Albert Cohen: Book of My Mother

Suddenly she took my arm, savored the joy of resting on it and of having another three weeks to spend with me. “Tell me, eyes of mine, those fables you write (that is what she called a novel I had just published), how do you find them in your head? In the newspaper they describe an accident: that isn’t difficult — it’s something that actually happened and they have only to put the right words down. But you write inventions, hundreds of pages straight out of your brain. It’s a wonder of the world!” In my honor she repudiated her former deities. “Writing a book is difficult, but being a doctor is nothing. They just repeat what they’ve learned in books, and they put on such airs with their waiting rooms, where they always keep a dying bronze lioness. Hundreds of pages,’ she repeated dreamily. “Poor me, I can’t even write a letter of sympathy. Once I’ve said, ‘I send you my condolences,’ I don’t know what else to say. You ought to write me a model for sympathy letters — but don’t use big words, because that would show them that I hadn’t written it myself.” All at once she sighed happily: “It’s so nice to go for a walk with you. You at least listen to me. With you I can have a conversation.”

That day I bought her a pair of soft suede shoes, ignoring her protests. (“Keep your money, my son — old women don’t need suede shoes.”) I remember how eager she was to get home ‘to look at them — I can’t wait.” I can see her now, opening the parcel in the lift, then walking triumphantly round my flat with her news shoes in her hand, gazing at them, holding them away from her, closing one eye the better to see them, explaining their visible and invisible charms. She had the intense, excessive emotional reactions of genius. Before going to bed, she put the shoes by her bedside — “So that I can see them as soon as I wake in the morning.” She fell asleep proud of having a good son. Content with so little, my dear mother. At breakfast the next day she put her treasured shoes on the table beside the coffeepot. “My little guests.” She smiled. There was a ring at the door, and she trembled. A telegram from Marseilles? But it was only my tailor delivering a suit. Excitement of Maman, festive atmosphere. She felt the material and declared with an air of great experience (she knew nothing about it) that it was Scotch wool. “May you wear it in joy and in health,” she said sententiously. Placing her hand on my head, she also expressed the hope that I would wear it for a hundred years, which depressed me slightly. When, yielding to her entreaties, I tried on the new suit, she surveyed me ecstatically, hands clasped. “A real sultan’s son!” she proclaimed. And she could not refrain from mentioning what she so much desired: “There, all you need now is a fiancée.” I remember, it was that morning she made me swear never to travel in an “Angel of Death.” That was what she called airplanes. She is dead.

IN MY SOLITUDE I sing to myself the gentle, so very gentle, lullaby which my mother used to sing me — my mother on whom death has laid its icy touch — and there is a dry, strangled sob in my throat when I think that her little hands are warm no more and that nevermore will I hold them, soft and soothing, to my brow. Nevermore will I feel the featherlight touch of her awkward kisses. Nevermore will I see her, never will I be able to wipe away my moments of indifference or anger.

I was spiteful to her once, and she did not deserve it. Oh, the cruelty of sons! Oh, the cruelty of the absurd scene which I made! And for what reason? Because at four in the morning, worried that I had not yet come home and never able to sleep until her son had come home, she had phoned the smart set who had invited me and who were certainly her inferiors. She had phoned to be reassured, to be sure I had come to no harm. On my return I made an abominable scene. That scene is tattooed on my heart. I can see her now, so humble, my saintly mother, in the face of my stupid scolding, so heartrendingly humble, so conscious of her offense, of what she was sure was an offense. So convinced of her guilt, poor soul who had done no wrong. She was sobbing — my poor little child was sobbing. Oh, her tears that I will never be able not to have caused! Oh, her little hands in despair, on which blue marks had appeared! You see, darling, I am trying to atone by confessing. What deep suffering we can inflict on those who love us, and how awful is our power to hurt them. And what advantage we take of that power. And why was I so shamefully angry? Perhaps because her foreign accent and her incorrect French when she phoned those cultured cretins had embarrassed me. Nevermore will I hear her incorrect French and her foreign accent.

Avenged on myself, I feel it is right and proper that I should suffer, for that night I caused suffering to a blundering saint — a true saint who was unaware that she was a saint. Brother humans, brothers in wretchedness and in superficiality, what a mockery is our filial love! I stormed at her because she loved me too much, because her heart was too ardent, because she was easily alarmed and overanxious about her son. I can hear her reassuring me. You are right, Maman, I was cruel to you but once, and I asked your forgiveness, which you granted so joyfully. You know, do you not, that I loved you with all my heart. How happy we were together, what chattering accomplices we were — such garrulous good friends, talking interminably. But I could have loved you yet more and written to you each day and given you each day a sense of your importance, which I alone was able to give you and which made you so proud, you who were humble and unacknowledged, my little genius, Maman, my dearest girl.

I did not write her often enough. I did not have enough love in me to picture her opening her mailbox in Marseilles several times a day and finding it empty. (Now, whenever I open my mailbox and do not find my daughter’s letter — that letter I have been expecting for weeks — there is a faint smile on my face. My mother is avenged.) Worst of all, I was sometimes annoyed by her telegrams. Poor telegrams from Marseilles, always with the same wording: “Worried no news wire health.” I hate myself for having once wired in reply, with the perfume of a nymph still on my face, “I am absolutely fine letter follows.” The letter did not follow very soon. Darling, this book is my last letter.

I cling to the thought that when I had grown up (it took quite a time) I used to give her money in secret, and with it the disinterested joy of knowing she was being looked after by her son. I should have bought her a vacuum cleaner. It would have given her poetic pleasure. She would have paid it a little visit from time to time, cherished it, and examined it from all angles, taking an artistic little step backward and sighing with satisfaction. Those things mattered to her, gave color to her life. I also clutch at the thought that I so often listened to her and took part hypocritically in the family feuds which she found so absorbing and which bored me rather. I agreed with her, told her she was right to criticize a particular relative who was in her bad books — the very same relative whom she praised to the skies two days later if she received a nice letter from him. I cling to the poor consolation of recalling how well I adapted my pace to the needs of her poor weak heart. “You’re not like the others, my son — you at least walk at a normal speed. It’s a pleasure to go for a walk with you.” I should just think so. We were doing about three hundred meters an hour.

I also find comfort in remembering that I was good at flattering her. When she wore a new dress, which was never in fact new but invariably made over and which did not suit her very well, I would say, “You’re smart as a young girl.” She would glow with shy happiness, blush, and believe me. At each of my whopping compliments she would make her special dainty gesture of putting her little hand to her lips. She was then absolutely radiant, for her self-esteem was restored. What did it matter that she was alone and disdained? She drank in my praise, she had a son. But my only true comfort is that she cannot see how miserable her death has made me. Rubbing my hands in an effort to raise my spirits, I have just confided that thought to my cat, who purred politely.