As mentioned earlier, my father’s brother, Raphael, lived with our family in Valence, along with his wife, Allegra, and their son, Sami. Sami was an only child, and he practically grew up with us and used to call my brother, René, his frère-cousin (brother-cousin). My grandmother, Memé, adored him, it was said, because he was the child of her favorite son. She also favored my brother, René, because he was the family’s first born. René was a very good child, quiet and serious and hard-working, with a gift for music. I admired him very much and would memorize whatever lessons I heard him recite when doing his homework. I had a good memory and this was good preparation for my own classes later on; but while I was a good student, I was also a rebel. I would rather play with my dolls than do anything else! Once, René and I were charged with knitting a sweater, each knitting one-half of it; by the time René had finished his half, the two sleeves and the collar, I was still struggling with the front. The ribbing was fierce, yet he was so good at it, and I was too lazy and only wanted to play. Also, I was unruly and impertinent, talking back to my parents. I must have been quite a handful! I felt unloved, particularly when compared unfavorably to my older brother who could do no wrong. In retrospect, I realize that I have always felt very close to him and always loved him very much. I suppose I learned to love him by imitation! This deep love has remained with me all my life. Evidently, whatever we learn as children molds us and colors our personalities forever. There has been no sibling rivalry between the two of us, as I do not remember feeling any jealousy toward him, and I believe the deep love and profound affinity between us have kept me from being resentful in spite of my parents’ and grandmother’s attitude toward me and their constant praise of my brother.
When René was nine years old, he was enrolled at the music school. All my pleas to be enrolled too came to naught: I was a girl and was not allowed to do things that boys did. René excelled in this, too, and soon started learning to play the clarinet and eventually joined the Valence Orchestra as clarinetist. A school friend of mine who attended the same music school told me in admiration that my brother was “hors concours,” meaning beyond rating and raves. I loved him and basked in his glory, and was happy turning the pages of his music when he played his clarinet at home. Our apartment was always full of his music, either when he was practicing his scales or playing pieces like Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Shéhérazade, or von Soupé’s Cavalérie Légère or Le Marché Persan. Nowadays, whenever I hear Weber’s Clarinet Concerto or Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, I am again that little girl turning the pages for her beloved brother. How I loved and admired him! I still do, of course, in spite of all the years, all the changes, all the distancing and coming close again – he is and always will be my anchor, the brother I look up to, the brother I loved because he was everything I was not: quiet and serious, good and beloved, and I ebullient, playful, rebellious … and unloved. Did the fact that he was so loved make him so sure of himself and lovable, or was he loved because he was lovable in the first place? I suspect the former, and believe that to love a child is the greatest gift parents can impart on him or her, and that is the root of self-worth and self-confidence.
I went to an all-girls’ school. The boys’ school was separated by the nursery school, and I remember how I wondered at age eleven or twelve, why the older school girls found the boys so interesting. Once, before classes began, I was told that my brother, René, had been run over by a car. I ran out of the courtyard and saw him lying in the street, a crowd surrounding him. I could not help crying upon seeing him outstretched on the pavement and in pain. Much later, I identified that pain when I read a letter from the French poet, Madam de Sévigne to her ailing daughter, saying, “J’ai mal a votre gorge …” (your throat hurts me …)
I loved school. I enjoyed learning and must have been a bright child because I skipped the second grade. Being a star pupil made me the teacher’s pet in most of my classes. However, my friends and I were in dread of the principal. Mademoiselle Herbet was an extremely severe unmarried woman who was a holy terror to all of us girls. What a surprise she was for me, though! I came to love Mademoiselle Herbet and I am sure she loved me. I could read her affection and approval in her eyes, and she even invited me to her apartment to have tea with her after school. Her apartment was located on the second floor of the school, and we tip-toed with awe when we passed her door on our way to classes. I recall that one day she called on me in class and asked that I recite our lesson for that day. In great shame, and after a long silence, I admitted to her that I had not studied the lesson. She responded, “Too bad, you can sit down. I am giving you a zero.” That zero was a terrible mark on my record, and I felt quite humiliated. Mademoiselle Herbet called on some other pupils, and listening to them, I was able to memorize the geometry theorems that I had not studied the night before. I whispered to my friends that I knew the lesson now, and in great excitement they told the teacher that I could recite it now. Mademoiselle Herbet called on me again, and I recited the theorems without error, to the uproar acclaim of the entire class who begged her to lift the awful zero. She did to my great relief. What a victory that was!
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During one of my recent trips to France, I went to see my elementary school along the Rhône. Nothing had changed. I could even smell the chalk! With tears in my eyes, I remembered my innocent childhood gone by. I wanted to run and tell my parents that I was home again and had seen my school … but of course, they were nowhere to be found; gone with my childhood and the best part of my life. I wanted so much to tell them all I had seen and experienced, how the streets that looked so large as a child were now so narrow. I wanted to tell them that I was back at the beautiful park where Maman used to take us three children, that I had seen our old friends who were still living in their apartment on the next street, and that they had not changed at all. They told me that Martine, my friend, was now a nurse and living in Germany. I wanted so much to share with them all this nostalgia … but of course, I could not. I felt as if I had lost them again and experienced my grief anew. I stopped at the boulangerie where we bought our bread and cakes and found it exactly as I remembered it, with the same aromas, the same variety of breads warm from the oven, but it was not the same.
It is true that one can never go back …
The games we would play as children … Some mornings, my father would call us from his bed inquiring whether we were awake. If we were, he would say, “Parlons de lit à lit” (Let’s talk from bed to bed). We would start chatting, eventually joining him in his bed, but I always waited for him to tell us stories about “l’Italie,” imaging sunny vistas, but he would correct me and remind me that we were talking “de lit à lit,” an alliteration.
And I had my dolls. A particularly beloved one had her carriage that I had furnished with pillows and blankets. One day while playing with this doll, I realized that my mother had gone out shopping and left me at home with my grandmother who was forever cursing me, and I began crying in despair at the prospect that my mother might never return. I still remember the pain I felt and the fear of never seeing her again.
My grandmother had an incomprehensible hatred toward me. She would often curse me, and my mother would not dare defend me. My father, her son, would not dare offend her by standing up to her. For example, she was very handy with her fingers, and was always doing some needlework. I asked her once to show me how to make the heel of some stockings, and she answered, “Learn by yourself as I have!” Innocently, wishing to ingratiate myself, I said, “But you are an accomplished housewife,” which was a compliment in those days. Her response was, “May you never reach the day of being an accomplished housewife!” I ran to tell my mother who was so shocked, she sent me to ask my father what this meant. He asked me where I heard that, and when I told him that Memé had said that to me, he became pale, but did nothing. She knew that she could do or say anything and no one would ever oppose her.
Another time she said, “Que te quedaras en la cuna!” (You should have died in your cradle). No wonder I was in fear of being abandoned by my mother into the hands of such a harpy!
At about that time, when I was around ten or eleven, our school