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Jean Christophe: In Paris by Romain Rolland

R >> Romain Rolland >> Jean Christophe: In Paris




So the days slipped by for the two children, within hail of each other,
though neither ever gave a thought to the other,--except when it would
suddenly occur to Antoinette to play a prank on her brother, and throw
a handful of pine-needles in his face, or shake the tree in which he
was sitting, threatening to make him fall, or frighten him by springing
suddenly out upon him and yelling:

"Ooh! Ooh!..."

Sometimes she would be seized by a desire to tease him. She would make him
come down from his tree by pretending that her mother was calling him.
Then, when he had climbed down, she would take his place and refuse to
budge. Then Olivier would whine and threaten to tell. But there was no
danger of Antoinette staying in the tree for long: she could not keep still
for two minutes. When she had done with taunting Olivier from the top of
his tree, when she had thoroughly infuriated him and brought him almost to
tears, then she would slip down, fling her arms round him, shake him, and
laugh, and call him a "little muff," and roll him on the ground, and rub
his face with handfuls of grass. He would try to struggle: but he was
not strong enough. Then he would lie still, flat on his black, like a
cockchafer, with his thin arms pinned to the ground by Antoinette's strong
little hands: and he would look piteous and resigned. Antoinette could
not resist that: she would look at her vanquished prisoner, and burst out
laughing and kiss him suddenly, and let him go--not without the parting
attention of a little gag of fresh grass in his mouth: and that he detested
most of all, because it made him sick. And he would spit and wipe his
mouth, and storm at her, while she ran away as hard as she could, pealing
with laughter. She was always laughing. Even when she was asleep she
laughed. Olivier, lying awake in the next room, would suddenly start up in
the middle of the stories he was telling himself, at the sound of the wild
laughter and the muttered words which she would speak in the silence of the
night. Outside, the trees would creak with the wind, an owl would hoot, in
the distant villages and the farms in the heart of the woods dogs would
bark. In the dim phosphorescence of the night Olivier would see the dark,
heavy branches of the pines moving like ghosts outside his window: and
Antoinette's laughter would comfort him.

* * * * *

The two children were very religious, especially Olivier. Their father used
to scandalize them with his anti-clerical professions of faith, but he did
not interfere with them: and, at heart, like so many men of his class who
are unbelievers, he was not sorry that his family should believe for him:
for it is always good to have allies in the opposing camp, and one is never
sure which way Fortune will turn. He was a Deist, and he reserved the right
to summon a priest when the time came, as his father had done: even if it
did no good, it could do no harm: one insures against fire, even if one has
no reason to believe that the house will be burned down.

Olivier was morbidly inclined towards mysticism. There were times when he
doubted whether he existed. He was credulous and soft-hearted, and needed
a prop: he took a sorrowful delight in confession, in the comfort of
confiding in the invisible Friend, whose arms are always open to you, to
whom you can tell everything, who understands and forgives everything: he
tasted the sweetness of the waters of humility and love, from which the
soul issues pure, cleansed, and comforted. It was so natural to him to
believe, that he could not understand how any one could doubt: he thought
people did so from wickedness, and that God would punish them. He used to
pray secretly that his father might find grace: and he was delighted when,
one day, as they went into a little country church, he saw his father
mechanically make the sign of the cross. The stories of the Gospel were
mixed up in his mind with the marvelous tales of Ruebezahl, and Gracieuse
and Percinet, and the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. When he was a little boy he
no more doubted the truth of the one than the other. And just as he was not
sure that he did not know Shacabac of the cleft lips, and the loquacious
barber, and the little hunchback of Casgar, just as when he was out walking
he used to look about for the black woodpecker which bears in its beak the
magic root of the treasure-seeker, so Canaan and the Promised Land became
in his childish imagination certain regions in Burgundy or Berrichon. A
round hill in the country, with a little tree, like a shabby old feather,
at the summit, seemed to him to be like the mountain where Abraham had
built his pyre. A large dead bush by the edge of a field was the Burning
Bush, which the ages had put out. Even when he was older, and his critical
faculty had been awakened, he loved to feed on the popular legends which
enshrined his faith: and they gave him so much pleasure, though he no
longer accepted them implicitly, that he would amuse himself by pretending
to do so. So for a long time on Easter Saturday he would look out for the
return of the Easter bells, which went away to Rome on the Thursday before,
and would come floating through the air with little streamers. He did
finally admit that it was not true: but he did not give up looking skywards
when he heard them ringing: and once--though he knew perfectly well that it
could not be--he fancied he saw one of them disappearing over the house
with blue ribbons.

It was vitally necessary for him to steep himself in the world of legend
and faith. He avoided life. He avoided himself. Thin, pale, puny, he
suffered from being so, and could not bear its being talked about. He was
naturally pessimistic, no doubt inheriting it from his mother, and his
pessimism was fed by his morbidity. He did not know it: thought everybody
must be like himself: and the queer little boy of ten, instead of romping
in the gardens during his play-time, used to shut himself up in his room,
and, carefully picking his words, wrote his will.

He used to write a great deal. Every evening he used laboriously and
secretly to write his diary--he did not know why, for he had nothing to
say, and he said nothing worth saying. Writing was an inherited mania with
him, the age-old itch of the French provincial--the old indestructible
stock--who every day, until the day of his death, with an idiotic patience
which is almost heroic, writes down in detail what he has seen, said, done,
heard, eaten, and drunk. For his own pleasure, entirely. It is not for
other eyes. No one will ever read it: he knows that: he never reads it
again himself.

* * * * *

Music, like religion, was for Olivier a shelter from the too vivid light of
day. Both brother and sister were born musicians,--especially Olivier, who
had inherited the gift from his mother. Their taste, as it needed to be,
was excellent. There was no one capable of forming it in the province,
where no music was ever heard but that of the local band, which played
nothing but marches, or--on its good days--selections from Adolphe Adam,
and the church organist who played romanzas, and the exercises of the young
ladies of the town who strummed a few valses and polkas, the overture
to the _Caliph of Bagdad_, _la Chasse du Jeune Henri_, and two or three
sonatas of Mozart, always the same, and always with the same mistakes, on
instruments that were sadly out of tune. These things were invariably
included in the evening's program at parties. After dinner, those who had
talent were asked to display it: at first they would blush and refuse, but
then they would yield to the entreaties of the assembled company: and they
would play their stock pieces without their music. Every one would then
admire the artist's memory and her beautiful touch.

The ceremony was repeated at almost every party, and the thought of it
would altogether spoil the children's dinner. When they had to play the
_Voyage en Chine_ of Bazin, or their pieces of Weber as a duet, they gave
each other confidence, and were not very much afraid. But it was torture
to them to have to play alone. Antoinette, as usual, was the braver of the
two. Although it bored her dreadfully,--as she knew that there was no way
out of it, she would go through with it, sit at the piano with a determined
air, and gallop through her _rondo_ at breakneck speed, stumbling over
certain passages, make a hash of others, break off, turn her head, and say,
with a smile:

"Oh! I can't remember...."

Then she would start off again a few bars farther on, and go on to the end.
And she would make no attempt to conceal her pleasure at having finished:
and when she returned to her chair, amid the general chorus of praise, she
would laugh and say:

"I made such a lot of mistakes."

But Olivier was not so easy to handle. He could not bear making a show of
himself in public, and being "the observed of all observers." It was bad
enough for him to have to speak in company. But to have to play, especially
for people who did not like music--(that was obvious to him)--for people
whom music actually bored, people who only asked him to play as a matter of
habit, seemed to him to be neither more nor less than tyranny, and he tried
vainly to revolt against it. He would refuse obstinately. Sometimes he
would escape and go and hide in a dark room, in a passage, or even in the
barn, in spite of his horror of spiders. His refusal would make the guests
only insist the more, and they would quiz him: and his parents would
sternly order him to play, and even slap him when he was too impudently
rebellious. And in the end he always had to play,--of course unwillingly
and sulkily. And then he would suffer agonies all night because he had
played so badly, partly from vanity, and partly from his very genuine love
for music.

The taste of the little town had not always been so banal. There had been a
time when there were quite good chamber concerts at several houses. Madame
Jeannin used often to speak of her grandfather, who adored the violoncello,
and used to sing airs of Gluck, and Dalayrac, and Berton. There was a large
volume of them in the house, and a pile of Italian songs. For the old
gentleman was like M. Andrieux, of whom Berlioz said: "He _loved_ Gluck."
And he added bitterly: "He also _loved_ Piccinni."--Perhaps of the two
he preferred Piccinni. At all events, the Italian songs were in a large
majority in her grandfather's collection. They had been Olivier's first
musical nourishment. Not a very substantial diet, rather like those
sweetmeats with which provincial children are stuffed: they corrupt the
palate, destroy the tissues of the stomach, and there is always a danger of
their killing the appetite for more solid nutriment. But Olivier could not
be accused of greediness. He was never offered any more solid food. Having
no bread, he was forced to eat cake. And so, by force of circumstance, it
came about that Cimarosa, Paesiello, and Rossini fed the mystic, melancholy
little boy, who was more than a little intoxicated by his draughts of the
_Asti spumante_ poured out for him, instead of milk, by these bacchanalian
Satyrs, and the two lively, ingenuously, lasciviously smiling Bacchante of
Naples and Catania--Pergolesi and Bellini.

He played a great deal to himself, for his own pleasure. He was saturated
with music. He did not try to understand what he was playing, but gave
himself up to it. Nobody ever thought of teaching him harmony, and it never
occurred to him to learn it. Science and the scientific mind were foreign
to the nature of his family, especially on his mother's side. All the
lawyers, wits, and humanists of the De Villiers were baffled by any sort
of problem. It was told of a member of the family--a distant cousin--as a
remarkable thing that he had found a post in the _Bureau des Longitudes_.
And it was further told how he had gone mad. The old provincial
middle-classes, robust and positive in temper, but dull and sleepy as a
result of their gigantic meals and the monotony of their lives, are very
proud of their common sense: they have so much faith in it that they boast
that there is no difficulty which cannot be resolved by it: and they are
never very far from considering men of science as artists of a sort, more
useful than the others, but less exalted, because at least artists serve
no useful purpose, and there is a sort of distinction about their lounging
existence.--(Besides, every business man flatters himself that he might
have been an artist if he had cared about it.)--While scientists are not
far from being manual laborers,--(which is degrading),--just master-workmen
with more education, though they are a little cracked: they are mighty fine
on paper: but outside their arithmetic factories they're nobody. They would
not be much use without the guidance of common-sense people who have some
experience of life and business.

Unfortunately, it is not proven that their experience of life and business
goes so far as these people like to think. It is only a routine, ringing
the changes on a few easy cases. If any unforeseen position arises,
in which they have to decide quickly and vigorously, they are always
disgruntled.

Antoine Jeannin was that sort of man. Everything was so nicely adjusted,
and his business jogged along so comfortably in its place in the life of
the province, that he had never encountered any serious difficulty. He had
succeeded to his father's position without having any special aptitude for
the business: and, as everything had gone well, he attributed it to his
own brilliant talents. He loved to say that it was enough to be honest,
methodical, and to have common sense: and he intended handing down his
business to his son, without any more regard for the boy's tastes than
his father had had for his own. He did not do anything to prepare him for
it. He let his children grow up as they liked, so long as they were good,
and, above all, happy: for he adored them. And so the two children were
as little prepared for the struggle of life as possible: they were like
hothouse flowers. But, surely, they would always live like that? In the
soft provincial atmosphere, in the bosom of their wealthy, influential
family, with a kindly, gay, jovial father, surrounded by friends, one of
the leading men of the district, life was so easy, so bright and smiling.

* * * * *

Antoinette was sixteen. Olivier was about to be confirmed. His mind was
filled with all kinds of mystic dreams. In her heart Antoinette heard
the sweet song of new-born hope soaring, like the lark in April, in the
springtime of her life. It was a joy to her to feel the flowering of her
body and soul, to know that she was pretty, and to be told so. Her father's
immoderate praises were enough to turn her head.

He was in ecstasies over her: he delighted in her little coquetries, to see
her eying herself in her mirror, to watch her little innocent tricks. He
would take her on his knees, and tease her about her childish love-affairs,
and the conquests she had made, and the suitors that he pretended had come
to him a-wooing: he would tell her their names: respectable citizens, each
more old and ugly than the last. And she would cry out in horror, and break
into rippling laughter, and put her arms about her father's neck, and press
her cheek close to his. And he would ask which was the happy man of her
choice: was it the District Attorney, who, the Jeannins' old maid used to
say, was as ugly as the seven deadly sins? Or was it the fat notary? And
she would slap him playfully to make him cease, or hold her hand over his
mouth. He would kiss her little hands, and jump her up and down on his
knees, and sing the old song

"What would you, pretty maid?
An ugly husband, eh?"

And she would giggle and tie his whiskers under his chin, and reply with
the refrain:

"A handsome husband I,
No ugly man, madame."

She would declare her intention of choosing for herself. She knew that she
was, or would be, very rich,--(her father used to tell her so at every
turn)--she was a "fine catch." The sons of the distinguished families of
the country were already courting her, setting a wide white net of flattery
and cunning snares to catch the little silver fish. But it looked as though
the fish would elude them all: for Antoinette saw all their tricks, and
laughed at them: she was quite ready to be caught, but not against her
will. She had already made up her mind to marry.

The noble family of the district--(there is generally one noble family to
every district, claiming descent from the ancient lords of the province,
though generally its origin goes no farther back than some purchaser of
the national estates, some commissary of the eighteenth century, or some
Napoleonic army-contractor)--the Bonnivets, who lived some few miles
away from the town, in a castle with tall towers with gleaming slates,
surrounded by vast woods, in which were innumerable fish-ponds, themselves
proposed for the hand of Mademoiselle Jeannin. Young Bonnivet was very
assiduous in his courtship of Antoinette. He was a handsome boy, rather
stout and heavy for his age, who did nothing but hunt and eat, and drink
and sleep: he could ride, dance, had charming manners, and was not more
stupid than other young men. He would ride into the town, or drive in his
buggy and call on the banker, on some business pretext: and sometimes he
would bring some game or a bouquet of flowers for the ladies. He would
seize the opportunity to pay court to Antoinette. They would walk in the
garden together. He would pay her lumbering compliments, and pull his
mustache, and make jokes, and make his spurs clatter on the tiles of the
terrace. Antoinette thought him charming. Her pride and her affections were
both tickled. She would swim in those first sweet hours of young love.
Olivier detested the young squire, because he was strong, heavy, brutal,
had a loud laugh, and hands that gripped like a vise, and a disdainful
trick of always calling him: "Boy ..." and pinching his cheeks. He detested
him above all,--without knowing it,--because he dared to love his sister:
... his sister, his very own, his, and she could not belong to any one
else!...

* * * * *

Disaster came. Sooner or later there must come a crisis in the lives of the
old middle-class families which for centuries have vegetated in the same
little corner of the earth, and have sucked it dry. They sleep in peace,
and think themselves as eternal as the earth that bears them. But the soil
beneath them is dry and dead, their roots are sapped: just the blow of
an ax, and down they come. Then they talk of accidents and unforeseen
misfortunes. There would have been no accident if there had been more
strength in the tree: or, at least, would have been no more than a sudden
storm, wrenching away a few branches, but never shaking the tree.

Antoine Jeannin was weak, trustful, and a little vain. He loved to throw
dust in people's eyes, and easily confounded "seeming" and "being." He
spent recklessly, though his extravagance, moderated by fits of remorse as
the result of the age-old habit of economy--(he would fling away pounds,
and haggle over a farthing)--never seriously impaired his capital. He was
not very cautious in business either. He never refused to lend money to his
friends: and it was not difficult to be a friend of his. He did not always
trouble to ask for a receipt: he kept a rough account of what was owing to
him, and never asked for payment before it was offered him. He believed
in the good faith of other men, and supposed that they would believe in
his own. He was much more timid than his jocular, easy-going manners led
people to suppose. He would never have dared to refuse certain importunate
borrowers, or to let his doubts of their solvency appear. That arose from a
mixture of kindness and pusillanimity. He did not wish to offend anybody,
and he was afraid of being insulted. So he was always giving way. And, by
way of carrying it off, he would lend with alacrity, as though his debtors
were doing him a service by borrowing his money. And he was not far from
believing it; his vanity and optimism had no difficulty in persuading him
that every business he touched was good business.

Such ways of dealing were not calculated to alienate the sympathies of his
debtors: he was adored by the peasants, who knew that they could always
count on his good nature, and never hesitated to resort to him. But the
gratitude of men--even of honest men--is a fruit that must be gathered in
good season. If it is left too long upon the tree, it quickly rots. After
a few months M. Jeannin's debtors would begin to think that his assistance
was their right: and they were even inclined to think that, as M. Jeannin
had been so glad to help them, it must have been to his interest to do so.
The best of them considered themselves discharged--if not of the debt, at
least of the obligation of gratitude--by the present of a hare they had
killed, or a basket of eggs from their fowlyard, which they would come and
offer to the banker on the day of the great fair of the year.

As hitherto only small sums had been lent, and M. Jeannin had only had to
do with fairly honest people, there were no very awkward consequences: the
loss of money--of which the banker never breathed a word to a soul--was
very small. But it was a very different matter when M. Jeannin knocked up
against a certain company promoter who was launching a great industrial
concern, and had got wind of the banker's easy-going ways and financial
resources. This gentleman, who wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor,
and pretended to be intimate with two or three Ministers, an Archbishop,
an assortment of senators, and various celebrities of the literary and
financial world, and to be in touch with an omnipotent newspaper, had a
very imposing manner, and most adroitly assumed the authoritative and
familiar tone most calculated to impress his man. By way of introduction
and recommendation, with a clumsiness which would have aroused the
suspicions of a quicker man than M. Jeannin, he produced certain ordinary
complimentary letters which he had received from the illustrious persons of
his acquaintance, asking him to dinner, or thanking him for some invitation
they had received: for it is well known that the French are never niggardly
with such epistolary small change, nor particularly chary of shaking hands
with, and accepting invitations from, an individual whom they have only
known for an hour--provided only that he amuses them and does not ask them
for money: and even as regards that, there are many who would not refuse to
lend their new friend money so long as others did the same. And it would
be a poor lookout for a clever man bent on relieving his neighbor of his
superfluous money if he could not find a sheep who could be induced to jump
the fence so that all the rest would follow.--If other sheep had not taken
the fence before him, M. Jeannin would have been the first. He was of the
woolly tribe which is made to be fleeced. He was seduced by his visitor's
exalted connections, his fluency and his trick of flattery, and also by the
first fine results of his advice. He only risked a little at first, and
won: then he risked much: finally he risked all: not only his own money,
but that of his clients as well. He did not tell them about it: he was sure
he would win: he wanted to overwhelm them with the great thing he had done
for them.

The venture collapsed. He heard of it indirectly through one of his
Parisian correspondents who happened to mention the new crash, without ever
dreaming that Jeannin was one of the victims: for the banker had not said
a word to anybody: with incredible irresponsibility, he had not taken the
trouble--even avoided--asking the advice of men who were in a position
to give him information: he had done the whole thing secretly, in the
infatuated belief in his infallible common sense, and he had been satisfied
with the vaguest knowledge of what he was doing. There are such moments
of aberration in life: moments, it would seem, when a man is marked out
for ruin, when he is fearful lest any one should come to his aid, when he
avoids all advice that might save him, hides away, and rushes headlong,
madly, shaking himself free for the fatal plunge.

M. Jeannin rushed to the station, utterly sick at heart, and took train for
Paris. He went to look for his man. He flattered himself with the hope that
the news might be false, or, at least, exaggerated. Naturally he did not
find the fellow, and received further news of the collapse, which was as
complete as possible. He returned distracted, and said nothing. No one
had any idea of it yet. He tried to gain a few weeks, a few days. In his
incurable optimism, he tried hard to believe that he would find a way to
make good, if not his own losses, at least those of his clients. He tried
various expedients, with a clumsy haste which would have removed any
chance of succeeding that he might have had. He tried to borrow, but was
everywhere refused. In his despair, he staked the little he had left on
wildly speculative ventures, and lost it all. From that moment there was
a complete change in his character. He relapsed into an alarming state of
terror: still he said nothing: but he was bitter, violent, harsh, horribly
sad. But still, when he was with strangers, he affected his old gaiety;
but no one could fail to see the change in him: it was attributed to his
health. With his family he was less guarded: and they saw at once that
he was concealing some serious trouble. They hardly knew him. Sometimes
he would burst into a room and ransack a desk, flinging all the papers
higgledy-piggledy on to the floor, and flying into a frenzy because he
could not find what he was looking for, or because some one offered to help
him. Then he would stand stock still in the middle of it all, and when they
asked him what he was looking for, he did not know himself. He seemed to
have lost all interest in his family: or he would kiss them with tears in
his eyes. He could not sleep. He could not eat.

Obituary: Donald Westlake

The disputed Holocaust memoir which was dropped from Penguin Group's publication schedule at the end of December is set to appear as a work of fiction.

Herman Rosenblat's memoir - which Oprah Winfrey called "the single greatest love story" she had heard in two decades in television - recounted how as a teenage boy in a Nazi concentration camp, he was kept alive by the food which was thrown to him by a young girl, Roma Radzicky. Penguin's US imprint Berkley Books had planned to publish the story, which sees Rosenblat reunited with Radzicky on a blind date years later, as Angel at the Fence: the True Story of a Love That Survived, next month.

But a Holocaust historian said it would have been impossible to approach the fence in the Schlieben concentration camp to throw food over it, concluding that this part of the story was made-up. Berkley initially defended the book, saying it was a work of memory, but then decided to cancel its planned publication, and demanded the return of the advance it had made to Rosenblat. A $25m film based on the book, to be called The Flower of the Fence, is still going ahead, with production due to start this year.

Publisher York House Press based in White Plains, New York, has entered into a tentative agreement with the film production company to publish a novel based on the film script early this spring. It said the book would be "grounded in fact", and would rise "to the proper levels of artistic value, ethical conduct and social responsibility".

A spokesperson for York House Press condemned the attacks which were made on the 80-year-old Rosenblat after the veracity of his story was questioned, describing them as a "savage" response to what was otherwise "a credible, heart-wrenching, and verifiable account" of his time in the concentration camp.

"No deliberate untruth is permissible, but beneath any fabrication is motivation and intent. We believe Mr. Rosenblat's motivations were very human, understandable and forgivable," the spokesperson said. "It is beyond our expertise to know how Holocaust survivors cope with their trauma. Do they deny, try to forget, rationalise or fantasise and promote fiction along with truth? Perhaps the coping mechanisms are as individual as the survivors themselves."

The president of the company producing the film, Harris Salomon from Atlantic Overseas Productions, said the book, "regardless of its shortcomings", would "challenge, educate and enlighten" readers about the horrors of the Holocaust. "The documented fact, acknowledged by his critics, is that Herman is a survivor of concentration camps," he said.

But Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst, said that neither she nor Rosenblat were involved with this version of his story. "Usually book rights from films come out after the movie is released," she told guardian.co.uk. "I think the timing on this is very insensitive."

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Obama to feature in Marvel comic

We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

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Climbing the walls

Barack Obama is teaming up with Spider-Man in a comic from Marvel, which will see the future president exchanging a fist-bump with the superhero. The story sees one of Spidey's oldest enemies, the Chameleon, trying to stop Obama being inaugurated. Spider-Man's alter ego, Peter Parker, is covering the event as a photographer, and saves the day.

"Ya hear that, Chameleon?" Spider-Man says as he thwacks the villain in the face. "The president-elect here just appointed me ... secretary of shuttin' you up."

He tells Obama: "This is your day, and I know it wouldn't look good to be seen palling around with me" - in a nod to Sarah Palin's comment that Obama had been "palling around with terrorists".

"When we heard that president-elect Obama is a collector of Spider-Man comics, we knew that these two historic figures had to meet in our comics' Marvel Universe," said the publisher's editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada.

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