2

x – 2(4x + 1) = 4(2 – x) + 2

Without a doubt, this was my first problem of the year. Not the only problem, but the first. I tried to remember what we’d learned last year, but frankly nothing came to me. I looked over at Haisam, who’d already put down his fountain pen. I wondered whether for once he didn’t know the answer, but it turned out that he’d already finished, thanks to the mysterious turbocharger in his brain. I threw him a despairing look and he just raised his chubby hand a few inches off the desk. That’s his way of giving encouragement. What he means is: don’t worry, it’ll all work out, maybe not so well, but it’ll work out. It’s true that I was feeling quite anxious, because of my difficulties at school and the gaps in my knowledge.

I stole a glance at the maths teacher, who made a funny sound when she walked because she was lame. In fact sometimes she could only get around with the help of two crutches. They ticked and tocked as though she was using them to measure the passing of time. Haisam, who always knew everything, had told me that she was very unhappy because she’d lost a baby a long time ago. I thought that probably explained why she was now making us do equations. One day I’d asked Haisam if he thought she was still carrying the dead baby in her right leg. He’d given me a funny look, with his mouth wide open, which is always a sign that he’s thinking deeply. Then he’d put his hand on my shoulder.

“Maybe there’s hope for you still, my friend.”

My remark seemed to have made quite an impression on him and from that moment on he took me a bit more seriously. It felt cool to think he saw me as someone to be reckoned with.

I pretended to be writing and tried not to get myself noticed. Luckily, the bell rang.

It was the last lesson and Haisam took his time putting his things away in his locker. I hung around for a bit, but since he didn’t show up I went ahead to his father’s lodge. That day he was wearing his splendid red fez hat, which made him look like a nobleman from the olden days. I was hypnotized by the little golden tassel that hung from a velvet ribbon, fastened to the top of the fez.

I grabbed the opportunity of my Honourable Egyptian’s absence to try and clear up some of the mysteries that were puzzling me.

“Sir,” I asked, “could you please explain to me why you chose an Egyptian name for Haisam – well, he wasn’t called Haisam until you named him that obviously – when you’re Turkish? And also, I’d really like to know why you observe the Sabbath on Friday nights?”

“When do you think we should observe it? On Wednesday mornings? Or on Monday afternoons?”

He smiled and I could see that he was making fun of me.

“What I mean is, the Sabbath isn’t really a Turkish sort of thing, nor Egyptian actually…”

He raised his hand in a slightly limp way that reminded me of Haisam.

“Who knows! Who knows…”

Haisam arrived at last. I asked him to explain the maths to me, because well … equations! We settled down at the back of the lodge so as not to be disturbed.

“What is it you want to know?” he asked.

He seemed very calm.

“Well, I want to know what you’re supposed to do with this gibberish: x – 2(4x + 1) = 4(2 – x) + 2. It’s not that I’ve got anything against maths, but still, really.”

“It’s not very hard. Start by multiplying it out.”

He stuffed an enormous piece of Turkish delight in his mouth and began to chew slowly and deliberately, with a strange gleam in his eyes.

“Multiplying out what?” I asked.

“Well, the brackets of course. What else would you want to multiply out?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Right. You cross out the brackets and that gives you: x – 8x – 2 = 8 – 4x + 2. See?”

“Then what do I do? That’s not all, is it?”

“Of course not, you dope. Then you put all the xs on the left and everything else on the right. And don’t forget to swap the plus signs to minus when they switch sides.”

“OK, so that makes… that makes… x – 8x + 4x = 8 + 2 + 2.”

“And there you are. So now what do we do?”

“I don’t know, maybe we could go and kick a ball around!”

He nearly choked on his Turkish delight. There was icing sugar coming out through his eyes: they looked like two little snowballs.

“No, you birdbrain, you haven’t finished it. You’ve got to find the value of x!”

I felt tears come into my eyes. I thought of Dad, who had given me The Three Musketeers, who had done super well at school when he was young, who’d had his ear chewed off by Lucky Luke and who did everything, pretty much, to keep tabs on me … and here I was, KO’d by the first x of the year.

“Right,” Haisam resumed calmly. “You need to simplify. So simplify.”

“OK, I’m simplifying, I’m simplifying. I’ll simplify until it’s simply fizzing. Here we are, I get: – 3x = 12.”

“And now you just need to divide by 3!”

“Obviously… Whew! But it looks a bit weird to me: x = 12 ÷ – 3… I must have slipped up somewhere…”

“No, it’s right, it means x = – 4. Do you get it now?”

“To be honest, I don’t really see the point of it, but I get it. Though I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it again on my own. I can’t promise.”

“I can’t think how you’re going to manage an equation with several unknowns,” he said, guzzling another piece of Turkish delight.

“Is there such a thing?”

“In maths, everything’s possible.”

“How come you learnt all this?”

“It’s different for me. I can’t claim any credit for myself: Egyptians have always been great mathematicians.”

“What about Turks who observe the Sabbath?”

“Turks too. Even those who don’t observe the Sabbath.”

The following week, things got complicated. Things have a natural tendency to get complicated, I find. First of all, the geography teacher got mad at me when he was giving back our work because for the question about the climate in the South of France, I’d answered that “there is snow and sometimes low tide”. I understood what I meant, but I was certainly the only one who did. The whole class burst out laughing, especially a group of snotty, stuck-up girls who look like they’re reciting a mathematical theorem when they laugh. I bet their farts don’t even smell. Even Haisam smiled, but in his case it was just friendly affection.

I’d forgotten to revise the stuff on the climate because of the piston pins. Dad had wanted to replace the old five ring pistons with modern four groove ones, so he’d had to dismantle the whole engine and take out the chrome pins. I’d fetched the Krebs manual from my room and we’d looked it up. We’d realized that we’d need to check the connecting rod and cylinder to avoid the pistons jamming, because you know what that would have led to. Anyway, it was because of all this that I forgot about the climate in the South of France. It’s not that I have anything against geography. My Honourable Egyptian’s father had shown me where Egypt was on a map, and I’d seen that it was a country with a lot of water everywhere except where there was desert.

“What about Turkey?” I’d asked.

He’d pointed very precisely at a spot on the map that was tacked to the wall. His fingernail, as polished as a pearl, made a little tapping noise.

“There’s Turkey. Just there.”

“Huh, that’s strange, I thought that was India.”

During the break, after the geography lesson, I hung around on my own so that I could think about what Dad was going to say and how I could explain my bad mark.

I watched the footballs streaking across the playground and thought to myself that when it came down to it, perhaps I just wasn’t cut out for studying. I got the impression that the girls in the class were taking the mick, because they were looking up at the sky and saying loudly, “I wonder when it’s going to snow…” And then they snorted with laughter, in a snotty, stuck-up sort of way. Haisam had disappeared and I didn’t know where to turn for support. I thought back to my father’s test question from last night, “At the time of the 1901 Paris–Berlin motor race, what technical innovations would you have found in the Panhard cars?” I couldn’t find the answer even in the Krebs manual.

I felt very downhearted and turned down all invitations to go and play so that I could continue to think things over, which is a very important thing to do in life. I could already picture Dad in the head teacher’s office with Lucky Luke tearing a strip off him and that was something I wanted to avoid at all costs, so as not to hurt his fatherly feelings. I also thought again about Alexandre Dumas, who always made a big effort to entertain us and to teach us loads of historic things, even though he never knew us. I promised myself that I would read at least twenty pages of The Three Musketeers that evening. Then I dropped it down to fifteen, because it’s best to pace yourself so you don’t run out of steam.

The bell rang at the end of break and I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. Full of misgivings, I got in line to wait for the sports teacher. I thought about Dad and his school record to give myself courage. Sport would get me back on track.

Half an hour later it would be true to say that I was having no more luck with sport than with the climate in the South of France. I’d ended up eyeball to eyeball with Lucky Luke, in his office. He was standing with his legs slightly apart, as if he was squaring up for a duel. He looked as though he was about to pull out a piece of chalk and write “dunce” on my forehead.

“I must say I thought that things had been made absolutely clear and that you’d taken it all on board… Isn’t that right? I thought you’d made some resolutions … that you had good intentions…”

“Yes … but then again no…”

“What do you mean, yes but then again no?”

“Well, I mean that I did have resolutions, as well as intentions, but words often just slip out on their own…”

“Right, let’s recap. The sports teacher gets you all to line up…”

“Yes, and then he goes to fetch the keys to the gym…”

“And everyone’s quietly waiting for him in line?”

“Yes, sir, everyone’s waiting for him, that’s exactly right…”

“And so at that moment you decide to draw attention to yourself. Please could you repeat out loud what you said?”

I scratched my chin. To tell the truth I felt alone in a hostile environment. I asked myself what d’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers would have done in this situation.

“You’d like me to repeat…”

“Yes.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel ashamed, that’s not very nice of you.”

“Repeat what you said or I’m calling your father!”

He made a big show of grabbing the telephone and looking up the number. I began to panic, because he’d figured out what would get to me.

“So I should repeat it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, so there we were waiting in line. Then out of the blue it started to rain. You know, Monsieur Luc— Monsieur Guénolé, those big drops of summer rain which are like flies banging against dry window panes…”

“Spare me your literary talents.”

“All the same, literature is important, isn’t it, sir…?”

“I don’t give a stuff, I just want you to repeat what you said when you were standing in line.”

“Have you read The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, sir?”

“No, I haven’t read The Three Musketeers… Why? Have you read it?”

“Yes … well, nearly… Did you know that Alexandre Dumas took three whole years to write that book, one year for each musketeer?”

“No, I didn’t know…”

Suddenly, he seemed to pull himself together.

“Right. Come on! I want to know what you said in the line.”

“What I said? You really want to know? Well, OK then, when I was in the line I said, ‘So what do we do now? Play with ourselves?’”

He said nothing for a few seconds, as though it was taking a while for the words to sink in. I couldn’t tell if he was going to smile or burst into tears.

“You disappoint me, young man, you disappoint me. And yet you’re not a bad fellow.”

“No, sir.”

“You could do well…”

“Absolutely, sir. It’s mostly a question of method, according to the specialists.”

“Do you want to please your father?”

Ouch!

All at once there was a miracle: I remembered the local newspaper that Dad rolled his greasy tools in. A secret weapon. A counter-attack worthy of the musketeer d’Artagnan.

“By the way, sir, I know I’m changing the subject, but congratulations on Sunday’s bike race. I really thought the other cyclists would catch you up, but you gave it that one last push…”

Touché. This really was just like The Three Musketeers. I’d hit upon the fact that Lucky Luke was also a top-ranking cyclist. All his spare time was spent in the saddle. It was funny to think his bum must always be hurting.

He gave me a strange, slightly suspicious look.

“Were you there?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to remember what the newspaper article had said. “I’ve never seen a breakaway like that before. Even in the Tour de France. If you want my opinion, you could have been a professional, a real champion.”

“Perhaps, but you have to take so much stuff… I never wanted to do that: taking care of one’s health is what matters most.”

“You were right. Health is important for sure… In my view, the essential thing in a race is not to start too fast, so that you don’t run out of steam… It’s the same thing with a school year.” (I hoped he’d appreciate the comparison.) “Can I go now, because it’s getting dark…”

“No more nonsense then, I don’t want to hear your name coming up again. No more of that vulgar language. Otherwise I’ll have to call your father and he won’t be happy.”

“You’re right about that.”

I left his office, but with all that carry-on I’d missed the school bus. From a distance I could see Haisam and his father settling down to a game of chess in the lodge. I felt like going to watch them and stuffing myself with Turkish delight to take my mind off things. There’s nothing like chess for that, but I thought I’d better go home, because I’d made enough of a spectacle of myself for one day. The Honourable Egyptian noticed me and raised his big hand in greeting. His horn-rimmed glasses always made him look infinitely serene, like a large placid owl.

I walked home just as the sun was beginning to set behind the trees, along the edge of the little wood that fringed the road. It was there, right in amongst the trees, that our biology teacher kept a little pond where he could observe tadpoles and frogs. Last year, I’d had the bright idea of pouring some washing-up liquid into the water. This killed some of the frogs, which were found floating face-up, and meant the rest failed to develop properly. I swore to Lucky Luke that an amphibian massacre wasn’t at all what I’d intended, but he only partly believed me. To make amends and to prove my love of nature, I’d had to look after the pond for half the Christmas holidays. Later in the year, after all that, Monsieur Dubois made us study frogs’ reflexes. He dissected one of the creatures and fixed electrodes all over it. So much for the lecture about respect for frogs and love of animals in general, that’s all I can say.

I walked on down the hill and passed the big houses at the entrance to the village. And then just before the church I saw one of the girls in my class. Marie… Marie something, I couldn’t remember. I thought about turning back, because to be honest, I’d had enough… But since she was also heading towards the village and I was already late, I just slowed down to avoid catching up with her. In the end it was she who turned round: when she saw me, instead of scuttling off as I’d have expected, she stopped and waved at me. I was trapped.

“Do you think it’s going to snow today?” she asked.

“Oh, give it a rest! Don’t you ever scr— mess things up?”

She seemed to be thinking, as though weighing up her reply.

“Well, no, actually – I don’t.”

It didn’t look as though being perfect made her particularly happy.

“And anyway it was because of Dad’s piston pins, but obviously you wouldn’t understand.”

“Is that what you think?”

It was going round and round in my head: her name… Marie… Marie… Marie what?

“Definitely, trust me,” I replied at last.

I’d put on a serious expression, because at least on the subject of Panhard cars I knew I didn’t make mistakes and could even claim to be quite an authority. I was wrong yet again, as it turned out, but that’s for later. For a few minutes we couldn’t think of anything to say to each other. I was a bit distracted with trying to remember her name… It was on the tip of my tongue, but it kept slipping away. I snatched a glance at her. Her hair was reddish and incredibly curly. It flew around all over the place, hiding half her face. Apart from that, she seemed as neat and tidy as a Japanese doll and I remembered that I hadn’t had a shower for three days. I swore I’d have a good scrub that very evening, because self-respect is important. I tried to think of something to say to impress her a bit: the climate issue was bugging me and I have my pride. All at once an idea came to me.

“I’ve got a question for you… Have you read any books by Alexandre Dumas?”

“The father or the son?”

“What do you mean?”

“Alexandre Dumas the father, or Alexandre Dumas the son?”

I had no idea what she was talking about: once again things were getting complicated. But I could look into that later. Right now it would be better to change the subject. I tried to think of something that didn’t hold too much danger for me. By chance I caught a glimpse of her right hand. She was wearing a big ring, so I thought I’d pay her a compliment.

“That’s a superb gallstone you’ve got on your finger. Is it a real one?”

I couldn’t understand why she was looking at me like I was from outer space. She didn’t seem to know what to say next, as though we were speaking different languages. So I took the initiative.

“I get the impression you’re interested in intellectual things.”

She seemed a bit taken aback by this new change of direction and frowned. She must have been wondering if I was trying to catch her out or something.

“Why, aren’t you?”

I’d got it at last. Her name was Marie-José.

“Sure,” I said with as much conviction as possible, “intellectual things interest me too. Though not all the time.”

“For instance, I found the biology lesson on the eye very instructive,” she said.

She seemed to be lost in thought. She went on, as though talking to herself. “It’s crazy what goes on inside the iris and the cornea…”

“Did you see,” I asked, “when he explained how you go blind because of that shi— tricky cornea?”

We were coming up to the baker’s and I realized that the sun had disappeared and darkness was beginning to fall gently around us like a veil. She stopped suddenly, turned towards me and said, with a smile in her voice, “When you’re blind, you can’t see the snow in the South of France or whether the tide’s in or out. That would be annoying for you, when you love the area and its climate so much.”

She turned her back on me and that was that. I was left feeling utterly humiliated.

Humiliation the action of humiliating or the condition of being humiliated. Impairment to self-esteem. See abasement.

There were at least two words in this definition that I didn’t understand. If you have to be a specialist to understand a definition, you might as well give up.

It was still bothering me when I got home, so I asked Dad.

“Dad, seriously, did you know that there were two writers called Alexandre Dumas?”

He was absorbed in the Journal for Collectors and the Curious, but he glanced up.

“Yes, father and son.”

I sighed deeply and mournfully.

“Why are you sighing like that?”

“Well, it’s just that I’ve realized other people know loads of things that I’m completely in the dark about… On the way back from school I met a girl from my class who already knew that there were two of them. I’ll never dare to speak to her again about The Three Musketeers: I’m sure she must have read it several times already. And as for Haisam, he must have known about it for years… By the way, why did Alexandre Dumas give his son the same first name as himself?”

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps he wanted him to write books too and thought the name would bring him luck.”

“It’s an odd thing to do. The one who wrote The Three Musketeers, was that the father or the son?”

“The father.”

“I thought so…”

“Thought what?”

“I thought that it seems more like a book written by a father than by a son.”

It was getting darker, and I wondered how he could still see to make notes in the Journal, which has such small type. I switched on the lamp on the sideboard and opened my rucksack to get my things out.

“Because I’m sure that the books by Alexandre Dumas’s son wouldn’t be as accomplished or as informative. By the way, what did he write?”

“I can’t remember. Something called The Lady of the Camellias, I think, which is a charming story about a woman and some flowers, who’s in love but also very poorly.”

I watched Dad as he settled back into the Journal for Collectors and the Curious, a little magazine of classified ads that he published himself and that allowed all kinds of collectors to get in touch with each other. But what I really admired about Dad was that he used his little magazine to flag up, to some of these antique lovers, stuff that might interest them. He owned a warehouse in Paris, in which he kept all sorts of old objects waiting to be delivered. He’d taken it over from my grandfather, and it was called “El Dorado”. In my imagination it had the mythical allure of a legendary country. I’d never set foot in it, and I didn’t even know why Dad called it ‘“El Dorado”. But what I did know was that the day I first went there would be the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

“Dad?”

He looked up from his magazine. He had beautiful blue eyes that glistened a little and it always made me wonder whether he was on the verge of tears.

“Yes?”

“Your father, was he like you are with me? Did he keep an eye on your progress at school?”

Looking at me with his eyes full of emotion, he put the lid back on his pen and waved it in the air, as if he was drawing a long strand of spaghetti.

“He arrived here in France from Poland just before the war, and once peace returned he started selling scrap metal… When that began to take off, he became far too busy with El Dorado to take much notice of how I was doing…”

“So you did super well all on your own?”

He nodded, sucking in his breath, and I was overwhelmed with admiration.

“Dad, tell me, did you love your father a lot?”

He smiled in an awkward sort of way, because some things are difficult to talk about, and took the lid off his pen. I felt he might slip away from me, like a fish from a hook.

“I don’t know if I really knew him… And now, when I think about it, I wonder if he even existed. Do you think it’s possible for fathers and sons to know each other?” He looked really serious. The atmosphere was very solemn, as though philosophical storm clouds were gathering.

“Yes, Dad. After all, we know each other, don’t we? And my friend Haisam, he knows his father as well as he knows his chessboard…”

Dad considered this for a few seconds. His thoughts seemed to be travelling way back in time.

“Yes, you’re right, we know each other, you and I, we do.”

He didn’t look all that convinced.

“I’ve got two more questions, but they’re not so important.”

“Go on then.”

“OK, well, to start with, I can’t help wondering how teachers can buy their toilet paper in public, in front of other people…”

“I asked myself the same thing at your age. I still don’t know the answer. What’s the other question?”

“What are we eating tonight?”

“Frogs’ legs.”