Unlike his mother, Javier didn’t think Francois Legrand was the answer to their prayers, or his at least. He wanted much more than the comfortable, secure middle-class life Francois could provide. He didn’t want to move to Paris if she married him. He had no interest even in his own ancestral roots in Europe. Javier was an Argentine to the core. Whereas the blue blood that ran in his German mother’s veins, and even in his twin brother Joachim’s, was always evident in subtle ways, good manners, and a natural compassion and generosity toward others, Javier related better to the common man in the streets of Buenos Aires. He acted like them and had a rough edge. He was always out of step, picking fights in school, and on the streets when he grew older. There was a violent side of him, despite his mother’s efforts to quell it. Joachim tried to reason with him to no avail in their late teens. They were turning into very different men.
Joachim had a thirst for life, for new discoveries and the knowledge he acquired. He loved his studies. To him everything new he encountered was an adventure, and he was intrigued by the idea of attending the Sorbonne in Paris. He had learned French and English in school as a boy, and his mother had taught him German. He managed all four languages well. Javier had had the same education and had benefited from none of it. He was a poor student and felt most at ease among the lowest element on the streets. Joachim didn’t like the new friends his brother sought out as they got older, although they’d had the same friends as young boys. He thought his twin’s pals were “cowards and little jerks.” By their late teens, and even before that, the two brothers couldn’t have been more different. Despite that, Joachim loved Javier deeply and had an older brother’s protective instincts toward him, and felt sure he’d outgrow his rebellious nature. He frequently reassured his mother about it, and she hoped Joachim was right.
It had taken considerable convincing and reassurance, but Francois had finally overcome Liese’s reservations about remarrying. After two years of correspondence and courtship, they were married in a small ceremony in Buenos Aires with only her two sons present. After a brief honeymoon in Punta del Este, Francois went back to Paris to ready his home to receive them. Joachim had been accepted at a lycée near Francois’s home in Paris, where he would spend a year, pass his baccalauréat exam, then hopefully get into the Sorbonne, to pursue his education. He was planning to major in literature and art.
Much to Joachim’s chagrin, Javier flatly refused to join them. At seventeen, he wanted to live with a friend’s family for a year in Buenos Aires after his mother and brother left, and then go to work after that, without bothering with university. He grudgingly agreed to come to Paris in a year when he finished school, if his mother would allow him to spend the year in Buenos Aires. He didn’t want to graduate in another country, without his friends. His new, wild friends meant more to him than his education or his family. Liese didn’t like the family that Javier wanted to stay with, nor their son, and Joachim was upset at the thought of being separated from his brother for a year. He had never lived away from his twin, and even though they were very different and didn’t always agree, he still felt that Javier was a part of him, like a limb, or his heart, a vital organ he couldn’t imagine losing. He didn’t want to be away from him for a year, but Javier fought like a cat to be left behind.
Joachim was always more protective of their mother, and it didn’t seem fair to him to let her go to her new life alone, without her sons, even though Francois was a kind man and would take good care of her. Joachim got along with him particularly well, and Francois enjoyed having a son for the first time. Javier treated him as an unwelcome stranger, an interloper, but Francois warmly invited him to live with them in Paris nonetheless. He knew how important her sons were to his new wife. She had made countless sacrifices for them while they grew up.
Eventually, after struggling with the decision, Liese gave in to Javier’s constant pleas and arguments that went on day and night until she conceded. She agreed to let him stay with the family she didn’t like. She thought they were coarse, and their children badly behaved, but they weren’t evil people. And Javier solemnly promised to come to Paris in a year when he graduated. It was a major victory for him, which he celebrated with his friends for weeks, which made his mother even more uneasy. She wasn’t fully confident that his best friend’s family would supervise Javier as closely as she had, and he was hard to control. He was far more eager to fly free than Joachim was, and do what he wanted. Joachim still enjoyed family life, and never chafed over his mother’s parental control. He liked the idea of Francois as the father figure he’d never had. He’d been hungry for a father all his life. And Francois was kind to both boys.