Shhh Read Online Free PDF Page A

my nose was dripping all the time, I was undernourished, knock-kneed, and scared of everything, especially rats. Quite frankly there wasn’t much hope for me. And my uncle Leon took advantage of that.
    Sometimes, when my mother didn’t have money to buy food for us, my aunt Marie would ask my sisters and me to come and eat with them. After the meal my uncle Leon would make me crawl under the dining room table to pick up the crumbs of bread that had fallen on the oriental carpet.
    My father and mother never went to eat chez eux. My father didn’t get along with Leon. They argued and cursed each other all the time. In fact, nobody in the family on my mother’s side liked my father. They all said that he was a good-for-nothing. I’ll go into that too when the time comes, and tell how they treated my father.
    I was afraid of my uncle Leon. He never hit me, but he screamed at me and insulted me all the time. Everybody in the family was afraid of him. I think my aunt Marie was afraid of him too, because she did a lot of things behind his back. For instance, sometimes when my sisters and I were coming home from school, and she was in her apartment, she would quickly open the door as we came up the stairs and shove a piece of bread or a fruit into our hands, and tell us, Quick go upstairs and don’t tell Tonton Léon.
    Tonton, that’s what we called Leon, even though my sisters and I didn’t really like him. He was not nice, and on top of that he was a self-impressed snob. My father used to say, Léon, c’est un nouveau riche snob. Leon always wore a tie, whileworking in his atelier, and a suit jacket when he sat at the table to eat. He looked like the French actor Fernandel.
    In Aunt Rachel’s Fur I told how, once a week, Fernandel would come to visit the lady who lived in the fancy villa on our street. She was the only rich person in our neighborhood. So I’m not going to tell that story again. No, I’m ...

Ah, go ahead Federman, tell us again how Fernandel came every Thursday to visit that rich lady. Those who haven’t read Aunt Rachel’s Fur might be interested.
    Okay, I’ll tell Fernandel again, and after that I’ll describe our crummy one-room apartment on the third floor where the five of us lived.

Fernandel was a famous actor with horse-like teeth and a huge smile that made people laugh. He was a vaudeville comedian before he became a movie star. He always played funny parts. His most famous role was that of an irascible Italian village priest called Don Camillo, at war with the communist mayor of the village. He was tall and gangling. The people in our neighborhood who had seen him when he came to visit the rich lady used to say that my uncle Leon looked like Fernandel.
    That rich lady lived in a fancy private villa with a huge garden enclosed by a tall fence. She had an old gardener who was deaf. In the garden there was a statue of a naked woman. A statue of a Greek goddess. When the gardener was not working in the garden the older boys from the neighborhood would look at the statue through the fence and giggle. Everybody in the neighborhood called that lady La Comtesse de Montrouge. She was beautiful. She had long dark hair and very dark eyes. She wore elegant clothes, and many different hats. She had a big car with a chauffeur who came to fetch her whenever she wanted to go out.
    When the children were playing in the street, and the big car would arrive, all the games stopped, and we would stare at La Comtesse, and she would wave to us with her gloved hand.
    When I first started masturbating, I don’t remember exactly how old I was, I would often see La Comtesse inside my closed eyes.
    Please excuse the digression, but that just came to me.
    Anyway, every Thursday Fernandel came to visit this beautiful lady who lived in the villa, number 15 rue Louis Rolland, just down the street from our house.
    The reason we could see Fernandel when he came is