The Elegance Of The Hedgehog Part 8

I am sorry, I've got family coming round (blatant lie). (blatant lie).

My cat is ailing, I can't leave him alone (sentimental). (sentimental).

I'm sick, I'd better keep to my room (shameless). (shameless).

Ultimately, I steel myself to say: thank you but I have people coming over this week, when suddenly the serene affability with which Monsieur Ozu stands before me opens a meteoric breach in time.

3. Beyond Time.

Snowflakes falling inside the globe.

Before memory's eyes, on Mademoiselle's desk-she was my teacher until I reached the older children's cla.s.s, with Monsieur Servant-is the little gla.s.s globe. When we had been good pupils we were allowed to turn it upside down and hold it in the palm of our hand until the very last snowflake had fallen at the foot of the chromium-plated Eiffel Tower. I was not yet seven years old, but I already knew that the measured drift of the little cottony particles foreshadowed what the heart would feel in moments of great joy. Time slowing, expanding, a lingering graceful ballet, and when the last snowflake has come to rest, we know we have experienced a suspension of time that is the sign of a great illumination. As a child I often wondered whether I would be allowed to live such moments-to inhabit the slow, majestic ballet of the snowflakes, to be released at last from the dreary frenzy of time.

Is that what it means to feel naked? All one's clothes are gone, yet one's mind is overladen with finery. Monsieur Ozu's invitation has made me feel completely naked, soul-naked, each glistening snowflake alighting on my heart with a delicious burning tingle.

I look at him.

And throw myself into the deep, dark, icy, exquisite waters beyond time.

4. Spiders' Webs.

Why, oh why on earth, for the love of G.o.d?" I ask Manuela, that very afternoon.

"What do you mean?" she says, setting out the tea things. "It sounds lovely!"

"You must be joking," I moan.

"You must think practical, now," she says. "You can't go like that. Your hair is all wrong," she a.s.serts, looking at me with the eye of an expert.

Do you have any idea of Manuela's notions on the subject of hairdressing? She may be an aristocrat of the heart but she is a true proletarian when it comes to hairstyling. Teased, twisted, puffed out then sprayed with a wicked concoction of chemical spiders' webs: a woman's hair, according to Manuela, must be architectural or nothing at all.

"I'll go to the hairdresser's," I say, trying to act un-precipitately.

Manuela looks at me doubtfully.

"What are you going to wear?"

Other than my everyday dresses, my concierge dresses, all I have is a sort of white nuptial meringue buried beneath layers of mothb.a.l.l.s, or a lugubrious black pinafore which I use for the rare funerals to which I am invited.

"I'll wear my black dress."

"The funeral dress?" Manuela is dismayed.

"That's all I have."

"Well, you'll have to buy something."

"It's only a dinner."

"That's as may be," answers the duenna lurking inside Manuela. "But don't you dress up when you go to have dinner with other people?"

5. Of Lace and Frills and Flounces.

Now things start to get difficult: where am I to buy a dress? Ordinarily, I order clothes by mail, even socks, underwear and camisoles. The idea of trying something on in front of an anorexic virgin-something which, on me, will look like a sack of potatoes-has always deterred me from going into boutiques. It is most unfortunate that it is now too late to order anything by mail and have it delivered in time.

If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.

The very next morning Manuela bursts into my loge.

She is carrying a clothes-bag, and hands it to me with a triumphant smile.

Manuela is a good six inches taller than I am, and weighs at least twenty pounds less. I can think of only one woman in her family whose figure might be comparable to mine: her mother-in-law, the formidable Amalia, who has a real penchant for frills and furbelows, although she does not strike one as being the sort to indulge fantasy. Portuguese-style pa.s.s.e.m.e.nterie has something rococo about it: nothing imaginative or light, just a delirious acc.u.mulation, where a dress ends up looking like a straitjacket made of lace, and even a simple blouse like an entry in a seamstresses' ruffles and frills compet.i.tion.

So you may imagine how worried I am. The dinner is already promising to be an ordeal; this could also turn it into a farce.

"You will look like a movie star!" says Manuela, as I feared. Then suddenly feeling sorry for me: "I'm joking," as she pulls from the bag a beige dress that seems to have been spared where flounces are concerned.

"Where did you get it?" I ask, examining the dress.

At first glance, it's the right size. It also appears to be a pricey dress, in wool gabardine, with a very simple cut, a s.h.i.+rt collar and b.u.t.tons down the front. Very sober; very chic. The kind of dress Madame de Broglie would wear.

"I went to see Maria last night," replies Manuela, pleased as punch.

Maria is a Portuguese seamstress who lives right next door to my savior. But to Manuela she's more than a mere compatriot. The two of them grew up together in Faro, each of them married one of the seven Lopes brothers and came with them to France, where they managed to have their children at almost exactly the same intervals, only a few weeks apart. They even share a cat, and similar tastes in refined patisserie patisserie.

"You mean it's someone else's dress?"

"Mmm," answers Manuela, pouting slightly. "But you know, she won't come to collect it. The lady died last week. And by the time it takes them to realize she left a dress at the seamstress's ... you'll have time to have ten dinners with Monsieur Ozu."

"This dress belongs to a dead woman?" I say, horrified. "I can't do that."

"Why not?" asks Manuela, frowning. "It's better than if she were alive. Just think, if you got a spot on it-you'd have to rush off to the dry cleaner's, make up some sort of excuse and what a ha.s.sle that would be."

"Morally ... I can't do it," I protest.

"Morally?" says Manuela, p.r.o.nouncing the word as if it were something disgusting. "What does that have to do with it? Are you stealing? Are you harming anyone?"

"But it is someone else's property, I can't just appropriate it for myself."

"But she's dead! And you're not stealing, you're just borrowing it for the evening."

When Manuela begins to embellish on semantic differences, there's not much point putting up a struggle.

"Maria told me she was a very nice lady. She gave her dresses, and a very nice Palpaga Palpaga coat. She couldn't wear them anymore because she'd put on weight, so she said to Maria, 'Could these be of any use to you?' You see, she was a very nice lady." coat. She couldn't wear them anymore because she'd put on weight, so she said to Maria, 'Could these be of any use to you?' You see, she was a very nice lady."

Palpaga is a type of llama with a highly valued wool fleece and a head adorned with a papaya. is a type of llama with a highly valued wool fleece and a head adorned with a papaya.

"I don't know ... " I say half-heartedly. "I just get the feeling I'm stealing from a dead person."

Manuela looks at me from the height of her exasperation.

"You are borrowing, not stealing. And what is she going to do with that dress, poor woman?"

There is nothing to be said to that.

"Time for Madame Pallieres," says Manuela with delight, changing the subject.

"I'll savor the moment with you."

"I'm on my way, then." She heads for the door. "In the meanwhile, try on the dress, go to the hairdresser's, and I'll be back later to have a look."

I look at the dress for a moment, doubtfully. In addition to my reticence to clothe myself in the garments of the deceased, I am greatly afraid that the dress will look utterly incongruous on my person. Violette Grelier is to dishrags what Pierre Arthens was to silk, and what I am to a shapeless purple or navy blue overall.

I shall wait until I get back to try it on.

And I did not even thank Manuela.

Journal of the Movement of the World No. 4.

A choir is a beautiful thing.

Yesterday afternoon was my school's choir performance. In my posh neighborhood school, there is a choir: n.o.body thinks it's square and everyone competes to join but it's very exclusive: Monsieur Trianon, the music teacher, hand picks his choristers. The reason the choir is so successful is because of Monsieur Trianon himself. He is young and handsome and he has the choir sing not only the old jazz standards but also the latest hits, with very cla.s.sy orchestration. Everyone gets all dressed up and the choir performs for the other students. Only the choir members' parents are invited because otherwise there'd be too many people. The gymnasium is always packed fit to burst as it is and there's an incredible atmosphere.

So yesterday off I headed to the gymnasium at a trot, led by Madame Fine because as usual on Tuesday afternoon first period we have French cla.s.s. "Led by" is saying a lot; she did what she could to keep up the pace, wheezing like an old whale. Eventually we got to the gym, everybody found a place as best they could. I was forced to listen to the most asinine conversations coming at me from below, behind, every side, all around (in the bleachers), and in stereo (cell phone, fas.h.i.+on, cell, who's going out with who, cell, dumb-a.s.s teachers, cell, Cannelle's party) and then finally the choir arrived to thundering applause, dressed in red and white with bow ties for the boys and long dresses with shoulder straps for the girls. Monsieur Trianon sat down on a high stool, his back to the audience, then raised a sort of baton with a little flas.h.i.+ng red light at the end, silence fell and the performance began.

Every time, it's a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there's this life we're struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck-it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers' faces are transformed: it's no longer Achille Grand-Fernet that I'm looking at (he is a very fine tenor), or Deborah Lemeur or Segolene Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur. I see human beings, surrendering to music.

Every time, it's the same thing, I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it's just too much emotion at once: it's too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I'm no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir.

When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.

In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.

6. Just a Trim.

Will you believe me if I tell you that I have never been to the hairdresser's? When I came to the city from the country, I discovered that there are two equally absurd professions, each of which accomplishes a task one ought to be able to take care of on one's own. To this very day I still find it difficult to believe that florists and hairdressers are not parasites, the former living off nature, which belongs to everyone, the latter performing with an outlandish amount of playacting and smelly products a task which I can expedite in my own bathroom with a pair of well-sharpened scissors.

"Who cut your hair like this?" asked the hairdresser indignantly once I had, with a Dantean effort, entrusted to her the mission of transforming my head of hair into a domesticated work of art.

She is pulling and shaking two strands of an immeasurable dimension on either side of my ears.

"Well, perhaps I shouldn't ask," she continues disgustedly, sparing me the shame of having to inform on my own person. "People have no respect for anything anymore, you see it all the time."

"I'd just like a trim," I say.

I am unsure what is meant by that but it's a cla.s.sic line from early afternoon TV series, which are filled with young women who wear buckets of make-up and who invariably spend their time at the gym or the hair stylist's.

"Trim? There's nothing to trim! We have to start from scratch, madame!"

She examines my scalp with a critical eye, and lets out a whistling sigh.

"You have really good hair, that's already a start. We should be able to do something with it."

In the end, my hairdresser turns out to be a good sort. Once her outrage, the legitimacy of which is actually there to confirm her own professional legitimacy, has abated-and because it is always good to read from the social script to which we owe our allegiance-she looks after me with grace and good humor.

What is to be done with a thick ma.s.s of hair other than cut it every which way when it begins to expand? This had been my lifelong credo in matters of hairstyling. Henceforth, to attempt to sculpt the resulting unruly ma.s.s into a shape shall be my abiding cutting-edge capillary concept.

"You really do have beautiful hair," she concludes, observing her labors, visibly satisfied. "It is thick and silky. You shouldn't be letting just anyone cut it."

Can a hair style change a person to such a degree? I cannot believe my own reflection in the mirror. Now that they are no longer confined by a black helmet, my features-which I have already qualified as anything but attractive-are framed by a light and playful wave, and are decidedly more appealing. It makes me look ... respectable. I even think I look like an aspiring Roman matron.

"It's ... fantastic," I say, wondering how I will ever hide this ill-considered folly from the stares of the residents.

It is inconceivable that all these years in pursuit of invisibility have run aground on the shoals of a matronly hair style.

I go home, hugging the walls. With incredible luck, I do not run into anyone. But I do fancy that Leo is giving me strange looks. I go up to him and he puts his ears back, a sure sign of anger or confusion.

"Oh come on then, don't you like it?" And then I realize that he is sniffing the air around me.

The shampoo. I reek of avocado and almond.

I stick a kerchief on my head and attend to sundry fascinating ch.o.r.es, the high point being the conscientious polis.h.i.+ng of the bra.s.s k.n.o.bs on the elevator cage.

It is now ten to two in the afternoon.

In ten minutes Manuela will emerge from the darkness of the stairwell to come and inspect the finished product.

I do not really have time for meditation. I remove my kerchief, undress hastily, slip on the beige gabardine dress that belongs to a dead woman and there comes the knock at the door.

7. The Vestal Virgin in Her Finery.

Wow ... holy cow!" says Manuela.

An onomatopoeia and a slang expression coming from the mouth of Manuela, whom I have never known to say a single trivial word, is rather like the Pope forgetting himself and shouting to the cardinals, Where the devil is that b.l.o.o.d.y miter Where the devil is that b.l.o.o.d.y miter?