My Father’s Books

The Mother Tongue

84 The ­ Mother ­ Tongue Si­ lence is our ­ mother ­ tongue. Beck­ ett What was my ­ mother’s ­ mother ­ tongue? ­ Shortly after her birth she be­ came moth­ er­ less. Her ­ father ­ brought her a new ­ mother. And so, my­ mother did not, as they say, im­ bibe her ­ mother ­ tongue at her ­ mother’s­ breast. Her ­ father was a pre­ fect dur­ ing the first ­ decade of the last cen­ tury at the south­ ern­ most bor­ der ­ between Al­ ba­ nia and ­ Greece. There were prob­ lems in this bor­ der zone, as many as you could wish for. Life ex­ pe­ ri­ ence had ­ taught her ­ father to speak Al­ ba­ nian, Greek, Turk­ ish, a lit­ tle­ French and Ital­ ian . . . The town of Ja­ nina was not far away. There were many of her­ father’s own peo­ ple there, and, nat­ u­ rally, they had ­ learned Greek. My­ mother, hav­ ing been left moth­ er­ less, was under the care of her large ex­ tended fam­ ily. When she was a bit older, she went to Sal­ o­ nika to live with her uncle who was work­ ing as a sur­ geon. There she so­ lid­ ified her knowl­ edge of Greek. Her uncle was mar­ ried to an Ital­ ian, a real sig­ nora, as my ­ mother would say when she let her mind drift back to mem­ o­ ries of her child­ hood, as she often did. She could not for­ get the ­ woman’s large white hat, ­ bigger than any my ­ mother had ever seen. From her, my ­ mother ­ learned a lit­ tle bit of Ital­ ian. In Sal­ o­ nika dur­ ing the twen­ ties, my ­ mother saw just how many lan­ guages were ­ spoken, how many dif­ fer­ ent lives were lived. At the end of her so­ journ in Sal­ o­ nika she could make a list of the lan­ guages she had­ learned and those she came to love. Aside from Greek and Ital­ ian, she had ­ picked up a bit of ­ French from some­ where or other, prob­ ably from the ­ teacher who came to teach her ­ aunt’s chil­ dren. Had my ­ mother 85­ stayed ­ longer in Sal­ o­ nika she would cer­ tainly have ­ learned Cas­ til­ ian as well from the Se­ phar­ dic Jews liv­ ing there who had pro­ fes­ sional ties with her uncle. My ­ mother re­ mem­ bered the great white caps of the Se­ phar­ dim and the lan­ guage they spoke, which was clos­ est to her Ital­ ian yet some­ thing else alto­ gether. My ­ mother never re­ turned to Sal­ o­ nika after her child­ hood. She re­ mained in Les­ ko­ vik, but the Greek lan­ guage had taken root in her for­ ever. When fate ­ brought us to ­ Skopje, a city cut in two by the Var­ dar, a river flow­ ing to­ ward Sal­ o­ nika and on to the ­ nearby sea, mem­ o­ ries of Sal­ o­ nika woke once again in my ­ mother’s mem­ ory. She spoke often about the prom­ e­ nades by the sea. In her mem­ o­ ries, Beaz Kule, the White Tower, con­ tin­ u­ ally rose up be­ fore her. She re­ called the white gulls cir­ cling the tower. Now, half a cen­ tury later, trans­ ported to the banks of this river, where fate had ir­ rev­ o­ cably set­ tled us, she ­ watched sev­ eral white gulls that had seem­ ingly flown out of her mem­ o­ ries. But they were real gulls, ­ Father as­ sured her, ex­ plain­ ing how they flew up here from as far away as the sea­ shore of Sal­ o­ nika, bring­ ing the ­ breath of the sea with them. As my ­ mother ­ stared ­ across the flow­ ing river, for­ get­ ting even my ­ father’s pres­ ence, she re­ turned once more to Les­ ko­ vik . . . There she was in the bloom of youth. Sal­ o­ nika and Ja­ nina were left in her ­ thoughts alone; she would never re­ turn there. Those cit­ ies were for­ ever con­ nected with her mem­ o­ ries of her child­ hood and of her ­ adopted Greek lan­ guage. That lan­ guage, as much of it as she had mas­ tered, held fast in her con­ scious­ ness. Ital­ ian too held its place in ­ Mother’s mind; her knowl­ edge of it re­ vived and deep­ ened...