The Book of Wonders Read online

  The disappointment of 19 January, that first day when I was conscious but no one came to see me – I can tell you I’m over that. I know now that Mum’s there, and she’s fighting. I know that Grandma’s there too. Oh, and I must tell you about the best bit, which made me laugh my socks off. A few minutes after Mum left, Granny Odette came to see me. She chatted innocently to Charlotte/Sophie Davant, but I could tell she was plotting something. She acted like she was in on Mum’s plans, whereas I knew she hadn’t the faintest idea. Grandma’s crafty. So Charlotte told her everything, in the most natural way, and Grandma took in the information in the most natural way too.

  When Charlotte left the room, Grandma came over and whispered that there was no way she was going to let Mum go off on her own to such an unfamiliar, faraway country, that she was sorry to have to leave me for a few days, but she was sure I understood. That of course I mustn’t breathe a word to Mum, but she was going to follow her from a distance. You can trust me, Grandma; I’ll be as silent as the grave. Excuse the pun, but Grandma just kills me. If I’d been my usual self, I’d have had a bellyache from laughing so much all day. I’d love to be a fly on the wall, just to see Mum’s face when Grandma rocks up.

  I love my mum to bits, I love my grandma to bits – they’re the best. I can’t wait to hear about their Tokyo trip; they’re really going to kick ass.

  10

  23 Days

  All About My Mother

  Unable to sleep because of jet lag and the strange sounds coming from my bedfellow, I lay awake all night, thinking. About my life. About my mother. About us.

  For as long as I could remember, I’d been Thelma the pseudo-rebel, fighting against everything for the sake of it. I wasn’t named after Thelma in the 1990s film Thelma and Louise – I’m much too old for that. I was born in 1977, when Thelma Houston was topping the charts with the mega international hit ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’, which my mother, Odette, was crazy about. These days, of course, when I tell people my name, they always think of the film with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. When Ridley Scott’s film was released, it blew me away. A star-struck teenager, I identified with the story of those two strong and sexy women. They became my role models, a sort of feminine ideal. I’d never believed in God, and I saw the film as a sign from destiny: now my name was associated with a symbol that was much more meaningful than an old forty-five-r.p.m. record. I know the film ends in tragedy, but the impact it had on me was positive. Thelma and Louise are symbols of women’s freedom of choice, of women who owe men nothing, have no expectations of them and get by on their own.

  When I fell pregnant, I decided to keep the baby, knowing that I would raise it without a father. I hoped to have a girl and call her Louise. But Louise turned out to be a boy. That’s the way it is, and I’m very glad. Louis is the only male who matters to me.

  My mother brought me up alone too. Odette is a product of May ’68, who’s always campaigned to do as she pleases with her body, for her freedom of thought, and I admired her for that. I grew up with the idealized memory of an absent father, who’d died during a demonstration against the destruction of the steel industry. I wasn’t yet a year old, and the figure of that untouchable, irreplaceable father swept away all hope of a family life. My mother continued his work as a union activist, and, as far back as I can remember, I’ve always seen her involved in the struggle. She left no door open in her life for a man. She drowned her grief in her battles, and her day-to-day work as a primary-school teacher and activist in an education priority zone. Success for all, darling. I was full of admiration for her! I spent so much time marching in the streets with her! I remember the May Day parades – first of all on her shoulders, a few years later holding one end of a banner, then my own flag. I was proud of her, proud of myself, proud to honour my father’s memory.

  Then came my teens. My anxieties, my embarrassment, my aching desire to fit in, to be a slave like everyone else to the fashion brands, American princes and princesses, stereotyped beauty. I was fed up with shapeless jumpers with a picture of Che Guevara on them, having Mum cut my hair, tatty trainers, rejection of the capitalist world. I hated the alternative lifestyle that prevented me from being accepted by the cool girls at school, made me a laughing-stock among the boys of my age, so sexy in their Nike Air Jordans, baggy Poivre Blanc sweaters and Adidas tracksuit bottoms, unzipped at the ankles.

  I didn’t understand my mother’s wholesale rejection of all that; I resented her for denying me a normal life. So I started loathing her violently, and automatically doing the opposite of what she wanted for me. I hated her lanky, pipe-cleaner look, her bandy legs in her loose-fitting, worn jeans, the way she smoked her cigarettes, holding them between her thumb and forefinger, her ashen hair clipped back in that eternal tone-on-tone grip, her cowboy whistles, her hard expression and her disparaging words, her disapproval of my lifestyle. I did my utmost to become everything she abhorred. She saw me as an irresponsible mother, wasting the best years of my life pursuing my career, obsessed with the sales figures of a multinational corporation that had no qualms about outsourcing overseas and selling products that were purely frivolous.

  The only bond we still have is Louis. Louis has always been allowed to see his grandmother whenever he wants to. Always. A matter of principle, of roots. And the three of us have brunch together once a month. Which is what we were supposed to have been doing on that fateful Saturday, 7 January.

  After my long and intense night of thinking, I finally decided to accept my lot. My mother was there, with me, 10,000 kilometres from Paris. And I’d promised Louis I’d carry out what was written in his little Book of Wonders, to the letter.

  He’d drawn up a detailed list of things he wanted to experience in Japan, the title of which said it all:

  Have a wild day in Tokyo with the person I love more than anyone else in the world (Mum, for the time being).

  I found the ‘for the time being’ a bit disconcerting. I managed to take it on the chin, but the mere idea that he could think that one day he might love someone more than me had wounded my broken little heart – and my strong ego. Then I remembered that, when I was his age, I couldn’t have foreseen that he would come along and I’d love him more than anyone else, so I swallowed my pride and moved on. I had initially thought I’d be ticking the box alone, since I was not going to be able to spend my ‘wild day’ in Tokyo with ‘the person I love more than anyone else in the world’ – in other words, Louis. On second thoughts, it was bending the rules of the game. Louis had stipulated that the challenges had to be experienced by two people – that was what he meant. But, apart from Louis, there was no one I really loved . . . Sad, I know, but that’s the way things were. The next person on my list of potential people I loved was my mother, I had to admit it.

  There, lying in that vast bed, closer to her than I had been since I was fourteen, I became aware of the emptiness of that ‘list of people I love’. I wasn’t antisocial, I had lots of acquaintances with whom I enjoyed a good night out, but I didn’t really have any friends. Love and friendship required an effort which I’d given up on a long time ago, when I left Louis’s father, before he knew he was going to be a father. Since the accident, I could count on the fingers of one hand the people who’d tried to get in touch to find out how I was. I hadn’t called them back. I’d got lots of friends on Facebook, lots of real-life men and women mates, but no true friends. I hadn’t been unhappy about it; it was my choice. My priorities had always been clear: raise my son and have a successful career.

  My Aunt Odile never had children, much to her regret. My only family, right now, were Louis and my mother. I sat up in bed. We’d left the curtains open and the white light of the city bathed the room in a ghostly glow. I watched my mother sleeping. She seemed peaceful. Her face less stern than when she was awake. I found her beautiful. An unconventional beauty – angular, obstinate. I lay back down and continued to look at her. I told myself that ultimately Louis would no doubt be delighte
d if I spent this wished-for ‘wild day’ with his grandmother.

  When she woke up, and I suggested it, I saw a new glint in her steel-blue eyes. She hadn’t been expecting this. She had probably been planning to follow me like a secret agent, complaining about those ‘darn Japanese’, cursing me out loud, and here I was offering her a completely different prospect. She merely said, ‘Thank you,’ looked down to hide her emotion, then said, ‘So, what do we start with?’ I told her that I hoped she had a strong stomach, because we had a lot on our plate. She gave a gleeful laugh that I found completely unrecognizable.

  And we went out into the singular warmth of that winter’s day in Tokyo.

  11

  23 to 22 Days

  My Mother as a Maid in a Karaoke Club

  ‘Anniiiiie aime les sucettes, les sucettes à l’anis . . .’

  We were in a karaoke bar in Shibuya, the trendy district that never sleeps, and I think the surreal image of my mother, dressed up as a saucy maid, screeching France Gall’s cute Lolita number about loving lollipops, a song which she hates, surrounded by Japanese in high spirits, chorusing ‘Kanpai!’ at the end of every line, will remain etched in my memory forever.

  Naturally, it occurred to me to capture that magic moment for posterity. I had difficulty filming because I was in fits of giggles, which made the camera wobble. At one point, one of our fellow drinkers grabbed the camera, and his friends gave me a second mic and pushed me on to the mini stage. My mother, who generally doesn’t drink and who’d been downing glasses of umeshu – a moreish plum liqueur – yelled that she was very happy to sing this duet with me, grabbing me by the neck, like a drunkard at a village beer festival in Alsace, and shrieking even louder when Johnny Hallyday’s ‘Que je t’aime’ came on. That night, we discovered that Japanese karaoke bars, as well as being places of wild drinking, are veritable museums of international music hits, and that the French pop songs of the Sixties to the Nineties are a big favourite.

  The day had begun a great deal more calmly. We’d followed Louis’s plan to the letter, and I piqued my mother’s curiosity by disclosing each stage only as we came to it. So, for her, the day had been a series of surprises. It was the first time she’d been outside Europe, and only her third time out of France, and she was like a kid, impatient to find out what was next. She relied on me, because I both had the schedule and spoke English – for want of Japanese – and I had the feeling that our roles had been reversed: I was the mother, travelling with her child who was carrying a senior citizen’s card.

  The first stage was the Pokémon Center megastore, in Ikebukuro, where we bought thirty or so super-rare cards and posed in front of giant statues of Pikachu and his friends. People dressed as strange creatures, in cosplay outfits, greeted us: teenagers disguised as characters from the Studio Ghibli, candyfloss-pink schoolgirls, punk Lolitas, superheroes going around in noisy groups. I recognized a Sailor Moon, two Hello Kittys, a Totoro and a few Pokémon heroes, but I’m certain that Louis would have identified most of the characters.

  Next, we went for a stroll in the vast gardens around the Meiji Jingu. We were awestruck by this oasis of nature and history in the heart of the city’s hustle and bustle. A surprising change of scene. We gave in to the temptation of taking a selfie in front of the majestic collection of ancient sake barrels that greets visitors, then we captured the special atmosphere of the shrine by placing the camera on a low wall for some minutes. Louis would be able to listen at leisure to the special peacefulness of Tokyo’s nature, the murmur of the city providing a subtle soundscape. The foreground was made up of birds twittering and rustling foliage. We stayed there for a long time, listening. Waiting for the next step of our adventure.

  A traditional wedding was going to be celebrated at the Meiji Jingu. I had no idea why Louis wanted to attend a Japanese wedding; it was most likely something he’d read about in a manga magazine, the extraordinary beauty of which he’d intuited. The procession approached. I gestured to the bride to ask if we could film, and she agreed with a smile. She seemed to be imbued with the magic of the Meiji Jingu and of the moment, utterly still in her immaculate cocoon-like dress, a chrysalis of purity. Time was suspended in the reds of the kimonos, the copper roofs, the slow, coordinated steps, the weight of tradition. Leaning towards the camera, I quietly described the scene, mindful of the solemnity of the moment: ‘It’s a stunning sight, darling. You have to see it for yourself. Thank you for having brought us here.’

  After this moving interlude, we decided to dive straight into the buzzing Shibuya district. Shibuya – everyone knows it, without knowing it. It’s that crazy intersection, with a tangle of pedestrian crossings and tall buildings covered in giant screens, screaming noise and lights. The Japanese Times Square. I’d read that this legendary crossing is the epitome of Japanese discipline: when the lights change to green for pedestrians, hundreds of people cross at the same time, carefully avoiding one another. ‘Imagine what chaos it would be if Parisians were thrown in there,’ Mum remarked with her usual tact. She couldn’t have spoken a truer word. I was a little afraid of what Louis had planned, but I had to follow everything to the letter. We had to follow everything to the letter.

  We waited by one of the pedestrian crossings, surrounded by a hundred or so people. A hundred or so others stood facing us. Ignoring her protests, I attached Louis’s camera to my mother’s forehead with a ‘Take it or leave it’ that made her laugh and mutter that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and that I was well and truly my mother’s daughter. I switched on the camera and took her wrinkled palm in mine.

  ‘On the count of three, we close our eyes.’

  ‘You’re joking, I hope? Are you trying to kill me, or what?’

  ‘On the count of three, we close our eyes, Mum.’

  ‘Mary, mother of Jesus, what have I done for God to punish me like this—?’

  ‘Mum, you’ve never believed in God!’

  ‘Maybe that explains it.’

  I laughed, and she laughed. I said, ‘One, two, three – close your eyes!’

  The pedestrian light must have turned green, because we surged forward with the crowd, our eyes closed. My mother yelped in a panic each time someone brushed against her, and I laughed all the more. Then my foot hit what must have been a kerb, I stumbled and Mum steadied me. I regained my balance, and we opened our eyes again. We were on the other side. We’d just crossed the busiest intersection in the world with our eyes closed, and not been jostled once. These Japanese were disarmingly disciplined and well mannered. We looked at one another and burst out laughing. I think we felt alive.

  We decided to take a well-earned break in a café overlooking the Shibuya Crossing, watching (and filming) the ballet of pedestrians for some time, with what we guessed were the latest Japanese hits playing in the background. Dusk was about to fall and we hadn’t noticed the time go by. It was already almost five and we still had a lot to do.

  We took a taxi to the Shinjuku district, the hub of Tokyo nightlife, where I’d read you had to be careful. In the heart of Kabukicho, the red-light district where gaming rooms, hostess bars, restaurants, jazz clubs and meetings of the yakuza – the local mobsters – mingle, it was better not to follow just any person, anywhere. We dived headlong into the bustle, the crowd, the vertical luminous signs with incomprehensible ideograms. After locating – with difficulty – the address on Louis’s list, which was very precise, when it came to Tokyo, we found ourselves in the waiting room of Tomohiro Tomoaki, alias Tomo: the celebrities’ tattoo artist. I had to ask him to ink a part of my body, in order to check off this item on my son’s motley Japanese wish list.

  The walls were covered with photos of international stars proudly posing, one with an eagle on their hip, another with a greedy mouth at the top of their pubis (really classy – I won’t reveal who it was, even under torture) . . . and I started to wonder what I’d got myself into. Mum was having fun acting the interviewer, filming me while asking me what it was lik
e to be on the point of getting a penis tattoo on my right cheek – ‘You never know what you’ll end up with, with your level of Japanese.’ Ha, ha, very funny. I’d decided to be restrained and have a plain capital L tattooed on the inside of my left wrist. It would be hidden by my watch most of the time.

  I closed my eyes while Tomo was tattooing me and, in the end, I was very pleased with the result. Bearable pain, a discreet and beautiful Japanese-style L. We thanked him with a reverential bow that was probably inappropriate – I don’t think I’ll ever understand the complex codes of Japanese greetings – and emerged into the turmoil of Kabukicho.

  After drinking a first umeshu in the Golden Gai district, full of microhouses concealing bars which can only cram in five or six people, we entered an izakaya – a traditional restaurant. We removed our shoes and sat on the floor, kneeling on a tatami. Our adventures had given us an appetite. Next on Louis’s list was an exciting and scary command:

  Eat in an izakaya, ask for a menu in Japanese, with no photos, order five random dishes and eat them all!

  ‘You can count me out, pussycat. After all, you’re the one who must follow Louis’s instructions, not me.’

  ‘You’ve got a nerve, Mum! If you decide you’re going to be my guest – well, you’re my guest to the end! Come on, let’s both have another umeshu – that’ll perk you up!’

  My mother raised her eyes to the heavens, feigning exasperation with a broad smile, and answered in her best accent: ‘Go for the oo-me-shoe . . .’