Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Read Free Page B

having been reduced to a foetus and then blown up to matronly dimensions.
    I kept on growing and I realized that my fate was sealed: I was condemned to be an outcast from childhood. I sought refuge in my own reflection. Every morning Louise would curl my hair and I would gaze with satisfaction at my face framed with ringlets: dark hair and blue eyes did not often, so they had told me, go together, and I had already learned to appreciate the value of the unusual. I was pleased with myself, and I sought to please. My parents’ friends encouraged my vanity: they politely flattered me and spoiled me, I would stroke the ladies’ furs and their satin-sheathed bosoms; I admired even more the gentlemen with their moustaches, their smell of tobacco, their deep voices, their strong arms that could lift me nearly up to the ceiling. I was particularly anxious to arouse the interests of the men: I tried to attract their attention by fidgeting and playing the ingénue, seizing any look or word that would snatch me out of my childhood limbo and give me some permanent status in their grown-up world. One evening, in the presence of one of my father’s friends, I rudely shoved away a plate of Russian salad: on a postcard sent to us during the summer holidays this friend asked, with rather laboured wit: ‘Does Simone still like Russian salad?’ The written had even more prestige thanthe spoken word: I was exultant. I had been taken notice of! The next time we met M. Dardelle, in front of the church of Notre-Dame-des-Champs, I was counting on a renewal of his delicious teasing; I attempted to provoke him to another display of brilliant badinage, but found no response. I tried again, even harder. I was told to keep quiet. I had discovered, to my sharp vexation, the ephemeral nature of fame.
    I was generally spared this sort of disappointment. At home, the slightest incident became the subject of vast discussions; my stories were listened to with lavish attention, and my witticisms were widely circulated. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and a host of other relatives guaranteed my continuing importance. In addition, a whole race of supernatural beings were for ever bent over me, I was given to understand, in attitudes of divine solicitude. As soon as I could walk, Mama had taken me to church: she had shown me, in wax, in plaster, and painted on the walls, portraits of the Child Jesus, of God the Father, of the Virgin, and of the angels, one of which, like Louise, was assigned exclusively to my service. My heaven was constellated with a myriad benevolent eyes.
    Here below, Mama’s sister and mother tended to my physical needs. Grandmama had rosy cheeks, white hair, and trembly diamond ear-rings; she sucked wine-gum pastilles, hard and round as boot buttons, whose translucent colours enchanted me; I loved her because she was old; and I loved Aunt Lili because she was young: she lived with her parents, like a little girl, and I felt she was closer to me than the other adults. Red-faced, bald-headed, his chin daubed with a prickly, frothy grey scum, grandpa used to dance me dutifully up and down on his foot, but his voice was so gruff one never knew whether he was speaking in fun or in anger. I lunched with them every Thursday: rissoles, blanquette, ‘shape’ – known in our family as ‘floating island’ – grandmama always had a treat for me. After the meal grandpapa would doze in a tapestry armchair, and I, underneath the table, played the sort of games that make no noise. Then he would go out, and grandmama would bring out of the cupboard the metal humming-top into which we slipped, while it was spinning, circles of multi-coloured cardboard: in the backside of a lead figure she called ‘Mister Skitters’, she would light a white capsule out of which poured long coils of twisting brown matter. She played dominoes with me, and beggar-my-neighbour and spillikins. I felt stifled in that