27

CHARTRES

Alexandre pushes the door very softly and stands on the threshold of our bedroom looking at me. He hasn’t changed into his tweed jacket. His pockets are all turned out and hang starkly white against the faintly striped midnight-blue flannel of his suit. He makes a face.

‘No Monsieur Doucet today, Catherine. It’s a period of lack. Let’s go and have a sandwich on the banks of the Seine.’

I love the periods of lack. We walk along the river and eat sandwiches sitting on the quay with our legs dangling over the water. Being near water makes every sound, every moment, flow and belong. When he has devoured his sandwich he doesn’t say anything much, just holds my hand, thoughtfully sucking the toothpick he always has in his pocket. The water twinkles and glitters. Each passer-by seems part of some silent, lonely story. This reminds me of Josephine, walking around her garden on her own, missing Napoleon.

‘Poor Josephine,’ I murmur, staring at the water.

Alexandre sighs. ‘Yes, it was sad. But you know, she wasn’t faithful to Napoleon when he was on his campaign. She loved men.’

‘Did she sleep with other people?’

I have understood the bed thing by now. When people sleep in the same bed, it seems to change things, especially if they are grown-ups.

‘Yes, she did.’

‘Maybe poor Josephine didn’t like sleeping by herself.’

‘To be fair, Napoleon didn’t like sleeping by himself either.’

Suddenly he’s on his feet: ‘Come on, let’s go!’

Soon we are sailing out of Paris as if the motorway has swallowed us. Other cars bob in and out of our path, ‘barking’ at us from time to time. The window’s open, the tweed jacket’s back on, we could be on our way to China. With my father every departure is a complete journey, a run for the hills. Destination is something of a luxury, maybe because he never decides where he’s going until he’s gone.

‘Look, Catherine! The cathedral!’

And sure enough, the huge stone ship of Chartres is ploughing through fields of wheat. Both my parents love Chartres and go there as you would dash to the chemist’s. The clergy must have made a very tidy sum out of them. Soon after my birth, on their return to France, they both rushed to Chartres to have their child blessed for its whole life. I still have the paper. They needed luck in all its forms where I was concerned, as if no blessing were enough to compensate for their swaddled misdemeanour. From the start, Poum’s mother and sister called it the child of the devil. Soon, I discovered the devil was just a recycled god, Pan. Yet there was always something faintly ridiculous, lonesome, and rock and roll about the devil, which made me warm to him. It took me a while to understand they were referring to me. Then I wondered who they meant by the devil. My father? Or the real devil with the hooves, horns and bright red skin? Neither were frightening. One I loved, and the other I had a sneaking sympathy for.

On his way to the cathedral Alexandre sobers up, as its benefits exponentially accumulate in his system – the mysterious stock exchange of the soul. He keeps on pointing at it with a happy smile on his face. Seeing the cathedral in the distance soothes him so much that his cloak of euphoria, like a ship’s full sails, can be folded down on deck for a while.

Before you get there, you can see Chartres for miles. We settle into silence, punctuated by his happy sighs, his suntanned forehead, his careless hands on the wheel, his sudden grins as if an intense conversation were going on all the while, a conversation across the centuries, across the clouds above us, across the kilometres the car is devouring, across our separate generations, just to be together on the sunny road.

Then it’s a shock. We’re already on the cobblestones, hunting for a restaurant. He walks into the first one he finds and, in seconds, voluminous serviettes and sleepy tablecloths are encasing us, steaming plates are put in front of us. I have the peas and he has the rest and we are both happy.

‘That was very reasonable. Come on! Let’s go and see the cathedral!’

He says it as if he were saying, Come on! Let’s go home!, and after hurriedly paying the bill, throws his serviette on the table. A few steps later, we are in the big church that clasps its streets close to its flying buttresses. Strangely, the cathedral is empty: not a tourist, not a priest, not a parishioner in sight. Suddenly, the place is his. We walk around at first, then he halts in his tracks.

‘Sit down, Catherine! No, not there … directly on the floor. You have to feel Chartres.’

I settle at his feet while he sits on a low velvet prayer stool, his hands on my shoulders. My bottom becomes icy and soon my legs are quite numb too, but only a part of me notices.

‘See that big round window? It’s called la rosace bleue. Do you know what stained-glass windows are made of?’

He takes a deep breath. He could be at the seaside.

‘They were made of precious stones, feathers, liqueur, twigs, women’s milk and birds’ blood. The secret is lost; nobody knows how to make them quite the same today. They have tried, of course, but it just doesn’t work.’

The enormous stone walls surrounding us have closed off the rest of the world. It just isn’t there anymore.

‘Listen to the music of the stained-glass windows, Catherine.’

We could be near a creek in a forest. Whenever we find one, Alexandre always has me kneel to drink its freezing water. In the same way, we listen to the fine-edged vibration of crazy blue, blood red, emerald green, bird’s-beak yellow.

‘The stained-glass windows, little one, create a luminous slope of light. Whatever the time of day, from dawn to dusk, the same dim glow is maintained within the church, whether it be bright sunshine or rain. That’s the stained-glass windows’ secret. Right now, they are sifting the bright afternoon glitter in the same way they will sift the pale light of dawn.’

Leaning back comfortably on his prayer stool, his legs still stretched out in front of him, my father, with an indignant wave, shows me a row of light bulbs hanging from an iron rod above us.

‘Look at those ridiculous lamps! What a crime! These priests are utter idiots. Did you know that Chartres was built on a temple to Isis? In pagan and medieval times, priests weren’t constantly reciting from prayer books. The cathedral was a silent, sacred place. Go and shut them off. Look, all you have to do is pull that cord hanging under each one.’

To hear is to obey. I run off to the central nave and, climbing onto the pews, execute one offending bulb after the other. Soon the sombre silver light of the stained-glass windows reigns again. My father was right. The cathedral heaves a sigh of relief.

Suddenly, a door opens with a fishy flap and a priest pops out of nowhere and screeches: ‘What are you doing?’

A hand in midair, still standing on the pew, I can’t say a thing. I think of my mother peacefully stealing roses in the Bagatelle Gardens … But our crime seems of a lower order. He starts walking towards me, swishing his brown skirts. He reminds me, in spite of his cassock, of the bossy student teacher at school who frightens me out of my wits. All of a sudden, I can see the monk’s knees pumping like pistons inside his robe. I can’t make out his features; they are swallowed by fury. As he moves closer, his face gets redder and redder.

‘Come down, little vermin!’

I turn round towards my father, but there’s no one there. I look at the empty prayer stool he was sitting on – nothing. He has disappeared. So I climb down from the pew and, as soon as my feet touch the stone, run for my life, leaving the yelling priest behind me. Fumbling, I find the little door we used to come in and clatter down the stone steps. My father appears from behind a column.

He smiles at me. Everything’s all right.

‘It was no use my staying there. It would only have made things worse. That little busybody priest couldn’t say anything to a little girl like you. But if he had known it was my idea, we would never have heard the end of it.’

I’m so relieved to have found him, nothing else matters.

‘Come on! Let’s go and have another dessert. We’ll never last until dinner with all these adventures. Aren’t you hungry?’

He grabs my hand and, all priestly matters forgotten, we scramble down the rest of the stairs. Soon we are in a pâtisserie where a lady with prosperous bosoms covers our table with brioches and croissants. In a few gulps, his share has vanished. Alexandre transfers his attention to the room and, eying the owner, raises his eyebrows:

‘An overcrowded balcony.’

I nod. This is the code word for big bosoms. My father likes them and always points them out to me in the street. Then he pushes his chair back with a sigh.

‘I could start all over again,’ he adds thoughtfully, eyeing the croissant on my plate. ‘Don’t you want any more?’

When I shake my head he downs that too, looks at his watch, pays and, before the lady can take another breath, we are out of her pâtisserie.

On the motorway heading towards Paris, I wonder why my father goes to noisy Masses where the priest’s voice interrupts the silence the whole time, instead of listening to the stained-glass windows made of precious stones, blood, feathers, wine, twigs and women’s milk. But he’s clearing his throat.

‘Y’know!’

For once he doesn’t look at me, but keeps his eyes on the road ahead.

‘Do you know, Catherine, that men have a little finger somewhere?’

I frown.

‘On their hand?’

‘Oh, no, somewhere else entirely – and they absolutely must put it into a lady every day and even twice a day. If they don’t, they get very sick! And, when it’s inside the lady, that finger becomes as big as a bottle of Coca-Cola! And then …’

He stops dramatically.

‘It explodes!’

‘It explodes? Doesn’t it hurt the lady?’

‘Oh, no, she’s very happy.’

This leaves me silent. I am wondering where men put their bottle of Coca-Cola, in their briefcase perhaps, or in their pocket. It’s a worry. I feel my father is expecting me to ask him some questions as usual, but I’d rather we spoke about the Carthaginians. Maybe the Carthaginian women were trying to escape the Roman bottles when they threw themselves from the top of the city walls into the flames. Carthage always makes things clearer for me.

When I’m uncomfortable I tend to think of the Carthaginians. Sometimes I imagine going to Carthage myself one day, forgetting that the Romans have poured salt all over its ruins.