The Tongue Set Free, page 7
Napoleon; Cannibal Guests; Sunday Fun
Life in the mansion on Burton Road was social and cheerful. We always had guests on weekends. Sometimes I was called in, the guests had asked for me, and there were all sorts of ways I could perform. So I got to know them all well, the members of the family and their friends. The Sephardic colony in Manchester had grown rather quickly, all of them settling not far from one another in the outlying residential districts of West Didsbury and Withington. Exporting cotton goods from Lancashire to the Balkans was a profitable business. A few years before us, Mother’s eldest brothers, Bucco and Solomon, had come to Manchester and started a firm. Bucco, who was regarded as sagacious, soon died at an early age, and Solomon, the hard man with the ice-cold eyes, remained alone. He looked for a partner, and that was a chance for my father, who had such a lofty notion of England. Father entered the firm and, being charming, conciliant, and understanding of other people’s viewpoints, he formed a useful counterpoise to his brother-in-law. I cannot see this uncle as friendly or fair, he was the hated enemy of my youth, the man who stood for everything I despised. He probably didn’t care about me one way or another, but for the family he was the picture of success, and success was money. In Manchester I rarely saw him; he took many business trips, but the family spoke about him all the more. By now, he was quite at home in England and greatly respected among the businessmen. His English, which was perfect, was admired by the latecomers in the family, and not only by them. Miss Lancashire sometimes mentioned him at school. “Mr. Arditti is a gentleman,” she said. By which she probably meant that he was well-to-do and had nothing of a foreigner in his behavior. He lived in a big mansion, much higher and more spacious than ours, in Palatine Road, which ran parallel to our street, and since, unlike all the reddish houses I saw in the neighborhood, it was white and shimmery bright, and also perhaps because of the name of the road, it seemed like a palace to me. But as for him, even though he didn’t look it, I regarded him as an ogre very early on. It was always Mr. Arditti this, and Mr. Arditti that, our governess made a deferential grimace when she spoke his name, supreme shalt-nots were attributed to him, and when my conversations with the wallpaper people were discovered and I tried to defend them by citing my father, who was very lenient with me, I was told Mr. Arditti would find out about them, and that would have the most frightful consequences. At the sheer mention of his name, I gave up on the spot and promised to break off my relations to the wallpaper people. He was the ultimate authority of all the grownups in my milieu. When I read about Napoleon, I pictured him precisely like this uncle, and the atrocities I ascribed to him were credited to Napoleon. On Sunday mornings, we were allowed to visit our parents in their bedroom, and once, when I entered, I heard my father saying in his solemn and dignified English: “He’ll stop at nothing. He’d leave a trail of corpses.” Mother noticed me and retorted in German, she seemed angry, and the conversation went on for a while without my understanding it.
If my father was talking about my uncle, then he must have meant business corpses; my uncle hardly had any opportunity for others. But I didn’t grasp this at the time, and even though I hadn’t gotten very far in Napoleon’s life, I comprehended enough of his impact to regard corpses (which I only knew about from books, of course) as corpses.
There were also three cousins of my mother’s who had come to Manchester, three brothers. Sam, the eldest, really looked like an Englishman, he had also been in England longer than anyone else. With the drooping corners of his mouth, he encouraged me to pronounce difficult words correctly, and when I grimaced in order to emulate him, he took it amiably and laughed heartily, without hurting my feelings. Miss Lancashire’s dictum about that other relative, the ogre-uncle, was something I never recognized, and once, in order to demonstrate this, I stood in front of Uncle Sam and said: “You’re a gentleman, Uncle Sam!” Perhaps he liked hearing it, in any event he understood, everyone understood, for the entire company in our dining room went mute.
All these relatives of my mother, except for one, had started families in Manchester and came visiting with their wives. Only Uncle Solomon was missing, his time was too costly, and he had no interest in conversations with women present, much less in making music. He called these things “frivolities,” his head was always full of new business dealings, and he was admired for this “mental activity” too.
Other families we were friends with also came on such evenings. There was Mr. Florentin, whom I liked because of his beautiful name; Mr. Calderon, who had the longest moustache and always laughed. The most mysterious one for me, when he first appeared, was Mr. Innie. He was darker than the others, and people said he was an Arab, by which they meant an Arabic Jew, he had only just recently come from Bagdad. I had The Arabian Nights in my head, and when I heard “Bagdad,” I expected Caliph Haroun in disguise. But the disguise went too far, Mr. Innie had gigantic shoes. I didn’t like that, and I asked him why he had such big shoes. “Because I have such big feet,” he said, “would you like to see them?” I believed he was really about to take the shoes off, and I was scared. For one of the wallpaper people, who was my special enemy, excluding himself from all enterprises that I wanted to launch, also had enormous feet. I didn’t want to see Mr. Innie’s feet, and without saying goodbye, I went up to the nursery. I no longer believed that he came from Bagdad with those feet; I told my parents it wasn’t true, and said he was a liar.
My parents’ guests had a merry time, they chatted and laughed a lot, they played music, they played cards. Usually they stayed in the dining room, perhaps because of the piano. Guests were entertained more seldom in the yellow salon, which was separated from the dining room by the vestibule and the corridor. However, the salon was the setting of my humiliations, which were linked to the French language. It must have been my mother who insisted that I also learn French, to balance English, which was so dear to my father. A teacher came, a Frenchwoman, and she gave me lessons in the yellow salon. She was dark and thin and there was something invidious about her, but her face has been covered by the faces of other Frenchwomen whom I knew afterwards, I can’t find it in me anymore. She came and went punctually, but she never made much of an effort and she merely taught me a story about a boy who was alone in the house and wanted to nibble on something. “Paul était seul à la maison,” was how it began. I soon knew the story by heart and recited it to my parents. The boy suffered all manner of misfortunes in his nibblings, and I recited the story as dramatically as possible—my parents seemed very amused, before long they were laughing their heads off. I felt odd. I had never heard them laugh so long and so harmoniously, and when I was done, I sensed that their praise was bogus. Offended, I went up to the nursery and kept rehearsing the story for myself to avoid faltering or making any mistakes.
The next time that visitors came, they all placed themselves in the yellow salon as though for a performance, I was brought down and asked to recite the French story. I began “Paul était seul à la maison,” and all faces were already twisting in mirth. But I wanted to show them and I stuck to my guns, I told the story to its end. By then, they were rolling in the aisles. Mr. Calderon, who was always the loudest, clapped his hands and shouted: “Bravo! Bravo!” Uncle Sam, the gentleman, couldn’t get his mouth shut and bared all his English teeth. Mr. Innie stretched his gigantic shoes out far, leaned his head back, and howled. Even the ladies, who were usually tender to me and liked kissing me on my head, laughed with gaping mouths as though about to devour me. It was a wild company, I got scared, and eventually, I started crying.
This scene was repeated several times; when guests came, I was cajoled into reciting my Paul story, and instead of refusing I agreed each time, hoping to conquer my tormenting spirits. But it always ended in the same way, except that some of them got used to chorusing the story along with me, thereby forcing me to keep on to the end in case I started crying too early and felt like stopping. No one ever explained to me what was so funny; since then, laughter has remained a riddle for me, which I have thought about a great deal; it is still an unsolved riddle for me, even today.
It was only later on, when I heard French in Lausanne, that I understood the effect of my “Paul” on the gathered visitors. The teacher hadn’t made the slightest effort to teach me a proper French accent. She was satisfied if I retained her sentences and repeated them in an English way. The guests, all from Ruschuk, had learned French with a perfect accent at home in the school of the Alliance Française, and now, having trouble with their English, they found it irresistibly comical to hear this British French, and, a shameless mob, they enjoyed the reversal of their own problem in a child that was just going on seven.
I associated all my experiences at that time with the books I read. I was not so far off-target in seeing the uninhibitedly laughing mob of adults as cannibals, such as I knew and feared from The Arabian Nights and Grimm’s fairy tales. Fear thrives strongest; there is no telling how little we would be without having suffered fear. An intrinsic characteristic of humanity is the tendency to give in to fear. No fear is lost, but its hiding places are a riddle. Perhaps, of all things, fear is the one that changes least. When I think back to my early years, the very first things I recognize are the fears, of which there was an inexhaustible wealth. I find many of them only now; others, which I will never find, must be the mystery that makes me want an unending life.
* * *
Loveliest of all were the Sunday mornings; we children were allowed into our parents’ bedroom, they both still lay in bed, Father closer to the door, Mother by the window. I was allowed to jump right into his bed, the little brothers went to Mother. He tumbled around with me, asked me about school, and told me stories. It all lasted a long time, I looked forward to this in particular, and I always hoped it would never end. Otherwise everything was scheduled in detail, there were rules and rules, which the governess saw to. But I cannot say that these rules tormented me, for every day ended with Father coming home with gifts that he presented to us in the nursery; and every week ended with Sunday morning and our playing and talking in bed. I paid attention only to Father; I was indifferent to, perhaps even a little scornful about, whatever Mother was doing with my two little brothers in her bed. Since I’d started reading the books that Father brought me, I found my brothers boring or a nuisance; and the fact that Mother took them from us and that I had Father all to myself was the greatest luck. He was especially funny when he was still in bed, he made faces and sang comical songs. He mimicked animals for me, which I had to guess, and if I hit on the animal, he promised he’d take me to the zoo again as a reward. There was a chamber pot under his bed, and it contained so much yellow fluid that I was amazed. But that was nothing, for one day, he got up, stood next to the bed, and passed his water. I watched the tremendous gush, I was flabbergasted that so much water could come out of him, my admiration for him reached the highest pinnacle. “Now you’re a horse,” I said, I had watched horses passing their water in the street, and the gush and their members seemed gigantic. He admitted I was right: “Now I’m a horse,” and of all the animals he mimicked, this one had the greatest impact on me.
It was always Mother who put an end to all the fun. “Jacques, it’s time,” she said, “the children are getting too wild.” He never stopped immediately and never sent me away without first telling me a story that I hadn’t heard before. “Think about it!” he said as I stood in the doorway; Mother had rung, and the governess had come to fetch us. I felt solemn because I was supposed to think about something; he never neglected—sometimes days had passed—to ask me about it. He would then listen very carefully and finally approved of what I had said. Perhaps he really did approve of it, perhaps he was only trying to encourage me; the feeling I had when he told me to think about something can only be described as an early sense of responsibility.
I have often wondered if things would have continued like that had he lived longer. Would I eventually have rebelled against him as I did against Mother? I cannot imagine it, his image inside me is undimmed, and I want to leave it undimmed. I believe that he suffered so greatly from his father’s tyranny, living under his curse throughout that brief time in England, that he aimed at caution, love, and wisdom in everything concerning me. He was not bitter, because he had escaped; had he remained in Bulgaria, in his father’s business, which oppressed him, he would have turned into a different man.
Father’s Death The Final Version
We had been in England for about a year when Mother fell ill. Supposedly, the English air didn’t agree with her. The doctor prescribed a cure at Bad Reichenhall; in the summertime, it may have been August 1912, she went. I didn’t pay much attention, I didn’t miss her, but Father asked me about her, and I had to say something. Perhaps he was worried that her absence wouldn’t be good for us children, and he wanted to catch the first signs of change in us on the spot. After a couple of weeks, he asked me whether I would mind if Mother stayed away longer. If we were patient, he added, she would keep improving and would come home to us in full health. The first few times, I had pretended to miss her; I sensed that he expected me to. Now, I was all the more honest in agreeing that she should have a longer treatment. Sometimes he came into the nursery with a letter from her, pointing to it and saying she had written. But he wasn’t himself in this period, his thoughts were with her, and he was concerned. In the last week of her absence, he spoke little and never mentioned her name to me; he didn’t listen to me very long, never laughed, and devised no pranks. When I wanted to tell him about the latest book he had given me, The Life of Napoleon, he was absent-minded and impatient, and cut me off; I thought I had said something foolish and I was ashamed. The very next day, he came to us as merry and exuberant as usual and announced that Mother was arriving tomorrow. I was glad because he was glad; and Miss Bray told Edith something I didn’t understand: She said it was proper for the mistress to come home. “Why is it proper?” I asked, but she shook her head: “You wouldn’t understand. It is proper!” When I eventually asked Mother about it in detail—there were so many obscure things, leaving me no peace—I learned that she had been gone for six weeks and wanted to stay on. Father had lost patience and wired her to come back immediately.
The day of her arrival, I didn’t see him, he didn’t come to the nursery that evening. But he reappeared the very next morning and got my little brother to talk. “Georgie,” he said; “Canetti,” said the boy; “Two,” said Father; “Three,” said the boy; “Four,” said Father; “Burton,” said the boy; “Road,” said Father; “West,” said the boy; “Didsbury,” said Father; “Manchester,” said the boy; “England,” said Father; and I, in the end, very loudly and superfluously, said, “Europe.” So our address was together again. There are no words that I have retained more sharply, they were my Father’s last words.
He went down to breakfast as usual. Before long, we heard loud yells. The governess dashed down the stairs, I at her heels. By the open door to the dining room, I saw my father lying on the floor. He was stretched out full length, between the table and the fireplace, very close to the fireplace, his face was white, he had foam on his mouth, Mother knelt at his side, crying: “Jacques, speak to me, speak to me, Jacques, Jacques, speak to me!” She kept shouting it over and over again, people came, our neighbors the Brockbanks, a Quaker couple, strangers walked in off the street. I stood by the door, Mother grabbed her head, tore hair out, and kept shouting. I took a timid step into the room, towards my father, I didn’t understand, I wanted to ask him, then I heard someone say: “Take the child away.” The Brockbanks gently took my arm, led me out into the street, and into their front yard.
Here, their son Alan welcomed me, he was much older than I and spoke to me as if nothing had happened. He asked me about the latest cricket match at school, I answered him, he wanted to know every detail about it and kept asking until I had nothing more to say. Then he wanted to know if I was a good climber, I said yes, he showed me a tree standing there, bending somewhat towards our own front yard. “But I bet you can’t climb that one,” he said, “I bet you can’t. It’s too hard for you. You wouldn’t dare.” I took the challenge, looked at the tree, had my doubts, but didn’t show them, and said: “I can too. I can too!” I strode over to the tree, touched the bark, threw my arms around the trunk, and was about to swing up, when a window in our dining room opened. Mother leaned way out, saw me standing at the tree with Alan, and yelled: “My son, you’re playing, and your father is dead! You’re playing, you’re playing, and your father is dead! Your father is dead! Your father is dead! You’re playing, your father is dead!”
She yelled it out into the street, she kept yelling louder and louder, they yanked her back into the room by force, she resisted, I heard her shouting after I no longer saw her, I heard her shouting for a long time. Her shouts pushed Father’s death into me, and it has never left me since.
I wasn’t allowed to see Mother. I was taken to the Florentins, who lived halfway to school, in Barlowmore Road. Arthur, their son, was already something of a friend to me, and in the coming days we became inseparable. Mr. Florentin and Nelly, his wife, two kind-hearted people, never took their eyes off me for an instant, they were afraid I might run off to my mother. She was very sick, I was told, no one could see her, she would soon be fully well again, and then I could go back to her. But they were wrong, I didn’t want to go to her at all, I wanted to go to my father. They spoke little about him. The day of his funeral, which was not kept from me, I resolutely declared that I wanted to go along to the cemetery. Arthur had picture books about foreign countries, he had stamps and many games. He was occupied with me day and night; I slept in the same room, and he was so friendly and inventive and earnest and funny that I have a warm feeling even now when I think about him. But on the day of the funeral, nothing helped; when I noticed he wanted to keep me from going to the funeral, I lost my temper and struck out at him. The whole family tried to help me, they locked all doors for safety’s sake. I raged and threatened to smash them down, which may not have been beyond me on that day. Finally, they had a fortunate idea, which gradually calmed me down. They promised that I could watch the funeral procession. It could be seen from the nursery, they said, if I leaned out, but only from afar.
