A son said to me, and it is he who speaks now, I too have lost my mother, said that son with dark-ringed eyes. I too lived far away from her and she would come and stay with me for a few weeks which for her as well were the meager enchantment of her life. I too, said that son, on the very evening of her departure, instead of weeping all night for my mother, who was incomparable, I would go, sad but soon consoled, to see one who was comparable, one of the exquisite she-devils of my life, whose name was Diane — Diane, priestess of love. I would go, giving scarcely a thought to my mother, whose head was nodding, dazed with grief, in the train which was bearing her away from me and where she was thinking only of her son — the son who at the very instant, thinking no more of his mother all alone and tiny in her train, was laughing aloud for love in the taxi which was taking him to his Diane. Oh, the sinful pleasure of saying that name! And I would take advantage of the noise of the engine to sing love songs at the top of my voice with no fear of the comments of the driver, to whom I planned to give a sparkling tip, so happy was I at last to be seeing Diane again.
While my mother was weeping and blowing her nose in her train, said that son whom I dislike, I was gazing joyfully at my youthful face in the taxi mirror, gazing at the lips which in just a few minutes Diane would so passionately kiss, and quivering with impatience I sang sickening songs of stupid passion and above all the luminous name of the blonde she-devil called Diane — Diane, slender and fervent and overintelligent, toward whom the taxi was speeding me, admirably shaved, admirably dressed, and taut with desire. And all at once here was the villa where dwelt the orphan Diane, the most beautiful and sumptuous of maidens, who stood waiting for me under the roses round the door, tall in her white linen dress sheathing the firm nudity which was offered to me alone. Diane, live and sunlit and devilishly jealous, poetic yet athletic, sensual yet idealistic and given to singing hymns on Sunday. Diane, nurtured on sunshine and on fruit, who would send me hundred-word love telegrams from her travels — yes, always telegrams, so that the beloved would know at once how dearly his loving loved one loved him incessantly. Diane who would phone me at three or four in the morning to ask if I still loved her and tell me that “I love you and love you like an imbecile and I hate myself for loving you so much, my beloved, and no Romanian peasant girl with long plaits ever looked at her man with such trusting adoration.”
On the night of my mother’s departure, said that son, Diane accompanied me home, and in the flat which my mother had blessed before leaving I dared to undress the impatient Diane. When our ardor was spent, and with countless kisses tattooed on our faces, we fell asleep in the fragrant bed at the foot of the precipice of joy and we had the same sated smile in our sleep while my old mother was blessing me and blowing her nose in the train which was bearing her far away from me. O shame! Sons and daughters, cursed breed!
Thus spoke that son. Like him perhaps, on the evening of my mother’s departure — the very evening when piteously she had stood at the carriage door and thanked me and blessed me with hands spread out like sunbeams, blessed me with all the fervor of her face glistening with slow tears — like him perhaps I would go, hurrying out of the station, go impatiently, son that I was, to see an adoring, fragrant, whirling and twirling lover, an Atalanta wreathed in sunlight. O cruelty of youth! It is right that I should suffer now. My suffering is my vengeance against myself. She expected so much of me, with her plump face, wholly loving, so naïve and childlike. My old Maman. And I gave her so little. Too late. Now the train has left forever, for the forever. Crushed, devastated, her hair disheveled, and ceaselessly blessing me, my dead mother is at the carriage door of the train of death. And I trail after the moving train, panting as I trail, ghastly pale, sweating and obsequious, in the wake of the moving train which is bearing away my dead mother and her blessings.
XIV
IN MY SLEEP, which is the music of tombs, I have just now seen her again, beautiful as in her youth, mortally beautiful and weary, so placid and mute. She was about to leave my bedroom, but I called her back in a hysterical voice of which I was ashamed in my dream. She told me she had urgent things to do, a tallow star of David to sew on the teddy bear she had bought for her little boy soon after we arrived in Marseilles. But she agreed to stay a little longer, despite the order of the Gestapo. “Poor orphan,” she said. She explained that it was not her fault that she was dead, and that she would try to come see me sometimes. Then she assured me she would never again phone the countess, “I’ll never do it again. Please forgive me,” she said, looking at her little hands, on which blue marks had appeared. I woke and read books all night so that she would not come back. But I find her in all the books. Go away, you are not alive. Go away, you are too alive.
In another dream I meet her in an unreal street like a film-set street, in France during the Occupation. But she does not see me, and my heart aches with pity as I watch that little bent and almost beggarly old woman picking up cabbage stumps after the market closes and putting them in a suitcase where there is a yellow Star of David. She looks rather like the wicked fairy in stories, and she is dressed like an Orthodox priest, with a queer cylindrical black hat, but I am in no mood to laugh. I kiss her in the slippery street, and a carriage passes by, inside which there is someone who is Pétain. Then she opens the suitcase, which is held together with string, and takes out a teddy bear and some almond paste she has kept for me, and despite the hunger in France she has never touched it. How proud I am to carry her suitcase. She is afraid it will tire me, and I am cross with her because she wants to carry the suitcase herself. But I can see she is glad I am cross, because it shows I am in good health. All at once she tells me that she would rather I had been a doctor, with a fine waiting room and a bronze lioness, and that I would have been happier that way. “Now that I am dead there is no harm in telling you.” Then she asks me if I remember our walk on the day of the suede shoes. “We were happy then,” she says. Why did I take a huge cardboard false nose from my pocket? Why did I clap it proudly on my face, and why are Maman and I now walking royally along the street buzzing with mistrust? Maman’s queer hat is now a crown, but of cardboard too, and a sick horse is following us and coughing and falling in a flash of sparks in the dank night. An ancient coach with the gilt peeling off, all encrusted with tiny mirrors, is wobbling and pitching behind a gently consumptive horse, which falls then picks itself up and draws the royal coach, nodding wisely, and its silken eyes are sad but intelligent. I know that this is the coach of the moral Law, eternal and splendid. Maman and I are now in the coach, and we gravely greet a crowd which laughs and mocks because the coach is not a sixty-ton tank, and the crowd throws rotten eggs at us while my mother shows them the sacred scrolls of the Ten Commandments. Then we weep, my mother and I. “Jerusalem,” she says to me suddenly, and the old sick horse gives a great solemn nod then turns to look at us and its eyes are so kind, and I repeat “Jerusalem” and I know that its meaning is also “Maman” and I awake and I am appalled at my solitude.