Papa Noël

Ever since his name shone in the world of children, a special picture of him had stamped itself on my mind — a picture more like "Papa Noël" than like a man of our own age, living in the capital and excelling in trade until he outdid his like among our clever forebears.

Then I heard from some of the people who preceded us into life — and into despair of ever reforming the people in it — that this Papa Noël was nothing but a former "sergeant" of the gendarmerie, known by a strange nickname: "Half-Our-Lord." Thereupon the features of that beloved picture were transformed, and in my imagination the face of "Papa Noël" turned into the visage of one of those rough men of arms. And at the same time I was bereft of the dearest of boyhood's dreams... at an early age. Yet in spite of that I went on laying in, for every holiday, a stock of his toys and firecrackers, like all the other children of the city. And when I became a father I did not exchange my old friend for any other of the dealers in these toys, though they multiplied after the Second War as the sellers of eyeglasses multiplied. And the picture of the fighting "gendarme" went on occupying, in my imagination, the place of the meek, peaceable "Papa Noël."

I used to tell my children, repeating what I had heard without verifying it myself or seeking to prove it:

— I bought you these toys from the kingdom of "Half-Our-Lord"!

And they would laugh, and find in those childish "marvels" what justified the name. But I would hasten to explain the secret, lest appearances deceive them:

— Half-Our-Lord... is a man who lived as a gendarme... and ended a sergeant! Then he was put out of the corps because... he was proud and would not obey his superiors' orders!

Then the little one, who listens to my talk with interest and attention, says:

— Like the drivers — they obey no one, not even the law!

— Exactly... But the superiors of that "sergeant" were personally annoyed by him... so they dismissed him. If they were personally annoyed by the drivers... they would discipline them and make them apply the law!

I said this, then turned with my children to lighting the wonder-lights and the rockets that scatter through the air stars and boughs like the stars of heaven and the fronds of palms — so that for moments we fancy the dome of the sky has drawn near the surface of the earth, or that the gardens of this earth have soared up till they hang in the expanses of space! Did not the ancients build the hanging gardens? Did not Adam and Eve come down from Paradise to earth?

And joy reaches its peak among the little ones, each imagining "Papa Noël" after the image whose lines have clung to his mind, after every fresh account at every holiday. All except that little one who is influenced by me more than the rest — as though I were the voice and he the echo — for he said to me in earnest:

— And how can an old "gendarme" make these marvels, even if he was a sergeant?... The gendarmes, all of them together, cannot stop our neighbor the grocer from shouting and disturbing the whole quarter — so how can they make "something" more important than that?

The question was embarrassing and the sarcasm biting, especially as I had in fact appealed to all the competent authorities, and to the conscience of the grocer himself, to stop his constant shouting in advertisement of his wares... So I said to the boy, hedging:

— The police... are responsible — not the gendarmerie — for the noise that troubles the residents' peace! And in any case... "Papa Noël" left his former corps and gave himself over to perfecting his new work... and excelled in it!

That was shortly before the end of the Second World War. Our country was swarming with the soldiers of the Allies, who had cooperated in the West to win the military positions and then quarreled in the East over the occupation of the strategic posts. Meanwhile "Papa Noël" had the chance to expand his trade, and to earn sums of money that placed him among the great men of means: here a mansion he builds to live in, there a "skyscraper" he puts up

to let, fitting it with electric elevators and the means of conditioning the air; and there lands he leases to plant with flowers, investing in them sums exceeding what he paid to obtain them!

Nor was it strange, after we won our independence, for one of us to attend a "fireworks display" of "Papa Noël's" making and arranging, and be dazzled by what he beheld of his arts — as he would be appalled by what the papers wrote the next day about the taxpayers' money the state had spent on that display.

Until those "displays," and the extravagance lavished on them, became part of the general national traditions — to say nothing of private weddings and all the other celebrations.

The fates had not yet favored me with making the acquaintance of that "Half-God," who I supposed had swelled with his abundant wealth till he filled the air with almightiness and become a god complete! — though I tried repeatedly to meet him, as I bought toys from his stores on private holidays and public ones. Each time I failed, I would console myself by saying that the fates have their wisdom, hidden from simple folk like me, so that we imagine them striking about at random like a beast in the dark, or walking without direction like a blind woman! Until this summer came. The war in Indochina was intensifying to the point of danger, threatening the outbreak of a third world war. And though many fancied that this war, like its predecessor the Korean War, must end in an agreement among the parties, I am more than certain that our Middle East will become the arena of that struggle the day it has exhausted its purposes there! For the poverty in whose shadow the crushing majority of mankind lives, and the material and spiritual diseases that follow from it, are enough to set fire to every place!

So I proceeded to buy a country house, which I preferred to have far from the main lines of communication, so that if events forced us to flee the capital we should find the best of refuges in our house in the mountains. And so I took to shuttling between the capital and that "hermitage-house" every day, now by car, now on foot. Then, on the advice of one of my children, I went and bought a bicycle, its price to be paid in monthly installments equal to half of what smokers spend on their deadly cigarettes.

Thus I was able to range the countryside surrounding the capital and my "hermitage" perched on the shoulder of the middle mountain, many times over during the last three months, and to discover — with my children, who accompany me one after another, each in his turn, on those exploratory outings — many things I had not known: things which, taken together, every citizen is bound to know, so that he may love his homeland with a love founded on knowledge and on good.

And the greatest of my discoveries was that spacious playground built at the entrance of the town neighboring the bare mountain... by a man whose name reminded me of the sergeant... Half-Our-Lord — as it reminded my boy of Papa Noël... whose toys had deserted us years ago, for economy's sake. And so my recollections and those of my boy, perched behind my back on the bicycle, met only in picturing the hundreds of thousands of liras that people squander at holidays and occasions on such luxuries, while most of them take no part in any humane work, nor contribute to the success of any charitable project.

We came up to the playground, and behold, in its center a beautiful garden adorned by a "basin" glorying in its lights, glittering through transparent cords of water. These descend from fountains that fling the water out in threads spreading in every direction. Then the water falls as a spray that caresses the faces — and in colors that would put to shame the colors of the gowns at a party of the Women's Union!

Around the playground, on its four sides, runs a row of comfortable benches, which the workmen seemed to have finished making only hours before: they are clean, not yet eaten away by the knives of those strollers who are bent, like madmen, on carving their names wherever they may be. And behind the benches stand cypresses and pines, transplanted from the neighboring forests to lend the grim rocky place the tenderness of the woods, so that its naked rocks grow dewy with meek green!

Only moments had passed while I stood with my boy at the western end of the wide playground, contemplating the sight of the sunset in its eternal splendor, when a man came toward us... graced with the tan of the diligent workman, won in the blaze of the sun and the heat of summer.

He presented himself to us, greeting us with the words:
— Youssef Salim... owner of the playground.
Whereupon my boy cried out without thinking:
— Papa Noël....
And I muttered in my turn, like one dazed:
— Half-Our-Lord...?

At that Youssef Salim broke into laughter, then put his hands in his trouser pockets and said:
— Half-Our-Lord... is my brother! As for me, I am Papa Noël, as the little one said. A Papa Noël of a new style! I have lived with his flesh and his blood and his feelings — without his clothes and his trappings!
The man said this, then laughed a stifled laugh, like the laugh children laugh in a gathering of grown-ups. I found it courteous to follow suit, so I laughed in my turn, as my little boy laughed!
Then a wave of shame swept over me, hot as a gust of the east wind in high summer. Perhaps it was a feeling of remorse for my carelessness in taking up people's sayings without verification or scrutiny, and a feeling of regret, too, for the dreams of childhood and the hopes of youth I had let slip.
Then a daze came over me — I know not whether it was the daze of one astonished, or the perplexity of one filled with admiration for this work and this workman. But I soon returned to the bearing of sense and sobriety, and put to my interlocutor a number of questions... and that pressing only increased his modesty, his self-assurance, and his quiet certainty that he had done a patriotic duty.
Then Papa Noël said to me as he bade me farewell:
— Be assured that I want neither reward nor recognition... I wanted to profit and to profit others... I am, as you see, no saint and no angel! I am a man among men! I built this playground and gave it to my village in discharge of my duty toward the people from whom
I sprang — and by whose custom of my wares I gathered my fortune! And do not forget that I began my working life with a capital of... one lira and ten piasters!
This last confession made the deepest impression of all on my boy, who stood long dumbfounded! But at last he managed to break the silence that had settled between us on the way home, saying:
— Papa... what would you say if I too began my working life... this very moment? For I have a hundred piasters and ten piasters!
I answered the boy, encouraging him to take to heart the example of this self-made man:
— Very well... if you equip yourself, as he did, with knowledge — the knowledge of life — and if you have abilities like his, you will without doubt arrive at a summit like this one!