Revolution Baby (21 page)

Otherwise, as far as teachers went, the school had not been kind to us. Everyone hated the chemistry teacher, Monsieur Masson, because he was strict beyond belief and horribly cold. While his attitude meant that his classes were pretty dull affairs, from time to time he had to pay the price for being so despicable: he was the butt of practical jokes.

One day, when Monsieur Masson was walking up and down the stairs in his white coat in the amphitheater explaining some concept to do with the periodic table, little Alfred, who didn't know what more he could do to stay awake, splashed some purple ink at him with his pen. Silence. The teacher turned around abruptly. He stood there, unmoving, for a few seconds that seemed to drag on forever. He stared at Alfred, then walked over to him—probably very quickly, but the images I have retained of this event unfold in slow motion. Not saying a thing, he grabbed him by the shirt and forced him to stand up. Then he motioned to him to descend a few steps . . . and thump! kicked him soundly in the back. Alfred fell to the ground, rolled down the steps . . . and didn't get up. We all looked at one another, not knowing whether we should rush over to him or stay where we were in our seats. Finally, Monsieur Masson went up to Alfred and turned him over. He was all floppy. The professor went red in the face and shouted that we had to help him carry the kid to the infirmary.

Alfred recovered all right, but this incident was fatal to the chemistry teacher's reputation. A wind of rebellion blew through the classroom. After Alfred's fainting spell, Monsieur Masson found it harder and harder to maintain discipline in his classes. As for me, I wrote short stories during the chemistry classes, pretending to be taking notes with the utmost diligence. As I knew that chemistry would never be of any use in my life, I preferred to spend the time perfecting my literary talent. From the time I had started at the lycée, my decision had been made: I would become a journalist or a novelist. Or a bit of both. So science would not be much use to me.

 

While nobody liked Monsieur Masson, where Monsieur Vidal the drawing teacher was concerned, it was more of a personal matter between the two of us. A personal matter that would also lead to a loss of consciousness. And this time, the fault would be mine alone.

I was not good at drawing or art in general. I don't know why, but between what I imagined in my head and what appeared on the paper there was always an insurmountable gap. And yet I really made an effort. But I think it just wasn't in the genes. And as for Monsieur Vidal . . . well, my handicap just made him laugh. He loved showing my drawings to the entire class, and thought it was great fun to have them guess what I was trying to depict. It was painful. And humiliating. My drawings got more and more slapdash as the year progressed. And Monsieur Vidal derived more and more pleasure from them.

His cruelty toward me was not the only reason for my hatred. It's true, I swear! There were political reasons, too, for we were poles apart. Can you imagine, my tormentor thought that throughout the entire history of France there were only two heroes worthy of admiration: Joan of Arc and Marshal Philippe Pétain. Joan of Arc, the maid of Orléans, I don't mind. She kicked the English out of Orléans, that's not bad. But in my humble opinion, she was still no more than an enlightened crank. And as for Marshal Pétain, he was at best an opportunistic collaborationist and at worst, a fascist, anti-Semitic old man who brought about France's downfall so that he could seize power.

If I've devoted this long preamble to my relations with Monsieur Vidal, to describe the hatred he aroused in me, it's not solely my self-esteem at work. All alone in my corner, I was quietly plotting my revenge. Fairly recently I had started spending a lot of time in joke and novelty shops. And I needed some new victims on whom to test my purchases. Monsieur Vidal seemed the perfect candidate. I hesitated between a stink bomb and a whoopee cushion, placed discreetly on his chair just before class. It would be funny, but I wasn't sure . . . Both were fairly common, and not nearly nasty enough.

One morning I had a sudden burst of inspiration. When he had his back turned I blew a strong dose of sneezing powder at his head. Let's just say I might have overdone it. Monsieur Vidal didn't even have time to realize what had happened before he started choking . . . His lips went blue and he collapsed on the floor in a faint. Silence in the classroom. Followed by intense commotion. And silence again when Monsieur Vidal got back to his feet, stood there for a few moments holding onto a chair, then left the room. We sat stock still, not daring to imagine what would happen next. Personally, I felt sad. My revenge had been more spectacular than planned, but for some unknown reason it didn't satisfy me. And I was worried about what was to come.

For a very long while, nothing happened. All you could hear in the classroom was some whispering and the rustling of paper. Then the door opened. It was the headmaster.

“Monsieur Vidal has just been to my office. I suppose that what happened to him is the result of a particularly stupid prank. I will not leave this room until I have the name of the perpetrator of these vile shenanigans. Would anyone care to come forward?”

Silence.

“So be it. Well, would anyone care to denounce the culprit?”

Long silence.

“Given the gravity of the incident, I will allow myself to resort to a method that I don't often use. I will give the culprit, or anyone who knows his identity, two more minutes to come forward. After that, the entire class will be punished, very severely.”

Heavy silence.

Which I eventually broke, after ten seconds or so had gone by.

“It was me . . . ”

“Excuse me. Could you speak up, Master Binet?”

“It was me.”

“You are guilty, is that what you are saying?”

“Yes.”

“Good, good. Then come with me. The rest of you, take out a book, a notebook, anything, find something to do until the end of class. Quietly.”

My tête-à-tête with the headmaster was not exactly pleasant. He asked me where I had bought my sneezing powder. I tried as best I could to protect my sources. My punishment consisted of three days' suspension from school and a zero for conduct. As was to be expected, this misadventure did not improve my relations with the drawing teacher. But he no longer dared make fun of me. He merely acted as if I did not exist, which, in the end, was better.

 

All of this was nothing compared to the scolding I got from Francine when I came home and informed her that I had three days off ahead of me. She was furious! No matter how often I explained that Monsieur Vidal deserved his punishment, and that it had not gone the way I expected, she would not calm down. She thought that for someone who was living under an assumed name with false papers, I had acted extremely carelessly. She wasn't wrong. I hadn't seen things from that angle.

“I hope you didn't say that it was your teacher's political opinions that you gave you such pleasure in causing him to faint.”

“Well, no, I'm not that stupid.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

You might be tempted to think that it had something to do with the episode of the sneezing powder, but Francine assured me it didn't: one month after my three-day suspension, she informed me that I would no longer be going to Jean-Baptiste-Say, that I would no longer be living with Michel and her, and that I would be a boarder in a little school in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, not far from Paris. For the first time, I spoke up to protest against this change in my life the adults had planned for me.

“I like it here, nobody suspects a thing, I have friends, everything is great. Why do I have to move again?”

“It's your mother's decision. She has her reasons.”

“Then let her come and explain them to me in person. She's not the one who has to make up a new story every time, and always has to be careful not to make mistakes whenever she opens her mouth. I want to know her reasons, and if they're no good, I don't see why I should move from here!”

Francine didn't say anything. She looked sad. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable. What if it was Michel and Francine who were afraid, and wanted to avoid putting their own son's life in danger because of me?

“You know, your mother isn't doing this just to annoy you. I am sure that someday, when you grow up, she'll be able to justify every decision she has made. And that she won't regret a single one.”

“But I'm big now, I'm fourteen! Let her come and justify her decisions, and if it's true she has good reasons, then I'll go to Saint-More-of-the-Fussies without a fuss, and I'll re-re-rehearse my story all over again, or even make up a brand-new one.”

“She can't come right now, it would be too dangerous, for her and for us. You have to trust her and not ask any questions. I promise you that you'll understand someday, when the war is over.”

 

Lena. Her maternal instinct was not very developed. I'd had several mothers in my life, and so I was able to compare. And at times I suffered because of it, and this must have influenced my opinion of her. But it would be unfair not to mention her superb qualities as a militant, which were the reason for this new change in my life. Lena was a very important member of the Resistance. She was brave. And intelligent. And extremely intuitive, which is no doubt what helped her to survive the war.

According to what she told me later on, one of my mother's resistance strategies was to always leave the house well dressed, wearing makeup, and perfectly groomed. In France, roundups were generally carried out by French policemen, so it was surely a good tactic. One day she was standing on the platform in the métro when she saw some police officers asking everyone for their papers. In her handbag my mother had some leaflets from the Resistance. Like a shot, she went straight up to be first to be checked by the officers. She begged them, simpering, “Oh please, oh please, officer, I'm in the most terrible hurry, I have a date with my lover, and I'm already terribly late.” She went ahead of everyone without even having to show her papers, while the policeman gave her a knowing wink.

 

I had no choice, I had to get ready to move yet again. We came up with a new version of Roger Binet's life, somewhere in between the one used in Normandy and the one used in Jean-Baptiste-Say. Once again I had fun learning the broad outlines and inventing new details.

One week after learning that I would have to move, I was boarding with Monsieur Barbier, a math teacher at my new school, the lycée at Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. There were about a dozen of us boys living upstairs in a huge house, while the teacher lived on the ground floor. We tried to avoid him as much as we could, this surly old man with a white beard full of tiny relics of his meals.

This time it was the French teacher I liked best of all, Monsieur Noiret. He had us read books we really liked, not just the things “you have to have read in order to show you have some culture.” And I found out that required reading can bring you as much happiness as a book you've chosen yourself. Maybe because we didn't expect anything, and we thought we'd be bored to hell. So when, instead, you find yourself captivated, and you become feverishly absorbed in the story, and you keep delaying the time to switch off the light to go to sleep, it's even more intoxicating than with an author you know in advance you will like. Monsieur Noiret gave us novels that were for young people, not children, books that had bad words in them, for example. Like
The War of the Buttons,
which has this sentence I adore: “Fancy-schmancy, super-duper, shit, how amazing,” which became the favorite expression of the fifth-year students at the Collège in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. And there were the shorter versions: “That's fancy-schmancy, super-duper!” or “Shit, that's super-duper!” And of course, a new insult was added to our repertory: “candy-ass.”

 

We were in the thick of the war. It was the real thing, with heavy bombing and all. You could sense the end was in sight . . . and victory. When we were at the lycée and heard the air raid sirens, we had to rush out into the trenches dug in the schoolyard. Sometimes we were glad to have a break, it was almost like recess. For example, there was one time when the English teacher had just asked me a tricky question, and the sirens started up. And when we got back to class and the teacher asked, “Right, where were we, before the air raid?” the others were terrific, no one said a thing. But in the long run you got tired of it, those endless minutes when you were all crammed together in the trenches. So a few pals and I began discreetly slipping off to run and jump in the Marne. After all, we had all learned that the bombing only killed other people. And besides, there was no danger that the Americans might start bombing swimmers! By day, it was mainly the Americans bombing, from very high up, with their immense flying fortresses.

At night, at Monsieur Barbier's, we would go down into the cellar when the sirens started wailing. There too, we began to see how pointless it was, and above all, how boring. So after the first few times, we went to sit rather out on the roof of the house. From there we could watch a magnificent show: the DCA, the antiaircraft defense, lit up the planes with huge searchlights (at night, these were mainly English planes, flying very low) and shot at them; we also saw the fireworks created by the rockets the planes fired to show where to bomb . . . This was a hundred times better than any fireworks display. And sometimes, if we were lucky, the bombing was close enough for everything to begin to vibrate around us. When this happened, it was more than just fireworks, it was like being at an amusement park. In Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, during this period near the end of the war, we were rarely bored.

On Saturdays I went back to Paris. I would take the train as far as the Bastille, and from there I walked to Lena's house (Madame Hélène Colombier) on the passage Montgallet in the twelfth arrondissement. I didn't have any friends in the neighborhood, so I took a lot of reading along.