“To you he’s a stranger, not to her.”
He gets up. “Can I see this man’s grave?”
“Yes. Could you come back in about half an hour ? I never go into my cemetery in a dressing gown.”
He smiles for the second time, and leaves the kitchen-cum-living room. Instinctively, I switch on the ceiling light. I never switch it on when someone enters my place, but when they leave. To replace their presence with light. An old habit of a child given up at birth.
Half an hour later, he was waiting for me in his car, parked outside the gates. I saw the registration on the number plate: 13, for Bouches-du-Rhône. He must have dozed off against his scarf; his cheek was marked, as though creased.
I had put on a navy-blue coat over a crimson dress. I’d buttoned my coat up to my neck. I looked like the night, and yet, underneath, I was wearing the day. I would have only had to open my coat for him to start blinking again.
We walked along the avenues. I told him that my cemetery had four sections—Bays, Spindles, Cedars, and Yews—two columbaria, and two gardens of remembrance. He asked me if I’d been doing “this” for a long time; I replied: “Twenty years.” That before, I’d been a level-crossing keeper. He asked how it felt to go from trains to hearses. I didn’t know how to reply. Too much had happened between those two lives. I just thought what strange questions he asked, for a rational detective.
When we reached Gabriel Prudent’s tomb, he went pale. As if he were coming to pay his respects at the grave of a man he’d never heard of, but who could very well be a father, an uncle, a brother. We remained still for a long while. I ended up blowing into my hands, it was that cold.
Normally, I never remain with visitors. I accompany them and then withdraw. But then, I don’t know why, I just couldn’t have left him on his own. After a while, which seemed like an eternity to me, he said he was going to get back on the road. Return to Marseilles. I asked him when he thought he’d be back to place his mother’s ashes on Mr. Prudent’s headstone. He didn’t reply.
7.
There’ll always be someone missing
to make my life smile: you.
I’m repotting some plants on the tomb of Jacqueline Victor, married name Dancoisne (1928–2008), and Maurice René Dancoisne (1911–1997). Two beautiful white heathers, like two pieces of coastal cliff in pots. One of the rare plants that can withstand winter, along with chrysanthemums and succulents. Madame Dancoisne loved white flowers. She came every week to visit her husband’s tomb. We’d have a chat. Well, in the end, once she’d got a little more used to the loss of her Maurice. For the first few years, she was devastated. Being unhappy, it leaves you speechless. Or it makes you talk nonsense. Then, little by little, she found her way back to forming simple sentences, to asking for news of others, news of the living.
I don’t know why one says “on the tomb.” One should really say “beside the tomb,” or “against the tomb.” Apart from ivy, lizards, cats, or dogs, nothing goes on top of a tomb. Madame Dancoisne rejoined her husband without warning. On the Monday she was cleaning her beloved’s headstone; the following Thursday, I was arranging flowers around hers. Since her burial, her children visit once a year, and ask me to look after things the rest of the time.
I like putting my hands into the heathers’ soil, even if it is midday and this pale October sun is struggling to warm things up. And although my fingers are frozen, they love it. Just like when I plunge them into the soil of my garden.
A few meters away from me, Gaston and Nono are digging a grave with shovels while telling each other how their evening went. From where I am, I hear snatches of their conversation, depending on the direction of the wind. “My wife says to me . . . on the TV . . . itching . . . mustn’t . . . the boss is coming . . . an omelette at Violette’s . . . I knew him . . . he was a good guy . . . curly hair, right? . . . Yeah, must’ve been about our age . . . that was nice, that was . . . his wife . . . stuck-up . . . Brel song . . . ‘mustn’t play it rich if one hasn’t a bean’ . . . just dying to piss . . . scared stiff . . . prostate . . . get the shopping before it closes . . . eggs for Violette . . . it just ain’t right . . . ”
Tomorrow, there’s a burial at 4 P.M. A new resident for my cemetery. A man of fifty-five, died from smoking too much. Well, that’s what the doctors said. They never say that a man of fifty-five can die from not having been loved, not having been heard, getting too many bills, buying too much on credit, seeing his children grow up and leave home without really saying goodbye. A life of reproach, a life of grimacing. So, his little cigarette and his little drink to drown that knot in his stomach, he was fond of them.
No one ever says that you can die from having been too fed up, too often.
A bit further along, two little ladies, Madame Pinto and Madame Degrange, are cleaning the graves of their men. And since they come every day, they invent what needs cleaning. Around their tombs, it’s as clean as a flooring display in a DIY store.
These folks who visit graves daily, they’re the ones who look like ghosts. Who are between life and death.
Madame Pinto and Madame Degrange are as slight as sparrows at winter’s end. As if it were their husbands who fed them when they were still alive. I’ve known them since I’ve worked here. More than twenty years now that, on their way to the shops, every morning, they’ve made a detour, like some inescapable ritual. I don’t know whether it’s love or submissiveness. Or both. Whether it’s for appearances, or out of affection.
Madame Pinto is Portuguese. And like most of the Portuguese living in Brancion, in summer she’s back off to Portugal. It means a lot of work for her, come autumn. At the beginning of September, she returns, still as thin, but with tanned skin, and knees grazed from having cleaned the graves of those who had died back home. In her absence, I’ve watered the French flowers. So, to thank me, she gives me a folk-costume doll in a plastic box. Every year, I’m entitled to my doll. And every year I say: “Thank you, Madame Pinto, thank you, you SHOULDN’T have. For me, flowers are a pleasure, not work.”
There are hundreds of folk costumes in Portugal. So, if Madame Pinto lives another thirty years, and I do, too, I’ll be entitled to thirty new creepy dolls who close their eyes when you lay down the boxes that serve as their sarcophagi, to do the dusting.
Since Madame Pinto comes to my home from time to time, I can’t hide the dolls she gives me. But I don’t want them in my bedroom, and I can’t put them where people come seeking comfort, either. They’re too ugly. So, I “display” them on the steps leading up to my bedroom. The staircase is behind a glass door. You can see it from the kitchen. When she comes to mine for a coffee, Madame Pinto looks over at them, to check that they are in their proper place. In winter, when it’s dark at 5 P.M. and I see them with their black eyes glinting and their frilly costumes, I imagine they’re going to open their boxes and trip me up so I fall down the stairs.
I’ve noticed that, unlike many others, Madame Pinto and Madame Degrange never talk to their husbands. They clean in silence. As if they’d ceased talking to them well before they were dead. That this silence, it’s a kind of continuity. They never cry, either. Their eyes have long been dry. Sometimes, they converge to chat about the fine weather, the children, the grandchildren, and even, soon, can you believe it, their great-grandchildren.
I saw them laugh once. One single time. When Madame Pinto told the other one that her granddaughter had asked her this question: “Granny, what’s All Saints? Is it like holidays?”
8.
May your rest be as sweet as your heart was kind.
November 22nd, 2016, blue sky, 10C, 4 P.M. Burial of Thierry Teissier (1960–2016). Mahogany coffin. No marble. Grave dug straight into soil. Alone.
Around thirty people present. Including Nono, Elvis, Pierre Lucchini, and me.
Around fifteen of Thierry Teissier’s colleagues from the DIM factories laid a spray of lilies:
“To our dear colleague.”
An employee named Claire, from Mâcon’s oncology unit, holds a bouquet of white roses.
The wife of the deceased is present, as are their two children, a boy and a girl aged, respectively, thirty and twenty-six. On a funerary plaque they have had engraved: “To our father.”
No photograph of Thierry Teissier.
On another funerary plaque: “To my husband.” With a little warbler etched above the word “husband.”
A large cross made of olive wood has been embedded in the soil.
Three school friends take turns reading a poem for him, by Jacques Prévert.
A distraught village listens
To the song of a wounded bird
It’s the only bird in the village
And it’s the only cat in the village
Who has half-devoured it
And the bird stops singing
The cat stops purring
And licking its muzzle
And the village gives the bird
A marvelous funeral
And the cat who is invited
Walks behind the little straw coffin
In which the dead bird lies
Carried by a little girl
Who doesn’t stop crying
If I’d known it would upset you so
The cat said to her
I’d have eaten all of it
And then I’d have told you
That I’d seen it fly off
Fly off to the ends of the earth
To a place so far away
That one never returns
You’d have had less grief
Just sadness and regrets
One must never do things by halves.
Before the coffin is lowered into the ground, Father Cédric speaks:
“Let us recall the words of Jesus to the sister of Lazarus, just after her brother’s death: ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’”
Claire places the bouquet of white roses beside the cross. Everyone leaves at the same time.
I didn’t know this man. But the way some people looked at his grave makes me think he was kind.
9.
His beauty, his youth smiled upon the world
in which he would have lived. Then from his hands
fell the book of which he has read not a word.
There are more than a thousand photographs scattered across my cemetery. Photos in black-and-white, sepia, color that’s vivid or faded.
On the day all these photos were taken, none of the men, children, women who posed innocently in front of the camera could have thought that that moment would represent them for all eternity. It was the day of a birthday or a family meal. A walk in the park one Sunday, a photo at a wedding, at a promotion party, one New Year. A day when they were at their best, a day when they were all gathered together, a particular day when they were wearing their finest. Or then in their military, baptism, or First Communion attire. Such innocence in the eyes of all these people who smile from their tombs.
Often, the day before a funeral, there’s an article in the newspaper. An article that sums up the life of the deceased in a few sentences. Briefly. A life doesn’t take up much space in the local paper. A little more if it was a storekeeper, a doctor, or a football coach.
It’s important to put photos on tombs. Otherwise, you just become a name. Death takes away faces, too.
The loveliest couple in my cemetery is Anna Lave, married name Dahan (1914–1987), and Benjamin Dahan (1912–1992). We see them in a tinted photograph taken on their wedding day in the thirties. Two wonderful faces smiling at the photographer. She, blonde like a sun, translucent skin; he, a fine face, almost carved; and their eyes sparkling like starry sapphires. Two smiles they offer up to eternity.
In January, I give the photos in my cemetery a wipe with a cloth. I only do so on tombs that are abandoned or very rarely visited. A cloth soaked in water containing a drop of methylated spirits. I do the same thing to the plaques, but with a cloth dipped in white vinegar.
I have around five to six weeks of cleaning ahead of me. When Nono, Gaston, and Elvis want to help me, I tell them no. That they’ve already got enough to do with the general maintenance.
I didn’t hear him arrive. That’s rare. I notice people’s steps on the gravel of the avenues immediately. I even know whether it’s a man, a woman, or a child. A walker or a regular. But him, he moves without making a sound.
I’m in the middle of cleaning the nine faces of the Hesme family—Etienne (1876–1915), Lorraine (1887–1928), Françoise (1949–2000), Gilles (1947–2002), Nathalie (1959–1970), Théo (1961–1993), Isabelle (1969–2001), Fabrice (1972–2003), Sébastien (1974–2011)—when I feel his eyes on my back. I turn around. He’s standing against the light, I don’t recognize him immediately.
It’s from his “Good morning,” from his voice, that I grasp that it’s actually him. And just after his voice, with two or three seconds’ delay, from his cinnamon and vanilla smell. I didn’t think he’d come back. It’s been more than two months since he came knocking on my road-side door. My heart quickens a little. I sense it whispering to me: Beware.
Since Philippe Toussaint’s disappearance, no man has made my heart beat a little faster. Since Philippe Toussaint, its rhythm never changes, like an old clock nonchalantly humming away.
Except for on All Saints’ Day, when its rate speeds up: I can sell up to a hundred pots of chrysanthemums, and I have to guide the many occasional visitors who get lost in the avenues. But this morning, although it isn’t the day of the dead, my heart quickens. And it’s due to him. I think I detect fear; my own.
I still have my cloth in my hand. The detective looks at the faces I’m in the middle of polishing. He smiles shyly at me.
“Are they members of your family?”
“No. I’m maintaining the tombs, that’s all.”
Not knowing what to do with the words buzzing in my head, I say to him:
“In the Hesme family, people die young. As if they were allergic to life, or it didn’t want them.”
He nods his head, draws in the collar of his coat, and says to me, with a smile:
“It’s bitter in your parts.”
“It’s certainly colder here than in Marseilles.”
“Are you going there this summer?”
“Yes, like every summer. I see my daughter over there.”
“She lives in Marseilles?”
“No, she travels around a bit.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s a magician. Professional.”
As though to interrupt us, a young blackbird lands on the Hesme family tomb and starts singing its head off. I don’t feel like polishing faces anymore. I tip my bucket of water onto the gravel and tidy away my cloths and cleaner. As I bend down, my long gray coat opens a little, allowing my pretty crimson floral dress to be seen. I see that it doesn’t go unnoticed by the detective. He doesn’t look at me like the others. There’s something different about him.
To divert his attention, I remind him that, to place his mother’s ashes at Gabriel Prudent’s tomb, the authorization of the family will have to be requested.
“No need. Before dying, Gabriel Prudent informed the town hall that my mother would be laid to rest with him . . . They’d thought of everything.”
He seems embarrassed. He rubs his unshaven jaw. I can’t see his hands, he’s wearing gloves. He stares at me for a little too long.
“I would like you to organize something for the day I’ll be laying her ashes to rest. Something that’s like a celebration, but without celebration.”
The blackbird flies away. It was scared off by Eliane, who’s come to rub against me in the hope of a pet.
“Ah, but I don’t do that. You’
ll need to speak to Pierre Lucchini at the undertaker’s, Le Tourneurs du Val, on rue de la République.”
“Undertakers are for funerals. All I would like is for you to help me write a little speech for the day I place her ashes on that guy’s tomb. There’ll be no one there. Just her and me . . . I’d like to say a few words to her that remain between us.”
He crouches down to pet Eliane himself. He looks at her while speaking to me.
“I saw that in your . . . registers, well, your burial notebooks, I don’t know what you call them, you had copied out speeches. I could perhaps lift bits here and there . . . from others’ speeches, to write the one for my mother.”
He runs a hand through his hair. He’s got more gray hair than last time. Maybe it’s because the light’s different. Today, the sky is blue, the light white. The first time I saw this man, the sky was overcast.
Madame Pinto goes past us. She says: “Morning, Violette,” and looks at the detective suspiciously. Around here, as soon as a stranger goes past a door, a gate, a porch, they’re looked at suspiciously.
“I have a burial at 4 P.M., come and see me after 7 P.M., at the keeper’s house. We’ll write a few lines together.”
He seems relieved. Like a weight’s been lifted. He takes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and puts one in his mouth without lighting it, while asking me where the nearest hotel is.
“Twenty-five kilometers away. Otherwise, just behind the church you’ll see a little house with red shutters. That’s Madame Bréant’s place, and she does bed and breakfast. Just one bedroom, but it’s never taken.”
He’s not listening to me anymore. He’s looking elsewhere. He’s gone, lost in thought. He comes back to me.
“Brancion-en-Chalon . . . Wasn’t there some tragedy here?”
“There are tragedies all around you. Every death is someone’s tragedy.”
He seems to search his memory, without finding what he’s after. He blows into his hands and murmurs: “See you later” and “Thank you very much.” He goes back along the main avenue to the gates. His steps are still silent.
Fresh Water for Flowers Page 3