Shhh by Raymond Federman Page B

mother said to me, You see, behind this wall, that’s where I spent most of my childhood, until I was old enough to be on my own. Your uncle Maurice and your aunt Rachel where there too. It was then an orphanage.
    In those days, it was not unusual for Jewish marriages to be arranged. It was a time when many Jews from Eastern Europe were emigrating to France, many of them illegally. My father had just arrived from Poland without any papers, probably broke, and the orphanage found a Jewish husband for my mother who was still unmarried at the age of twenty-four. He was two years younger than her.
    In any case, that’s my hypothesis, the reason why my mother married a man who made her so unhappy all the time.
    It’s true that my mother was not beautiful. But she was a saint, as her sisters always said, because she endured this bastard of a husband, and sacrificed herself for her children. True, my mother was not very good-looking. She was short. Had a prominent nose, like mine. And she was crossed-eye. She wore spectacles all the time. Her hair was messy. She never used make-up. And she was always poorly dressed. Most of her clothes came from her sisters after they were used or no longer in style. But my mother was a saint.
    I will not try to justify my father’s conduct. I simply say how it was. Papa for me has become a mythical being. At least, that’s how I imagine him. How I’ve reinvented him.
    When I think of him, I see him in a cloud of cigarette smoke in the back of the Métropole café, playing cards with his foreign friends.
    Often my mother would send me to the Métropole to tell Papa to come home for dinner. It was a ten minute walk each way to Porte d’Orléans. I was well known at the Métropole. My father’s friends would kid me when they saw me arrive. Ah, here is Schimele-Bubkes-Zinn who comes to get Papa.
    Schimele-Bubkes-Zinn, the little piece-of-shit-son of Simon. That’s what they always called me.
    My father would say, Wait till we finish this game and I’ll come with you. So I would sit on a chair next to the table where he was playing and watch the game. That’s how I learned to play belote, and I too became a gambler. I think in English this game is called klaberjass, or something like that.
    I must tell how, in the afternoon, after I finished my homework, and managed to slip past Leon’s atelier to play in the street, my school friend Robert Laurent and I would sit on the edge of the sidewalk and play belote. We did that almost every day. Sometimes he would win, and other times it was my turn.
    I don’t know why, but I have never forgotten Robert Laurent’s name. Not so with the names of the other boys in school. They have all been forgotten. But not his name.
    Oh, I know now why I haven’t forgotten Robert Laurent’s name. Or rather Bébert’s as everyone called him.
    Bébert was timid like me, so he didn’t have many friends. That’s why we played together.

My uncle Leon used to say that Bébert’s parents were anti-Semites, and that I shouldn’t play with him.
    But we got along well, Bébert and me. Not only did we play cards together, but we also went swimming together.We were both members of a swimming club called L’Amicale de Natation. Every Thursday we would go practice with the team in the municipal swimming pool, rue Saillard near Denfert Rochereau. We had races against other clubs, and I even won some medals. I specialized in the backstroke, and Bébert in the butterfly. We also swam relays together.
    I became a pretty good swimmer when I was a boy. Later, when I went to America I swam for Northern High School in Detroit, and then for Wayne University. In 1948, I almost qualified for the Olympic team. I’m not kidding. For more details about that see Take It or Leave It.
    I should tell how Bébert and I became members of L’Amicale de Natation. It’s a funny story. We were