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father’s business acquaintances were not her sort and probably did not like her. She could not laugh with those tradesmen’s wives, take an interest in matters which interested them, or talk like them. Since she had no other company, she sought the company of her flat. After lunch, when her housework was done, she would dress nicely and pay a call on herself. She would walk round her beloved flat, examine each room in turn, pat a bedspread, arrange a cushion, fondly survey her dining room, check to see that all was in order, and enjoy the general neatness, the smell of floor polish, and the hideous new stamped-velvet sofa. She would sit down on the sofa and receive herself in her own home. The glass-bowl coffeemaker she had just bought was a new acquaintance. She smiled at it, then put it a little farther away, to get a better view of it. Or else she looked at the fine handbag I had bought her, which she kept wrapped in tissue paper and never used, for it would have been a shame to dirty it.
    Her life was made up of her flat, writing to her son, waiting for letters from her son, preparing for her visits to her son, waiting for her husband in the silent flat, welcoming him when he arrived, and being proud of his compliments. There were also the tearooms, where she listened to snatches of the conversation of fine ladies while she ate cake – the consolation of the lonely. She took part in things as best she could, humbly made do with such poor pastimes, ever a spectator, never a player. She would also go all alone to the cinema. The characters on the screen admitted her to their company, and she wept over the misfortunes of those beautiful Christian ladies. To the end of her days she lived in isolation, a timid child with her overplump face pressed hungrily against the window of the cake shop of social life. I do not know why I am telling of my mother’s sad life. It may be to avenge her.
    At the table she would lay a place every day for the absent son. And on my birthday she would even serve the absent son. She would put the choicest morsels on the plate of the absent son, next to my photograph and a few flowers. For dessert on my birthday she would put on the plate of the absent son the first slice of almond cake – always the same kind of cake, because it was the one I had loved as a child. Then, with a trembling hand, she would pour Samos wine – always the same wine – into the glass of the absent son. She would eat in silence beside her husband, and she would gaze at my photograph.

IX
     
    A FTER I LEFT Marseilles, her big event each year was her stay with me in Geneva during the summer. She would prepare for it months in advance, patching up her clothes, buying presents, and going on an unsuccessful slimming diet. That gave her a kind of happiness long before her departure. It was a little trick she devised to feel that in a way she was already with me. During her visits, which were the great adventure of her life, she would try to curb her Oriental gestures and smother her accent, half Marseilles and half Balkan, under a confused murmur which was meant to sound Parisian. Poor darling!
    She did not have much willpower. She was unable to keep to a diet, and her plumpness increased with the years. But each time she came to stay she assured me she’d lost several kilos since the previous year. I did not disillusion her. In actual fact, she starved herself for weeks before leaving Marseilles, in order to slim and win my approval. But she never lost as much weight as she had put on. And so, though she grew plumper all the time, she nurtured a fanciful belief that she was growing slimmer all the time.
    She would arrive firmly resolved never again to break her diet. But she did so constantly, without being aware of it, because infringements, though a daily occurrence, were always seen as exceptions. “I just want to know whether this pastry has turned out right.” “This almond paste doesn’t count, my son –