François-Maxime walked around in circles, hoping that stretching his legs would clear his mind.
In vain . . .
Idle, exhausted, he stared at Séverine’s closet, half opened it and looked through her things. Everything seemed to deny that she was gone. Her lily of the valley scent was still there, her silk scarves, her cashmere sweaters, her fine cotton blouses. He lightly touched these objects, and doing so eased his pain.
He opened the wardrobe and, without thinking, took out an ecru dress. Stroking it, sniffing it, he decided to lay it out over the bedspread. Then he took out another, and laid it out by the side of the first. Then another, and another . . .
Now, on the bed, four Séverines lay waiting for him, docile, abandoned.
Opening the closet again, he came across his favorite of her evening dresses, a refined mixture of black silk and velvet panne. Séverine had worn it for important occasions. Taking it off its hanger, he held it against himself.
Looking at himself in the stand-alone mirror, he remembered happy moments with his wife on his arm, when he had felt so carefree and so proud of her.
He heard a tear-laden voice behind him: “Daddy?”
François-Maxime turned. There stood Guillaume, red-eyed, who for a moment had imagined he had seen the figure of the mother he was mourning.
11
All of a sudden, silence fell, and a wave of impatience swept through the gathering.
The three hundred participants turned their heads: through the main entrance, which was flooded with light, Séverine’s coffin entered the church, borne by four men in dark suits. The oak casket did not seem to weigh on their shoulders. Accompanying their advance, the organ played a Bach chorale, grave and measured and profound, full of the attentive respect that is owed to life as to death, music that distilled both sadness and its resolution: hope. Gentle yet voluminous, the flutelike sounds wove a meditative emotion in the air.
Hippolyte bowed his head, unable to bear the thought that a woman lay within those planks of wood. To his right, his daughter Isis, her light blue eyes wide open, followed the ceremony with fascination, watching the slow march of the pallbearers as it merged with the music. In the same row, Germain, who really wished he wasn’t there, had withdrawn into himself; if circumstances hadn’t conspired against him, he would have been somewhere else, in one of the city parks, his arms bare, his head in the sun, looking after the hedges; now he had to suffer the colder shade of this place, to see hundreds of flowers murdered, thrown in sprays on the altar.
At first, Hippolyte had wanted to go to the ceremony alone. Learning that a woman, a mother, whom he had seen for years, frail, melancholy, but very polite—she had always waved at him in greeting—had killed herself had come as a shock. How could you take your own life when you had four children? Because of Isis, he would never kill himself. Out of love and a sense of responsibility. In formulating the impossibility of this, he had realized just how desperate Séverine must have been. She must have entered a zone of pain where even her affection for her own family ceased to matter. Imagining that despair had unsettled him. In attending the funeral, he was not only bearing witness to his sympathy for her, but also trying to prove to her that she had been wrong: human beings loved each other, helped each other, he trusted in their solidarity. It didn’t matter to him if he didn’t understand, what he wanted was to reassure himself. It was essential to him to prove that Séverine had been wrong to think she was alone in the world. After all, the church was full.
In order to be here, he had taken half a day off. As if by chance, that morning Isis had told him that, as the teachers in her school were on strike, she wouldn’t be going to classes. Immediately, he had called Germain, who was taking a professional development course on the other side of town and therefore couldn’t take care of Isis. He had had to resign himself to the fact that he would be taking his daughter to the funeral.
During the ride on the streetcar, he had feared tackling the subject. Did Isis know what death was? So far, she hadn’t lost anyone near and dear to her. But from the height of her ten years, she dominated the situation.
“What did that lady on Place d’Arezzo die of? Was she old?”
“No.”
“Had she been sick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she die in her armchair or in her bed?”
“I don’t know. What matters is that we pay her a last tribute.”
“Will she realize?”
“I don’t know.”
Hippolyte cursed himself: all he could think of to say to his daughter was “I don’t know,” either because he didn’t know the answer, or because he was hiding the truth. She’d be right to take me for an idiot.
After due thought, Isis concluded, “When it comes down to it, it doesn’t really matter if she realizes or not. The most important thing is that we do it.”
On the square outside the church, Germain had joined them at the last moment and suggested to Hippolyte that he take Isis somewhere else. Too late: the girl was intrigued by now and had insisted on attending the ceremony. So, in the end, Germain had shuffled in after them.
The four pallbearers put the casket down by the altar, then placed a photograph of Séverine on the lid.
“Oh, it’s her!” Isis exclaimed in astonishment.
Hippolyte realized that his daughter had started shaking. “Are you going to be all right, sweetheart?”
Her cheeks pale, she whispered, “I knew her. I . . . ” She turned to her father, her nostrils pinched with sorrow. “Why?”
“Everyone dies eventually, sweetheart.”
“Why?”
Her voice was so imploring that Hippolyte felt he could no longer reply just “I don’t know.” In a panic, he looked to Germain for support, but the dwarf was engrossed in contemplating his shoes.
The priest now spoke up, monopolizing everyone’s attention.
The service began. Now Hippolyte no longer feared that Isis should hear some unpleasant details: the representative of a Church that condemned suicide would almost certainly pretend to be unaware of the exact circumstances of the death.
Hippolyte relaxed and looked around him: hundreds of strangers, of course, but also the inhabitants of Place d’Arezzo had gathered.
There was the impeccable Mademoiselle Beauvert, stiff-necked and red-eyed; the pinup from the realtor’s, her face camouflaged by round dark glasses; Ludovic and his mother, thrilling at every dramatic word uttered by the priest; Rose Bidermann, calm and attentive, giving luster to the ceremony, responding to the greetings that everyone addressed to her. Farther away, in a corner, he recognized Baptiste Monier, without his wife, in the company of a blonde woman. Closer to the front, the concierge Marcelle was pulling paper handkerchiefs from her bag, taking a kind of fierce pleasure in weeping. The engineer Jean-Noël Fanon had come with his rarely-seen wife Diane, who was wearing a tight-fitting black tailored suit and openly yawning. The gallery owner Wim remained for a few minutes, looked at his watch, slipped a note to his assistant, a pleasant Flemish woman, then slipped out, looking like a man who cannot possibly miss an important meeting. The ones who surprised him were the florists, Orion and Xavière: she, usually so unemotional, seemed to be in the grip of a profound grief; her features drawn, her eyes glassy, her skin grayer than cardboard, she was biting her lip like a woman trying to stop herself screaming; Orion, usually so carefree, was fully aware of her state and was supporting her by the arm.
Hippolyte looked everywhere for Patricia, but couldn’t see her. Turning to the other side, to the right of Isis and Germain, he saw her in his row. She was watching him. Without thinking, they smiled at each other. For a split second, they forgot where they were and why.
A young girl stood up and walked to the microphone, facing the crowd: it was Gwendoline, the oldest of the four motherless children. There was a hint
of appehension in the silence.
She stood at the microphone, a handwritten sheet of paper in her hand. The audience held its breath.
Isis seized her father’s wrist anxiously and murmured, “If you died, Daddy, I think I would die too.”
Overcome with emotion, Hippolyte leaned down and clasped her to him.
Gwendoline began her speech in a clear, determined, courageous voice. On behalf of her brother and sisters, she talked about the mother who had just left them, a wonderful, gentle mother, always there, always willing to help; she talked about her love, which was serene and never burdensome. As she said farewell to her beloved mother, her voice grew firmer and the audience wept. The bravery of this teenager touched everyone, making Séverine’s death even more cruel and incomprehensible, her sudden departure inexplicable. Then Gwendoline dared to venture on more sensitive terrain. Turning to face the casket, she took her mother to task:
“Why did you so rarely talk to us about yourself? Why didn’t you tell us your sorrows, the secrets that made you suffer? Why did you try to spare us to the point of neglecting yourself? Why did you suppose that we wouldn’t understand? Why did you think that we would have loved you less if we’d known how fragile you were? Why, Mommy, why?”
Her voice broke. In response to these questions, the silence grew deeper, disturbed only by a little sniffing. Gwendoline stared at the casket, the mute photograph, and waited for an answer that would never come.
Hippolyte felt a strong pressure against his leg: Isis had seized it in her arms and, her head buried in the folds of his pants, was weeping bitterly.
He couldn’t help turning his head toward Patricia, who was watching the child, visibly moved. Their tear-blurred eyes met: at that moment, he knew that Patricia was ready to love Isis.
On his left, a nudge of the elbow threw him. Tom and Nathan, who were late, were trying to take their place in the row, apologizing as they did so.
Hippolyte gave them a kindly smile and invited his neighbours to shift up. Raising her head, Isis was pleased to see these familiar, friendly faces.
The ceremony continued.
Isis, demanding that her father lean down, whispered in his ear, “She killed herself, didn’t she?”
Reassured that he no longer had to lie, Hippolyte murmured “Yes, she did.”
“How?”
Now that he had started, Hippolyte saw no more reason to hesitate. “She threw herself off a tall building.”
Isis looked at him openmouthed.
The priest announced that they would now hold communion. Nathan abandoned Tom to go to the altar. Hippolyte hesitated. Although a believer, he was not a regular churchgoer, and he wondered if he should go up. When he saw Patricia step out into the aisle, he entrusted Isis to Germain and made up his mind to join the line of communicants.
Patricia followed him, almost pressed up against him. They said nothing, didn’t try to look at each other, content just to be close. Because they were thinking about their relationship, they were unaware of the buzz around them: the people present were determining who was Catholic and who wasn’t. In a country like Belgium, split down the middle, not by French speakers and Flemish speakers but by the line separating Christians from atheists, who took or didn’t take communion would be a subject of conversation for months to come. The priest being assisted by a deacon, the line divided into two on the last steps. In a daze, Hippolyte and Patricia suddenly found themselves side by side in front of the choir, each facing a clergyman holding out the host. Together they bowed. Together they accepted the offering. Together they received the blessing. These seconds gave them an intense and, for both of them, premonitory sensation; forgetting the context, they saw nothing but the glittering stained-glass windows, the virginal lilies, the huge gilded crucifix, and, borne on the powerful chords of the organ, they had the impression that they were rehearsing their own wedding.
They went back to their seats, eyes lowered, hearts pounding, holding the round host on their tongues, full of that glimpsed promise.
A soprano approached the organist and a sublime song rose up into the vault: Laudate. Mozart’s aria gave thanks; it blessed the Lord for giving us this life, so fragile and so precious, expressed the ecstasy of having this chance, mingled with the tender light that bathed the building.
Hippolyte no longer felt sad, but genuinely joyful, joyful at being here, joyful at having his daughter, his friend, and his future wife beside him. Did he need to come to a funeral to realize it? He remembered a strange sentence he had heard during his childhood: One must die so that the other may live. Looking again at the photograph on the casket, he seemed to notice a new expression on the face captured on the glossy paper; it now had a goodness, a kind of all-pervasive tenderness; Séverine had become his good angel, the guardian of his love.
On the left, a noise startled everyone. Xavière had felt faint, her husband hadn’t been in time to stop her, and she had fallen between the pews.
Nathan muttered between his teeth, in such a way as to be audible to his neighbors, “What’s she trying to make us swallow? That she has a heart? What nerve! Ladies and gentlemen, the wickedest woman in Brussels has pretended to faint.”
Tom stopped him with a slap. Too late. Some, including Hippolyte, had heard and expressed their own surprise: Xavière was indeed the last person anybody would have thought likely to swoon.
Orion was fluttering over her, in a panic, powerless to do anything. Nobody went to his aid. All at once, Dr. Plassard elbowed his way through.
“We have to take her out and let her breathe.”
He took hold of Xavière by the armpits and undertook to drag her outside. In trying to help him, Orion kept bumping into things, overturning chairs and prayer books.
“What’s the matter with her, doctor?” he asked. “Why did she faint?”
“She’s pregnant, you fool!”
Orion froze openmouthed in the middle of the aisle. Tom, Nathan, Hippolyte, and Germain looked at each other in astonishment. Nobody dared to believe what they had just heard. Orion broke into a run to catch up with the doctor and Xavière, who had already gone out through the main door.
“What a couple!” Nathan murmured. “The kindest man in the world lives with the wickedest woman.”
“Orion might have been the Cupid.”
“You’re right, he might have been.”
At that moment, they turned toward Germain, who bowed his head.
The priest resumed the service and launched into a speech that did indeed imply that the dead woman had killed herself.
Isis stroked her father’s hand. “Will you introduce Patricia to me?”
“What? Today?”
“Daddy, stop hiding.” And to underline her comment, she pointed to the casket. “Life is short.”
Once again, Hippolyte wondered how a child of ten could come out with such a statement and nodded. “Later.”
Another piece of music started. The four men in black reappeared, lifted the casket, and headed calmly and solemnly for the exit, followed by the family.
Walking in front, holding his son Guillaume by the hand, François-Maxime looked the very picture of grief. Eyes fixed, staring into the distance, he advanced like an automaton, summoning up all his energy to make the gestures the ceremony demanded. For the first time, Hippolyte felt a surge of sympathy for the aristocrat whose arrogant perfection usually made his blood run cold.
As for the three girls, they followed, hypnotized, the box containing their mother, refusing to admit that she was about to leave them once again.
Isis tugged at her father’s hand. “Daddy, what can we do for them?”
Hippolyte almost replied, “I don’t know,” then heard himself say, “We can pray, sweetheart. Sometimes we just have to accept the fact that we suffer and other people suffer too.”
While he himself
was trying to fully grasp what he had just said, Isis looked at him and nodded, reassured.
“Are you planning to go to the cemetery?” Tom whispered to Hippolyte and Germain.
“No.”
“Neither are we,” Nathan said. “We are just going to leave a note on the register of condolences.”
He pointed to a large open book on a lectern standing at the far end of the church.
The group got to the book before the rest of the crowd.
“Go ahead,” Tom said to Germain.
The dwarf seized the pen in his right hand and wrote a few words.
Tom stepped back and whispered in Nathan’s ear, “Forget about him. He’s right-handed.”
“You’re joking!”
“Take a look.”
Nathan confirmed that Tom was telling the truth, but couldn’t resign himself. “He’s trying to throw us off the scent.” He went up to Hippolyte and asked in a low voice, “Is your friend usually right-handed?”
“There’s nobody more right-handed than he is. His left hand is like a hook.”
Tom and Nathan looked at each other, infuriated: their theory that Germain had written the anonymous letters had come crashing down!
Patricia appeared at that moment and knelt down in front of Isis. The child looked intensely at the adult. Patricia felt intimidated, and started shaking, but Isis took her hand.
“Hello, I’m Isis.”
“I’m Patricia.”
“We’re the two women in Daddy’s life, aren’t we?”
12
Hello, Albane.”
“Well, well, Quentin, you’re still alive. I thought you were dead.”
This morning, the parrots were agitated and noisy, screeching like saws attacking hard wood. The low sky, in which a storm was brewing, brought an occasional flight of swallows, eager to land on the square but bouncing back in swarms before they could touch the ground, fearful of the reaction of the cockatoos, although they didn’t resign themselves to leave immediately.
The Carousel of Desire Page 36