The Negus 1930–1942 13
hilly suburbs of Algiers, in a holiday home. Right up until the last
minute, his mother refused to break off a poker game: poker would
remain her lifelong passion. The boy’s main forename was probably
chosen because of Jackie Coogan, who had the star role in The Kid.
When he was circumcised, he was given a second forename, Élie,
which was not entered on his birth certifi cate, unlike the equivalent
names of his brother and sister.
Until 1934, the family lived in town, except during the summer
months. They lived in the rue Saint-Augustin, which might seem
like too much of a coincidence given the importance that the saintly
author of the Confessions would have in Derrida’s work. He later
retained only the vaguest images of this fi rst home, where his
parents lived for nine years: ‘a dark hallway, a grocer’s down from
the house’.^9
Shortly before the birth of a new child, the Derridas moved to
El Biar – in Arabic, ‘the well’ – quite an affl uent suburb where the
children could breathe more freely. The parents plunged themselves
into debt for many years when they bought their modest villa, 13,
rue d’Aurelle-de-Paladines. It was located ‘on the edge of an Arab
district and a Catholic cemetery, at the end of the chemin du Repos’,
and came with a garden that Derrida would refer to later as the
Orchard, the Pardes or PaRDeS, as he liked to write it, an image
of Paradise and of the Day of Atonement (‘Grand Pardon’), and an
essential place in kabbalistic tradition.
The birth of Derrida’s sister Janine gave rise to an anecdote that
was constantly being retold in the family, the ‘fi rst words’ of his
that have come down to us. When his grandparents beckoned him
into the bedroom, they showed him a travelling bag that probably
contained the basic implements used in deliveries in those days, and
told him that his little sister had just come out of it. Jackie went up
to the cot and stared at the baby before declaring, ‘I want her to be
put back in her bag.’
At the age of fi ve or six, Jackie was a very charming lad. With
a little boater on his head, he would sing Maurice Chevalier songs
at family parties; he was often nicknamed ‘the Negus’ as his skin
was so dark. Throughout his early childhood, the relation between
Jackie and his mother was particularly intense. Georgette, who had
been left with a childminder until she was three, was neither very
aff ectionate nor very demonstrative towards her children. This did
not stop Jackie from completely worshipping her, almost like the
young Narrator of À la Recherche du temps perdu. Derrida later
described himself as ‘the child whom the grown-ups amused them-
selves by making cry for nothing’, the child ‘who up until puberty
cried out “Mummy I’m scared” every night until they let him sleep
on a divan near his parents’.^10 When he was sent to school, he stood
in the schoolyard in tears, his face pressed against the railings.