Shhh by Raymond Federman Page A

regularly. She kept saying that it was good for me, it made me stronger. But my uncle Leon made fun of me. He would say that it was a waste of time.
    Of course, when I had to wear the yellow star on all my clothes, I was no longer allowed to go to the municipal swimming pool. Nor to the movies. Nor to public libraries and museums. I even had to stop playing in the street with the other boys from the neighborhood. I would stay home and play alone, or reread my Jules Verne.
    It was the same for my cousin Salomon and the other Jewish boy in our school. His name was Lucien Jacobson, but everybody called him Loulou.
    Oh, that’s another name from my school days that I remember. Lucien Jacobson. Of course, Loulou with whom ...

Loulou! Federman, is that the Loulou whose story you tell in Double or Nothing?
    Yes, that’s him.
    Those who want to know more about Loulou, and how we left together for America on the same ship, and how together we starved in New York, eating noodles every day because we were broke, and how we managed to survive, they can consult Double or Nothing, the noodle novel, as my friends call that book.
    Not much more to say about swimming, and the boys from my school.
    Now I’ll go back to the Café Métropole where I watched my father play cards.

When I went to get my father at the café, I knew when he was winning because while I waited for his game to be over, he would order un citron pressé for me. The days when he was losing I didn’t get one. And when he came home he was always in a bad mood, and he would argue with my mother, and she would cry. My mother cried a lot in her short life.
    The only day when my father would come home for dinner regularly was Friday. Not because it was the beginning of the Sabbath. In our home, we didn’t pay attention to the Sabbath or any religious holidays. My father was an Atheist. So my sisters and I were raised without any religion. During my entire childhood I never set foot in a synagogue, and I knew nothing of Jewish customs. I was not even Bar Mitzvad. Though I was circumcised. That much I can prove. My cousin Salomon, he was Bar Mitzvad. And I remember how all the aunts and uncles brought him lots of presents.
    Once in a while Maman would tell us about God and the Jewish religion, but she always spoke in a low voice. She had learned the religious customs in her orphanage, but she was afraid to talk about them because of my father.
    Anyway. One of these customs is to eat carp on Friday before the Sabbath. And my father loved carp. So he always gave my mother extra money to buy a carp, and always came home for dinner on Fridays. My sisters and I, we didn’t like eating carp, but Maman would say it was good for us, and so we were forced to eat it, except for the head with the eyes. We were scared of the head with its big eyes. But my father he ate everything, the whole head and the eyes. He ate it cold with aspic. Though, I remember how one evening Papa almost choked when he swallowed one of the fish-bones. My mother got scared. He was all red and coughing. But he finally managed to spit it out.
    I liked Fridays because I could play with the carp before my mother cooked it. In the morning she would go to the fish market to buy a live carp which she kept alive all day in a wash basin full of water. The same one she used to bathe me in. My sisters didn’t play with the carp because they were afraid. But me, when I came home from school I would quickly finish my homework to be able to play with the carp. I would put a wine bottle cork in the water and I would push it with my finger towards the carp as if it were a little boat, and the carp would swim away from the cork. While playing with the carp I would imagine far away places on the other side of the ocean. Except that I had never seen the ocean. I saw it for the first time when I left on the boat for America.
    No, I’m mistaken. I had seen the sea, once. In Trouville. Now I