Letter to a Child Never Born Read online

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  I’ve written three fairy tales for you. I haven’t really written them since I’m lying flat on my back and cannot write; so I shall simply tell them to you. Once upon a time there was a little girl who was in love with a magnolia tree. The magnolia stood in the middle of a garden. The little girl used to look at it for days on end, leaning out of the window from the top floor of a house facing onto that garden. The little girl was very small, and to look down at the magnolia she had to climb on a chair, where her mother used to find her and cry out, ‘Oh God, she’ll fall, she’ll fall out of the window!’ It was a big magnolia, with big branches and big leaves and big flowers which opened like clean handkerchiefs and which no one picked because they were too high. As the little girl watched, day after day, the flowers would bloom, turn yellow, wither and fall to the ground with a small thud. And each day the little girl dreamed that someone would appear and pick a flower while it was still white. It was in this expectation that she stayed at the window, her arms resting on the sill and her chin resting on her arms. There were no other houses around her, only a wall rising steeply at the side of the garden and ending in a terrace where washing was hung out to dry. You knew when it was dry because of the way it slapped in the wind, whereupon a woman would arrive to collect it all in a basket and take it away. But one day the woman arrived and, instead of collecting the wash, she too began looking at the magnolia: it was almost as though she was trying to see if she could pick a flower. She stood there a long time staring at the tree while the laundry flapped in the wind. Then she was joined by a man who put his arms around her. She put her arms around him too, and soon they fell down on the terrace together and lay gasping together for a long time and finally went to sleep. The little girl was surprised; she couldn’t understand why the two of them lay sleeping on the terrace instead of looking at the magnolia and trying to pick a flower, and she was waiting patiently for them to wake up when another man appeared. He was very angry. He said nothing, but it was clear that he was very angry because he immediately flung himself on the two of them. First on the man, who jumped up and ran away, then on the woman, who began running through the hanging wash. He ran after her, trying to catch her, and in the end he did. He lifted her up as though she weighed nothing and threw her off the terrace: on to the magnolia. It seemed to take a long time for the woman to reach the magnolia, but when she did, she landed on the branches with a loud crack as if a branch had broken. At that moment the woman grabbed at a flower and plucked it. She stayed there motionless with her flower in her hand. Then the little girl called her mother. She said: ‘Mama, they threw a woman down on the magnolia and she picked a flower.’ Her mother came, screamed that the woman was dead, and from that day on the little girl grew up convinced that if a woman picked a flower she must die.

  I was that little girl. May God protect you from learning the way I learned that it is always the strongest, the cruellest, the least generous who wins. God keep you from understanding as early as I did that a woman is the first to pay for this reality. But it is a mistake for me to hope that. It is better to hope that you’ll soon lose this virginity called childhood. It’s an illusion. From now on you must prepare to defend yourself, to be quicker and stronger, and to throw others down from the terrace. Especially if you’re a woman. This too is a law: unwritten but obligatory. It’s either you or me, either I save myself or you save yourself: these are the terms of this law. And beware of forgetting it. Everybody does harm to somebody, here among the living, Child. Those who don’t succumb. And don’t listen to those who say that it’s the better who succumb. It’s the weaker who succumb, and they’re not necessarily the better. I’ve never pretended that women are better than men, that because of their goodness they deserve not to die. To be good or bad doesn’t count: life out in this world doesn’t depend on that. It depends on a relation of forces based on violence. And survival is violence. You’ll wear leather shoes because someone has killed a cow and skinned it to make leather. You’ll warm yourself with a fur coat because someone has killed an animal, a hundred animals, to strip away the fur. You’ll eat chicken livers because someone has killed a chicken that was doing harm to no one. Perhaps not to no one, because even that chicken was devouring little worms that went around peacefully nibbling plants. There’s always someone who eats or skins another to survive; from men to fish. Even the fishes eat each other, the bigger ones swallow the smaller. The same for the birds, the insects, anything. I believe it is only trees and plants that devour no one: they nourish themselves on water, sun, and nothing else. At times, however, deprived of sun and water, they wither and die. But is now the time for you to know these horrors, you who live and nourish and warm yourself without killing anybody?

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  Here is a second fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a little girl who was very fond of chocolate. But the more she liked chocolate, the less chocolate she had. This was because she had once been given as much chocolate as she wanted. During that time she lived in a house filled with light that came in through the windows. Then one day she woke up and there was no sky and no light and no chocolate. From the windows of her new room, which were placed almost at the ceiling and protected by a prison grating, all she could see were feet going back and forth. She could also see dogs, and at first it was fun because you could see the whole dog, including the head. But then the dogs lifted their legs and made peepee on the grating, while the little girl’s mother wept: ‘Oh, no, not that!’ Her mother was always weeping, especially when she looked at her big stomach, which made her apron stick out, and spoke to it. ‘You couldn’t have picked a worse moment!’ At which point the little girl’s father began to cough in his bed, a cough that left him as though dead when it subsided. Her father stayed in bed even during the day, his face yellow and his eyes shining. And sad. As the little girl reckoned it, the end of the chocolate had come at the same time as her father’s illness and the move to this house with neither sky nor joy. They had no money.

  In order to get money, the little girl’s mother went to clean house for a beautiful lady whom she called by her first name and who called her by hers. She was a rich aunt and was always changing her clothes. They even said she had a handbag for every dress and a pair of shoes for every bag. Her house was on the river and all the sky in the city came in through the windows. But still the beautiful lady wasn’t happy. She was always complaining: because a hat didn’t look right, or because her cat sneezed, or because her maid had been away in the country for a month and showed no signs of returning. So the little girl’s mother took the place of this irresponsible maid. Every day, from nine to one, she left her husband and took the little girl with her, insisting it was better for her to get some air than to stay alongside a man with a punctured lung. They went by foot, a long distance through endless streets. As they walked, her mother kept wondering aloud at what unhappiness she would hear about this time from the beautiful lady, and then, before ringing the bell, she would whisper, ‘Cheer up!’ The sound of the bell was answered by a languid voice, followed by an even more languid step, and the door opened on a dressing gown that went all the way down to the feet: sometimes white, sometimes pink, sometimes blue. They trod on carpets as they entered, and the little girl’s mother placed her on a stool, almost as though she were a package. She told her to be quiet and still and not to bother anyone, then disappeared into the kitchen to wash the dishes. The beautiful lady by then was stretched out on a divan, reading the newspaper and smoking with a cigarette holder. Clearly she had nothing else to do. And the little girl couldn’t understand why she didn’t wash the dishes herself, instead of having them washed by her mother who had a big stomach.

  That morning the beautiful lady’s complaints had to do with money. She had begun while the little girl’s mother was washing the dishes and she kept it up while she was cleaning the drawing room. ‘Don’t you see?’ she repeated. ‘That’s all the money he wants to give me.’ And when the little girl�
��s mother replied, ‘With all that money I’d feel like a princess,’ the lady got angry. She said, ‘To me it’s barely enough for taxis. You don’t mean to compare yourself to me!’ The little girl’s mother blushed, and with the excuse of brushing the rug she knelt on the floor and hid her face. The little girl felt a lump in her throat. And the tears burning in her eyes were just about to flow when her attention was caught by some golden objects glittering in the sun: a glass container for sweets, filled with chocolates. But not just ordinary chocolates: chocolates two or three times as big as those she’d been accustomed to eat in those faraway days in the house with the sky. Indeed, all of a sudden, the lump in her throat disappeared, to be replaced by a liquid that had the taste of chocolate. Her mother realized it. She gave her a terrible look to warn her: you ask for anything and you’ll be sorry! The little girl understood and with dignity began gazing at the ceiling. She was gazing at the ceiling when the beautiful lady got up and, murmuring with boredom, went onto the balcony where she stood rubbing her wrist. The balcony faced out over a second, larger balcony. And on the second balcony were two rich children. The little girl knew this because she had once seen them and had understood they were rich because they were beautiful. They had the same beauty as the lady. Still rubbing her wrist, the lady ran to the edge. Enraptured, she smiled, leaned over to call them: ‘Bonjour, mes petits pigeons! Ça va, aujourd’hui?’ And then: ‘Attendez, attendez! Il y a quelque chose pour vous!’ She came back into the house, took the glass container, uncovered it, and, holding it daintily carried it onto the balcony and began to throw down chocolates. She threw them, saying: ‘Chocolates for my little pigeons! Chocolates for my little pigeons!’ She threw more than half of them, amid bursts of laughter, and finally brought the container back to the table and took out one more chocolate. Slowly she stripped away the gold foil, held it for a moment, thinking of something or other, then ate it. While the little girl watched.

  From that day on I’ve been unable to eat chocolate. If I eat it, I throw up. But I hope you’ll like chocolate, Child, because I want to buy you a lot of it. I want to cover you with chocolate: to let you eat it for me till you’re sick of it, till the sense of injustice that weighs on me so heavily is finally lifted. You’ll come to know injustice as well as violence; that’s something else you must get ready for. And not the injustice of killing a chicken to eat it, a cow to skin it, a woman to punish her: I mean the injustice that separates the haves from the have-nots. The injustice that leaves this poison in the mouth, while the pregnant mother brushes someone else’s carpet. How this problem can be solved, I don’t know. All those who have tried have only succeeded in replacing the one who brushes the carpet. Under whatever system you’re born, whatever ideology, there’s always someone brushing another’s carpet. There’s always a little girl humiliated by a desire for chocolate. You’ll never find a system or ideology that can change the hearts of men and erase their iniquity. When someone tells you with-us-it’s-different, answer him: Liar. Then challenge him to demonstrate that with them there’s no such thing as meals for the rich and meals for the poor, houses for the rich and houses for the poor, seasons for the rich and seasons for the poor. Winter is a season for the rich. If you’re rich, the cold becomes a game because you buy a fur coat and heat your house and go skiing. If, instead, you’re poor, the cold becomes a curse and you learn to hate even the beauty of a white, snow-covered landscape. Equality, Child, like freedom exists only where you are now. Only as an egg and in the womb are we all equal. Is it really time for you to come to know of these injustices, you who live there and serve no one?

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  I don’t know if this one is a fairy tale, but I’ll tell it to you anyway. Once upon a time there was a girl who believed in tomorrow. Indeed everyone was always teaching her to believe in tomorrow, assuring her that tomorrow is always better. The priest assured her when he intoned his promises in church and announced the Kingdom of Heaven. The school assured her when it taught her that humanity goes forward: that once man lived in caves, then in unheated houses, then in houses with central heating. Her father assured her when he gave her examples from history and maintained that the mighty are always brought low. The girl lost faith in the priest fairly early. His tomorrow was death, and the girl was not at all interested in living beyond death in a luxurious hotel called the Kingdom of Heaven. She lost faith in the school a little later, during a winter when her hands and feet were covered with chilblains and sores. It was a great thing, to be sure, that men had progressed from caves to central heating, but her house had no central heating. She continued, however, to have a blind faith in her father. Her father was a courageous and stubborn man. For twenty years he had fought certain arrogant men dressed in black, and every time they cracked his skull, he said, courageously and stubbornly: ‘Tomorrow will come.’ There was a war in those years, and the arrogant men dressed in black seemed to be winning it. But her father shook his head and said, courageously and stubbornly: ‘Tomorrow will come.’

  The girl believed him because of what she had seen one night in July. On that night the arrogant men had been driven out and it seemed that their war was over, making way for tomorrow. But September came and the arrogant men returned, with new ones who spoke German. The war was redoubled. The girl felt she had been betrayed. She asked her father, who answered, ‘Tomorrow will come.’ And he convinced her by showing her that tomorrow could not be far off because they were no longer alone: friends were arriving, a whole army of friends who were called allies. Next day the girl’s city was bombarded by the friends who were called allies and a bomb fell right in front of her house. The girl was bewildered. If they were friends, why did they bomb her house? Her father replied that unfortunately they had to but that this in no way diminished their friendship, and the better to convince her he brought into the house two of those who had dropped the bombs. The ‘friends’ had been taken prisoner by the arrogant men, but they had escaped. It was necessary to help them, her father explained, since tomorrow was their common cause. The girl agreed. Together with her father, who was risking the firing squad for these men, she hid the friends and fed them and guided them to safe villages. Then she settled down to wait for the army that was to bring the tomorrow. Weeks passed, months, and the army didn’t come. And meanwhile people were dying under the bombs, the tortures, the shootings: the famous tomorrow now seemed only a dream made of dreams. Then the girl’s father was arrested, beaten, tortured. The girl visited him in prison and could hardly recognize him, he had been so tortured. But even in prison, after being tortured, he said: ‘Tomorrow will come. A tomorrow without humiliation.’

  And in the end, the tomorrow arrived. It was an August dawn and during the night the city had been shaken by dreadful explosions. The bridges and streets had been blown up, and more innocent people had been killed. But then the dawn had emerged, splendid as the bells of Easter, and it brought the army of friends. Handsome, smiling, joyous, they advanced, angels in uniform, and people ran up to them throwing flowers and shouting their thanks. The girl’s father, now freed, was greeted by everyone with great deference and in his eyes shone the light of one who has known the faith. Then somebody came up and told him to run to the allied command: something very serious had happened. The girl’s father ran, wondering what this very serious thing could be. At the command post was a man who lay sobbing on the ground, his face buried in the grass. He must have been about thirty years old. He was wearing a blue suit, obviously chosen to welcome the friends, and in the buttonhole of the jacket there was a big red paper rose. In front of him, or rather over him, his legs spread, stood an angel in uniform with a machine gun slung on his shoulder. The girl’s father bent over the man: ‘What have you done?’ The man only sobbed more and whimpered, ‘Mama, mama, mama.’ The girl’s father asked to speak to the allied commander. As the commander received him, he lifted his sharp face, adorned with carrot-coloured moustaches, and waved a riding crop. ‘Are you one of the so-called rep
resentatives of the people?’ The girl’s father said yes. ‘Then let me inform you that your people have welcomed us by stealing. That man is a thief.’ The girl’s father asked what he had stolen. ‘A haversack full of food and documents,’ the commander hissed. The girl’s father asked what documents. ‘The leave papers of the sergeant who owns the haversack,’ the commander hissed. The girl’s father asked if the papers had been recovered. ‘Yes, but torn!’ the commander hissed. The girl’s father suggested that perhaps they could be mended. And the food? Had that also been recovered? ‘The food has been eaten! A whole day’s ration!’ the commander shouted in fury. The girl’s father checked a smile. He answered that this was indeed disagreeable: as a representative of the people he would take charge of the thief and order him to reimburse the sergeant for his losses. Then the riding crop traced a great spiral in the air and the commander replied that in his army thieves were shot. He ordered the girl’s father to get out. Outside, the thief was still crying with his face buried in the grass: ‘Mama, mama, mama.’ The angel in uniform was still standing over him, his legs spread and the machine gun pointed. The legs were squat and hairy; the machine gun was aimed at the back of the man’s neck. As she walked by, the girl heard a metallic click. The click of the safety catch when it is released.