Where We Going, Daddy__ Life With Two Sons Unlike Any Other - Jean-Louis Fournier [13]
Would a tiger react in the same way if Thomas or Mathieu pulled its tail?
I’ll give it a try, but I’ll warn the tiger first.
When I go for walks with my two boys, it feels like having a puppet or a rag doll in each hand. They’re light, they have fragile little bones, they’ve stopped growing or putting on weight, at fourteen they look more like seven, they’re like little imps. They don’t say what they want in French, they speak Impish, or they mew, roar, bark, twitter, cackle, whinny, squeal, or squeak. I don’t always understand them.
What exactly is there inside my two imps’ heads? It’s not lead. Apart from the straw, there can’t be very much there, at best a birdbrain, or a bit of old junk like a crystal set radio receptor that no longer works. A few badly soldered electrical wires, a transistor, a flickering little bulb that often goes out, and a few recorded words playing on a loop.
With a brain like that it’s hardly surprising they’re not high-performance. They’ll never get into Polytechnique, a top-rated engineering school, which is a shame. I would have been so proud, given how terrible I’ve always been at math.
I had a huge surprise recently. I found Mathieu immersed in a book. Overcome with emotion, I went over to him.
He was holding the book upside down.
I’ve always loved the magazine Hara-Kiri. I once wanted to suggest a cover for it. My brother, who does study at Polytechnique, has an impressive uniform with a cocked hat; I wanted to borrow it and take a photo of Mathieu wearing it. I’d put some thought into the caption too: “This year our top student is a boy!”2
Sorry, Mathieu. I can’t help it if I have twisted ideas. It wasn’t to make fun of you, perhaps it was me I wanted to make fun of. To prove I could laugh at my own hardships.
2. The previous year, for the first time, the top student at Polytechnique was a girl, Anne Chopinet.
Mathieu is getting more and more hunched. Physical therapy, metal braces … nothing helps. At fifteen he has the silhouette of a little old man. When we take him out for a walk all he can see are his own feet, he can’t even see the heavenly blue of the sky anymore.
At one point I thought of fitting the tips of his shoes with little mirrors, like wing-mirrors to reflect the heavens for him …
His scoliosis is getting worse and will soon cause respiratory problems. They’ll have to try and operate on his spine.
They try, and he’s perfectly upright again.
Three days later he drops down dead.
In the end the operation that was meant to help him see the heavens succeeded.
My little boy’s gorgeous, he’s always laughing, he’s got beady little black eyes like a rat.
I’m often afraid of losing him. He’s only two centimeters tall … even though he’s ten.
When he was born we were surprised, rather worried even. The doctor set our minds at rest right away by saying, “He’s completely normal, be patient, he’s just a little backward, he’ll grow.” We’re patient, we’re impatient, he’s not growing.
Ten years later the nick we made in the skirting board to mark his height when he was a year old is still valid.
No school has agreed to take him, on the grounds that he’s not like the others. We have to keep him at home. We’ve had to hire a home tutor. It’s very hard finding anyone who’ll take the job. It involves a lot of care and responsibility; he’s so small, people are afraid of losing him.
Particularly because he’s such a practical joker, he loves hiding and doesn’t answer when he’s called. We spend so much time looking for him: we have to empty the pockets of all our clothes, search through all the drawers and open every box. Last time he hid in a matchbox.
Washing him is difficult, there’s always the fear he could drown in the basin. Or get swept down the drain. The hardest thing is cutting his fingernails.
To find out his weight we have to take him to the post