Promise at Dawn, Page 3

  “Roland Campéador; Alain Brisar; Hubert de Longpré; Romain Cortès . . .”

  But no, I could see from the expression on her face that none of them was good enough, and I was beginning to wonder whether I should ever find a name beautiful and promising enough to fit her dream and everything she wanted for me.

  Years later, when for the first time I heard the name of General de Gaulle on the day of his famous call to arms over the London radio, on June 18, 1940, my first reaction was one of anger with myself for not having hit on this magnificent name fifteen years earlier, during my endless search for a good pseudonym. “Charles de Gaulle”—this would certainly have pleased my mother, especially if I had written it with only one “l,” like our old Gaul, mother of France. I can only say that life is paved with missed opportunities.

  CHAPTER 4

  The maternal love in which I basked suddenly presented me with a quite unexpected and extremely gratifying bit of good fortune.

  When business was good, that is, when the sale of some of the “family jewels” permitted my mother to look forward to a month of relative material security, her first concern was to pay a visit to a good hairdresser, followed by tea on the terrace of the Hôtel Royal while listening to a gypsy orchestra—she loved gypsy music and songs and, to my embarrassment, she would always pick up some bit of the song with delight but rather too loudly; then, with that optimistic streak in her nature that no hardship or financial disaster could ever dampen, she would hire a daily maid, convinced that our difficulties were over, and that prosperity was there to stay. The only housework that my mother always resented was scrubbing the floors, and for her to have a maid was a supreme luxury and gave her a tremendous feeling of achievement. She had always been extremely status conscious in an old-fashioned, naïve and childish way. Once, during her absence, trying to be helpful, and knowing her distaste for this harmless housework, I armed myself with a floor cloth, a bucket of water and a piece of household soap and proceeded to wash the floor of our little apartment. Unfortunately, my mother returned from her errands earlier than I expected and caught me on all fours, rubbing, scrubbing, polishing and generally doing my best. She looked horror-stricken; her lips began to tremble and tears came to her eyes as she stared at me with an expression of hurt reproach; I must have spent at least an hour trying to console her, reminding her that we were living in a democratic country where such little household chores were considered quite normal and not in the least degrading.

  Mariette, the new maid, was a sturdy young woman with invitingly suggestive thighs, earthy legs, dark, mischievous eyes, and blessed with such a firm, round, lively and truly impressive behind that the haunting vision of that interesting aspect of her personality frequently obscured the face of my math teacher at school. This infinitely absorbing and fascinating vision was actually the sole reason for my wide-eyed and trancelike contemplation of that excellent man’s features. My mouth slightly open and my throat dry, my eyes riveted to his face and my cheeks burning, I sat there, unable, needless to say, to pay the slightest attention to what he was saying, and when, turning his back to the class, he would start to write algebra signs on the board, I would make an effort to transfer my hallucinated gaze to the black surface, only to see the object of my dreams take shape there too—ever since then black has always had on me the happiest effect. Whenever the good professor, flattered by my fascinated attention, asked me a question, I rolled my eyes and swallowed hard and stared at Mariette’s posterior with an expression of mild surprise, until the irritated voice of Monsieur Valu brought me down to earth.

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” the teacher exclaimed. “You seem to be hanging on my every word and yet you’re obviously absorbed in something else!”

  This was correct.

  With the best of wills it was impossible for me to explain to this excellent man what it was that I saw with such perfection in lieu of his face.

  And so Mariette began to play a part in my life which grew larger and more important every day. It got hold of me as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning and would last more or less all day long. As soon as this Mediterranean goddess graced our little apartment with her undulating presence, my heart would jump into my throat and my hair almost stand on end, while I tried to remain motionless on my bed, terribly burdened and awkward. I also often had goose flesh, I shook, and once or twice, when she came too close, I got suddenly covered with hives from head to foot. In spite of this state of semiconsciousness and stupor into which my deity threw me every morning, it slowly dawned on me that Mariette too was observing me with a certain amount of interest. Once or twice she would come very close, put her hands on her hips, stare at me with a dreamy smile, sigh, shake her head, and say with a certain amount of wonder:

  “She can never stop talking about you. She just goes on, and on. . .. And all the great things you’re going to do and all the beautiful ladies who are going to love you, and this and that. . . . In the end it does something to me. Maybe she thinks I am made of wood, or something.”

  I felt rather put out. My mother was the last person I wanted to be bothered with just then. Twisted on my bed, doubled in two, knees up, head against the wall, I hardly dared move.

  “She speaks of you as if you were a Prince Charming or something. . . . My little Romain here, my little Romain there . . . I know it’s only because she’s your mother, but in the end, a girl begins to wonder. . . .”

  Mariette’s voice had a most peculiar effect on me. It was a voice unlike any other I have ever heard. To begin with, it didn’t seem to come from her throat at all—though where it did come from I didn’t in the least know. And even more strangely, it didn’t go where voices are supposed to go. In any case, it certainly didn’t go to my ears. It was very odd.

  “It gets me, in the end,” Mariette concluded. “I begin to wonder what it is that makes you so special. . . .”

  She would stare at me for another second, then turn away, and go back to her work. I would lie there on the bed unable to move, reduced from head to foot to the helpless rigidity of a felled tree. Neither of us spoke another word. Now and again Mariette would turn her head in my direction, sigh and go on rubbing the floor: the sight of such an appalling waste was heartbreaking. I desperately wanted to do something about it, but I felt quite literally nailed to the bed. Soon the work would be finished and Mariette would go home. I saw her leave with the feeling that a part of my flesh had left me forever. My life was over. I was a failure. Roland de Chantecler, Artemis Kohinore and Hubert de la Roche Rouge gave up pretending, stuck their fists in their eyes and set up a terrible howling.

  But I was soon to learn the famous French saying: a woman’s will is God’s will. Mariette kept looking at me oddly, her feminine curiosity and, probably, some obscure rivalry or jealousy aroused by my mother’s never-ending love song and the highly-colored, romantic and intriguing picture she was constantly conjuring up of the triumphant future awaiting me. And so at last the miracle occurred. I still remember vividly that mischievous face close to mine, the hand gently caressing my cheek, that moment of total deliverance, of strangely satisfying weightlessness, as I was floating somewhere in another and better world and the throaty voice murmuring into my ear:

  “You mustn’t tell her, Monsieur Romain. It just got me in the end. Course she’s your mother, but then the way she speaks about you, as if there had never been anyone like you . . . I just couldn’t help it. I just had to find out. Mother or no mother, there will never be another woman to love you the way she does. That’s God’s honest truth.”

  It was. But I didn’t know it then. It was only after my fortieth winter that I began to understand. It is wrong to have been loved so much so young, so early. At the dawn of life, you thus acquire a bad habit, the worst habit there is: the habit of being loved. You can’t get rid of it. You believe that you have it in you, that you have it in you to be loved, that it is your due, that it will always be there around you, that it can always b
e found again, that the world owes it to you, and you keep looking, thirsting, summoning, until you find yourself on the beach at Big Sur, with only your brother the ocean, and his tortured tumult, with only your brother the ocean able to understand your heart. In your mother’s love, life makes you a promise at the dawn of life that it will never keep. You have known something that you will never know again. You will go hungry to the end of your days. Leftovers, cold tidbits, that’s what you will find in front of you at each new feast. After that first encounter so early in the dawn, each time a woman takes you in her arms and presses you to her heart and murmurs sweet words into your ear, you will always do your best to forget and to believe, but you will always know better. You will always crawl back to your mother’s grave and howl like a lost dog. Never again, never again, never again. Lovely arms embrace your neck, gentle lips whisper sweetly into your ear, and in those eyes you will catch glimpses of beauty now and then, but it’s too late, too little, you know where all the beauty lies, and from this first and final knowledge not even the sweetest breast can bribe you away. You have long since found the spring and you have drunk it dry. You will walk through the desert from mirage to mirage, and your thirst will remain such that you will become a drunkard, but each sweet gulp will only rekindle your longing for the one and only source. Wherever you go, you carry within you the poison of comparisons, and you spend your days waiting for something you have already had and will never have again.

  I am not saying that mothers should be prevented from loving their young. I am only saying that they should have someone else to love as well. If my mother had had a husband or a lover I would not have spent my days dying of thirst beside so many fountains.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Mariette episode came to an end in an abrupt and unexpected manner. One morning I sauntered off innocently for school with my satchel under my arm, but soon turned about and ran back home to join my love, who usually made her appearance at the flat at about half past eight. By then my mother was on her way to work, catching, bag in hand, the eight-fifteen bus for Cannes, where she hoped to find buyers for the “family jewels” among the English visitors at the Hôtel Martinez. We had every reason to feel completely safe. But fate, in its usual beastly manner, thought it funny to organize a bus strike that very morning, and so my mother was obliged to turn back. Hardly had she opened the front door when, to her horror, she heard what she thought were cries of pain and, convinced that I was dying on the floor in the throes of acute appendicitis—the threat of a fatal attack of appendicitis was always present in her mind, a humble and prosaic incarnation of Greek tragedy—she rushed to my rescue. I had just come back to my senses, and was submerged in that happy state of beatitude and absence which is one of mankind’s greater moments here below. At the age of thirteen and a half I had the feeling that my life had been a complete success, that I had fulfilled my destiny and, from my seat among the gods, I was looking with detachment at my big toe, the only reminder of that lowly earth where common mortals dwelt. It was one of those moments of total serenity which the spiritual part of me, always aspiring to the heights of philosophical detachment, so often compelled me to seek in the days of my meditative youth; one of those moments when all the materialistic and cynical views of life collapse like pathetic fabrications before the sovereign evidence of life’s beauty, meaning and wisdom, and when every man experiences the triumphant feeling of an artist of genius who has just entirely expressed himself. In this state of euphoria, I accepted my mother’s sudden arrival on the scene as I would have accepted any other manifestation of unleashed elements—that is to say, in a spirit of indulgence. I welcomed her with a mild smile. Mariette’s reaction was somewhat different. With a piercing shriek, she jumped out of bed. The ensuing scene did manage, however, to arouse in me some interest, and from my Olympian peak I observed it with a vague curiosity. My mother was still holding her cane in her hand, and, having in a flash grasped the full extent of the disaster, she raised her arm and went into immediate action. The cane descended upon the face of my math teacher with vigor and accuracy. Mariette began to howl and did her best to protect that adorable aspect of her personality. In one instant, the small room filled with a terrifying tumult, above which the old Russian word kourva (whore) rose with all the vibrant power of my mother’s sense of drama and art of delivery.

  She had to the highest degree the sense of invective: in a few well-chosen words her poetic and inspired nature could miraculously create an atmosphere compared to which Gorki’s Lower Depths would appear ethereal and refined; it took very little for this distinguished-looking white-haired lady, who so deeply impressed by her unmistakably aristocratic poise the purchasers of our “family jewels,” to conjure suddenly before the eyes of her flabbergasted audience all the holy Russia of drunken coachmen, swearing moujiks and Volga boatmen; she had been blessed, without any doubt, with a truly impressive talent for holding an audience spellbound, and this stunning and earth-shaking scene, of which I still cannot think without a shudder, seemed to support fully her claim that she had been in her youth a great dramatic artist on the Russian stage.

  This last point, however, remains for me to this day rather obscure. True, I had always known that my mother was once a “dramatic artist” and how proud her voice sounded, whenever she uttered those words! I still have a vision of myself, at the age of five or six, sitting beside her in a sleigh, with only the tip of my nose emerging from under the heavy blanket, listening to the melancholy tinkling of the horses’ bells as we were driven, through snow-bound wastes, from some freezing factory where my mother had been “giving Chekhov” for an audience of workers, or from some desolate barracks where she had been entertaining the gaping audience of soldiers and sailors of the Revolution with “poetry reading.” I can see myself no less clearly sitting on the floor of her dressing room in a Moscow theatre, playing with odds and ends of multicolored stuffs which I was trying to arrange into a harmonious pattern—my earliest attempts at artistic expression. I even remember the name of the play in which she was appearing at that time: Le Chien du Jardinier. The mysterious inside world of the theatre is among my earliest childhood memories: the delicious smell of wood and paint, the empty stage where I adventured cautiously in a sham forest, and stopped frozen with fear at the sudden sight of the dark auditorium gaping at me. I can still see the painted faces of the actors, looking strangely yellow, with black and white circles around their eyes, smiling at me; men and women in fantastic clothes and with bright red lips holding me on their knees, while my mother was in front of the footlights. And I remember a Soviet sailor perching me on his shoulders, so that I might see my mother playing the part of Rosa in The Shipwreck of Hope, and her stage name written on the door of her dressing room—the first Russian words that I learned to spell out for myself: Nina Borisovskaia. It would seem, therefore, that my mother was not exaggerating when she proudly talked of her “artistic past,” and that her position in the small world of the Russian theatre, round about the years 1919-1920, was solidly established. On the other hand, Ivan Mosjoukine, the great movie actor of the silent-picture era, who had known my mother in her earlier days, has always been curiously evasive on the subject of her stage career. Fixing me with his strange pale eyes under the famous Cagliostro brows, he only once referred to the subject in an elusive way, on the terrace of the Grande Bleue, where he often invited me for a cup of coffee when he was making a movie in Nice: “Your mother ought to have studied more, she should have done the conservatoire; unfortunately, circumstances prevented her from developing her talent. Besides, after you were born, young man, nothing and no one else really mattered to her. . . .” And then he would stare at me curiously, with just a cautious trace of irony on his lips. I also knew that my mother was born somewhere in the Russian steppe, at Kursk, to be precise, the daughter of a little Jewish watchmaker, that she had been very beautiful, that she had married very young—at sixteen—and then been divorced, again married and again divorced. An
d all the rest, all that mattered, were a cheek against mine; a melodious voice whispering into my ear, or speaking to me of a strange faraway land called France, where all the beauty lies, murmuring mysterious tales of wonders awaiting me, singing, laughing—a completely carefree laughter, with that quality of gaiety and happiness that to this day I associate with a woman in love, even though it was only her child’s head which she was pressing against her breast— laughter that I shall hope for, look for, long for till I breathe my last; a whiff of lily-of-the-valley—her favorite perfume, even in old age; a veil of soft dark hair falling over my face—and again, a whisper in my ears, a promise of things to come, of proud victories, of battles won, strange tales of the distant country which I should one day call my own. Dramatic school or no, conservatoire or no she must have been very talented indeed, for her voice has left on me an indelible mark; in evoking France for me, she could summon to her aid all the magic art of eastern storytellers, and a power of conviction from which I have never recovered. To this day there are moments when I find myself waiting for France, for that never-never land of which I heard so much, which I have never known and never shall know; for the land of France, which, from my earliest childhood, my mother conjured up for me in her lyrical and inspired descriptions, has become for me a fairy tale, a mythical place, a poetical masterpiece that no fact of life, no contact with reality could ever encompass or reveal. She knew our language remarkably well, though she spoke it with a strong Russian accent, a trace of which, as I am told, I retain in my own voice to this day. How, where, for whom, at what period of her life, she learned to speak French, she never told me. “I have been in Nice and in Paris”—that was all she would ever admit. In her freezing little dressing room at the Moscow theatre, in the flat we shared with three other families of actors, among whom I remember only an old man by the name of Svertchkov—and where a young nursemaid called Aniela looked after me—and later still, in the cattle-and-goods train which took us west—a three-week journey with typhus for company—my mother would kneel beside me, rubbing my numbed fingers, and talk to me about the distant land where my future lay and where all the dreams came true; where all men were free and equal; where artists were received in the best houses; where Victor Hugo had been President of the Republic. The camphor beads which I wore round my neck—a sovereign remedy, my mother was assured, against the typhus carrying lice—prickled my nose and made me sneeze. I was going to be a great violinist, a great actor, a great poet—the French d’Annunzio, another Nijinsky, Emile Zola; we were kept in quarantine at Lida on the Polish frontier; I was walking with my mother along the railway tracks in the deep snow, firmly grasping in one hand the chamber pot from which, ever since leaving Moscow, I had refused to be parted—I form attachments very easily; they shaved my head; I screamed as they gave me an anti-cholera shot; we were lying on a straw mattress among a hundred other refugees at the Lida railway station; my mother’s eyes had a faraway look and there was a smile on her lips as she pressed me against her, whispering in my ear new tales of wonders awaiting me; le Chevalier Bayard; La Dame aux Camélias; shops stuffed with butter and sugar; Napoleon Bonaparte; Sarah Bernhardt; I fought against sleep and forced my eyes wide open, following her faraway look and trying to see what she saw beyond the dirty wall: Maxim’s, the Bois de Boulogne, Austerlitz, Wagram; there is a ball at the Opéra . . . until, at last, I fell asleep with my head on her shoulder and my friend the chamber pot clasped in my arms. Later, much later, after fifteen years of daily contact with French realities, at Nice, where we had reached our journey’s end, her face now lined, her hair completely white—an old woman now, there was no denying the fact—but having learned nothing, noticed nothing, with the same confidence and the same happy smile, she refused to acknowledge the stark reality, but still kept seeing only the land of marvels which she had brought with her in her wanderer’s bundle; as for me, having been brought up in a fairy tale, but not having my mother’s extraordinary gift of seeing around her what lived only in her heart, I at first kept looking about me in amazement and rubbing my eyes, and later, when manhood gave me strength and strength gave me courage, I devoted both to the backbreaking task of making a fairy tale come true.