Vie Francaise

CHARLES DE GAULLE (January 8, 1958April 28, 1969) And my mother fell to her knees. I had never seen someone collapse so suddenly. She hadn't even had time to hang up the telephone. I was at the other end of the hall, but I could hear every sob and see her whole body shaking. Her hands seemed like a pathetic bandage over her face. My father went over to her, hung up the phone, and then he collapsed as well, sinking into the armchair in the front hall. Bowing his head, he began to weep. Silent, terrified, I remained motionless at the far end of that long hall. By not approaching my parents, I felt as if I were buying time, protecting myself for a few more moments against the awful news that I could guess at anyway. So there I stood, teetering on the edge of grief with my skin on fire, studying with a watchful eye how quickly calamity can spread, and waiting for it to overwhelm me in turn. My brother, Vincent, died early on the evening of Sunday, September 28, 1958, in Toulouse. The television had just announced that 17,668,790 French citizens had finally approved the new constitution of the Fifth Republic. Neither my father nor my mother had taken the time to go vote in the referendum. They spent the day at the bedside of my brother, who had been operated on for appendicitis complicated by acute peritonitis. His condition had taken a turn for the worse the previous evening, and around midday, he had lost consciousness. I remember that the doctor on duty had spoken at length with my parents to prepare them for an outcome that he now felt was inevitable. During that discussion I had remained sitting on a chair out in the corridor, wondering what they could be talking about, behind that door, that I wasn't supposed to hear. I thought about my brother, about everything he would have to tell me when he came home from the hospital, and I was already envious of the status this heroic survivor would enjoy over the next few weeks. At that time, I was eight years old and Vincent barely ten, a modest difference that was in reality quite important. Vincent was a giant of a boy, a perfectly proportioned child who seemed built to lay the foundations of a brand-new world. He was surprisingly mature for his age, and would patiently explain to me the ups and downs of the adult world, protecting me all the while from those same vicissitudes. He was the most popular boy in school but did not hesitate, when he felt he was in the right, to stand up to a teacher or to our parents. And so, in my eyes, he was a colossus. When I was with him, I felt sheltered from life's troubles. Even today, forty-six years after his death, when I think back on our childhood, he is still the same towering figure, so beloved and admired. When my father rose painfully from his chair and came toward me, he looked like an old man. He seemed to stagger, as if hauling some invisible burden behind him. I watched him come closer and somehow knew that he was going to tell me that the world had come to an end. He laid a hand on my arm and said, "Your brother has just died." Without any consideration for my father's anguish, without showing him the slightest sign of affection, I rushed into Vincent's room and grabbed his chromium-plated metal coach pulled by six white horses. This toy, or rather, this souvenir, had been brought to him from London two years earlier by our uncle, a shifty sort of person, short and unpleasant, but a great traveler. The object doubtless came from an ordinary souvenir shop near Buckingham Palace, but it was so heavy, and shiny, and the details of the carriagein the lanterns, the wheelswere so precise, and the high-stepping horses exuded such power, that to me it was a talisman, and if my brother had not already been an exceptional child, this object would in itself have endowed him with an aura of sCoverdale, Linda is the author of 'Vie Francaise ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307262875 and ISBN 0307262871.