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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 07/08/2024
Maupassant's Ball of Fat
Born 1945, M, from Boston/MA, United StatesWhen Max Tittlebaum arrived fifteen minutes early for his creative writing class, Dahlia Dennis, the chairwoman of the English department, was sitting in the rear of the room. The writing class, which met weekly on Wednesdays, had been in existence for two months and never once had Dahlia set foot in the room or shown any interest.
“Thought I’d see how things are going.” She flashed a forced smile. The woman was tall and gangly with a wealth of curly brown hair and rather prominent, hooked nose. Max Tittlebaum had once noted that Dahlia wasn’t so much ugly as she was simply unpleasant to look at.
“I’ll just sit here quiet as a church mouse, if you don’t mind.” Without anticipating any response Dahlia began scribbling in a leather-bound notebook. The creative fiction workshop was a feather in her academic hat. Dahlia shrewdly dubbed the class her ‘advanced honors program’ even though participants received no academic credit and anyone with marginal interest could attend.
“Just so you’re aware, I begin each meeting with a brief discussion of famous literary figures,” Max explained. “Last week Guy de Maupassant, before that Chekhov… this week Hawthorne.”
The students began filtering in. On the blackboard Max printed PATIENCE!!! in huge capital letters that scrolled the length of the chalkboard. When the class was settled, he said, “At our last meeting we discussed Guy de Maupassant, the French writer, who spent years perfecting his skills as a writer before publishing a single piece. Patience paid off and his Boule de Suif”, Ball of Fat, which was his first published story, is generally considered a literary masterpiece and the author’s greatest work of fiction.”
“Patience was a quality that Nathaniel Hawthorne also gave considerable thought to.” Max began wandering the classroom aisles as he spoke. “Hawthorne felt that language resembled a pane of glass, a visual window through which writers create fictional realities.” Returning to the front of the room, he retrieved a small plastic spray bottle. Approaching a window facing the rear of the school and nearby soccer field, Max sprayed a thin mist of water on the surface of the glass.”
“The author of The Scarlet Letter believed that editing was the process of keeping language clear and transparent.” Removing a small handful of dirt from a cellophane bag, he smeared it gently on the wet glass then, with the heel of a hand, spread the dirt in messy streaks. Max encouraged several students to approach. Pointing at an adjacent window that had been spared the dirt, he asked, “Watch what’s happening on the soccer field.”
Fifty feet away the home team, the Red Devils, was limbering up for a match with a neighboring school district. They were passing soccer balls back and forth, taking random shots on goal and sprinting short distances across the grassy field.
“Over here,” Max said positioning himself in front of the muddied window, “much of what you would normally see has been obliterated.” He turned and faced the students. “When you go back over your rough drafts and polish the prose, it’s like scrubbing the glass clean.” Returning to the front of the class, Max grabbed a thick roll of paper towels and bottle of glass cleaner. Glancing about the room, he asked, “Who would like to do the honors?”
Janet Moran, a sophomore with a penchant for detective novels, stepped forward and grabbed the spray. Misting the window with the solvent, she wiped away the gray sludge and, as she did so, the soccer players racing energetically about the field in their maroon colored jerseys reemerged. Each member took their turn ‘editing’ the glass until it had been restored to pristine clarity.
“Writers are always in search of the mot juste, the exact word or phrasing. Gustave Flaubert, who we mentioned last weeks, coined the phrase, defining it as his guiding principle.”
Max surreptitiously glanced at the stony-faced, middle-aged woman in the rear of the class. Dahlia Dennis was staring dully into space, her harsh features glazed over with a mix of boredom and disdain. The chairwoman of the English department had a rather peculiar mannerism that manifested when she was particularly annoyed: her bottom lip protruded noticeably beyond its upper counterpart. Max had seen monkeys in the zoo display a similar physical anomaly but had no idea what the aberration suggested.
“Like Flaubert, we need to discipline ourselves to work slowly… labor with infinite care and patience.” He pointed at the letters covering the chalkboard. “The French master would write a page a day and then spend the remaining week editing and revising a meager five-hundred words in search of the mot juste.” Max raised a taut index finger in the air. “His literary output was quite meager but Flaubert, in his day, emerged as the greatest French writer.”
Max put the cleaning supplies away and hurried back to his desk. “Okay, get out your writing pads. We’re going to do a ten-minute, flash fiction drill and then Jason has a few pages of a work in progress he will be sharing with us.”
* * * * *
When the class ended, Dahlia Dennis remained seated staring languidly off into space. “A complaint was lodged.”
“Could you be more specific?”
Her lower lip precariously inched slightly forward. “I’m not at liberty to divulge names, but regarding the nature of the complaint, there were two specific issues.” She finally rose from the chair and came forward. When she spoke again, her tone had assumed an officious, patronizing edge. “You discussed a Maupassant short story where the main character was a French prostitute.”
“Mademoiselle Elisabeth Rousset,” Max confirmed. “Maupassant also brought together ten travelers who represent easily distinguishable types in French society. They were all trying to escape the war-torn region of Rouen on a winter morning.”
“Yes, well one of your students took offense… found the description salacious and offensive.”
“Salacious and offensive,” Max threw the woman’s words back in her face, “There are books in the school library that deal with transsexuals, lesbians and oral sex.”
“That’s beside the point,” Dahlia Dennis parried the remark. “You should have been more discrete.”
“A Ball of Fat… Boule de Suif,” Max returned. “It’s a literary masterpiece.”
A guttural sound welled up in the woman’s throat. “The student went home, told her mother what you were teaching and now she’s launched a formal complaint with the school committee, requesting that you be censured for inappropriate behavior and the creative writing class disbanded.”
“Jennifer Veal,” Max noted. “She dropped out of class last week.” The girl was an emaciated sophomore with chronic acne whose mother managed the PTO.”
Dahlia opened her mouth but closed it abruptly, choosing to simply ignore the observation. For sure Jennifer was the snitch, the misguided stoolpigeon. Max blew out his cheeks then shook his head in a vain attempt to clear the cobwebs. “And where exactly do you stand on the issue?”
“That’s of no consequence,” she deftly dodged the question as he knew she would. At heart, the woman was a political opportunist; she would ignore any moral or ethical considerations in favor of what whatever was in her professional self-interest. The woman had no genuine interest in education per se. She a political power broker. She was grotesquely unprincipled and inordinately successful.
“Over the past week did you even bother to read the story?”
“Obviously not,” Max mused, when there was no immediate response. “So you know nothing about the central plot or characters involved but accuse me of a gross indiscretion?” The chairwoman of the English department was neither flustered nor embarrassed in the least by the teacher’s assumptions. An inveterate autocrat, Dahlia Dennis always ruled by decree; it was her way or the highway.
“Two issues… you said there was an additional complaint.”
Dahlia ran a tongue across her lips. “The girl told her mother that you made a joke of Maupassant’s parentage, suggesting that the author may have been the illegitimate son of his mentor, Flaubert.”
“Maupassant’s mother was on intimate terms with Flaubert from an early age. Her own marriage was a gross failure and the couple separated permanently when the child was eleven years old. Many literary biographers believe that Flaubert was Maupassant’s biological father.” Max made a gesture of futility. “The historical facts surrounding these assumptions are common knowledge.”
“No matter,” Dahlia shot back dismissively. “Your situation is a hot mess.” The chairwoman of the English department’s voice abruptly turned more strident. “You will need to issue a public apology, acknowledging an unintentional error in good judgment.”
The room fell silent. A minute passed. Over the staticky intercom the school receptionist announced that the Red Devil soccer game would commence in fifteen minutes with seating still available. “You’re a buffoon,” Max observed calmly. “A literary nitwit.”
“What?” The chairwoman of the English department couldn’t believe her ears.”
“I’ve taught here fifteen years. It never occurred to you to come to my defense?”
“Have you lost your mind?” Dahlia was beside herself. “I could fire you on the spot for gross insubordination.”
“You can recommend my dismissal to the school committee,” Max corrected, “but you lack authority to terminate my employment.” “A Ball of Fat, Boule de Suif, was one of the greatest works of French literature. It catapulted an unknown author to instant fame.” Dahlia’s bulbous lower lip had grown exponentially, her hands trembling as her deft control of the situation abruptly frittered away. “I’ll wager you never even bothered to read the story.” When there was no response, Max brushed past the chairwoman of the English department. In the hallway students were still milling about. In the parking lot he located his car and drove home.
* * * * *
Max found his wife, Gloria, in the back yard gardening. She held a fistful of freshly-picked snow peas in her left hand and was pealing back a layer of vines, tendrils and thick, shrub-like leave in search of additional succulent beauties. “I may not be teaching much longer.” He told her what had taken place earlier.
A middle-aged brunette with a short, compact torso, Gloria surveyed the plump peas then plopped one in her mouth and ground the emerald mass into bittersweet pulp. “You always wanted to retire early,” she said. “We’ve got enough money squirreled away so that it wouldn’t represent an immediate hardship.” Gloria pointed at a plot of land fenced in with metal poles and chicken wire. “Go work your garden and we’ll discuss the options over supper.”
In a corner of the garden close by the shed, Max inspected his Blue Lake bush beans. Over the weekend following a battering rain storm he discovered a vine lying limp on the ground. Looping a strand of green twine round the topmost set of leaves, he hoisted the wilted plant upright, securing the string to an overhead wooden support. Following a few days of faithful watering and sun the plant, which had strengthened considerably, looked perfectly healthy.
Too bad one couldn’t work the same magic on the likes of Dahlia Dennis, the class stoolpigeon, Jenifer Veal, and her brittle-minded mother. Max could loop lengths of rope around each of the women’s earlobes and string them up vertically alongside the peas. Let the sun bake and bleach all the fascistic nastiness, ill will and malevolence out of their bones. Unfortunately humans were less amenable to horticultural intervention.
Moving further down his garden, Max inspected the three sisters. The three sisters was a hodgepodge of corn, squash and pole beans he planted closely together. Many Native American tribes sowed this trio collectively because they thrive like three inseparable sisters; the plants grew symbiotically, deterring weeds and pests, enriching the soil while supporting each other.
Max had discovered the planting technique in a gardening manual. The tall corn provided the poles beans with necessary support as they grew to full height, while the beans, in turn, pulled nitrogen from the air, bringing it back to the soil to benefit all three. As the beans grew through the tangle of squash vines and wound their way up the cornstalks into the sunlight, they held the sisters close together. The large leaves of the sprawling squash protected the threesome by creating living mulch that shaded the soil, keeping it cool and moist and preventing weeds. The prickly squash leaves also kept away raccoons and other pests, which didn’t like stepping on them. When European settlers arrived in America in the early 1600s, the Iroquois had been growing the “three sisters” for over three centuries. The vegetable trio sustained the Native Americans both physically and spiritually. In legend, the plants were a gift from the gods, always to be grown together, eaten together, and celebrated together.
Max’s wife, who had joined him in his garden, pointed in the general direction of the three sisters. “When were you planning to gather the produce?” On the underside of a five-foot bean stalk a profusion of pole beans were dangling in the light breeze. “I’ll pick the ripe ones before we go in.”
“Do you think the school board would fire you?”
“Don’t know but I did nothing wrong.”
“Dahlia Dennis clearly never bothered to read the story before accusing you of bad judgment.” Gloria ran a finger over the scratchy surface of one of the broad squash leaves. “For that reason alone, you could suit her for defamation of character.”
* * * * *
Gloria wandered over to a small table situated in the rear of the garden where a collection of tan peat pots with tomato plants that Max had grown from seed were inching up to half a foot in height. “When were you planning on planting these lovely creatures?” His wife held one of the peat pots at eye level. A feathery profusion of ivory roots had burst through the bottom of the soft container.
Max picked up another peat pot and surveyed the damage. He would gently rip the bottom from each tub before replanting it in the fresh garden soil. The plants would quickly breakdown the remaining covering so the tomatoes could grow to full height.
He pointed at a patch of soil covered with ripe garlic stalks, which he had stopped watering earlier in the month. “I’ll be pulling up the garlic by the end of the week; most of the tomatoes can go there. The rest will be transplanted in that bed of lettuce gone to seed over by the fence.”
“Yet another potential calamity averted.” Gloria shook her head and grinned mischievously. “About that unseemly nonsense regarding Flaubert being Maupassant’s father,… is there any truth to it?”
“A ton of historical trivia surrounds the relationship,” Max replied. “Maupassant’s mother, who was passionate about French literature, was on intimate terms with the famous author, long before her own marriage.”
“How intimate?” his wife pressed.
“Max shrugged. “No one knows for sure. “The Maupassant’s marriage was an abysmal failure from the outset, and the mother left her husband when the child was quite young. Several vague comments that she made about Flaubert before his death suggest that he, in fact, was the child’s real father.”
“Such as?”
Max made a wry face. “Maupassant’s mother was interviewed shortly after Flaubert died; in an offhand remark, she mentioned that her son, Guy, was taking care of ‘his father’s funeral arrangements’. Quickly realizing the faux pas, She corrected the statement to say ‘his mentor’, not his father.”
“Such a peculiar twist of words!”
“In another instance Flaubert said publically that he loved the young Maupassant as though he was his own flesh and blood.”
“The implication being,” Gloria finished the thought for him, “that Flaubert knew the young writer to be his son but was forced to exercised discretion.”
Having finished watering her garden, Gloria rolled up the hose. “You did nothing wrong. There’s no reason to capitulate,” she insisted. “An apology would be absurd!”
“I’ll stand my ground,” Max agreed.
Max continued inspecting his pole beans, many of which had already climbed quite high. Earlier in the season he drove metal stakes into the earth. From a local lumber yard he purchased a Douglas fir two-by-four, which he ripped into inch-thick poles, securing them with bailing wire to the metal stakes.
Max strategically repositioned the beans near the center of the garden. The previous year he planted the seedlings along the fence and in early July, when the bean climbed a dizzying six feet in the air, a full-grown deer wandered into the back yard and proceeded to devour the juicy leaves. Wherever his thick neck could reach - like a bad haircut – the deer had stripped every vine bare. Initially, Max was clueless as to what had caused the wreckage, but then he saw the hoof prints with the telltale double wedges dimpling the ground in a muddy patch bordering the mangled beans. Amazingly all the foliage eventually grew back, and well into October the Tittlebaums were still harvesting the sweet greenery.
“What are we having for supper?” Max asked.
“I thought we’d splurge… go to a nice restaurant,” his wife replied.
Max glanced up at the sky. The light was fading and a hoard of mosquitoes would soon be out in full force. “Isn’t that a bit extravagant under the circumstances?”
“We ought to start spending the windfall from impending lawsuits.”
“Lawsuits… we’re suing more than one entity?”
“Dahlia Dennis, of course, as the principle party,” Gloria explained, “then Myra Veale, her loquacious daughter, the entire school committee and that’s just for starters.”
* * * * *
The house phone was ringing shrilly, when the Tittlebaums returned from the restaurant. “It’s Dahlia Dennis,” his wife announced.
Max spoke briefly with the woman and returned to the living room. “Regarding Maupassant’s Ball of Fat, Dahlia says that she may have acted in haste. After conferring with Myra Veale, she has agreed to rescind the complaint. The creative writing program will continue as usual.” Max chuckled softly as though at some private joke. “The woman couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.”
“And her tone?”
“Like that of a beaten dog with its tail dragging on the ground between scraggily legs.”
“Poorly chosen imagery,” Gloria objected, kissing her husband brusquely on the cheek. “Dog’s bark or howl. Only humans use spoken language.”
Postscript
While this short story is fictional, all the material regarding Guy de Maupassant and his literary mentor, Gustave Flaubert, is well-documented historical fact. Ask any Frenchman who the greatest French writer is and nine out of ten will say “Guy de Maupassant’. Boule de Suif is, was and always will be a sublime masterpiece.
Maupassant's Ball of Fat(Barry)
When Max Tittlebaum arrived fifteen minutes early for his creative writing class, Dahlia Dennis, the chairwoman of the English department, was sitting in the rear of the room. The writing class, which met weekly on Wednesdays, had been in existence for two months and never once had Dahlia set foot in the room or shown any interest.
“Thought I’d see how things are going.” She flashed a forced smile. The woman was tall and gangly with a wealth of curly brown hair and rather prominent, hooked nose. Max Tittlebaum had once noted that Dahlia wasn’t so much ugly as she was simply unpleasant to look at.
“I’ll just sit here quiet as a church mouse, if you don’t mind.” Without anticipating any response Dahlia began scribbling in a leather-bound notebook. The creative fiction workshop was a feather in her academic hat. Dahlia shrewdly dubbed the class her ‘advanced honors program’ even though participants received no academic credit and anyone with marginal interest could attend.
“Just so you’re aware, I begin each meeting with a brief discussion of famous literary figures,” Max explained. “Last week Guy de Maupassant, before that Chekhov… this week Hawthorne.”
The students began filtering in. On the blackboard Max printed PATIENCE!!! in huge capital letters that scrolled the length of the chalkboard. When the class was settled, he said, “At our last meeting we discussed Guy de Maupassant, the French writer, who spent years perfecting his skills as a writer before publishing a single piece. Patience paid off and his Boule de Suif”, Ball of Fat, which was his first published story, is generally considered a literary masterpiece and the author’s greatest work of fiction.”
“Patience was a quality that Nathaniel Hawthorne also gave considerable thought to.” Max began wandering the classroom aisles as he spoke. “Hawthorne felt that language resembled a pane of glass, a visual window through which writers create fictional realities.” Returning to the front of the room, he retrieved a small plastic spray bottle. Approaching a window facing the rear of the school and nearby soccer field, Max sprayed a thin mist of water on the surface of the glass.”
“The author of The Scarlet Letter believed that editing was the process of keeping language clear and transparent.” Removing a small handful of dirt from a cellophane bag, he smeared it gently on the wet glass then, with the heel of a hand, spread the dirt in messy streaks. Max encouraged several students to approach. Pointing at an adjacent window that had been spared the dirt, he asked, “Watch what’s happening on the soccer field.”
Fifty feet away the home team, the Red Devils, was limbering up for a match with a neighboring school district. They were passing soccer balls back and forth, taking random shots on goal and sprinting short distances across the grassy field.
“Over here,” Max said positioning himself in front of the muddied window, “much of what you would normally see has been obliterated.” He turned and faced the students. “When you go back over your rough drafts and polish the prose, it’s like scrubbing the glass clean.” Returning to the front of the class, Max grabbed a thick roll of paper towels and bottle of glass cleaner. Glancing about the room, he asked, “Who would like to do the honors?”
Janet Moran, a sophomore with a penchant for detective novels, stepped forward and grabbed the spray. Misting the window with the solvent, she wiped away the gray sludge and, as she did so, the soccer players racing energetically about the field in their maroon colored jerseys reemerged. Each member took their turn ‘editing’ the glass until it had been restored to pristine clarity.
“Writers are always in search of the mot juste, the exact word or phrasing. Gustave Flaubert, who we mentioned last weeks, coined the phrase, defining it as his guiding principle.”
Max surreptitiously glanced at the stony-faced, middle-aged woman in the rear of the class. Dahlia Dennis was staring dully into space, her harsh features glazed over with a mix of boredom and disdain. The chairwoman of the English department had a rather peculiar mannerism that manifested when she was particularly annoyed: her bottom lip protruded noticeably beyond its upper counterpart. Max had seen monkeys in the zoo display a similar physical anomaly but had no idea what the aberration suggested.
“Like Flaubert, we need to discipline ourselves to work slowly… labor with infinite care and patience.” He pointed at the letters covering the chalkboard. “The French master would write a page a day and then spend the remaining week editing and revising a meager five-hundred words in search of the mot juste.” Max raised a taut index finger in the air. “His literary output was quite meager but Flaubert, in his day, emerged as the greatest French writer.”
Max put the cleaning supplies away and hurried back to his desk. “Okay, get out your writing pads. We’re going to do a ten-minute, flash fiction drill and then Jason has a few pages of a work in progress he will be sharing with us.”
* * * * *
When the class ended, Dahlia Dennis remained seated staring languidly off into space. “A complaint was lodged.”
“Could you be more specific?”
Her lower lip precariously inched slightly forward. “I’m not at liberty to divulge names, but regarding the nature of the complaint, there were two specific issues.” She finally rose from the chair and came forward. When she spoke again, her tone had assumed an officious, patronizing edge. “You discussed a Maupassant short story where the main character was a French prostitute.”
“Mademoiselle Elisabeth Rousset,” Max confirmed. “Maupassant also brought together ten travelers who represent easily distinguishable types in French society. They were all trying to escape the war-torn region of Rouen on a winter morning.”
“Yes, well one of your students took offense… found the description salacious and offensive.”
“Salacious and offensive,” Max threw the woman’s words back in her face, “There are books in the school library that deal with transsexuals, lesbians and oral sex.”
“That’s beside the point,” Dahlia Dennis parried the remark. “You should have been more discrete.”
“A Ball of Fat… Boule de Suif,” Max returned. “It’s a literary masterpiece.”
A guttural sound welled up in the woman’s throat. “The student went home, told her mother what you were teaching and now she’s launched a formal complaint with the school committee, requesting that you be censured for inappropriate behavior and the creative writing class disbanded.”
“Jennifer Veal,” Max noted. “She dropped out of class last week.” The girl was an emaciated sophomore with chronic acne whose mother managed the PTO.”
Dahlia opened her mouth but closed it abruptly, choosing to simply ignore the observation. For sure Jennifer was the snitch, the misguided stoolpigeon. Max blew out his cheeks then shook his head in a vain attempt to clear the cobwebs. “And where exactly do you stand on the issue?”
“That’s of no consequence,” she deftly dodged the question as he knew she would. At heart, the woman was a political opportunist; she would ignore any moral or ethical considerations in favor of what whatever was in her professional self-interest. The woman had no genuine interest in education per se. She a political power broker. She was grotesquely unprincipled and inordinately successful.
“Over the past week did you even bother to read the story?”
“Obviously not,” Max mused, when there was no immediate response. “So you know nothing about the central plot or characters involved but accuse me of a gross indiscretion?” The chairwoman of the English department was neither flustered nor embarrassed in the least by the teacher’s assumptions. An inveterate autocrat, Dahlia Dennis always ruled by decree; it was her way or the highway.
“Two issues… you said there was an additional complaint.”
Dahlia ran a tongue across her lips. “The girl told her mother that you made a joke of Maupassant’s parentage, suggesting that the author may have been the illegitimate son of his mentor, Flaubert.”
“Maupassant’s mother was on intimate terms with Flaubert from an early age. Her own marriage was a gross failure and the couple separated permanently when the child was eleven years old. Many literary biographers believe that Flaubert was Maupassant’s biological father.” Max made a gesture of futility. “The historical facts surrounding these assumptions are common knowledge.”
“No matter,” Dahlia shot back dismissively. “Your situation is a hot mess.” The chairwoman of the English department’s voice abruptly turned more strident. “You will need to issue a public apology, acknowledging an unintentional error in good judgment.”
The room fell silent. A minute passed. Over the staticky intercom the school receptionist announced that the Red Devil soccer game would commence in fifteen minutes with seating still available. “You’re a buffoon,” Max observed calmly. “A literary nitwit.”
“What?” The chairwoman of the English department couldn’t believe her ears.”
“I’ve taught here fifteen years. It never occurred to you to come to my defense?”
“Have you lost your mind?” Dahlia was beside herself. “I could fire you on the spot for gross insubordination.”
“You can recommend my dismissal to the school committee,” Max corrected, “but you lack authority to terminate my employment.” “A Ball of Fat, Boule de Suif, was one of the greatest works of French literature. It catapulted an unknown author to instant fame.” Dahlia’s bulbous lower lip had grown exponentially, her hands trembling as her deft control of the situation abruptly frittered away. “I’ll wager you never even bothered to read the story.” When there was no response, Max brushed past the chairwoman of the English department. In the hallway students were still milling about. In the parking lot he located his car and drove home.
* * * * *
Max found his wife, Gloria, in the back yard gardening. She held a fistful of freshly-picked snow peas in her left hand and was pealing back a layer of vines, tendrils and thick, shrub-like leave in search of additional succulent beauties. “I may not be teaching much longer.” He told her what had taken place earlier.
A middle-aged brunette with a short, compact torso, Gloria surveyed the plump peas then plopped one in her mouth and ground the emerald mass into bittersweet pulp. “You always wanted to retire early,” she said. “We’ve got enough money squirreled away so that it wouldn’t represent an immediate hardship.” Gloria pointed at a plot of land fenced in with metal poles and chicken wire. “Go work your garden and we’ll discuss the options over supper.”
In a corner of the garden close by the shed, Max inspected his Blue Lake bush beans. Over the weekend following a battering rain storm he discovered a vine lying limp on the ground. Looping a strand of green twine round the topmost set of leaves, he hoisted the wilted plant upright, securing the string to an overhead wooden support. Following a few days of faithful watering and sun the plant, which had strengthened considerably, looked perfectly healthy.
Too bad one couldn’t work the same magic on the likes of Dahlia Dennis, the class stoolpigeon, Jenifer Veal, and her brittle-minded mother. Max could loop lengths of rope around each of the women’s earlobes and string them up vertically alongside the peas. Let the sun bake and bleach all the fascistic nastiness, ill will and malevolence out of their bones. Unfortunately humans were less amenable to horticultural intervention.
Moving further down his garden, Max inspected the three sisters. The three sisters was a hodgepodge of corn, squash and pole beans he planted closely together. Many Native American tribes sowed this trio collectively because they thrive like three inseparable sisters; the plants grew symbiotically, deterring weeds and pests, enriching the soil while supporting each other.
Max had discovered the planting technique in a gardening manual. The tall corn provided the poles beans with necessary support as they grew to full height, while the beans, in turn, pulled nitrogen from the air, bringing it back to the soil to benefit all three. As the beans grew through the tangle of squash vines and wound their way up the cornstalks into the sunlight, they held the sisters close together. The large leaves of the sprawling squash protected the threesome by creating living mulch that shaded the soil, keeping it cool and moist and preventing weeds. The prickly squash leaves also kept away raccoons and other pests, which didn’t like stepping on them. When European settlers arrived in America in the early 1600s, the Iroquois had been growing the “three sisters” for over three centuries. The vegetable trio sustained the Native Americans both physically and spiritually. In legend, the plants were a gift from the gods, always to be grown together, eaten together, and celebrated together.
Max’s wife, who had joined him in his garden, pointed in the general direction of the three sisters. “When were you planning to gather the produce?” On the underside of a five-foot bean stalk a profusion of pole beans were dangling in the light breeze. “I’ll pick the ripe ones before we go in.”
“Do you think the school board would fire you?”
“Don’t know but I did nothing wrong.”
“Dahlia Dennis clearly never bothered to read the story before accusing you of bad judgment.” Gloria ran a finger over the scratchy surface of one of the broad squash leaves. “For that reason alone, you could suit her for defamation of character.”
* * * * *
Gloria wandered over to a small table situated in the rear of the garden where a collection of tan peat pots with tomato plants that Max had grown from seed were inching up to half a foot in height. “When were you planning on planting these lovely creatures?” His wife held one of the peat pots at eye level. A feathery profusion of ivory roots had burst through the bottom of the soft container.
Max picked up another peat pot and surveyed the damage. He would gently rip the bottom from each tub before replanting it in the fresh garden soil. The plants would quickly breakdown the remaining covering so the tomatoes could grow to full height.
He pointed at a patch of soil covered with ripe garlic stalks, which he had stopped watering earlier in the month. “I’ll be pulling up the garlic by the end of the week; most of the tomatoes can go there. The rest will be transplanted in that bed of lettuce gone to seed over by the fence.”
“Yet another potential calamity averted.” Gloria shook her head and grinned mischievously. “About that unseemly nonsense regarding Flaubert being Maupassant’s father,… is there any truth to it?”
“A ton of historical trivia surrounds the relationship,” Max replied. “Maupassant’s mother, who was passionate about French literature, was on intimate terms with the famous author, long before her own marriage.”
“How intimate?” his wife pressed.
“Max shrugged. “No one knows for sure. “The Maupassant’s marriage was an abysmal failure from the outset, and the mother left her husband when the child was quite young. Several vague comments that she made about Flaubert before his death suggest that he, in fact, was the child’s real father.”
“Such as?”
Max made a wry face. “Maupassant’s mother was interviewed shortly after Flaubert died; in an offhand remark, she mentioned that her son, Guy, was taking care of ‘his father’s funeral arrangements’. Quickly realizing the faux pas, She corrected the statement to say ‘his mentor’, not his father.”
“Such a peculiar twist of words!”
“In another instance Flaubert said publically that he loved the young Maupassant as though he was his own flesh and blood.”
“The implication being,” Gloria finished the thought for him, “that Flaubert knew the young writer to be his son but was forced to exercised discretion.”
Having finished watering her garden, Gloria rolled up the hose. “You did nothing wrong. There’s no reason to capitulate,” she insisted. “An apology would be absurd!”
“I’ll stand my ground,” Max agreed.
Max continued inspecting his pole beans, many of which had already climbed quite high. Earlier in the season he drove metal stakes into the earth. From a local lumber yard he purchased a Douglas fir two-by-four, which he ripped into inch-thick poles, securing them with bailing wire to the metal stakes.
Max strategically repositioned the beans near the center of the garden. The previous year he planted the seedlings along the fence and in early July, when the bean climbed a dizzying six feet in the air, a full-grown deer wandered into the back yard and proceeded to devour the juicy leaves. Wherever his thick neck could reach - like a bad haircut – the deer had stripped every vine bare. Initially, Max was clueless as to what had caused the wreckage, but then he saw the hoof prints with the telltale double wedges dimpling the ground in a muddy patch bordering the mangled beans. Amazingly all the foliage eventually grew back, and well into October the Tittlebaums were still harvesting the sweet greenery.
“What are we having for supper?” Max asked.
“I thought we’d splurge… go to a nice restaurant,” his wife replied.
Max glanced up at the sky. The light was fading and a hoard of mosquitoes would soon be out in full force. “Isn’t that a bit extravagant under the circumstances?”
“We ought to start spending the windfall from impending lawsuits.”
“Lawsuits… we’re suing more than one entity?”
“Dahlia Dennis, of course, as the principle party,” Gloria explained, “then Myra Veale, her loquacious daughter, the entire school committee and that’s just for starters.”
* * * * *
The house phone was ringing shrilly, when the Tittlebaums returned from the restaurant. “It’s Dahlia Dennis,” his wife announced.
Max spoke briefly with the woman and returned to the living room. “Regarding Maupassant’s Ball of Fat, Dahlia says that she may have acted in haste. After conferring with Myra Veale, she has agreed to rescind the complaint. The creative writing program will continue as usual.” Max chuckled softly as though at some private joke. “The woman couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.”
“And her tone?”
“Like that of a beaten dog with its tail dragging on the ground between scraggily legs.”
“Poorly chosen imagery,” Gloria objected, kissing her husband brusquely on the cheek. “Dog’s bark or howl. Only humans use spoken language.”
Postscript
While this short story is fictional, all the material regarding Guy de Maupassant and his literary mentor, Gustave Flaubert, is well-documented historical fact. Ask any Frenchman who the greatest French writer is and nine out of ten will say “Guy de Maupassant’. Boule de Suif is, was and always will be a sublime masterpiece.
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Denise Arnault
07/12/2024I loved Mauppasant when I was younger. Thanks for bringing him up! You have given me the urge to read him again. Standing your ground when it means your livelihood is not easy. I'm glad it worked out for Max.
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