Book of My Mother

by Albert Cohen

  “And now, my son, mark my words, because old women give good advice. In that Division of the Diplomats you have a chief, I suppose? Well, if he sometimes gets a bit cross, don’t lose your temper, try to put up with it, because if you answer him back, his bile will rush up to his brain and he’ll hate you and God only knows what viper’s tongue he has and what dagger he’ll prepare for your back! Our people have to put up with things – that’s how it is. That hat does suit you.” Seeing my smile, she added with a sigh, “How could the pretty little creatures possibly resist that smile?” Ever partial, she gave me a fond, searching look, imagined my love life, and shuddered to think that I might stop a bullet from the revolver of one of those daughters of the Gentiles who were glamorous and clever but jealous and bold and when they got carried away by passion were in the habit of killing off a mother’s son in a couple of seconds on the slightest pretext. Absolutely deadly, those daughters of Baal, who did not shrink – so she had been told – from stripping naked in front of a man who was not their husband. Stark naked and smoking a cigarette! They were tigresses! “Tell me, my son, would it not be a good idea to pay a little call on the Chief Rabbi? He knows some nice, quiet girls who are wonderful housekeepers. You’ll be under no obligation. Just have a look, and if they don’t take your fancy, you can put on your hat and walk out. But who knows, perhaps God has destined one for you? You know it’s not good for a man to live by himself. I could die in peace if I knew you had a good woman to look after you.” Faced with my silence, she sighed, strove to repel the vision of a revolver flashing out of the handbag of a half-naked tigress, and decided to trust in the Lord, the Almighty God of Jacob, who had saved the prophet Daniel from the lions’ den. Surely He would save me from the tigresses. She vowed to go to synagogue more often.

  She was old by then, short and rather stout. But her eyes were magnificent and her hands were dainty and I loved to kiss those hands. I would like to reread the letter her little hand wrote from Marseilles, but I cannot. I am afraid of those signs which still live. When I come upon her letters I put them away again with my eyes shut. And I dare not look at her photographs, for I know that in them she is thinking of me.

  “My son. I haven’t studied like you, but I can tell you that the love they write of in books is nothing but the goings-on of heathens. I say they’re playacting. They only see each other when their hair is nicely done and they’re smartly dressed like in the theater. They adore each other, they cry, they kiss each other on the mouth – it’s sickening – and a year later they get a divorce! So what happened to their love? When marriages start with love it’s a bad sign. Those great lovers in the stories you read, I wonder whether they would go on loving their poetess if she was very ill, always in bed, and if he – the man that is – had to care for her like you care for a baby – well, you see what I mean: if he had to do everything for her. Well, I believe he would stop loving her. Do you want me to tell you what true love is? It’s being used to each other and growing old together. Would you like peas or tomatoes with your meatballs?

  “My son, tell me what pleasure you find in going to the mountains. What pleasure is there in watching all those cows with their sharpened horns and great big staring eyes? What pleasure do you see in all those rocks? You might fall, so where’s the pleasure? Are you a mule to go climbing up those rocky places which make you giddy? Isn’t it better to go to Nice, where there are gardens and music and taxis and shops? Men are meant to live like men and not among rocks and snakes. Those mountains are like a bandit’s lair. Are you an Albanian? And how can you like all that snow? What pleasure is there in walking through bicarbonate of soda which wets your boots? My heart trembles like a little bird when I see the skis in your room. Those skis are the devil’s horns. Putting yataghans on your feet is madness! Don’t you know that all your skiing devils break their legs? They like it, they’re heathen and thoughtless. Let them break their legs if they like, but you are a Cohen, a descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses, our master.” At that point I reminded her that Moses had gone to the top of Mount Sinai. She was taken aback. That was obviously no mean precedent. She thought for a while, after which she explained that Mount Sinai wasn’t a very big mountain, that Moses had only been there once, and, what was more, he had gone there not for pleasure but to see God.

  IV

  SHE SPEAKS no more, she who spoke so sweetly. Her life ended piteously. She was snatched from my arms as in a dream. She died in Occupied France during the war, while I was in London. She had cherished such hopes of spending her old age with me, only to come to that end: the fear of the Germans, the yellow Star of David, my harmless lamb, shame walking the street, poverty perhaps, and her son far away. Did they manage to keep it from her that she was dying and would never see me again? She had so often written in her letters of the joy of seeing me again. Seems we must praise God and thank Him for His blessings.

  They took her up, mute, and she did not resist, she who had been so busy in her kitchen. They took her from the bed where she had so often thought of her son, where she had so often waited for letters from her son, where she had had so many nightmares in which her son was in mortal danger. They took her up, stiff, they put her in a box, and then they screwed down the lid. Locked up in a box like a thing, a thing which two horses bore away, and the people in the street went on with their shopping.

  They lowered her into a hole, and she did not protest, she who had talked so vivaciously, little hands never still. And now she is silent under the earth, locked up in the earthen jail which she may not leave, imprisoned and mute in her solitude of earth, with stifling earth oppressive and inexorable above her, and her little hands will move no more, nevermore. A Salvation Army poster informed me yesterday that God loves me.

  All alone down there, poor useless creature dumped in the earth, all alone, and they were kind enough to slap a heavy marble slab, a corpse-press, on top of her to make sure she would not run away.

  Deep down in earth, my darling, while my hand which she fashioned, my hand which she kissed, still moves. Deep down in earth, she, one alive, laid out now in eternal idleness, forever still, she who in her virginal youth danced chaste and gay mazurkas. All is ended, all is ended, no more Maman, nevermore. We are both so alone; you in your earth, I in my room. I am part dead among the living, you are part alive among the dead. Just now you may be smiling just a little because my headache is a touch better.

  V

  TO WEEP for one’s mother is to weep for one’s childhood. Man wants his childhood, wants it back again, and if he loves his mother more as he grows older, it is because his mother is his childhood. I was a child, I am a child no more, and I cannot accept it. Suddenly I recall our arrival in Marseilles. I was five. When I came off the ship, clutching the skirt of Maman, who was wearing a cherry-trimmed straw hat, I was frightened by the trams, for those vehicles moved by themselves. I sought comfort in the thought that there must be a horse hidden inside.

  We knew no one in Marseilles, where we had come from our Greek island of Corfu. We landed as in a dream, my father, my mother, and I – as in some absurd, slightly clownish dream. Why Marseilles? The leader of our expedition himself did not know why. He had heard that Marseilles was a big city. My poor father’s first exploit, a few days after we arrived, was to let himself be robbed blind by a businessman whose hair was fair and whose nose was not hooked. I can still see my parents crying in their cheap hotel room, as they sat on the edge of the bed. Maman’s tears dropped onto the cherry-trimmed hat in her lap. I was crying too, though I did not understand what had happened.

  Soon after we landed my father left me, in a state of terror and bewilderment, for I knew not a word of French, in a little school run by Catholic sisters. I stayed there from morning till evening while my parents tried to earn a living in a vast, frightening world. Sometimes they had to leave so early in the morning that they had not the heart to wake me. So when the alarm rang at seven I would find the coffeepot swathed in flannel by
my mother, who had made time, at five in the morning, to sketch a comforting little drawing as a substitute for her kiss and leave it propped up against my cup. I can see some of those drawings now: a boat carrying Albert, minute beside a gigantic bar of nougat which was all for him; an elephant called Guillaume carrying his girlfriend, an ant who answered to the sweet name of Nastrine; a little hippopotamus who wouldn’t finish his soup; a chick with a vaguely rabbinical air playing with a lion. On such days I breakfasted alone, facing the photograph of Maman which she had also placed opposite my cup to keep me company. As I ate my breakfast I thought of Paul, a handsome child who was my ideal and my best friend – so much so that one Thursday I invited him home and enthusiastically gave him all our silver cutlery, which he calmly accepted. Or else I told myself adventure stories in which I saved France, galloping at the head of a regiment. I can still see myself cutting the bread, taking care to poke out my tongue because I thought that essential for smooth slicing. I recall how, when I left the flat, I would close the door with a lasso. I was five or six and very small. The doorknob was placed very high, so I would fish a bit of string out of my pocket, shut one eye, and take aim. When I had caught the china knob I would pull it toward me. Following my parents’ advice, I would then bang on the door several times to make sure it was really closed. I have kept the habit.

  At the Catholic sisters’ school there were no fees. There were two menus at lunchtime: a five-centime menu for the poor, which was rice, and a fifteen-centime menu for the rich, which was rice and a minute sausage. I gazed from afar at the menu for the rich, which I could devour only with my eyes. When I had fifteen centimes it was Paul, that ruthless charmer, who enjoyed the meal for the rich.

  I remember that the Mother Superior – who kept us in order with large castanets called clappers, which beat time for our straggling processions along corridors reeking of disinfectant – sometimes sighed with regret as she gazed at the pretty child I was then, carefully shredding linen to make lint for hospitals, which was the main feature of the curriculum, or absorbed in the production of nauseous truffles. I made them by letting two bars of Menier chocolate melt in my tightly closed hand. And I would shake my fist idiotically, because that was supposed to help the process, the outcome of which was a sickening mash which left brown streaks all over my face and suit, a stupid pap which I shared with admiring classmates who came and licked it off my hand and which we called Bishop’s Delight. Yes, the Mother Superior, for whom I nurtured a respectful passion, sighed as she gazed at my black curls and sometimes murmured, “What a shame” – an allusion to my Jewish origin.

  Strangely enough, I was the favorite of the gentle Catholic sisters. They used to give me deportment lessons and urge me to maintain a modest bearing and never swing my arms in the street as common boys did. Completely won over and full of admiration, determined to make no pact with the Devil, and sporting an enormous floppy tie, the memory of which makes me blush, I took care to walk in the street just as the sisters had advised, hands devoutly clasped and – right little idiot – eyes lowered as if in perpetual prayer. As a result my pious little person was constantly jostled by passersby or mocked by horrible kids from the State school, who called me papist and pelted me with stones, which I bore like a martyr to the cause of my beloved Catholic sisters, to whom their Albert today addresses a tender and respectful greeting.

  Then, as my father’s affairs had improved, I was sent to secondary school when I was ten. I can see myself now at the age of ten. I had huge girlish eyes, peach-bloom cheeks, and a suit bought at the Belle Jardinière – a sailor suit with a white cord from which hung a whistle I loved to blow to make believe I was the son of a rear admiral who was also a lion tamer and a train driver, a heroic son and ship’s boy intrepidly sailing the seas with his father. I was a bit cracked. I was sure that everything I saw really and truly existed inside my head, absolutely real but on a very small scale. If I was by the sea, I was sure that the Mediterranean before me was also inside my head – not a picture of the Mediterranean but the Mediterranean itself, minute and salty inside my head, in miniature but real and with all its fish, though very tiny, all its waves, and a little burning-hot sun, a real sea with all its rocks and all its ships, absolutely complete inside my head, with coal and real live sailors, each ship with the same captain as in the world outside, the same captain, dwarf-sized, whom you could touch if your fingers were small and delicate enough. I was sure that inside my head, as in a circus version of the world, lay the real earth with its forests, all the horses on earth, though extremely small, all the flesh-and-blood kings, all the dead, the vast sky with its stars, and even God Himself, dinky as could be.

  I can see myself now. I was loving, delighted to obey, so eager to be commended by grown-ups. I was keen to admire. One day after school I followed a general for two hours just so I could feast my eyes on his medals and revel in them. I was wild with respect for my general, who was very short and bowlegged. Every now and then I ran past him and then turned round suddenly and walked toward him so that I could gaze for a while upon his face wreathed in glory. I can see myself now. I was too gentle, I blushed easily, I fell in love quickly, and if in the distance I saw a pretty little girl I did not know – whose face I would notice, but nothing else – I immediately galloped for love, I cried out with the joy of loving, and my arms made little windmills of love. A bad sign, all that.

  I had a secret altar to France in my room. On the shelf of a cupboard which I kept locked I had set up a sort of shrine to the glories of France, surrounded by tiny candles, bits of mirror, and little cups I made out of silver paper. The relics in the shrine were pictures of Racine, La Fontaine, Corneille, Joan of Arc, Du Guesclin, Napoléon, Pasteur, Jules Verne of course, and even a certain Louis Boussenard.

  On my secret altar to France there were also a number of tiny French flags, which I had torn a bit to make them look more glorious, a little cannon on a lace doily near a President of the Republic – Loubet or Fallières, whom I thought was a genius – and the photograph of an unknown colonel, the rank I deemed the most distinguished and even more to be envied than that of the general, God alone knows why. Wrapped in gilt paper was a hair which a wag of a schoolmate had sworn was from the head of a soldier of the French Revolution and for which he had made me pay a very high price – at least a hundred apricot pits. Propped up against an eggcup was a dwarf-sized poem from me to France. Inside the eggcup were paper flowers standing guard over the photograph of a dear departed canary. Stuck on the walls of my minute temple were some little votive tablets on which I had inscribed lofty and original thoughts such as “Glory Be to France” or “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Some Jewish conspiracy! The image of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

  I remember that I had such a strong accent that my schoolmates jeered when I made ambitious plans to sit the baccalaureate. They said I would never write and speak French like them. Actually, they were quite right. Bernadet, Miron, Louraille – suddenly their illustrious names come back to me.

  VI

  WE KNEW NO ONE in Marseilles. Poor but proud, we associated with no one. Or rather no one associated with us. But we did not admit it to ourselves, or perhaps we did not realize it. We were so naïve, so lost in the Western world, and so artless that when my parents lit a fire they did not use logs but thin sticks, which were immediately reduced to ashes. And, to crown it all, they took care to leave the protecting metal cover down till the end of the process, because they thought that was more hygienic. These two fugitives from the Orient, where it was always springtime and fireplaces were unknown, genuinely believed that flames left unscreened in that mysterious thing called a fireplace would emit deadly fumes. Was it not some such devilish contraption that had suffocated the man my mother used to call “the great Zola”? Of course she had read none of his books, but she knew he had defended Captain Dreyfus. (“Whatever gave that Dreyfus the idea of joining the army with a great big knife in his belt?” she would say. “Such j
obs are not for us.”) Anyway, to come back to our heating system, we froze in front of a roaring chimney and lowered metal cover. We warmed ourselves in front of an icy noise.

  We were social nobodies, completely isolated, cut off from the world outside. So in winter my mother and I would go to the theater together on Sundays, staunch friends, two shy, gentle creatures vaguely seeking in those three hours at the theater a substitute for the social life which we were denied. That misfortune shared and never before confessed is such a strong bond between my mother and me.

  We had our Sunday outings in the summer too, when I was a small boy. We were not rich, but the tram ride round the cliff road overlooking the sea cost only fifteen centimes. Those one-hour rides were our summer holidays, our social life, and our hunting expeditions. There we were, my mother and I, fragile, well dressed and loving enough to outdo God. I well remember one of those Sunday outings. It must have been about the time of President Fallières, hulking, red faced, and common looking, who had made me shiver with respect when he had come to visit our school. “The leader of France!” I kept saying to myself, goose-pimply with admiration.

  On the Sunday I have in mind, my mother and I were absurdly well dressed, and I look back with pity on those two naïve creatures of long ago, so pointlessly dressed to the nines, for no one was with them and no one paid attention to them. They were all dressed up for no one. I wore the incongruous costume of a little prince, and with my girlish face I looked angelic and ecstatic enough to invite stoning. She was the Queen of Sheba in middle-class clothes, corseted, excited and slightly bewildered by her finery. I can still see her long black-lace gloves, her frilly bodice with its pleats, puffs, and tucks, her little veil, her feather boa, her fan, her long wasp-waisted skirt with flounces which she held up with her hand, revealing little boots which had mother-of-pearl buttons with a tiny metal ring in the middle. In short, for that Sunday outing we were dressed like singers at an exclusive afternoon garden party, and all we needed to complete the picture was to hold a scroll of music.