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The French Father

Steerforth Press

My sister's name is Yvonne. She is a good-looking forty-four, petite, with light chestnut hair cut short, a small, slightly arched nose, full lips and very expressive blue eyes. An impulsive, authoritarian character, she always says what she thinks. She is understanding with the people she loves. Yvonne has always been present in the important moments of my life and, apart from a few normal, short-lived quarrels, we have always got along.

When our father died, neither of us could believe it. The handsome hero, strict, cruel, very much loved and feared by both of us, the man who had cemented our bond, had gone for ever. In silence, we accompanied him to the cemetery together, sitting close to each other in the hearse as it drove through the streets of Paris.

There were a lot of people at Montparnasse cemetery on that cold November morning, and I almost felt as though I was trespassing on a film set. I couldn't concentrate on anything and listened absently to the Rabbi, who was delivering his funeral speech in solemn and moving tones, recalling my father's merits and commemorating his works and deeds. I looked at the light-coloured wooden coffin a few steps away, and refused to believe that it contained his body, not long dead. A few minutes later that coffin would be lowered for ever into the family tomb where my grandparents were buried.

I wasn't sad, nor did I cry in the days following the funeral, but I did feel lonely — he was no longer there, I would never see him again, never phone him again, never again hear the low, stern sound of his voice. During the first week of mourning, the Kaddish had to be recited every evening, and a rabbi and ten Jewish men had to be present at the service. My father's wife was silent, shaken by the enormous void that yawned before her, by the thought of her future solitude.

I went to see her at about eleven the next morning. She greeted me kindly and with embarrassment and, as if we were entering a sanctuary, she took me to my father's dressing room where she opened his closets saying, "Take any suits you want," or, "Take his shirts, pyjamas, socks."

The idea of owning and wearing my father's clothes made me feel vaguely uneasy. As a child, I had always regarded those extremely orderly closets with reverence: his shiny black shoes, all the same, his dark ties, his white handkerchiefs ... After his death, these unattainable things had become mine. I could wear the blue pin-striped suit he wore on the day the President of the Republic had awarded him the Legion of Honour, or the morning suit he had worn at my sister's wedding.

Eleven months after our father died, as required by Jewish tradition, Yvonne and I went to the cemetery together for the first anniversary of his death. In the car we didn't talk much, this first visit was intimidating. Luckily, it was a pleasant autumn day and, had it not been for the tombs and chapels, I might have thought we were in a public park.

We stood in front of the grey marble tombstone on which his name had been engraved in gold letters. I opened my prayer book and my sister and I recited the Kaddish. We then stood for a couple of minutes in silence, placed two stones on the tomb and moved off.

After a step or two, I saw a new grave, on which a white stone bore the name 'Roland Topor' in black letters. I knew that Topor had been an artist, a writer. I had met him with my ex-wife and recalled having seen the reports of his death in the newspapers. I remembered him with a glass of red wine in his hand, laughing in a rather coarse way and smoking a cigar. It had been one night in Paris, at the house of a painter friend. Aimlessly, my sister and I began to stroll along the paths of the cemetery. She told me she wasn't unhappy. Standing in front of his tomb had not upset her. I felt that our father's death had united us — we were happy together, alone, walking among the graves.

From that day on, I stopped wearing mourning, I no longer wore a black tie, and I started thinking about my father in a different way. He had been a serious man, but one full of fixations and taboos, a stubborn Capricorn, a moralist with some immoral traits; he laughed little and talked a lot, but when he did laugh, he had a nice smile. My relationship with him was never easy, because one word too many meant being judged severely and incurred some kind of punishment. The most irritating thing about his character, which sometimes harmed him, was his excessiveness, which on occasion verged on extremes of cruelty, precision, strictness, exactitude. The excessive orderliness of his life and his person. Everything was studied, organised, prepared well in advance; nothing was left to chance. Even his clothing was thought out in minute detail — which shirt, which cufflinks, whether a dark suit or a light one, blue or grey. My father also had a very curious relationship with food. He had been on a diet for years and years; he wanted to be slim at all costs, because he found that attractive. He had a horror of paunches and bald heads. He abhorred sweet foods, drank only Evian water and no alcohol. During the night, he used to eat fruit: apples, oranges, tangerines, strawberries and cherries.

He slept badly, took too many sleeping pills and woke very early. Breakfast was of enormous importance. Decaffeinated coffee, ordinary coffee, tea, tea with milk, orange juice, cereals and cooked fruit. It depended on how he was feeling. I had seen him eat quantities of oysters, before he eliminated crustaceans and seafood from his diet. Then there was the period when he ate Emmenthal cheese instead of fruit, then came the period of chicory, endive or lettuce heart salads, seasoned with lots of vinegar and seed oil. When he was young — up to forty-five — he liked steak and large hamburgers. This was followed by long years of grilled fish and nothing else, but when he fell ill, he stopped eating that. For a lifetime he had a real passion for pasta, which he preferred English-style, with butter and Gruyère, or butter and Parmesan. But he knew that starch is fattening, so there was an irreconcilable conflict between his desire for pasta and his rigorous diet.

During his illness, when he found he could eat anything he wanted without putting on weight, he rediscovered his taste for sweets, especially semolina, tapioca, rice, cheesecake, and chocolate ice cream. He started going to an Italian restaurant near his office almost every day. He found it ideal, because it was simple, cheap, and the restaurant owner was from Modena.

My father had always been on ambivalent terms with Italians. On the one hand, he despised their bourgeoisie, especially industrialists, whom he considered insincere, unreliable toadies, whereas he liked waiters, workers and craftsmen. He made friends with a certain Luciano, who was an interior decorator and had decorated various offices for him. He had blind faith in Luciano's taste and, more than anything, he liked talking with him. I never knew what they talked about. Besides a few childhood friends, my father had no friends. He had no love for social life, and didn't play cards. In the evening, he used to read or watch the television. He was reluctant to use the telephone. I was always afraid to make calls in his presence, because he would lose patience. His preference was to communicate by letter or by fax. His papers were always in order, and he was meticulous and precise. He would often use a pencil to tot up his accounts; otherwise he would use a small Japanese calculator. Weight was an obsession for him, which was why he always travelled with his own white scales, since he didn't trust those he found occasionally in hotels. In addition, he took the greatest care with his image, so that no one could ever doubt that he was intelligent, handsome, rich and, above all, a manager. He also needed long moments of solitude, which he devoted to reading history and biographies, but mostly financial papers and dailies. Even when he was very ill, he carried on reading the newspapers day after day. He was a charmer, proud of being attractive to beautiful women and — naturally — of not giving himself to them. Knowing that he was seductive was enough for him. Excess in anything was abhorrent to him and consequently he would never betray any sign of emotional upheaval or suffering. He wanted to appear a cold, hard, severe man, with icy eyes. He wanted to be loved but, above all, feared, and looked upon with respect and admiration. His wish was to be considered a special person, unique, above the others. Even as a Jew, he wanted to be superior, a king consulting with his rabbis.

Since my father died, I have often spoken with his wife, who cannot accept the pain of his loss.

I went to see her one Sunday and found her wandering through the rooms of her flat, as if looking for her husband. Every so often, she would stop and ask me, "What will become of me? Where shall I end up? I can't go on like this, I want to die." Poor woman, she was really desperate.

She and my father had been passionately in love for years. I remember them as if they were two Hollywood stars. She, blonde and very elegant, looked like Grace Kelly; he, dark with green eyes and a white dinner jacket, looked like Cary Grant. When we were on holiday, they would go out in the evenings and, from the balcony of my hotel room, I used to watch them get into a large sports car. To me, they seemed extraordinary, unattainable.

She was an attentive wife, a slave to her husband's every whim or desire, but he feared her sulks, her long silences ...

As a child, I used to go to Paris for my holidays and was surprised by the fact that my father sat at the head of the table and was the only one to talk. He would give an account of his working day, his appointments, what so-and-so had said, and what he had said in reply. He had an extraordinary ability to turn everything to his advantage, so that he would look like a hero to his family. His wife lived vicariously through these accounts of his doings. She led a very private life, looking after the house and the grandchildren.

I didn't know much about my father. He kept his secrets to himself. I always thought of him as an immanent presence, a sort of god sitting in judgement who was always right while I was always wrong. But I also sensed that his disapproval was a way of letting me feel his love, that love typical of northern Jews, rather severe and reserved.

After the visit to the cemetery with my sister, something changed in my relationship with my father. It was as though he had been resurrected within me and I had suddenly seen a new side of his life — not another prestigious position, nor another trip, but his death. Yes, his death, which for me became a new life — the man I had had to share with so many others was now all mine. And now that he was dead, he was no longer the strict person I had lived with for forty-five years, but had become cheerful. As a boy, I found any comparison with him humiliating. I was well aware that he was a handsome man, respected, elegant and honest, who had nothing to fear from anyone, least of all from his son. On many occasions, I had thought that I would have been the first to die. Relations between us were tense, because the threat of punishment always loomed. To disagree with him was dangerous. No confession could be made to him because it might irritate him, and when he judged something to be bad, he never forgot it, and was capable of bringing it up even years later.

On reflecting on Montparnasse cemetery, however, and Roland Topor's neighbouring tomb, I had to smile.

Topor had died young. He had led a dissolute life, one completely devoted to excess: tobacco, alcohol, food, women, disorderly work, sleepless nights. He had been an illustrator, a painter, and a writer whose works had a touch of the macabre about them. I recall his large, dark, darting, slightly bulging eyes, his droll gaze, his rejection of melancholy and self-pity. To tell the truth, I don't know much about Roland Topor, except that he was the opposite of my father and that, when they were alive, they would never have been friends. My father, however, delighted in conversation; he liked to talk about himself and his life. It may be that when they buried Topor a few months after him, he was curious to know about this new person who was to rest beside him for ever. My father was a serious-minded, solemn man, but at times he would laugh heartily. I don't know when it happened, nor how long afterwards, but I am certain that Roland too, on realising there was company in the neighbouring tomb and not used to being alone, spoke to my father in a cheerful and open manner, with the pretext of asking for information about the cemetery. Having been there now for some months and probably bored by being alone with his parents, my father would have replied willingly to Roland's questions. He may have assumed his habitual solemn and serious attitude, that of one who is familiar with the rules and teaches them to others. Roland, who had only just arrived and was unaware of how things stood, must have felt the need to speak to that older man resting in the next tomb, who could give him useful information about living there. After the customary small talk, Roland might have said, "Have you been dead long?"

"No, since the end of November last year. I died of cancer. What did you die of?"

"I died of a stroke."

"So you didn't suffer. How old are you?"

"Fifty-six."

"But that's very young! I died when I was nearly seventy-five, after a long and painful illness. Why did you die so young?"

"Perhaps I didn't think my life was very important. So I ruined it, I overdid things. But then, how can we know? Unfortunately I was a hypochondriac and afraid of doctors and should have had a check-up. But now it's too late — that's the way it went."

"What was your job?"

"Painter, writer, artist."

"Ah, like my son! They're risky professions. You have to be successful!"

"That's right, and what did you do?"

"I've always been in business, in industry and then in banking. But you see, I was a Jew and for many years I looked after the Jewish community."

"I was a Jew too, of Polish origin."

"Where were you born?"

"In Paris."

"Ah, you too! My parents — they're resting here with me now — were from Alsace. Jewish communities have changed a lot. If you're of Polish origin, you must know something about that! Nowadays religious Jews come mostly from North Africa: Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Egyptians."

"Were you religious?"

"Yes, in my own way very much so, but not Orthodox. I was President of the Community."

"I think I must have heard about you from one of my aunts, who was my one remaining connection with religion. I'm telling you this because I remember that she always used to say, 'You should see our President, he's as handsome as a film star.' Were you a handsome man? Did you look like an American actor?"

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Excerpted from The French Father by Alain Elkann, Alastair McEwen. Copyright © 2011 Pushkin Press. Excerpted by permission of Steerforth Press.
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