Nanu!” We followed Margarethe up the stairs and the closer we got to Gran’père’s room, the louder the sound he made. I thought: What if he’s already in Hell? Pulling back, I collided with M’man. “Merde! Nanu!” she cried. “Je me fâche!” I hid my face with my hands because I feared she would strike me, but she only pushed me into the room, which was dark except for Gran’père’s head lit as if from within by Margarethe’s lamp. She set it down on the bedstand beside Gran’père’s teeth and offered M’man a chair. Gran’père could have been dead but for all the noise he was making.
“P’pa!” M’man shouted. “P’pa!” Gran’père snorted and smacked his lips. “He’s thirsty,” M’man decided. Dipping the edge of her shawl into his glass she squeezed some water into his open mouth. “Rah!” he said. “Oui!” said M’man. “C’est moi, Reine. I’m here beside you: Reine.” A strange sound came from Gran’père—like a bullfrog’s croaking—so that I laughed out loud. “Nanu!” M’man made a slicing gesture across her neck. This sobered me enough to approach Gran’père. “Gran’père,” I said. “It’s me, Nanu.” Gran’père said, “Nah?” “Si!” I said. “Nanu. Your little Nanu.” When he did not respond I asked M’man: “Does he know us?” “Shut up!” M’man said. “Conasse!” I wanted to cry then so I looked around the room for my own place to sit. I found Gran’père’s chair beside the desk where in the old days he went over his accounts. For a time I sat there in the dark, staring at the ugly statuette Gran’père called Wormwood. His nose and tongue and knees horribly protruding, Wormwood was sitting on a stump.
Gran’père was asleep and as he slept he whistled: a sound as monotonous as the wind. Downstairs a clock ticked; I could hear M’man’s soft breathing and from time to time I heard her sigh: “Ah, merde. Merde, merde, merde.” She was almost singing.
On the desk there was a little china vase and because it was too deep to see inside I emptied it into my hand. Some pen nibs tumbled out, two coins, and a key. I slipped the coins in the pocket of my nightgown and examined the key. It was very small and appeared to be made of green brass. I held it in the palm of my hand and, making a fist, squeezed hard. When I opened my hand I could feel the key’s impress in my flesh with the tips of my fingers.
Once when I was a tiny child I had asked Gran’père why he kept a thing as ugly as Wormwood around. “If Wormwood were mine,” I told him, “I would throw him into the fire.” Gran’père said: “Little idiote! Wormwood is made of brass and cannot burn. But he has a hot temper: behave yourself, Nanu, or he’ll wake up—because yes, even though his eyes are open he is fast asleep. If I decide to wake him, you’re finished, Nanu! Foutue! Foutue! Fucked, petite garce. Tu comprends?”
Remembering this, I bit my lip, but what I really wanted to do was bite Gran’père. I imagined creeping across the room and poking my head under his covers. Before he or M’man would know what was up, I’d have taken a good bite out of Gran’père. And because the room was dark, Gran’père asleep and M’man sleeping too, I stuck out my tongue. I stuck it out so far it touched the bottom of my chin and still I had not stuck it out far enough. Then I saw p’tit Pierre standing inside the door. Made fearless by the dark and the fact that Gran’père was dying, he crept over to me. His mouth hot against my ear, he said, “I saw you! If le père Foucart doesn’t die I’ll tell him! I’ll tell him I saw Nanu making faces in the dark. And then I’ll watch him give you a good spanking with his shoe.”
I said, “I don’t give a fuck.” P’tit Pierre grinned. He said, “Can I kiss you? You are so pretty, Nanu.” I said, “You make me want to shit you are so ugly.” P’tit Pierre began to laugh. I could hear him laughing quietly beside me in the dark. Then, crouching down, he waddled like a dwarf around the room, sidling dangerously close to M’man’s chair and Gran’père’s bed, looking droll and sinister, too. Once more he was standing beside me. He picked up Wormwood and the china vase, scattering the pen nibs on the table.
“There’s a key,” he whispered. “Help me find it.” I said, “Why? Why should I help you find it? You’re nothing but a little thief.” I was squeezing the key so tightly my hand was throbbing. “Because,” he said, “it’s a thing le père Foucart showed me.” And he imitated Gran’père’s voice so well the hair stood up on the back of my neck: “P’tit Pierre! Viens! Look at what old Wormwood knows how to do! And better than you, I warrant, little brigand!”
In the dark room, M’man softly snoring and Gran’père whistling like the Devil, I said, “Hush! You sound just like him! I’m afraid! Stop or I’ll do it in my pants.”
P’tit Pierre fell to his knees and then, his fist in his mouth to keep the laughter deep in his belly, he rolled across the floor. I could hear Margarethe stirring in the house just under us. “Are you going to sleep here?” P’tit Pierre, now at my feet, gazed up at me.
“Bien sûr! Idiot! Gran’père is dying. I have to stay till he’s dead.” P’tit Pierre then said very seriously: “Nanu . . . I’ll be your husband one day.” I said, “Non! M’man told me we can’t be married because your m’man is a maid who empties Gran’père’s bedpan.” Hurt to the quick, p’tit Pierre growled: “Your papa has run away! You’re no better than a bastard like me.” “My papa did not run away!” I pinched p’tit Pierre’s arm so hard he cried out, waking my m’man. “Hush!” she scolded. “Hush, Nanu. Or I’ll burn your tongue in the fire!” But almost as soon as she said this she was asleep.
“My papa is a soldier,” I said. “He’s fighting the boche. When he comes home he’s taking me to Holland,” I said. It seemed to me p’tit Pierre was crying. “We could elope,” I said, “and live deep in the woods on the hill. No one would look for us there. We’ll eat berries—”
P’tit Pierre was beaming. “And nuts and wild partridge eggs,” he said. “We’ll sleep in a big pile of leaves.”
“I’ll make us a blanket of moss,” I said eagerly. “And when we have babies I’ll kiss them over and over.” As p’tit Pierre looked on I held an imaginary baby in my arms and covered it with kisses. P’tit Pierre bent over me, kissing the air.
“We’ll sleep in a bed of roses,” he said, recalling a song he had heard in the street. “We’ll burn frankincense like they do in church.”
“Roses!” I pretended to spit. “Where will you find roses?”
“In Iron Corset’s garden,” he said gleefully.
“I don’t want my m’man’s roses,” I said, and I pulled his hair.
He said, “I’ll make you a bed of fox fur. And when the werewolf comes I’ll chop off his head.”
“When I am a woman,” I said, “I’ll run away for sure.”
“When I am a man,” p’tit Pierre said, “I’ll shit without dropping my pants.” We both collapsed on the floor, silently laughing. Then for a time we lay together and I could hear p’tit Pierre’s heart moving beneath mine.
Because of M’man’s violent temper and the injury caused by Papa’s departure, to recall the past meant upheaval and isolation. But that night in p’tit Pierre’s arms I dared remember an afternoon when Papa and I climbed the hill up to the Bosc du Puy. At the top we rested beneath the ancient trees. We saw a fox pass by, a glassy-eyed rabbit thrown over its
