Book of My Mother

by Albert Cohen

  ONE DAY in Geneva when I had arranged to meet her at five in the university square, I was detained by a girl with fair hair and did not arrive until eight. She did not see me coming. My heart filled with shame, I watched her sitting there patiently waiting, all alone on a bench in the waning light and the now chilly air, in her poor coat which was too tight and with her hat askew. She had been waiting there for hours – meekly, peacefully, slightly drowsy, older because she was alone, resigned, used to solitude, used to my lateness, uncomplaining in her humble wait, a servant, a poor, put-upon saint. What could be more natural than to wait three hours for her son, and was he not entitled? I hate that son! She saw me at last and came back to life, entirely dependent on me. I can see the little start she gave as her vitality came flooding back, I can see her passing in a flash from lethargy to life, suddenly younger, the quietude of a slave or a faithful dog yielding all at once to an intense interest in living. She adjusted her hat and her features, for she wanted to do me credit. And then my aging Maman made her own two special gestures. Whence had they come, and in what childhood lay their source? I see them so well, those two awkward poetic gestures which she made when from a distance she saw me coming. The terrible thing about the dead is their gestures, which live on in our memory. For then they are dreadfully alive and we are at a loss to understand.

  You made those two gestures whenever you saw me coming to meet you. First, your eyes lighting up shyly for joy, you would point me out needlessly with your finger, with a delight full of dignity, to let me know you had seen me, but in reality to give yourself confidence. I sometimes suppressed a kind of irritated giggle of shame when I saw that absurd gesture, which I expected and knew so well, your gesture of pointing me out to no one. And then, my darling, you would get up and come toward me, blushing, abashed, exposed, smiling with embarrassment at being seen from a distance and observed for too long. Like a clumsy debutante, you would advance with the delighted, sheepish smile of a not very clever little girl, while your eyes would scrutinize my face to see whether I was criticizing you inwardly. Poor Maman, you were so afraid of not pleasing me, of not being Western enough for my taste. And then you would make your second shy gesture. How well I know that gesture and how it lives on in my eyes, which see all too clearly everything from the past. You would put your little hand to the corner of one lip as you came toward me, your other hand outstretched to steady you and keeping time with your labored step. It was a gesture which hailed from our Orient – the gesture of the chaste virgin seeking to conceal part of her face. Or perhaps you wanted to hide that little scar, Maman, for despite your age you were still just a girl at heart. How ridiculous I am to try to explain the humble treasure of your two gestures, O my living mother, my regal dead mother. I know very well that what I say about your gestures does not interest a soul and that no one indeed cares a rap for anyone.

  Nevermore will you wait for me on a bench in a square. You forsook me, you did not wait for me, you left your bench, you did not have the heart to wait for your son to come. That time, he made you wait too long. He arrived far too late at the meeting place and you got up and went. That was the first unkind thing you had ever done to me. I am alone now, and it is my turn to wait on the autumnal bench of life in the chill wind which moans in the twilight and stirs the dead leaves into baleful eddies clothed in the musty-scented rooms of the past; it is my turn to wait for my mother, who does not come, who will nevermore, nevermore come to the meeting place. Those passersby are useless and alive, repulsively alive. I cast a sick glance at them, and when I see an old woman, I think of my mother, who was beautiful, and inwardly I say, “How delightful, so sweet,” to the awful old woman. Pitiful vengeance. I am unhappy, Maman, and you do not come. I call you, Maman, and you do not answer. That is horrible, for she always answered and came running so quickly when I called her. Now it is all over: she is silent forever. The stubborn silence, the obdurate deafness, the terrible indifference of the dead. Are you happy at least, beloved dead – happy to be rid at last of the wicked living?

  XII

  SHE WAITED three hours for me in that square. Three hours which I could have spent with her. While she was waiting for me, wreathed in patience, I chose to concern myself, stupidly enthralled, with some poetic amber damsel, abandoning the wheat for the chaff. I missed three hours of my mother’s life. And for whom, good God? For an Atalanta, an attractive arrangement of flesh. I dared to prefer an Atalanta to the most sacred goodness, to my mother’s love, my mother’s incomparable love.

  Incidentally, if some sudden illness had deprived me of my strength or merely all my teeth, the poetic damsel would have pointed me out and ordered her maid to sweep away that toothless garbage. Or, more nobly, the high-minded filly would have sensed – suddenly sensed in all pureness and in a flash of spiritual revelation – that she no longer loved me and that it would be impure not to live in truth and to go on seeing a man she no longer loved. Her soul would have made off on wings of scorn. Those noble creatures love men who are strong, energetic, and assertive – in other words, gorillas. Toothless or not, strong or weak, young or old, our mothers love us. And the weaker we are, the more they love us. Our mothers’ incomparable love.

  A brief remark in passing. If poor Romeo had suddenly had his nose cut clean off in an accident, when Juliet next saw him she would have fled in horror. Thirty grams less meat and Juliet’s soul is no longer nobly stirred. Thirty grams less and that is the end of sublime moonlit babble, of “It is not yet near day: it was the nightingale, and not the lark.” If as a result of some hypophyseal disorder Hamlet had lost thirty kilos, Ophelia would no longer love him with all her soul. Ophelia’s soul can only reach divine heights of intensity if it has at least sixty kilos of beefsteak to feed on. It is true that if Laura had suddenly lost both legs, Petrarch would have dedicated less mystical poems to her. And yet poor Laura’s gaze would have been unchanged, and her soul too. Ah yes, but good Petrarch’s soul cannot love Laura’s soul unless she has pretty little thighs. Poor meat eaters that we are, one and all, spouting bunkum about the soul. Enough, my friend, cut it out – they’ve got the message.

  My mother’s incomparable love. She was completely uncritical where her son was concerned. She accepted everything I did, possessed with the divine genius which makes a divinity of the beloved – the poor beloved who is so far from divine. If one evening I suggested going to the cinema, she would immediately declare that it was a wonderful idea and that “Yes, indeed, we must have some fun and enjoy ourselves while we’re alive” and “Really, it’s crazy to be sensible” and “Why on earth should we shut ourselves up at home like old people, so I’m ready, my darling, I’ve only to put on my hat.” (She had always just to put her hat on, even that night when I was feeling gloomy on account of a sprite with fair hair and woke her at midnight to ask her to go out with me.) But if I mischievously changed my mind, knowing full well what would happen next, and said that all things considered I would rather stay at home, she would immediately agree – not so as to please me but in a burst of passionate sincerity because all my decisions were remarkably right. She would agree without even realizing that she was contradicting herself and say that “Yes, indeed, it will be so nice to stay comfortably at home in the warm and chat instead of going to see all that nonsense in the cinema where the woman always has a perfect hairdo even when she is ill, and, anyway, the weather is bad and it will be tiring to come home late, and at night there are thieves prowling the streets, those sons of Satan who snatch your handbag.” And so, if I mischievously changed my mind about the cinema four times, she would genuinely change her mind four times, contradicting herself each time with the same conviction. If I finally decided against the cinema, she would say, “Get into bed and I’ll sit up with you till you fall asleep, and if you like I’ll tell you the story of Diamantine’s broken engagement. You remember Diamantine – the soapmaker’s daughter, the girl who had only one tooth and no neck, and do you know it was a mouse that caused
it all? Listen while I tell you about it, my son.” And she would begin: “Do you know, my son, that in those far-off times – for it all happened long ago and poor Diamantine is dead now and she’s well off where she is but we’re better off here below – do you know, my son. . .” And I would listen to her, enchanted, blissful, caressed by her words, physically charmed. For I adored my mother’s interminable tales, which were full of genealogical digressions and interspersed with little treats which materialized miraculously out of her suitcase, and she would sometimes break the thread of her story to say she was worried because she had not received a letter from my father. But I would sturdily reassure, and my docile mother would let herself be convinced and go on telling me endless heartrending or ludicrous tales of the ghetto where I was born, and I shall never forget them. How I would like sometimes to go back to that ghetto and live there, surrounded by rabbis like bearded ladies – live that loving, passionate, quibbling, and frenetic life.

  My mother’s love. With me she was like one of those loving, approving, eager dogs, overjoyed at being with their master. The naïve fervor on her face touched my heart, and her adorable weakness and the kindness in her eyes. Politicians and their short-lived schemes? That is not my affair and they can sort things out themselves. Their nations, vanished ten centuries hence? My mother’s love is immortal.

  My mother’s love. She approved my whims. She was a willing partner if I suggested eating sandwiches from the Automat, because it is wise to economize “and don’t waste the money you earn with your brain, my son.” But she also agreed if I wanted to go to the most expensive restaurant, because life is short. For what strange and mysterious reason did I often hold aloof from that most loving creature, my mother, avoiding her kisses and her gaze, and why was I so cruelly reserved? Too late now. Nevermore will I see her alight from her train in Geneva, glowing with happiness as she brings me her tribute of twenty-franc gold coins which she has secretly saved for me. On one of her visits she had a mad fit of making red-currant jelly, more than a hundred jars, to be sure I would not want for sweet things when she had gone. During her visits, all she wanted was to cook heaps of food for me and then, decked out like a clumsy queen, corseted, and prouder and slower than a cruiser with a fine jutting prow, to walk out in the afternoon with Her Son, slowly, respectably.

  My mother’s love. Nevermore during the night will I go and knock at her door because I cannot sleep and want her to keep me company. With the cruel thoughtlessness of sons, I would knock at two or three in the morning, and always she would reply, waking with a start, that she had not been asleep, that I had not woken her. She would get up at once and come in her dressing gown, staggering with sleep, to offer me her dear assortment of maternal comforts, an egg flip or even almond paste. What could be more natural than to make almond paste for her son at three in the morning? Or else she would suggest piping hot coffee, which we would drink cozily together, chatting endlessly. She saw nothing unreasonable in drinking coffee with me at three in the morning, sitting at the foot of the bed and telling me until dawn tales of old family quarrels – a subject on which she was an expert and in which she took a passionate interest.

  No more mother to sit with me until I fall asleep. At night I sometimes put a chair by my bed to keep me company. When you have no mother you make do with a chair. The billionaire of love has become a tramp. If you have insomnia some night, you can fend for yourself, my friend, and you do not knock at any door. And if you remarry and choose that brunette who took your fancy the other day, take care not to knock at her door at three in the morning. You would be sure of a warm reception. “I insist that you respect my sleep,” she would say, steely eyed and square jawed. My mother’s incomparable love. Yes, I know I keep dwelling on it, chewing it over, repeating myself. That is what ruminating grief is like, its jaws weakly in perpetual motion. That is how I take my revenge on life, by harping disconsolately on the kindness of my mother, who lies deep in earth.

  My mother’s love, nevermore. She is in her last cradle, the bounteous and gentle giver. Nevermore will she be here to scold me if I worry over nothing. Nevermore will she be here to feed me, to give me life each day, to bring me into the world each day. Nevermore will she be here to keep me company while I shave or while I eat, watching me closely, a passive but attentive sentinel, trying to find out whether I really do like the walnut biscuits she has made me. Nevermore will she tell me not to eat so quickly. I loved having her treat me like a child.

  Nevermore the sudden short naps, an old lady with a weak heart in her armchair, and when I asked if she was asleep she would always reply, waking with a start, that she had only closed her eyes for a moment. And she would immediately get up to serve me and suggest eating earlier and heaven knows what else, everything else, all her loving kindness. O Maman, my youth that is no more! Laments, calls of my youth on that distant shore.

  For love of me she mastered her fear of animals and came to feel affection for my pretty little cat. She would awkwardly stroke that animal whose motives were a mystery to her, that animal with claws always ready to transgress the Ten Commandments but nonetheless loved by her son and therefore undoubtedly delightful. She stroked it from a distance just the same, her little hand ready to withdraw in a flash. Every instance of her love comes back to me: how she shyly radiated joy when she saw me on the station platform; her awkward little hand the day she wrote down at my dictation, with so many spelling mistakes and so much goodwill, a few pages of a book of mine, with never a clue as to what it was all about. I remember, I remember, and yet this is still not the most valuable of my possessions.

  My mother’s love. Nevermore will I have beside me someone who is wholly good. But why are men spiteful? How astounded I am on this earth. Why are they so prompt to hate, so ill tempered? Why do they love to take revenge and hasten to speak ill of you, they who are soon to die, poor things? The ghastly fate of human beings, who arrive on this earth, laugh, move, then suddenly move no more, does not make them good: is this not incredible? And why are they so quick to return rough answers, in a voice like a shriek of a cockatoo, if you speak to them gently, which makes them think you are unimportant – that is to say, not dangerous? And so the tenderhearted must pretend to be cruel in order to be left in peace, or even – and this is tragic – to be loved. Why not just retire to bed and sleep like a log? Sleeping dogs have no fleas. Yes, let’s sleep – sleep has the advantages of death without that one minor drawback. Let’s go and settle down in the cozy coffin. Like a toothless man who takes out his dentures and puts them in a glass of water by his bed, I would like to take my brain out of its box, take out my poor devil of a heart, which beats too fast, too conscientiously, take out my brain and my heart and bathe those two poor billionaires in refreshing solutions while I sleep like the little child I shall be no more. How few humans there are; suddenly the world is empty.

  During her stays in Geneva she would always wait for me at the window. No one will wait for me at a window for hours as she did. I can see her face now as she leaned out of the window, her overplump face filled with thoughts of me, so concerned and attentive, her features slightly coarsened by excessive attention, her eyes fixed on the corner of the street. I always think of her as the woman at the window. At the window, on the watch when I came home from work. I would look up and it was heartening to see from below that wait-laden face, that thought waiting for me, and I felt the reassurance of a son. Now when I go out I still have the habit of looking up at the window. But there is never anyone there. Who needs to wait for me at the window?

  She would also be at the window when I went out, so as to spend an extra minute with me and gaze at the disappearing figure which was her son, her lot on this earth, her beloved son, whom she would watch as he walked away, watch perhaps with the strange, keen-edged, piercing pity that we feel for those we love and whose secret destitution we know – the same keen pity that I feel for my loved ones when from my window I see them in the street, alone, forlorn and de
fenseless, walking disasters unaware that I am watching them. And my loved ones are not only my daughter and Marianne and one or two others, but all the men in the street, all such endearing failures whom I love from afar, for close up they do not always smell of roses. Yes, I would look up once or twice at my mother, feeling reassured and protected but not fully understanding my happiness. Now when I go out I still look up, somewhat haggard and forlorn. But there is never anyone at the window.

  Nevermore will she nurse me, she, the only one. The only one who never would have been impatient had my illness lasted twenty years and had I been the most insufferable of patients. She alone would have nursed me not out of duty or affection but out of need. For, had I been ill, the only interesting thing she could have found to do for those twenty years would have been to nurse me. That is what she was like. All other women have their dear independent little me: their life, their thirst for personal happiness, their sleep, which they protect so fiercely and woe betide anyone who interferes with it. My mother had no me: she had a son. Little did she mind not sleeping or being weary if I needed her. What have I left to love now with that same love which knows it will never be let down? A pen, a lighter, my cat.

  O you, the only one, mother, my mother and the mother of all men, you alone deserve our confidence and our love. All the rest – wives, brothers, sisters, children, friends – all the rest is but a trifle and a leaf in the wind.

  There are geniuses at painting and I know nothing about it and I shall not look into it and I am not the least bit interested and I am no judge, nor do I want to be. There are literary geniuses and I know it and the Countess de Noailles is not one of them, nor another person I can think of and certainly not yet another. But what I know even better is that my mother was a genius at loving. Like yours, gentle reader. And I remember everything – everything. How she would watch all night by my bedside when I was ill, her heart-stirring indulgence, and the fine ring which, with some regret but with the weakness of those who love, she had so quickly agreed to buy me. She was so easily persuaded by her harebrained son of twenty. And her secret savings set aside for me when I was a student, and all her schemes to keep my extravagance from my father so that he would not be angry with his spendthrift son. And her naïve pride when that wily tailor had said, to get round her, that her son of thirteen had “class.” How she had savored that horrible word! And her fingers secretly crossed to ward off the evil eye when women gazed at her wondrous little boy. And, during her stays in Geneva, her suitcases always crammed with treats she used to call “throatsoothers,” which she bought on the sly in anticipation of some sudden fancy on my part. And her hand, which she would all at once hold out unexpectedly to shake my hand like that of a friend. “My little kangaroo,” she would say. All that is so near. It was a few thousand hours ago.