Shhh (3 page)

But my story, I can tell it. The story of the thirteen years I spent with my parents and my sisters. My childhood.

That's what I'm going to try to tell now. And perhaps, while relating my childhood, I will also tell a bit of their story. Well, the beginning, until that moment when their story stopped. This way I'll have the beginning and the end, but nothing in the middle.

My mother was 39 years old when her story stopped. My father 37. He was two years younger. My sister Sarah was 15, Jacqueline 12.

I suppose I can say that 1942 was the year of their death. But I can also say that 1942 was the year of my rebirth. Or rather my real birth, because when my mother hid me in the closet she gave me an excess of life. And so now, more than sixty years later, I want to tell the story of my childhood. Well, I'm going to try to tell it. I'm ...

Federman, stop repeating that you're going to tell your childhood, and start telling it. You're not going to use the same old leap-frog technique again in this story—delaying and digressing all over the place.

What do you think? That I'm going to tell this story straightforward? That would be something. I've said it and repeated it many times: chronology handicaps me. I don't know how to walk the straight line. And I don't understand logic at all.

Besides, what's left of my childhood in my head are only fragments, debris, torn souvenirs for which I must now improvise a form.

OK, I'll try to tell it anyway.

This lost childhood blocked in me, except for the vague debris of souvenirs, how should it be told? How can it be found again? How to reconstruct it? Where to begin?

As I did in the preceding pages, I had to return to the closet. It is from there, from that black hole, that the story of my childhood can be told. Backward. Or at least obliquely.

But this time, instead of coming out of the closet on tip-toes, full of fear, and with a package of shit in my hands, instead of going down the stairs slowly and quietly trying to avoid the creaking steps, until the little boy that I was then started running into the street towards the enigma of his future, this time I'll come out of the closet without fear, and I'll go down the stairs resolutely to better sink into my childhood.

To better fall back into childhood, if at all possible.

To find this childhood, it was necessary to revisit the closet, and tell, once and for all, what happened later on that July day of 1942. How during the long hours the boy spent in the dark, groping at the walls with his hands, searching blindly in all the corners, he found behind a pile of old newspapers a box of sugar cubes, probably bought on the black market.

Seated on the pile of newspapers, the boy sucked pieces of sugar one after another to calm his hunger and his fear. But his fear made him want to shit. So he opened a newspaper, spread it on the floor, and crouched like an animal, holding his penis with two fingers not to wet himself, he defecated on the photos of smiling German soldiers, then he folded the newspaper into a neat package feeling the warmth and the wetness on his hands. He placed the dirty package next to the door, and the next morning, when he finally dared come out of the closet, he climbed up the ladder that led to the skylight, pushed it open, and left his bundle of excrement on the roof of the building.

Three years later, after the war, when I returned to the old house in Montrouge for the first time, I immediately went up to the skylight to see if my package of shit was still on the roof. I found nothing. Had the wind blown away my fear? Had the rain washed it away? Had the birds pecked my shitty package? One will never know. But that day I burst into laughter while asking myself these questions.

In any case, this time, it is not on tip-toes and with shit in my hands that I will emerge from the black hole. It is backward, without fear, that I will plunge into my childhood and try to imagine it.

It is true that over the years I have managed to tell, here and there, moments of that childhood—little stories, scenes dispersed in my books. I suppose now I should recycle these fragments of writing. They will help me reconstruct my childhood, they ...

Federman, you're incurable. You're not going to start reusing your old stuff. Plagiarizing yourself? Mumble the same old stories again?

Why not? After all, what I'm in the process of telling is the final chapter of the great story I've been muttering and scribbling for the past forty years. It's a piece of the whole. Of the big book I'm trying to finish now. It's the conclusion, even though that conclusion is my beginning. So I think I can allow myself to re-inscribe here some of the stories I've already told.

And after that, when I'm finished, finished with the big book, if there is still time, then I'll tell a different story. Maybe a science-fiction story. I've always wanted to write a funny sexy science-fiction novel in the style of Stanislav Lem.

But for the time being, and for the commodity and acceleration of the tale that I am in the process of telling, I think I can allow myself displaced words I've scribbled elsewhere. After all, it's part of the same story.

To begin, I have to draw the geography of the neighborhood where I spent the first thirteen years of my life, in Montrouge. A proletarian suburb, south of Paris.

First, the apartment building, 4 Rue Louis Rolland. Then the street where I played with my sisters, my cousin Salomon, and the other boys of the neighborhood. Then the adjacent streets. The boys school where I went, Rue de Bagneux. The bakery where I bought the bread and where on Sunday, if my mother had the money, I would take the chicken she had bought at the market to be roasted in the baker's oven. The meat shop, Avenue Émile Zola, and also the horse meat shop on the same avenue, and all the other shops on Rue Michelet. The open market where on Sundays I went with my mother to buy fresh vegetables, and other things. I was the one who carried
le filet.
The café Chez Marius at the corner of Rue Louis Rolland and la Route d'Orléans, next to the
patisserie.
Oh, and very importantly, the big factory across the street from our building. A tannery from which an unbearable smell emanated at all times. People who came to our neighborhood always said,
Wow does it stink here!

I spent my entire childhood in that smelly neighborhood, totally oblivious to what was going on in the world. Oh well, I must describe it anyway.

Now the house where we lived. It was a three-story building, with a courtyard in front enclosed by walls on each side and a tall gate that opened onto the street. I vaguely remember the gate was painted green. It was an old dilapidated 19
^th
-century building, like all the others on that street, except for one house. An elegant villa. I'll tell about it later.

I've been told that originally all the houses on our street were military barracks. They all looked exactly the same. But now many have been renovated and modernized.

(Montrouge has become
un quartier chic pour nouveaux riches.
I don't think I need to translate that.)

The staircase of the house was narrow and dark. Some of the steps were rotten and creaked. There was always a rancid smell in the staircase. The building had a very deep and scary cellar where the coal was stored, and other junk. At the top of the staircase, on the third floor, a ladder led to a little glass transom window that opened onto the roof.

The building belonged to my uncle Leon and my aunt Marie. Marie was my mother's older sister. My mother had two brothers and five sisters. I'll tell more about them later.

Leon and Marie were rich. They owned several apartment buildings in Paris. But I never knew where.

On the main floor of our building there were two small apartments. One on each side of the staircase. Each had only one room and a small kitchen. No bathroom. This is where the anti-Semites lived. We never spoke to them.

Leon had tried to get rid of them, but I think there was a law that prevented proprietors from expelling undesirable tenants.

The entire second floor was Leon and Marie's apartment. They had a dining room, a salon, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and even a bathroom. They had lots of antique furniture in their apartment. Oriental carpets. Two big buffets. Armchairs. A tall grandfather clock. Paintings on the walls, and all kinds of little knickknacks on the tables, most of them in carved ivory.

Ivory statues were in style before the war. Most of these statues were of wild African animals, all the same size, elephants, giraffes, lions, monkeys, gazelles. I was not allowed to touch these little statues, but I would spend a lot of time just looking at them whenever I went to Leon and Marie's apartment. These wild animals made me dream, and even believe, that I was in Africa chasing lions, wandering in the jungle, dying of malaria. These little animal statues made me invent stories in which I saw myself as a great adventurer.

In the dining room there were two giant Chinese vases, one on each side of the fireplace. Leon and Marie had a fireplace. In our apartment we only had a small stove, a salamander-stove in which we burned coal in the winter when my mother could afford to buy some. Sometimes, when it was very cold in the winter, my mother would beg Leon for a little coal. Later I'll tell how poor we were.

On the Chinese vases there were pictures of dragons. These dragons made me invent other wild adventures in far away places. Chinese vases were in style before the war. They must have been expensive, but even though Leon was known in the family as
un radin,
a miser, he liked to accumulate objects. Oh, they also had a phonograph, a big radio, and a piano.

My cousin Marco, their only son, took piano lessons. His real name was Salomon, but during the war he changed it to Marco, and for the rest of his life he was known only by that name. He was four years older than me. He made my life miserable when we were growing up together. I'll tell some of the mean things he did to me, and the ugly thing he once wanted me to do to him.

In my uncle and aunt's bedroom there was a huge armoire with a mirror in the center, and a bed with a big red feather quilt. My uncle Leon would hide money under the mattress. I know this because one time, when I was still very young, I saw him slide his hand under the mattress and take out a handful of large bills. He didn't notice I saw him.

The wooden floor of their apartment was always well polished. They had
une femme de ménage
who came once a week to polish the floor and the furniture. When you entered their apartment, you had to put your feet on little pieces of cloth and slide along on the shiny and slippery parquet. It was like a game for me. As if I were ice-skating. Leon would get angry and yell at me if I walked on the floor with my shoes because I neglected to put my feet on the little
patins.

In the salon there was a leather divan with big cushions and one armchair. And also a tall oval mirror on a swiveling stand. My uncle Leon was a tailor. His atelier was downstairs in the courtyard, but he did the fitting of his clients in that salon. This way the clients could see in the mirror the suits they were trying on, and Leon could show them where he was going to adjust the pants or the jacket.

Next to the mirror stood a mannikin. Just a bust on top of a metal stem. No head. On this bust Leon put the jackets he had prepared for the fittings. The jackets still had the white basting threads all over, showing that they were not finished and could be altered if necessary. After the fittings, when the jackets
were
finished, I was the one who had to remove these white threads with a little scissors. I had to be very careful not to cut the fabric because, for sure, Leon would have killed me.

Leon had a good reputation as a tailor. Everybody in the family said that he had some very wealthy clients who came all the way to Montrouge just to have a suit made by
Léon le Tailleur,
as he was known by everyone. Some of the rich clients even came by car with a chauffeur.

My aunt Marie worked with Leon in the atelier. She did all the sewing to be done by hand, and many other things, as she sat on a little
tabouret
in front a table full of pins and needles and scissors and things she needed to do her work. Leon did the cutting of the fabric, standing in front of a tall table. He did the sewing with a foot pedal sewing machine. He also did the final pressing with a big steam iron, and the fittings with the clients.

I know all this because I spent a lot of time in their atelier doing little chores. After I finished my homework, Leon always made me do little chores instead of letting me go play in the street with the other boys. My cousin Salomon was allowed to go play in the street when he finished his homework, but not me, unless I could sneak past the window of the atelier without Leon seeing me. To go out into the street one had to pass in front of the atelier, and when Leon saw me through the window he would call out to me loud to come in and make me do something.

Humiliating little chores, like pulling the white threads from the jackets, or on my knees picking up with a little magnet the pins and needles that had fallen between the cracks of the floor planks. He kept telling me that a little
cornichon
like me should learn how to work. That's what he always called me,
cornichon.
A pickle, that's what the French call a dumb person.

Because I was so shy when I was a boy, and always daydreaming, everyone in the family thought I was mentally retarded. I never said anything. I think I was five years old when I started talking.

When someone asked me a question, I would either shrug my shoulders or shake my head as an answer. Even my mother used to say,
toujours dans la lune mon pauvre garçon.
On top of that, my nose was dripping all the time, I was undernourished, knock-kneed, and scared of everything, especially rats. Quite frankly there wasn't much hope for me. And my uncle Leon took advantage of that.

Sometimes, when my mother didn't have money to buy food for us, my aunt Marie would ask my sisters and me to come and eat with them. After the meal my uncle Leon would make me crawl under the dining room table to pick up the crumbs of bread that had fallen on the oriental carpet.