“Well, if you must know, Arieh was called up into the army during World War I. Romain was four when he came home, but he left us again for a much younger woman who bore him two children ten years later. I was hurt, humiliated. But, I think . . . When I look back at it all now, I think that was exactly what I wanted. Exactly! I think I wanted to be left alone with my little boy. Romain filled me with joy. So many times I would ask him to turn his head toward the light so I could drink in his magnificent blue eyes. That was all I needed to feel happy.”
“So, Romain took the place of your husband.”
“You could say that. I did everything in my power for him, just like a wife hoping to further her husband’s career. I’ll tell you a story so you can see exactly what I mean. One day, it occurred to me that, without any means to pay for lessons, my adored son would never learn to play tennis, so I went to the imperial park of Nice and marched right out onto the courts to explain that with just a little training, my son would become a champion. He had to get in free!”
“He must have been a real natural talent.” Rebecca concluded.
“Not at all. He was a clumsy player at best. He’d never done more than hit a few balls. But I could never admit that; no one would have taken me seriously. The club manager tried to reason with me to lower my voice, especially since King Gustave of Sweden was there at that moment. The poor man: he obviously didn’t know me. I went right up to the king, who was taking his tea on the lawn. I remember he was an older man, very elegant in his straw hat, sitting under a white parasol. I told him how wonderful my Romain was: The future French champion, and he was only fourteen! The king wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear it and he invited my son to show him what he could do with his trainer. The rest of the story is less glorious. All I can say is that Romain did his best. He describes how humiliating the experience was in Promise at Dawn: ‘I jumped, dived, bounced, pirouetted, ran, fell, bounced up again, flew through the air [. . .] but the most I can say is that I did, just once, touch the ball.’ No matter: The King of Sweden was so impressed by his courage that he paid Romain’s fees. We never set foot there again but I had done what I set out to do.”
“You always believed in miracles,” said Louise Cohen.
“I did just the same for my own boys,” agreed Minnie Marx. “Did I tell you how I managed to get reimbursed for Harpo’s harp at twice the price I paid for it?”
“Minnie, you’ve told that story a hundred times already,” said Louise wearily.
“There was a train accident, and I was threatening the conductor that I would send for the insurance agent,” Minnie began anyway.
“Minnie, it’s my turn. I was in the middle of telling the story of my life.”
“Or maybe Romain’s?” Rebecca suggested.
“What’s the difference? I lived with him.”
“If you were exactly the same, how did you manage to raise him?” Rebecca asked.
“He owed me his respect, and I insisted that he always come to my defense,” Mina explained by way of an answer. “Any time I felt insulted, I ordered him to slap the person who had wronged me. I knew I could count on him; he even went in my place to see the shopkeepers when they were looking to be paid. I was often in debt, with no means to pay anyone back. But I had nothing to worry about: Romain protected me as well as any man.
“He was your Prince Charming. Is that why you never remarried?”
“Twice is plenty. Of course, I didn’t lack for offers.”
This reminded Mina of the story of Zaremba. He was a painter staying at the Mermonts’ boarding house who was so impressed by Mina’s adoration of her son that he asked to marry her, hoping she would love him just as unconditionally.
“Zaremba asked Romain for my hand in marriage, and he accepted. My son wanted me to marry him. He thought my devotion to his education was ruining my life. How could he think such a thing? Romain was my greatest success! Thanks to him, my life was worth something: He became famous! I always knew he would, even when he was a child. Our cleaning lady, Mariette, knew it too. At first she thought I sang his praises because he was my son but then she started to wonder. Maybe there was something special about him after all?”
“What did you tell the painter who was in love with you?”
“I sent him back to Poland, and that was my last and final suitor.”
“Come with me, Rebecca. I’d like to get an apple,” Jeanne Proust interrupted.
Minnie held one out to her, but Jeanne, who was already on her feet, brushed her aside and motioned to Rebecca to follow her. As soon as they were in the kitchen, she exploded in anger: Mina was an utter liar, all her stories came from Gary’s novels, Zaremba was a character in Promise at Dawn, and he was modeled on Philippe Maliavien, a Russian painter who lived in a castle outside Nice. Even the name Zaremba was stolen from an 18th century Lithuanian myth. Gary couldn’t stand to see his mother old and sick so he made up the story. How could she tell such whoppers?
“Whatever truth there is, it certainly demonstrates the kind of relationship she had with her son.”
“Why are you defending her? What do you know about it?”
“Nothing, but it reminds me of something I went through.”
“Oh! In that case, tell me everything. I adore a love story.”
Rebecca had fallen for a Russian literature professor. Unlike her other foreign lovers, he had no plans to return to his native country and she had gotten in over her head. For one thing, he looked like the hero of a Russian novel: Alexis Vronski, Nicolas Rostov, Youri Jivago . . . He was going to move in with her and Nathan, and the night of the move, she and the professor were going out for a celebratory dinner. Nathan must have been ten years old at the time and she was giving him a few instructions. She wrote down her cell-phone number, reminded him to brush his teeth and told him he could watch some television, a huge concession for her. She must have told him fifty times how much she loved him. Nevertheless, by the time she got home, Nathan was passed out. At the hospital, they told her he had drunk himself into a coma. Had he tried to commit suicide? In any case, that was the end of her Russian love affair.
“You never saw him again?”
“Not after the hospital, no.”
“And Nathan, what did he say afterwards?”
“Nothing, ever. He was ashamed, the poor darling, but it was me who was guilty.”
“Don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions?” Jeanne prompted her gently. “Isn’t it possible that Nathan just made a mistake, that he took advantage of being alone in the house to drink for the first time? Many children who are smothered with attention act out in these ways.”
Rebecca blanched: The idea had never occurred to her.
“Was I a fool? It took me a long time to get over him. I cried all the time and I became even stricter with Nathan, without even realizing it. I was obviously angry at him. Did I make a terrible mistake?”
“There’s no point in crying over spilled milk,” Jeanne said. “What’s done is done.”
Jeanne was tired. She had no patience for other peoples’ troubles, and Mina had gotten on her nerves.
“You don’t have to go back into the dining room, Rebecca.”
“What if Mina is expecting us?”
Jeanne just shrugged her shoulders and went her way.
In fact, everyone had gotten up from the table, so Rebecca went looking for Mina. Instead she came across Louise Cohen, who was riding on a breeze of jasmine in a Mediterranean garden, stretched out in a hammock suspended between two olive trees. Rebecca followed her lead and lay down in a chaise longue, watching the birds flit back and forth as a lone cloud asserted itself against the cobalt sky.
Blushing slightly and looking a little tipsy, Louise broke into the story of her love life.
“I loved my husband and my son both. I was eighteen when I married Marco. I had only admiration for him. I remember, it was December 25, 1875. We were in Corfu, and the sky was a deep sea blue. I didn�
�t love him at first but I agreed to marry him. Ten months later, Albert Abraham Caliman was born. I lived for the next six years with my in-laws. Marco’s father was president of the Hebrew community. He was always good to me, better than to Marco with whom he fought constantly. They worked together at the family soap factory and they never agreed on anything. Abraham wasn’t an easy man and he refused to listen to his son’s advice on how to modernize the business and diversify their soaps, with perfumes and new shapes. He would fly into a rage and call him an idiot. He didn’t see that the economic crisis was going to change everything in Corfu and stir up anti-Semitism. For him, Marco was always wrong. He crushed Marco, who never got over it.”
“Albert wrote about his father’s severity and how you both were afraid of him.”
“Marco followed his father’s example: authoritarian and violent. He was the same father to Albert as his father was to him, and I spent my time protecting my darling from him.”
“Were you frightened of Marco, too?”
“That’s what Albert thought. He says so in Book of My Mother.”
“But what did you think?” Rebecca insisted.
“I hated it when he drank but I always managed to calm him down or reason with him. I would cajole or flatter him; it soothed him. Never underestimate the power of a woman.”
“You were the stronger one.”
“But I could never let him know that. He would have been furious. My main concern was Albert, so I did what I had to so he would leave us in peace. I had the same intense relationship with Albert as Jeanne Proust and Mina Kacew had with their sons.”
It occurred to Rebecca that Louise Cohen’s proclaimed love for her brutal husband was a facade; she was an abusive mother, just like the others, who kept her husband away from her child. He was no more involved in his son’s upbringing than Adrien Proust and Arieh Kacew had been with theirs.
“Tell me, Louise: did Marco’s violence influence Albert’s theory of the ridiculous male?”
“I’ve wondered about that, too,” Louise confessed timidly. “He wrote with disdain about those men who are so enamored of their strength but who never impress anyone other than a few ‘prehistoric’ women who will unconditionally follow their ‘Neanderthal men.’ He could never forgive the women who loved those baboons. I think he looked down on me too for loving Marco.”
Mina appeared in the garden, wearing a light dress, her hair tinted that shade of mauve so characteristic of elderly ladies who try to hide their grey hair.
“Romain Gary also exalted femininity, its gentleness and compassion and non-violence, as a strength of civilization.”
“He was copying Albert!”
“Dear Louise, I don’t mean to nitpick but let me remind you that Promise at Dawn came out in 1960, whereas your son wrote Belle du Seigneur in 1968.”
“They were both machos, you know. They denigrated women at the same time they put them on a pedestal. They loved them and seduced them again and again. They couldn’t live without women. But they only chose who adored them and showed them off. And these women had to hide their own intelligence, shrewdness and above all their critical powers. Romain and Albert were too fragile for any of that.”
“I was just wondering why we always sought out the company of men,” said Louise. “We’ve been here for years and none of us misses them at all.”
“Speak for yourself!”
Minnie Marx had just entered the garden, wearing a loose black dress.
“To think I have to come outside if I want to join in this conversation, when you know how much I hate gardens. I only feel good with my feet on the asphalt, breathing in the smells of the big city. I love the company of men, their freedom and spontaneity when they go after a woman, and I love in particular that they don’t sit around analyzing everything all the time.”
“In that case, don’t let us keep you,” Mina shot at her, insulted.
“No, I like you all too much. Can’t I admit that men amuse me? My husband especially.”
“That’s because you took him for one of your sons.”
“It’s true he behaved just like them, which only made me love him more. He was a tailor, his clients sarcastically called him ‘the ace of spades’ because he didn’t know his way around a needle and thread. He used to say that only amateurs used a tape measure; professionals like him could take a measurement just by looking. The results were lamentable. You could always pick out Samuel’s clients by their too short sleeves and the uneven hemline on their trousers. Once was enough though; they never came back after that. Samuel wasn’t bothered, though. He only had to go a little further from home to find new clients. He was an optimist above all else. He refused to worry and tried to make the most of every day. It was a wonderful philosophy for life and he passed it on to Harpo.”
“Was he much involved in his sons’ upbringing?” Rebecca asked.
“He helped the most by doing the cooking. When even I couldn’t convince a theater director to book the boys, he could always win him over with one of his dishes. He could turn a few ingredients into a mouthwatering meal. But there were always too many of us and too little to eat.”
“Did he realize that you loved your sons better than him?”
“Well, he could see who was the toast of Broadway and it wasn’t him.”
Minnie blinked a few times then suggested that they all go in.
“We’ll be more comfortable inside, don’t you think?”
Back in the living room, Minnie poured herself a glass of scotch and threw herself into the story of her life with her husband. The German neighborhood where they lived on New York’s Upper East Side was teaming with immigrants just like them, looking for a better life in the city’s bustling streets. Simon Marrix had come from Alsace, but once in America he decided he would be Samuel Marx.
“How did you meet?”
“You can’t guess, can you, how a Frenchman ended up with a German woman? He had to cross the whole Atlantic to find himself surrounded by Germans!”
“Did you catch sight of each other on the boat that brought you to Ellis Island?”
“Not at all,” sighed Minnie, nostalgic now. “I did arrive by boat, of course, but with my parents. I was sixteen years old, and it was 1880. We’ve all heard the stories about Ellis Island: the confusion, the dirt, the humiliation . . . I was mesmerized by the ship’s wake. I thought it was tracing the line of my destiny in the water. I was young, strong and absolutely determined to succeed. I loved watching the sun dance on the waves so I told myself that, whenever I doubted myself, whatever might happen to me, I only had to see the sun sparkle, even in a puddle, and I’d get my courage back. It was a glorious day. I was so sure of myself. It was just a superstition of mine, but it proved useful. It helped me find Samuel, on a ferry one bright sunny day when the sea shone like all the constellations in the summer sky. It was the winter of 1882. I could hardly see my future husband’s face under the wool cap he wore, but he got my attention. He helped me into the boat, and we were together from that day forward.”
She was moved by the memory and reached for her handkerchief.
“Is everyone here an exile?” Rebecca asked.
“There’s Jeanne Proust, who never left Paris, and Amalia Freud, who stayed in Vienna. But the rest of us all know what it’s like to live at the whim of politics.”
4
Exile
A child’s first experience of civilization is his relationship with his mother.
Romain Gary, La nuit sera calme
Thinking about Minnie’s arrival in New York, Rebecca started to draw a mental picture of what life would have been like for the Cohen’s and the Kacew’s. Albert came to Marseille in 1900 and Romain Gary to Nice in 1928. Greek and Russian, respectively, both were from poor Jewish families who had left their native countries behind. Theirs was a world that no longer existed, and they had known the horrors of the 20th century. Both mothers had only their sons, to whom they were devoted, and the
sons had only their mothers. And Rebecca? She hadn’t experienced any tragedies in her life. The fall of the Berlin Wall? She had watched it on television. War, massacres? She’d seen pictures in newspapers. And yet, she had protected Nathan much like these other women had protected their sons, with the same undying hope that they had put in their sons’ futures. If they had made something of themselves, if they had proven themselves to be exceptional, it was because these women had breathed so much energy into them.
Is some kind of trauma a precondition of future success?
Rebecca was curled up in a large leather armchair, leafing though a photo album with Mina. She lingered over a portrait of Romain Gary when he must have been no more than fifteen years old; he had a thoughtful look, fine features and wore his hair combed back. He was remarkably handsome and elegant, with his tie carefully knotted around the collar of his starched shirt.
“Even when he was little, Romain was as serious as any adult,” Mina remarked.
Smiling to herself, she got up to find a shoebox in a cupboard, then returned to her spot next to Rebecca and began to shuffle through more photos until she came to one in particular. It was Romain again, this time buckled into a leather jacket, an aviator’s cap down low over his forehead, a sly smile under his thin mustache, hands in his pockets and a swaggering look in his eyes.
“This was taken when he joined General de Gaulle. After that he was made a Compagnon de la Libération and became French, too,” Mina declared proudly.
Rebecca fished around in the box as well. It was full of Kacew family photos.
“When did you leave Russia?” she asked.
“Right after the fall of the tzar, in March, 1917. We weren’t the only ones to leave, you can imagine. People were in a panic. We were lucky to find a spot in a cattle car.”
Mina’s voice never wavered as she talked about this most dangerous moment of her life. She might have been talking about moving from one house to another in the same street. She was strong, sure of herself and of her rights.
“I never had a thought for anything other than Romain’s well being. So many things could have gone wrong. I made him wear camphor around his neck to keep away Typhoid fever but, above all, I never took my eyes off him. He was incontestably the most beautiful person in the whole car, and I convinced myself that, with eyes like his, he would make it out of there.”
Jewish Mothers Never Die Page 5
