she typed, on a Remington Portable. Letters, or parts of books, stories. In America she discovered photography, now she turns up in encyclopedias as a photographer. She liked to photograph derelicts and iron bridges. She did it well, in black and white. She had Hungarian and Spanish blood in her veins, but she married Andreâs grandfather in Switzerlandâthus becoming very wealthy. We never saw her. She was known for her beauty. Andre resembles her, they say. Also in character.
At a certain point the grandmother stopped taking photographsâshe devoted herself to keeping the family together, becoming its gracious tyrant. Her son suffered from this, her only son, and the woman he married, an Italianmodel: Andreâs parents. They were young and insecure, so the grandmother broke them regularly, because she was old and had an inexplicable power. She lived with them and sat at the head of the tableâa servant handed her the plates, saying the name of each course in French. Until she died. The grandfather had departed years earlier, it should be said, to complete the picture. Died, to be precise.
Before Andre, Andreâs parents had had twins. A boy and a girl. To the grandmother it had seemed rather vulgarâshe was convinced that having twins was something poor people did. In particular she couldnât bear the girl, whose name was Lucia. She couldnât see the use of her. Three years later, Andreâs mother became pregnant with Andre. The grandmother said that, obviously, she should have an abortion. But she didnât. And hereâs exactly what happened next.
The day Andre came out of her motherâs womb was an April dayâthe father was traveling, the twins were at home with the grandmother. The clinic telephoned the house to say that the mother had been admitted to the delivery room; the grandmother said, Good. She made sure that the twins had eaten, then she sat down at the table and had lunch. After coffee she let the Spanish nanny go for a couple of hours and took the twins to the garden: it was sunny, a beautiful spring day. She sat down on a recliner and fell asleep, because it happened that she did that, sometimes, after lunch, and didnât think it necessary to behave differently. Or it simply happenedâshe fell asleep. The twins played on the lawn. There was a pool with a fountain, a stone pool with red andyellow fish. At the center a jet. The twins approached, to play. They threw things they found in the garden into the pool. Lucia, the girl, at a certain point thought it would be nice to touch the water with her hands, and then her feet, and to play in it. She was three, so it wasnât easy, but she managed it, planting her small feet against the stone and pushing her head over the edge. Her brother was half watching her, half picking up things on the lawn. In the end the child slid into the water, making a faint sound, as of a small amphibious animalâa round creature. The pool wasnât deep, barely two feet, but she was scared by the water, maybe she hit the stone bottom, and this must have dulled the instinct that would have simply, naturally, saved her. So she breathed the dark water, and when she sought the air that she needed to cry, she couldnât find it. She turned slightly, laboriously, pushing on her heels and slapping the water with her hands, but they were small hands, and made a light, silvery sound. Then she was motionless among the yellow and red fish, who didnât understand. The brother came over to look. At that moment Andre emerged from her motherâs womb, and did so in suffering, as it is written in the book we believe in.
We know this because itâs a story that everyone knowsâin Andreâs world there is no modesty or shame. Thatâs how they hand down their superiority, and underscore their tragic privilege. This predisposes them to rise inevitably into legendâand in fact numerous variants of this story