A Masterpiece of Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page B

that caused my heart to fall into my shoes: “Dad, I want a motorcycle.”
    Five little words, yet they had thrown me into total panic. Images instantly crowded my teeming brain — Jean-Louis in a coma, on a hospital bed, bleeding profusely in some gutter, broken in a thousand places. It had seemed like only yesterday he had cut himself above the eye falling off his tricycle.
    And now he wanted a motorcycle! Good God. Those metal death traps that made that infernal racket. Never!
    â€œNo, Jean-Louis. Never.” I had said this as calmly as I could.
    â€œBut, Dad—”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œBut,
Daddy.”
He began his sweet-talking routine, and I’d had to shut my ears.
    Eventually, of course, I relented. I allowed myself to be dragged down to the nearest motorcycle dealer, where Jean-Louis pointed out the one he had his heart set on. It was shiny and red. The color of blood.
    I had never seen such a monstrous machine, and searched the salesman’s eyes for some shred of sympathy. Nothing but the sale was on his mind. In desperation I had asked Jean-Louis if he didn’t want a VCR instead, an electric organ, a drum set (to hell with the neighbors!) What about a trip to Canada? Iroquois still live in its primeval woods, you know!
    All to no effect. He walked around the thing, stroking its smooth metal flanks. It was already his. That murderous salesman, who was his accomplice, sidled up to me.
    â€œAll boys want motorcycles. It’s natural,” he said.
    The imbecile!
    â€œAll students want to study in California,” Jean-Louis’s professors had said years later. “It’s natural.”
    And so off to California he had gone, putting seven thousand miles between us, a plane trip of over eleven hours. Here was the separation I had always expected and dreaded. Here was the reality: that I would wake up old, helpless, alone. I would become a pathetic old man, leading a joyless existence between phone calls from my son.
    It has only been six weeks since he left, but I felt I’d already begun the long, slow journey toward death. A chill engulfed me. No more vacations together. No more evenings when I would come home with a surprise for him — a video game, a CD, an art book, fresh foie gras.
    All the fun had gone out of my life. Now I was going to live with ceaseless worry and a thousand new things to fret about: earthquakes, mud slides, AIDS, drugs, religious cults, random violence. Worst was the distinct and very alarming possibility Jean-Louis would fall in love with some silly American girl and settle down with her in her native state — Arkansas, or Nevada.
    In my calmer moments I understood perfectly Jean-Louis’s decision to study in California. He had always dreamed of living near golden beaches, pounding surf, sequoias, the land of Jack London and the Sierra Nevada. He was happy; so should I have been. Instead of bemoaning my loneliness I should have been celebrating his happiness. Berkeley was a world-class institution. I myself had taught there for a semester before Jean-Louis’s birth and I remembered well the sights and smells of California — the food and wines; the snowy tops of the Panamints; Zabriski Point, an infinite landscape whose desolation yields unexpected splendors; Badwater, near whose heated earth you could almost fry an egg; the wild roses of the Mojave.
    Yes, I had sung the praises of California to Jean-Louis. I also knew that with an American business degree in hand, and then returning to France’s Ecole Nationale d’administration — breeding ground of the country’s leaders — Jean-Louis’s future was a bright one indeed.
    Of course I’d relented. It was only to be for two years. I would count the days until his return, just as I was counting the hours until the plane touched down at San Francisco airport.
    Following a stopover in Chicago to refuel, my excitement began to mount. In one