L'Amerique. Thierry Sagnier

to be a man of the world like his magnificent Papa, pretended to be interested, but could never manage it for very long.

      While Papa wrote and Maman sewed, both mostly oblivious to the complicated emotions of their employees, Jeanot watched as both Jean-Sylvain and Cécile vied for his Papa’s attention.

      Jean-Sylvain’s tactics relied on appealing to Papa’s pride. Papa was a handsome man; inches taller than the average Frenchman, and he knew it. He didn’t smoke and his clothes never smelled like Gauloise butts, like so many of the fathers of Jeanot’s friends. Papa had a marvelous speaking voice, an easy gait and a winner’s Yankee smile. He’d been in the war, too; a Free French who actually knew Le Général, a decorated fighter too modest to ever mention his medals. Papa was close to being the perfect man, thought Jeanot, and Jean-Sylvain obviously agreed.

      Under the pretext of designing some new men’s apparel, Jean-Sylvain took Papa’s measurements efficiently and without any hint of pleasure. He measured Papa’s shoulders, his chest, the length of his arms, and with trembling fingers the inseam of his trousers. He casually asked whether Papa dressed left or right, and when Papa admitted that he didn’t know what that meant, Jean-Sylvain explained with suspicious airiness that it had to do with Papa’s private parts. In which pant leg did Papa put them when he dressed in the morning? “The left,” Papa answered. Jean-Sylvain and Jeanot both saw Papa blush and Jeanot wasn’t too pleased with that. Jean-Sylvain remained stone-faced.

      Cécile took a remarkably similar tack, appealing to Papa’s pride as well. Papa, who had visited America before the war, had decided to teach his family basic English. Cécile spoke a smattering of English. She’d spent a week in London before the war, she said, and for three days taken a British lover of little skills. Now, she sought Papa out at every opportunity, asking for the translation of this word or that. Papa said she had a good accent, and soon they were exchanging greetings, jokes and asides in English.

      Papa may have been impressed, but Jeanot, who now found Cécile completely unattractive, was not.

      Chapter 11

      With the atelier doing well almost from opening day, Maman decided to accept the invitation to visit the Bonjeans at the château they owned in the Loire Valley.

      Jeanot, Papa and Maman cheerfully piled into the DeSoto to spend some time in the country, but even with all the windows open, the aging car’s interior was stifling. They’d stopped three times to add water to the leaky radiator. That the automobile had traveled 260 kilometers without a major mishap was a miracle, Papa said. Papa insisted the “American beast” had carried them safely through the sheer force of his will.

      The château was the architectural equivalent of the aging car. The circular coachway leading to the front entrance was rutted with missing cobblestones. To Jeanot’s horror, in the entranceway, Babette and Dédé Bourillot of the potato gun and naked Nazi fiascos, stood, holding hands, Babette smiling her welcome.

      Jeanot felt as if the DeSoto had run over his chest, as if his guts had been torn out and eaten by a savage cannibal Zhivaro headhunter.

      So, apparently, did Papa. “Ah non! Non non non! C’est l’idiot avec le pistolet à patate!”

      The idiot with the potato gun seemed no happier to see the St. Paul family. Dédé scowled, whispered something in Babette’s ear. She giggled and the sound further bruised Jeanot’s heart. They turned and skipped away, still holding hands. Jeanot let himself slide to the floor of the DeSoto.

      He moped through the afternoon and in the evening decided to go catch frogs at the estate’s étang, a walled pond that in earlier times had been the château’s water supply. Maman equipped him with a swatch of red felt tied at the end of long piece of string. The idea, she said, was to fool the frogs into believing the cloth was a piece of meat. Frogs, being both stupid and carnivorous, would take the bait, swallow it, and Jeanot would reel the string in with an amphibian at the end. It made sense in a strange way so he spent forty-five minutes being ignored by frogs too numerous to count. He caught one with his bare hands, tried to feed it a morsel of the cloth but the beast was adamantly anti-felt. He was about to shove the offended animal in his pocket when a pair of soft arms enveloped him from behind.

      Babette.

      He dropped the frog, tried to slither away from the two-timing hussy but she refused to let him go. She whispered, “I’m so glad you’re here,” and then, “Dédé smells like onions. It’s really dégoutant.”

      Monsieur Bourillot, Dédé’s journalist father, had once written a long article for Le Figaro about the benefits of healthy eating. Papa had read it aloud at the table with great distaste. Monsieur Bourillot had propounded the theory that onions were beneficial to dental hygiene. The Bourillot family—father, mother and son—he wrote, each ate an onion a day. Their splendid teeth were the pride of their dentist, but the entire family emanated an onion soup smell that Jeanot and his family found disturbing.