Albert Cohen: Book of My Mother

She was old by then, short and rather stout. But her eyes were magnificent and her hands were dainty and I loved to kiss those hands. I would like to reread the letter her little hand wrote from Marseilles, but I cannot. I am afraid of those signs which still live. When I come upon her letters I put them away again with my eyes shut. And I dare not look at her photographs, for I know that in them she is thinking of me.

“My son. I haven’t studied like you, but I can tell you that the love they write of in books is nothing but the goings-on of heathens. I say they’re playacting. They only see each other when their hair is nicely done and they’re smartly dressed like in the theater. They adore each other, they cry, they kiss each other on the mouth — it’s sickening — and a year later they get a divorce! So what happened to their love? When marriages start with love it’s a bad sign. Those great lovers in the stories you read, I wonder whether they would go on loving their poetess if she was very ill, always in bed, and if he — the man that is — had to care for her like you care for a baby — well, you see what I mean: if he had to do everything for her. Well, I believe he would stop loving her. Do you want me to tell you what true love is? It’s being used to each other and growing old together. Would you like peas or tomatoes with your meatballs?

“My son, tell me what pleasure you find in going to the mountains. What pleasure is there in watching all those cows with their sharpened horns and great big staring eyes? What pleasure do you see in all those rocks? You might fall, so where’s the pleasure? Are you a mule to go climbing up those rocky places which make you giddy? Isn’t it better to go to Nice, where there are gardens and music and taxis and shops? Men are meant to live like men and not among rocks and snakes. Those mountains are like a bandit’s lair. Are you an Albanian? And how can you like all that snow? What pleasure is there in walking through bicarbonate of soda which wets your boots? My heart trembles like a little bird when I see the skis in your room. Those skis are the devil’s horns. Putting yataghans on your feet is madness! Don’t you know that all your skiing devils break their legs? They like it, they’re heathen and thoughtless. Let them break their legs if they like, but you are a Cohen, a descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses, our master.” At that point I reminded her that Moses had gone to the top of Mount Sinai. She was taken aback. That was obviously no mean precedent. She thought for a while, after which she explained that Mount Sinai wasn’t a very big mountain, that Moses had only been there once, and, what was more, he had gone there not for pleasure but to see God.

SHE SPEAKS no more, she who spoke so sweetly. Her life ended piteously. She was snatched from my arms as in a dream. She died in Occupied France during the war, while I was in London. She had cherished such hopes of spending her old age with me, only to come to that end: the fear of the Germans, the yellow Star of David, my harmless lamb, shame walking the street, poverty perhaps, and her son far away. Did they manage to keep it from her that she was dying and would never see me again? She had so often written in her letters of the joy of seeing me again. Seems we must praise God and thank Him for His blessings.

They took her up, mute, and she did not resist, she who had been so busy in her kitchen. They took her from the bed where she had so often thought of her son, where she had so often waited for letters from her son, where she had had so many nightmares in which her son was in mortal danger. They took her up, stiff, they put her in a box, and then they screwed down the lid. Locked up in a box like a thing, a thing which two horses bore away, and the people in the street went on with their shopping.

They lowered her into a hole, and she did not protest, she who had talked so vivaciously, little hands never still. And now she is silent under the earth, locked up in the earthen jail which she may not leave, imprisoned and mute in her solitude of earth, with stifling earth oppressive and inexorable above her, and her little hands will move no more, nevermore. A Salvation Army poster informed me yesterday that God loves me.

All alone down there, poor useless creature dumped in the earth, all alone, and they were kind enough to slap a heavy marble slab, a corpse-press, on top of her to make sure she would not run away.

Deep down in earth, my darling, while my hand which she fashioned, my hand which she kissed, still moves. Deep down in earth, she, one alive, laid out now in eternal idleness, forever still, she who in her virginal youth danced chaste and gay mazurkas. All is ended, all is ended, no more Maman, nevermore. We are both so alone; you in your earth, I in my room. I am part dead among the living, you are part alive among the dead. Just now you may be smiling just a little because my headache is a touch better.

TO WEEP for one’s mother is to weep for one’s childhood. Man wants his childhood, wants it back again, and if he loves his mother more as he grows older, it is because his mother is his childhood. I was a child, I am a child no more, and I cannot accept it. Suddenly I recall our arrival in Marseilles. I was five. When I came off the ship, clutching the skirt of Maman, who was wearing a cherry-trimmed straw hat, I was frightened by the trams, for those vehicles moved by themselves. I sought comfort in the thought that there must be a horse hidden inside.

We knew no one in Marseilles, where we had come from our Greek island of Corfu. We landed as in a dream, my father, my mother, and I — as in some absurd, slightly clownish dream. Why Marseilles? The leader of our expedition himself did not know why. He had heard that Marseilles was a big city. My poor father’s first exploit, a few days after we arrived, was to let himself be robbed blind by a businessman whose hair was fair and whose nose was not hooked. I can still see my parents crying in their cheap hotel room, as they sat on the edge of the bed. Maman’s tears dropped onto the cherry-trimmed hat in her lap. I was crying too, though I did not understand what had happened.

Soon after we landed my father left me, in a state of terror and bewilderment, for I knew not a word of French, in a little school run by Catholic sisters. I stayed there from morning till evening while my parents tried to earn a living in a vast, frightening world. Sometimes they had to leave so early in the morning that they had not the heart to wake me. So when the alarm rang at seven I would find the coffeepot swathed in flannel by my mother, who had made time, at five in the morning, to sketch a comforting little drawing as a substitute for her kiss and leave it propped up against my cup. I can see some of those drawings now: a boat carrying Albert, minute beside a gigantic bar of nougat which was all for him; an elephant called Guillaume carrying his girlfriend, an ant who answered to the sweet name of Nastrine; a little hippopotamus who wouldn’t finish his soup; a chick with a vaguely rabbinical air playing with a lion. On such days I breakfasted alone, facing the photograph of Maman which she had also placed opposite my cup to keep me company. As I ate my breakfast I thought of Paul, a handsome child who was my ideal and my best friend — so much so that one Thursday I invited him home and enthusiastically gave him all our silver cutlery, which he calmly accepted. Or else I told myself adventure stories in which I saved France, galloping at the head of a regiment. I can still see myself cutting the bread, taking care to poke out my tongue because I thought that essential for smooth slicing. I recall how, when I left the flat, I would close the door with a lasso. I was five or six and very small. The doorknob was placed very high, so I would fish a bit of string out of my pocket, shut one eye, and take aim. When I had caught the china knob I would pull it toward me. Following my parents’ advice, I would then bang on the door several times to make sure it was really closed. I have kept the habit.