Merde!

It’s sad when one has to admit being embarrassed by one’s country of birth.

 

Normally, I’m almost stupidly proud of France. I defend the place and its inhabitants whenever detractors--and there are many--surface, and I’m pretty good at justifying French politics, even if they’re a mystery to the non-Gallic. I can cite a long history of intellectual brilliance, and I have at my disposal a veritable Yellow Pages of people who have influenced modern thinking, from Molière and Sartre to Edith Piaf and the Baron Bic (yes, the inventor of the disposable pen and lighter, and the windsurfer.) Recently, though, I’ve hit a wall. It shames me that the nation I truly love is quickly regressing and becoming, once again, openly anti-Semitic.

 

There’s always been a wide streak of anti-Semitism in Europe, dating back thousands of years. The Germans made it their business to eliminate all Jews. The Swiss helped, though they’ll deny it. The Brits pretend to be more civilized, though it’s often simply that they’re more discreet. The Spaniards invented the Inquisition, and the Italians created the openly anti-Jewish papacy. The Poles, Hungarians, Russians and other East Europeans have been no better.

 

In France in 1894, there was the Dreyfus affair, which split the country, and my family.  My great-grandfather was convinced the Jewish Army captain was indeed guilty of treason, and when Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major, Great Grand Dad (Arrière Grand-Père) took to his bed for weeks and even forsook visiting his mistress.

 

During World War II, the defeatist Vichy government covertly assisted the Nazis in arresting and sequestering Jews. In recent times, the French have had to come to terms with a streak of historical denial that for decades averred that yes, we did apprehend the Jews, but we never shipped them to death camps. That turned out to be a horrendous lie. The government’s admission of a whole other truth barely a decade ago shook the French and ignited a debate on France’s role in the making of the Holocaust. The dispute still rages.

 

In 1972, Jean-Marie Le Pen, then a largely unknown French politician, created the highly protectionist National Front party which would eventually revive a misguided sense of French chauvinism, as well as an anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic polemic. Le Pen’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, took over the National Front and is now its leader, while her father became a member of the European Parliament, to which he was re-elected six times by his followers. The National Front has made inroads and though it is now in decline in France proper, it received 4,712,461 votes in the 2014 European Parliament elections, finishing first with 24.86% of the vote and 24 of France's 74 seats.  It was the first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide election in its four-decade history. The party's success came as a shock in France and the EU and many politicians announced their concerns about the results. Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, described the National Front as “fascist” and “extremist.”

 

In the wake of this success, the anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant movements in France have once again blossomed, partially fostered by Dieudonné M’bala M’bala.

Dieudonné (aptly named, God-given) is a Franco-African comedian who once campaigned against racism in France. About a decade ago his politics changed radically and he approached Jean-Marie Le Pen. The two became political allies and friends and Dieudonné described Holocaust remembrance as “memorial pornography.” He was convicted in court eight times on anti-Semitism charges and though often banned from mainstream media, he has become an internet sensation. A quasi-Nazi salute he invented where the arm is pointed downward rather than up, became notorious in 2013 and is now employed by every social misfit in the country.

 

All this astounds me, concerns me, scares me. That my birth-country has such a short memory is truly disturbing. That it would adopt an openly ultra-right wing spokesperson such as Dieudonné astounds me. Truly, I don’t know what to think.

 

Stay tuned.    

Heirlooms

I have two pieces of furniture in my home that I consider heirloom: an 18th century secretary, or ladies’ desk, and a massive chest of drawers probably owned by a French bourgeois family in the 1800’s. Both have crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times, coming from France in the early Sixties, then back in the Eighties when my parents moved back to Paris after two decades in the States. In the early Ninetiess when my mother died and I decided my father would be better off in America with me, the desk and chest of drawers returned to America one last time.

The desk has an elegant folding top and six small drawers, plus a few vertical pigeon-holes for paper, blotter and envelopes. There is a fake front drawer, and a ‘secret’ compartment beneath a horizontal sliding door. The chest of drawers is a massive, looming thing, scarred and darkened by time, its top cracked and badly filled by several generations of do-it-yourselfers. Unlike the desk, it is not elegant. Its ornamentation is basic, workmanlike and utilitarian. 

Even as a little kid in Paris, I knew both these items had mystical powers. I believe, though I am not sure, that they originally belonged to my maternal great-grandfather, an architect of some note reputed to have designed the Banc de France and, family legend has it, ornamented the building’s gables with gargoyles bearing the likeness of people he didn’t like, notably other architects. Hidden from view and sculpted in granite, I was also told, is a likeness of his mistress’ torso, her naked stone breasts overlooking the City of Lights.

The desk figures prominently in my earliest memories. My mother hid packs of her American cigarettes--Pall Malls--in its secret recess. There were also decks of cards there, along with score pads, since she was an avid bridge player; a fountain pen set whose ink had to be replenished every few days; photo albums of her family (but none of my father’s whose forbears were a mystery); old war-time cigarette lighters with black wicks; and assorted colored pencils with which my mother sketched the streets visible from our apartment windows. On top of the desk, where other families might display travel and vacation mementos, was a fired clay replica of a Tang Dynasty horse. This was a gift from my mother’s best friend Marie Louise, a hugely talented but impoverished and alcoholic artist who often spent the night on our living room couch.  

The chest of drawers was in the dining room. My mother kept table cloths and linens there, as well as heavy, inherited silver-plated place settings--three kinds of knives, four sorts of forks and spoons of varying size--used when my parents entertained. The drawers were equipped with massive lion’s jaw handles that I suspect were not original, and I remember my father using candlewax on the drawer’s tracks to make them slide more easily. The middle drawer--where tablecloths and napkins were stored--always stuck. Sixty years later, it still does.

Now in America, both pieces of furniture have found different uses.  The desk, in my living room, holds the collection of clippings from my newspaper days, Moleskins notebooks in assorted colors, a shiny assortment of state-issued quarters in small cloth pouches, and a half-dozen empty wallets. The secret compartment holds a cheap pair of Japanese binoculars and those small, black power supplies that come with wall-mounted vacuum cleaners and other rechargeable items that I have lost or thrown away.  The Tang horse is still there. 

The chest of drawers has winter wear--sweaters, heavy socks, flannel shirts and leather gloves. Atop it sits a menu from an old French brasserie, and two oil-lamps dating back a couple of hundred years.

Sometimes I get sad thinking that at some point in the relatively near future, these relics of a much earlier age will probably be sold and lose their histories. But for now they’re a link to a very real past, a different era in a different country without television, computers, modems, microwaves and self-cleaning ovens. I might never be able to go home again, but these reminders of a simpler time are strangely comforting. The past isn’t gone, it is alive and safely stored in the antique drawers.