He and my mother would invariably address each other in reproachful tones, even when they were showing concern. ‘Don’t forget to take your muffler!’ and ‘Why don’t you sit down for a while?’ sounded like insults. They would always be bickering over who had lost the lemonade supplier’s invoice or who had left the light on in the cellar. Her voice rose above his because everything got on her nerves, a late delivery, her periods, the customers, or the hood dryer at the local hairdresser’s, which was always too hot. Sometimes she would snap: ‘You weren’t cut out to be a shopkeeper!’ (meaning: you should have remained a factory worker). He responded to the insult by shedding his customary reserve: ‘Slattern! I should have left you back where I found you!’

Every week, an exchange of insults:

‘A nobody, that’s what you are!’

‘Fruitcake!’50

‘You’re pathetic!’

‘Stupid old bitch!’

Etc. It didn’t mean anything.

At home, when we spoke to one another, it was always in a querulous tone of voice. Only strangers were entitled to polite behaviour. The habit was so deep-rooted that my father, who applied himself to speaking properly in front of other people, would automatically revert to Norman dialect and to his broad accent and aggressive tone whenever he told me not to climb onto the heap of rubble in the yard. This ruined his efforts to create a good impression. He never learned to scold me in proper French and, besides, I would never have taken seriously his threats about slapping me if he had spoken correctly.

For a long time, courtesy between parents and children remained a mystery to me. Also, it took me years to ‘understand’ the kindliness with which well-mannered people greet each other. At first, I felt ashamed, I didn’t deserve such consideration. Sometimes I thought they had conceived a particular liking for me. Later I realized that their smiling faces and kind, earnest questions meant nothing more to them than eating with their mouth shut or blowing their noses discreetly.

Now it is imperative that I unravel these memories, all the more so since I have long suppressed them, believing them to be of no consequence. Only a humiliated memory had enabled me to preserve them. I surrendered to the will of the world in which I live, where memories of a lowly existence are seen as a sign of bad taste.51

In the evening, when I spread out my homework on the kitchen table, he would leaf through my books, especially the ones about history, geography and natural science. He liked to be tested on these subjects. One day he insisted that I gave him a dictation, to prove that he could spell properly. He never knew which year I was in. He would say, ‘She’s with Miss So-and-so.’ He saw my school, a religious establishment chosen by my mother, as a terrifying world which dictated the whole of my behaviour, floating above me like the island of Laputa in Gulliver’s Travels: ‘Honestly! If your schoolmistress could see you now!’ or ‘I’ll have a word with your teacher and she’ll put you right!’