Albert Cohen: Book of My Mother

Not true: she does not dream of me, she never thinks. She is joyless in her mold, and above her there is life and the light headiness of the morning and the huge risen sun. She is paralyzed and withered in her rich mold, parchment-like and green-tinged here and there, the once pretty Maman of her boy of ten, half skeleton, insensible despite my slow tears, deaf, impassive, while above her little scraps of creation wake and joyously busy themselves with living, begetting and murdering under the benevolent eye of God. On a tree above her grave an early squirrel is rubbing its front paws together: what luck, there are lots of walnuts this year! Above her grave in the early morn the sky is immensely and powerfully blue and the little birds are setting up their joyous trills and their innocent babble in the flowering dawn, their angelic waking and fluttering prattle, their penny poems, their sweet, sharp, icy calls and all their rippling repertoire, and, except for a cuckoo idiotically obsessed with playing hide-and-seek, all those birdies bid a thousand good mornings in filial homage to the sun, and, “Oh, how grand it is to live in the fresh air!” chirp those little darlings, snooty, tiny, tufted troubadours, drunk on the new day, who come flocking now, in a flurry of gracious polkas, to peck in the grass upon her grave.

WHEN ALL IS SAID and done we settle down into unhappiness, and sometimes we think we are not so bad off after all. So let’s smoke a cigarette while the idiot on the radio talks about an important statement of an important head of state. The idiot relishes that statement, revels in it, and rolls it around his tongue. What do I care about their important statements? Those incredibly dynamic future corpses are ludicrous.

When my cat, a feebleminded creature, looks at me avidly in fixed astonishment, seeking to understand and very attentive, yes, it is my mother who is looking at me. Is my mind becoming deranged by that death which ceaselessly I acknowledge, my eyes upturned toward the night sky, where a pale round dead presence is shining, benign and motherly? Since her death I like to live alone sometimes for days on end, far from the absurdly busy living, alone as she was alone in her flat in Marseilles, alone with the phone off the hook so that the world outside does not enter my home as it did not enter hers, alone in this dwelling which has the perfection of death and where I constantly tidy up to convince myself that all is well, alone in my deliciously locked room, too neat and too clean, obsessively symmetrical, with pencils laid out in order of size on the glossy little graveyard of the table.

Seated at the table, I converse with her. I ask her whether I should put on my coat to go out. “Yes, darling, it’s better to be on the safe side.” But it is only me rambling on, imitating her accent. I would like to have her sitting here beside me, embalmed in her black silk dress. If I were to talk to her for a long time, patiently, looking at her intently, perhaps her eyes would suddenly come to life a little, out of pity, out of motherly love. I know very well that this is not true, and yet the idea haunts me.

THERE, I HAVE finished this book and it is a pity. While I was writing it I was with her. But Her Majesty my dead mother will not read these lines written for her and traced by a filial hand in morbid slowness. I do not know what to do now. Should I read this modern poet who racks his brains to be incomprehensible? Should I return to the world outside and see again those monkeys dressed like men who are all conditioned by social life and play bridge and do not like me and talk of their political intrigues, which will be out of date ten years hence?

Sometimes at night, after checking once more the dear little lock on my door, I sit with my hands flat on my knees and, with the lamp switched off, I stare into the mirror. Surrounded by certain minotaurs of melancholy, I wait in front of the mirror while scurrying across the floor like rats flit the shadows of those who were unkind to me in my life among men, and while intermittently piercing the gloom there shines the light of a noble gaze, that of my other love, Yvonne. I wait in front of the mirror, sitting with my hands flat Pharaoh-wise; I wait in the hope that my mother will appear beneath the moon which is her message. But only memories come. Memories — that terrible life which is not life and which gives such pain.

While a dog howls in the night, a wretched dog, my brother who whines and tells of my grief, tirelessly I call to mind memories of the past. I am a baby and she powders me with talc and then, for a joke, puts me in a little house made of three pillows, and the young mother and her baby laugh and laugh. She is dead. Now I am ten, I am ill and she watches over me all night by the glow of the nightlight, above which a little teapot keeps the herb tea warm — glow of the night-light; glow of Maman dozing beside me with her feet on a foot warmer — and I moan because I want her to kiss me. Now it is a few days later, I am convalescing, and she has brought me a licorice whip, which I asked her to go and buy — and how quickly she ran: docile, ever ready! She is sitting by my bed sewing, and her breathing is calm and measured. I am perfectly happy. I crack the licorice whip and then I eat a cookie with tiny little bites, starting with the frilly edges, which are browner and taste nicer, and then I play with her wedding ring, which she has lent me, spinning it on a plate. Kind smiles of my comforting Maman, indulgence of Maman. She is dead. Now I am better, and with leftover bits of dough she makes little men which she is going to fry for me. She is dead. Now we are at the fair. She gives me ten centimes, which I put on the belly of the cardboard bear and — goody! — a cream bun comes out of the belly. “Maman, watch me eat it. It tastes better when you are looking.” She is dead. Now I am twenty and she is waiting for me in the university square, holy patience. She sees me and her face lights up shyly with happiness. She is dead. Now she is welcoming us on the eve of the Sabbath. Before we had time to knock, the door opened as if by magic, her gift of love. She is dead. Now she is proud of having found my pen. “You see, my son, I can find anything.” She is dead. Now I ask her to tidy my room. She does so with a good grace, but she has a little laugh at me. “It would take an army of soldiers to serve you, my son, and you would wear them all out.” What a kindly smile. She is dead. Now she is delighted to be settling her weight into the taxi. Walking tires her so quickly, my sick darling. I feel a sudden pride as I write at the thought that I too am often sick. I am so much like you; I am so much your son. Now she is at the carriage door at the station in Geneva and the train is about to leave. Her hair disheveled and her hat piteously askew, her mouth aghast with distress, her eyes glistening with distress, she is gazing at me intently to take in as much of me as possible before the train pulls out. She blesses me and advises me no to smoke more than twenty cigarettes a day and to dress warmly in winter. Her eyes are crazed with tenderness, divinely crazed. That is motherhood. That is the majesty of love, the sublime law, the gaze of God. Suddenly I see in her the proof that God exists.

Music of infinitely subtle, distraughtly smiling despair, which seeps in and erodes with visions of past and perished happiness. Nevermore. Nevermore will I be a son. Nevermore will we have our interminable chats. And I shall never be able to tell her the tales which in London I was saving up for her and which she alone would have found interesting. Sometimes I still find myself saying, “I must not forget to tell Maman.” And what of the presents I bought for her in London, those pretty lace collars she will never see? I shall have to throw them away. Nevermore will I see her alight from a train, radiant and diffident. Nevermore will I see her suitcases falling apart and crammed with presents that nearly ruined her. Those expeditions to see her son were her great adventure, prepared and saved for long in advance. Oh, her anxiety to make a good impression at the station, her virtuous elegance the evening of her arrival! Yes, I know I have said all this, but no one can stop me displaying my poor treasure. Once again I went to open the door of my room. Yet I know very well that she is never behind the door.