I remember my father being a distant man; beginning with his colossal stature of six foot four to the simple fact that he was never at home. He was a man that simply never understood the needs of a child. This became clear to me on our first and last trip as a family to Paris.

We came for four days – I think he was on a business trip - and stayed in a slap up hotel behind the rue de Rivoli. My mother and I barely saw him. A flash of suit as he flew in and out in the morning while my mother desperately tried to arrange me into some semblance of order. She found the whole experience excruciating; she was a nervous woman raised to keep up standards and the fact that she found even the chambermaids immaculately beautiful sent her into a frenzy the moment my shoelace came undone.

On our last afternoon in Paris my father had cleared his schedule so that my mother could go shopping. Of course this sent her into a complete dither. She had to navigate the Paris Metro by herself, complete the never ending task of making me presentable and then pretend that she was going to enjoy the ordeal of shopping in a foreign place in a language she could make neither head nor tail of. And I was in a lather of excitement, my nostrils flaring at the explosion of smells, the straining to hear the occasional squeaks of the accordions, and rocking in time with the motion of the metro.

By the time we arrived in the Jardin de Luxembourg I could barely contain myself. I swung backwards and forwards in the sun warmed green metal chairs kicking up the gravel and dust over my white socks and shorts with every sway. I itched to jump off my chair and join the boys around the pond with their bamboo sticks. I could feel their pleasure as they pushed their brightly painted wooden sail boats and watched them gently drift away, sometimes bumping into one another, the sails wobbling dangerously, sometimes sailing all the way to the middle. I wanted to scream with those boys; I could understand every ooh and aah that came from their mouths even though I spoke not a word of French

But I also understood the rhythmic shake of my mother’s heeled foot. The way her lips smacked as she dragged on her cigarette, sitting there in her favourite pale green Jaeger suit. And suddenly the shaking stopped. She wearily unfolded her legs, leaned towards me and straightened my collar, pulled up my shorts and looked at me sympathetically as if she knew that she was being spared a tedious afternoon and she was sorry that I had to go through it.

My mother and father didn’t exchange a word as I was swapped from one hand to another. I looked from her to my father to the boys leaning eagerly around the pond and then I was whisked around and my father and I began a treacherous march up hill. My little legs could barely keep up with him. As I watched my sandaled feet and my slightly yellowed socks all I could think of was those sail boats gently swaying in the breeze.

I remember his monotone voice which kept time with his steps. He was explaining something about the building, a story about some lovers - Clovis and Clotilde. I never could remember their story, but I remember suddenly being enveloped by a cool shadow that brought relief from the stifling heat. I looked up at the walls and columns that seemed to go up forever, even my father was dwarfed in comparison to this building.

My father wasn’t a very good storyteller which is probably why I don’t remember a single part of the Clovis and Clotilde story. Even though he tried to remind me of the details as we looked blindly at the gargantuan murals in the cavernous interior. My father would drone some intricate detail and my eyes would dart from the walls to the large gold orb that swung lazily backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. I was hypnotized by it and finally my father noticed where my attention was really held and he walked to the edge of the transept.

“Foucault used this pendulum to prove that the earth rotated,” my father explained. That didn’t make much sense to me, but he continued regardless. “You see the white circular band with the numbers on the side?” He asked me and I nodded eagerly. This I could understand. “Well, the orb tells the time.” Time, time was something I had a vague grasp of. I knew that at seven o’clock for instance I woke up and had my breakfast. I knew that at eight o’clock in the evening I had to brush my teeth and then my mother would put me to bed.

“Foucault’s pendulum tells time in a very special way.” My father continued. He reached inside his shirt and took off his St. Christopher medal. He began swinging it before my eyes. “Am I moving, William?” He asked me.

“No,” I answered my eyes glued to the medal.

“Is this building moving, William?”

I stopped, the world around me stopped including my breath as I scanned the building for signs of movement. “No,” I finally gasped as I dared to breathe again.

“So how can the pendulum tell the time?”

I felt a fog fill my brain as my eyes followed the to and fro movement of the medal. My father waited for what seemed like an eternity before he seemed to realise that I was five and couldn’t possibly answer his question.

“Because the earth is moving William. The building isn’t moving William. The pendulum swings backwards and forwards, but the whole world is moving, and as the whole of the earth moves round in a circle the pendulum swings to another minute, another hour; so it tells the time.”

Once more I peered at the golden orb. All my father’s words twisted and turned in my head creating a knot of confusion. As I weaved through my puzzlement my fathers words seeped away until only the ones I understood remained. As I turned back to watch my father’s medal I saw his hand reach out and grasp it. I gasped and the sound echoed out away from me filling the walls.

“What’s the matter William?” My father reached down and took my chin.

“Have you stopped time?” I whispered. I had felt it, truly felt it, he had, I could still hear my gasp echoing out there.

He gave me a slightly irritated look and shook his head. “You have understood nothing William, have you?”

But I understood one thing that day. I understood that the distance between the floor where I stood and the tip top of the dome that seemed to reach up to heaven was still nearer than the distance between my father and I.

Copyright, 2006, The Pimple Continued

Labels: short story