Book of My Mother Read Online Free Page A

President of the Republic – Loubet or Fallières, whom I thought was a genius – and the photograph of an unknown colonel, the rank I deemed the most distinguished and even more to be envied than that of the general, God alone knows why. Wrapped in gilt paper was a hair which a wag of a schoolmate had sworn was from the head of a soldier of the French Revolution and for which he had made me pay a very high price – at least a hundred apricot pits. Propped up against an eggcup was a dwarf-sized poem from me to France. Inside the eggcup were paper flowers standing guard over the photograph of a dear departed canary. Stuck on the walls of my minute temple were some little votive tablets on which I had inscribed lofty and original thoughts such as “Glory Be to France” or “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Some Jewish conspiracy! The image of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion .
    I remember that I had such a strong accent that my schoolmates jeered when I made ambitious plans to sit the baccalaureate. They said I would never write and speak French like them. Actually, they were quite right. Bernadet, Miron, Louraille – suddenly their illustrious names come back to me.

VI
     
    W E KNEW NO ONE in Marseilles. Poor but proud, we associated with no one. Or rather no one associated with us. But we did not admit it to ourselves, or perhaps we did not realize it. We were so naïve, so lost in the Western world, and so artless that when my parents lit a fire they did not use logs but thin sticks, which were immediately reduced to ashes. And, to crown it all, they took care to leave the protecting metal cover down till the end of the process, because they thought that was more hygienic. These two fugitives from the Orient, where it was always springtime and fireplaces were unknown, genuinely believed that flames left unscreened in that mysterious thing called a fireplace would emit deadly fumes. Was it not some such devilish contraption that had suffocated the man my mother used to call “the great Zola”? Of course she had read none of his books, but she knew he had defended Captain Dreyfus. (“Whatever gave that Dreyfus the idea of joining the army with a great big knife in his belt?” she would say. “Such jobs are not for us.”) Anyway, to come back to our heating system, we froze in front of a roaring chimney and lowered metal cover. We warmed ourselves in front of an icy noise.
    We were social nobodies, completely isolated, cut off from the world outside. So in winter my mother and I would go to the theater together on Sundays, staunch friends, two shy, gentle creatures vaguely seeking in those three hours at the theater a substitute for the social life which we were denied. That misfortune shared and never before confessed is such a strong bond between my mother and me.
    We had our Sunday outings in the summer too, when I was a small boy. We were not rich, but the tram ride round the cliff road overlooking the sea cost only fifteen centimes. Those one-hour rides were our summer holidays, our social life, and our hunting expeditions. There we were, my mother and I, fragile, well dressed and loving enough to outdo God. I well remember one of those Sunday outings. It must have been about the time of President Fallières, hulking, red faced, and common looking, who had made me shiver with respect when he had come to visit our school. “The leader of France!” I kept saying to myself, goose-pimply with admiration.
    On the Sunday I have in mind, my mother and I were absurdly well dressed, and I look back with pity on those two naïve creatures of long ago, so pointlessly dressed to the nines, for no one was with them and no one paid attention to them. They were all dressed up for no one. I wore the incongruous costume of a little prince, and with my girlish face I looked angelic and ecstatic enough to invite stoning. She was the Queen of Sheba in middle-class clothes, corseted, excited and slightly bewildered by her