"Geschichte schreiben ist eine Art, sich das Vergangene vom Halse zu schaffen." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).
The subject of this post was introduced here:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/wawa/blog/290821/peres-cocus-cuckolded-fathers
…
The divorce of Mariette and José was a divorce for fault, Mariette having been caught in flagrante delicto of adultery duly noted by a bailiff, at the end of the 1960s. Four or five years later, the first to make me doubt that my registered father (José) was indeed my father, it was my paternal grandmother (Marie-Raphaëlle). I was about 12 or 13 years old. According to Marie-Raphaëlle, my father was either Dujardin, or maybe Desurmont. It seems that I looked like these two men who had apparently been two of Mariette's many lovers. On the other hand, Marie-Raphaëlle did not know anything about Roger, the only one she could reasonably have suspected, as we will see.
Later, when I was about 17 years old, my fiancée (Marie-Noëlle) again put this doubt in my head. According to Marie-Noëlle I was too different from José and everyone knew that Mariette had been of a rather adulterous temperament during her marriage to José.
Then, married to Marie-Noëlle, then pregnant, I had questioned, very precisely, Mariette. "Can you swear on your children's heads that José is really my father?" I asked her. Mariette had sworn that yes. I remember that scene and that oath that took place in the store that Mariette ran with Max in Tours. I believed Mariette and I no longer thought of it.
A little less than 20 years later, Mariette ended up confessing her "truth" to me. According to her, José was not my father. Aged +/- 35, I was living in Rodez at the time. I had come to visit my sister Sylvie in Clermont-Ferrand. Sylvie, I and our two other sisters had no contact with José for over 15 years. Mariette offered me a little walk in the subdivision where Sylvie lived, in Clermont-Ferrand. She told me that she had a secret to tell me. It was her psychic who convinced her to tell me her secret (her "truth").
When, almost 20 years earlier, Mariette had sworn to me the opposite of this new "truth", it was Max (her companion at the time), she told me, who had convinced her to swear to me, against her own conviction, that José was my father. Mariette's conviction, which she had never given up, was based on the fact that, baby, my smell was exactly the same as that of Roger, with whom she had cuckolded José when she conceived me.
My first reaction was to believe this new "truth" as I had believed the previous "truth" to the contrary. But as I thought about it a little longer, I began to not quite know where the real truth was.
My job is medical biology. The ideal solution for me was to request a genetic analysis. But the one who, according to Mariette, was my real father (Roger) had died several years ago from a car accident. It was therefore impossible to carry out a genetic analysis on this side. José being still alive, it would have been theoretically possible to carry out a genetic analysis with him, but, since we had asked the justice, without success, to put him in guardianship, José refused any contact with his four children. Mariette wrote him a letter, but it was wasted (Mariette's letter was formulated without any mention of paternity).
My sister Myriam (my oldest of six years) had known Roger a little. Myriam was categorical: according to her I looked much more like José than like Roger. For Myriam, it was impossible for Roger to be my father.
I then got in touch with Philippe, José's brother, to ask his opinion. We made an appointment in Paris. We had not seen each other for almost 20 years. As soon as Philippe saw me, he told me his certainty that José his brother was indeed my biological father: the resemblance between the two of us was, according to him, too striking. He offered to send me pictures of José taken at different ages of his life. When I saw these photos my doubts were definitely gone.
Myriam and Philippe were right, it was obvious. My two other sisters Sylvie and Patricia were also of the same opinion: José was obviously both my father and my progenitor.
Once fully reassured about my genetic origins, I began to wonder about the reasons which could have pushed Mariette to tell me this story and especially to tell it to herself, because she was obviously still convinced by her story. Over time I think I have found some answers, but that's another story ... which will be the subject of a future post.
Mariette and José lived together for 15 years (1954-1969); she was his widow for 15 years (2006-2021). They were both cremated and their ashes were spread (nearly 1000 kilometers away by the motorway): José in Mouscron in the south of Belgium, and Mariette in Béziers in the south of France. This poem was obviously not written for this couple:
When your soul and mine
have left our bodies and we are
burried alongside each other,
a Potter may one day mould
the dust of both of us
into the same clay.
Omar Khayyam (1045-1131).
…
The French version of this post can be read here:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/wawa/blog/310821/mon-pere-selon-letat-civil-fut-il-mon-geniteur
…