even know what you saw, do you?” She challenged Jeanot and Dédé again. The latter had told Jeanot that he didn’t like Babette. That was comforting, in a way. Dédé said she was a know-it-all like his cousin, whom he didn’t like either. He professed no interest in naked men and women and said he had come to Jeanot’s party strictly for the cake and a movie. The cake was apparently only so-so. His mother, he scoffed, made better, and he was massively disappointed in the film. He left the room, calling to his parents that he wanted to go home.
There was now a dreadful silence emanating from the gathered adults. The projectionist’s wife was ashen and weeping quietly, protesting she hadn’t known her husband possessed such things; it called into question everything about her marriage. Surely Maman was exaggerating, she insisted. The movie may have been a bit risqué, but pornographic? She pushed past her husband who was still trying to wind the film onto the reel, grabbed a handful of film and held it up to the light. She dropped the offending material as if it were alive. She slapped her husband in the face with a resounding crack, then stumbled out the door gasping apologies.
Parents rushed to their offspring to check on their health. The kids were rounded up and a mother with operatic ambitions led them in song: Frère Jacques, Au Clair de la Lune, and Alouette, and finally, out of sheer desperation, Edith Piaf’s Rien de Rien, which they hummed since no one knew the words except Babette. Small voices reached for the high notes and broke, and when the singing was over almost everyone left, some surreptitiously taking back unopened presents. All that remained were cake crumbs on the floor and half-empty glasses of lemonade and Orangina.
Jeanot watched it all happen as from a distance. He hadn’t been that interested in a party in the first place but was glad some of the presents were left. He sat on the floor and unwrapped them carefully, Babette squatting at his side.
There was a Jokari; a hard rubber ball attached to a long elastic band that in turn was tied to a heavy stand. The game came with two paddles, and Jeanot thought the courtyard would be big enough but wondered who in the apartment complex would have the time to play with him. There were four lead cowboys, a book on Indians of the Amazon, a box of chocolates that was obviously a hand-me-down gift, a scarf, three pairs of socks and four pairs of cotton underwear.
Babette took the box of chocolates and opened it. Three pieces were missing from the center row.
“Who gave you this?”
Jeanot thought it might have been Dédé. That would explain the missing pieces. “I don’t know. Dédé maybe?” He bent down and sniffed the box. It smelled like onions. “Oui. Dédé.”
Babette made a face, selected a chocolate and popped it onto her mouth. She chewed pensively, then gave Jeanot a hug. “You’re going to be much more interesting in a few years, when you understand things.”
Jeanot considered the statement and shrugged it off. “That movie wasn’t fun at all. It was really dumb, and those naked people...ils n’étaient pas beaux. They weren’t very pretty. And they didn’t say anything, or even smile at each other. What was Maman thinking?”
He opened the book on the Amazon and looked for pictures of shrunken heads. He didn’t find any; the photos showed multi-colored birds, men in dirty trousers and raggedy hats, and a lot of green jungle.
He added the new lead cowboys to the Wild West diorama in his room. They were all duplicates and he placed them at opposite ends of the table.
After a while, he and Babette took the Jokari to the courtyard. Babette managed to hit the ball repeatedly, sending it speeding until it reached the end of the elastic and came bounding back. Jeanot swatted at it, missed most of the time, and then found the rhythm of the game. They exchanged strokes until the concierge told them to stop.
When they returned to the apartment, Jeanot said, “Maman told me that it’s storks that bring babies, not naked men and women.”
Babette paused in mid-step, gave him a searching look and said, “Your Maman is wrong.”
Chapter 8
Jeanot’s école maternelle at rue des Epinettes annually put on a show for parents and local dignitaries to involve them in the education of their children. Originally launched by the mayor of the 17th arrondissement as a platform for politicking, over time the show had become a spectacle, with preparations beginning at the start of the school year and involving stage sets, music, sound effects, costumes and special lighting. This year’s special guest was Jules Dassin. Jeanot’s teacher, Madame Charbonneau explained that Dassin was a director whose 1942 film Reunion in France created a stir when it was shown in Paris after the war. Madame Charbonneau was probably, thought Jeanot, somewhere in her thirties. She had a pleasant face, an inviting bosom, and was, according to the whispers of some of the older students, involved with the married school principal.
The school’s show, Les Peaux Rouges, was a presentation loosely based on the battle of Great Meadows during the French and Indian Wars. There was some confusion regarding historical facts and costuming; cowboys, Indians of many different varieties and tribes, as well as the occasional pilgrim all peopled the stage at the same time.
Jeanot was a Sioux, an unimportant one whose sole function was to be tied to a stake and danced around by other Indians as flames of yellow light devoured his feet and legs. He was to be stoic as he burned; an example of what his teacher referred to as “the noble savage.” It was a very small part and Maman confessed to being annoyed that her only son should be relegated to the role of sacrificial Sioux.
Jeanot, on his own, had practiced looking both brave and resigned as the fire devoured him. He wondered if he should writhe and make faces to engage the audience in the drama of the moment, but since he’d been expressly instructed not to utter a word or sound, he decided he would stand as straight as the binding ropes allowed and burn like a man.
Maman rejected this. She mentioned the idea of painting Jeanot a glorious shade of red, which, she assured him, would make him stand out among the pale-skinned Parisian urchins. Finally, she hit upon the notion of dipping him in red food coloring to give him an all-over ruddiness truer to the American Indian complexion. Jeanot thought it was a good idea too, and the morning of the performance he climbed into the bathtub and marinated for an hour in the red water. Maman told him to hold his breath as she dunked his head under several times. While he steeped, she also dyed his hair jet black. The transformation was amazing and ghastly, decided Jeanot, gazing at himself in the bathroom mirror. When Papa saw Jeanot, he turned ashen and was speechless during the entire drive to the school.
Maman wrapped Jeanot in a blanket and walked him to the refectory, where a complicated multi-platformed stage had been erected. Half-naked children with pastel war paints milled around, as did cowboys in hats with cloth fringes pinned to their sleeves. Inexplicably, one sweating boy was dressed as an Eskimo. There was a teepee made of brown butcher paper, and a stake in the center of the topmost platform. This would be Jeanot’s post.
He took a deep breath and dropped his towel.
Madame Charbonneau looked at Jeanot standing redly at attention in his loincloth and her hand flew to her mouth. She turned to Maman, eyes wide.
“Madame, your child is sick. He has la rougeole!”
Neither Jeanot nor Maman had considered Jeanot’s hue might be mistaken for measles. It took them both a moment to regroup, to react. “Non, non, Madame! I assure you our Jeanot is perfectly healthy. He insisted on being as red as a real Indian and there was no arguing with him. I came back from the market and there he was, dyed from head to foot! God knows if he’ll ever be pink again!” She laughed, maybe a bit too brightly.
Jeanot
