promised eyesight improvements, and slowly past the Russian tea room on avenue Foche.
One time, a few days after the spud gun party, Papa and Kharkov took Jeanot along and the Russian gave the boy a swig from a vodka bottle. Papa stopped the car with a squeal of tires, opened the passenger door and shoved the Russian out. It was many months before the Russian was allowed in the DeSoto again.
Chapter 4
Jeanot’s great aunt Tatie owned a house in St. Germain en Laye near a large public park abutting a château.
It was called the Château de Neuilly, and its surrounding grounds were a maze of wide yellow gravel-covered avenues that crisscrossed 170 acres of grass, trees, streams and ponds. Jeanot had been there dozens of times, once to model children’s outfits for a fashion magazine.
That had been in 1951, when Maman had answered an ad in France-Soir seeking four-, five-, and six-year-old children for a day’s work. The parents, she assured Papa, would be paid a massive sum; the equivalent to two months’ salary for an entry-level government worker if the photos were published.
Ever since she’d seen an advertisement for a little girl’s mink coat costing 300 francs, Maman had been talking to her family about opening a dressmaking shop. She had a good eye for fashion, was nimble with a needle, and had been given a non-functional Singer electric sewing machine by the American Captain’s wife. Papa had fixed the machine by resoldering a loose wire, and he and Maman had calculated the startup costs of Créations St. Paul. They would produce expensive children’s clothing for those Papa referred to as “the stupidly wealthy.” Jeanot’s modeling debut, his parents assured him, would be the perfect entrée to a haute couture career.
Maman had a photographer friend take a few shots of Jeanot and sent them to the advertising agency. To her delight and amazement, and to Jeanot’s chagrin, he was one of twelve children selected.
That morning was not a good one for him. Earlier, the American girl, Trudy, had snubbed him, calling him something vile in English—he hadn’t understood the word but the meaning was unmistakable—and Mathilde had swatted him for being underfoot. Either at the Gare St. Lazare or in the train to St. Germain, he had lost the tin cowboy he most treasured. Fifteen minutes before the modeling session, Jeanot was in tears, his nose bathed in snot and his eyes red.
Maman wrestled him into the first outfit, a smart if scratchy flannel suit with short pants, an Eton jacket and a matching cap. She won his cooperation only by promising he would get to keep the cap. Based on this vow, Jeanot behaved through three hours of posing and changing outfits, and only when it was all over did he notice the cap was gone, packed up in a cardboard suitcase with the other fashionable items. Furious, he unlatched the suitcase when no one was looking, peed in it, ran away and hid in the woods. Maman, panicked, called the local police which sent two young gendarmes on bicycles. They found Jeanot asleep under a tree, sucking his thumb.
In the café where they later ate lunch, he sat up very straight even though his butt hurt from the spanking, but it was well worth it. The gray flannel cap hidden in the crotch of his pants itched only slightly. Then it struck him on the way to his Tatie’s home that he would never be able to wear the thing in public. That made the punishment costly, cheeks-wise.
Weeks later, Mathilde found the cap and, not knowing its significance, donated it with a bag of old clothes to the Algerian Children’s Relief Fund. She mentioned the donation to Maman, and Jeanot had to pretend complete disinterest until he could retreat to his room and shed a few frustrated tears.
Maman returned to Paris, and Jeanot spent the night and the following day at Tatie’s and thought for the