Shhh Page 4

  It wasn’t easy to be the son of a tubercular father. The boys in school always called me fils-de-tubard, and none of them wanted to sit next to me in class because they were afraid to be infected. They kept saying that I had some kind of bug in me that was contagious. They called it the F-virus. I suppose because my last name begins with an F.

  What a rough life my father had. He spent a good part of it in hospitals before he was erased from history at the age of thirty-seven.

  My father never really worked much. He couldn’t. That’s why my mother had to clean other people’s houses and do their laundry so she could feed her children.

  Ah, all this is so sad! I’ll have to tell something funny soon otherwise I’ll get depressed, and the readers too.

  I imagine the only pleasure my mother must have had in her miserable life is when she was cleaning the apartment of the rich people in the fancy neighborhoods. During the long hours she spent on her knees scrubbing floors, she would say to herself, It’s beautiful here. I feel a bit like I am in my house when I clean here. And while dusting the antique furniture and the rare objects, while making the beds, washing the pots and pans, carefully pressing the collar of Monsieur’s shirts making sure not to make false pleats, she would say to herself, What beautiful things these people have, while absently contemplating her chapped hands.

  As for my father, he was a strange man. An incurable foreigner. Not only a tubercular artist, but also a gambler, and a womanizer. Well, that’s what all my aunts and uncles on my mother’s side said about him—that he had mistresses. And I believe that, because my father, in spite of his tuberculosis, was very handsome. He had brown curly hair always well groomed. Eyes grey like a stormy sky. Eyes that were forever looking elsewhere, far away. He was elegant. Always well dressed. Even though we were poor, he wore good suits. Even silk shirts and silk ties. His shoes were well polished. I was the one who polished them. Papa would give me one sou every time I polished his shoes. I kept the polish and the brush under my cot with my other things.

  Sometimes when my father was not home, I would put on one of his felt hats. He had several of them. The hat was, of course, too big for my head, and would fall over my eyes, and my sisters would laugh at me. Ah, my sisters! What a big hole of absence they dug in me. I’ve never been able to fill that hole because I have so few souvenirs of what we did together, of what we said to each other. No memory of words that passed between us. I am sure we played games together. We argued and fought, like all brothers and sisters do. Especially me with my sister Sarah. Sarah and me, we didn’t get along too well. She thought of herself superior because she was older. She liked to be left alone. She spent much of her time reading, especially the books of La Comtesse de Ségur. She had several of them. I don’t know how she managed to get them. There was one she read and reread constantly, Les malheurs de Sophie.

  My mother often told the story of how a few months after I was born, one sunny summer day she had put my crib outside in the courtyard, and sat in the shade knitting me a warm sweater for the winter, she hadn’t noticed that my sister Sarah, who was then two years old, had toppled my crib upside down, and I was underneath crying, flat on my face, my nose pressed against the ground. My mother would say that my sister Sarah had done that because she didn’t want a little brother.

  I preferred to play with my sister Jacqueline. She was shy like me, but not as much. She giggled all the time. She was Papa’s favorite. Sa petite chouchou. Sometimes, when my father was in a good mood, he would ask her to dance, and Jacqueline would do some pirouettes, then my father would kiss her and tell her how beautiful she was.

  Jacqueline always said that she wanted to become a ballerina. It’s true that she was beautiful with her long curly hair. She looked like Papa. Same grey eyes. Sarah and me, we resembled Maman who had big dark eyes always full of tears.

  When Papa was in a good mood we were all happy. Even my mother. He was so unpredictable. To tell the truth, I barely knew him.

  He spoke six languages. Polish, Russian, German, Czech, French, and Yiddish. I know this because the men with whom he played cards in the cafes spoke all these languages. That’s something else I’ll have to tell, my father’s political activities, and his other activities.

  Sometimes my father didn’t come home for several nights, and my sisters and I would ask Maman, Where is Papa? And Maman would say, Shhh, Papa is working. And we would say, He works during the night? Maman would explain. He likes to work at night. I never understood what kind of work Papa did, but I could tell Maman didn’t want to answer any more questions.

  When Papa returned from one of his absences, he would always tell us a story. A fabulous story of political intrigue. A revolution. The way he told it, it was like a great adventure. Then he would say to us, Wait till the day comes when we’ll all go back to Russia, you’ll see how beautiful it will be. Sometimes he would sing a song in Russian. He would also sing the International in French and in Russian, and my sisters and I would sing along with him. That’s how I learned the words of that song, which I still remember today.

  When we sang the International with Papa, Maman would say, Shhh, not so loud. Tonton Léon is going to hear, and he’ll make a fuss.

  My sisters and I loved when Papa told us stories, but he only told what he did during the day, never what he did during the night when he didn’t come home.

  My mother’s sisters would tell her that her husband was sleeping with his courveh. They would say that in Yiddish, so I didn’t really understand what that word meant. The only Yiddish words I knew were the insults Papa and Leon would shout at each other when they had an argument, or when Papa was cursing Maman.

  That’s how I learned Yiddish insults when I was a boy. I still remember a few of these, but I can only say them. I don’t know how to spell them.

  For instance this one, Geh in Drerde, which I write the way I hear it when I say it. Literally translated I think it means, Go get buried, or disappear into the earth. And this one also, Wer verblunjet mit ein sibelles in dem toochess. Which means, more or less, Go get flushed away with an onion up your ass.

  So when my mother’s sisters told Maman in Yiddish what Papa was doing when he didn’t come home, my sisters and I would ask Maman, Where is Papa tonight? What is he doing? Why didn’t he come home? And Maman would say, Chut, geh schlafen. And she would kiss us. And my sisters and I would ask, after Maman had turned off the light, Isn’t Papa scared all alone in the dark? And Maman would say, Schlaf mein kinder.

  I am now convinced that my father had mistresses. In fact, I found proof. But before telling how I found out that my father was unfaithful to my mother, I have to do a long detour to explain how I got the proof. First, I have to return to the description of our apartment.

  We didn’t have much furniture in our little apartment. In the kitchen there was a small rusty gas stove on a counter, and above it a wall cabinet in which the dishes were stored. There was a sink, but no hot water. To wash our clothes my mother would heat the water on the stove. She also had to warm water to bathe us. My sisters’ folding cot was stored against the wall in the kitchen that faced the window. Because we didn’t have a refrigerator, in the winter my mother would keep milk and meat outside on the window ledge.

  Oh, I mustn’t forget la cuvette. The big wash-basin in which my mother would bathe me when I was little. Maybe this is a good place to put the poem I wrote about that.

  The Wash-basin

  my fondest pleasure

  when I was a little boy

  was when my mother

  gave me a bath on sundays

  naked I stood in the wash-basin

  in the middle of the kitchen and

  abandoned myself to the soft hands

  of my mother who hummed dreamily

  while scrubbing my frail white body

  when the water became too cold

  and I was starting to shiver

  my mother would wrap a towel

  around me and rub m
e hard all over

  after that she would hold me tight

  against her and after she finished

  squeezing me she would say

  go get dressed quickly now

  I think it made my mother happy

  to give me a bath in the little basin

  while singing love songs to herself

  I could see that in her big black eyes

  In the room which was both dining room and bedroom, there was an old buffet in which mother stored all our possessions. Next to it was my father’s old hand-cranked phonograph with its big speaker, and near the window our green salamander-stove with its little mica windows. As I mentioned before, two of them were broken, so that you could see the fire burning inside the stove which made me dream of wild adventures. When my mother would see me staring at the stove, she would say, My little Raymond is lost in the clouds again.

  That was my mother’s favorite expression when I was day-dreaming. Years later, when I started reading my horoscope every day, as I still do, the best description that was given for a Taurus was, someone who lives with his feet on the ground and his head in the clouds. Yes, of course, I’m a Taurus. I was born on May 15. A Sunday. My mother often said that I was lazy because I was born on a Sunday. But I don’t think …

  Federman, now you’re really exaggerating. You tell too many things at the same time. Your readers are going to get lost in all these stories within stories. Can’t you finish one story before starting another one? With all these detours and interruptions, for sure you’ll forget half of what you promise to tell us.

  I cannot write any other way. When I start telling something that happened during my childhood, all kinds of other things come bursting into my head, so I have to mention them otherwise I’ll really forget them.

  So let me go on digressing.

  I was in the middle of describing our apartment.

  Across from the phonograph was my father’s old shabby armchair. Some of the stuffing was coming out of the cover. Papa would sit in it to read his newspapers or to listen to music. He loved music. Especially opera. His favorite was Tosca. When he wanted to listen to music, he would ask me to put the disk on the phonograph, and while I was rewinding it with the little crank, each time Papa would tell me the story of Tosca, and how she hurled herself to her death from the parapet of a fortress when she discovered that her lover Mario had been killed.

  One time, my father took me with him to see Tosca at the Paris Opéra, Place de l’Opéra. I fell asleep during the first act. But I was happy that day to have gone out with my father. That didn’t happen often. Except once in a while, he would take me with him to one of the political demonstrations, Place de la République. That too, I’ll have to tell. How, when I was a boy, on May Day, I sang the International with my father and his communist friends.

  The day my father took me to the opera it was very cold. In winter my father wore a heavy dark blue overcoat made of a thick fabric. As we walked from the métro to the opera house, Papa held one of my hands inside the pocket of his coat to warm it. I didn’t have gloves. I was so happy that day.

  Since I am talking about my father’s passion for music, I should perhaps insert here the piece I once wrote about his favorite song, “Ramona” It’ll give an idea of what type of man my father was, and ...

  Federman, one of these days you’re going to get lost in your own stories, and you won’t know how to get back to the real world.

  I’ve managed quite well until now with my leap-frog technique.

  Besides, as I’ve often said, the real world, it’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there permanently.

  RAMONA

  My father’s favorite song was “Ramona.” It goes like this, Ramona je t’aimerai toute la vie, Ramona je t’aimerai toute la vie … I only know the words in French. But I think that song also exists in English.

  My father, the dreamer, the starving romantic, the Trotskyist, the gambler, the womanizer, the Brudny yd as he was often called, my tubercular father, who never achieved his vocation, while listening to Ramona on the scratched disk playing on our old dusty phonograph with the big speaker and the little crank, my father, Papa, Tate, was dreaming. I could tell he was dreaming.

  Sometimes towards the end of the song, when the phonograph was unwinding and needed to be cranked again, the voice of the singer would whine into distortions, and the song would become so slow, so sad.

  I never knew who was singing the recording of “Ramona” that my father loved so much. It was a woman, a young woman, I think, with a beautiful deep sad raspy voice. She died young. She died of tuberculosis. That’s what my father told me one day. That’s all I know about her. I don’t even know her name, or perhaps I knew it once but have forgotten it. But when I listened to “Ramona” with Papa, I would feel tenderness towards her. Yes, tenderness. Not passion. I was too young then to know what passion was.

  Papa, I’m sure, knew what passion was. He was a passionate man. He loved women. Il était coureur de femmes. That’s what all my aunts and uncles always said about him, un coureur de femmes, but also un fainéant, un rien-du-tout. Papa.

  So what. Maybe that’s what he left me when he changed tense. His passion. His passion for women. For love. For sex? Look, it’s not because I am writing about my father that I have to become prudish.

  Yes, even me, while listening to the sad voice of the singer singing Ramona je t’aimerai toute la vie … I would feel tenderness for her, and I would imagine her being petite et fragile, with very long black hair and very long eyelashes. That’s all I could imagine about her then. Today I could imagine her much better if I could listen to her sing Ramona. Today I know how to imagine a beautiful woman.

  When papa listened to “Ramona” there was dreaming in his eyes, I could see that, and I know he was dreaming about his failed vocation. And probably also about his failed loves. When papa listened to Ramona, sitting in his old broken down armchair, facing the phonograph, I could tell he was making up stories about how he could have been great if ...

  Ah! yes, if ...

  I could see it in his eyes, but I could also feel it in his fingers, in his fingernails gently scratching my back. As I sat on the floor next to his armchair, I would say to him, Papa gratte-moi le dos, s’il te plaît, ça me gratte là, près de l’omoplate gauche, and my father would scratch my back. We had studied human anatomy in school, that’s why I could tell my father to scratch my left clavicle because it itched.

  I could feel he was dreaming in the way his fingers moved slowly on my back. He was dreaming of the great works of art he would have liked to have created, but never did.

  Not because he was lazy, as my aunts and uncles said he was, and not because he was sick all the time. But because he was not ready yet. The tense changed too soon for him. I am sure he would have created something immortal, if he had been given the time. I could feel it in his fingers. Papa had beautiful hands, with long fingers.

  Deep inside he knew he had failed, failed to achieve what was inscribed in him, by his father, or some remote ancestor.

  All the others before him, his father, grand-father, great-grand-father, and all those who preceded them probably failed each in their own way. Except that, it is said, that there was one Federman who, way back in the 16th century, was a famous conquistador who became very rich in the new world. But he was a mean bastard, and as the story goes, the ship which was bringing him back to Europe sank in the ocean, and all the treasures he had accumulated disappeared forever.

  I once wrote a poem about my father’s ancestors. I’ll put it here, for whatever it’s worth. It’s called ...

  BEFORE THAT

  Some say, can say: my father was a farmer,

  and his father before him, and his father

  before that. We are of the earth.

  Others say, can say: my father was a builder,

  and his father before him, and his father

  before that. We are of the stone.
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br />   And others can say: my father was a sailor,

  and his father before him, and his father

  before that. We are of the water.

  They have been farmers, builders, sailors,

  no doubt, since the time earth, stone, water

  entered into the lives of men, and still are.

  I am a writer, but I cannot say: my father

  was a writer, nor his father before him,

  nor his father before that. I have no antecedent.

  My father, and his father before him, and his father

  before that were neither of the earth, nor of the stone,

  nor of the water. The world was indifferent to them.

  I write, perhaps, so that one day my children can say:

  my father was a writer, the first in our family.

  We are now of the word. We are inscribed in the world.

  I feel I could write on the earth, on the stone.

  It seems to me that I could even write on water.

  I write to establish an antecedent for my children.

  Five thousand years without writing in my family,

  what can I do against this force which presses

  behind me? Say that I write to fill this void?

  Say, I suppose, that of my father I cannot say anything,

  except what I have invented to fill the immense gap

  of his absence, and of his erasure from history.

  No, I am wrong, you see, because I can say: my father

  was a wanderer, he came from nowhere and went nowhere.

  He came without earth, stone, water, and he went wordless.

  While contemplating his failures, and absentmindedly scratching my back, my father was perhaps thinking that his son, I mean me, would someday achieve what he had failed to achieve. And so, aware that his tuberculosis might soon kill him, or that some unforgivable enormity would erase him from history, Papa with his hand on my back would try to make me feel this yearning for greatness. With the tips of his fingers he would try to transmit his dreams into my body, into my skin, my flesh, my bones.