A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (11 page)

Francis ceased completely to show interest in Frédérique. He wasn’t cruel but simply no longer acknowledged her existence. I felt sorry for her and saved a space for her at the next desk so that she wouldn’t have to sit alone. But the more friendly I was, the more nasty and obnoxious she became. It was the oddest behavior I had ever encountered. Frédérique had something condescending and unpleasant to say about everything, as though she really believed she possessed a grandmotherly wisdom that gave her the right to attack everyone else’s way of life. “You’re so childish,” she would say, clap her hands and cackle derisively. Or, if I would offer her a sweet, she’d shake her head, lowering her eyes, and say, “You should really be ashamed, eating things like that.”

“You’re a real drag, Frédé, you know that?” I said after a few days, not in a nasty way, but just as a statement of fact. She stared at me flatly with her pale eyes and said nothing. A few weeks later she came down with pneumonia and left the school forever.

About a month into the trimester, the headmistress came to our class with a questionnaire for the English-speaking students. A rumor had been going around the school (spread by the upperclassmen) that certain English-speaking parents were complaining to the administration. English was being taught as a foreign language even to American and English students, meaning that the school only had to hire one teacher—who was not even a native English speaker. It was not a daily class, but met twice a week, and all students were thrown in together. The school was saving money in this department, it was true, and everyone knew it. The English classes were so boring and easy that Francis and I were constantly getting thrown out into the hall, which was fine with us, since it gave us more privacy to talk and giggle. Francis had begun to tell me opera stories.

“Which opera would you like to hear today?” Francis would say while we stood out in the hall among the hanging coats.

“Tell me
Tosca
again.”

He would proceed to tell me every detail of the love triangle and act out the characters’ tragic and violent deaths. Francis never played the records for me or told me about the composers, just the stories.
Don Giovanni, Tosca, Aïda, Madame Butterfly, Otello, La Bohème
; they were the most wonderful, romantic, passionate, tragic stories I’d ever heard. I especially liked
Romeo and Juliet
and
Tosca
. When Francis would get to the end of
Romeo and Juliet,
he’d say, “And then she
plunged
the dagger into her own breast,” and pantomime plunging the dagger into his breast. Then he’d collapse into a heap of bones on the floor. For the end of
Tosca
, he’d jump off a table or throw himself down stairs if any were nearby.

The day the questionnaire was handed out by Madame Beauvier,
directrice
, Francis and I were sitting, as usual, in the very last row of desks.

“I see you two are still occupying the North Pole,” the
directrice
said in a pointed tone.

The questionnaire asked the students to write down their parents’ names, nationalities, how many years they’d been in France, and so on. Feeling important, I busily wrote in that my parents were American but that I was born in France and had always lived in France. Since there were only four English-speaking students in 7
ème
C, Madame Beauvier gathered the questionnaires quickly and took a moment to glance over them as she stood near the door.

“Francis Fortescue,” she said in her loud, determined voice. “You have forgotten to put down your father’s name and nationality.”

Francis looked up at the ceiling, eyelids fluttering, and tapped his fingers impatiently on the desktop.

“What is your father’s name, Francis?” The
directrice’s
mouth became a hard little knot as she positioned her clipboard in the crook of her arm and raised a pencil to Francis’s questionnaire.

Can’t she see she’s embarrassing him? I thought. Can’t she just go away?

“Well, we’re waiting, Francis,” Madame said. “We don’t have all day.”

Everyone turned to stare at Francis.

“I don’t know,” Francis finally said in an exasperated tone, and glared back at the
directrice
.

“You don’t know?” she repeated, and shook her head slightly. “Well, that explains everything, doesn’t it?” she concluded, as though she’d suspected as much all along.

Everyone tittered, including the teacher, who already did not think highly of Francis or me. Then Madame Beauvier left, telling the class sharply as she stood in the doorway that we were all a bunch of bandits and better learn to behave or else.

I glared at the words I’d written on my notebook just before Madame Beauvier came in. It was a dictation, some complicated passage from
Les Misérables
. I was so distraught I couldn’t read the words or look at Francis for a long time. After a while he mumbled, “That bitch was just trying to get my goat.”

One weekend we built an opera house for Francis’s puppets, out of a large rectangular cardboard box. We constructed the sets out of all kinds of materials—Francis’s mother’s old scarves, dishrags, and veils; we bought velvet, marble, gold, and silver paper by the centimeter at the art supply store to decorate the walls and floor. Once we’d created a set, we’d lead the puppets through the complicated love triangles we’d invented for them. The sets changed more often and more radically than the stories.

Twice a week, Francis had his violin lesson, and only on those afternoons would we not get together after school. Those were lonely and boring afternoons for me.

“Practicing is so boring,” Francis would say in a whiny voice on those days, “but my mother says if I keep practicing I’ll become a great violinist.”

“For my birthday, my mother wants to take us to
Tristan and Isolde
at the opera,” he announced to me one day on the way to recreation. “It’s by Wagner, it’s five hours long and there’s barely any scenery. Do you think you can sit still that long? My mother thinks you’re impatient and that it might be hard for you.”

This statement made me decide immediately that I wouldn’t move an inch through the whole opera if it killed me.

When I told my parents what we were doing for Francis’s birthday, they looked at me in silence, without commenting. It seemed a bit odd to them, certainly, but how could they complain? At least it was a major step up from playing Cowboys and Indians in the street.

We sat in a loge on the right side of the opera house. There was no scenery but the inside of a ship’s bow at the back of the slanting stage, and a few benches and some large trunks of Isolde’s scattered here and there, on which the singers sat from time to time. I knew the story: In Act I, Tristan is taking Isolde by ship to meet her future husband the King.

Tristan and Isolde were so very large that it seemed funny to me—I imagined all tragic heroes should be young and skinny. It took Tristan and Isolde an hour and a half to accidentally drink the love vial destined for Isolde and her future husband the King, and then, at the close of the act, they threw themselves into each other’s arms and the scenery trembled from the impact.

I sat still through the entire opera. On the way out, Mrs. Fortescue smiled down at me in her impish way and asked, “How did you like it?”

“I loved it,” I said. “But they were a bit fat.”

One day, Francis’s mother brought his violin to school, and the teacher made time for him to play for a few minutes at the end of class.

“Now, children, Francis has brought his violin and is going to play for us,” the teacher said in a tone that sounded slightly derisive. Mrs. Fortescue stood by the door with her arms crossed, smiling at everyone as though she thought we were all so sweet and cute.

No one had ever done such a brash thing in the dummy class. Francis slowly, unhappily dragged himself to the front of the room and stood with his back to the blackboard, tapping his foot impatiently and making that condescending face, his eyes focused on the ceiling and his mouth puckered up as though his tongue tasted terrible to him.

He played a little classical piece slowly, without rhythm or nuance. Afterwards, everyone clapped politely and his mother left with his violin.

“That was good, Francis,” I said.

“No it wasn’t. You don’t have an ear for music, you can’t tell. It was lousy. I don’t play well. My mother likes me to play, though. It was her idea, not mine. Maybe I should take voice lessons, or try the piano instead? I’m going to have to learn to do something musical if I want to make it in the opera business.”

I decided that I would ask my parents if Francis could spend the night during Christmas vacation. I waited until we were all gathered for dinner one evening.

“Can Francis sleep over next weekend?”

My parents looked at each other quickly and then at me.

“Where’s he going to sleep?” my mother asked.

“He can sleep in Billy’s room,” I suggested.

“What are you, nuts?” Billy said, glaring at me. Our father laughed out loud, throwing his weight back in the chair, which tipped.

“Watch the Louis Treize furniture,” our mother said. “That fat drunken jerk friend of yours ruined one already last month.”

“He can sleep on the cot in your room,” my father said, righting himself, still laughing.