Parrot and Olivier in America (9 page)

We were told to call our visitor Monsieur but he did not seem so ordinary to me, and all the while he talked with Mrs. Piggott, sugaring her with
d'accords
and
madames
, he had his eyes on the men around the table, engaging each of them, even me, letting us know he was very fine and fancy and that we would be unwise to cross him or betray him or even dream of such a thing.

We were at war with France yet we were in Devon very near the coast, and at Piggott's it was always ask no questions and you'll be told no lies. We never knew where the fruits of our labors would come to rest, in Louvres or Auxerre, or Oxford Street. The Piggotts were always feeding up their customers, plying them with brandy and Madeira, and after they had slept off their dinner they were on their way.

I expected the Frenchman to be gone by morning. But there he was, nudey in midstream, and all I could see was the shocking violet skin shining in the place where his arm had been, and nothing left of it but a kind of flap, or turtle fin. Elsewhere his body had been pierced more times than Saint Sebastian, and each site of injury was like a patch of angry silk.

My father was a terrible talker who wanted to know everything at once, but here he had a powerful wish to know not a bloody thing.

"Bonjour,"
the Frenchman called to us.

My father's eyes went dead and milky.

"Bonjour,"
he called again, but my father was taken by the sights downstream.

It was I who called back, not from wickedness, but because I could. Perhaps I might never draw a proper mouse, but I was a perfect mimic. That was a talent. Vowel for vowel, a parrot on the wing.

Says I:
"Bonjour."

Says he:
"Parles-tu francais, monsieur?"

Says I:
"Parles-tu francais, monsieur?"

He had a face like stone. I squeezed a grin out of it.
"Vous,"
said he.

"Ah,
vous
?" said I.

I wish you could hear me now because you would understand the unholy jumble--that rough little English boy falling over his
vous
and
tus
in the perfect accent of the faubourg Saint-Germain. I dived into the stream in triumph, scraping my bare boy chest along a gravel bed as lightly as an old brown trout. Surfacing, I saw my father had retreated from me, scrambling to the bank to fetch our laundry.

"Ou habites-tu?"
the Frenchman asked me. You could hear the money in his voice.

"Ou habites-tu?"
I replied.

The Frenchman was not sure what was being done to him, whether he should be offended or amused.

My father came splashing toward me, the clothes clutched to his chest. It was rocky and difficult but he never once looked down.

"Wash-oh," he cried to me. "Wash-oh!"

Monsieur was a great wide bear, the hair on his chest pale and tight and curly. He sent a splash to me, a kind of kiss. I splashed him back, like a mad creature, in a frenzy of happiness.

Then I joined my daddy in the middle of the stream where, in the midst of a shallow run, he was already beating my britches against the river rocks. He turned the left pocket out and left it hanging empty as a spaniel's ears. I arrived at his side as he turned his attention to the other where I had hidden the assignat.

I dared not say a word but set to rubbing at my collar while my father, not inches from me, coughed and passed his hand across his mouth. All the while he scrubbed my britches I knew he had the forgery inside his mouth.

At last the Frenchman left the river and, once on the cattle path, shook himself like a great wild dog. My father watched him as he returned to that gray lumpy printery with its dragon's-back roof giving up its dew, mist rising, bleeding into the gray sky, and all its windows dark and secret, declaring its business was not for you to know.

When the Frenchman went inside my father finally spoke. "That's the job then."

He stared at me, pointing with his big burned nose like some fierce ostrich.

"What job?"

"Shut your mouth," he said.

My father was a plucky man. But now I knew him seriously afraid, and his fear made him hard and unkind toward me.

"Tell no one," he said. "Here," he said, throwing my britches at me like they were the skin of a dead beast. "Here." He handed me a bar of soap. And so we occupied ourselves as usual for a Sunday but I had never, on any day, in all my life, felt my heart so heavy or seen my father's eyes so dull and far away.

At last, we brought our clothes ashore and spread them on the gorse, hoping some breeze would come before the thunderstorm, to put it mildly.

V

IT WAS A SUNDAY, and the revolutionary factions of English printers dispersed themselves around the woods and riverbank in endless arguments about the rights of man. There, amid Piggott's graveyard of wheels and broken axles, my father and the Weasel conferred together. I fancy I can make an honest sketch of this: the single iron ring springing free of a rotting wheel, the humpbacked printery, the elder bushes, the oaks and poplars, the fuzz of hatch above the shallow stream, the Piggotts' cat rubbing around the Weasel's bandy legs, my lanky daddy with his hands pushing violently into his pants, and there, in Jack Larrit's white scrubbed hand, an assignat, all golden in the sun.

I had no idea that thousands of these assignats were forged in France and Britain and the Netherlands. Their purpose was to devalue the currency and thereby, by dint of ink and paper, destroy the beloved Revolution. All I knew was that forgery was a capital offense. Witnessing the two printers examine Mr. Watkins' work I understood I had betrayed the poor queer creature, trapped inside his cage.

Of course I should have confessed to Mr. Watkins, but I wished him to like me and I was so ashamed that, on that Sunday night, I would not take my burin lessons. I said I was needed by my father.

"Indeed," he said. His eyes were as frail as plover eggs, the prey of raging boys.

VI

NEXT MORNING the Weasel slung his misbegotten bedroll across his narrow shoulders and headed off into the woods without, it seemed, a word to anyone. Concerning this departure the printers--arguers and complainers to a man--made not a boo, although the absence of our best pressman would make more work for everyone.

So it was that my father, a compositor of the first water, was removed from his tray of type and ordered to take Weasel's place at the press. Da would now work with Chooka, five foot tall, a proud persnickety pressman with chin and nose like Punch. My da's poor work would have Chooka in a rage, I knew it. But it was worse than that, for Piggott had contracted to produce a fancy chapbook on expensive linen paper, and the pressmen would be fined for spoilage.

Yet after the third sheet was thrown away, I witnessed little Chooka, who had a famous temper, reach up and pat my father's back while he, my da, grinned and shrugged in shame.

And still no one blamed the Weasel. Which meant--there was a Higher Cause. And although I was only a printer's devil, I understood that every one of these men was sworn to this cause in secret. They were comrades, solid as a wall.

Piggott ordered me to perform a hundred dirty chores, including a message to the Dit'sum Swan which meant running across the stubbled fields with the beery harvesters calling me to them
cootchum cootchum coo
. I returned alive, with a fierce stitch in my side. I was late for Mr. Watkins who was so kind to me I almost cried. I mean, he offered me the burin, but how could I touch it after my betrayal?

"Sorry Mr. Watkins."

"You won't sit, boy?"

"No time sir," I said. I was certain the Weasel had gone to report Watkins to what you might call
the authorities
. I thought, This fellow will never make his book of birds.

"What is it, boy? What happened?"

I thought, I have destroyed you. "Nothing sir," I said.

He brushed his fine white hair back from his high forehead and considered me directly, long and slow until I felt my ears burn red.

"Sorry sir," I said, and carefully maneuvered his doings through the doorway.

"No time for Mr. Watkins, boy?" he called.

I snaked away from him, holding his piss pot high, pulling myself forward on my elbows.

That afternoon, when the men took their tea-oh on the steps, I drew my da away among the rotting wheels.

"Where did Mr. Stokes go?" I asked, for I was not permitted to call him Weasel.

My father looked directly at my face which I imagine thus--dry lips parted, brow furrowed, heat showing on the cheeks and mottling down the smudgy neck. He reached a hand toward me and I went to hold it tight, but he ducked inside my cover and got his fingers in my ribs and when he had me wailing and shrieking without breath he grabbed me by my ankles and held me upside down so that my penny and two favorite stones fell to the ground.

I was upside down, blood filling my head like a bucket, crying loud--"Where is he?"

"Good old Weasel is a journeyman," my father said, setting me back the right way and helping me pick up my treasure. "He's journeying. It's his nature," he said, and gave me back my penny and another one besides, but even this did not persuade me. If the Weasel had been a French printer, that would be his nature sure enough--always on the road, traveling to jobs as far away as Switzerland. The French printers got paid for the time they were on the road, but the English printers had no such excitements and don't argue if you please, for this is true.

I knew my father was lying to me about the Weasel's nature, but if I was worried about the assignat and worried about Mr. Watkins, I was worried about my daddy even more. If you were ever a boy you will remember the worries of a boy and how they swarm around you, and if I have had no reason to name mine for you until now, it does not mean they were not my constant companions. A boy's life, like a bird's life, is not what is generally assumed. For bird examples, watch the whitethroats gorging in the bramble patches, the warblers gluttoning among the blackberries, the blackcaps swinging off the rose hips, all in a panic to get fat before the summer ends. I, for my part, was forever in a fret lest my daddy die like my mother and leave me with no one to care for me, no one to save me from my cheeky nature, my mimicking, my fear of strangers on the road or in the woods at night, tramps, scamps, hermits, men who put paper noses on their face to frighten boys.

He was a dear tender man, and if he lied to me it was only because he loved me, and his eyes were moist when he gave me the penny and I put my hand inside his and walked back to the printery and worked very conscientious until tea.

Only two days later I was on the lanes with my cart of newspapers, and all around me bindweed, bluebell, chamomile and coltsfoot, ferns uncurling like a thought, white butterflies around my shoulders. All these things I could name and draw, although not so well as I imagined, but they were my deep familiars and they must have given me that comfort a boy does not know he has until it is lost to him and he finds himself robbed of names by providence. There was heather, wild primrose, and around the corner of the rutted lane there came a man walking, duck-footed and bandy-legged, a new white straw hat upon his head.

It was the Weasel and I saw him lift his staff and was afraid.

But of course--you guessed already--he greeted me with a punch to the arm and a sticky dust-covered humbug from his pocket. I sucked on my lolly and he picked a paper from my cart and read through Bunter's setting, finding fifteen faults in as many column inches. "Home sweet home," said he.

And after that everything was calm, and I was able to visit Mr. Watkins and take up his burin once again. It was still summer. My da and I saw glowworms in the night. Then it was almost autumn. I found hazelnuts, hawthorn berries, and sycamore seeds among the leaves. The harvest was ending and as I cut across the paths to Dit'sum I would see the drunken workers at their games, throwing their reap hooks at a sheaf. Now I had worn the sharp edges off my guilty conscience Mr. Watkins became cooler to me once again. Just the same, he instructed me in what is called the crosshatch. After that I was finally permitted to attempt a creature. I chose a butterfly and he was very fierce about it but I knew I did it well enough because he recognized it as a silver-washed fritillary and taught me how to spell its name.

Then I was sent to deliver a box of wedding invitations to the next village after Dit'sum, I forget its name, and I cut across the commons toward its spire only to find myself set upon by a mob of harvesters who came rushing out of the deep shade of an oak and chased me across a ridge and down toward a sluggish stream, and by the time I emerged onto a road through a hedgerow I was cut and bleeding and had lost my invitations and my courage. I set off crying, having no idea of where I was.

I passed a group of men with scythes who did not speak to me, although I suspected them of being the ones who chased me so I would not ask them the way. The hedgerows were high and it was impossible to get any bearing and when a carriage came along I had to press myself back into the buckthorn. It was a very large and black affair, doubtless with some fancy name I did not know, and I can remember no more than the single line of gold along its trim. When its gleaming back wheel was almost past me it stopped, leaving me imprisoned, so to speak, behind its bars. I would have ducked beneath the axle, but feared being squashed and so I remained, black-faced, slashed with red, pinned like a butterfly. I was thus easily identified by the gentleman inside the coach, who poked his smooth-shaven face out the window to consider me.

"Printer's devil," called he. His voice was very Windsor arsehole and he had a hat like an admiral's.

I pulled my forelock although my father would have wished I did not. "Yes sir."

"And where is your printery, devil?"

"Near Dit'sum, sir."

"Is it old Piggott who is your master? You know a chap named Weasel?"