Taking Off (19 page)

Chapter 40

I, Panmuphle

TO DISTRACT MYSELF from feelings of bitterness and betrayal, I decided to make another try at my translation of the
Adventures & Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician.
Reading what I had done, I felt that I understood Panmuphle's frustration at being unable even to locate the dilatory tenant of the Bonhommes, felt it at a level deeper than the words on the page. It resembled, I saw on rereading, my frustration at being unable to find a friend when I needed one. I also saw that Monsieur Jarry—as I thought of him in my schoolboy way—intended Panmuphle to be ridiculous. He was officious with regard to the duties of his office, jealous of its perquisites, and vigorous in his efforts to avoid blame. He was a petty bureaucrat, a type of being my father often railed against at the dinner table. I began trying to plod through what I had done, word for word, but the more I worked, the more clearly I could see in my mind's eye the interview between Panmuphle and the mayor of Paris when the bumbling bailiff returned in defeat and began to make his excuses. I found myself straying from the letter of the text to what I took to be the spirit, and I produced this:

The mayor's door stood partly open, as it ordinarily does when he is at work within. I knocked with due deference, employing the modest tap that my dear wife did me the honor of referring to as “the badge of my diplomatism” when I demonstrated it for her. After a moment's pause, during which I detected no response to my knock from monsieur le mayor, I peered discreetly around the frame of the door, knocked again, cleared my throat, and said, as a request that he acknowledge and admit me, “Monsieur le Mayor?”

Employing that gruff tone that he affects to hide from others the avuncular affection he feels for me, he asked, “What is it now, Panmuphle?”

“Sir,” I said, “today I have—”

“Today?” he said, raising his head from his work and regarding me with querulous eyes. “What day is today?”

“It is the eighth of February, sir.” He made no response, but his eyes seemed to grow more querulous. “In the year eighteen hundred ninety-eight,” I added.

With an economical gesture of the hand, he indicated that I should proceed.

“Today I have been frustrated in my attempt to do my duty, sir.”

“Then today is a day like all days, is it not?” he said, attempting through this drollery to put me at my ease.

“Yes, thank you, sir,” I said, with a smile to show that I understood his humorous intent. “The source of my frustration, sir, is my inability to locate a certain Dr. Faustroll.”

“Faustroll? Faustroll?” he muttered.

“Yes, sir. He is the tenant, or perhaps the lodger, of Mr. and Mrs. Jacques Bonhomme, owners of a house situated at 100 Richer Street.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. They appealed to me, sir, as the elected member for the district.”

“Mm.”

“Dr. Faustroll—if indeed he has the right to the apellation—owes to the Bonhommes the sum of three hundred seventy-two thousand francs and 27 centimes, for eleven terms of rent on the premises annexed to the Bonhomme house and numbered 100 bis.”

“Mm.”

“I made my way to Richer Street, sir, and found the lodgings of Dr. Faustroll.”

“You are certain of that?”

“But yes, Monsieur le Mayor. The number 100 was clearly marked on the house.”

“And you were in the correct street?”

“Monsieur—”

“Go on, go on.”

“I rang the bell, I knocked, and I called the name of Dr. Faustroll.”

“And getting no response, you left, I suppose.”

“For lunch, yes, but I returned following my lunch, and again I rang the bell, again I knocked, and again I called the name of Dr. Faustroll. Again and again.”

“No one came to the door, I suppose.”

“No one.”

“Forgive me, Panmuphle, but you are certain that you were knocking at the door of the residence of Dr. Faustroll?”

“I interrogated the neighbors, sir, and they declared to me that it was indeed the residence of Dr. Faustroll.”

“Had you prepared a Commandment in accordance with article 819 of the Code of Civil Procedure?”

“Yes, sir. I had, sir.” I unrolled the Commandment and displayed it, but he did not look up from the papers on his desk. “I put considerable effort into it, and into the two copies,” I said. “Notice the care I've taken with the lettering—”

“Panmuphle,” he said with a sigh betraying the weight of his office, “why did you not have some relative or neighbor of Dr. Faustroll sign the original and take a copy to present to Faustroll when he returned?”

“Sir, I could not find anyone who was willing to do that. There were no relatives of Faustroll's there, nor any servants, and none of the neighbors was willing to assume the duty of signing my original and being presented with the copy.” I paused for a moment. The account of my struggles had left me a bit breathless. “I was uncertain, sir, what my next action ought to be, so I returned here immediately to speak with you personally, seeking your advice and counsel.”

“Is the Commandment properly worded?”

“But of course, sir,” I said, and, to prove that it was so, I began to read the Commandment to him: “‘I, René-Isidore Panmuphle,
et cetera,
hereby make Commandment,
et cetera,
to Mr. Faustroll, doctor,
et cetera,
within a period of time not to exceed twenty-four hours to pay to the plaintiff,
et cetera,
the sum of three hundred seventy-two thousand francs and 27 centimes,
et cetera,
declaring to him that failing to satisfy,
et cetera
—'”

“All right, all right,
et cetera,
” he growled in his collegial way. “Let me have it.”

I laid the original before him and he signed it with a flourish. “Leave a copy at Faustroll's residence,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Nail it to the door if you must.”

“Certainly.”

“And see that the proper stamps are affixed to it.”

“Of course, sir,” I said, backing out the door. “Thank you, sir.”

While I was at work on this version of the very first part of the
Adventures & Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician,
I experienced the realization—a realization accompanied by a great deal of pleasure—that I was doing something like flying: I had taken off from the original and had embarked on a flight of fancy. I could not help but think about what Mr. MacPherson had said earlier: “If they set you the task of writing a dissertation, perhaps you'll choose to do it on the question of whether an imaginary solution can be built from scratch, from whole cloth, or must needs be built from a kit, a set of precut pieces that we cut as we live, without even noticing that we're doing the work.” I was working from a kit, a set of precut pieces, and I was acutely aware of my having done the work of making the pieces over all the years that had preceded my taking off.

Chapter 41

The Boss Takes His Place

ON THE MORNING OF THE DAY when my father and I were to begin building the aerocycle, alone, I was reluctant to get out of bed. I could hear my father downstairs, whistling, as he did whenever a burst of enthusiasm came over him and he felt for a while as if he were a boy again, feeling the boyish lift of possibility in his life. I was as reluctant to join my father in building the aerocycle as I was to join him in his enthusiasm. I found enthusiasm unseemly in him. Recalling that morning and the feelings that kept me in bed, I think that I may at the time have found enthusiasm unseemly in any adult. From the point of view of my teenage self, adults didn't wear enthusiasm well. Seeing them under the influence of enthusiasm was like seeing them drunk and telling jokes. From my point of view, my tipsy parents embarrassed themselves in attempting to be funny, and the next morning they seemed to realize that they had. I thought that they should also have realized that they embarrassed themselves in attempting to recover their youthful enthusiasm. I know that I was embarrassed for my father when I saw the signs of his enthusiasm—his whistling and bustling and the fraternal attitude that he took toward me when the fit was on him, as if we had always been great friends and he had never been the Grand Naysayer.

Hiding from my father's enthusiasm wasn't my only reason for lingering in bed. I was also giving my friends time to gather secretly to surprise me. I nursed the slim hope that they had conspired to play a joke on me. If that were the case, then they must now be gathering outside, or in the garage, preparing to surprise me when I came down to begin work. I wanted to give them plenty of time to gather so that the slugabeds and stragglers among them wouldn't miss seeing my look of surprise and gratitude when I discovered that they were all there to help me, that they were friends indeed. The moment promised to be poignant and exhilarating, with lots of backslapping and hugging and many lumpy throats. I didn't want anybody to miss it. I strained to hear any sound that might betray their secret assembly, but I couldn't hear a thing. Evidently, they were a stealthy bunch, those friends of mine.

Then I heard footsteps—but not outside, where the sound of the footsteps of my gathering friends would have come from. They were footsteps inside the house, footsteps approaching the foot of the stairs, and they were my father's footsteps.

Then: “Peter!”

From me, reluctantly: “Yeah?”

“Time to get going! Sooner begun is sooner done!”

“Have you been talking to Mr. MacPherson?” I groaned.

“I—um—” he began, and then he added, “I—ah—who?”

“Never mind,” I said. “I'm getting up.”

I got up. I dressed. I brushed my teeth. I shaved. (Wait a minute. That can't be right. I wasn't shaving yet. Or was I? This was just before the end of my junior year in high school. Because I had started kindergarten early and skipped the third grade, I was only fifteen. Was I shaving? Now that I think about it, I believe that I was, perhaps as often as monthly. Maybe I did shave that morning, mindful that someone might take commemorative snapshots.)

I dawdled through breakfast, stretching it out and stretching it out, until, finally, there was nothing to do but get up and go out to the garage. My friends were not there, but my father was, bustling about. He had already scratched a sketch of the wing framework in the sand that served as the floor of the garage and laid a few lengths of aluminum tubing in place on the sketch. That should have been my work. I wondered whether he had gotten it right.

“How's it going?” I asked.

“Great! Just great!” he claimed.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Hey, I'm not the boss here,” he said, incredibly. “This is your project, your baby, your dream. You tell me what you want me to do.”

I asked myself whether he could possibly mean that. Was he really there to help me? Or was he there, as he usually was, to tell me that what I was doing, or what I wanted to do, was wrong, that he knew a better way, the only way, his way? I decided to find out.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me see that sketch.”

He gave it to me. With my sketch in hand, I began walking the perimeter of his version, his lines drawn in the sand, making corrections. I could almost hear him bristling, but I didn't care or dare to look up to see whether he was fuming at my impudence in changing what he had done. I kept my attention strictly on the work of making the template on the floor match the sketch. When I had finished, and only then, I raised my head to look at him, to see how he had taken my treating him as he had always treated me, correcting his work without asking, altering it as I thought it should be altered, and that was when I saw that we were not alone. Behind my father, just outside the garage door, was quite a crowd. Everyone I had asked to help was there, and many more, including Mr. MacPherson, who immediately snatched the sketch from me and went around the template again, correcting my corrections. All my friends were there, and a lump began to form in my throat, as I had known it would.

“Hey, Pete,” said Spike, “whatcha doin'?”

I swallowed hard and said, as nonchalantly as I could, “Building an aerocycle.”

“Oh, right! I remember you mentioned that. Mind if we help?”

“No,” I said as if the idea had never occurred to me. “I don't mind.”

“All right, everyone!” said Mr. MacPherson. “The surprise portion of the event is over. I'm sure we can all see that our little stunt was a great success and Peter is deeply moved by our demonstration of loyalty. Now it's time to get to work. I want this machine to fly in forty-eight hours. Line up to my right and I'll assign tasks based on ability and experience.”

People began lining up. I didn't see any reason to join them. After all, I was the boss.

“Peter?” said Mr. MacPherson with a gesture toward the end of the line. It would have been useless to object. I took my place with the others.

“Mr. Leroy?” said Mr. MacPherson, looking over his glasses at my father.

“I was already working—” he began, but Mr. MacPherson's stare was enough to silence him. He fell into line behind me.

It was an awkward moment for both of us, shuffling along at the end of the line, awaiting assignments on my project in his garage. After a long, silent minute, my father said, “You have a lot of friends.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I envy you that,” he said.

Chapter 42

Flyguys

AS I APPROACHED Albertine's hospital room the next evening, I could hear her humming. It was as unmistakable a sign of enthusiasm in her as whistling had been in my father.

“You sound chipper,” I said as I leaned over to kiss her.