During her stays in Geneva she would always wait for me at the window. No one will wait for me at a window for hours as she did. I can see her face now as she leaned out of the window, her overplump face filled with thoughts of me, so concerned and attentive, her features slightly coarsened by excessive attention, her eyes fixed on the corner of the street. I always think of her as the woman at the window. At the window, on the watch when I came home from work. I would look up and it was heartening to see from below that wait-laden face, that thought waiting for me, and I felt the reassurance of a son. Now when I go out I still have the habit of looking up at the window. But there is never anyone there. Who needs to wait for me at the window?
She would also be at the window when I went out, so as to spend an extra minute with me and gaze at the disappearing figure which was her son, her lot on this earth, her beloved son, whom she would watch as he walked away, watch perhaps with the strange, keen-edged, piercing pity that we feel for those we love and whose secret destitution we know — the same keen pity that I feel for my loved ones when from my window I see them in the street, alone, forlorn and defenseless, walking disasters unaware that I am watching them. And my loved ones are not only my daughter and Marianne and one or two others, but all the men in the street, all such endearing failures whom I love from afar, for close up they do not always smell of roses. Yes, I would look up once or twice at my mother, feeling reassured and protected but not fully understanding my happiness. Now when I go out I still look up, somewhat haggard and forlorn. But there is never anyone at the window.
Nevermore will she nurse me, she, the only one. The only one who never would have been impatient had my illness lasted twenty years and had I been the most insufferable of patients. She alone would have nursed me not out of duty or affection but out of need. For, had I been ill, the only interesting thing she could have found to do for those twenty years would have been to nurse me. That is what she was like. All other women have their dear independent little me: their life, their thirst for personal happiness, their sleep, which they protect so fiercely and woe betide anyone who interferes with it. My mother had no me: she had a son. Little did she mind not sleeping or being weary if I needed her. What have I left to love now with that same love which knows it will never be let down? A pen, a lighter, my cat.
O you, the only one, mother, my mother and the mother of all men, you alone deserve our confidence and our love. All the rest — wives, brothers, sisters, children, friends — all the rest is but a trifle and a leaf in the wind.
There are geniuses at painting and I know nothing about it and I shall not look into it and I am not the least bit interested and I am no judge, nor do I want to be. There are literary geniuses and I know it and the Countess de Noailles is not one of them, nor another person I can think of and certainly not yet another. But what I know even better is that my mother was a genius at loving. Like yours, gentle reader. And I remember everything — everything. How she would watch all night by my bedside when I was ill, her heart-stirring indulgence, and the fine ring which, with some regret but with the weakness of those who love, she had so quickly agreed to buy me. She was so easily persuaded by her harebrained son of twenty. And her secret savings set aside for me when I was a student, and all her schemes to keep my extravagance from my father so that he would not be angry with his spendthrift son. And her naïve pride when that wily tailor had said, to get round her, that her son of thirteen had “class.” How she had savored that horrible word! And her fingers secretly crossed to ward off the evil eye when women gazed at her wondrous little boy. And, during her stays in Geneva, her suitcases always crammed with treats she used to call “throatsoothers,” which she bought on the sly in anticipation of some sudden fancy on my part. And her hand, which she would all at once hold out unexpectedly to shake my hand like that of a friend. “My little kangaroo,” she would say. All that is so near. It was a few thousand hours ago.
My mother’s incomparable love. My daughter loves me, but while I am writing here all alone she is having lunch with some pea-brained moron who is simply wild about art and beauty. (He pronounces it “bewtee.”) My daughter loves me, but she has her life and she leaves me all alone.
My mother was my talisman. All that she wanted was to sit by my side and sew. She would breathe in a little saliva as she sewed, and then we would look at each other and I would feel in my place, reassured, a son. Then she would get up and go into her lovely kitchen, which was the bridge of her ship, to perform her sacred little tasks, pat her meatballs, though they did not need it, and put frightful jagged-edged paper on the shelves. Then she would call me to come and admire the jagged-edged paper and she would look at me to see if I approved. It is such humble things which make up sublime love.
Some men must have passion and young huntresses with long thighs, or glamorous stars — who, by the way, blow their noses in handkerchiefs and do not produce pearls. That is their affair, and much good may it do them. Speaking for myself, my mother is all I want — especially Maman in her old age, with her white hair and her enthusiastic chatter about things I already knew by heart. What I want is my old mother, my mother with the false teeth which she wore during the last years of her life and which she used to wash under the tap. She was so sweet without her false teeth, so defenseless, innocent and harmless as a gummy babe, childlike, her pronunciation distorted, and with motherly coyness she would stifle her laughter and put her hand in front of the gap in her mouth. With her alone I was not alone. Now I am alone with everyone.
With those I love most dearly — friends, daughter, and loving women — I always have to pretend a little, conceal a little. With my mother I had only to be what I was, with my anguish, my failings, my afflictions of the body and the soul. She did not love me less. My mother’s incomparable love.
With her alone I could have lived far from the world. Never, like others, would she have thought, “He has stopped publishing books” or “He is getting old.” No. “My son,” she would have said trustingly to herself. And so, lifting up my eyes, which bear the noble mark of your goodness, and cutting through the immensity of space and silence, I reciprocate that act of faith, and I say to you gravely, “Maman.”
XIII
OH, HER TEARS at the station in Geneva on the evening she left for Marseilles, while the engine shrieked like a madwoman in despair, clanked and belched steam from under the axles! At the carriage door she gazed at me so tenderly, wild eyed and distraught, no longer worried about appearing smart and well dressed. She knew that she was leaving me for a whole year and that a gulf which now I hate separated my life from her own humble life. Oh, the tearful blessing of my mother at the carriage door, my mother looking at me so intently, my mother suddenly so old, beaten, her hair disheveled and her hat absurdly askew! Oh, the blessing of my mother, defenseless, discomfited, wretched, vanquished, an outcast, so dependent and lowly, a little crazy in her distress, a little unhinged by her distress! Over now, the wonder of being together, the pitiful festival of her life. Oh, her panic-stricken distress at the carriage door of the train, which was starting to move, which was about to bear her away toward her life of solitude, which was bearing her away, powerless and condemned, far from her son, while she blessed me and wept and stammered thanks! Strange that I did not take her tears seriously enough. Strange that only now do I realize that my mother was a human being, someone apart from myself, someone who truly suffered. Perhaps that very evening I would go to see my lover.