“My mother, you ask her time, she lies to you”

Mestent conjugate

We are after the Second World War. Louis Carrère d’Encausse (son of a couple of Bordeaux bourgeois) met, in 1948, Hélène Zourabichvili (daughter of a ruined German-Russian aristocrat and a Georgian commoner, undoubtedly executed, in 1944, for collaboration). They married in 1952. The dream of aristocratic Russia married the ideal of eternal France. They will stay together for sixty and eleven years: twenty years of better and fifty years of worse. Hélène Carrère d’Encausse will experience a dazzling social ascent: she becomes a recognized specialist in Russia and finds herself elected perpetual secretary of the French Academy in 1999. She died on August 5, 2023, in Paris, at the age of 94. She will be entitled, in the Court of Invalides, to a national tribute. For his part, Louis Carrère d’Encausse will lead an insurer career. He died on December 30, 2023. The husband will have survived his wife 147 short days. “Kolkhoze” is a tribute to an adored mother.

Emmanuel Carrère asks the question: “So that the story of my parents ends well, where should he have stopped him?” At the heart of the novel, a conjugal disagreement of fifty years between them. Hélène Carrère d’Encausse was the mistress of a diplomat for several years. The son observed his mother isolate himself, so as not to be discovered by his children. From there, nothing was as before. The wife has given up love, for fear that her husband commits suicide. The couple made a separate room. She in a large room and he in a reduced to the bottom. She only spoke to him if she couldn’t do otherwise. He came in, she came out. She rebuilt him and humiliated him. Louis Carrère d’Encausse will also have an affair, for three years, with a married woman. Hélène Carrère d’Encausse knew it and ended it. Their son said, “They were a real couple. Each had to find their account there, because they stayed together seventy years. What would have happened if he had left before her? She would certainly have collapsed. My father died in a few months. He didn’t want to survive him. »»

Three dramas

Any child asks the question: were his parents happy? Emmanuel Carrère: “The energy and the courage of my mother took place for her happiness. My father, a young Bordeaux bourgeois, had, thanks to his wife, a dream life. He was fascinated by the Russian aristocracy. Hélène Carrère d’Encausse will shine in a thousand lights in the world, while Louis Carrère d’Encausse will withdraw from the scene. The father will have all his career in GMF insurance where he will become the scapegoat of Michel Baroin, father of the politician François Baroin, who became CEO of the company from 1974. His existence will crystallize around three dramas: his wife’s adultery with a diplomat; His relationship with his boss, Michel Baroin; A car accident, when he was driving, following which his daughter Marina Carrère d’Encausse will find himself between life and death. His only pleasure: genealogy.

He is the third most important family figure in the life of Emmanuel Carrère. Nicolas Zourabichvili, brother of Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, has long been confronted with the denial of her older sister. The future historian will lie about the death of their mother and the collaborationist past of their father. She wanted to protect him, protect herself. The son explains: “My uncle was built in the desire for truth against the well -intentioned lies of his big sister. Emmanuel Carrère stopped fiction in 2000 to be interested in the truth. In “Kolkhoze”, he had nothing to do with the shadows of Hélène Carrère d’Encausse. The intellectual on the right was close to the fascist Maurice Bardèche, sometimes got the wrong position, chose Russia against Georgia, then France against Russia. Emmanuel Carrère: “I wrote” Kolkhoze “in sweet sadness and I hope it is one of the living books. I wanted to tell the truth but, at the end, love and admiration prevail. »»

I am the face of my mother who turns out to be without appeal, I am the bottomless distress of my father.

What son is it? “I have my user reservations of psychoanalysis, but some basic intuitions are very accurate: the attachments of early childhood are the most powerful because they are replayed throughout your life. “The answer is on page 309:” I am the face of my mother who turns out to be without appeal, I am the bottomless distress of my father. In “Kolkhoze”, we understand how the literary obsessions of Emmanuel Carrère are linked to his family saga. The sudden absence of a maternal grandfather mustache or the day his mother became blonde are transposed in “La Mustache” (1986); Questions about what his father makes of his days are replaying in “The opponent” (2000); The possibility of a life in Kabul, if his mother had to marry an Afghan pilot, is at the heart of the problems of “uchronia” (1986, reissued in 2025). In “A Russian novel” (2007), the author unveiled the collaborationist past of his grandfather Georges Zourabichvili. Mother and son will no longer be seen for two years.

“Kolkhoze” is a mixture of family portraits and upheavals around the world. We find there the style without the affsetting of Emmanuel Carrère: it takes us into the depths, without any heaviness. In “Vers le Rel II”, the second collection of his works chosen from Gallimard (Quarto collection), the writer claims his taste for portrait. “The degrees of affective involvement are variable when you portray. By doing that of my mother, I pushed the cursor to the maximum. “Would she have dubbed” Kolkhoze “? “She didn’t like us to tell herself, that we show off, that we are stripping. The painting of his marital life would have displeased him. But Emmanuel Carrère also depicts men and women plunged into the tragedies of the century. “Writing is an instrument of knowledge. It gives me access to reality and others. I need this mediation. Otherwise, I have an autistic character. The writer is pessimistic about our future. “We see the wall coming and there is no exit ramp. I’m old: I don’t care for myself, but not for my children. Geoffrey Everest Hinton is a British-Canadian researcher, specialist in artificial intelligence. His painting is black and hopeless. When a youngster asked him, at a conference, what to do, he replied: “Being 80 years old.” »»

“My sorrow was tempered by my admiration”

Unlike “a Russian novel” and “yoga”, crisis books, “Kolkhoze” was written in peace. “My mother had an impressive death of greatness. My grief was tempered by my admiration. In the approach of death, all that was most beautiful at home, like her outfit and her courage, was condensed. His death crowned his life. I hope to be capable of my mother’s stoicism in front of mine, but I don’t know. I have known few personal mourning. I lack practice. “In” Kolkhoze “, there are many moments of happiness, like those spent in the modest house of the paternal grandmother, in Cazères-sur-Garonne, at the gates of the Pyrenees; The discovery of literature, including Tolstoy’s work; The love of a mother for her two daughters and her son. It seems that we die as we live. The children gathered around their mother in the last moments, as they gathered around their mom when they were small. “Kolkhoze” navigates between the joyful light of childhood and the twilight light of mourning.

“Kolkhoze” recounts love and war. His father loved without return. When his wife leaves him to go to the medical house Jeanne-Garnier, palliative care center, she does not have a word of tenderness for him. The son admits: “The love he has devoted to my mother gives his life a mystery. I knew my father better at the very end. He was so secret. I feel like I missed my father, when I faced my mother. With it, the accounts have been cleared. Hélène Carrère d’Encausse had a single fragility: her worship for her father, Georges Zourabichvili. Everything is replayed. The son plunged into his father’s archives to write his family history. Louis Carrère d’Encausse had two passions in life: his wife and genealogy. In “Kolkhoze”, Emmanuel Carrère traces the history of his family and pays homage to his mother. This is what grabs: the son wrote the father’s book.