“That’s what I said.”
“In other words, the author is writing about his own childhood, his real mother, about himself, about being a pilot during the war. He is telling the story of his life.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes, I assure you. He is describing what he experienced, what he felt…”
“Even when he talks about howling like a dog over the grave?”
“Like a dog?… I’m not sure what—ah, yes, I think I remember. Indeed, I think he may have used those very words. Just a moment, just a moment, let me check…”
She flicked the pages with the edge of her thumb—zzzzip—like a dealer shuffling a pack of cards.
I was thinking, she’s showing off, no one can read that fast without even opening the book the whole way. But apparently they can, because suddenly she screeched to a halt and said:
“Ah, I’ve found it! You constantly return to howl at your mother’s grave like a lost dog. Well, well, Germain, I’m impressed, you have excellent auditory memory.”
“Well, actually, I mostly remember things that I hear…”
She began rereading the passage silently, selfishly. I said:
“Couldn’t you read it out loud?”
“I would be happy to! All the more so as it is so poignant, listen: It is not good to be so loved so young, so early. It leaves you with a fatal flaw. You believe that love is possible. You believe that it exists elsewhere, that it can be found. You stake your life on it. You watch, you hope, you wait. Through a mother’s love, life makes a promise at dawn that it can never keep… And so, to the end of your days, you are destined to be disenchanted.”
“So that’s where it comes from, the title?”
“Hmm?”
“The writer called it Promise at Dawn because life makes promises that it doesn’t keep? It’s about a mother’s love.”
“Of course, absolutely! It’s astonishing to realize that I never noticed that crucial detail in all the times I read it!”
“Could you keep going a little bit, just as far as the dog?”
“As far as the end of the chapter would be even better.”
“OK.”
“Thereafter, each time a woman takes you in her arms and clasps you to her breast, it is merely a condolence. You constantly return to howl at your mother’s grave like a lost dog.”
“There: ‘like a lost dog’, see!”
“… Never again, never again, never again. Beautiful arms twine about your neck, the softest lips speak to you of love, but already you know the score. You have drunk from the source early and slaked your thirst. When, later, you grow thirsty, though you search high and low, you will find there are no more springs, only mirages.”
“Does he say that because he was a pilot?”
“Say what?”
“You did tell me he was a pilot, the guy who wrote this?”
“Yes, yes absolutely.”
“So, it’s because he was a pilot that he mentions Mirages in the story?”
You’d think I was speaking Chinese.
“I’m sorry, Germain, I’m not quite sure what you’re saying…”
“I was saying that a Mirage is a type of fighter plane.”
“Is it? I didn’t know that.”
“I suppose even you can’t know everything.”
“Very true. And it’s fortunate, for otherwise I should be terribly bored. That said, in the novel, I believe the author is using the word mirage in a different sense. Its other meaning, if you prefer. A mirage is an optical illusion. You know the sort of thing, when you think you can see pools of water on the road when it’s hot in summer.”
“Oh, yes, of course, now you mention it… I knew that.”
“This is why, on the subject of love, Romain Gary writes: there are no more springs, only mirages… You think it is love, but in fact it is not. It is only an illusion.”
“That’s a figure of speech, isn’t it?”
She set the book down on her lap and said:
“Yes, exactly, it’s a figure of speech. It’s what’s known as a metaphor.”
“A me-ta-for?”
“Yes, a metaphor. An image, if you prefer…”
Then she brought a finger to her lips and whispered shh! with a smile, then she carried on reading.
“I am not saying that mothers should be forbidden from loving their children. I am simply saying that it is best that mothers have someone other they can love. If my mother had had a lover, I would not have spent my life languishing and thirsting next to every spring. Unfortunately for me, I know how to recognize a true diamond.”
I thought to myself that Monsieur Gary and I had had very different life experiences, even if we had at least two things in common: a father who’d gone AWOL and a mother who smoked a bit too much.
I also thought he was laying it on a bit thick. No one could love their mother as much as he claims.
Margueritte had a faraway look in her eyes, she seemed happy. She whispered softly: there are no more springs, only mirages…
“What if it’s the other way round?” I said.
Margueritte raised an eyebrow.
“The other way round?”
“What if the spring had dried up, what if there was no well. Well, you know what I mean…”
“You mean what if one was not loved as a child?”
“Supposing. What would happen?”
She thought for a moment. Then she said:
“Well, if you… I mean if someone did not receive enough love as a child, one might say that they have everything still to discover.”
“So, actually, it would be better. Because I have to say, Gary sounds really dismissive, the way he talks about women. All that stuff about the dog howling over the grave… You don’t think that maybe the guy was a depressive?”
“He committed suicide…”
“Well, there you go, then. That’s what I was saying. I think that if his mother had brought him up the hard way, it would never have come to that.”
“Was your mother strict?”
“Mine? She didn’t care one way or the other.”
Margueritte put away her book, she sighed, she said:
“I feel sorry for you. There is nothing worse than indifference. Especially from a mother.”
“Well, what can you do? She didn’t have the fibre.”
MARGUERITTE never had kids. It’s a pity, because I think they would have turned out well, with a mother like her teaching them culture in between juggling test tubes and reading them Camus—and leaving out the boring bits. Problem is, they were never born, so they never got to find out what they missed. For me vice is versa, if you know what I mean. I was born into this world by accident and I stayed out of habit.
People shouldn’t have children if they’ve got no use for them. Because a kid puts more demands on your life than a dog in terms of responsibilities. And you can’t just leave it by the side of the road, unless you want to wind up behind bars, but I’m sure you worked out that that was just a figure of speech.
But the thing is, meeting Margueritte and talking to her about life made me see my mother in a different light. I didn’t suddenly love her, that would be pushing things a bit far! But I felt sorry for her. As a human being, I mean. Because her and me, we spent our whole lives screaming at each other—well, she did most of the screaming—and punching holes in the walls—that bit was mostly me. But she’s still my mother. Julien is right, though it pisses me off to admit it. She didn’t have me deliberately, obviously. She got pregnant with me the same way those Algerians got the plague. I’m an accident, a mistake. That said, she could have loved me anyway. It’s been known. Take Julien, for example. When he talks about David, his eldest boy, he always says:
“My son was an unintended side-effect of a particularly boozy night out.”
But you should see him with his kid, he loves the bones of him.
If I don’t have a kid, it’s probably for the best. Well, in a manner of spe
aking. I think I would have liked to have a kid. Sometimes when I look at Annette, I think how beautiful she’d look if she was pregnant. And even more beautiful with a baby in her arms. My baby, I mean. Thing is, what could I give a kid? Not much of a prize, a father like me, with no qualifications. A guy who’d never read a book in his life before the age of forty-five and even then only bits of The Plague by Albert Camus. A sad loser who can’t even string three fucking words together without effing and blinding.
Apart from taking him fishing and showing him how to whittle, taking advantage of the knots and the grain of the wood, I’d have nothing to teach him. I wouldn’t be a good role model. I wouldn’t know how to bring him up.
That said, Annette would really like me to get her up the duff, I know that. Sometimes, when we’re in bed, she takes my hand, lays it on her belly and whispers in my ear:
“How about we make one tonight?”
And feeling her next to me, so silky and warm, soft as a pillow, I’d give her ten kids and I know I’d love every one.
ANNETTE, she had a kid once. She lost the baby, some stupid illness, I don’t really know the details. She never talks about it. Even though I’m a man, I think I can understand what it’s like for a woman, losing a baby. Ever since, she’s been bursting at the seams with tears, she’s lumbered with all this love and she has no outlet for it. Maybe that’s why she’s so beautiful. Sometimes sadness tans your hide so deeply that afterwards you’re soft and silky. My mother is a perfect example of the reverse: tough as old boots, silky as sixty-grit sandpaper.
It’s true: life didn’t do her any favours. She carried me like a burden, and as soon as she started to show she was thrown out and called a slut. Seems like her mother obviously didn’t have much in the way of maternal fibre either.
Maybe the love between a mother and child is part of heredity—The set of characteristics and traits inherited from one’s parents—to use one of Margueritte’s words when she talks about science. Loving just wasn’t one of my mother’s traits.
I remember what she used to tell the neighbours about my birth when I was a kid.
“Ten hours it took. Ten hours of suffering worse than a dumb animal. He refused to come out, he was so big. Five kilos, can you imagine? Five kilos! Just think what that does to you. I’ll tell you: it’s like I took these two litres of milk, a bag of sugar, a kilo of flour and a packet of butter and, I don’t know, those onions over there. Five kilos! They had to drag him out with a forceps and I had to have stitches. So after that, I said to myself, I said, never again! Especially given all the satisfaction you get, when you realize how much trouble they are…”
When I heard her telling the story, I’d feel guilty. I’d look at all the food on the table, the milk, the sugar, the onions, a whole basketful of groceries, and it would go round and round in my head: five kilos, five kilos, five kilos…
I wished I could shrivel up and disappear.
But it was like it was deliberate; the more I tried to make myself smaller, the more every bit of me seemed determined to grow. My feet, especially. God, how my mother used to rant and rave about having to buy me new shoes every three months.
“Have you any idea how much you cost me? Keep this up and you can go to school in your bare feet. In your bare feet, I’m not joking.”
It’s not that I didn’t want to curl up my toes like olden-day Chinese women—I saw a documentary about them once—but it’s really painful, wearing shoes that are too tight. And besides, sooner or later they would wear out. And one morning, there would be a hole in the sole right under my big toe, or the whole seam would split.
My mother would start yelling about how she told me so! How she couldn’t believe it, a new pair of shoes she’d only just bought me. How I was doing it on purpose. How all I was good for was making her life a misery. Nothing else.
Then she would sigh and examine the shoes from every angle and when she was completely convinced that I couldn’t go on wearing them, she would drag me to the Shoe Palace. She would barge into the shop, shouting at the top of her voice to drown out the door chime: “Monsieur Bourdelle!”
And the short-arse at the back of the shop behind his bead curtain would yell back:
“Coming, Commming! Just a second!”
He would burst out of the back room and bear down on me hungrily. He looked like a fat spider about to gobble a fly. I couldn’t stand the guy.
He would take off my shoes instead of letting me do it myself. He sweated like a pig, his hands were clammy and he’d grope my feet and say:
“Oh, he’s got big feet! Very big feet! Let’s see, let’s see… 39, 40? Yessss, 40 it is. He’s a big lad for his age. If he keeps growing like this, he’ll have to have shoes made to measure!”
I would have punched him if I’d been big enough. But at ten years old, it wasn’t a possibility. And later, when I could have decked him, it wasn’t really relevant. With men, growing older sometimes cools down the thirst for revenge, not like elephants.
My mother always picked the cheapest, ugliest shoes.
“Give him something solid, Monsieur Bourdelle, something he might get a bit of wear out of this time.”
And Bourdelle would wipe the sweat from his forehead and say: “Funny you should say that, Madame Chazes, I’ve just had something in I think you’ll like! A new model that offers excellent ankle support. Snug fitting, crepe soles, and if that’s not enough, they’re Italian!”
“Oh, well,” my mother would say, “If they’re Italian, I’ll take them. But you know with this one, nothing ever lasts.”
This one was me.
Bourdelle would rummage through his unsold stock and then come back all fake smile and tell me I was in luck, that they had only one pair left in my size.
“You’ll see, they’ll last. See how stylish they are? Young people love them, they’re very sporty.”
From a grey or brown shoebox, he would take out a pair of shit-kickers, the sort of clodhoppers a country priest might wear. He would try to force them on, saying:
“Don’t tense your foot, push down with your heel. Thaaat’s it, lad. You see? I told you he was a size forty.”
My mother would say:
“Let me have a look.”
She would frown and give him a tight-lipped stare, then nod to let him know she wasn’t born yesterday. In the end, she would always say:
“Tell you what, give him one size bigger, that should give me a bit of leeway.”
And so I would leave with shoes too big for me that I had to wear until they fell apart.
It’s funny the things you remember about your childhood. The shoes that were so huge they rubbed my feet raw only to crush my toes later and leave me with blisters. That, and the trousers so short you could see my ankles and my friends would take the piss:
“Hey, Chazes, you’re at half mast! Did somebody die?”
Then there was the monthly trip to Chez Mireille, the salon where my mother had her hair dyed and old ladies went to get perms. I felt mortified just stepping through the door. The other boys all went to Monsieur Mesnard, the barber who cut their fathers’ hair. But since I didn’t have a father, I had to make do with a cut and blow job from a hairstylist—and unfortunately, that’s a figure of speech.
I was always given the chair next to the window. I used to feel like the whole village traipsed past whenever I was there. That everyone would see me with my feet dangling in the air, my wet hair plastered to my skull and neatly parted in the middle. The assistant would put a pink towel around my shoulders. She would press her huge breasts against my back, so that was one good thing about it.
Then she would cut my hair with scissors instead of clippers like the other boys in my class. The haircut was probably fine, but every time I left the salon there was someone calling me names. People say names will never hurt you. But they’re wrong, names hurt just as much as sticks and stones. They just break your bones more slowly.
Obviously, I wasn’t the only
badly dressed kid in my class. But, in case you hadn’t noticed, other people’s troubles are no consolation when you’ve got your own. It’s not even as though it makes you feel you’re not so alone. Sometimes, it’s the opposite.
Landremont, who’s got a thing for proverbs, always says: That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
So that’s life, then, you’re either strong or dead?
Talk about a shitty choice.
MY MOTHER AND ME, we don’t talk much. We give each other a wide berth. From time to time, I have a look to see if the back door is open, if she’s got washing on the line. Otherwise, I don’t need to see her to know what she’s up to. I can imagine. At eight o’clock every morning she comes downstairs in her dressing gown and slippers. She makes herself coffee—no sugar—and eats the last of yesterday’s bread slathered with butter while she watches some soap opera on TV. She washes the breakfast dishes and then goes upstairs to put on her face. When she comes down again, she’s wearing mascara, lipstick and perfume. My mother likes perfume. She always wears it, but not too much. It’s still possible to breathe. It would embarrass me if she was tarty. She is my mother, after all. In front of the mirror in the hall she fixes her hair and says, Well, well, old girl, or, Would you look at the state of me this morning! and she sighs. Then she goes out to do her shopping.
She’s sixty-three but she doesn’t look it. She looks older. It’s loneliness that does that. And maybe the two packs of smokes she gets through every day. I wouldn’t mind, but she knows perfectly well that Smoking Kills, like they say in the warnings on the packets she chucks away.
Coming back from the shop is a 500-metre climb. When she gets back, she’s out of breath.
When I was a kid, I’d sometimes say:
“You shouldn’t smoke, Maman.”
And she’d say:
“You suck the life out of me faster than the ciggies, so don’t go lecturing me. And don’t call me Maman, you know it annoys me.”
And I’d say:
“Yes, Maman.”
She always thought I was doing it to wind her up. But I was never able to call her Jacqueline or Jackie. I tried my best, but I just couldn’t. It was Maman or nothing.
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