Mother's Chronicles (Book 1)

2

Mathilde and Barine

Mathilde, Mira Ismalun's second daughter, was born in Alexandria in 1857, and just like her mother, on December 18.

As we have seen, in 1874, on June 18, at the age of seventeen, she had married in great pomp a young Turk, Maurice Alfassa. He was born in Adrianople in 1843. After their marriage the couple moved to Turkey, where Mathilde gave birth to their first child. But the infant died at the age of two months. The parents returned to Egypt.

Mathilde found Egypt stifling. She liked simplicity — all the pomp and pageantry of the court of Egypt disgusted her. The iron collar enforced on the women of those days had become intolerable to her —she believed in human dignity. So, one fine day, to the

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utter scandal of all the good people, young Mathilde refused to bow to the Khedive. She had to pack her bags.

That is how it came about that the Alfassa family, Maurice, Mathilde and Matteo — for by this time they had had another child —embarked for France, in 1877.

"It is curious," Mother mused, speaking of Mathilde, "I say 'curious' because it is due to her that I took birth in this body, that it was chosen. When she was very young she had a great aspiration. She was exactly twenty when I was born. I was her third child. The first was a son who died in Turkey when he was two months old, I think. They vaccinated him against smallpox and poisoned him." Mother added ruefully, "God knows what happened! Anyway, he died of convulsions. Next was my brother. He was born in Egypt, in Alexandria. And then I, born in Paris when she was exactly twenty years old."

Paris, the heartbeat of France.

"She was exactly twenty. At that time—mainly after the death of the first child —there was a kind of GREAT aspiration in her: her children had to be 'the

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best in the world.' It wasn't ambition, I don't know what it was." Mathilde was strict but straightforward, progressist but headstrong. "And what a will she had!" Mother exclaimed. "My mother had a tremendous will! She was like an iron bar, utterly impervious to any outside influence. Once she had made up her mind, her mind was made up; even if someone were dying in front of her, she would not have budged! So, she had made up her mind: 'My children will be the best in the world.' " As we shall see, Mathilde succeeded wonderfully with her two children. "One thing she had, a sense of progress. She felt that the world was progressing, and that we had to be better than all that had come before us —that was enough."

That set Mother thinking, "That was enough, it's curious."

This sense of progress, of human progress, made Mathilde a Communist at a time when well-bred young ladies were busy knitting their trousseaux. And Communist she remained —doubtless because she had got it into her head to do so —till the age of eighty-seven, when she passed away in 1944. To be sure, her

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communism was of a special brand. "I remember," said Mother in 1970, "long, long ago, my mother had started a poultry (or something similar), to supplement her income. This goes back some fifty or sixty years. Well, she was very simple and uncomplicated, she had set up her business and was selling her chickens, eggs, etc., spending the money personally and running the whole business." When, one day, a plaguy tax collector got it into his head to make Mathilde pay taxes —not only on the current eggs but on all the eggs she had sold to date. "Then, one fine day," Mother chuckled, "she was called upon to submit accounts! She barely escaped a very severe penalty because she had used the money for her own expenses. She never understood! ... I found it very amusing." Which, however, did not prevent Mother from seeing the plain absurdity of all governmental and political systems. "You know," she said to Satprem, "I find it a queer turn of mind. You work —for what? Normally, to earn your living —it is illegal. You must work, but the business is in no way your personal affair. You have no right to draw your own expenses from the industry

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you have set up yourself!" Mother concluded, "The stupidity of the world is unparalleled."

The uncomplicated Mathilde could never understand. She must have told the tax collector, "Look here, these are my chickens!"

True, Mathilde was simple, but she was by no means uncultured. The young lady from Alexandria was as well read as her mother who admired Goethe, and considerably more intellectual. Life was seen by her as a set of mathematical theorems to be perpetually and rigorously demonstrated: it had to be exact and tend imperturbably towards some ideal asymptote,

"But she was in adoration before my brother," Mother laughed mockingly. "My mother scorned all religious sentiment as a weakness and superstition, and she absolutely repudiated the invisible. 'It's all brain disease,' she would say. But she could just as well say, 'Oh, my Matteo is my God, it is he who is my God.' And she truly treated him like a god. She left

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him only when he got married, because really she could not very well continue to follow him around!"

But all the same, even Matteo, the adored son, had to toe the line. "I was reared by an ascetic and stoical mother, you see," Mother commented to Satprem on another occasion, "who was like an iron bar. When we were very small, my brother and I, she spent her time dinning into our ears that one is not on earth to have a good time, that it is constant hell, but one has to put up with it, and the only satisfaction to be got out of life is in doing one's duty."

Mother added appreciatively, "A splendid education, my child!"

And Maurice Alfassa? Why did Mother choose him as her father? "There was another reason," Mother went on. "My father had a wonderful health, and was he strong! What a stability! He wasn't tall but stocky. He had done all his studies in Austria (in those days French was widely spoken in Austria, but he also knew German, he knew English, Italian, Turkish . . .); and there he learned to ride horses in a fantastic manner: he was so strong that he could bring a horse

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to its knees simply by pressing his legs into its sides. With a punch he could break anything whatsoever, even one of those big silver five-franc pieces current in those days: one blow with the fist —broken in two. Strangely enough, he looked Russian. I don't know why. They called him Barine. What a stability! An extraordinary physical poise! And not only did this man know all those languages, but I have never seen such a head for arithmetic. Never. He did accounts like child's play, effortlessly —accounts with hundreds of digits! And you know what," Mother smiled, "he loved birds! He had a room to himself in our apartment (for my mother could not much suffer him), he had his own room and in it he kept a big cage . . . full of canaries! And all the day long he would keep the windows closed, leaving all the canaries loose."

Well, can't a mathematician be as imaginative as a poet? Why not? Does he not unveil for us the power and the rhythm of NUMBER as the primeval poetry of the word?

"And could he tell stories! [There we have the source of Mother's own storytelling genius.] He must

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have read every novel in print, I think, any and every story —fantastic adventure stories. He loved adventures. When we were kids he would let us come into his room early in the morning, while he was still in bed, and tell us stories. Stories from the books he had read. But instead of telling us that the stories came from books, he narrated them as his own! So he had had extraordinary adventures —with brigands, with wild beasts. . . . Any story he picked up was narrated as his own. We, of course, enjoyed it hugely!"

Thus, in spite of stoical Mathilde, the children had fun with their father: "My father loved the circus." Barine would take little Mirra to the circus, both of them enjoying it equally in their own fashion. He was thirty-five when Mirra was born, and he adored his daughter.

"I can recall but one instance when I took things seriously, or rather I took on a serious AIR," said Mother. "It involved my brother, who was still quite young. My brother may have been twelve years old or less —ten, and I eight . . .no, nine and eleven, more likely —youngsters. One day my brother got carried

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away —he was quick to anger, was outspoken and a bit cheeky —he talked back to my father (I don't know what about, can't remember now). My father got furious and put him across his knees. My father was an extremely strong man, I mean physically strong. So then, he had taken my brother across his knees and was spanking him. He had pulled down Matteo's pants and was spanking him." Seeing the scene in her mind's eye, Mother smiled. "I enter —it was taking place in the dining room, my father was sitting on a sofa and spanking him. I see this, I see my father, I look at him, I say to myself, 'This man is mad!' ... I draw myself to my full height and tell him, 'You stop at once or I leave the house.' I said it with so much seriousness, oh! 'Papa, if ever you do this again, I leave the house.' And I was determined. And the father," Mother shook her head, "my father was flabbergasted. I said it with such authority, my child!" Mother smiled at Satprem. "He stopped and never did it again."

From such seeds came Mother.

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Matteo with Mirra