My Mother's Book
(Le Livre de ma mère)
by
Albert Cohen
English translation
1993
E. M. Langille
My Mother's Book
I
Each man is alone and each holds all others in contempt and our grief is a desert island. Still, that is no reason not to take comfort, this evening, in words. Poor lost soul sitting at his desk taking comfort in words, sitting at his desk, the telephone off the hook because he is frightened of the outside, and, in the evening, if the telephone is off the hook, he feels like a king, protected from evil outside. So quick to nastiness; nasty for nothing.
Such a curious happiness, sad and crippled but soft like weakness or contraband liquor, such happiness, just the same, to be writing, at this moment, alone in my kingdom and far from the knaves outside. Who are these knaves? I shan't tell you. I don't want any trouble. I don't want them coming to intrude on my sham peace or to keep me from writing page after page, by the dozen, by the hundred, depending on my preference and my destiny. I, furthermore, have resolved, once and for all, to tell all painters that they are gifted -- if not, they bite. And, as a general rule, I tell everyone how charming they are. Such is my everyday manner. But at night, and until daybreak, I have a few thoughts of my own.
Sumptuous, you, my golden pen, dance across the paper, go! Dance whilst I still have the youth, go! Find your slow irregular path, hesitating, as in a dream, little path, awkward but controlled. Go! I love you, you, my only consolation; go on dancing across the pages where sadly I find pleasure, squinting sullenly in enjoyment. Yes words, my homeland, they console and avenge. But they will never bring back my mother. However filled with the fiery past, pounding in my head, however sweet smelling, the words I write will never bring back my dead mother. The night's forbidden subject. In the background the image of my mother alive, when, for the last time I saw her in France, in the background, maternal ghost.
Suddenly at my desk, because everything is in its place and because there is hot coffee and cigarettes and my lighter is working and my pen dances and I am close by the fire and my cat, I have a moment of happiness so intense that my eyes well with tears. I pity myself; pity this childish capacity for happiness -- bad omen. Oh! What pity to feel so contented, all because of a pen that writes smoothly, pity for this poor hapless heart that longs to stop aching, longs to find some reason to go on living. Then, for a few minutes, I find myself in a tiny middle class oasis whose comforts I relish intensely. But grief lies in wait, underneath the surface, permanent, unforgettable. Yes, I relish being, if but for a few moments, an honest burgher, like them. One loves to be what one is not. And no one's soul is more refined than that of a true bourgeoise, she who falls into a trance on hearing verse and, who, at the sight of a Cézanne, froths at the mouth, holding court, in her inimitable jargon, picked up here and there, pointing to mass and volume, and declaring that nothing is more sensuous than that red! And your sister, is she sensuous? Now, where was I? I know, let's draw a little picture in the margin to help gather our thoughts, a little neurasthenic picture, a slow picture full of decisions and schemes, a strange island, a spiritual homeland, an oasis of thought which, in its turn, follows the ever curving lines, a little drawing not quite demented, careful, childish and devoted. Shush! don't wake her, daughters of Jerusalem, don't wake her whilst she sleeps.
Who is sleeping? asks my pen. Who is sleeping, if not my mother, eternally. Don't wake her, daughters of Jerusalem, my grief is buried in the cemetery of a town whose name I cannot bring myself to pronounce for this name is a synonym of my mother buried in the earth. Go pen, now curving, no longer hesitant, be reasonable and once again an instrument of clarity, dip your nib in will and don't make such long commas. This inspiration is pointless. Soul, oh my pen, be brave and hardworking, leave the land of the obscure, stop being foolish, almost foolish and unsparing, morbidly unsparing. And you my only friend, you whom I see in the looking glass, hold back your dry tears and, now that you dare, speak -- with a heart of false bronze -- of your dead mother, speak calmly, feign calmness, who knows? Perhaps you'll grow accustomed to it. Speak of your mother in 'their' detached manner, whistle a lullaby and make believe that things are not so tragic, smile that you might go on living, smile in the looking glass and when you are in company, smile even at this page. Smile in your mourning more breathless than fear. Smile, that you might believe that nothing matters, smile and force yourself to feign life, smile underneath the dangling sword of your mother's death, smile your whole life through, smile until it kills you.
II
Friday afternoon, which, in the Jewish household, is the beginning of the holy Sabbath, my mother wore her finery. She wore her solemn black silk dress and what jewellery she had not sold. For I, in my happy youth, was a prodigal son and gave banknotes prodigiously to old bearded beggars. And if a friend fancied my cigarette case, the gilt case was his. In Geneva, where I was a generous hearted student, foolish though tender, she sold her most noble jewels. Jewels of which she was naively proud and which were the outward sign of her personal dignity, my darling, daughter of notables, dignity of a forgotten age.
So often, always, cheated by the estate jewellers, she sold her jewels for me, behind my father's back. My father's harshness frightened us, her me, and made us accomplices. I still see her coming out of a Geneva jewellers, so proud of the meagre, grand sum she had secured for me, happy, overcome with happiness, happy to have sold her treasured earrings for me, her rings and her pearls, the adornments of her cast, honour of an Levantine lady. So happy, my darling, already walking with difficulty, already tracked by death. So happy to be rid of her jewels for me, to give me the banknotes, which, in a very few days, would turn to smoke in my young and ready hands. I took the banknotes, carefree and golden, so little preoccupied with my mother, for I had sparkling sharp teeth and was the loved lover, although loving, of a beautiful girl, and of another and another and so on infinitely in the shimmering looking glass of the Castle of Love. I took the banknotes and did not know, son that I was, that those humble, great sums were my mother's offering on the altar of motherhood. Oh priestess of your son, oh majesty that I was much to slow to recognize -- too late now.
Every Sabbath when I came home from Geneva for the holiday, my mother waited for my father and me, sprigs of myrtle in hand, to return from the synagogue. Having finished her housework for the Sabbath, her humble apartment, her Jewish kingdom and her poor homeland, she was seated, alone, at the ceremonious Sabbath table, ceremonious she waited for her husband and her son. Seated, constraining herself, immobile so not to spoil her finery, breathless and prim, corseted with dignity, breathless to be so well groomed and respectable, breathless at the thought of pleasing her two lovers, her husband and her son. Soon she will hear their footsteps on the stairs, breathless under her shining hair, anointed with venerable sweet almond oil, for she was artful in her finery, breathless like a little girl on prize giving day, my ageing mother waiting for her two reasons for living, her son and her husband.
Seated beneath a portrait of me at fifteen, her altar, that horrid picture which she thought exquisite, seated at the Sabbath table, three candles already lighted, at the feast table, already a small corner of the kingdom of the Messiah, my mother breathed happily, yet not without some quickness, for soon they would be here, her two men, her life's two lights. Oh yes, she thought rejoicing, they will find the apartment clean and luxurious. They will compliment her for her immaculate housekeeping; compliment her on the elegance of her dress. Her son appeared to pay no mind but he noticed everything, would cast a quick glance on her new collar, her lace cuffs and, certainly these refinements would meet with his august approval. And bursting with pride she already imagined every word that she would tell them, with some slight, innocent, exaggeration perhaps, of her remarkable domestic prowess. And they will see just how competent she is, a queenly housekeeper. Such was the ambition of my mother.
She sat, swollen with maternal love, listing, in her mind, all that she had cooked, cleaned and put away. Now and again she would go out to the kitchen and, with her tiny hands where shone a noble wedding ring, she would gracefully, uselessly, poke meatballs simmering in their tomato sauce. Her dimpled, little hands with skin so soft that it warranted my compliments -- not without some hypocrisy and much love -- for her naive satisfaction delighted me. She was so skilful in the kitchen, so clumsy at everything else. But in her kitchen, spruce old lady, what a first rate captain she was.
My mother's naive poking in her kitchen, poking the meatballs with her wooden spoon, ritual, wise poking, tender and sweet, absurd and useless, so loving and contented, announcing that all was perfect and would meet with the approval of her two fussy men. Oh my mother's expert and silly poking, all alone, smiling imperceptibly in her kitchen, awkward, majestic grace, my mother's majesty.
Back from her kitchen she would sit down, very prim in her domestic calling, satisfied with her adequate, little destiny of loneliness, exclusively adorned by husband and son whose servant she was and guardian protector. This woman who had once been young and pretty was a daughter of the Law of Moses, a moral law, which in her eyes, was more important than God. No amorous love affairs, no escapades à la Karenina. No. But a husband and a son to guide and to serve with humble majesty. She did not marry for love. She was proposed in marriage and she docilely accepted. And biblical love was born, so different from my own western passions. My mother's sacred love was born in marriage, grew with the birth of the child that I was and was fulfilled in the sacred bond of husband and wife, allied against evil. There are passions iridescent and glistening. There is no greater love.
On one Sabbath that now comes to mind, she was sitting, waiting, pleased with herself and with her son's good countenance. She was planning to prepare some marzipan on Sunday. "I'll cook it better than last time" she thought. And, oh yes, on Sunday she would make a corn cake for him with lots of sultanas. Very well. Suddenly, noticing that it was already 8 o’clock she was overcome with dread, losing, if only for a moment, her studied composure, loosing, at the same time that self-control which is the prerogative of self-assured peoples, those certain of tomorrow, those accustomed to happiness. They said they'd be home by 7 o'clock. An accident? Run over? Her forehead pearled with sweat, she checks the clock in the bedroom. Only ten to seven. Smile in the looking glass -- thanks be to the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. But closing the door she scrapes her hand on a nail -- tetanus! Quick! iodine. She dreaded death, and worse the thought of the night gown that she wore on her wedding night and which she would wear again on the day of her death, the terrible nightgown, put away in the bottom drawer of her wardrobe, terrifying drawer never opened. In spite of her religious faith she could not bring herself to believe in eternal life. Then, suddenly, life returns, she hears footsteps in the stairwell, the touching footsteps of her two beloved.
One last glance in the looking glass to wipe off that dusting of powder, put on in secret and with an enormous feeling of guilt, a naive white powder sold by Roger et Gallet and which was called, I think, Vera Violetta. And hastily, she opens the door, secured by a safety chain, because you never know, and memories of pogroms are tenacious. Quickly prepare for the entrance of the two beloved. Thus was the passionate life of my saintly mother. Very little like Hollywood, as you can see. Compliments from her husband and her son. Of life, that is all she asked.
She opened the door without their having to knock. Neither father nor son expressed surprise that the door open magically. They were used to it and knew that she, always ready, lie in wait for love. Yes ready, so much so that her searching eyes, forever inquiring after my health angered me on occasion. Secretly I hated her for watching me so closely, for guessing. Oh sacred guardian forever lost! Standing in front of the open door she was smiling, breathless, dignified, almost flirtatious. Such I remember her, when I dare, as if the dead were living. "Welcome", she would say with timid and sententious dignity, longing to please us, breathless on this Sabbath to be so dignified and beautiful. "Welcome, peaceful Sabbath", she would say, and, hands splayed like shafts of light she blessed me, a priestess, glared at me with the ardour of a wild beast, with all the amber watchfulness of a lioness, to see if I was still in good health, or, with maternal solicitation, if I looked sad or worried. But on this day everything was perfect. She smelled the sweet scent of the myrtle we brought for her. She rubbed the sprigs in her dainty hands, drinking in the divine perfume a little theatrically as becomes one of our oriental tribe. At that moment she was so beautiful, my old mother, already moving with difficulty, my mother.