8

STATION JAVEL

In Paris, a population of cleaning ladies lives in a seamlessly close parallel world to that of the city’s other inhabitants. You recognise them easily in the streets or in the Metro. They have chapped hands and heavy legs. Their bearing is a little stately, like people still in the thrall of an effort that encompasses too much of their being. If you sit next to them, you will often get a whiff of eau de Javel, the French bleach, named after the little village where it was invented in a small factory in 1774 by Claude Louis Berthollet. Like Proust’s madeleine, eau de Javel takes you back to France quicker than a postcard of the Eiffel Tower. Palms folded in the small of their lap, these women sit with their knees tight as the Metro thunders past stations Maubert Mutualité, Bastille and the strangely apt Filles du Calvaire. There is even a Station Javel. From time to time, they will pensively smooth creases out of their skirts or flick imaginary fluff from their sleeves. Cleaning ladies can be angels or demons, they can be young or middle-aged, but they all have shadows under their eyes and a claw of exhaustion between their eyebrows.

They are not the only cleaners. In many buildings the concierge also climbs up the back stairs to tidy people’s apartments. Her official role is to deal with the mail, wax the staircase, keep a general eye on things and hold on to the residents’ extra set of keys, but she also often has a second job as a cleaning lady. The concierge lives in a loge near the front door of the building. In some cases it is as tiny and dark as a confessional, in others it has French windows and white curtains. Concierges can be Spanish or Portuguese; they can even be French. The French ones are generally widows with varicose legs that they air in summer on the trottoirs. Even if they’re not inquisitive by nature, they are an institution, an information bank. Tips are as essential as the hyperbolic phrases of respect and consideration: that is the tradition. Ignoring them as you go past their door can thrust you out of favour. A Parisian apartment building is a mini Versailles. The Sun Queen is the concierge.

My parents don’t consider it politic or safe to have their concierge, Madame Carmel, coming in to clean their apartment. Like many Parisians, whatever the depth of their pockets, they always have people working for them in their home. Parisians can live without bare necessities but not without a femme de ménage.

In deep mourning for Monsieur Carmel, who died some twenty years before (about the time it takes for Odysseus to come home to Penelope, I calculate), Madame Carmel is decked out in black from head to toe. When I read about the witch Baba Yaga in ‘The Frog Princess’ or ‘Vasilisa the Beautiful’, I recognise her instantly. Her toad-like body and unblinking, bulging eyes lie in wait in her loge. In spite of its high windows and three comfortable rooms, light hides behind her looming black furniture.

She is a true concierge. She knows everything and has plenty to say about everybody, except to children, to whom she never speaks if she can help it. Her door is always open just a chink. The happy chime of the little bell teetering on the top of this door is the ominous harbinger of her presence. Soon her wheezing voice will waylay you. Her implacable questions start up a conversation like a Harley Davidson. She hardly ever stoops to comment on the weather or your health but aims straight for the gut. Sex is her area of expertise. Of course the word ‘sex’ is never pronounced, but I rapidly fathom that it has to do with an underground organisation. People slip in and out of each other’s apartments at night and exchange the strange and secret information that Madame Carmel then repeats out loud at the street door. My mother always tries to slink past the loge but rarely escapes without being buttonholed into parting with her pound of flesh. Choice morsels invariably escape her grasp like wriggling fish from a wet hand to fall into Madame Carmel’s steel-trap mind.

Something about my mother attracts Madame Carmel like a magnet. It’s awful to watch. Why doesn’t she breezily stalk by like my father? His hearty ‘Bonjour, Madame Carmel!’ rings out against the cobblestones as his footsteps carry him away. All she can do is slither back into her loge hissing an answer he doesn’t even hear. Stopping my father is like stopping the wind. Madame Carmel has met her match. He is probably the only person in the building who isn’t terrified of her.

My mother, on the other hand, just stands there, her gaze locked on one of Madame Carmel’s black buttons. When Madame Carmel eventually releases her invisible claws and reluctantly steps back, I know she is retreating behind the high dark-brown cupboards of her den to lay her monstrous eggs.

I don’t know that my parents have servants. Some ideas take a long time to percolate into my mind. All I know is that there is always a lady there, or two, depending on my father’s roller-coaster bank statement. ‘Money,’ he remarks, ‘is a good servant but a bad master. You pay your debts as soon as you can, but you never let money make decisions for you.’ I hear the word ‘servant’ much sooner than I understand its real meaning. It suddenly dawns on me that Marie Onion, the cook, is a servant. But it doesn’t change anything for me. We’re all still under her rule.

One day she has me in her kitchen and tells me that some cooks cheat on the bills, but she is not one of those. This sticks in my mind in a funny way as if she were conveying some truth about herself, some message for me alone. Like so many other truths adults drop my way, I don’t understand it. Then one day she shows me a forest of bottles under the kitchen sink, like my father shows me his secret stash of liquorice or tells me about his mistresses from the time he was in America. With Sylvia’s absence, everything has turned into a thick fog. Busy dreaming of Sylvia’s return, I let these mysteries grow and deepen exponentially.

Baffled by the smallest chores, the world of ‘things’ terrifies both my father and mother in different ways. They stare at the iron and the ironing board as if they are UFOs. They peer into the oven and the washing machine with the fascinated gaze some people have in front of an abstract painting. They raid the kitchen cupboard for biscuits and chocolate. ‘Easy to open!’ they scoff as they read the instructions and tear at the packaging. Marie Onion complains next morning, asking them if they have let a flock of birds into her kitchen.

Marie Onion is their teacher. They listen conscientiously to their mentor’s homilies, nodding gravely, promising not to mess with her cupboard. Soon she is storing everything in screw-top jars, which they carefully screw back on as if they were thieves in their own home. She leaves severe instructions on how to manage on their own in the evenings. My parents are terrified of Marie Onion. They never go near the kitchen in the daytime if they can help it. They quarrel about it in whispers: ‘You go!’, ‘No, you go!’ My mother often finds herself running out of it. I once hear her timidly ask: ‘Your boeuf bourguignon is exquisite, but does it need five bottles of wine?’ From the other end of the house you can hear Marie Onion bellow back: ‘Are you going to teach me my job?’ But they don’t run into any trouble if they obey her to the letter. Again, as with the suitors, my mother looks like a child, there on sufferance. It is all about power. The one who is supposed to have it is afraid and alone. At school I live in fear too, but I know why. A child is not the mistress of the house like my mother. A child is supposed to be scared of teachers and bullies, maybe just not as much as I am. The other kids think I’m a loony and the American nuns disapprove of me. More than what I say or do, it’s as if I had a smell. My mother’s smell can’t have anything do to with it. She smells like a basketful of flowers, so many of them you can’t recognise them individually. Yet each one is there, a light in the darkness.

Marie Onion’s nose is red and her Breton eyes are small and bright blue – from looking out at the sea off Brittany with the wind in her face, say my parents. Her tight bun of grey hair is tiny in proportion to her big body, which stomps around the kitchen. She keeps threatening to return to Quimper to keep them in line. For a long time I believe Brittany is another country where the Onion family rule their terrified subjects, instead of a French département only 500km from Paris.

I never see my parents fire a servant. It is rather that they themselves are always abandoned. They wander disconsolately around the kitchen, bolstering each other with rallying comments. ‘It’s going to be all right. We’ll find a solution. And think! She has gone to a much better job. She is so clever. She was wasted here.’ This time with Marie Onion it is different. She becomes louder and louder, clanging round the kitchen in rages that sweep through the house like tsunamis (like Pange in one of his fits, I imagine). I often watch her ingest enormous quantities of bicarbonate of soda. She makes me swallow some too, saying it’s good for the liver.

One day a gigantic Onion sister, even larger than Marie herself, appears out of the blue. Something has definitely happened. The femme de chambre, who hates her, tells me that she has been found in a drunken stupor on the kitchen floor. Her sister whisks her off. When I come home from school she has gone. My parents find all sorts of excuses for her. She was tired. She wasn’t so young anymore. ‘Oh,’ moans my mother, ‘poor Marie Onion, such a strong woman, she must have been homesick for Brittany!’ For weeks, they speak of her in hushed tones. But never once do I hear them admit she was a drunk.

Days pass and my mother walks around thoughtfully with pink plastic gloves that reach right up to her elbows like ballroom gloves – because she can’t bear to touch raw meat or fish. Lunchtime comes and there is nothing to eat, but the fridge is immaculate so they rush out to a café and have a lovely time eating croque-monsieurs or hot dogs, until another set of ‘parents’ come along. The new cook rapidly has their number and a new order is established.

It is a one-sided arrangement. The cook commands and they obey. Somebody has to look after them.

I notice how other French people treat their servants. They are not even afraid of them; they don’t clap when dessert is chocolate cake. They never ask their advice. They never buy them flowers. They never watch them cook or clean with a fascinated eye. Why, they don’t even seem to need them. The word ‘servant’ takes on a whole new meaning. They are replaceable people. They are there to do the tasks no one else wants to perform. They are ignored as human beings.

Under Marie Onion’s rule, Poum hardly ever dared to cross the kitchen’s threshold, but now Marie Onion has departed, she loves to go to the kitchen and talk to la femme de ménage and la femme de chambre. It’s obvious she feels safe with them. She sits at the kitchen table and watches them clean, iron or sew. She listens to their lives and rejoices over the highs and deplores the lows of their families. Spanish women are happy near the smell of clean sheets, in the gynécée as my mother calls it, the harem. She can sit for hours, suspended in their talk. They move her from chair to chair like a child if she is in their way. She fingers what they have cleaned, she pats what they have folded. Sometimes I watch her and it feels so important, almost vital – as if they were saving her life. When I look at my grandmother I can understand Poum needs all the mothering she can get.

Childhood is stamped out of the French as soon as possible. My parents’ innocence and lack of guile is obvious to anyone who looks at them carefully. And I look at them very carefully. In fact, everyone seems grown-up next to them, even real children. But Poum hates children. ‘They smell bad,’ she says, ‘they are little animals.’

Poum is not an easy mother, either, but when I least expect it, with a glance, with a whiff of her scent as she passes, she pours gold in my cup. Of course, like fairy gold, it doesn’t happen very often or last very long – in a second it’s gone. But something of it stays with me because, as she quotes, my name is ‘written in the palms of her hands’.

Irénée, her Spanish femme de ménage, comes to do the heavy cleaning. Tough with the broom and a devil with hidden dirt, she attacks the mould on the windowsills and scoops muck out of the drain. Her face has fine, intelligent lines and she smells so strongly of eau de Javel that when she hugs me I can draw the air right down into my lungs. She hardly speaks French and tosses words of Spanish at me, but Poum prefers to be alone with her and shoos me away. Poum loves Irénée, the woman who cooks tortillas, who slaves to keep her home clean. She nearly always walks her to the door and often begs my father to drive her home rather than imagine her tired out in the Metro. Thanks to Irénée, Poum finds the pluck to face her life in the other parts of the house.

Irénée’s proud smell of Javel sweeps away the cobwebs of my mother’s past.