Book of My Mother

XXVI

WHEN ALL IS SAID and done we settle down into unhappiness, and sometimes we think we are not so bad off after all. So let’s smoke a cigarette while the idiot on the radio talks about an important statement of an important head of state. The idiot relishes that statement, revels in it, and rolls it around his tongue. What do I care about their important statements? Those incredibly dynamic future corpses are ludicrous.

When my cat, a feebleminded creature, looks at me avidly in fixed astonishment, seeking to understand and very attentive, yes, it is my mother who is looking at me. Is my mind becoming deranged by that death which ceaselessly I acknowledge, my eyes upturned toward the night sky, where a pale round dead presence is shining, benign and motherly? Since her death I like to live alone sometimes for days on end, far from the absurdly busy living, alone as she was alone in her flat in Marseilles, alone with the phone off the hook so that the world outside does not enter my home as it did not enter hers, alone in this dwelling which has the perfection of death and where I constantly tidy up to convince myself that all is well, alone in my deliciously locked room, too neat and too clean, obsessively symmetrical, with pencils laid out in order of size on the glossy little graveyard of the table.

Seated at the table, I converse with her. I ask her whether I should put on my coat to go out. “Yes, darling, it’s better to be on the safe side.” But it is only me rambling on, imitating her accent. I would like to have her sitting here beside me, embalmed in her black silk dress. If I were to talk to her for a long time, patiently, looking at her intently, perhaps her eyes would suddenly come to life a little, out of pity, out of motherly love. I know very well that this is not true, and yet the idea haunts me.