It had been half a year since the last time he saw her. The last time was when he dropped her at the dance school in Paris. The girl was full of joy and she had run upstairs to enter the building, just to stop suddenly and turn around to run towards him and jump to give him a tight hug. The action surprised him beyond belief, and at a point made him feel something he had never felt since long ago: affection. The girl returned running to her new home, and as she entered the building, Mr. Luteau removed tears from his eyes, maybe, afraid that the emotion overwhelmed him and avoided him to let her go.
He knew perfectly well he had to face the mother superior as soon as he landed his foot on the ground of the orphanage. And indeed that's how it happened. When he arrived, there it was the woman, expecting him at the door with a mortuary expression in her face.
"Where have you been André?"
"None of your business." replied driedly the man.
"Don't talk to me in that tone of voice! And where is the girl?"
"Which one?"
"Don't act like a fool, you know exactly of who I'm talking about!"
"You gotta be more specific." Said Mr. Luteau, kneeled aside his old motorcycle and fixing a tire, trying hard to erase a naughty smirk.
The mother superior snorted angrily.
"Of the troublemaker child of course! Of Félicie! She's missing André!"
"What?" faked Luteau to be shocked while raising from the ground and approaching his interlocutor. "How? I made sure that girl didn't make any troubles again! How outrageous!"
But the mother superior looked at him with skepticism.
"She and you got missing at the same time, and you expect me to believe you're not behind this? After all, you showed to have some pity for her."
Luteau was cornered. The mother superior was no fool and she was very suspicious all the time. Barely nothing escaped her perception.
"I took her myself where she belongs." He answered firmly.
"Are you insane? Why would you do that? You better than anyone knows that she's safer here, in the orphanage!"
"Didn't you look at her Lorraine? She wasn't happy here! You can't make her stay forever in this place!"
"She would've understand in the future why I was strict with her now. She would've even thanked me! A dancer is not a proper career for a decent person. They're exposed to so much temptation and sin!"
"Dear Lorraine, that's what you think of the entire world!" almost said Luteau in a plea "That's not entirely true! Dancing is a noble art!"
"Now you've become an expert!" Interrupted mother superior.
"Just because the parisian society let you down doesn't mean it has to be the same for everyone!"
"My youth years were a mistake, and I'm not allowing anyone else to take the same road as I! I found a purpose here on our little village, in the foundation of this orphanage."
"So, that became your dream. That's alright. What about hers?"
"What part didn't you understand big fool? This is real André, don't call it a dream! She'll get across with so much peril and deception. The world is no merciful for orphans like her, society doesn't accept people without positions! Dreams are idealisms and those oftenly get crunched by the cruelty of reality."
"Then you're viewing half of reality. Let her learn! Let her make mistakes and discover that for herself! She will be fine, she already found someone who will take care of her. She told me about her on the road to Paris."
"And since when have you believed in dreams may I ask?"
Mr. Luteau remained silent for a while, realizing that, in fact, he was being a dreamer himself.
"I saw her dance in the rooftop yesterday." He answered with a low voice. "Remember when she used to trip over the tuiles like a clumsy chicken? Yesterday, she was turning and turning like the little doll in her music box, with so much decision, so much energy and passion... She hasn't been the same Lorraine. She has become more responsible, I've noticed it. She makes her bed in the morning, she obeys, she doesn't sneak out and when I discovered her doing that last night, she apologized and she was willing to return to her room. Forgive me if I say this, but, she better understood that by escaping than here with all your demands."
Mother superior grimaced at him.
"I don't think she's not being realistic" Luteau continued. "I think she's not pretending or playing anymore. She's being very serious about it and I think her desires are more sublime than all our little expectations in life. She has gone further than both of us."
"What can be more sublime than praising God in service and meditation?"
"Love for what you do, Lorraine. I think she praises God in her own way, with her joy for dancing."
"Praising God with such a sinful career?"
"What I saw her dancing didn't look like a sin to me! Tell me, do you really find joy in praising God and in taking care of orphan children? Or... you just do it to have your conscience clear? Where is the old Lorraine I knew? Willing to take risks and learn from life, who searched for perfection and to change the world? Who felt pity for desperate children in need?"
"She's gone!" mother superior screamed. "I had to see it for myself to understand I was being way too idealistic."
"Haven't you forgot reality has a hope too?"
The mother superior turned to one side avoiding to make eye contact with him.
"Not in my experience. You're as gullible as always... André. You have a kind heart, be cautious with that."
The discussion died there. After saying that, she entered, leaving him alone.
***
The next months were worse than the others before for him. There was a strange emptiness in the air. Luteau wasn't the same since then, the children could notice that. He didn't screamed at them anymore when they disobeyed or made a prank to him. He just got angry and scolded them without raising his voice, and he appeared to be more patient with their naughty behavior. He called them softly to form the lines and even helped them carefully placing them in their places. One day he even placed his stoic hand over the head of one of the boys when he passed by, stroking the boy's black hairs. He inspired so much pity that the children stopped being mean to him. All of them agreed it had something to do with the strange disappearing of Félicie, and with the discussion Mr. Luteau and the mother superior had the same day, which all of them witnessed peering through the bedroom's window early that morning.
Mr. Luteau always lived a simple and yet exhausting life. Born deformed and squinty didn't gave him so much opportunities in life like other children of his age. He wasn't considered smart as well, and children always mocked him for his clumsiness. The only thing he appeared to be useful for was to be the altar boy dedicated to ring the bell in the Consecration or to light the candles or shake the incense container, but he couldn't aspire for more. The parish priest of the local church knew well the Luteau family and was apparently the only one that treated him with tenderness, calling him by the pet name of "Quasimodo" something that didn't really amused little André, to be called after a humpback locked up in a bell tower.
He didn't have the brilliant mind nor the untamed determination, nor the high expectations of his older sister, who had a great desire to change the world and make a difference. He was just a "big fool" as she used to call him anytime he made a mistake. Although he found some comfort in what the priest always said to him: "God doesn't look for the wise nor the important people. He places His wisdom in the hearts of simple and humble persons, and He has preference fo those that the world rejects or find stupid or naive."
His sister insisted so much in her young days to travel to the french capital, expecting to learn anything enough to make important changes. But when she finally got to convince her parents to let her go, the parisian population showed to be so frivolous and careless that gave her a terrible impression. Things got worse when a friend invited her to the Moulin Rouge, where most of every single deadly sin was stored. Just drinking, bets and provocative, wild behaviors and none a bit of virtue and decency. That was the night, Lorraine Luteau decided it was not use to give the parisian life a chance. She left the place determined to return to her little town. As she told her brother when she returned, "It was a huge mistake to consider traveling and studying there in the first place."
A few days later she met casually a couple of nuns that made her realize she wanted to be part of them, to dedicate her life to meditation and prayer. Years later, because of her determination and intelligence, she became mother superior, and around that time she felt the need to do more than praying, and she thought it was a good idea to stablish an orphanage, because the orphans were many around and that was one way to make the difference she always wanted to make.
She went in search of her useless yet meek little brother's help, since he wasn't a handsome enough man to bring the attraction to young, innocent nuns or novices, and since he was clumsy enough to not fall in love with any of them and indeed, she was right. He gave up long ago the hope to be noticed by some mademoiselle. He protested at a start, he wasn't good with children and he hated them because they were always annoying, naughty, disobedient and a burden, but in the end he accepted by force because after all he loved and cared for his sister. For André himself his sister was being to idealistic and unrealistic with the expectation to change the world from one night to the next morning. Still, he saw his sister's passion, that flame for her mission to get extinguished with time, everytime she witnessed the sins of humanity and the world that most of the time remained the same immersed in unjustice and frivolousness, until routine within the orphanage swallowed both siblings. André as well lost faith in humanity. His only illusion was one time a cocky neighbor brought with him to the orphanage an old motorcycle he assured to be useless, and which André found to be functional so he was able to use it for a quicker travel in his roads from the isolated orphanage to the town instead of the old horse that pulled from a cart.
One day though, in one of his customary visits to the town to get the groceries, when he was returning to the old vehicle, it seemed that someone identified him all the time for riding it and being related with the local orphanage, because at the feet of the motorcycle was placed a cradle from which a crying was heard. He left the paper bags on the floor and with curiosity he peeked to the interior, in which he found a year old baby with hair of an intense red color, who instantly started crying again at the sight of the grotesque face of André. André wasn't smart, or at least he believed that, but at his sight, it was a nice looking baby. Maybe not so pretty as others he met before, but she wasn't ugly either. Her big green eyes were beautiful to look at. He knew exactly what meant that strange delivery, but he wasn't sure if to take her himself, due to the difficulty to carry two heavy paper bags along with the cradle on an old motorcycle. But it was now his duty, so he picked the cradle up and, in not a so nicely way he placed inside the paper bags, in front of the baby's head, making her angry. Arriving to the orphanage he made the delivery of the groceries along with the little girl, and he thought his mission was accomplished... For the moment. The next years meant to be responsible for that little girl without rest, and didn't passed so much time before Mr. Luteau would hate her.
That day though, that day she was in line when he asked where she was with shouts and she instantly answered, that day she swept the floor without dancing or laughing or screaming of pure joy, when "she lost her spirit." She reminded him of Lorraine's illusions being extinguished, and he feared, that the only joyful kid in the orphanage would be lost forever, to get turn into another mother superior. He couldn't bare to witness that again, it was to painful to revive.
And then that next day, the girl twirling fully recovered, like a strong phoenix rising from the ashes, that amazed and pleased his squinty eyes, and made him realize, and to believe again, that the world still keeps some beauty and hope in it. He felt God's existence so real, just by watching one of the many orphans aspiring to greatness without having great expectations for perfection.
That night, he decided in a flash of instant, he would take her, that little girl he carried in the cradle when she was a baby, to her new home. He didn't remembered to have a smile like the one he draw in his face when the little girl was shouting excited at his back, wearing his helmet and laughing at the top of her lungs.
As soon as he left her, he finally discovered he cared for that little noisy burden. He felt her absence, and the days were grayer, while the first snowflakes fell that January. The orphanage felt so empty and sad... No one cared for him in these years more than that little girl, who gave him a hug he had never received since his loving yet strict mother had. And if his sister was right? It was a good decision to take her back to Paris, alone at her own luck? Does she was going to be alright?
Months passed by. It had been half a year since the last time he saw her. And then, an early morning of summer, just when he was returning from picking up eggs from the hen house, he heard the hubbub of the children, screaming excited "She's back, she's back, she's back!" And saw all of them in group around the gates of the orphanage. He didn't understand a bit what was happening, and stood there with a basket in each hand, petrified and shocked, when a little group of kids ran towards him and two girls, taking him each one by one hand, started to pull him to the group.
"She's back, she's back, she's back!" kept saying the children in a chorus.
"She's been asking for you! She wants to see you!" told him the girls that were pulling from his sleeves.
Wait... does that meant..? Was he wrong..? It was perhaps... who he thought it was?
Getting closer he saw the group surrounding a pair, from who Luteau could only see their backs, one of a distinguished man with an enviable body shape that Luteau would've wanted to have, and dressed in a black impecable coat and a nice elegant hat Luteau would've never get the chance to wear, and the other belonging to a woman dressed in a more countryside way, so simple, so in contrast with the gentleman's fanciness. Both were talking to mother superior.
And then, at a few steps, he heard the children saying "He's here, he's here!" Then, the group got divided like the red sea, and with the speed of a lightning, crossed between them a girl. A pair of arms went to surround his neck and strands of red hair stroked his cheek. The energy with which he was received made him drop both baskets, making the eggs crash within and making Lorraine to get upset.
"Thank you uncle Luteau, thank you, thank you, thank you!" said Félicie hugging him tight. "Without you I wouldn't have made my dream come true!"
Luteau couldn't believe what was happening nor what he was hearing. The girl just called him uncle? He felt so moved that he started to weep.
"I missed you so much!" she kept saying.
After a while in which he couldn't formulate a word, he finally said, hugging her back:
"Me too!"
I've been having this little story in my mind for a while. I just wanted to explore and dig deeper into Luteau's character, who was introduced in the movie as a comical character, but later suprised us with his change of heart. We all realized he just cared for order and responsability, but deep inside he has a tender heart. I wondered, what would've happened to him after he brought Félicie to Paris, and why did he took that decision. I hope you enjoy it! 😊
