Book of My Mother

by Albert Cohen

  When we reached the stop marked “The Beach,” which was opposite a casino rotting with damp, we alighted and, feeling excited and awkward, solemnly installed ourselves on iron chairs at a green table. From the waiter of the little refreshment kiosk, which bore the sign “Sea-lect Snax,” we timidly ordered a bottle of beer, plates, forks, and, to win him over, green olives. When the waiter had gone – that is to say when the danger had passed – we exchanged contented smiles, my mother and I slightly embarrassed. Then she unwrapped the provisions she had brought, and, somewhat uncomfortable if other customers were watching, served up all kinds of Eastern wonders: spinach balls, cheese puffs, botargo, currant rissoles, and other sublime delicacies. She handed me a lightly starched napkin at the thought, while she ironed and hummed a tune from Lucia di Lammermoor, that tomorrow she would be off to the seaside with her son. She is dead now.

  We started to eat politely, gazing self-consciously at the sea, so dependent on one another. It was the grandest moment of the week, when my mother’s dream came true, her passionate desire was fulfilled: she was dining by the sea with her son. In a whisper, because she had an elephant-sized inferiority complex, poor darling, she told me to take deep breaths of sea air, to stock up on fresh air to last a week. I obeyed, for I was just as simple as she was. The other customers stared at the little imbecile who conscientiously opened his mouth and gulped down the Mediterranean air. We were foolish, yes, but we loved each other. And we talked all the time, making remarks about other customers, in whispers, very discreet and well bred; we kept on talking, happy, though less so than when preparing for our outing at home, happy but with an unspoken sadness due to perhaps a vague sense that each was the other’s sole company. Why were we so isolated? Because we were poor, proud, and foreigners, and above all because we were naïve creatures who knew nothing about social niceties and had not the minimum of guile needed to make acquaintances. In fact, I believe our awkward haste to show affection, our too obvious vulnerability, and our shyness had put off potential friends.

  Seated at the green table, we watched the other customers and tried to hear what they were saying, not out of vulgar curiosity but because we were thirsting for human company and wanted to be just a little bit their friends, albeit at a distance. We so wanted to belong. We made up for things as best we could by listening. You do not think that nice? I beg to differ. What is not nice is that on this earth it is not enough to be kind and uncomplicated to be welcomed with open arms.

  Seated at that green table, we talked on and on to take our minds off things. Our eternal subjects of conversation were the two of us, my father, and a few relatives in other towns, but never other, stimulating people, people really other than ourselves. We talked on and on to disguise the fact that we were a little bored and not quite sufficient company for each other. How I would like now, far from the Very Important People I mix with when I feel so inclined, to have Maman back again and be a little bored in her company.

  On the Sunday I am thinking of now, I suddenly imagined, poor little chap, that I was all at once magically endowed with the ability to jump twenty meters into the air and that just with a flick of the heel I would rise and soar over the trams and even over the dome of the casino, and the customers would give the little prodigy a round of applause and above all love him. I imagined that when, breathing hard but not too hard, I went back to my proud, avenged mother that the other customers would come and congratulate Maman on having produced such a superb acrobat, shake hands with her, and ask us to sit at their table. They would all smile at us and invite us to lunch at their homes the following Sunday. I got up and tried my flick of the heel, but the magic gift was withheld and I sat down again, gazing at Maman, to whom I could not give the fine present I had imagined.

  At nine in the evening my mother packed up and we went to wait for the tram by the public urinal, malodorously melancholic, while, dazed and half hypnotized, we watched happy, laughing, well-to-do revelers as they arrived by car to play roulette at the casino. My mother and I waited silently for the tram, humbly participating. To dispel the gloom of our joint solitude, my mother sought for something to say. “When we get home, I’ll cover your schoolbooks with pretty pink paper.” Without knowing why, I felt like crying and I squeezed my mother’s hand very hard. We led the grand life, as you can see, my mother and I. But we loved each other.

  VII

  MAMAN of my childhood, with whom I felt snug and warm, her herb teas, gone forever. Gone forever her fragrant cupboard with its piles of verbena-scented linen trimmed with heartwarming lace which spelled home, her beautiful cherrywood cupboard, which I would open on Thursdays and which was my childish kingdom, a calm and wondrous valley dark and fruity scented with jam, as comforting as the shade under the drawing-room table, where I would imagine I was an Arab chief. Gone forever the bunch of keys which tinkled on her apron string and which were her badge of honor, her Order of Domestic Merit. Gone forever her trunk full of ancient silver trinkets with which I would play when I was convalescing. O furniture of my mother, gone forever! Maman, you who were alive and always gave me new heart, you who were a source of strength, you who had the knack of encouraging me blindly with absurd soothing words, Maman, from up there can you see your obedient little boy of ten?

  Suddenly I see her once more, all agog because the doctor has come to see her sick child. How excited she was by those visits of the doctor, a pompous, perfumed ass whom we admired passionately. Those paid visits brought the world to us, were a form of social life for my mother. A fine gentleman from outside would speak to that solitary creature, who suddenly became alive and gracious. And from the height of his eminence he would even drop political, nonmedical pronouncements, which rekindled the flame of my mother’s self-esteem, made of her an equal, and wiped out for a few minutes the leper spots of her isolation. No doubt she then remembered that her father had been a notable. I can still see her peasantlike respect for the doctor, a bombastic fool whom we thought the wonder of the world and whose every feature I worshipped, even the pockmark on his imposing proboscis. I can still see her fervent admiration as she watched him listen to my chest with his face reeking of eau de cologne, after she had handed him the brand-new towel to which he had a divine right. How scrupulously she observed the magic requirement of a towel for the examination. I can see her now, walking on tiptoe so as not to disturb him while, radiating genius, he took my pulse and, still exuding genius, consulted the fine watch on his hand. You thought it was grand, did you not, my poor Maman, for you were so unspoiled, so completely cut off from the joys of this world.

  I can see her now, hardly daring to breathe while the medical oaf pretentiously scribbled the prescription, which she saw as a talisman; I can see her making “shushing” gestures to prevent me from speaking while he was writing, to make sure I would not inhibit the inspiration of the great man in the throes of scientific travail. I can see her now, charmed, excited, girlishly showing him to the door and blushing as she sought an assurance that her little boy was not seriously ill. And afterward, how she sped off to ask the chemist, a lower but nonetheless highly esteemed divinity, to prepare the elixirs which she expected would have an immediate effect. My mother attached such importance to medicines. She loved to cram me with her own remedies, to give me the benefit of them, and she would not rest until I had swallowed the lot. “This is very strong,” she would say as she handed me a new potion. In order to please her, even when I was grown up, I had to gulp down all kinds of remedies for all kinds of organs and tissues. She would watch me take them with rapt, almost stern, attention. Yes, my mother was a simple creature. But all that is good in me I owe to her. And, since I can do nothing else for you, Maman, I kiss my hand, which came from you.

  Your child died the day you did. Your death has suddenly transported me from childhood to old age. With you I had no need to pretend I was an adult. That is what lies in store for me now; I shall always have to pretend to be a grown-up, a serious person with responsi
bilities. I no longer have anyone to scold me if I eat too quickly or read too late into the night. I am no longer ten, and I can no longer play with cotton spools or stickers in a cozy room, far from the fog of the wintry street, near the yellow circle of the oil lamp and in your keeping, while studiously you sew and make sweet, vague, enchanting plans, poor creature born to be swindled.

  O my past, my early childhood! O my little room, cushions embroidered with reassuring kittens, virtuous color prints, comforts and cream buns, herb teas, cough sweets, arnica, gas burner in the kitchen, barley sugar, old lace, smells, mothballs, china night-lights, little bedtime kisses, kisses of Maman, who would say, after tucking me up in bed, that I was now going to take a little trip to the moon with my friend the squirrel! O my childhood, quince jelly, pink candles, illustrated Thursday papers, plush teddy bears, joys of convalescence, birthdays, New Year letters on jagged-edged notepaper, Christmas turkeys, fables of La Fontaine idiotically recited standing up on the dining-room table, brightly colored sweets, waiting for holidays, hoops, diabolos, grubby little hands, grazed knees and I always pulled off the scab too soon, fairground swings, the Cirque Alexandre, where she took me each year and I would dream of it months in advance, new exercise books for the new school year, imitation-leopard-skin satchel, Japanese pencil boxes, multi-tiered pencil boxes, Sergeant Major nibs, Blanzy Poure bayonet nibs, bread and chocolate for tea, cache of apricot pits, plant-collecting box, glass marbles, Maman’s songs, lessons which she made me revise each morning, hours spent watching her cook with ceremony, childhood, little scraps of peace, little scraps of happiness, Maman’s cakes, Maman’s smiles, all this I shall know no more, O charms, O dead sounds of the past, vanished smoke and withered seasons. The shores recede. My death draws near.

  VIII

  WHEN I WAS EIGHTEEN I left Marseilles and went to Geneva, where I registered at the university and nymphs were kind to me. My mother was then quite alone. She was uprooted in Marseilles. She did have some relatives of a kind there, but they were excessively rich and invited her to their homes only to ram their opulence down her throat, boast of their grand connections, and ask patronizing questions about her husband’s modest business. After a few visits, she had stopped going to see them. Since her first heart attack, she had been unable to help my father in his work, so she spent most of the time alone in her flat. She saw no one, for she did not know how to make social contacts. In any case, the wives of my father’s business acquaintances were not her sort and probably did not like her. She could not laugh with those tradesmen’s wives, take an interest in matters which interested them, or talk like them. Since she had no other company, she sought the company of her flat. After lunch, when her housework was done, she would dress nicely and pay a call on herself. She would walk round her beloved flat, examine each room in turn, pat a bedspread, arrange a cushion, fondly survey her dining room, check to see that all was in order, and enjoy the general neatness, the smell of floor polish, and the hideous new stamped-velvet sofa. She would sit down on the sofa and receive herself in her own home. The glass-bowl coffeemaker she had just bought was a new acquaintance. She smiled at it, then put it a little farther away, to get a better view of it. Or else she looked at the fine handbag I had bought her, which she kept wrapped in tissue paper and never used, for it would have been a shame to dirty it.

  Her life was made up of her flat, writing to her son, waiting for letters from her son, preparing for her visits to her son, waiting for her husband in the silent flat, welcoming him when he arrived, and being proud of his compliments. There were also the tearooms, where she listened to snatches of the conversation of fine ladies while she ate cake – the consolation of the lonely. She took part in things as best she could, humbly made do with such poor pastimes, ever a spectator, never a player. She would also go all alone to the cinema. The characters on the screen admitted her to their company, and she wept over the misfortunes of those beautiful Christian ladies. To the end of her days she lived in isolation, a timid child with her overplump face pressed hungrily against the window of the cake shop of social life. I do not know why I am telling of my mother’s sad life. It may be to avenge her.

  At the table she would lay a place every day for the absent son. And on my birthday she would even serve the absent son. She would put the choicest morsels on the plate of the absent son, next to my photograph and a few flowers. For dessert on my birthday she would put on the plate of the absent son the first slice of almond cake – always the same kind of cake, because it was the one I had loved as a child. Then, with a trembling hand, she would pour Samos wine – always the same wine – into the glass of the absent son. She would eat in silence beside her husband, and she would gaze at my photograph.

  IX

  AFTER I LEFT Marseilles, her big event each year was her stay with me in Geneva during the summer. She would prepare for it months in advance, patching up her clothes, buying presents, and going on an unsuccessful slimming diet. That gave her a kind of happiness long before her departure. It was a little trick she devised to feel that in a way she was already with me. During her visits, which were the great adventure of her life, she would try to curb her Oriental gestures and smother her accent, half Marseilles and half Balkan, under a confused murmur which was meant to sound Parisian. Poor darling!

  She did not have much willpower. She was unable to keep to a diet, and her plumpness increased with the years. But each time she came to stay she assured me she’d lost several kilos since the previous year. I did not disillusion her. In actual fact, she starved herself for weeks before leaving Marseilles, in order to slim and win my approval. But she never lost as much weight as she had put on. And so, though she grew plumper all the time, she nurtured a fanciful belief that she was growing slimmer all the time.

  She would arrive firmly resolved never again to break her diet. But she did so constantly, without being aware of it, because infringements, though a daily occurrence, were always seen as exceptions. “I just want to know whether this pastry has turned out right.” “This almond paste doesn’t count, my son – it’s only an ant’s helping. It’s just for the taste – I must have just a mouthful to try, then I’ll stop craving. You must have heard that an unsatisfied craving makes you put on weight.” And, if I urged her to take her coffee without sugar, she would declare that sugar was not fattening. “Put some in water and you’ll see it disappear.” If a chemist’s scales showed that she had put on weight, it was because the scales were wrong or because she had moved while she was on them or because she had kept her hat on. There were always good reasons for a lavish meal. The day she arrived in Geneva it was because it was a red-letter day and she just had to celebrate. Another time it was because she felt a little tired and honey fritters give you energy. On another occasion it was because she had received a nice letter from my father. A few days later it was because she had not received a letter. Then it was because she would be leaving in a few days’ time. Or else because she did not want to be poor company for me by making me watch her eat a slimming dinner. She would tighten her corset a bit and that would do the trick. “And, anyway, I’m not a young girl to be married off.”

  But if I chided her, she obeyed, convinced that I knew best, instantly shattered by the prospect of illness and believing me if I said that six months on a strict diet would give her a figure like a fashion model. She would then scrupulously refrain from eating all day long, sadly imagining the innumerable delights of slimness. If, suddenly smitten with pity and feeling that it was all to no purpose, I said that, all things considered, those diets were not really much use, she would hasten to agree: “You see, my son, I believe all those slimming diets make you depressed, and that makes you put on weight.” I would then suggest that we should go and eat in a first-class restaurant. “Oh yes, my son, let’s have a little fun before we die!” And, in her very best dress, carefree as a little girl, she would eat to her heart’s content with a clear conscience, since she had my approval. I would watch her and
reflect that she was not long for this world and that she was entitled to a few little pleasures. I would watch her as she ate, absolutely in her element. Like a father, I would watch her little hands as they moved, as they moved then.

  She was not in the least methodical, though she thought herself very organized. On one of my visits to Marseilles I bought her an alphabetical file and explained the ins and outs of it – telling her, for example, that gas bills should be filed under G. She listened earnestly, firmly resolved to follow my instructions, then began to file with a will. A few months later, in the course of another visit, I noticed that the gas bills were filed under S. “Because it’s more convenient for me,” she explained. “I remember things better that way.” The rent receipts had deserted R and emigrated to I. “My child, I must put something under I, and, anyway, isn’t there an I in ‘receipts’?” Gradually, she went back to her old filing system: the income-tax returns reappeared on the mantelpiece, the rent receipts under the bicarbonate of soda, the electricity bills beside the eau de cologne, the bank statements in an envelope marked “Fire Insurance,” and the doctor’s prescriptions in the horn of the old gramophone. When I remarked on this reversion to chaos, she smiled guiltily, like a child. “All that method muddled me up,” she said with downcast eyes. “But if you want me to, I’ll start filing again.” I blow you a kiss in the night – a kiss for you up there beyond the stars.