The Drowning Of A Goldfish Read Online Free PDF Page A

be false? Who, in fact, was the imposter?
    Was it I?
    On leaving the movie theater, I would no longer be dazzled. American movies and the civilization they portrayed would seem a synonym of deceit and crookedness. I deeply mistrusted the very existence of these beautiful women, limited to the social function of their husbands. Their way of life, being ersatz, was totally unacceptable to me.
    I wanted to become myself, independent and free, and I was prepared to pay the price.
    I discovered the Soviet movies around 1946. I would realize later that they were just the same lies; only their make-up was crude and their make-believe was humanitarian.
    They used the collective “we” instead of “I,” one gave all one’s thought for the good of the people, not for individual success; one got killed so that the principle would live forever.
    I would leave the theater dazzled.
    Next to me, Grandmother’s seat would stay empty—as was the rest of the theater. People did not like these disturbing and unpolished films. They preferred to be captivated by the flamboyant American version of war, which conformed better to their unfulfilled fantasies of being heroes.
    I felt that my unshared truth was right and socialism seemed to me, without any doubt, superior to capitalism.
    I was very pleased when, in 1946, the year of our first and last free elections, the left became victorious.
    I remember this day very well; its feverish atmosphere, thick with anxiety.
    In the street, people conferred in tight groups. For the first time since 1939, the time of the German occupation, they felt like actors in a drama whose outcome seemed to be in their control. But these poor clowns with their red painted faces, wearing their ridiculous costumes, placed on a historical stage, were the mere shadows of a great director.
    All was decided beforehand at the Yalta conference, without being asked, where the three carvers of the world drew the border lines of freedom outside of our territory, once and for all.
    They were snared in the hunter’s trap and I with them, mistaking, in our stunned naïveté, the prison bars for sun beams.
    One afternoon in May, when the violent fulmination of February 1948 began to ferment, I was seated beside my father in the National Theater, listening to Boris Godunov . We could hardly choose better; the ingredients of this majestically aggressive music were gliding from the stage to the street, from the street to the stage; venomous snakes, slithering beneath the sounds of the opera and the cries of the street, intertwined. The shrill hissings sneaked from their triangular heads with flickering tongues into my deafened ears.
    I trembled with fear.
    The theater echoed it back.
    I remember very little of the reprieve before that February, which lasted a year and a half.
    I attended high school, I devoured culture, I discussed politics with my father.
    Countering him and the darlings of my class, I became a “red.” But this was not my sole reason. I was spellbound by the chimeras of social justice and universal happiness, and was spitting out the flames of passionate words.
    A slight change occured in my life: I became friends with a classmate. Not because our minds matched, but only because she was a concierge’s daughter.
    In February, 1948, I went with my class to the mountains. One day we were not served lunch. In the valley below, the sirens of the textile factories started to wail. The Communist Party had ordered a general strike.
    I was sitting in a red and white deck chair, protected from the wind, basking voluptuously in the warmth of the sun. I was glad not to be obliged to get up and lose this precious moment in the dining room. For I adore the sun. Ever since I can remember …
    I stretch out on the floor. The carpet is soft, the room is cozy, the beams of a radiant sun revive the subtle movement of the animals, delicately amalgamated with flowers of faded colors in the