Shhh

by Raymond Federman

  These interruptions, commentaries, arguments, critiques, etc. are presented on separate pages in italics.

  It is difficult to tell now where all this will lead me, but I’m progressing, in spite of my deficient memory, in this reconstruction of a childhood, and in spite of the interruptions. I would like to be able to get to 250 pages. After that, we’ll see.

  With best wishes,

  Raymond

  OK, I’ll leave this here, and we’ll see. Now perhaps I should tell about my mother’s family.

  I don’t know much about my mother’s origin. And even less about my father’s.

  About my father I know that he was born in March 1904, in Siedlec, a little town in Poland near the Russian border. That’s what is indicated on the Acte de Disparition I obtained after the war from Le Ministère des Anciens Combattants et Victimes de Guerre when I searched the archives to find out what had happened to my parents. On that document his first name is given as Szama, his Polish name. But in France everybody called him Simon. The Act of Disappearance does not indicate the day of his birth. Only the month. I know that my father had three brothers and five sisters. Most of them died in concentration camps. I never knew my grand-parents who lived and died in Poland. Those are the only facts I know about my father and his family.

  As for my mother, this is what I learned from L’Extrait des Minutes des Actes de Naissance du 5ème Arrondissement de Paris, année 1902. I want to quote exactly what is written by hand on this old yellowed, half-torn document that I found in the box of papers and photos abandoned in the bedroom closet of our apartment in Montrouge.

  Le dix septembre mil neuf cent deux, à une heure du soir, est née, dans le domicile de ses parents, rue Saint-Séverin 8, Marguerite, du sexe féminin, fille de Salomon Epstein, âgé de vint-sept ans, cordonnier, et de Rose Varseldorf, son épouse, âgée de trenteet-un ans, ménagère. Mariée à Paris, 4ème arrondissement, le ving-huit janvier mil neuf cent ving-six, avec Szama Federman.

  Pour extrait conforme

  Paris, le cinq décembre mil neuf cent quarante-et-un

  Here is a literal translation of that birth certificate.

  On the 10th of September 1902, at 1:00 in the evening, was born, in the home of her parents, 8 rue Saint-Severin, Marguerite, of the feminine sex, daughter of Salomon Eptstein, 27 years old, shoemaker, and of Rose Warseldorf, his wife, 32 years old, a homemaker. Married in Paris, 4th Arrondissement, on the 28th of January 1926, with Szama Federman.

  Conform extract

  Paris, December 5th 1941

  It’s all there. That’s how one reduces the essential facts of a person’s life to a paragraph.

  One almost feels like laughing or crying reading such a document. What style!

  But from this birth certificate I did learn a number of things I didn’t know before—the address where my grandparents lived, that my mother was of the feminine sex, that my grandfather was a shoemaker four years younger than my grandmother, and that my mother and father were married on the 28th of January, 1926.

  I have no idea why my mother needed this birth certificate in 1941. Probably to prove that she was a French citizen. That was the time when Jews had to declare their identity, and wear the yellow star.

  My mother had five sisters and two brothers. Here is the list in chronological order of the Epstein children.

  Fanny

  Jean

  Marie

  Léa

  Marguerite

  Maurice

  Rachel

  Sarah

  Except for Marguerite, my mother, all her sisters and brothers died in their own beds of old age. My mother was thirty-nine when she was ...

  Federman, these details about the origin of your parents are interesting, but a bit sad. Do you think they are necessary?

  It’s especially my mother’s birth certificate that I wanted to include here. The style and the tone of these documents are so laughable. It adds a touch of humor to the sadness.

  I always imagined that my maternal grandparents were Polish. But one day, after the war, talking with my aunt Fanny, I asked her where my grandparents lived in Poland, and she said to me, Oh, no, my mother and father were not Polish. They were Palestinians.

  Palestinians!

  Yes, we are Palestinian Jews, she explained. There were many Jews in Palestine during the 19th century. Your uncle Jean and I were born there. But you won’t believe this, my aunt said, at a moment when things were not going well in Palestine, the whole family moved to Poland. Don’t ask me why. It was such a crazy idea. Marie and Lea were born in Poland. But life in Poland was worse than in Palestine because of the pogroms. So around 1900, your grandparents emigrated to France with four children. Your mother, Margot, was the first to be born in France, and then three more children after that, Maurice, Rachel, and Sarah.

  Everybody called my mother Margot. So being French born, she was a French citizen. That’s what the birth certificate indicates.

  I suppose that means that I am of Palestinian origin, at least on my mother’s side. That’s why I’ve always been fascinated by the desert. I have a passion for the desert. I feel that I am a nomad. When I was a child, I dreamt of wandering in the Sahara with the Foreign Legion.

  I should perhaps say more about my mother’s brothers and sisters. After all, they were all present during my childhood. I would see my aunts and uncles and cousins when the whole family gathered on Sunday at my grand-mother’s apartment. So without elaborating too much, this is what I can recall about them.

  My aunt Fanny was married to Nathan Gotinsky. They didn’t have children. They sold kitchen utensils at the marché. They had a little truck. They were well to do, but they lived in a very small apartment in the 14ème arrondissement, not far from where my grand-mother lived. I liked my aunt Fanny. She was nice to me and my sisters. When we went to visit her, she would slip a little money to my mother without Nathan noticing. Nathan was totally bald, with yellowish skin, and a lot of freckles on his face. He only spoke Yiddish to me even though I didn’t understand what he was saying. He always insisted on playing cards with me. Belote. I usually won. He was not very smart. Fanny was the boss in that family. After the war, Nathan finished his life in Charenton, the famous insane asylum of Paris.

  Ida was the wife of my uncle Jean. They lived in the suburbs. I don’t remember which one. We didn’t see them often. Jean worked in a factory, so he was not rich. Ida and Jean had a daughter, Renée, whom I never really knew well. When my aunt Ida died rather young, Jean remarried a woman who was not Jewish. After that he rarely visited my grandmother and the rest of the family, and when he did, he always came alone. My grandmother and the rest of the family were angry with him for having married a shikse. I believe that when the Jews started to be deported, Jean and his daughter spent the rest of the war hidden at his wife’s parents farm. I cannot remember her name, but I liked her. She had a good farm woman face. She was always smiling, and when we visited her, she would bake special cakes for us. After the war I lost contact with my uncle Jean and his wife. And also with my cousin Renée.

  The next in age was my aunt Marie. She had married Leon Marcowski the tailor. They had one son, my cousin Salomon. I knew them best since we all lived in the same apartment building. They were the wealthiest of the aunts and uncles, and aunt Marie thought of herself as the matriarch of the family. She was the one who organized the Sunday lunches at my grandmother’s, and decided who should come on such and such Sunday. Not all the aunts and uncles came at the same time because grandmother’s apartment was very small. And besides they didn’t get along with each other. My mother and her three children were invited every Sunday. That’s because we were poor, so this way we would eat well that day. My father never went with us.

  I don’t remember Lea’s husband, but their family name was Abramowitz. We rarely saw them. They lived in Montreuil in a fancy apartment. They were very embourgeoisés. They owned a large shoe store. During my entire childhood we visited them o
nly three or four times. They had one daughter, Agnes. A little snob who thought of herself a grosse merde because her parents were rich. And she acted like she was beautiful. When she was still very young, she would wear red lipstick, and red nail polish. Personally, I didn’t find her very attractive. When she and her parents came to the Sunday lunch at my grandmother’s, she was always trying to attract attention to herself. My sisters and I never played with her. She was older than us. Her parents would get into arguments with the other aunts and uncles. Usually about money. I saw my aunt Lea and my cousin Agnes only once after the war.

  Maurice’s wife was called Jeannette, but everybody called her Nenette. She was blonde. Everybody in the family loved her. I say the wife of Maurice, but in fact, they were never married, though they lived together. Nenette was Catholic. The reason she was accepted in the family was because, unlike Jean and his Catholic wife, Maurice and Nenette never married. So in the mind of my grandmother, that did not affect her Jewish religious belief. She thought that Maurice and Nenette had not married out of respect for her. But not so Jean. When I was a boy I never understood why Nenette could come to the family gatherings and not Jean’s wife.

  Maurice and Nenette didn’t have children. They also owned a truck and sold toys at the marché. On Sundays when they came for lunch they would always give little toys to the grandchildren, either a yo-yo, or a jump rope, or a spinning top, or a game. The toys would occupy us while the grown-ups sat around the table drinking hot tea in glasses with pieces of lemon floating on top. Unfortunately for me, my uncle Maurice did not sell tin soldiers.

  I never knew my aunt Rachel during my childhood. As I’ve told in Aunt Rachel’s Fur, she escaped at the age of fourteen from the orphanage where she was with my mother. For many years she lived in the French colonies, in Asia and Africa. So I cannot say anything about her in relation to my childhood, except that she sent money regularly to my grandmother. All the aunts were saying that she was a dancer. But Leon kept saying that she was a prostitute.

  I met her for the first time after the war when she came to France for a few weeks to see if her brothers and sisters had escaped deportation. At that time she was living in Senegal where she owned two hotels in Dakar. When I first saw her, I was struck by her resemblance to my mother, only much prettier. During her stay in Paris, she was very nice to me and generous. She would buy me things. My first wristwatch. She also had a suit made for me, not by Leon, but by one of the tailors on the grands boulevards. Everyone in the family wondered how rich she was because she spent money so freely. She wore a lot of makeup on her face, and even false eyelashes. She had expensive clothes, including an elegant fur coat. I became very fond of her, and she of me. I was only sixteen then. She would take me dancing in night-clubs. She wanted me to come with her to Senegal. She would say to me, You’ll have a good life there in my hotels, I’ll take care of you. I was sixteen then and so romantic. I had just returned to Paris from three miserable years on the farm. I was confused. I didn’t know what to do. I think she thought of herself as a replacement for my mother. Though I was tempted to go with her to Senegal, and live a wild adventure, instead I went to America, to live a different adventure. So far as I know, she was never married and never had children. When Senegal became an independent country, she sold her hotels and she moved to Paris, where she died at the age of seventy-seven. She left all her money to the orphanage where she and my mother and her brother Maurice were raised. I thought it was a beautiful gesture. Her sisters and brothers were furious with her for having done that.

  I don’t remember my aunt Sarah’s husband. I was still very young when he abandoned her and their daughter Solange, who was less than a year old then. Solange was the youngest of all the grandchildren. After she was deserted, Aunt Sarah lived alone her entire life, whining all the time and depending on her brothers and sisters for support. My cousin Solange was very cute. I liked her, but she was too young to play games with us when we saw her. Solange now lives in Ivory Coast. She married an African whom she met when he was studying in France. I admire her a great deal for having had the courage to escape from a mother who was stifling her with attention rather than affection. She did well in Ivory Coast. Her daughter Animata is a doctor in Abidjean, and her son Alain a pilot for Air Africa. When it was known that Solange had married a black man, her mother and the rest of the family rejected her completely, and even refused to see her children. A few years ago I went to visit my cousin Solange and her husband Johnny in Ivory Coast. I found a woman of great beauty and courage of whom I am very proud.

  Well, that’s it for the family on my mother’s side. Except for my mother who had three children, it was a rather sterile family. Only four cousins, from seven brothers and sisters.

  On my father’s side three of his sisters and one brother lived in Paris. I’ve written quite a bit about them in my other books. Especially in To Whom it May Concern. So no need to tell more. The rest of my father’s family who stayed in Poland all died in the concentration camps. They

  Federman, tell the truth. The reason you’re constantly referring to your other books is to have your readers buy these. A clever way of self-advertisement.

  No, that’s not the reason. It’s to avoid repeating what I’ve already told elsewhere. Otherwise, I’ll be accused of self-plagiarism.

  But enough about the family. Now I want to tell something about my sisters.

  I’ve never succeeded in writing much about my sisters, except for their names which I often repeat.

  I have only one photo of me with my sisters. The photo I found in the small box in the bedroom closet. It’s from this photo that I can say something about them. I have no other real memories of our playing together, or arguing as children always do.

  I don’t usually like to look at old photographs. They are supposed to show a real moment, but in fact they falsify that moment. Photos are fabricated objects. The photo I have of the three of us looks like it was taken by a professional photographer who had no idea who we were. But I like looking at it.

  It is difficult to say how old we were at that time. I’ll guess Sarah was about nine, Jacqueline five. There were four years’ difference between them. Me, I was exactly in the middle. Two years younger than Sarah, and two years older than Jacqueline. In the photo I am also between my two sisters. That’s how I remember them, always one to each side of me, as if they wanted to protect me. Though they have been absent for more than sixty years, even today I feel their presence. And yet, I have never been able to write anything of substance about them. I only remember a few words that passed between us.

  I was half asleep that July morning when I saw my sisters for the last time. From behind the door of the closet, I heard them go down the stairs. In my head I have a blurry image of them. But in the photo I see them clearly.

  It’s a black-and-white photo. A bit yellowed now. My sisters are both wearing dresses. Sarah’s hair is short. Jacqueline’s is long and curly. Jacqueline is smiling. Sarah has a more severe smile. Me, I am wearing a jacket and a beret. I am smiling more than my sisters. There is nothing behind us. We must have been posing in front of a wall or a curtain when this photo was taken, probably in the photographer’s studio for a special occasion. I don’t remember. But that must have been why we were wearing our nice clothes. I wonder how my mother paid for this occasion.

  It is difficult to make out the color of my sister’s hair and eyes. I believe Sarah’s hair was black, Jacqueline’s brownish. Sarah resembled my mother. Jacqueline looked more like my father. So Sarah must have had dark eyes too like those of Maman, and Jacqueline grey eyes like Papa’s. Mine are dark like Maman’s.

  Every time I look at this picture, a scene from our childhood comes to me. Especially when I look at Jacqueline. A distant moment engraved in my mind. It was the day when Jacqueline and I were playing doctor. I often replay that scene.

  It was the end of summer 1939. September 3rd to be exact. The day France declared war on Germany. That d
ay my sisters and I were on vacation on a farm, sent there by the city of Montrouge. Every summer, schools would select children of poor families to be sent on vacation for two weeks. Not to the Côte D’azur, but to some remote corner of the countryside so that the poor children would not bother the rich children who were sunbathing and swimming in the Mediterranean.

  Toward the end of that summer, a group of children were sent, to a little village of the Poitou. The children were lodged on different farms for the two weeks of vacation. There was always lots of food on farms. And we were able to help with simple chores. Like feeding the animals.

  I’ll skip the description of the farm. It was just a typical French farm of the period. An old dilapidated farm house, a dark and dusty barn, lots of domestic animals, cows, horses, pigs, chickens, rabbits, and lots of manure. Two old tires were hanging from a tree for the children to swing on. Behind the farm house there was a meadow next to a little stream where the children could go wading.

  As for the weather, on that memorable day, let’s say hot and humid. The scene I remember vividly takes place in the barn. Old rusty farm tools everywhere. In a corner of the barn there is a huge pile of hay. The big double door is open. There are a few cows on one side of the barn tied with chains behind mangers. One can hear the noise of the chains clanking around their necks, and the sound of their mastication as they ruminate. One also hears the noise of the cow-dungs falling on the straw. In another corner of the barn two horses are sniffling and farting. There is dust in suspension in the sun rays that filter through the planks of the walls. But in spite of the heat and humidity, a nice day, and ...

  Federman, you said you would skip the description of the farm, and here you are doing ultra-realism.