My mother’s love. With me she was like one of those loving, approving, eager dogs, overjoyed at being with their master. The naïve fervor on her face touched my heart, and her adorable weakness and the kindness in her eyes. Politicians and their short-lived schemes? That is not my affair and they can sort things out themselves. Their nations, vanished ten centuries hence? My mother’s love is immortal.
My mother’s love. She approved my whims. She was a willing partner if I suggested eating sandwiches from the Automat, because it is wise to economize “and don’t waste the money you earn with your brain, my son.” But she also agreed if I wanted to go to the most expensive restaurant, because life is short. For what strange and mysterious reason did I often hold aloof from that most loving creature, my mother, avoiding her kisses and her gaze, and why was I so cruelly reserved? Too late now. Nevermore will I see her alight from her train in Geneva, glowing with happiness as she brings me her tribute of twenty-franc gold coins which she has secretly saved for me. On one of her visits she had a mad fit of making red-currant jelly, more than a hundred jars, to be sure I would not want for sweet things when she had gone. During her visits, all she wanted was to cook heaps of food for me and then, decked out like a clumsy queen, corseted, and prouder and slower than a cruiser with a fine jutting prow, to walk out in the afternoon with Her Son, slowly, respectably.
My mother’s love. Nevermore during the night will I go and knock at her door because I cannot sleep and want her to keep me company. With the cruel thoughtlessness of sons, I would knock at two or three in the morning, and always she would reply, waking with a start, that she had not been asleep, that I had not woken her. She would get up at once and come in her dressing gown, staggering with sleep, to offer me her dear assortment of maternal comforts, an egg flip or even almond paste. What could be more natural than to make almond paste for her son at three in the morning? Or else she would suggest piping hot coffee, which we would drink cozily together, chatting endlessly. She saw nothing unreasonable in drinking coffee with me at three in the morning, sitting at the foot of the bed and telling me until dawn tales of old family quarrels — a subject on which she was an expert and in which she took a passionate interest.
No more mother to sit with me until I fall asleep. At night I sometimes put a chair by my bed to keep me company. When you have no mother you make do with a chair. The billionaire of love has become a tramp. If you have insomnia some night, you can fend for yourself, my friend, and you do not knock at any door. And if you remarry and choose that brunette who took your fancy the other day, take care not to knock at her door at three in the morning. You would be sure of a warm reception. “I insist that you respect my sleep,” she would say, steely eyed and square jawed. My mother’s incomparable love. Yes, I know I keep dwelling on it, chewing it over, repeating myself. That is what ruminating grief is like, its jaws weakly in perpetual motion. That is how I take my revenge on life, by harping disconsolately on the kindness of my mother, who lies deep in earth.
My mother’s love, nevermore. She is in her last cradle, the bounteous and gentle giver. Nevermore will she be here to scold me if I worry over nothing. Nevermore will she be here to feed me, to give me life each day, to bring me into the world each day. Nevermore will she be here to keep me company while I shave or while I eat, watching me closely, a passive but attentive sentinel, trying to find out whether I really do like the walnut biscuits she has made me. Nevermore will she tell me not to eat so quickly. I loved having her treat me like a child.
Nevermore the sudden short naps, an old lady with a weak heart in her armchair, and when I asked if she was asleep she would always reply, waking with a start, that she had only closed her eyes for a moment. And she would immediately get up to serve me and suggest eating earlier and heaven knows what else, everything else, all her loving kindness. O Maman, my youth that is no more! Laments, calls of my youth on that distant shore.
For love of me she mastered her fear of animals and came to feel affection for my pretty little cat. She would awkwardly stroke that animal whose motives were a mystery to her, that animal with claws always ready to transgress the Ten Commandments but nonetheless loved by her son and therefore undoubtedly delightful. She stroked it from a distance just the same, her little hand ready to withdraw in a flash. Every instance of her love comes back to me: how she shyly radiated joy when she saw me on the station platform; her awkward little hand the day she wrote down at my dictation, with so many spelling mistakes and so much goodwill, a few pages of a book of mine, with never a clue as to what it was all about. I remember, I remember, and yet this is still not the most valuable of my possessions.
My mother’s love. Nevermore will I have beside me someone who is wholly good. But why are men spiteful? How astounded I am on this earth. Why are they so prompt to hate, so ill tempered? Why do they love to take revenge and hasten to speak ill of you, they who are soon to die, poor things? The ghastly fate of human beings, who arrive on this earth, laugh, move, then suddenly move no more, does not make them good: is this not incredible? And why are they so quick to return rough answers, in a voice like a shriek of a cockatoo, if you speak to them gently, which makes them think you are unimportant — that is to say, not dangerous? And so the tenderhearted must pretend to be cruel in order to be left in peace, or even — and this is tragic — to be loved. Why not just retire to bed and sleep like a log? Sleeping dogs have no fleas. Yes, let’s sleep — sleep has the advantages of death without that one minor drawback. Let’s go and settle down in the cozy coffin. Like a toothless man who takes out his dentures and puts them in a glass of water by his bed, I would like to take my brain out of its box, take out my poor devil of a heart, which beats too fast, too conscientiously, take out my brain and my heart and bathe those two poor billionaires in refreshing solutions while I sleep like the little child I shall be no more. How few humans there are; suddenly the world is empty.