The last present I gave him was a tool box I had seen in Brico. I had actually gone to look for a barbecue on wheels. When I got there all the barbecues had gone, but they had a whole wall of tool boxes. They were piled up to the ceiling. That’s just the thing for M, I thought. He had lots of tools, but they were a clutter of things he had collected over the years. He was always complaining because he was messing around with useless tools. Many of them he had stolen. If you haven’t paid for it you’ve no right to complain. I think. But he complained anyway. In the store they assured me that my husband would be happy with it. It wasn’t top quality, that was impossible at that price, but it was sturdy and could be used every day. I took the box home as pleased as Punch. I had had it wrapped in shiny paper. He couldn’t miss it. I put the shiny package on the television. Two days later it was still there. ‘Don’t you want to know what’s in it?’ I asked. He didn’t even answer.
He didn’t trust those presents. He saw them as a trap. He was afraid I would take them from him again and throw them away. Or destroy them. Or that I would give them to someone else, as his father had done with the carpentry set that he had been given by his Granny and Granddad. In his first year at school M came home at Christmas with a brilliant report. He had got top marks in virtually everything. That isn’t that difficult in your first year, but he managed it. His parents didn’t say a word about it, either positive or negative, nothing. They scarcely looked at the report. But his Granny and Granddad wanted to reward him. They gave him a case with a hammer, a saw, a chisel and a file. M was so happy and proud! He never played with it. His parents gave it away to another child. That tool box from the DIY store was of course the most stupid possible present. When I finally took off the gift wrapping myself, his face froze. Just like a mask. A few days later his brother dropped by. I thought: I’ll give him the box. He then told me about the case full of carpentry tools that his parents had given away. If his brother had not told me the sad story, I would never have known. M kept those things to himself. He was too proud to talk about them.
His brother didn’t want the box. Finally I put it in the van with all the other tools. Nothing was ever said about it. But he did use it. From then on I always did it in that way. When I had bought something for him, I put it in his cupboard or in the place where he would use it, but I didn’t make a present of it. The memories were too painful, for him. I went on buying stuff for him. When I saw something I thought he needed, I bought it. If I had the money. At the beginning it was easier, before he started checking my outgoings. I didn’t have much leeway, because M couldn’t stand me spending money frivolously. Not that I’ve ever done that. Mummy had taught me the value of money. She had been through the war, and Dad too.
More than once I thought: oh, if only I could have given you some love from the moment you were born!
Love didn’t interest him. Sex did, but love didn’t. Because he had never known it. He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t recognise it, he couldn’t give it, he couldn’t receive it.
The worst thing was that he realised that. Sometimes.
There were moments when he realised. Then he knew very well why he was the person he was and what he was like.
I tried to straighten out what had grown crooked, but it was too late.
It was as if love could gain no hold on him. It slid off him.
At school we had had to read Le petit prince. I knew the book well, because I did an exam on it and later even gave a teaching-practice lesson on it. I loved it, especially the passage about the fox who asks the little prince to make him tame and explains to him how to do it, with superhuman patience. First the little prince must keep his distance and mustn’t say anything, but gradually he is allowed to come a little closer each day. The fox needed time to get used to the prince.
I thought it would be the same with M. I had hoped to tame him step by step, the way the little prince tames the fox, with love and patience.
I thought: I’ll prove to him that he can trust me, that I won’t drop him. I shall prove that love exists, unconditional love, real love. I shall give him the love that he had to do without. And that love will cure him.
I really thought that.
I saw him as a man with a gaping hole where his heart should be. Un homme avec un trou. I wanted to fill that hole. I felt pain in his place. I felt pain because it didn’t cause him pain. Or because he thought that it didn’t cause him pain.
When I think of it, it still causes me pain.
In his first year, his parents sent him to school on the train. He wasn’t yet six. They didn’t take him to the station, no, no. He walked over a kilometre to the station by himself, took the train and got off at the next station. Then it was another quarter of an hour through the town to the school. At four o’clock he had to do the same journey, but in the opposite direction. And he had to make sure he got the right train. Only the slow train stopped in his village. He couldn’t mistake it. But of course other trains stopped at the station near his school. How could a child make that distinction? At the beginning he couldn’t yet read, could he? But God help him if he made a mistake.
The following year they sent his brother with him. Two little boys alone on the train. They could have been abducted! And that while there was a school in the village where they lived. But they didn’t consider it good enough. His parents were both primary school teachers. They looked after other children at yet another school. They could have taken their sons with them to that school. But no. The father was at loggerheads with all his colleagues. He didn’t trust them.
At first I refused to believe it. I thought M was pulling the wool over my eyes, but his father started talking about it. He thought it was perfectly normal. That’s what happened in the Congo. There, children were sent to the spring to fetch water. Children were given responsibility from a very early age. A child of five carried his brother or sister, who couldn’t yet walk, on his back. And a can of water on his head, or firewood. That strengthened their backbone, literally and figuratively.
The worst thing was that it was against the law. A child of five is not allowed to take the train unaccompanied. That’s why it stopped after two years, because the railway authorities finally realised that that little chap and his brother were on the train alone every day.
It took them a long time to realise.
The father was particularly afraid that the children would be spoilt. Spoiling children—that was the great danger that must be avoided. Leaving children to their fate, that was OK. Neglecting them: fine. Spoiling yourself, there was nothing wrong with that. Stuffing yourself in front of the children with the sweets you had confiscated from them: great. Because sweets were bad for their teeth. But not for yours.
Had he seen that in the Congo too?
And of course M took after him. And I kept trying to give a different example. And hoped the children would follow my example.
Il faut partager.
You must share.
Try teaching that to a child when its own father keeps everything for himself.
The mother would have done better to murder M. She could have said it was an accident. Accidents happen all the time. Most accidents happen at home. Fatal accidents too, especially those. People are careful everywhere except in their own home. They think they are safe there. They let themselves go. Even M. let himself go at home sometimes. Sometimes.
There is no such thing as safety. Anywhere. She must have known that. Why else did she want to learn judo? A normal woman doesn’t learn judo. Certainly not when she has five children. She stays at home and looks after her children. Period. Perhaps she takes cookery classes, or sewing lessons, or yoga. But judo? No.
She could have finished him off with a judo hold and afterwards she could have said that he had had a fall. She could have laid him at the bottom of the stairs, as if he had fallen down them. She always