Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in
the early afternoon. I had been to Mass at a quarter to
twelve as usual. I must have brought back some cakes from
the baker in the new shopping precinct--a cluster of temporary
buildings erected after the war while reconstruction
was under way. When I got home, I took off my Sunday
clothes and slipped on a dress that washed easily. After the
customers had left and the shutters had been pinned down
over the store window, we had lunch, probably with the
radio on, because at that hour there was a funny program
called Courtroom, in which Yves Deniaud played some
wretched subordinate continually charged with the most
preposterous offenses and condemned to ridiculous sentences
by a judge with a quavering voice. My mother was in
a bad temper. The argument she started with my father as
soon as she sat down lasted throughout the meal. After the
table was cleared and the oilcloth wiped clean, she continued
to fire criticism at my father, turning round and round
in the tiny kitchen--squeezed in between the cafe, the store
and the steps leading upstairs--as she always did when she
was upset. My father was still seated at the table, saying
nothing, his head turned toward the window. Suddenly he
began to wheeze and was seized with convulsive shaking. He
stood up and I saw him grab hold of my mother and drag
her through the cafe, shouting in a hoarse, unfamiliar voice.
I rushed upstairs and threw myself on to the bed, my face
buried in a cushion. Then I heard my mother scream: "My
daughter!" Her voice came from the cellar adjoining the
cafe. I rushed downstairs, shouting "Help!" as loud as I
could. In the poorly-lit cellar, my father had grabbed my
mother by the shoulders, or maybe the neck. In his other
hand, he was holding the scythe for cutting firewood which
he had wrenched away from the block where it belonged. At
this point all I can remember are sobs and screams. Then the
three of us are back in the kitchen again. My father is sitting
by the window, my mother is standing near the cooker and
I am crouching at the foot of the stairs. I can't stop crying.
My father wasn't his normal self; his hands were still trembling
and he had that unfamiliar voice. He kept on repeating,
"Why are you crying? I didn't do anything to you." I
can recall saying this sentence, "You'll breathe disaster on
me." My mother was saying, "Come on, it's over."
Afterward the three of us went for a bicycle ride in the countryside
nearby. When they got back, my parents opened the
cafe like they did every Sunday evening. That was the end
of it.
It was June 15, 1952. The first date I remember with
unerring accuracy from my childhood. Before that, the days
and dates inscribed on the blackboard and in my copybooks
seemed just to drift by.
Later on, I would say to certain men: "My father tried to kill
my mother just before I turned twelve." The fact that I
wanted to tell them this meant that I was crazy about them.
All were quiet after hearing the sentence. I realized that I
had made a mistake, that they were not able to accept such
a thing.
This is the first time I am writing about what happened.
Until now, I have found it impossible to do so, even in my
diary. I considered writing about it to be a forbidden act that
would call for punishment. Not being able to write anything
else afterward, for instance. (I felt quite relieved just now
when I saw that I could go on writing, that nothing terrible
had happened.) In fact, now that I have finally committed it
to paper, I feel that it is an ordinary incident, far more common
among families than I had originally thought. It may be
that narrative, any kind of narrative, lends normality to people's
deeds, including the most dramatic ones. But because
this scene has remained frozen inside me, an image empty of
speech--except for the sentence I told my lovers--the words
which I have used to describe it seem strange, almost incongruous.
It has become a scene destined for other people.
Before starting, I reckoned I would be able to recall every single
detail. It turns out I can remember only the general atmosphere,
our respective places in the kitchen and a few words or
expressions. I've forgotten how the argument actually started,
what we had to eat and whether my mother was still wearing
her white storekeeper's coat or whether she had taken it off in
view of the bicycle ride. I have no particular memory of that
Sunday morning besides the usual routine--attending Mass,
buying the cakes and so on--although I have often had to
think back to the time before it happened, as I would do later
on for other events in my life. Yet I am sure I was wearing my
blue dress, the one with white spots, because during the two
summers that followed, every time I put it on, I would think,
"it's the dress I wore that day." Of the weather too I am quite
sure--a combination of sun, clouds and wind.
From then on, that Sunday was like a veil that came
between me and everything I did. I would play, I would
read, I would behave normally but somehow I wasn't there.
Everything had become artificial. I had trouble learning my
lessons, when before I only needed to read them once to
know them by heart. Acutely aware of everything around
me and yet unable to concentrate, I lost my insouciance and
natural ability to learn.
What had happened was not something that could be judged.
My father, who loved me, had tried to kill my mother, who
also loved me. Because my mother was more religious than
my father and because she did the accounts and spoke to my
schoolmistresses, I suppose I thought it normal for her to
shout at him the same way she shouted at me. It was no one's
fault, no one was to blame. I just had to stop my father from
killing my mother and going to jail.
I believe that for months, maybe even years, I waited for the
scene to be repeated. I was positive it would happen again.
I found the presence of customers comforting, dreading the
moments when my parents and I were alone, in the evening
and on Sunday afternoons. I was on the alert as soon as they
raised their voices; I would scrutinize my father, his expression,
his hands. In every sudden silence I would read the
omens of disaster. Every day at school I wondered whether,
on returning home, I would be faced with the aftermath of
a tragedy.
When they did show signs of affection for each other--joking,
sharing a laugh or a smile--I imagined I had gone back
to the time before that day. It was just a "bad dream." One
hour later I realized that these signs only meant something
at the time; they offered no guarantee for the future.
Around that time a strange song was often heard on the
radio, mimicking a fight that suddenly breaks out in a
saloon: there was a pause, a voice whispered, "you could
have heard a pin drop," followed by a cacophony of shouts
and jumbled sentences. Every time I heard it I was seized
with panic. One day my uncle handed me the detective
story he was reading: "What would you do if your father
was accused of murder but wasn't guilty?" The question sent
a chill down my spine. I kept seeing the images of a tragedy
which had never occurred.
The scene never did happen again. My father died fifteen
years later, also on a Sunday in June.
It is only now that a thought occurs to me: my parents may
have discussed both that Sunday afternoon and my father's
murderous gesture; they may have arrived at an explanation
or even an excuse and decided to forget the whole thing.
Maybe one night after making love. This thought, like all
those that elude one at the time, comes too late. It can be
of no help to me now; its absence only serves to measure
the indescribable terror which that Sunday has always
meant to me.
In August an English family pitched their tent by the side of
a small country road in the south of France. In the morning
they were found murdered: the father, Sir Jack Drummond,
his wife, Lady Anne, and their daughter Elizabeth. The
nearest farmhouse belonged to the Dominici, a family of
Italian extraction, whose son Gustave was originally accused
of the three deaths. The Dominici spoke very little French;
the Drummonds probably spoke better than them. I knew
no English or Italian at all apart from "do not lean outside"
and "e pericoloso sporgersi," inscribed on train windows
underneath "ne pas se pencher au-dehors." We thought it
strange that a family who was well-off should choose to
sleep out in the open rather than at a hotel. I imagined
myself dead with my parents by the side of the road.
From that year, I still have two photographs. One shows me
in my Communion dress. It's an "artistic portrait" in black
and white, stuck on to a cardboard back with raised scrolls,
covered by a semi-transparent sheet of paper. Inside--the
signature of the photographer. You can see a girl with full,
smooth features, high cheekbones, a rounded nose with
large nostrils. A pair of glasses with heavy, light-colored
frames bars her cheekbones. Her eyes are staring intently at
the camera. The short permed hair sticks out from the back
and the front of her Communion cap, loosely tied under her
chin; from this cap hangs the veil. Just the hint of a smile at
the corner of her mouth. The face of a conscientious little
girl, looking older than her age because of the spectacles and
permed hair. She is kneeling on a prie-dieu with her elbows
on the padded cushion and her broad hands--a ring surrounds
her little finger--locked under her chin, circled by a
rosary falling down on to the missal and gloves lying on the
armrest. There's something vague and nondescript about the
figure in the muslin dress, whose belt has been tied loosely,
just like the Communion cap. It seems there is no body
underneath this small nun's habit because I cannot imagine
it, let alone feel it the way I have come to feel mine. Yet, surprisingly,
it's exactly the same body as the one I have today.
This photograph is dated June 5, 1952. It was taken not on
the day of my solemn Communion in 1951 but, for some
reason, on the day marking the "renewal of the vows," when
the whole ceremony, including the costume, is repeated one
year later.
In the other photograph, a small oblong one, I am pictured
with my father in front of a low wall decorated with earthenware
jars of flowers. It was taken in Biarritz in late August '52,
no doubt somewhere along the promenade running by the
sea hidden from view, during a bus trip to Lourdes. I can't be
taller than one meter sixty: my head comes slightly higher
than my father's shoulder and he was one meter seventy-three.
In those three months my hair has grown, forming a
sort of frizzy crown kept tight around my head by a ribbon.
The photograph is blurred; it was taken with the cube-shaped
camera my parents won at a fair before the war. Although one
cannot clearly make out my face or my spectacles, a beaming
smile is discernible. I am dressed in a white skirt and
blouse--the uniform I wore for the Christian Youth
Movement gathering. Over my shoulders--a jacket with its
sleeves hanging. Here I appear to be slim, lean, because the
skirt hugs my hips, then flares out. In this outfit, I look like
a little woman. My father has on a dark jacket, pale shirt and
pants, a somber tie. He is barely smiling, with that anxious
look he has in all photographs. I imagine that I kept this
snapshot because it was different from the others, portraying
us as chic people, holiday-makers, which of course we
weren't. In both photographs I am smiling with my lips
dosed because of my decayed, uneven teeth.
I stare at the two photographs until my mind goes blank, as
if looking at them for long enough might allow me to slip
into the head and body of the little girl who, one day, was
there in the photographer's studio, or beside her father in
Biarritz. Yet, if I had never seen these pictures before and if
I were shown them for the first time, I would never believe
that the little girl is me. (Absolute certainty--"yes, that's
me"; total disbelief--"no, that's not me.")
The two pictures were taken barely three months apart. The
first one at the beginning of June, the second one at the end
of August. The format and quality are too different to reveal
any significant change in my face or figure but I like to
think of them as two milestones: one shows me in my
Communion dress, closing off my childhood days; the other
one introduces the era when I shall never cease to feel
ashamed. It may be that I just need to single out part of that
summer period, in the manner of a historian. (To write
about "that summer" or "the summer of my twelfth year" is
to romanticize events that could never feature in a novel, no
more than the current summer '95; I cannot imagine any of
these days ever belonging to the magical world conveyed by
the expression "that summer.")
[CHAPTER ONE CONTINUES...]
