I returned to the house closer to lunchtime. My brothers were already there, having left the barn sooner than I did.
We were informed that our father wanted to see us in his study. The maid who relayed this information made us understand that his mood was not amicable.
My brothers assumed a very dignified demeanour. They stood erect on their way to see Father, while I feared that I could not put on any airs, but I had better prepare myself for what bad news might be relayed.
We walked into the study, my brothers in front and I behind them. This was a large room with large windows which let in little light even on a bright summer's day, as they opened onto the park behind the house and the view was partially obscured by the branches of an old oak tree. This shield offered by the greenery outside also kept any heat out, leaving the air inside the room not only dark, but also very cold.
I rarely walked into this space, but I knew that, if someone occupied it, it required some form of artificial lighting and heating. So, a fire was roaring inside the fireplace.
My father's study was at the same time bare and cluttered. There was a desk, some essential pieces of furniture, but, apart from these necessities, the room contained nothing but a range of shelves where rolls and books and boxes were stacked seemingly in no particular order. These were the records of the family business. Somehow, they didn't show any of the order and the ease they fostered. They just symbolised the confusion and the fast pace at which these transactions happened.
Father was at his desk with a book before him. Behind him, on a divan, I saw our mother. While he was dark and serious, and he showed great determination of will, she looked as white as a ghost, and any assurance had left her face. It was evident that they had had a discussion, the content of which had much perturbed her.
I was surprised to see, next to the window, my tutor, Mr Clement. He was staring at his shoes with an air of great dignity.
'Please sit,' our father said.
We all obeyed. I didn't fail to notice that his firm tone made my brothers lose their brave aspect and stoop a little, like contrite children.
'Now, Armand,' my father said, 'read here.'
He pointed at the book, which Armand picked up.
'Where…?' my brother said with a voice that trembled.
'The beginning. Anywhere,' my father said impatiently.
'Arma vir – virum – virumque…' Armand began, struggling to read fluently, 'cano, Troi - Troiae qui primus ab orbis…'
He read a few more lines until he reached the end of the sentence.
'Translate, please,' Father said.
Armand looked at the page, as if he was holding in his hands a dangerous animal that might leap and scratch him.
'I – I'm not sure, sir…'
'You!' my father then said towards Blaise.
My other brother took the book from Armand's hands and began to read, similarly unable to pronounce the words fluently. When asked to translate, Blaise too appeared confused and couldn't answer.
Then, it was my turn. I read as best as I could and translated, clumsily perhaps:
'I sing of the arms and the man… who, having been exiled from fate… first from the coast of Troy came to Italy and Lavine shores…'
'Is it right?' my father asked Mr Clement.
The tutor raised his eyebrows:
'Right enough.'
My father then looked at us three:
'I understand you haven't attended your lesson this morning. None of you…'
My brothers and I looked down, unable to utter a word.
'I pay for these lessons,' my father continued. 'I pay handsomely, and you squander it all. At least, Eloise seems to know something, but you two… can't even read the words on the page.'
My brothers didn't speak.
'So? You have nothing to say? You walked in looking like gentlemen, and now you're worst than the peasants on our fields. I believe I have let you live a life of leisure, and you have only diverted yourselves. You haven't learned anything. Now, you have no prospects. No use!'
'Father,' Blaise said timidly, 'What use is Latin anyway?'
Our father's face turned red. I picked up the book I had put back on the desk and threw it into the fire.
I spied Mr Clement's face which turned white at seeing this.
'So, it's my fault I asked you to learn useless things? I am the one who made unreasonable requests of you?'
He was now standing before Blaise, looking straight into his eyes.
Blaise couldn't speak.
'You don't know Latin…' Armand said, coming to the rescue of his brother. 'And you have been very successful. We too…'
The book was now all in flames. The pages were bitten by the flamed; they quickly curled, turned into ashes and vanished.
'You too?' my father asked. Then, he laughed. 'What do you think you can do? I have spoiled you, and you are not more useful than a little puppy. Unfortunately, you are grown men, and not little children.'
He turned to Mr Clement.
'I'm sorry to inform you that your presence will no longer be needed. You will be compensated for whatever is still owed to you and for your dismissal. I thank you for your services. I am sorry to see that you have wasted your time with my children, although I am sure you have done your best.'
Mr Clement was pale in the face. The look of rightful indignation had been replaced by a mask of agony.
'Where will I go?'
My father looked at him square in the face:
'When I hired you, you assured me that all the young gentlemen of France wanted to learn. I am sure you will find a family who doesn't need to teach practical knowledge to their children and who's perfectly satisfied with reading lines from Virgil, if that's the name you told me before. We,' here he gave us three a meaning look, 'we are now in a position where we need to learn skills to survive. And we need to acquire them very quickly.'
With this, he extended his hand and waited until a very pale Mr Clement move forward to take it.
My tutor looked at me, then at my brothers. Finally, he looked at my father. He had a pleading look in his eyes, but he could not find words to express what he was feeling.
I was sure he wanted to perorate his cause, to ask for more time, to offer an alternative list of subjects to teach us, maybe to even ask for justice. Instead, once he was before my father, seeing that stern face, Mr Clement simply said:
'Well, of course. I just want to thank you for these years.'
'Yes, yes,' my father said impatiently.
Finally, Mr Clement left to pack his trunk.
Once he had left the room, my father said:
'I believe you are right. That man had nothing to teach you. Whatever he knew didn't help him get out of being sacked. He could have said many things to delay the even, or maybe obtain more money, but all he knew was stories of battles, of gods, and nymphs. I wish I hadn't wasted my money on him.'
My heart went to Margot, who, in that strange way I have recounted, had grown attached to the tutor and, valuing knowledge more than my brothers or I, was counting on him to further her education, as pointless and as impractical as those notions might have been.
'It's my fault,' my father said stoking the fire and looking away from us, 'I believed that I had put the hard days behind me, that you could all live an easier life than the one I had to endure.'
'Surely…' Blaise said.
'Surely… Nothing is sure, as you will presently learn,' my father said. 'I have never told you about my childhood. It's a painful memory, and I didn't want to saddle you with it. I wanted you to have a life much different to mine. I wonder now if it isn't going to be worse, in fact.'
'Worse?' I asked, unable to stay quiet any longer.
My father looked at me. His lips curled. He wanted to say something. Instead, he continued with his initial argument.
'I was born poor. My parents were so poor that we were sent to the workhouse. I was young enough to be sent to the same institution as my mother, while my brothers and my father were sent to a different town. I was very little, but the memory is so vivid in my eyes: we didn't have more food or better clothes than we had at home; we had to work and attend prayer and repent for our poverty was the greatest sin of all.
'At night, my mother taught me our sacred books, another heritage I decided not to burden you with. And, during the day, she starved herself to keep a few extra morsels of food for me. She died within a year, when typhoid fever swept through our house, and her soul was already prepared to leave a body of which there wasn't too much of left. Hers was a silly sacrifice: Children thrive with nothing, but older people, who have been deprived for so long… But it was a sacrifice nonetheless, and I wonder what would be of me without those additional spoonsful of soup.'
I now observed my mother who was pale and shivering as if cold, but I knew that, in my father's past poverty, she was fearful of seeing her own future. She could see the old woman dressed in raggedy clothes, the simple bed, the insufficient food, the hard work, and, what made things worse, my mother was at the same time dressed in fine clothes, reclined on a brocade divan, within a large estate with an army of maids and cooks and coach drivers in livery at her service. What if she would need to say goodbye to all this luxury she had been so accustomed to?
My father didn't seem to relish telling us this story. He was not playing for effect: his narration was terse, and he was sticking to the most essential facts, so that we could all understand the point he was trying to make. He was certainly not asking for pity.
'When my mother died, I had to be moved to another institution. By that time, I was a ward of the state, and I wasn't reunited with my father or my brothers. They sent me to an institution for boys, where nobody would save some food for me. I ate was allotted to me; I wore what clothes they gave me; in a word, I was one of many. My fellow inmates soon taught me that you could either be plagued by hunger, be skinnier and shorter and paler than children your age, or you could find ways to… You probably catch my meaning: some boys were able to get better treatment either by force, by stealing or wrestling, or by cunning and by trade.
'I learned how to save what was I didn't strictly need to survive, so that I could sell it at a profit, later on. I learned to see around corners: I had to learn that I could store what was abundant in summer and sell it during the winter months. I had to foresee abundance and scarcity.
'By the time I left the institution, I had taught myself all that I would need in life. I learned to survive on nothing, and to anticipate the needs of my fellow men, and I learned how to make a profit when nobody could find one. I couldn't afford to trade like an established merchant: I didn't have the capital or the contacts. But I could hawk. Initially, I borrowed some money at very high interest. I used it to purchase rags, knives, fruit from one place, and I quickly sold it in another.
'At first, this trade allowed me to repay the initial loan and feed myself, but, slowly and with some luck, I could accumulate enough capital not to require the financial help of the loan sharks.'
Now, my father looked at my brothers, divining their secret thoughts:
'You believe this is easy, that you could repeat the same feat, if in need. After all, I didn't have the good education you have; I didn't have the connections your family could give you... I hope so, but I must warn you: I saw many others fail, where I succeeded. Perhaps, I was lucky. But, looking back, I can tell you that my biggest strength was my utter desperation. I always did everything I had to. And I mean it: everything. Nothing was too hard or too dangerous. I went without food, if that meant the prospect of a bigger profit. I see you now, with your fine clothes and your soft hands and your twenty years spent without a care, and I worry that, should the day come when you have to make sacrifices, you would be too scared to put yourselves through it.
'When I met your mother, I already had a vibrant commerce. She had a name and a title, which could open the doors that were precluded to an orphan Jew. What she needed was someone to save her family from the ruin that was but certain: they were facing nothing but debt, and my money made them turn a blind eye to my unsavoury origin.'
I glanced at my mother, and I noticed that she was silently crying. I wondered if theirs was just a marriage of convenience, or if there was any love between them. I suspected that my mother may have hoped for a different life, but that circumstances, and her desire to maintain her status, forced her to accept her future husband.
'We prospered. I could use her connections to improve my commerce. I had more appetite for risk than any of the people in her social circle. I was more astute, more ruthless. This gave me a big advantage in this society, where the stakes were even higher, where more money was available, even though, perhaps, not as much sense as they had in the lower circles I had inhabited up to that point.
'But I could prosper because of the gambles I took. Many a times, I was on the verge of losing everything. You would have had to say goodbye to the tutor, the maids, the large estate, the new clothes, the jewels. And yet, every time, I could gain it all back, and with additional profit to repay me many times over for the great risks I took.
'But now,' my father continued, 'I find myself in a situation where everything seems to be lost. The past few years has been particularly disastrous: where I forecasted famine and purchased grains and wine at higher prices, we saw greater warmth in the weather and abundance of produce from the fields; where I forecasted the need for guns and weapons to furnish our armies, we saw peace treaties being signed. Finally, desperate as I was, I had the chance to purchase a vessel that carried whale oil from America into France. This is a dangerous route, and the goods would be worth many times over. I have just received news that the ship is lost at sea, maybe sunk in the Atlantic. I have incurred a great debt to afford this trade, and now I find myself in no position to repay it.'
Armand then burst out:
'Surely, there must be something else you can try. Another loan. We have lands, fields with animals and all sorts of goods that could be sold.'
My father laughed bitterly:
'Surely… You utter this word so often I wonder whether you know what is sure and what isn't. Our lands are mortgaged.'
My brothers and I stared at my father, waiting for an explanation of how this was possible.
'We have nothing.'
This is all he said.
'But this ship might still arrive,' Blaise reasoned. 'It's not sure that it has sunk.'
'It may,' my father said. 'But I don't have much time. Our obligations expire shortly.'
'What can we do?' I cried, now desperate. 'There must be something left that people desire. We can go without food, or clothes, for a while. But there must be something…'
My father considered:
'You may be right. People always want something. In fact, I discussed the issue with your mother, and it is indeed the time to make sacrifices for the goods of the family.'
'What should we do?' Armand said.
'Nothing,' Father said curtly. 'For now, but I cannot tell you for sure that the measures your mother and I have to take will save us from ruin. You need to know, because the time for you to know has now come, that your parents have made sacrifices to grant you the existence you have taken for granted but enjoyed nonetheless until today, that we will continue to make them, but that it may not be enough.'
My father had now said what he needed to say. My mother had turned her head towards the window to hide her tears, which now fell copiously.
Father dismissed us and begged us to leave them for the time being. Then, he walked to Mother and took her in his arms. He wasn't consoling her: he knew that her distress was warranted, and he could only be next to her while our family entered this big storm, hoping to emerge intact on the other end.
I watched them stand in this pose for a moment, then I left.
As I walked along the corridor, through the windows, I witnessed a similar scene taking place on the clearing outside the house: Mr Clement's trunks were being loaded onto a carriage, while my former tutor embraced Margot, who appeared quite upset by so sudden a departure, wishing her goodbye.
I hastened my pace hoping not to be noticed, such was my shame for having been such an unsatisfactory pupil for Mr Clement, and wondering whether my father would have kept him on, had my brother and I been more disciplined in our studies.