A/N:I have been dying to write this ever since we learned this beautiful poem in French class.
Background:The French dominated Canada prior to the eighteenth century. After they lost the French-and-Indian War, they were forced to give war spoils to the British. It was a choice between giving up Canada and giving up the French Indies. Both the French and the British wanted the French Indies – it was a crucial financial center as it grew sugar cane – and so it was out of the question that the French would give it to their rivals. Canada was a luxury for France to have, as it was a provider of the ever-popular beaver furs and had much of the French population. France really didn't want to give it up, but they had to in the end. Britain is a butt.
Poem:Dejeuner du Matin ("Breakfast"; literally translated as "Dinner of the Morning") by Jaques Prévert
Warnings: Intentional changing of tense, poem!fic, copious amounts of untranslated French (I'll send all the translations to you if you want, but I don't think it's very necessary), usage of both country and human names, minimal drug use, and total disregard of history. Did you know neither the match nor the lighter were introduced for lighting cigarettes and cigars until the nineteenth century?
This fic is unedited.
Start: 7:12 PM
Finish: 8:55 PM
France came downstairs and I knew what this morning was going to be like right away.
Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
I had made him coffee and a small, cold meal – France didn't eat big breakfasts. He said it was "an English thing to do." I was too timid to tell him that I did. At our table places were identical plebeian plates, each one bearing gifts of fresh-baked croissants with jam. A basket in the center held more of the bread,
and a jar of the jelly was beside it.
He sat down, and I sat down across from him. I was clutching my cup of hot chocolate; coffee wasn't to my preference. It kept my hands warm on a cold Canadian morning. He didn't look up at me as he poured the coffee into a small mug.
It was raining outside.
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
I had remembered to put out the milk and sugar for him this time. I kept my eyes respectfully averted – or maybe I was just avoiding the problem. He didn't comment on it – he didn't comment on anything, really. It was so un-France that I wanted to crawl in a hole and die. But I probably didn't. I was just thinking that I did.
I probably don't really want to die right now, even if that's what I feel like doing.
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
I suddenly found the string hanging off of my sleeve a fascinating thing, once I learned to poke at it.
France put in more sugar than he usually did – I counted the times I heard it shift around in the jar – and did that mean anything? It probably didn't. I might have been overanalyzing everything just a little too much. But maybe it did mean something and I was trying to overlook it.
It surely did not mean that he was preferring sugar over...
I risked a glance up at him. His golden hair was frazzled and his stubble was longer than he kept it. His eyes were rimmed with a fleshy mauve that made his irises seem all the more blue.
I have your blonde hair, I wanted to remind him. I have your blue eyes.
Avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
I watched him stir the coffee, realizing that there was no chance of him looking at me looking at him because I was invisible again. But it wasn't a "who are you?" state of perpetual invisibility. It was an invisibility borne of intentional ignorance.
I got up, knowing he wouldn't say anything. When I came back, I set his tin of cigarettes on the table. He was strange that way, using cigarettes instead of cigars; he said the size felt better in this mouth, and he never made a sexual innuendo when he said it.
I sat back down and waited. I didn't know what for.
Il a bu le café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler
Why won't you say something?
Il a allumé
Une cigarette
He set the coffee down – he'd barely sipped it, was it not good enough? – and takes out a cigarette and a
match from the tin. I hate the smell. I've always hated the smell.
I've never complained. Not once. I let him light it, let him bring it up to his chapped lips to suck a drag of it and blow it back out through his nose.
Il a fait des ronds
Avec la fumée
He idly made smoke rings, as if he had all the time in the world.
"C'est ainsi que tu passeras nos dernier jour ensemble?" I finally asked him, and my voice came out much louder than I'd ever heard it before. It was harsh and unforgiving, nothing like I intended it to be. I hadn't realized how angry I was about all of this until now.
France visibly winced but did nothing else.
And I could see it – I'm a little bit invisible to the world and so I see a little bit of everything, always – I could see how the way he stiffened and flinched and refused to look at me spoke all he wanted to say.
Je suis désolé. Je suis tellement désolé, Mathieu. Pardonne-moi. Un jour, il trouve dans ton cœur de me pardonner.
Yet he wouldn't say it.
And maybe I never would forgive him, even if he did ask me to.
Il a mis les cendres
Dans le cendrier
The ashes flicked back into the ashtray because they didn't matter. He held the cigarette between his index and middle finger for a few more moments, as though he were considering one more drag, but he
gracefully set it on top of the gray sand.
Sans me parler
Sans me regarder
"Dis quelque chose," I begged him. "S'il te plait, papa."
Il s'est levé
He stood up.
Il a mis
Son chapeau sur sa tête
"Papa," I pleaded, following him to the door. His coat and hat hung neatly there, and he put the hat on his head of gold, snuffing the halo-like glow.
Il a mis son manteau de pluie
Parce qu'il pleuvait
The coat went on next. Even with haste, he could make all of his actions look beautiful. "Don't leave," I said. And his hand went for the door, and I screamed then.
"Don't leave! I swear, if you leave I will never, ever forgive you, Francis!"
And maybe it was my half-lie of a threat, or maybe it was that I used his human name, or maybe it was just because I shouted, I actually raised my voice at him, but he paused in the doorway, door canted just slightly open.
"This isn't just France giving up Canada," I said, my throat thickening around the words. "This is Francis leaving Mathieu."
He lingered there. Maybe he remembered that we were human enough to have feelings.
Et il est parti
Sous la pluie
He left anyway. The gray haze seemed to swallow him up, and the rain drowned out the sound of his footsteps.
Sans une parole
Sans me regarder
He left without a single word, without looking at me.
Et moi j'ai pris
Ma tête dans ma main
And here I am now, stumbling blindly back to the dinner table with his cigarettes and his cold breakfast and his stupid coffee with the stupid little spoon and the stupid sugar, and I sit down in front of it.
Et j'ai pleuré