Peter Carey - Parrot and Olivier in America

"Why does the king not come to Paris?" I asked.

"He is not only king of Paris, Master de Garmont. He is king of all the French."

"Then he is the king of murderers!" I cried, and was dispatched to my room where Odile was ordered to prevent me writing letters to Thomas. I doubtless made an appalling noise. Who knows, I might have gone on all day had I not been witness, in seeking a sight of Thomas, to a conversation in the garden beneath my window. That is, I heard, very clearly, the duc de Blacqueville tell my father that the prefet had left for Boulogne to greet His Majesty.

"Then tomorrow?" my father asked.

"Or the next," said M. de Blacqueville.

Vive le roi, I thought, with great relief. He will be here soon.

The Blacqueville wisteria was reattached to its ancient stone and we were permitted to play in the Luxembourg Gardens. A new wave of visitors arrived with articles that could be used to make our house to fit a king, among them a splendid Sevres service with views of Paris sent by the wife of a newly appointed Gentleman of the Chamber. This meant my father would soon be made a peer, Odile said.

Vive le roi, thought Olivier, and if his lungs hung like rags on the bony rack of his little chest, he remained a strong and willful boy. Vive, vive, vive, I thought, inflating myself with the intoxicating smell of lemons that had been used to clean the brass. I was a lunatic child staring wide-eyed, unprotected, at the moon which-at that very moment-must be shining on the waving plumes of the shakos, the splendid black royal carriage splattered with hard hot sprays of mud. In my imagination, I urged on the sweating horses through the night, past the flares and faggots of the King's good honest people. I prayed for him. Oh do not fear, my king.

I was still engaged in this journey, driving away his enemies, twisting in my sheets, when Odile returned from her evening off. My pulse was racing, and I myself was very hot, but not so hot as Odile, and I will tell you how I knew: When she leaned to kiss my forehead I could feel her blushing down her chest.

"What has happened, Odile?"

"The king has been detained again."

"No, do not tease me."

"This time it is the flour dealers of Amiens."

"But flour dealers, Odile? Do not the flour dealers want his head?"

"No, no, my small master." She placed her hot hands on my cheek. "It is the millers' ancient privilege."

"Millers," I thought. How preposterous.

Good Odile stroked my forehead until I slept and when I woke she had gone, although I soon understood that she was sobbing in her room. The daughter of a peasant, I thought, but she is no different from Blacqueville or myself. Neither of us can bear to wait another day.

At breakfast she did not wish to be bothered with me, so I pulled at her broad fingertips until she slapped my leg.

I said I would tell my mother.

"Tell who you like," she said. "It can't be worse than this." She said she was to be sent back to the Chateau de Barfleur that very day.

"Oh poor Odile," I cried, "you will never see His Majesty."

Odile's small round nose was red with her own misery, and yet she smiled and shook her head. I thought, It is not so bad for her as it would be for me.

"Little Olivier," she said, "your silly Odile has fallen in love."

I thought, It is the king, of course.

"Who will look after me, Odile?"

"Oh," she cried, "you poor little creature."

I was briefly puzzled to hear her speak this way. Yet it was not uncommon that her generous affections would lead her to forget her place.

Shortly before lunch I observed, with some alarm, a swarm of the strange Paris servants piling various items of my clothing, willy-nilly, upon the billiard table. Having at first taken exception to their appalling method, it took me a moment to see, among the tangle, the Ch'ien-lung bowl. Then I finally understood why she, a servant, had called me a pauvre petite creature. I was to be sent away with her.

When my mother confirmed these fears, I threw up on my shoes and declared myself too sick to travel. In any case, why must I be banished because a servant had misbehaved?

"You must study your Latin," my mother said formally, and again many hours later, by which time I lay exhausted on my bed. It had been a horrid, horrid day. The leeches had finally fallen off and been cast into the flames. "Bebe is waiting for you at home, my darling."

"Maman, you know I cannot possibly leave before the king arrives. Bebe must come here."

"Olivier, the Abbe de La Londe will not come to Paris."

"I cannot travel, Maman. I simply can't. I will study my Latin with Blacqueville. He will teach me Greek as well."

"Young man, you are a Garmont not a sparrow. You cannot sing the same song all day."

"It will be much better for everyone if I remain."

And so on.

The very next morning, having been permitted a tearful farewell with Thomas, I was carried to my tumbrel, a quilt wrapped around my poor thin legs. How dare they, I thought. How dare my own parents treat me so stupidly.

I was of noble blood. It was my right to stay but instead I was sent into exile, the horses plodding through mud and drenching rain, through melancholy, to melancholy, as the poet has said.

The servant steadied the Ch'ien-lung bowl on the seat between us and it was then that she confessed-we were being sent away to safety because she had fallen for a splendid Austrian guard and my mother would not have it.

I thought, What has this to do with me?

"You will have the abbe anyway," she said, lighting her little clay pipe and filling the carriage with her dusty smoke.

It is not Odile who is to blame, I thought. It is Bebe.

"Bebe is afraid," I said. "He is afraid Bonaparte will put him to the sword." I had never said such a vile thing in all my life and I waited to be shamed for it, but Odile shifted the Ch'ien-lung onto her lap and clutched it to her stomach as if it were her child.

"Everyone should be afraid," she said. "They are not afraid enough poor creatures."

"You are a poor creature, too, Odile."

And at that she began to laugh. "Aye," she said. "Look at us."

We entered the gates of the Chateau de Barfleur at that time of day when-so dreary, so predictable-no lights were lit and the dark beached mass of chateau bled into the gloom. How I dreaded it, the very air of my home, the dusty smell like that of a reliquary built to house the thigh bone of a tortured saint. I would be the only person of my age.

In the great courtyard we were greeted by Gustave the blacksmith, whom I had imagined to be in Paris, and by Bebe who, to my private shame, was so kind and affectionate toward me. He announced that we were, immediately, to make a bivouac in the unwalled pavilion my father had built beside the pond. We would sleep there and study there. We would botanize.

So Odile was left to take her leeches and grief into the chateau which, with so many of the servants in Paris, must have been a very lonely place indeed. Although, I thought, perhaps they like it, perhaps they have secret balls and grand dinners where they wear my parents' clothes and drink the best of our cellar and perform plays and juggling tricks when Bebe has gone to bed.

Let them dance, I thought, poor creatures.

But of course there were no dancing parties in the chateau. Or they were not visible. From the pavilion we could see only a single lighted candle in a window below the eaves, a very lonely flame compared to the rushing sparks from Bebe's splendid fire. The rain soon stopped. The sky cleared. We ate grilled rabbit below the great eternal wonder of the stars.

If you had observed Olivier's greasy face in starlight, you might have supposed he had been cured of his bleeding, vomiting, gasping upset. Yet this was a very willful constant child and he did not, not for a moment, forget his king. So while you see young Olivier admire the reflection of the moon in the pond, you must not doubt that he was, even as he turned to smile at the Abbe de La Londe, picturing the royal coach, the spinning wheel hubs decorated with painted suns, the spokes like shining rays ending in the firmament portrayed by the signs of the stars. He was a good boy. He said his prayers. He lay down beneath his uncle de Barfleur's bearskin. He closed his eyes and pictured the great ship of state plowing through the night.