Albert Cohen: Book of My Mother

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?

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.