Hallucinating Foucault (18 page)

“‘What’s an allegory?’ he asked, ‘and why should homosexuality always be unhappy in books? Elsewhere, it isn’t.’

“I suggested that we should check the rock pools, and in his accusing stare I had the reprimand for my evasions.

“He never engaged in pointless games or aimless conversations. There was always a goal to be achieved or information to be gathered. I remembered this, the terrifying purposefulness of an only child. I had the same inability to waste time. Day after day we haunted the rocks, inspected the weed-covered crevasses and tunnels, swam in the clear, warm water. I remember once, watching the curve of his back as he sat squatting, peering into the lapping, breathing sea. And noticing the way in which each vertebra was separate, a long bony chain, fragile, yet indestructible. He was extraordinarily strong.

“Yes, I suppose I did fall in love with that child. But there was something more important. We became friends. What equality is possible between a child of eleven and a man in his thirties? Friendship, complicity, trust make all things equal. You remind me of him.

“But it was only a matter of time before the father came in search of the vanishing child. Parents rightly suspect that the serpents of corruption are lurking on every street corner. Or in this case stretched out upon the summer rocks.

“The scene he witnessed was tranquil and innocent enough. We were playing cards and drinking Badoit under the shadow of a
huge grey rock, an overhanging mass like the nose of an elephant. Then the father was suddenly present, making the third in the triangle, standing above us. He was wearing jeans and a light, cream jacket. I was aware of the colored outline, as if he had been one of the child’s drawings. I think I expected him to pull out a gun. The child looked up briefly. Then concentrated on his cards.

“‘This is my Dad,’ was all he said.

“The father crouched beside us and looked at our cards.

“‘Twist. You’ve got to,’ he said to the boy, covering his eyes from the sun. He was about ten years older than I, slick, good-looking. I noticed a gold signet ring on the last finger of his left hand. We played out the game. The child won.

“‘I hope you weren’t cheating,’ his father said casually.

“‘I never cheat unless I have to,’ was the reply. Then the father addressed me directly.

“‘Will you have dinner with us tonight? We go on to Italy tomorrow.’ We looked straight at one another. I agreed. And at the same moment I realized that he was homosexual.

“They were staying at the best hotel in Nice. The moment of reversal, of revelation if you like, came that night on the steps of the hotel. The child was waiting for me, perched on the balustrade beside a huge palm tree in a Roman urn. He was on the lookout, alert and tense as a cat. But I saw him first, and noticed the brushed curls, washed with gold, the cheekbones pink with sunburn and freckles, the long arms curled around the knees. His ambiguity suddenly broke over me with all the force of the sea against the great rocks. I had not mistaken the nature of this child. But I had certainly been deceived in her sex. She swung down from the solitary ledge and rushed into my arms.

“When we parted that night she said something I shall never forget. Largely because only children, children like myself, children
like that girl, always keep their promises. She said, ‘If you love someone—you know where they are and what has happened to them. And you put yourself at risk to save them if you can. If you get into trouble, I promise that I’ll come to save you.’

“I think that’s the strangest, most romantic declaration I’ve ever had.

“‘Will you?’ I said.

“‘Yes, and when I can read French better, I will read every word you write. I will be your reader.’

“Wasn’t that an extraordinary promise, petit? They were English. Her father was a charming man. He worked in the Bank of England. I sometimes wonder if she remembers me.”

I sat staring at Paul Michel, speechless and terribly frightened. Then I said, “She never forgot you. She kept her promise. She sent me.”

He didn’t reply for a moment. It was now after seven o’clock and the light was softening on the barrels, the rocks, the ropes, supporting the café above the beach. The world was being transformed into luminous gold.

“Oh? Did she?” was all he said.

That night he was restless again. I was almost asleep when I heard him getting out of bed.

“What’s the matter?”

“Shhh, petit. I’m just going downstairs for a drink.”

He kissed my ear and stroked my head for a moment. I fell fast asleep again.

It was after four in the morning when I heard an urgent tapping on my door. I sat up shaking. Paul Michel had not returned. I was alone. It was a woman’s voice at the door. Through a fog of sleep and fear I recognized Marie-France Legras. She was calling my
name. But she didn’t wait for me to reply; she was already in the room, calling and calling.

“What is it?” I stammered.

“The police are here.”

“Paul Michel?”

“I’m afraid it’s bad news.”

I howled out his name and began to cry uncontrollably. I had been waiting for this, the empty bed, the call in the night. I had known that he would not wait for me. Marie-France put her arms around me and whispered all the gentle reassuring things that she would have said to her son. I realized that she was crying too. It was some hours before I was able to face the police.

The manner of his dying was bizarre. He had taken the car, although he was not authorized to drive, and had set out along the coast road of the Esterel in the direction of Cannes. You can’t build up much speed on that road, even in a more powerful car than a 2CV; it is too narrow, uneven, winding. There wasn’t much traffic. A gigantic white owl, drawn to the yellow lights and the swerving car, fixed its great eyes on his face and plummeted towards the Citroën. The creature smashed through the windscreen, sinking its claws into his face and throat. The car hurtled into the cliff. He was killed instantly. They laid him out on the stretcher with the great dead bird wrapped around his face. Weeks later the inquest gave the cause of death as multiple injuries received on impact; accidental death, killed in a car accident, a futile death, daily, banal. But the autopsy revealed that he had enough alcohol and paracetamol mixed in his blood to end the days of several Hollywood film stars. He had taken all the drugs in our bathroom cabinet, everything, even the travel sickness tablets and swallowed them down with a bottle of whiskey. It had been a miracle that he had been able to drive as far as he did.
There had been no mistake. He had intended to die. He had been searching for the great white owl on the narrow frontier between the mountains and the sea.

And then I knew what he had seen—the last vision he had had before the darkness had been drawn across his sight: the belly of a great white owl, its wings outstretched, ht from beneath, its huge yellow eyes, the pupils sharpening to slits as his claws reached for the glass and the white face beyond, blurred and magnified, as if by a powerful lens.

Marie-France went out to FNAC and bought all his books.

“I don’t read much usually. And certainly not this sort of thing. I like historical fiction. But I feel that we owe it to him. They said that Le Seuil are bringing out a new compact edition with all his political essays. I think I’ll just read the novels.”

The police interviewed me for hours. I kept breaking down like a child. They poured bottles of Evian down my throat. The gendarme at the typewriter corrected my French. He had to look up how to spell schizophrenia in the dictionary.

Early on the morning of the second day I had a phone call. A very careful English accent puzzled me at first.

“Hello? Is that you? This is Dr Jacques Martel. Your London friends rang me in Paris. The police rang the hospital too. So I’ve come from Sainte-Anne and on behalf of Paul Michel’s father. He’s too ill and senile to understand that his son is dead … I’m at the airport … Don’t worry, I’ll take a taxi. I’m here to help you with the paperwork … Yes … you won’t believe the bureaucracy. And we have to move fairly fast. They’ll release the body at the end of next week.”

“Do you have the necessary authorization?” I gulped helplessly. “They told me I didn’t.”

“I should think I do. I’m Paul Michel’s legal representative. I’ll be with you in an hour or so.”

I sat down beside the phone, my body tingling with shock. There were too many pieces of this story that I had not seen, too many connections that had never been revealed. The man with the wolf’s smile and the sharpened teeth had been the hermit in the cave, warning me of the dangers ahead. I had been watched and guided, every step of the way. I was their Red Cross Knight, sent out to find the soul that was lost. I had never understood the nature and meaning of my task, and now I had been defeated. I was still sitting on the floor beside the phone when I heard Baloo howling at the iron gates. Jacques Martel, in a light suit, his jacket over his arm, his briefcase and traveling bag in the other hand, stood, erect and unflinching as a mountain pine, on the other side of the white bars.

I thrust my face against the cold gate.

“Why didn’t you tell me when we first met?” I was almost shouting.

“I told you all you needed to know.” His manner was cool, utterly assured.

I thought of my Germanist, her mass of curly hair and intense, owl-like gaze. I felt imprisoned by conspiracy.

“Did she know too? Was she in on it? Are you all a part of this?”

Baloo howled at the blue sky.

“Ask her.” Jacques Martel stepped calmly through the gate and the dog began to circle his legs, sniffing.

“Don’t be afraid.” He gave me his traveling bag and took my arm with professional firmness. “I’m here now. I’m here to take care of you.”

I gazed up at him. What happened to the people who were consigned to his care? But it was so easy to silence me, to deflect my hysteria. Marie-France kept saying, you’re ill, you’ve had a terrible
shock, you’ve lost your friend. I was taken to the doctor. They gave me tranquilizers and I began to see the bright, cooling world through a blur. I hardly ate. I slept for ten hours a day. Jacques Martel took charge of everything. I remember his hands, white, smooth, untouched by work, taking the fountain pen out of his inside breast pocket, signing all the necessary papers, lifting the phone, filling in the forms. I fought against numbness.

“You must eat. Here’s some vegetable soup. Do try. It’s very nourishing.” Marie-France smothered me with motherly concern. Her husband retired to his newly built furnace and spent the evenings devising ever more elaborate and sinister pizzas with exotic fillings.

The funeral was fixed for the twelfth of October. Jacques Martel decided to bury him with his mother in the village churchyard above the vines near Gaillac, outside Toulouse. We were then confronted by extraordinary administrative questions, Gothic and bizarre. Were we to hire a hearse and drive to Toulouse? Was cremation in Nice a preferable option? So that we could drive him back ourselves, carrying only an urn in the boot of the car? Should we have the body flown in and engage to have the local undertakers meet us at the airport? Jacques Martel studied all the options.

Articles, reviews, retrospectives on his work began to appear in the press. Marie-France defended me against the journalists. Baloo guarded the gates. In any case I had nothing to say. In the evening, six days after his death, I phoned the Germanist at her flat in Maid’s Causeway. I was at a loss and utterly defeated. I couldn’t ask my parents to come. I felt that I had no one left.

“Hello,” she said crisply.

“It’s me.”

She paused. Then she said, “I’ve told your supervisor you’ll be late back and I’ve left a note in College.”

“Oh, thanks.”

She guessed at once what I was unable to ask.

“Do you want me to come?”

I started crying into the mouthpiece of the telephone.

“Don’t cry,” she said, and I could hear the snap of her cigarette lighter close to the phone.

She agreed to abandon Schiller for a week or so and sent a telegram with no information other than her flight number.

BA 604. Arrives Nice 18:30 tomorrow.

I was waiting in the great domed concourse among the dogs and the security guards, still dressed in the same stained T-shirt, jeans and gym shoes I had been wearing when he told me the story of the boy on the beach. I stared at her curls and glasses as she appeared from behind the barrier, as if I was seeing her for the first time.

She arrived, fresh, brisk, knowing, bearing all the chill of England. She kissed me. Then she made a more careful second inspection.

“You look awful,” she said.

“I know.”

“Well, you’ve been through it, I see.” But she didn’t specify what it was that I had so unsuccessfully traversed. She carried her own bag. I was swept out onto the pavement and into the early autumn heat. The light was changing. Now the air was vast, huge, expanding all around us. She summoned a taxi.

“We could go by bus,” I suggested.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You couldn’t stand the journey.”

She was right. I leaned against her all the way back into the city. Jacques Martel was delighted to see her. From then on they took all the decisions together.

It proved to be prohibitively expensive to fly the body back to Toulouse. For some reason a corpse’s ticket costs a good deal more than that of a living person. So we decided to drive in convoy back to Gaillac. His aunt, now eighty, still clear-headed, was his inheritor. She was busy arranging the funeral and had decided that the returning sinner should receive a decent Catholic burial, but with the minimum of expense. She put one announcement in the local papers. But it was in all the national press. The curé had been primed and given strict orders to be exceedingly discreet. Journalists and cameras were banned. She told Jacques Martel that she was very relieved that it had been a road accident and not AIDS. He was righteously furious, but kept his temper on the phone. Madame Legras said that it was no use quarreling with people like his aunt who might be incredibly wealthy, but were still peasants, and who had almost certainly never read any of his books. I didn’t remind her that, until the previous week, she hadn’t either.