course, that Oncle Yves was an accomplished pianist, friends with Ravel and Poulenc, that his fame reflected well on the family and by association on Tatie herself. Maman had said as much. None of these things mattered, however. Oncle Yves was a grande tapette, Guénolé once explained gleefully to Jeanot. He was a “sinful homosexual” whose mores were shameful, indecent, and unworthy of French citizenship.
Later, when Jeanot hesitantly asked Babette what the maid had meant by “homosexual,” he was shocked by her explanation. He was also reminded of the remark he’d once heard at home, when Mathilde had mentioned Oncle Yves’ attraction to Jeanot’s own Papa. Jeanot considered mentioning that episode to Babette, but ultimately he decided Papa would probably not have approved of the gossip, and that Maman would have been horrified if indeed this behavior was as “sinful” as Guénolé led Jeanot to believe. No, she wouldn’t have liked anyone outside of the family to know about it, and so Jeanot kept it to himself, for the time being at least.
Tatie once said that she believed Oncle Yves’ preferences stemmed from an incident dating back to the 20’s when her brother, Jeanot’s Grand-père Léopold, trying to impress a billiard-playing crony, bought an expensive Brunswick & Balke table and had it installed in its own room in the rear of the apartment. The table had to be craned in, windows removed from their frames, and reinforcing steel bars inserted into the floor to ensure the table’s level.
Oncle Yves was 12 at the time, already acknowledged as a prodigy. He was forbidden from entering the billiard room, nor was he allowed to touch the cues or the ivory balls. One day, however, he did. When Grand-père and his second wife Emma (to whom Jeanot had never once spoken) were attending the matinee premiere of Léopold’s long-awaited opera Mona Vanna, Oncle Yves racked the balls, chalked and tested a cue as he had seen his father do, drew back and hit the cue ball with force. The shot was low and the stick’s tip ripped through the green felt with a rending sound, exposing the polished slate bed.
Oncle Yves, immediately aware of the catastrophe’s immensity, stared at the split fabric for a moment before surrendering to terror.
Then and there he decided to run away. In minutes he had packed a change of trousers, underwear, shirt and socks, and a pair of black deerskin gloves in the small rattan suitcase used for vacation travel. He also took with him an unfinished symphony he had been composing since age eight. He bolted out the door, down the stairs and into the street at the very instant that Grand-père and Emma, back from a hostile audience’s reception of Mona Vanna, alit from a cab. He was carried sobbing back into the apartment where Grand-père, already staggering under the weight of his failed musical efforts, went straight to the billiard room.
The next day a tailor came to strip the felt from the table. A week later, the bright green cloth was a three piece suit that Oncle Yves was to wear at every social occasion until he outgrew it two years later.
Tatie was convinced the fabric’s color had somehow warped Yves’ sensitivities. “J’en suis persuadée,” she would tell Guénolé who paid scant attention, or Jeanot, who wasn’t sure he understood.
Over the years, Tatie became certain Oncle Yves’ proclivity was the wellspring of everything that was and could go wrong with the family. When Grand-père’s very last opera, L’Oiseau Bleu, was booed even before the intermission, Tatie assured Jeanot that it was Oncle Yves’ fault. When the writer Gustave Cassier choked on an asparagus and died while dining at Grand-père’s table, it was, of course, Oncle Yves’ fault.
Oncle Yves, one day, finally grasping the depth of Tatie’s dislike, took to calling her “the leprous bat,” even in front of his own family. He announced that he wouldn’t be caught wasting his time with her; that when she someday, mercifully passed away, he wouldn’t even be at her funeral.
Chapter 5
Maman was a painter. She’d dabbled in other media, had written and published a children’s book, and played both the piano and accordion. Jeanot harbored a small resentment when it came to the book, since it had been written specifically about and for his two sisters. He was waiting for his Maman to announce that there was another book written, one dealing with the adventures of Jeanot. He had been waiting a couple of years and come to the conclusion that writing a book might be very time consuming.
Maman’s paintings were drawn largely from old family photographs. She wanted to paint a dozen or so oils before she and Papa opened Créations St. Paul, the dressmaking shop made possible by a loan from Grand-père.
She painted colorful, confusing scenes: people in wedding clothes, surrounded by beaming armed Swiss guards. Jeanot had asked why guards were needed at weddings, and had gotten back a nonsensical, unsatisfactory answer that involved the Pope. Maman’s paintings reminded him of the contes de fées that Jeanot knew he should have outgrown years ago; there were flowers in full bloom and beautiful if slightly too-small horses who never pooped, pulling carriages of happy people. Everything Maman painted, in fact, was happy. There were never any old people, never anyone who was sick or injured. The soldiers never bled, or fought, which was jarring, though not really unpleasant. Maman told Jeanot that the style in which she painted was called neo-naif.
He had noted early that her people varied in height and sometimes were outsize standing next to their horses, or small when with their dogs. Jeanot concluded that in the Old Days most people were short and owned ponies and Great Danes. When he asked Maman about that at the dining table one night, she got mad, but his father laughed so hard red wine came out of his nose.
Painting was a family affair. When Maman decided to unfold her easel, Papa and Jeanot would drive to a dealer outside Amiens for the correct bois d’épicéa to build the canvas armatures. Then Papa would bring out the canvas stretchers, mallet, tacks and pliers he had bought at the flea market near Notre Dame. Maman shopped for new brushes, paints and old photographs. She always used the same palette and claimed it had once belonged to Auguste Renoir. The trash gatherer, she assured anyone who would listen, in Renoir’s Paris neighborhood had found it in the dustbin shortly after the painter’s death, sold it to a local antique dealer along with other items from the painter’s studio, and Maman had purchased it on a whim, spending that week’s food money.
Jeanot’s main responsibility was to stay out of the way, for in the week before Maman actually began painting, life in the apartment assumed a fevered pace. The easel was installed in a vacant maid’s room on the top floor, and a gypsy was hired to clamber across the roof and clean the skylight with soap and ammonia. When the man claimed to have hurt himself working at such heights, Maman called the concierge, Kharkov, who professed a deep hatred and distrust for all Romani. Kharkov and the cleaner argued in the courtyard, their voices echoing off the walls with increasing velocity. Jeanot watched with some interest as they traded insults, then slaps to the face that made cracking sounds. Eventually, the gypsy dropped his hands and left the courtyard with one last over-the-shoulder curse. Maman paid Kharkov a few Francs for the service. The Russian, his cheeks glowing bright red, considered the payment unnecessary and the day well begun. He liked, he said, hitting gypsies early in the morning.
When all was in place for her to begin painting, Maman brought from her bedroom armoire a tiny matador’s suit of light she had purchased years before in Spain. It fit Jeanot well after minor alterations, and the boy became her model for several canvases.
He liked the costume; the cape that swirled, the odd sideways hat held on by a chinstrap, the small brass-handled metal sword with a dull blade and a sharp tip. He tried parries and thrusts, parading in front of Trudy’s door. She was impressed, he could tell. She touched his shoulder, stroked the sequins enviously. She wanted to try the jacket on but he wouldn’t let her. These were men clothes that should never adorn a woman’s frail figure. Trudy pouted, cried, stomped her foot, and called for her mother who didn’t come. Then she tried bribery. She pulled up her skirt and showed him her panties.
