Maurice Alfassa
“My father was wonderfully healthy and strong — well-balanced. He wasn't very tall, but stocky. He did all his studies in Austria (at that time French was widely spoken in Austria, but he knew German, he knew English, Italian, Turkish...), and there he had learned to ride horses in an extraordinary manner: he was so strong that he could bring a horse to the ground simply by pressing his knees. He could break anything at all with a blow of his fist, even one of those big silver five-franc pieces they had in those days — one blow and it was broken in two. Curiously enough, he looked Russian. I don't know why. They used to call him Barine. What an equilibrium — an extraordinary physical poise! And not only did this man know all those languages, but I never saw such a brain for arithmetic. Never. He made a game of calculations — not the slightest effort — calculations with hundreds of digits! And on top of it, he loved birds. He had a room to himself in our apartment (because my mother could never much tolerate him), he had his separate room, and in it he kept a big cage ... full of canaries! During the day he would close the windows and let all the canaries loose....
And could he tell stories! I think he read every novel available, all the stories he could find — extraordinary adventure stories, for he loved adventures. When we were kids he used to let us come into his room very early in the morning and, while still sitting in bed, tell us stories from the books he had read — but he told them as if they were his own, as if he'd had extraordinary adventures with outlaws, with wild animals.... Every story he picked up he told as his own. We enjoyed it tremendously!
But one day when my brother had disobeyed him (Matteo must have been ten or eleven, and I perhaps nine or ten), I came into the dining room and saw my father sitting on a sofa with my brother across his knees; he had pulled down his trousers and was spanking him, I don't know what for. It wasn't a very serious spanking, but still.... I came in, drew myself up to my full height and said, “Papa, if you ever do that again, I am leaving this house!” And with such authority, mon petit! He stopped and never did it again.
Some very funny stories!”[1]
- ↑ Mother's Agenda 1961, 5 August 1961
See also