Jewish Mothers Never Die: A Novel (13 page)

“No, it’s too early for that,” Jeanne Proust managed to murmur. She never lost her good manners.

“Oh, go ahead,” Minnie encouraged her.

Jeanne took a sip, sighed deeply and turned to Rebecca:

“The discipline and routine I imposed on Marcel are what allowed him to write
Pleasures and Days
and
Jean Santeuil
. We woke at the same time, we ate our meals together, and that’s how he was able to write his masterpiece.”

“It seems to me that didn’t really work,” Rebecca insisted. “He soon returned to his old habits of working at night and sleeping during the day, living in his bed.”

“Just like Minnie, I had to finally acknowledge that I could do nothing more for him. The main thing was that he continued to work hard.”

“But if you had seen the superhuman effort he put into writing thousands of pages, you would have stopped him from killing himself at it.”

“That may be true,” Jeanne admitted. “Nothing is harder on a mother than to see her son suffer.”

“He managed fine after your death. I doubt he would have been able to write so candidly if you had continued to be his principal reader.”

“If you’re referring to his homosexuality, he knew that I knew, without saying it in so many words, of course.”

The other mothers were surprised to hear Jeanne Proust speak so openly about Marcel’s private life. This haughty woman had never before even alluded to the subject. They looked at each other for an uncomfortable moment, then Minnie broke the tension with a question for Rebecca:

“In the end, what was it that your Nathan was good at?”

“Reading,” Rebecca said in a low voice.

They all began to laugh, with the exception of Rebecca, whose embarrassment they didn’t even notice.

“Didn’t you say you were a French literature professor?”

“Yes, precisely. That’s probably why I never glorified reading. When that’s all you do, you cut yourself off from other people’s preoccupations and lives. You become a misanthrope. Excessive reading is an obstacle to accomplishing anything.”

Jeanne Proust immediately burst out:

“But that’s ridiculous!”

She had struggled so hard to instill a love of literature in Marcel.

“How can you be cultivated without reading?” she wanted to know, as if it was the only thing that mattered.

“What’s so important about being cultivated? If it’s to be boring, it’s not worth it, unless you enjoy it, of course.”

“But, you didn’t prevent your son from reading, did you?”

Jeanne, who had received a much more solid education than most young women of her day, knew what an intellectual life was worth, and now she was almost purple with indignation. When she was young, girls were trained only in hygiene, cooking, cleaning, and deep breathing to help tolerate the pain of tightly laced corsets and narrow shoes. Jeanne was something of a phenomenon in her time, having learned Latin, English, German and the Classics from her mother. At first, knowledge had pleased her, then it became vital to her happiness.

Louise had returned and, for the first time, they were all assembled in one room: Amalia Freud, Mina Kacew, Minnie Marx, Jeanne Proust and now Louise Cohen, too. What had brought them all here? The desire to see their sons become successful. Louise, however, did not share that view.

“Mothers aren’t the only explanation,” she countered. “We do what we can to help them in life but, in the end, they are who they are. In fact, I wonder why we were all killing ourselves for. Love and success are two different things. Albert was assigned to the diplomatic mission of the International Labor Organization in Geneva, and I can assure you that I had nothing to do with that.”

Rebecca had to agree with Louise. In those moments when she had been proud of her son, she had not felt that she was personally responsible. So many other factors combine to make a successful individual: environment, biology, genes, energy, motivation and luck.

“It’s possible that the Marx Brothers never would have existed,” she argued, addressing herself to Minnie, “and Romain wouldn’t have become Gary, but I doubt it. I think Albert Einstein still would have been a genius with or without his mother’s help!”

Rebecca watched as a look of unease went around the room. They were observing each other, silent, in shock.

“What did I say?”

Minnie broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Without his mother, Albert Einstein would have wasted valuable time before becoming a physicist. He was three years old before he ever spoke a word. Mentally retarded or simply caught up in his emotional world? Who can say?”

Jeanne Proust explained that Pauline Einstein was so horrified by Albert’s deformed head when he was born that she decided, then and there, he would have to be a genius. From that day forward, she was particularly tough on him.

“Albert didn’t have anything specifically wrong with him,” Jeanne continued. “But Pauline always made believe he was the top pupil in his class. Everyone knew, of course, that he didn’t do very well at school. He said himself, later, that he ‘wasn’t a particularly good student or a particularly poor one.’ His biggest trouble was with rote memorization, especially of texts.”

Rebecca remembered a story about Einstein and his father, when he was about four or five years old. Albert had been ill, so his father gave him a compass. Einstein could still remember his astonishment, sixty years later when he told the story, when he first saw the compass needle in its glass box. Sealed under glass, it was isolated and untouchable and yet it was irresistibly attracted by an invisible force that moved it to the north. It was a discovery that changed his life, or at least his conception of it. He was a genius!

“It’s thanks to his mother that he turned out as well as he did,” Minnie interrupted. “His father was against Albert embarking on a long course of study, just like me with my boys. He would have preferred to see him go into electrical engineering. But a mother’s will always prevails, particularly when she’s made an idea her hobby horse. Don’t forget that Albert Einstein had a habit of repeating under his breath the same words he had just said. That would sound very strange indeed. Can you imagine?”

Minnie did an imitation of what Einstein would have sounded like, which provoked wild laughter all around. Satisfied that she could still win over a crowd, she stood up and adjusted her corset.

“It’s unbelievable how much I love to laugh,” she said. “Good thing for me I wasn’t Albert Einstein’s mother. It would have been a disaster, I’m sure; I can’t vouch for his talents as an actor or even his sense of humor, even though his own mother assures us he was hilarious.”

During this lengthy exchange about Albert Einstein, Rebecca wondered if his mother was somewhere and if she was going to suddenly appear in the flesh, so to speak. To prepare herself, she searched her memory for anything she knew about Einstein’s parents. Nothing, except that they had made a fortune as grain merchants and had even been licensed to sell corn to the Württembergs: The royal family, no less.

“You’re a walking encyclopedia!” Minnie marveled.

“Let’s go to the library. I want to look up a few things,” Rebecca said. To her surprise and pleasure, all five women followed her. She was one of them now!

To hide her emotion, she quickly looked up the entry for Pauline Einstein: 1858–1920.

“Just seven years difference between the two of us,” Minnie Marx smiled.

“Both Germans too.”

“We have a lot in common,” she grumbled.

Rebecca paused, expecting Minnie to say more as she typically did when contradicted, but she was silent. Rebecca was impressed once more by Minnie’s uncompromising character. She couldn’t help asking:

“Won’t Einstein’s mother join us, or will she keep to herself like Woody Allen’s? I still don’t understand this place at all.”

“Take my advice: Don’t ask too many questions,” Amalia replied.

“Shall we go somewhere where there’s a little more light?” Minnie suggested.

Back in the living room, as Louise Cohen was discreetly leaving, Rebecca stretched out on a soft sofa since Minnie was starting to tell Einstein’s life. “When Hermann and his brother Jack emigrated to Milan with their wives and children, they left Albert in Munich so he could finish his year at the
Gymnasium
. He was fifteen at the time. But when it became apparent that he was as hated by his classmates as he was by his professors, his mother sent for him to join them in Italy. This meant the end of his formal schooling, of course. However, his math teacher had written a letter attesting that he had a university level of knowledge and capabilities in math. So, after a year off, he took the exam to enter the
Polytechnicum
in Zurich to study civil engineering. He failed it . . .

“But he passed his physics and math exams brilliantly, leading the director of the university to personally counsel him to return to school in Aargau and earn his diploma there first,” Jeanne interjected. “By then, he had already wondered what a light wave looks like. What fifteen year old asks himself such a question?”

“I’m guessing he passed the entrance exam the second time for the
Polytechnicum
,” Rebecca wondered out loud.

“Yes, thanks to Pauline, who never stopped believing in his extraordinary potential,” Minnie reminded everyone.

“Either that or he was born a natural genius,” Rebecca replied.

Minnie Marx yawned. She had a quick wit and was easily bored, unlike Jeanne Proust and Amalia Freud, who never tired of talking about their sons.

“Shall we play a game?” Minnie asked.

“What kind?” Rebecca wanted to know.

“Let’s play ‘The Most Successful Son’ because I have a feeling I’m going to win it today. After all, didn’t the Marx Brothers bring out thirteen movies in twenty years, make a fortune and lose it all, while their fame never waned?”

“Who in the world gives you the right to declare yourself a winner? Where’s the game in that case?” said an exasperated Mina.

“Go ahead then,” Minnie challenged her, sounding like a referee in a boxing match. “Your turn!”

“Romain won the Goncourt book prize twice,” Mina shot back. “The first for
The Roots of Heaven
in 1956 and the second for
The Life Before Us
in 1975. He would have easily been elected to the Académie Française, but he didn’t put forward his candidacy.”

“Yes, but he cheated!” Jeanne Proust exclaimed. “He published the second book under a pen name, Émile Ajar, because you can’t win the Goncourt twice. Marcel won it by six votes, beating Roland Dorgelès by four votes. He was also decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1919.”

“Marcel was incredibly talented, I’ll give you that,” Mina conceded, “But he was only a writer. My son, on the other hand, was a Companion of the Liberation before he began in the French diplomatic service, which sent him to Bulgaria, Switzerland, Bolivia and New York, where he worked for the United Nations from 1952 to 1954, and then Los Angeles, where he was the French Consul General from 1957 to 1961, when he finally retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

“Citing dates doesn’t make him more important,” Jeanne chided. “Romain Gary was an important man, and you certainly did well for yourselves but look where it got you!”

That was the final straw for Mina: Jeanne was wicked to have alluded to Romain’s suicide. Pale and haggard, she was preparing to leave when Louise Cohen rushed in.

“Don’t tell me I missed a round of ‘The Most Successful Son!’”

“You’re just in time,” Jeanne said, patting a few loose hairs back into her chignon.

“The Marx Brothers were the most influential!” Minnie asserted, returning to the attack. “I only have to remind you of a few of Groucho’s famous lines; they’re common parlance now. For example: ‘I must admit, I was born at an early age.’ Or, ‘Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.’ Or, ‘I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.’ Remember this one? ‘Why should I care about posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?’ But my favorite is this one: ‘Whatever it is, I’m against it.’ I wonder actually if I didn’t come up with that one myself.”

“Is there anything he ever said that you disliked?”

“You mean do I love everything he ever said? Well, you won’t hear me criticizing him. Go find Nettie if you want to hear a mother talk badly of her son.”

“That’s crazy! Woody Allen won four Oscars: two for
Annie Hall
, one for
Hannah and Her Sisters
and one for
Match Point
. And he was nominated eighteen other times! Not to mention the fact that he’s averaged a film every year since 1970! What more does she need?”

“It’s hard to believe he’s never won our contest. No wonder Nettie angers so easily,” Minnie declared.

“Yes, but whatever anyone says, Marcel Proust beats them all, even Albert,” Louise Cohen insisted. “I’m not saying that to be nice to Jeanne either.”

Jeanne was blushing with pleasure nevertheless.

“When Pauline Einstein used to lower herself to join us, she would win every time, hands down. Who can beat a Nobel Prize in Physics? And you can’t deny that E=mc
2
is used to explain absolutely everything.”

“It’s even printed on t-shirts,” Rebecca agreed.

“Did you know that it wasn’t his famous Theory of Relativity that won him the Nobel but his Photoelectric Law?” Jeanne told everyone, sounding every bit like a teacher’s pet who can’t help herself from blurting out the right answer, even though she knows she’ll be ridiculed later by her classmates.

“Why is that?” Rebecca asked.

“Because he hadn’t finished working out his Theory, but his supporters were becoming more and more impatient. He’d been nominated every year from 1910 to 1922. Finally, the Nobel Committee had to find a way to give it to him.”

Rebecca was amazed that these women still enjoyed having the same conversation. They must have played the game a thousand times because each of them knew by heart the minutest detail in the lives of these men and had apparently repeated over and over every variation without ever tiring of it.