could. Mama M had not been idle in the Congo. She used her time as a colonial well.
If only they had stayed in the Congo! M could have been Mr Big there, with ten women on each finger.
She gave judo lessons at home. Special mats were put down, said M, but the whole house shook when yet another person was thrown to the floor. Wham!
‘And why didn’t you learn judo?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t need it,’ he replied.
The woman was always out and about, and her husband too. Evening after evening the children were left alone. He went to play chess and she went to judo class. They had no time to read their children a story and they had no time to go to the parents’ evenings, but for the chess club and the judo club they had all the time in the world. And then they’re amazed when things turn out badly. They had nothing to give their children, nothing at all.
The two of them lived as if they had no children. She didn’t have to murder her children. Why would she have murdered them?
Is it possible that murderess-mothers kill their children because they love them? Love them too much? If that is true, then maybe it’s too dangerous to love your children a whole lot, then it’s better… No, you can never love your children enough. Those mothers don’t love their children. They think they love them, but it’s not love, it’s… I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t love, it isn’t love, it isn’t love.
M could sometimes respond so feebly when I was loving with him. As if he didn’t understand. Actually he didn’t respond at all. He wasn’t angry and he wasn’t happy. He was nothing.
When we were first together I used to buy him presents, but he did not seem to know what to do with them. I had to unwrap them myself. Otherwise they would have stayed where I put them down, wrapped and with the ribbon round them. My first present to him was a deodorant, because well, I felt his personal hygiene could do with improvement. ‘Why are you giving me that?’ he said. I thought I had insulted him. I apologised and said that I certainly didn’t want to suggest that he didn’t smell nice. He smelled nice, but he didn’t wash enough and went round for too long in the same clothes. Men paid less attention to that. Because in addition he did physical work, he sweated and so I thought that deodorant might help, although there was nothing wrong with his sweat as such. The smell of sweat could even be a turn-on sometimes. In the middle of my explanation he turned round and left. I stood there with my deodorant. I didn’t know what to do with it. It was a deodorant for men. I wasn’t going to use it. I put it on the draining board in the kitchen. A little later it had gone. He must have taken it, because I didn’t touch it and there were no goblins in our house.
I bought a belt for him, a dark-blue one in supple leather and a nice copper-coloured buckle. Made in Italy. Again the same reaction: ‘Why are you giving me that?’ I thought he felt the buckle was too flashy, or that blue wasn’t masculine enough. I’ll give the belt to my cousin, I thought. He’ll like it. That evening I saw him wearing the belt. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘you do like it after all.’ He didn’t react. ‘The belt,’ I said. No reaction. ‘That blue suits you.’ Still nothing. It was as if he didn’t want to admit that I had given him the belt. He was pretending that he had always had it. He wore it for years. When he changed trousers, he pulled it out of one pair and passed it through the loops of the other. It was slightly too wide, and it was always a bit of a squeeze, but eventually he got very good at it. There were days when I was afraid that he would hit me with the belt, but that never happened. M didn’t need a belt for that.
The last present I gave him was a tool box I had seen in Brico. I had actually gone to look for a barbecue on wheels. When I got there all the barbecues had gone, but they had a whole wall of tool boxes. They were piled up to the ceiling. That’s just the thing for M, I thought. He had lots of tools, but they were a clutter of things he had collected over the years. He was always complaining because he was messing around with useless tools. Many of them he had stolen. If you haven’t paid for it you’ve no right to complain. I think. But he complained anyway. In the store they assured me that my husband would be happy with it. It wasn’t top quality, that was impossible at that price, but it was sturdy and could be used every day. I took the box home as pleased as Punch. I had had it wrapped in shiny paper. He couldn’t miss it. I put the shiny package on the television. Two days later it was still there. ‘Don’t you want to know what’s in it?’ I asked. He didn’t even answer.
He didn’t trust those presents. He saw them as a trap. He was afraid I would take them from him again and throw them away. Or destroy them. Or that I would give them to someone else, as his father had done with the carpentry set that he had been given by his Granny and Granddad. In his first year at school M came home at Christmas with a brilliant report. He had got top marks in virtually everything. That isn’t that difficult in your first year, but he managed it. His parents didn’t say a word about it, either positive or negative, nothing. They scarcely looked at the report. But his Granny and Granddad wanted to reward him. They gave him a case with a hammer, a saw, a chisel and a file. M was so happy and proud! He never played with it. His parents gave it away to another child. That tool box from the DIY store was of course the most stupid possible present. When I finally took off the gift wrapping myself, his face froze. Just like a mask. A few days later his brother dropped by. I thought: I’ll give him the box. He then told me about the case full of carpentry tools that his parents had given away. If his brother had not told me the sad story, I would never have known. M kept those things to himself. He was too proud to talk about them.
His brother didn’t want the box. Finally I put it in the van with all the other tools. Nothing was ever said about it. But he did use it. From then on I always did it in that way. When I had bought something for him, I put it in his cupboard or in the place where he would use it, but I didn’t make a present of it. The memories were too painful, for him. I went on buying stuff for him. When I saw something I thought he needed, I bought it. If I had the money. At the beginning it was easier, before he started checking my outgoings. I didn’t have much leeway, because M couldn’t stand me spending money frivolously. Not that I’ve ever done that. Mummy had taught me the value of money. She had been through the war, and Dad too.
More than once I thought: oh, if only I could have given you some love from the moment you were born!
Love didn’t interest him. Sex did, but love didn’t. Because he had never known it. He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t recognise it, he couldn’t give it, he couldn’t receive it.
The worst thing was that he realised that. Sometimes.
There were moments when he realised. Then he knew very well why he was the person he was and what he was like.
I tried to straighten out what had grown crooked, but it was too late.
It was as if love could gain no hold on him. It slid off him.
At school we had had to read Le petit prince. I knew the book well, because I did an exam on it and later even gave a teaching-practice lesson on it. I loved it, especially the passage about the fox who asks the little prince to make him tame and explains to him how to do it, with superhuman patience. First the little prince must keep his distance and mustn’t say anything, but gradually he is allowed to come a little closer each day. The fox needed time to get used to the prince.
I thought it would be the same with M. I had hoped to tame him step by step, the way the little prince tames the fox, with love and patience.
I thought: I’ll prove to him that he can trust me, that I won’t drop him. I shall prove that love exists, unconditional love, real love. I shall give him the love that he had to do without. And that love will cure him.
I
