~ ~ ~
I’ve got heaps of presents now. It’s as though I’ve caught up on everything I’ve never had, since I was born. If you saw them you’d think there must be lots of children living in our house, when in fact there aren’t. Bags of marbles. Plastic soldiers with complicated weapons that run off batteries. French castles that are really difficult to put together. Ambulances with paramedics dressed in red and orange. Footballs, rugby balls, hand balls. A Superman, and lots of other things besides that I sometimes forget all about, then when I find them again I think: When did my mum and dad give me that?
There’s hardly any room left to put it all. Some days my parents don’t tell me they’ve brought me presents, they put them straight under my bed, and when I go and look for a football or a handball, to go and play with Lounès and some other boys from round here, I find them, and shout for joy, you’d think I’d just got my Primary School Certificate, which I haven’t. If I find the key to my mother’s belly, will they still go on giving me presents?
My favourite toy is, of course, the car like Sebastien’s, which my parents bought me a few days ago. They said it wasn’t easy to find because Christmas was ages ago. They looked in all the shops in town, and there was just one car like it left, at Printania.
On Sundays I go into our yard and press all the command buttons on my car. It turns left, it turns right, then does a U-turn, it goes straight on then comes right back to my feet. Then I press the red button and it stops, and the engine goes off.
At first my parents wanted to buy two of these cars, but I said: ‘No, first wait till this one breaks down. Besides, if it does break down I’ll call Sebastien, he’ll know how to repair it, because he’s had a car like this for ages.’
That made them laugh, but not me.
When I play with my car, Maman Pauline and Papa Roger sometimes stand behind me, like they want to be children again, and play with me. They get down on their hands and knees and watch my car go all the way to the end of our yard and then come back to my feet. They cheer and I’m very happy that my car interests them so much. On the other hand, I know they are too big, really, to be down on their knees, crawling about in the dust. Grown-ups only get down on their knees to pray. So I think that if my father and mother are getting down on their knees it’s not because they want to play with me, it’s not because they like my car, it’s just because they want something from me. They want the key.
They can see I’m happy playing, so they ask me: ‘Do you like your car, Michel?’
I’m concentrating very hard because I don’t want my car to bang into the mango tree or to go outside, where someone could steal it, so I just nod, and say nothing.
Then Papa Roger leans over to me: ‘Michel, you need to think about us too, now. You need to think about making us happy, because we love you, and we aren’t your enemies. We’ll never be your enemies. We’ve given you lots of presents already. Just think, none of the children in our quartier, not in this town, even, have got the things you’ve got. Now you think about us, make us happy. Do you understand?’
I just act like I don’t understand, and go on playing. Until Maman Pauline and Papa Roger tell me directly that I’m the cause of their misery, I’ll act like I know nothing, and understand nothing, and am waiting for them to spell it out.
~ ~ ~
This Sunday Lounès and I have been playing with my car on the big football pitch in the Savon quartier. We don’t even feel the late afternoon heat. He came and whistled for me outside the house and said: ‘We need to run your car in properly, or it will never go very fast. Let’s go to the football pitch in Savon, there’s no match there this Sunday.’
The two of us are trying to see how fast my car can go and how many minutes, or hours it will run for. As soon as it sets off we start shouting as though it was a race between two cars when in fact there’s only one. That’s when I realise my parents were right to want to give me two cars. We could have had a real race between Lounès and me. I don’t want to ask Sebastien to have a race with me, because then he’ll know I’ve got the same toy as him and he’ll be jealous of me.
The car’s already done several runs out and back. Suddenly we hear a strange noise as though I’d pressed on the stop button.
I yelclass="underline" ‘It’s broken down! We’ll have to take it to my cousin’s!’
Then, remembering that I don’t want Sebastien to see my car, I press the start button again and again to make sure it really has broken down. It won’t move. Panicking, I pick it up and turn it over. Maybe it’s because of the dust. So I blow on it.
‘Don’t bother doing that, it’s not broken, the batteries are dead,’ says Lounès.
So I run over to the little bag I’ve brought with me, put the car away, and get out the footbalclass="underline" ‘It doesn’t matter if the car doesn’t work, let’s play football. We’ll play penalties, since there’s only two of us, you go and stand in goal over there, and I’ll go first.’
Lounès doesn’t move. He just stands there in the middle of the pitch like a pillar, looking at me.
‘Why don’t you go and stand in goal?’ I ask.
‘I don’t want to, Michel. Here we are, just playing around, while your mother’s back there feeling miserable. That’s not right, is it? You need to think about her now. You need to find that key…’
This really annoys me, though usually I never get annoyed with him, because I know that if we have a fight he’ll win, with his muscles, and his height, and his advanced katas that he learns in Maître John’s club.
I go back and put my ball away and pick up my bag to leave the football ground. He runs after me: ‘Wait, Michel. I just want Maman Pauline to stop being unhappy, that’s all.’
We walk fast now, not speaking. We get to their house first.
‘You coming in to say hi to my parents?’
‘No. Another day.’
‘Come on, you’ll be glad you did. Caroline’s there…’
I don’t answer, just hold out my hand. He takes it, holds it for a while, and then says: ‘Off you go then, and don’t forget to change the batteries in your car, if that’s what you really care about.’
~ ~ ~
These days my dreams take me far far away. I’m not just Michel these days, the little guy you see running round the quartier, or walking about in a khaki shirt, blue shorts and a pair of plastic sandals. I wear polyester trousers, linen jackets, white cotton shirts with a bow tie. I wear a hat, too, like the child in that film The Kid that Lounès has told me about, doing his imitation of Charlie Chaplin. But I’m older than the boy who gets left in a car by his mother and goes to live with Charlie Chaplin till his mother comes back rich and takes him back and thanks the adoptive father. Yes, I’m a bit bigger than him, I’m the way I’d like to be when I’m twenty.