kids,
Francois barely out of shorts. The meal was served by a
Spanish woman named Carmen, with one eye that twitched
and looked askance. The apartment was filled with extravagant Lalique vases of all sizes and deco furniture, big red
club chairs with arms wide enough to hold two tea cups. I
walked out of there dazed, onto the street where the sun
was setting over Eleanor of Aquitaine's tower, across the
street. Five hours had passed.
I went back year after year to see this family from my junior year abroad in 1973-74. I went to Papillon's apartment
above the pharmacy, then to Micheline's house, rue de Patay, then back to Papillon's retirement house in Pessac, for
the traditional Saturday lunch. I heard many more Papillon
stories: how he went to Spain with his medicines, to help
the Republicans, and came back disgusted by their violence.
I heard about his medals, his stamp collection, his pharmaceutical vases. I heard how he controlled pharmaceutical
supplies during the Occupation. I heard about his love for
the Marechal Petain, "who was betrayed by France." He had
a scarf printed with a drawing of the island where Petain was
exiled, and a motto about France's shame. He tried to lend it
to me to wear on a train trip, he thought I would get cold,
but Micheline intervened, gently: "You're not going to send
this poor young American girl off to Corsica with a Philippe Petain label around her neck." The children rolled their eyes
and explained later what American children are rarely
called upon to explain: the connection between family history, family prejudices, and big history, with a capital H. It
would take me ten more years to figure out that if you had
been a World War I veteran and not a Jew, Petain could have
been your hero in 194o. No matter how much wrong he did
later, the memory of Verdun might have blinded you to it.
I think a lot about that Petain scarf and the way Papillon
wanted me to wrap up in it. I always go back to him for understanding France: the Third Republic, Gaullism, the Spanish Loyalists, French myths about the U.S. For each mystery
about France I can think back to Papillon barking out some
absurd slogan that would turn out to be soaked in politics,
and I remember his bottles and his jars and vases like a stage
set.
He was always taking things down off his shelves, as an
offering: a stamp, a handkerchief, a pharmaceutical vase.
Things, but always things with history. He had enough
things, it seemed, to give to all Bordeaux and still there
would be more.
Each of the children followed in the family's medical
tradition: Francois became a pharmacist, Sylvie a dentist,
Florence a pathologist. Papillon died in 1987; the next year
Francois bought a pharmacy, and Sylvie married Richard.
The family dog, Virginie, a puppy when I was nineteen, was
blind and emaciated like a skeleton when I was thirty-four.
No one could bear to put her to sleep.
I measured the passing of time by that house, that dog, as
our lives mingled and meshed. They became my French
family and I their American friend.
From the beginning I loved the fact that Micheline healed
people with language troubles. "Dr. Micheline Veaux: Maladies du langage" (illnesses of language) was inscribed on a
bronze plaque over her doorbell. Micheline Veaux is a phoniatre, a physician who specializes in problems, physical and
mental, that show themselves in speech. People recovering
from throat operations, stutterers, aphasiacs, immigrants
with psychological traumas in their newly acquired tongue.
People who, for one reason or another, speak in the wrong
pitch-too high or too low-and hurt their voices. She
works with them on a keyboard, and helps them find their
register. Her perspective is psychoanalytic; she believes, for
example, that it is dangerous to treat a symptom without
treating the cause. It is dangerous to cure someone of stuttering if the stuttering fulfills a psychic need that the person
Francois barely out of shorts. The meal was served by a
Spanish woman named Carmen, with one eye that twitched
and looked askance. The apartment was filled with extravagant Lalique vases of all sizes and deco furniture, big red
club chairs with arms wide enough to hold two tea cups. I
walked out of there dazed, onto the street where the sun
was setting over Eleanor of Aquitaine's tower, across the
street. Five hours had passed.
I went back year after year to see this family from my junior year abroad in 1973-74. I went to Papillon's apartment
above the pharmacy, then to Micheline's house, rue de Patay, then back to Papillon's retirement house in Pessac, for
the traditional Saturday lunch. I heard many more Papillon
stories: how he went to Spain with his medicines, to help
the Republicans, and came back disgusted by their violence.
I heard about his medals, his stamp collection, his pharmaceutical vases. I heard how he controlled pharmaceutical
supplies during the Occupation. I heard about his love for
the Marechal Petain, "who was betrayed by France." He had
a scarf printed with a drawing of the island where Petain was
exiled, and a motto about France's shame. He tried to lend it
to me to wear on a train trip, he thought I would get cold,
but Micheline intervened, gently: "You're not going to send
this poor young American girl off to Corsica with a Philippe Petain label around her neck." The children rolled their eyes
and explained later what American children are rarely
called upon to explain: the connection between family history, family prejudices, and big history, with a capital H. It
would take me ten more years to figure out that if you had
been a World War I veteran and not a Jew, Petain could have
been your hero in 194o. No matter how much wrong he did
later, the memory of Verdun might have blinded you to it.
I think a lot about that Petain scarf and the way Papillon
wanted me to wrap up in it. I always go back to him for understanding France: the Third Republic, Gaullism, the Spanish Loyalists, French myths about the U.S. For each mystery
about France I can think back to Papillon barking out some
absurd slogan that would turn out to be soaked in politics,
and I remember his bottles and his jars and vases like a stage
set.
He was always taking things down off his shelves, as an
offering: a stamp, a handkerchief, a pharmaceutical vase.
Things, but always things with history. He had enough
things, it seemed, to give to all Bordeaux and still there
would be more.
Each of the children followed in the family's medical
tradition: Francois became a pharmacist, Sylvie a dentist,
Florence a pathologist. Papillon died in 1987; the next year
Francois bought a pharmacy, and Sylvie married Richard.
The family dog, Virginie, a puppy when I was nineteen, was
blind and emaciated like a skeleton when I was thirty-four.
No one could bear to put her to sleep.
I measured the passing of time by that house, that dog, as
our lives mingled and meshed. They became my French
family and I their American friend.
From the beginning I loved the fact that Micheline healed
people with language troubles. "Dr. Micheline Veaux: Maladies du langage" (illnesses of language) was inscribed on a
bronze plaque over her doorbell. Micheline Veaux is a phoniatre, a physician who specializes in problems, physical and
mental, that show themselves in speech. People recovering
from throat operations, stutterers, aphasiacs, immigrants
with psychological traumas in their newly acquired tongue.
People who, for one reason or another, speak in the wrong
pitch-too high or too low-and hurt their voices. She
works with them on a keyboard, and helps them find their
register. Her perspective is psychoanalytic; she believes, for
example, that it is dangerous to treat a symptom without
treating the cause. It is dangerous to cure someone of stuttering if the stuttering fulfills a psychic need that the person
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