Shhh (10 page)

He doesn't seem interested in what I have become.

At that time, even though I had lived a rather chaotic life since the day I came out of the closet, done many crazy things, I hadn't accomplished much. For three years I worked on a farm in southern France before leaving for America. And there I worked in Detroit, and I was jazz musician, a dishwasher in New York, a waiter in a country club in the Catskills, I jumped out of airplanes with the 82
^nd
Airborne Division in North Carolina, fought the war in Korea, did a lot of screwing with cute Japanese girls in Tokyo, went to Columbia on the G.I. Bill, and yet in spite of all that there was little to tell. Now I was just a graduate student at UCLA working on a Ph.D. Doing a lot of reading.
Le nouveau roman.
Beckett. Writing a little. Mostly poetry. I started a novel which was not going very well. I hadn't published anything. At thirty, I felt like a failure.

I didn't tell Bébert all that. I was only thinking about it while he went on telling me about his mediocre life. I let him talk. I was impatient for him to leave.

Finally as he stood up to leave, he said to me, Why don't you come for dinner one evening, in spite of it all.

He said it in French of course.
Viens quande même dîner chez nous un soir.

I don't know why, but I said, Yes, that would be nice. It was, I suppose, his
quand même
that made me accept his invitation. Let's say that I was curious to see how anti-Semites lived now.

And besides that it'll give me a chance to see the old neighborhood.

Come this weekend, he said, as he waved
au revoir.

So the following Saturday, I arrive at Bébert's parents. Same old building, on my street, rue Louis Rolland. I'm greeted warmly. As if I were an old friend of the family. Bébert's mother even kisses me on both cheeks. His father shakes my hand vigorously. Before sitting at the table for dinner we talk. I am asked what kind of work I do, what kind of writing, how it is to live in America, if I'm doing ok over there. Just banal conversation. We avoid talking about what happened during the war. I am wondering why I decided to come.

Bébert's mother goes back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen where she's preparing dinner, finally she brings out a big soupière, puts it on the table and says, Dinner is served, let's eat before the soup gets cold.

I am sitting next to Bébert facing his mother. She tells me to serve myself. I fill my plate with what looks and smells delicious. I love split pea soup, I tell Bébert's mother. As I reach for my soup spoon, I notice the initials carved on the handle. It's a silver spoon. I look at it.

M.F. These are the initials on that spoon. And suddenly I realize that I am holding in my hand a silver spoon that belonged to my mother. Yes, my mother had a set of silverware with her initials. I believe it was a gift from her sisters when she got married. We never used that silverware. It stayed in a drawer of the buffet wrapped in newspaper. Whenever my mother complained to my father that she didn't have enough money to buy food, my father would threaten to take the silverware to a pawn shop.

My mother would stand in front of the buffet to protect her silverware, and start crying. So my father would not insist. I think he respected my mother's personal treasure.

I remained seated at the table for a moment, my hand holding the spoon before my face, my eyes fixed on it. Then I put it down slowly on the table. Got up. I didn't say anything. They all had lowered their heads over their soup. I stood by the door a moment, looking at them, and then I left. I felt a heavy silence behind the door. I was not going to ask them to give me back the spoon, and whatever else they had stolen from us. I can still see Madame Laurent's face when I held the spoon before my eyes staring at the initials. She looked as if she was ready to burst into tears or choke with sobs. She was all flushed. Monsieur Laurent just kept his head down, he started eating his soup. Bébert attempted to rise from his chair as if he wanted to reach for me, but he froze there.

Well, enough of that. But I believe that is the real reason why I have never forgotten the name Robert Laurent. And why I ...

As I was finishing writing the scene about the spoon the phone rang. My daughter from New York long distance, or wherever she is right now. She's always on the move.

She asks what I am doing.

Writing, I tell her. I just finished a new scene for the novel
Shhh.
You want me to read it to you?

I often read what I'm writing to Simone when she calls. This way I get feedback. She's tough. She knows how to tell me when I go overboard, as she's fond of saying. That doesn't mean she's always right, but I listen to her.

Is it funny? she asks.

Not really. Well, you'll see.

So I read her the scene about the spoon.

Pop, you're not going to stick that in the novel. It's not true. I never heard this story before. You've invented the whole thing to be more dramatic. To have people feel sorry for you. You fabricated that spoon story. Besides it's not plausible. Especially since you say all the time that your parents were very poor. How come then your mother had all that silver?

It was a wedding present from her sisters.

I don't believe that. When your mother got married her sisters must have been just as poor as she was. They couldn't afford to buy her such an expensive gift. Maybe later they got rich. And besides those aunts of yours all seem rather stingy.

Pop, the whole scene is too melodramatic. Doesn't sound real. Especially the chance encounter with Bébert in a café. It's not believable. I doubt you would have recognized each other. And even if you did, I doubt he would have invited you for dinner. If I were you I would take that scene out of the book immediately. The fact that you remember the name of the guy, that's good enough. No need to explain why you remember it. Explanations always falsify the truth.

She's something, my daughter Simone, the theater director, especially when she gets carried away like that. She's always right, even when she's wrong.

I should have told her that readers of fiction like to be told sad stories, as long as they appear to be true. I mean convincing, and the chronology is faithful to the principle of non-contradiction. It is well known that testimonies cause indignation and make those who listen feel good. What I wrote in that scene is a kind of testimony of what happened at that time, not only to us, but to many Jews who were deported. Their things, their possessions were stolen. Especially the silver and the works of art.

That's what I wanted to explain to Simone after her ranting about what I had written. But she hung up too soon. She had to rush somewhere.

Anyway, I'll tell how Bébert and I became members of
L'Amicale de Natation.

Before the day when Bébert told me he couldn't play with me any more, we were good buddies. It's with him that I smoked my first cigarette. Sometimes Bébert and I stole cigarettes from our father's packs. We did all kinds of things like that, Bébert and me. We would steal candies from the candy store, but I'm not going to tell how we did it because all children steal candy from candy stores too. But I'll have to tell later how I stole a ring from a department store and how I got caught.

I'll have to tell that. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in the list of scenes to relate. But I'll make a note to myself now not to forget.

I'll go on with Bébert and
la natation.

One day Bébert tells me that he had gone to a swimming pool for the first time. We were still very young when he told me that. And he said that I should come with him next time. It's a lot of fun, you'll see. And this way we'll learn how to swim.

When I told my mother that I wanted to go to the swimming pool with Bébert, she told me that I would need a bathing suit. But for the time being she couldn't afford to buy one.

I had never been in water before. I mean my whole body. Not even in a bath tub. When I was still young my mother would wash me in the kitchen in a wash basin. When I became too old and too big for the wash basin, my father would take me to the public baths of Montrouge once a week for a shower. I liked taking a shower, but it was not like being completely inside the water.

My mother would always tell me to make sure to dry my hair well so that I wouldn't catch a cold when I came out of the public baths.

I don't know how my mother managed it, but a few days after I told her I wanted to go swimming with my friend Bébert, she gave me a swimming suit.

I was the little darling,
le chouchou
of Maman, and when I wanted something somehow she always managed to get it for me. I still remember this bathing suit. It was dark blue, and it had a little red anchor on the side. I kept it for a long time even after it became too tight for me.

The day my mother gave me the bathing suit, my sisters complained that it wasn't fair, that it was always me who got extra things from Maman. They also wanted bathing suits, even if they didn't go swimming. My mother told them she would try to get them each one.

I think my sisters did get bathing suits. Yes, when the three of us went on vacation one summer with
les colonies de vacances
organized by the city of Montrouge for the children of poor families. But it was ...

Federman, why don't you ever say how old you were when you tell one of these stories of your childhood. You say, I was still a small boy, I was little, or I was older and bigger, but you never give the exact age. It's confusing.

The reason I don't tell how old I was is because it's impossible for me to remember exactly. I am trying to tell thirteen years of my life. Thirteen years of confusion and obliviousness. So I cannot organize chronologically with precise references the age I was.

From time to time, I do give a date. And since you know when I was born, it's up to you to calculate.

OK, this is how I became a member of
L'Amicale de Natation.

The day I got my bathing suit I went to the swimming pool with Bébert, and that day I almost drowned. This is what happened.

At the swimming pool there were cabins in which to undress. So I took off my clothes, folded them neatly, and put on my bathing suit. I was a bit ashamed to come out of the cabin because my body was so white and skinny. The boys who were swimming in the pool were all suntanned. It was summer. Timidly, I approached the edge of the pool and watched how people were swimming. It looked like it was easy to stay on the surface of the water by slapping it with your arms and legs. While I was watching, two big boys approached me and started shoving me around.

I had forgotten to take off my socks. I hadn't realized. The two boys kept laughing and pushing me and suddenly I fell into the pool. In the deep end. Since I had never been in the water before I didn't know what to do. My arms were flailing about, but I was sinking. I had water in my mouth, in my nose. I panicked. When the life-guard saw that I was drowning, he jumped in and pulled me out. He stretched me on the side of the pool, and made me breathe by pressing on my chest. I was trembling. All the boys were standing around me, some of them still laughing because I still had my socks on, which were all wet now. Finally I was able to stand up. I was so ashamed, but I didn't cry.

When Bébert saw what had happened he came to get me and explained that when you don't know how to swim you have to stay in the shallow end of the pool. I was afraid to go in, but when I saw how he was able to stand up, and the water reached only to his waist, I climbed down the ladder on the side of the pool, and slowly entered the water. I stayed close to the edge, holding on to it. It felt good to be in the water. But I didn't dare duck my head down like Bébert was doing.

After that, every Thursday Bébert and I went to the swimming pool. Little by little we both became more daring. We imitated how the other boys who could swim were moving their arms and legs, but we did it only in the shallow end and not far from the edge. After a while we were able to stay on the surface of the water without having our feet touch the bottom of the pool.

One day a man who was there every Thursday showed us how to move our arms and legs to do the breaststroke. Soon Bébert and I were able to swim across the narrow side of the pool.

The man who was teaching us was the coach of
L'Amicale de Natation,
and one day he told us that we could join his club for free and be part of the team that competed against other swimming clubs. The man explained that he went from pool to pool to recruit young swimmers. He told us that by looking at the bodies of young people he could determine if they could become good swimmers.

I wonder how he could determine that I could become a swimmer, me who was so skinny then, and undernourished, me whose knees knocked together when I walked, whose ribs were showing through my skin. And yet, I did become a good swimmer, specializing in the backstroke, and almost made the 1948 US Olympic Team, as I mentioned before.

My mother was pleased that I went swimming regularly. She kept saying that it was good for me, it made me stronger. But my uncle Leon made fun of me. He would say that it was a waste of time.

Of course, when I had to wear the yellow star on all my clothes, I was no longer allowed to go to the municipal swimming pool. Nor to the movies. Nor to public libraries and museums. I even had to stop playing in the street with the other boys from the neighborhood. I would stay home and play alone, or reread my Jules Verne.

It was the same for my cousin Salomon and the other Jewish boy in our school. His name was Lucien Jacobson, but everybody called him Loulou.

Oh, that's another name from my school days that I remember. Lucien Jacobson. Of course, Loulou with whom ...

Loulou! Federman, is that the Loulou whose story you tell in
Double or Nothing?