The Extinction Club

  Of course. I was about to ask more questions, about her grandmother’s piloting experience and plane, but Céleste hobbled off to the kitchen. As I unfoiled a bottle of Perrier Jouët Fleur de Champagne Rosé, a connoisseur’s pink according to my father, she returned with yet another gift-wrapped present. “Open it,” she said.

  From the irregular shape and translucent paper I knew what it was, but of course didn’t let on. “What could this be?” I said. “A tie clip?” I unravelled the red ribbon, tore off the white tissue paper.

  “It was given to my grandmother, so I’m regifting. But I know she’d want you to have it.”

  It was something I’d stumbled upon in the basement while looking for Christmas-tree lights, in a kind of hidden alcove, like those secret caves in Europe where wines were kept from the enemy until peace was restored. The label on the box said ACИHT KρИCTMac (“Christmas Absinthe”) and alluded to some chess tournament in Czechoslovakia. No date, but obviously Soviet era. It was a gift set, complete with glass, spoon and lighter. Just what a recovering alcoholic didn’t need. “Thank you,” I said, giving Céleste another hug. “Just what I always wanted. Amazing.”

  “You’ve never had it before?”

  “No,” I lied. “But I’ve always wanted to try it. Shall we have a drop?”

  “No, but you can,” she said. “I don’t like the smell of that stuff. The anise—it reminds me of bear hunter’s bait.”

  I didn’t trust myself with la fée verte, afraid I’d drink the bottle in one sitting. Or falling. I used to be able to drink it till the cows came home. When I was amped on speed it didn’t slur my speech or lame me. It just took the edge off my hot nerves. I stashed the bottle in a high kitchen cupboard, out of sight, out of mind.

  In the living room, beginning to sweat and trying not to twitch, I popped and poured pink champagne into two unmatching flutes. This I could handle, this I didn’t like enough to overdrink. Its liftoff was good but touchdown bad.

  “I think that’s the most beautiful bottle I’ve ever seen,” Céleste enthused hoarsely, as if her vocal cords were numb from cocaine. She picked up the clear bottle, held it up to the light of the fire. “Art Nouveau, right? And these flowers are anemones?”

  I shrugged, botanical dummy that I am.

  “A toast,” she said.

  This champagne’s too good for a toast—if you mix up emotions with stuff like this, you lose the taste: my father’s words. Only since his death had his voice sung like this inside me, sometimes the accompanist, sometimes the soloist. “Good idea,” I said. “Do you … know any?”

  “‘Drink to me with thine eyes. And I will pledge with mine. Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I’ll not look for wine.’”

  “That’s …” I was going to say “romantic” but thought better of it. “… Ben Jonson.”

  “It’s the only toast I know,” she shrugged. “You know any?”

  “‘To alcohol. The cause of—and solution to—all of life’s problems.’”

  “Who said that?”

  “Homer Simpson.” We clinked glasses. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Say Merry Christmas in every language you know.”

  I paused. “Joyeux Noël, Feliz Navidad, Frohe Weihnachten, Buon Natale, Feliz Natal, Xαρoµεvα Xριστoγευυα, Shèngdàn kuàilè. That’s it.”

  “Say … ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’ In … Spanish.”

  I hesitated. “Do you mean literally, or an equivalent that uses all the letters of the alphabet?”

  “Literally. No, the equivalent.”

  “El veloz murciélago hindú comía feliz cardillo y kiwi.” This had some letters missing, but it’s the only one I knew.

  “Okay. In German. Literally.”

  “Der flinke, braune Fuchs springt über den trägen Hund.”

  “Greek.”

  “Hγρήγoρη καψρετιά λ o ηδά έρα ó τo oκvηρó σκvλí.”

  “Italian.”

  “La volpe marrone rapida salta sopra il cane pigro.”

  A smile. “All right, now say … No, tell me about your childhood.”

  My memories of childhood were short-lived; they burned like newspapers. “I’ll tell you when I’ve finished it.”

  “About Christmases in places you lived. Like … Germany.”

  A holy trinity: booze, sentiment, gluttony. “I was confused as a kid. They seem to have a dozen Santa Clauses, each with a different name. The oldest one, the original one I guess, is Christkind, a child with blond hair and angel wings. Then there’s Weinachtsmann, Aschenmann, Pelznickel, Boozenickel, Hans Trapp, Klaubauf, Krampus, Schmutzli … depending on the region. Oh, and Ruprecht, who has bright red hair.”

  Céleste smiled. “How about … France? Same as Quebec?”

  “I don’t know much about Christmas in Quebec. In fact, I know nothing at all. You guys have a Père Noël up here?”

  She looked at the ceiling. “It’s the same as in America.”

  “In France, it’s close. Père Noël is like the American Santa except the French consider his reindeers as important as him. On Christmas Eve they leave hay and carrots out for them, in their shoes.”

  “Get out of town. You’re making that up.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Really? That is so wicked. I mean, to think of the animals like that. So then what happens?”

  “Père Noël takes the reindeer food and leaves gifts in return. He comes twice, though. Once on December 5th, the Eve of St-Nicolas, and once on the 24th.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris,” said Céleste.

  “Maybe I’ll take you there one day.”

  “I don’t think that’s in the cards. Somehow.”

  “What are you, a fortune teller?”

  “Touché. Did you like living there?”

  They were the best years of my life, and they weren’t very good. “Yeah, it was great.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Like the postcards.”

  “Come on.”

  “When I lived there? People carrying baguettes under their arms, old men wearing berets, women walking poodles, Art Nouveau entrances to the métro, bookstalls along the Seine and bateaux mouches, people reading newspapers in sidewalk cafés, lots of scooters, bad drivers, congestion, impossible squares and narrow lanes, dogshit and overweight tourists—”

  “Okay, you can stop. That’s kind of what I thought.”

  By and by, as the champagne kicked in, we began to sing two songs by the fire, simultaneously. Neither were Christmas songs. I started a round of “Row Row Row Your Boat,” which Brooklyn loved, and Céleste jumped in with “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” which her grandmother loved.

  Céleste then asked me to sing Christmas songs I’d learned while living abroad. I thought for a moment before launching into “We Three Kings.” First the standard variation, learned in an American school in Athens:

  We three Kings of Orient are

  Trying to smoke a rubber cigar.

  It was loaded, we exploded,

  Now we are travelling far …

  Then a version learned from a Floridian girl in France:

  We three kings of Orient are

  Trying to sell some cheap underwear

  Superfantastic, no elastic

  99 cents a pair …

  And this from a drunken headmaster in London:

  We three kings of Leicester Square

  Selling ladies underwear

  Oh so drastic, no elastic

  Only tuppence a pair …

  As I sang, Céleste stared at me with concern or perhaps fright in her eyes, as if I were becoming increasingly unglued. So I began a serious—and stirring—rendition of Lennon’s “And So This Is Christmas,” which I’d also heard for the first time in London. I went in and out of at least three keys and faltered on the words. Céleste prompted me in a flat monotone but did not join in; instead, she did something that shouldn’t have surprised
me, but did. Turning her head away, she began to cry. I asked if it was because of the song and she said no. I asked if she was thinking of Christmases past, pining for her grandmother, and she said no, she was thinking of Christmases to come. That there wouldn’t be any.

  I had a similar feeling—that there would be no future, that the door to the future had been closed and locked. “That’s nonsense, complete nonsense. I mean, who knows what tomorrow may bring?”

  She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “The arrival of wise men wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Let me see that.”

  “See what?”

  “Just hold out your hand, palm up.”

  She held it out, reluctantly, and I took it in mine. Her lifeline was short, truncated. I pointed. “See? I knew it. You’ll live to be ninety.”

  “That’s total bull.”

  “Okay, maybe not ninety. But at least eighty.”

  She moved her head slowly from side to side in a firm negative. Then wiped another teardrop, this time with her shoulder.

  “You survived the first attack, didn’t you? And together we’ll survive the second. And the third too, if it comes to that.”

  Tears began to well up again, so I put my arm around her, falteringly, and it remained there in the quiet as the fire and candles flickered around us.

  “Tell me a joke,” she said suddenly, sitting bolt upright. “Make me laugh. Please.”

  I looked up to the ceiling, pensively, despairingly. One thing I had always been able to do: make Brooklyn laugh. One thing I had never been able to do: make Céleste laugh. My jokes during her month-long convalescence had left her stone-faced—the same ones that left Brooklyn tear-faced.

  “You don’t like my jokes. You said—and I quote—they’re ‘childish and stupid.’”

  “No, I liked them. Really. I was fibbing. It’s just …”

  “Just what?”

  “Well, I was … just, you know, jealous or something.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Yeah, because I don’t know any jokes, I’ve never told one. I don’t have a sense of humour, ask anyone. My grandmother didn’t either and I take after her. I’ve never said anything funny in my whole life.”

  This was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard. Every child has a sense of humour; every child wants to laugh and make others laugh. “But what about when you said, ‘The arrival of wise men wouldn’t hurt.’ That was funny.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes.”

  Céleste paused to consider this. “It didn’t make you laugh.”

  “Well, that’s because—”

  “My grandmother was agelastic and so am I.”

  I paused, trying to figure out what that meant. Gelos is Greek for laughter; ά means ‘not.’ “Do you mean …”

  “Unable to laugh. Or uninclined to. It’s in my genes.”

  I stared at the floor, reflecting. She’s a gifted child, a prodigy; maybe that’s the price some of them have to pay. Newton, for example, was said to have laughed only once in his entire life (when asked what geometry could possibly be used for).

  “Gran even thought of eating sardonia. You know what that is?”

  I nodded. It’s a Sardinian plant that causes convulsive laughter ending in death. Whence the word sardonic. Was her grandmother joking?

  “Weren’t you supposed to make me laugh?” said Céleste.

  I strained, like the sad clown, to get on with the job, sifting through my clean-joke repertoire. “Can you cross your eyes?” I said.

  She frowned skeptically, but crossed her eyes.

  “Céleste, stop. You’re not allowed to cross your i’s. You’re supposed to dot your i’s and cross your t’s. Didn’t they teach you anything at school?”

  Not a ghost of a smile. No indication that a punch line had been reached. “I never went to school. Well, almost never.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “I already told you, I was home-schooled.”

  “Did your grandmother teach you phys. ed?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Can you do a somersault?”

  “Of course. Well, maybe not now.”

  “Do you know why it’s called a somersault?”

  “Yeah. It’s from the Middle French sombresault, from the Latin supra—over—and saltus—leap.”

  Christ, was she ever home-schooled. And she’s just ruined the joke. “That’s … not the reason,” I improvised. “That’s a common misconception.”

  Céleste looked at me warily. “Okay, so why’s it called a somersault?”

  “Because it starts with a spring and ends with a fall.”

  Céleste squinted at me, without even a sixteenth of a smile, as if analyzing the joke. Or preparing to smack me. “More.”

  I stopped to think. Maybe the trick was to tell something factual. “Okay. True story. Did your grandmother teach you anything by Hart Crane?”

  “Of course. The poem about the Brooklyn Bridge.”

  I nodded. “As you probably know, he committed suicide …”

  “He jumped into the Caribbean and drowned.”

  How many jokes was she going to ruin? I paused. “His father invented LifeSavers.”

  “Really? That’s … a coincidence but there’s nothing clever or instructional about it.”

  “Do you know who Dutch Schultz is?”

  “The gangster?”

  “He was gunned down in a restaurant in New Jersey, not far from where I used to live.”

  “And?”

  “Before he died he babbled nonsense for a couple of hours, which was all taken down by a police stenographer. Guess what his last words were.”

  “How should I know?”

  “’French-Canadian bean soup.’”

  Céleste stared at me, her eyes peering over the top of her glasses. “Okay, thanks, Nile. That was … hilarious. You’re a real screamfest. I think I’ll go to bed now.”

  Not exactly laugh therapy, not exactly a gelastic seizure, but at least she’d stopped crying. “Do you want me to read you a bedtime story?”

  “I’m fifteen, for God’s sake.”

  “I thought you were fourteen.”

  She grabbed my wrist and turned it. “Fifteen as of … an hour and fifty-seven minutes ago.”

  “Are you serious? You were born the same day as Jesus?”

  She nodded.

  I looked at her in silence. For a child, possibly the worst day of the year to be born. “Okay, I owe you another gift.”

  “Don’t bother. No one else ever did.”

  “Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday.” I raised my glass.

  “Where have I heard that before?”

  We clinked glasses and drank the last drops of champagne. “Shall I open the absinthe?” I asked. She’s only fourteen, I realize, or rather fifteen, but it was a doubly special occasion.

  “No thanks.”

  “How about a bedtime poem?”

  “Since when do I have a bedtime? Who says I have to go to bed, ever?”

  “But … you just said you were going to bed. So let’s go.” My voice sounded strangely like my father’s. “Chop chop. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Heil Hitler.”

  “I’ve spoken. It is my will.”

  She stuck her tongue out. “My grandmother let me go to bed whenever I wanted. She was a firm believer in letting children act on their stupidity until they learned better.”

  My mother’s policy too, more or less. “But what if, like me, the child never learns any better?”

  “Okay, read me a poem,” she groaned. “But with someone in it like me, someone I can identify with.”

  While Céleste got ready for bed, I went to my room and dragged out my duffle from beneath the bed. I pulled out my book of poems and flipped through its pages. This might be difficult, might call for some ad-libbing. But I was used to that. Brooklyn wanted a bedtime story every night, but only ones involving cats or else she’d wail. So I had some
adapting to do: Cat and the Beanstalk; Snow White and the Seven Cats; The Cat and the Tortoise; The Pied Cat.

  Céleste was under the covers when I knocked on her open door. Her eyes were closed, but she was playing possum. “Find a character like me?” she asked in a pillow-muffled voice.

  “That would be hard, Céleste, you’re one in a million.”

  She rolled from her side to her back and pulled the blanket up to the bridge of her nose, Arab style. “So that means there’s over six and a half thousand people like me in the world?”

  I sat down at the foot of the bed. “How about this one?

  She would joke with hyenas, returning their stare

  With an impudent wag of the head:

  And she once went a walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear,

  ‘Just to keep up its spirits,’ she said.

  But he perceived that her spirits were low,

  So he repeated in musical tone

  Some jokes he had kept for a season of woe

  But she would do nothing but groan.

  She is known for her slowness in taking a jest.

  Should you happen to venture on one,

  She will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:

  And always looks grave at a pun.”

  Céleste smiled, to my surprise. “Yup, that’s me all right. You just make that up?”

  “No, it’s from The Hunting of the Snark. Lewis Carroll.”

  “Never read him.”

  How could any child not have read Lewis Carroll? “You haven’t? Why not?”

  “He was a pedophile. What’s a snark?”

  “It’s a … an imaginary animal.”

  She arrested a yawn. “Did you know that the hyena doesn’t have a bone in its penis?”

  I was in unfamiliar territory. With Brooklyn, the subject of penises had not been broached. “I … didn’t know that, no.”

  “Only three other mammals don’t have one. Zebra, kangaroo and … guess which one.”

  “I give up.”

  “You!”

  I nodded.

  “Human males!”

  “Right. So how about another poem?”

  “Is your face getting red, Nile?”

  “Of course not, why would it be? Because of hyena penises? It’s probably just a … you know, a bit of an alcohol flush—”