Mon héros à moi, mon père (document en anglais)

At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, bothmore and less than a man. He had left Hawaii back in1963, when I was only two years old, so that as a child I knew him only through thestories that my mother and grandparents told. They all had theirfavorites, each one seamless, burnished smooth from repeated use. Ican still picture Gramps leaning back in his old stuffed chair afterdinner, sipping whiskey and cleaning his teeth with the cellophane from his cigarette pack, recounting the time that my father almost threw a man off the Pali Lookout because of a pipe....

“See, your mom and dad decided to take this friend of his sight-seeing around the island. So they drove up to the Lookout, andBarack was probably on the wrong side of the road the whole way over there—”

“Your father was a terrible driver,” my mother explains to me.“He’d end up on the left-hand side, the way the British drive, and if you said something he’d just huff about silly American rules—”

“Well, this particular time they arrived in one piece, and they got out and stood at the railing to admire the view. And Barack, he waspuffing away on this pipe that I’d given him for his birthday, point-ing out all the sights with the stem, like a sea captain—”

“Your father was really proud of this pipe,” my mother interruptsagain. “He’d smoke it all night while he studied, and sometimes—”

“Look, Ann, do you want to tell the story or are you going to let me finish?”

“Sorry, Dad. Go ahead.”

“Anyway, this poor fella—he was another African student, wasn’t he? Fresh off the boat. This poor kid must’ve been impressed with the way Barack was holding forth with this pipe, ’cause he asked if hecould give it a try. Your dad thought about it for a minute, and finally agreed, and as soon as the fella took his first puff, he started coughingup a fit. Coughed so hard that the pipe slipped out of his hand anddropped over the railing, a hundred feet down the face of the cliff.”

Gramps stops to take another nip from his flask before continu-ing. “Well, now, your dad was gracious enough to wait until hisfriend stopped coughing before he told him to climb over the railingand bring the pipe back. The man took one peek down this ninety-degree incline and told Barack that he’d buy him a replacement—”

“Quite sensibly,” Toot says from the kitchen. (We call my grand-mother Tutu, Toot for short; it means “grandparent” in Hawaiian,for she decided on the day I was born that she was still too young tobe called Granny.) Gramps scowls but decides to ignore her.

“—but Barack was adamant about getting his

pipe back, because it was a gift and couldn’t be replaced. So the fella took another look,and shook his head again, and that’s when your dad picked him clearoff the ground and started dangling him over the railing!”Gramps lets out a hoot and gives his knee a jovial slap. As helaughs, I imagine myself looking up at my father, dark against thebrilliant sun, the transgressor’s arms flailing about as he’s held aloft. A fearsome vision of justice.

“He wasn’t really holding him over the railing, Dad,” my mothersays, looking to me with concern, but Gramps takes another sip of whiskey and plows forward.“At this point, other people were starting to stare, and yourmother was begging Barack to stop. I guess Barack’s friend was just holding his breath and saying his prayers. Anyway, after a couple of minutes, your dad set the man back down on his feet, patted him onthe back, and suggested, calm as you please, that they all go findthemselves a beer. And don’t you know, that’s how your dad acted forthe rest of the tour—like nothing happened. Of course, your mother was still pretty upset when they got home. In fact, she was barely talking to your dad. Barack wasn’t helping matters any, either, ’cause when your mother tried to tell us what had happened he just shook his head and started to laugh.

‘Relax, Anna,’ he said to her—your dadhad this deep baritone, see, and this British accent.” My grandfathertucks his chin into his neck at this point, to capture the full effect.“

‘Relax, Anna,’ he said. ‘I only wanted to teach the chap a lessonabout the proper care of other people’s property!’

”Gramps would start to laugh again until he started to cough,and Toot would mutter under her breath thats he supposed it was a good thing that my father had realized that dropping the pipe had just been anaccident because who knows what might have happened other wise,and my mother would roll here yes at me and say they were exaggerating.“Your father can be a bit domineering,” my mother would admit with a hint of a smile. “But it’s just that he is basically a very honest person. That makes him uncompromising sometimes.”She preferred a gentler portrait of my father. She would tell thestory of when he arrived to accept his Phi Beta Kappa key in hisfavorite outfit—jeans and an old knit shirt with a leopard-print pat-tern. “Nobody told him it was this big honor, so he walked in andfound everyone standing around this elegant room dressed in tuxe-dos. The only time I ever saw him embarrassed.” And Gramps, suddenly thoughtful, would start nodding to himself “It’s a fact, Bar,” he would say. “Your dad could handle just about any situation, and that made everybody like him. Remember the time hehad to sing at the International Music Festival? He’d agreed to singsome African songs, but when he arrived it turned out to be this bigto-do, and the woman who performed just before him was a semi-professional singer, a Hawaiian gal with a full band to back her up. Anyone else would have stopped right there, you know, and explainedthat there had been a mistake. But not Barack. He got up and startedsinging in front of this big crowd—which is no easy feat, let me tell you—and he wasn’t great, but he was so sure of himself that before you knew it he was getting as much applause as anybody.” My grandfather would shake his head and get out of his chair toflip on the TV set. “Now there’s something you can learn from yourdad,” he would tell me. “

Confidence.The secret to a man’s success.”

Au moment de sa mort, mon père est resté un mythe pour moi, bothmore et de moins qu'un homme. Il avait laissé derrière Hawaï en 1963, quand je n'avais que deux ans, de sorte que lorsque j'étais enfant, je ne le connaissais que par le biais thestories que ma mère et les grands-parents dit. Ils avaient tous

...