An Imperfect Librarian (19 page)

Tatie reaches for me with her arms outstretched like someone about to fall. “Don't squeeze me too hard,” she says. “Look at you. All the way from Canada.”

Papa gives me an official peck on both cheeks. “Five o'clock
this morning we left Cavaillon. We spent an hour stuck in traffic then we almost missed the train. Georgette read the schedule wrong. She was looking at the weekend schedule instead of Monday's.”

Tatie smacks Papa on the arm. “Stop talking about that. Say hello to him.”

We push through the crowds. We pass by the signs for taxis, busses, metro, parking, then by the massive arrivals and departure board that stretches to the ceiling. Tatie lets go of my arm. She rests her fragile fingers on my cheeks then draws my head down to kiss me. I catch a trace of the wintergreen ointment she uses for her arthritis. The knuckles on her fingers are swollen. Her veins are visible through the skin. We go outside the gloomy station to scout for a place to eat and plan our day together.

“After the train arrived, I was afraid I mixed up the times. I couldn't remember if you said you were staying in Avignon yesterday or today.” We cross the street in front of the station, watching for taxis, motorcyclists and careless Parisian drivers.

Papa responds before Tatie. “You worry and forget exactly like Georgette. One in my life would be plenty, but I have both of you.” The hump in his back is bigger than the last time I saw him. The whites of his eyes are yellowish.

“You didn't forget,” Tatie says. “We'll stay the night in Avignon, go to the market tomorrow morning then drive home in the afternoon.”

Papa interrupts. “Who decided that we're going to the market tomorrow morning? If she's not spending money in Avignon, she's not happy.”

We choose the closest Bistro. A waitress leads us to a table. Papa and Tatie ask for cappuccino with croissants and Swiss cheese on the side. Twins with matching food. When our order
arrives, Papa says to the waitress, “If I'd known it was going to take that long, I would have ordered lunch.” Tatie doesn't flinch at the comment. The waitress apologizes. Papa cuts open Tatie's croissant for her then folds the cheese inside. Her own hands are too crippled to do it.

“You must come visit,” I tell them.

Papa talks to the sandwich in front of his face. “I've done my reading about Newfoundland. No need to hear about or go there.”

“You can't know a place by reading about it anymore than you can know a person by reading about them.”

“Depends on the quality of the reading material,” he says.

“What can you glean from an Internet site or an encyclopaedia?”

He stops eating to stare at me. “Who said anything about encyclopaedias?”

“OK. So,
Fodor's
, Newfoundland. Really, Papa.”

“I'm talking about novels, not travel books:
The Shipping News, Random Passage, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.
”

“Did you read those?”

“I read about them. They summed up the themes,” he says.

“That's not the same as being there.”

“I've lived in Canada too, don't forget,” he says.

“Newfoundland is not the same as Canada.”

Tatie swallows a bite, takes a drink of coffee then says, “In the village, they call your Papa
Le Canadien
to make fun of his tales about the wolves and Indians of Canada.”

“Not true. They call me
Le Canadien
because most of them have never been farther than Avignon.”

“What about me?” Tatie asks. “I've been off the continent. And you're leaving out Monsieur Giroux. He had a military posting in Vietnam. Donnatina, the butcher's wife, was born in Naples. And you're forgetting about Maximillian. He lived
in Germany before the war.”

“I'm talking about people who've been to Canada,” he says.

Papa spent six years there. If I didn't know better I'd say it was more like sixty, and more like living in the woods trading furs with North American natives than on the tenth floor of an apartment building in Quebec City, trying unsuccessfully to write a doctoral dissertation. I don't remember much about those days except that I had to stay in my room. He always made sure I had more than enough to read.

Tatie changes the subject. “What about Elsa? Is it completely over? You're not too old to have children.”

“Elsa and I will be divorced once the paperwork is finished. There's nothing more to say except I met someone in Newfoundland who–”

“No son of mine will marry an English woman.”

“Stop interrupting him,” Tatie says.

“Me interrupting? What are you doing? And I'm not going shopping in Avignon on Sunday.”

“Stop, please! I'm friends with a woman. Her name is Norah. She lives by the ocean. We've been hiking and horseback riding. I've been learning how to swim, row on the pond–”

“Be careful you don't catch pneumonia, or worse, drown. You're practically in the Arctic.”

“Come on, Tatie. You're exaggerating.”

“Georgette doesn't understand about latitude and longitudes,” says Papa.

“You're a fine one to talk,” Tatie says. “What do you know about geography? You're not an expert.”

“And you're not an expert on experts,” Papa says.

I'd already made a mental list of anecdotes I planned to share with them. There was the time when I was in a restaurant with Edith and she introduced me to the premier of the province. Apparently, her brother used to play hockey with
him. I want to tell them about when Mercedes and Cyril held a surprise birthday party for my fiftieth, complete with party hats, cake, gifts and a card that said
Happy 60th
. I'm sure Cyril was joking. I want to tell them about when Norah and I were riding on the side of the road to Cape Spear and the horses were spooked by a motorcycle. But there's no room in the conversation. After so many years of listening to them contradicting each other like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, I should have predicted there wouldn't be.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

T
HE WAITRESS REMOVES OUR CUPS
and plates then sets the table for the next customers. Papa and Tatie lean back in their chairs so they're not in her way but they don't pick up on her cues that it's time for us to leave. We can't leave because we can't agree where to go. Shopping is out of the question. We can't travel by metro because Tatie is worried about pickpockets. She won't allow me to hold onto her bag. It's hidden under her coat in her lap. Museums are not possible because Papa insists he doesn't want to visit any place where there might be crowds of Brits.

“What's so great about them?” he says. “You don't hear us pretending to be Great France or the Germans, Great Germany.”

“Where do you want to go?” I ask. “Please tell me.”

“If they were satisfied with simply Britain, I could have tolerated them,” he says. “I could have tolerated Philip. But no. They're the Great British. They eat fried potatoes wrapped in a newspaper. As a citizen of Great France, I prefer to read my newspapers, not eat out of them.”

Tatie's ex-husband, Philip, is to Tatie what the sciatic nerve problem is to Henry. The mere mention of his name makes her wince. She married him to spite Papa. That's my theory. He was from not-so-great Britain and they turned out to be a not-so-great match. She refused to speak English with Philip in the same way she refused to speak English with me. When he'd come home late, Tatie would complain. One day, he didn't come home at all. For two weeks after that, Tatie slept on the couch in the front room waiting for him. I'd wake to go to the bathroom, hear her crying and think it had something to do with me. I'd sit with her and hold her hand to make up for the times I'd told her, “You're not my mother!”

“If you can't agree on a place to go, we'll have to stay here,” I tell them. “That means we'll need to order something.”

Tatie shakes her head. “I'm not the one who's disagreeing. It's your Papa.”

“That's because you want to go shopping,” he says.

“Not in Paris, I don't want to go shopping,” Tatie says. “There are too many pickpockets. Besides, we're going shopping at the market tomorrow.”

“You do want to go shopping. You don't want to go shopping. Make up your mind.”

I call the waitress to the table and order more coffee. She turns to Papa. “And for your wife, Monsieur?”

Papa: If she was my wife, I would have divorced her long ago.

Tatie: I never would have married you in the first place so you couldn't have divorced me.

The waitress is unfazed by the conversation. She leaves. They continue to ricochet off each other.

Tatie: We're growing old, Carl.

Papa: I'm not as old as you.

Tatie: Ten minutes makes little difference in a lifetime.

Papa: It made a difference to me. With you born and me
still in the womb, I had the place to myself.

Tatie: The pleasure was all mine.

I change the conversation to the only topic they'll agree on: the state of the country. Papa complains about how, if France adopts a common European currency, it will be the end of the nation. Tatie says they won't be able to afford to keep the house. Papa launches into a tirade about how voters should have elected Le Penn. Tatie says they might have to get rid of the car if gas prices go up. I leave them together to map out the future of life in France while I pay the bill.

We leave the Bistro then visit the information counter in the station. The attendant suggests an afternoon tour on a double-decker bus with hop-on-and-off visits throughout Paris. Tatie is fine with the idea but Papa insists it's out of the question. He doesn't want to drive around Paris with a bunch of Great Brits. I reassure him. “I'll find us seats in an area of the bus without them.”

We leave the train station, buy the tickets and board the bus. There's a tour group on the bottom floor where it's comfortable and warm. They're wearing baseball hats with
Liverpool Seniors' Club
. We go to the upper deck. Papa and Tatie sit together. I take the seat behind them. Before the bus leaves, I pull the gifts out of my backpack: a Newfoundland hand-knit woollen scarf for Tatie, gloves for Papa. He wraps the scarf around Tatie's neck then puts the gloves on her hands before he reaches his arm around her.

We put on our headsets. The three-hour circuit tour begins: Le Louvre, l'Hôtel de Ville, La Bastille, La Sorbonne, St. Germain-des-Prés, Les Champs-Elysées, l'Arc de Triomphe, La Tour Eiffel, Invalides. It's too much trouble for Papa and Tatie to climb up and down the stairs so we stay on the bus when it makes its stops. I take advantage of the opportunity to conduct my
Fahrenheit 451
poll. I move into the seat in front of them
then turn partway around to face them. “You have to imagine a scenario where there'll be no more books and you have an opportunity to memorize one to share with future generations.”

Papa shakes his head. “I don't have to imagine anything.”

“What about you, Tatie? What would your book be?”

“I'm too old to be memorizing.”

“Come on! Think of something,” I plead.

“
Fables and Tales of the Middle Ages
,” she replies.

“That's exactly what I'd memorize.”

“What's the point if two people choose the same book?” Papa asks.

“It's hypothetical, Papa. The point is simply to see what people believe needs to be passed on.”

“If that's the case, I pick
France: The Greatest Nation
.”

“Is that a book?” I ask.

“It's a book and it's the truth.”

“I thought the Brits had the greatest nation,” I add to tease him. I should have known better. Papa takes offence. Tatie takes advantage of his anger to provoke him further and I spend the remainder of the day paying for my mistake.

Later, when it's time for them to take their train, Tatie clings on until the last minutes. The porter signals to us with a nod of his head then a finger pointed on his watch that it's time.

“It was in this very train station that I saw you for the first time forty-five years ago,” she says. “You were arriving from the airport after your flight from Canada. You gave me the book.”

“
Fables and Tales.
”

Papa shakes his head at me. “You wouldn't let it out of your hands from the moment we left Québec City until you presented it to her here in the station.”

I was five at the time. Papa had told me about a woman in France. I assumed I was on a journey to meet my mother. Tatie held out her arms. I ran towards her to give her the
book. It didn't take long to realize she wasn't my mother. “I wonder whatever happened to it.”

“I still have it,” she says. “I'll take care of it for you.”

I bend over to kiss her. Papa kisses me on each cheek. The porter ushers them onto the train. Papa holds Tatie's arm to help her up the steps. She turns to wave. I lose sight of them then they reappear on the other side of a dirty window. The train jerks forward. Tatie alternates between waving and wiping her eyes. The train picks up speed. I wave until I can't see them anymore.

The taxi brings me to my dingy, squatty hotel room where I fall asleep shortly after dark. During the intermittent periods of sleep, I dream that I'm in a train station filled with double-decker buses. Tatie is carrying heavy suitcases. I try to lift them. I pull harder and harder until they break open. Books fly out then turn into butterflies. They swarm us, swoop over Tatie then transform into wasps. When I move to protect her, they head towards me.

Loud voices in the room next door save me from a million wasps. The voices compete with impatient car horns and squeaking brakes from the street. It's too noisy to sleep so I alternate between bouts of reading or lying in the dark with my eyes open. I follow excerpts of conversations from the corridor and play at guessing what the language is. In the morning, someone calls from the hotel lobby to wake me. I rush downstairs and apologize to the taxi driver for being late. I feel like pre-dawn Paris, more asleep than awake. The driver asks me which terminal.