Shhh

by Raymond Federman

  I didn’t answer. I thought he was going to pull his pants up, instead he approached me, still holding his thing in his hand and said, Here suck it for me.

  I moved away from him ready to run. I was terrified and embarrassed, but Salomon grabbed the back of my head and pulled me down toward his erection. I resisted even though he was much stronger than me. I struggled, kept pulling back. I even managed to tell him in a kind of sob that if he didn’t let me go, I would tell his Father. But he continued to push my head down, and the tip of my nose touched his cock. It gave me a strange sensation. This time I really struggled and managed to escape his grip and I rushed out of the door. Salomon didn’t follow me, he just shouted, if you tell my father, you’ll pay for it. Keep your mouth shut petit con.

  I didn’t say anything to anyone, but after that I never asked my cousin to help me with my homework. Somehow I managed alone. I was so angry and so scared of him, I avoided him, even in school.

  For weeks after that, I kept rubbing my nose with my hand. It was like a tic. I was doing it all the time. My mother would say, Stop doing that. What’s wrong with your nose? Does it itch? If you continue like that your nose will be crooked, and all red.

  It’s true that my nose is big, crooked, and always red. Ah, did my nose make me suffer.

  Speaking of my nose, one day in school, when we were studying human anatomy, the teacher, the ugly one, was explaining the different colors of the pigmentation of the skin. She was saying that even among white people there are nuances in the color of the pigment of their skin. For example, she said, pointing to me, Raymond a le pigment rouge. And all the boys in the class started laughing and shouting, Raymond a le piment rouge ... Raymond a le piment rouge!

  The word piment in French slang means the nose.

  The teacher finally managed to stop the laughter. But after that, often in the playground the boys would chant, Raymond a le pigment rouge ... Raymond a le pigment rouge!

  It would make me so angry. But there was nothing I could do about my red nose. And besides, both winter and summer, it was always running. So in school besides being called fils-de-tubard, I was also called petit morveux.

  I had snot coming out of my nose all the time. And when I didn’t have a handkerchief, I would wipe my nose with my sleeve. My left sleeve.

  I don’t remember if I mentioned that I was born left-handed, and became right-handed after I broke my left arm when I fell off a tree. It happened during les colonies de vacances dans le Poitou. I fell from a cherry tree. I must have been seven or eight years old.

  I wrote quite a bit about my nose in My Body in Nine Parts, and also told why I became right-handed. So no need to go into that again. But I do want to add a few things about my hair and how ...

  Federman, damn right you’ve said enough about your nose. Your big crooked nose is everywhere in your writing. And the same about your broken arm, and how you became ambidextrous, and also about your scars, and all the rest.

  But that’s what marked my childhood. These are the marks that you never forget while all the rest vanishes into the inexpressible. Ah, my nose. As I once put it, a Jewish nose is a little tragedy. In my case, it was more a tragicomedy.

  Alright, I’ll stop talking about my nose, but I’d like to return a moment to my hair.

  In school I often caught lice. When my mother saw me scratching my head, she would say, Come here so I can comb those out of your hair.

  She would use a special lice-comb with tight little teeth, and she would comb my hair hard. I would cry that it hurt, and when she pulled the comb of my hair it was full of lice. I remember well now how she would crush them on the comb with her fingernail. She did the same thing with my sisters when they too caught lice in school, but I seemed to always have more lice than them even though they had more hair.

  Besides lice there were other little vermin in our house. Bed bugs. Huge cockroaches in the kitchen. And even mice. But no rats. The rats stayed in the cellar.

  In the morning if I had been bitten by bed bugs, and I was scratching myself, my mother would rub my body with alcohol.

  My father when he saw cockroaches in the kitchen would crush them with his shoes, and then he would tell me to pick up the yellowish goo that came out of the cockroaches and I would throw it into the garbage. That bouillie that came out of the crushed cockroaches looked like sperm. It was disgusting.

  To catch the mice, my father would set a spring trap with a little piece of bread or cheese in it. He placed it next to the wall where the mice were hiding, and in the morning if there was a dead mouse in the trap, he would tell me to take it out. But I would start crying because I was so scared to touch the mouse. So my father would take it out of the trap holding it by the tail and swing it before my face. My sisters would mock me and would called me petit trouillard, and me ...

  Federman, do you really need to tell us all that. The snot that came out of your nose, the lice, the bed-bugs, the cockroaches, the mice. Do you think your readers will like that?

  I’m not going to censor my childhood just to please the readers. What I am telling here is historical. That’s how we lived in those days. In the 1930’s. I say it as it was.

  Besides, these little beasts were not only in our house. It was like that in all the houses in Montrouge, and I am sure also in all the houses in France. Especially those of poor people. That’s why what I just told is historical.

  If it offends the readers, let them read something else. The charming novels of La Comtesse de Ségur.

  The only little animals I liked were the birds that landed on the window ledges. They were sparrows, I think. I would leave bread crumbs on the ledge and watch from behind the curtain not to scare them. I wanted so much to be able to fly like them. Maybe that’s why years later in America, I volunteered for the paratroopers during the Korean war. Just to be in the sky. But that’s another story.

  I would have liked to have been a bird. Except that in the winter, when it was very cold outside and it snowed, I could imagine how the poor birds were suffering. They were lined up next to each other on electric wires or on the leafless branches of trees. I would ...

  Federman, this time you did it. Here you are, sinking into sentimentality. You were warned.

  I love birds. Why can’t I allow myself a bit of sentimentality about birds? When I lived In New York, I had a friend who was a bird. A pigeon. I called him Charlot. He had only one leg. I told about him in Smiles on Washington Square.

  Yes, we know. So forget the birds and tell us something else.

  Alright then, I’ll tell how I once stole a ring in a department store.

  I admit it. I confess. I was a bit of a thief when I was a boy. Not a big thief, but I would steal candies in the candy store, pencils and erasers in the stationary store, cigarettes from my father’s pack, and once money from my uncle Leon. I think I’ve already told that I had seen him hide money under the mattress of his bed.

  Once in a while, when my aunt Marie knew that my mother didn’t have enough money to buy food to feed her children, she would have my sisters and I come and eat with them. One day, we were all sitting at the dining room table, my uncle Leon, my cousin Salomon, and my sisters, when aunt Marie told me to go get more bread from the kitchen. To get to the kitchen I had to go through their bedroom. So quickly, before going into the kitchen, I reached under the mattress and pulled out a bill, and without looking at it I shoved it in my pocket. Later, in the bathroom I took it out to see how much it was. It was a twenty franc bill. With that money I bought myself some stamps for my collection and a fountain pen. Still to this day, I love having fountain pens.

  When my father saw this new pen, he asked where I got it, and I told him that Salomon gave it to me because he had many of them. My father didn’t say anything. But I was afraid that he would guess that I had lied. I think I turned all red when I answered him.

  Yes, I was a bit of a liar as a boy. But all little boys are liars and sneaky, even if ....

  An
d now, Federman, you’re not a liar anymore? Who are you trying to kid?

  Well, let’s say that now I know how to invent better.

  My biggest crime was when I stole a ring in a department store.

  In school most of the boys my age had a ring. A ring with a skull on it. When you put ink on the skull and pressed it on a sheet of paper it would make human skulls.

  I wanted so much to have a ring like that, but I didn’t have money to buy one. The few centimes my parents gave me once in a while I spent buying stamps for my collection or tin soldiers, and sometimes candy. My mother always said that I was a gourmand when I was a boy. But I wanted to have a ring with a skull on it.

  One day when I was coming home from an errand, I stopped at the Monoprix, a store that sold all kinds of things. I just wanted to look. And I see that they were selling rings with skulls on them. I looked at them a while. I even touched one. A big one, the color of silver. The lady behind the counter had moved away to help somebody else. I looked around. Nobody was paying attention to me. Quickly I closed my hand on the ring and moved away from the counter my hand still closed. I walked around the store pretending to be looking at things. I was very nervous and scared. Then I put my hand in my pocket and dropped the ring inside. I looked around. Still, no one was paying attention to me. The store was crowded with customers and the sales ladies were busy with them. Slowly I walked toward the exit. Suddenly a man wearing a grey suit grabbed me by the arm and said, Come with me, you little thief. I saw you. And he pulled me to the back of the store. I didn’t resist, but I felt my legs trembling under me. I was on the verge of tears, but I held back.

  We were now in a little room in the back of the store. A bare room except for a table and one chair. Another man came in. He also wore a suit, a black one.

  I have never forgotten their suits. The suits were what scared me the most. I thought these men were policemen in civilian clothes.

  The man who caught me explains that he saw me stealing a ring which I put in my pocket. The man in black tells me to empty my pockets on the table in front of me. I don’t move. I’m frozen in place.

  Empty your pocket, he shouts, or I will do it for you.

  It was a summer day. I was wearing a short sleeve shirt, a pair of shorts, and sandals. I put my hand in my pockets and took out what was inside. A handkerchief, not too clean, a little pencil stub, a used eraser, two centimes, and the ring.

  Ah, ah, the man in the grey suit says, while shaking me by the arm and pointing to the ring on the table. You see, I was right, he tells the man in black, that little thief stole that ring.

  The man in black asks me why I stole that ring, and I answered, without thinking, without hesitating, that tomorrow is my mother’s birthday and I wanted to give her a present, but I don’t have any money.

  That’s exactly what I said. I swear. It came out of me just like that. I had to invent something.

  The two men remained silent, but I saw on their faces that they had a little smile. After a moment, that felt like an eternity, the man in the black suit asked me to write my name and my address on a piece of paper. I had to. So I wrote my real name and my real address. It didn’t occur to me to write a false name and a false address. I was thinking, they are going to send the police to my house and arrest me. My father is going to kill me. My mother will be so ashamed of me.

  After having examined what I had written, the man in black said, Okay, go home. We’ll decide what to do.

  So I left. While walking home, I was terribly worried about what would happen when the police would come to arrest me.

  The next day, when school was over, I didn’t dare go home. I imagined my parents waiting for me, and asking for an explanation.

  Several days passed. And each time, before going home after school, I was trembling with fear in the street. But nobody came.

  I never told this to anyone. No even to my friend Bébert, who like me also stole candy and others thing in stores, and even cigarettes from his father which we smoked together.

  Well, as you can see, I was not a great criminal, but maybe a bit of a pervert. Let me explain.

  When I was old enough to take the subway alone sometimes when there was no school and the boys who played soccer in the street didn’t let me play with them because they said I didn’t know how to play, I would take the subway to the station St. Paul in le Marais to visit my aunt Ida, my father’s youngest sister whom he adored, and whom I also liked because she was always nice to me. There I would play with my cousins Simon and Raymond, the younger one had the same name as me, and also with my little cousin Sarah who was so cute and whom I loved very much.

  My cousin Sarah is the only survivor of her family. For the past sixty years she’s been living in Israel. I told her story in To Whom it May Concern.

  I would play with Sarah and her two brothers in the garden of Place des Vosges. The same Place des Vosges where the Grand-Rafle took place. The beautiful Place des Vosges with its arcades, its garden, its fountain, its chestnut trees, and Victor Hugo’s house. I loved to read the plaque on that house that said that Victor Hugo lived there from 1832 to 1848. I had learned many of his poems by heart in school, and looking at his house made me feel close to him. As if I knew him personally. I would wonder what I would have to do later in life to have a plaque like this on my house in Montrouge.

  It was at this time, when I was old enough to take the subway alone, that I started looking at women. The boys in school often told each other stories about women while giggling.

  One day when we were playing Place des Vosges, my cousin Simon said to me, Come with me. I want to show you something.

  So we left Sarah and Raymond, and we walked to rue St. Denis. The famous rue St. Denis. It’s there that I saw prostitutes for the first time. I asked Simon what these women standing in the street or in doorways were doing there. Why they were waiting like that. And why all these messieurs were going inside the houses with them. And my cousin laughed.

  You don’t know what a putain is?

  No, I didn’t know. So my cousin explained what these women were doing.

  Even though Simon was my age, he seemed to know a lot of things I didn’t know.

  I asked him if he ever went with one of these beautiful women in very short skirts and black stockings, and who kept asking us as we walked past them, Tu montes, mon petit chéri. Come on little love, I’ll do nice things to you.

  Are you mad, my cousin answered, it costs a lot of money to go with them. And besides you could catch a disease.

  After that, whenever I went to visit aunt Ida, or my other aunts who lived in the Marais, I would get off the subway at the station Châtelet and make a detour to rue St. Denis. Now that I knew what a prostitute was, I would blush when one of the beautiful women would ask me to go with them. I never dared.

  Federman, don’t tell me you never fucked a prostitute.

  Yes, in Tokyo when I was in the army, but this has nothing to do with my childhood. So no need to go into that.

  Instead I want to tell something else. Something important. How I got from Montrouge to Monflanquin after I came out of the closet. I’ve never told that story. The end of a childhood.

  The End of a Childhood

  I have never told how I went from the closet to the farm. How I got from Montrouge to Monflanquin when I finally emerged from the hole into which my mother had hidden me, and where my childhood vanished into the dark.

  This crucial moment of my survival, this emergence from the tombwomb into the light and into life has remained so vague in the stories I’ve told for so many years.

  Perhaps it’s because I told so many different versions, all so nebulous, to the point that I myself don’t even know which is the true version, or if there is one, the real story of what happened after I came out of the closet with a smelly package of shit in my hands which I left on the roof of our house before tip-toeing down the stairs, and then frantically running into the street towards the enigma of my f
uture days of deportation to the farm

  This wandering in a no-man’s-land between Montrouge and Montflanquin lasted six days, during which I was lost in incomprehension. Oblivious to what was happening to me and around me.

  In Return to Manure I tell how the boy of that story jumped from a freight train that was racing south in La Zone Libre towards he knew not where, and how he landed into a muddy ditch, and how all bloodied and bruised he asked an old farmer working in the fields which way to Montflanquin, and the old farmer seemingly unconcerned by the boy’s condition pointed towards the west and mumbled, vingt kilomètres tout droit dans cette direction, and how dragging a wounded leg, the boy followed his shadow to the little town of Monflanquin where Leon, Marie, and Salomon had taken refuge before the round-up, and how surprised they were to see him, for they were convinced that, like his parents and sisters, he was already on his way to his final solution, and how to get rid of this unexpected burden they exchanged him for two chickens to a farm woman in need of help to do the farm work because her husband was a prisoner in Germany. No need to tell all that again.

  As I come to the end of the story of my childhood, I would like to tell what happened during these six days of wandering.

  I have an idea. I’m going to tell that story in the form of a time-table. This way it’ll go faster.

  About 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1942, the French police who were doing the dirty work of the Gestapo— les j’ai ta peau, as the poet Max Jacob called those who deported him—came to arrest us, au 4 Rue Louis Rolland à Montrouge, because we were Jewish. Undesirable.