Firmly in the camp of the elephants, Luc thought of them as protection against crocodiles. He loved Babar, who was as real to him, or perhaps more real than anything in the world. When he was still able to visit, Cathérine had dropped him off with Jules while she left her car and took the RER into Paris to have lunch with David and to shop. Jules forgot everything as he willingly entered Luc’s world. They sailed a model boat in Shymanski’s pool. They released helium balloons and watched them with binoculars. Luc affirmed that he could see them, but he was pointing the binoculars more or less downward at the Seine. They watched cartoons, and ate the blandest, tiniest lunch Jules had eaten since Cathérine was three.
As Luc and Jules were building with Legos, Luc fell asleep. Jules carried him to the sofa, arranged pillows so he wouldn’t roll off, and then brought out the grand éléphant d’activités Les Papoum, a wonderful, velveteen elephant with cloth ears and rattles in its feet. He set it next to Luc, and sat in a chair from which he could see the child’s expression when he awoke.
Jules was reading an essay about the Roman quest for a quiet life – the monuments, coliseums, insulae, and legions had perhaps created the Romans’ desire for life as nature laid it out at its simplest – when he heard a little yawn. Still holding the book, he let it drop to his lap. Luc opened his eyes. There was the elephant, from Luc’s perspective, towering above him. At first he froze. Then he smiled broadly and his eyes opened wider. Then he laughed, and lunged into his new friend, embracing it. All the great things that man has engineered, the vast cities, the dams, bridges, rockets, and trains, even the breathtaking forest of lights in Manhattan, could not hold a candle to that.
No one in the world but Jules Lacour knew that he had an aneurysm that would carry him away if, for example, he chose to outrun a pretty young girl on the long terrace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He could end his life at will, and it would never be taken as suicide. Other than the aneurysm, as far as he knew, he was in good health. He had kept up his strength because he had been sure since childhood that at some point he would need it to save himself or those he loved. Although he had not been able to save his mother, his father, or Jacqueline, he had always dreamed and prayed for the power and courage to do so. He had understood that never would he be able to come to their aid, and yet all his life he had dreamed that he would. And although he had never lacked courage, and had nurtured and come to the aid of others, never had he fulfilled his deepest desire, which was to save a faltering life by giving his own.
Touching Down
PARADOXICALLY, FLYING IS the handmaiden not only to fear but to optimism. Lifted above earth and oceans; seemingly higher than the stars close to the horizon; piercing through scudding, moonlit clouds; shot forward at great speed; the cabin carefully lighted; perfumed women circulating among their charges who sleep or read beneath pools of light … All this allows fresh starts, new thoughts, and the kind of planning that, once one touches down, assumes a weight and difficulty it does not have at altitude.
As the Airbus raced through thin air aloft, schemes and plans occurred to Jules almost uncontrollably. In the dimly lit cabin, its little spotlights illuminating here and there those who were still awake and working, he imagined thoughts issuing as if from a soap bubble machine and floating about, ephemeral and sparkling. But his speculations, tempted to fly off left and right, hewed to the centerline of necessity.
Disregarding morals in favor of necessities, he would have to abandon a lifetime of caution. For Luc, he would violate the categorical imperative. When things are so arranged, he thought, that observing the law crushes an individual, a family, the truth, then the categorical imperative need not be observed. He had already collided with the laws of the state. What he had in mind was far less a transgression but still illegal. Although in the hospital the first glimmer had appeared, the rest had come to him as he flew.
The plane now maneuvered over Paris grayed in morning light. As it dropped below the clouds, early traffic came into view, its red taillights reflecting off rain-slicked roads. There was a remarkable difference between the struggle below – thousands of cars slowing, skidding, sometimes stopping, all crowded together – and the enormous plane gliding smoothly through the air and aimed at the runway, like a rifle shot.
Despite all the troubles he would find, he was happy to be home. Though not vast, France is a big country, neither elongated like Italy nor broken into an archipelago like Japan, Denmark, or Indonesia. France is solid and centered. In Paris a Frenchman can feel that his world stretches more or less evenly in all directions, uninterrupted by sea or mountains, and yet not with the infinitude of the Russian Steppe or the Australian Outback. The center of gravity is just right, the country, although known as a hexagon, is like a protective sphere that most times allows the French to discover both the art of living and the perfection of art.
They flew low over fields, highways, and factories. The stewardesses strapped themselves into their seats. Now that Jules was an outlaw, he stared at the stewardess, the h?tesse de l’air, who he thought had perhaps expressed a desire – even were it fleeting – for him. And she stared back. Certainly he was too old, but there is a solidity and truth to age, and he was still physically able. Maybe for her he would be a novelty. Or perhaps what was most influential was that, as his inhibitions were overwhelmed by the sight and imagination of her, she felt his intense appreciation. She may have sensed the state he was in, and wanted to be taken to the ground along with him and cleared of everything but essence. Both of them had the same aura that envelops soldiers who fight with neither fear nor regret in a battle they know will be their last: release, abandon, humility, a feel for the earth, the defeat of time. But then, as always, there was Jacqueline, in the separate, inviolable world in which he would join her happily and soon. And that was enough for a constant widower as he wearily deplaned on the grayest of mornings in the city that still held his life.
II.
Blood Will Tell
DNA
JUST AS A CURVE is a series of infinitely small angles, and according to philosophers a point cannot exist, logically there is no present but only the infinitesimal and perhaps nonexistent space between past and future, as any schoolchild thinking about space and time might suspect. One thing that distinguishes Paris, however, making of it a magnet of attraction, is that it turns all this on its head. In Paris the present dominates the spectrum of time, spreading the otherwise invisible gap between past and future into spacious fields the ends of which one cannot even see. Just as music sounded out is only either heard in time that has passed or will be heard in time yet to come, and yet is solely of the present, Paris is overwhelmingly of the present as well.