Free Jewish Mothers Never Die: A Novel by Natalie David-Weill Page A

certain grandmotherliness. Physically, they were opposites, but their personalities were strikingly similar: determined, domineering, inflexible and hypocritical. Two peas in a pod!
    Louise Cohen was unstoppable now on the subject of her exile.
    “I wanted Albert to be French but it was just as important to me that he understood where he came from. So I did what I could: I put him in Catholic school in the hope he’d rub elbows with the French elite and at home, I told him stories of the Jewish royal houses and all their customs and ancestral traditions. I would never have allowed him to become one hundred percent French; it would have created a gulf between us. On the other hand, nothing delighted me more than to read about the adventures of the Valiant family. They were eager, imaginative and sincere, as all of us are who call Corfu home.”
    “I suppose the Valiants’ grand arrival in Geneva took place with a bit more pomp and circumstance than yours in Marseille?” Rebecca wondered.
    The allusion made Louise laugh; how could anyone compare her to Albert’s daring and resourceful characters? She was not too shy to admit, however, that she admired his novels’ portrayal of the immigrant’s fear of rejection. He had written from experience.
    “No matter how much Albert thought of himself as stateless, each move was an uprooting for him,” Louise continued. “He grew to like every city: Marseille, Paris, Geneva, London, Jerusalem, and he wanted to become a French citizen, but wherever he went, he always said the same thing: ‘My home is somewhere else.’”
    “Perhaps he felt he was Jewish above all?”
    “He could hardly have forgotten that fact. We left Corfu as so many Jews did, just as a tide of anti-Semitism started to grow. This was in 1900. A young Jewish girl, Rubina Sarda, had been found murdered just before Passover. Suspicion immediately fell on the Jewish community, including the girl’s father. People thought it had been a ritual sacrifice and some arrests were made. But this gave rise to more generalized violence, insults and attacks against Jewish businesses. The family was acquitted but the damage had been done and the atmosphere was suffocating, even though Corfu had been admirably tolerant to Jews up until then. Jews had even obtained equal rights from the French in 1791. If we were persecuted, we remained united, and resigned. In Marseille, however, things were far worse.”
    “How so?”
    “For one thing, we arrived just after the Dreyfus Affair.”
    Jeanne Proust interrupted curtly. She had no interest in hearing tell of the unfortunate captain; it brought up so many unhappy memories for her. Her Adrien had been stubbornly pro-military and anti-Dreyfusard and their differing opinions on the scandal had provoked disintegration of their marriage. In fact, they had had a bonafide argument about it that only cemented their lack of understanding. After that, she had always felt that she was living with a stranger.
    “That may be,” Louise Cohen replied dryly. “But you had the good fortune to live in Paris, such a cosmopolitan city, not like us in Marseille. We had hardly gotten settled in our hotel room when we were robbed of everything.”
    Tears welled in her eyes at the memory.
    “I got over it, but Albert became more and more withdrawn. He avoided boys his age and seemed different from them. He had such a fine imagination, I thought he would adjust, but the humiliation he endured on his tenth birthday was the final straw. We were out, and he was dressed in his sailor suit: such an innocent soul! He stopped to watch a street peddler selling a sort of stain remover. The peddler was a smooth operator, and Albert was fascinated. I remember him smiling, looking at the crowd that had gathered. He had found a good spot in the audience from which to observe the man’s performance and for a moment he felt as if he belonged among these French people, whom we had idealized so much. Emboldened