Free Shhh by Raymond Federman Page B

the signature in the old register. He goes back and forth between the two.
    You know, he tells me, the signature you just made is not the same as the one in this book.
    The old man leans over the director’s desk to look at the signature I just made.
    Yes, it’s true, he exclaims. This is not the same signature.
    I am on the verge of bursting into laughter but I hold back, and explain to the director and the old archivist and to all the curious bank employees who also leaned over the desk to examine the two signatures that twenty years had passed between these two signatures. I was just a boy when I made this one, I say, pointing to the signature in the register. It’s a school boy signature. A childish signature. I am now an adult, and of course my way of signing has changed. It’s normal.
    The director seems to approve but says, Still, it’s curious.
    Yes, it’s true, he finally says, signatures do change with age. He takes out a sheet of paper from the drawer of his desk and scribbles something on it, and gives it to the old archivist. This is my authorization, he says, you can take Monsieur to the cashier, I believe he has a right to collect his money.
    We are now at the cashier with the curious people still mumbling around me.
    The chubby lady inside the cashier’s cage looks at me with a kind of angry look. She must think I am a thief. She counts each bill with a scornful look as if it were her own money she was giving me. All in all she gives me 183 francs and some small coins. My hundred pre-war francs had almost doubled.
    I couldn’t resist, and said to her, Merci madame, merci beaucoup de votre générosité et celle de la France.
    Thank you madame for your generosity and that of France.
    I shoved the money into my pocket, and as I left, I felt behind me the confused and peevish look of the bank employees. Once outside I burst into laughter. The people in the street looked at me as though I was crazy. An old lady even asked me if I was okay because I was laughing so loud I started coughing. I reassured her that I was fine.

After that I took the subway to Montparnasse. I had decided to go and have a good lunch at the famous brasserie La Coupole , where I had never dared go before. It was famous for being the restaurant where all the Parisian intellectuals and artists congregated.
    I ordered a dozen oysters, a steak tartare with frites, an endive salad, a delicious goat cheese, and for dessert une crème caramel. And with that half a bottle of Saint-Emilion. The whole thing cost me more than half of what I had collected, but it was well worth it.
    Especially because, seated just across from my table, there were Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Boris Vian. Really, it’s true. They were there, having lunch at La Coupole. I wanted to go over to talk to them. To tell them how much I admired them. Tell them that when I left for America after the war, I thought of myself as an Existentialist, and that I had only two books with me: La nausée by Sartre, and J’irai cracher sur vos tombes de Vernon Sullivan. I didn’t know at the time that Vernon Sullivan was Boris Vian. That’s what I would have liked to tell them. But I didn’t dare.
    In any case, that day, I ate well, and had a good laugh, and...

Federman, you’re such a liar.
    No, I’m not. It’s truth. Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Vian were there. But maybe it was not that day I saw them there. During the time I spent in Paris that year, I often walked past La Coupole. I couldn’t afford to go in again, but perhaps that’s when I saw them. What’s the difference?
    OK, I go back to my childhood.

Now I want to finish telling about my father. How sometimes he didn’t come home for several nights. According to what I heard my aunts saying, he was sleeping with his mistress. But my mother would tell them, it’s not true. That he was working.
    I told earlier about the cardboard