when Maman had answered an ad in France-Soir seeking four-, five-, and six-year-old children for a day’s work. The parents, she assured Papa, would be paid a massive sum; the equivalent to two months’ salary for an entry-level government worker if the photos were published.
Ever since she’d seen an advertisement for a little girl’s mink coat costing 300 francs, Maman had been talking to her family about opening a dressmaking shop. She had a good eye for fashion, was nimble with a needle, and had been given a non-functional Singer electric sewing machine by the American Captain’s wife. Papa had fixed the machine by resoldering a loose wire, and he and Maman had calculated the startup costs of Créations St. Paul. They would produce expensive children’s clothing for those Papa referred to as “the stupidly wealthy.” Jeanot’s modeling debut, his parents assured him, would be the perfect entrée to a haute couture career.
Maman had a photographer friend take a few shots of Jeanot and sent them to the advertising agency. To her delight and amazement, and to Jeanot’s chagrin, he was one of twelve children selected.
That morning was not a good one for him. Earlier, the American girl, Trudy, had snubbed him, calling him something vile in English—he hadn’t understood the word but the meaning was unmistakable—and Mathilde had swatted him for being underfoot. Either at the Gare St. Lazare or in the train to St. Germain, he had lost the tin cowboy he most treasured. Fifteen minutes before the modeling session, Jeanot was in tears, his nose bathed in snot and his eyes red.
Maman wrestled him into the first outfit, a smart if scratchy flannel suit with short pants, an Eton jacket and a matching cap. She won his cooperation only by promising he would get to keep the cap. Based on this vow, Jeanot behaved through three hours of posing and changing outfits, and only when it was all over did he notice the cap was gone, packed up in a cardboard suitcase with the other fashionable items. Furious, he unlatched the suitcase when no one was looking, peed in it, ran away and hid in the woods. Maman, panicked, called the local police which sent two young gendarmes on bicycles. They found Jeanot asleep under a tree, sucking his thumb.
In the café where they later ate lunch, he sat up very straight even though his butt hurt from the spanking, but it was well worth it. The gray flannel cap hidden in the crotch of his pants itched only slightly. Then it struck him on the way to his Tatie’s home that he would never be able to wear the thing in public. That made the punishment costly, cheeks-wise.
Weeks later, Mathilde found the cap and, not knowing its significance, donated it with a bag of old clothes to the Algerian Children’s Relief Fund. She mentioned the donation to Maman, and Jeanot had to pretend complete disinterest until he could retreat to his room and shed a few frustrated tears.
Maman returned to Paris, and Jeanot spent the night and the following day at Tatie’s and thought for the very first time that perhaps crime did not pay.
Tatie slept with her hat on, the veil covering her face down to the nose. Her house smelled of lavender and animal skins, boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs and dog. The mutt, Mathurin, lay like a dead beast on Tatie’s zebra rug and farted quietly in its sleep. He was, thought Jeanot, about the least interesting animal ever created. Tatie’s maid, Guénolé, detested Mathurin, and she abused the beast whenever Tatie was not around, dragging him by his leashed neck for forced walks. Mathurin endured the maltreatment and kicks stoically, and Jeanot decided the animal was so uninteresting as to merit the abuse. The dog’s revenge lacked subtlety. Every once in a while, Mathurin would sneak up on Guénolé, get up on his hind legs and hump her left thigh. This so repulsed the old woman she would be unable to eat for a day or so, and Tatie would feed the table’s leftovers to the dog instead of to the maid.
Jeanot had once asked Guénolé, “Why don’t you like Mathurin?”
The maid had made a spitting sound, even though they were indoors. “That’s not a dog,” she said. “It is a sac de merde.”
Jeanot more or less agreed.
Tatie’s house was filthy. There were large balls of dust, dog hair and stuff Jeanot couldn’t identify on the floor and caught in cobwebs on the ceiling. Guénolé never cleaned. A woman came twice a month to dust and push a wheezing vacuum cleaner across the threadbare rugs, but it didn’t make much difference. Papa and Maman brought their own bread when they visited and refused everything but sardines from cans and hard-boiled eggs from which they peeled the shells themselves. Papa said it was the only way to make sure Guénolé didn’t actually touch what they were going to eat.
Tatie herself survived mostly on white chicken meat smothered in mayonnaise, so that’s what Jeanot ate, too, when he visited, though the mayonnaise always made him queasy. Sometimes there were croissants, occasionally a piece of cheese and some carrots. Jeanot didn’t come for the food, he came for the adventure.
Tatie’s house was a museum, a repository of ancient military uniforms and kepis, ceremonial swords, single-shot infantry rifles, the lower leg of an elephant, and a large rug made of jaguar skins stitched together with three heads on it. There were African spears mounted on one wall, a harpsichord that made dainty sounds, medals and certificates, a full suit of armor so delicate Jeanot thought it must have belonged to a child, an elk antler coat rack with burnooses and ao dais from French Indochina.
Outside under an oil cloth was an old motorcycle with “Vincent” in faded gold on the gas tank. Jeanot wondered who Vincent was but was afraid to ask. Tatie, he knew, had lost someone—either a son or a husband, he wasn’t sure—to a horrible illness contracted in Madagascar; a French colony, he knew, and an island as well. No one was allowed to talk about it. He hoped Vincent wouldn’t come back and claim the machine so maybe he could have it when he was older. He’d ridden on the pillion of a motorcycle just a year earlier and it had been the most exciting thing ever. The thing roared like a lion, accelerated like a dragonfly, vibrated in such a way it made his crotch feel good.
He liked to accompany Tatie when she went shopping. Guénolé no longer went to the market daily since she’d lost her teeth there sampling a peach. Jeanot had been there when it had happened. The dentures had popped out of the maid’s mouth with the peach and fallen to the ground. They were then kicked into the storm drain by a passerby. Guénolé made such a scene that the firemen came and lifted the nearest manhole cover to see if the teeth had survived but of course they hadn’t. The maid returned to Tatie’s house and locked herself in her room. Tatie didn’t seem to care. Guénolé, Jeanot knew, was a moody creature known to not speak for days and who often cursed and attacked the carrots and celery she was peeling with a butcher knife. This self-imposed solitude was nothing remarkable in comparison.
The next day, however, Guénolé and Jeanot went to the market, and the maid spied a pair of eyeglasses on the offending peach seller’s stand. She stole them. She wore them around the house for a week though they made her blind and she bumped into the furniture, but as she explained to the boy, this was an honest exchange. “They took my teeth, I took their eyes. This is how the world works, boy, and you’d better get used to it.”
Jeanot said, “Really? Papa says you should never steal. It’s wrong.”
The maid replied, “I didn’t steal, I borrowed. When they return my teeth, they can have their glasses back.”
When Tatie shopped, she never bought one or two, she bought six or eight. The merchants all knew this and greeted her effusively; very few people, Jeanot thought, bought a half-dozen saucissons or eight wedges of Camembert cheese at once, or, for that matter, six baguettes. It never seemed to bother Tatie that no sooner did the supplies come through the front door than they went out the rear, hidden, Jeanot suspected, under Guénolé’s capacious skirts. He’d caught the maid exchanging them at the local café for two early morning shots of Cointreau.
Tatie
