Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin

  The day she died, I couldn’t sleep all night because of “that.” Because of the awkwardness there had been between us at that moment. When I pushed open a door, laughing, and came face to face with my grandmother doing the housework. Doubled over a vacuum cleaner to supplement her income. I tried to remember what we’d said to each other that day. It stopped me from sleeping. I kept revisiting the scene, a scene I had completely forgotten until the day she died. All night long, I pushed open that door and saw her behind it, doing the housework in other people’s homes. All night long, I carried on laughing with my cousins, and she carried on vacuum cleaning.

  Next time I see her, I’ll ask her this question, “Old dear, do you remember the day when I saw you doing the housework at my aunt’s?” She’ll probably shrug her shoulders and reply, “And the poppets, are the poppets well?”

  13.

  There’s something stronger than death, and that’s the presence of those absent in the memory of the living.

  I’ve just found the 2015 register slipped behind my blue window box. The detective has scribbled, “Thanks a lot. I’ll phone you,” on the back of a leaflet for a gym in Marseilles’s 8th arrondissement. There’s a photo of a smiling girl on it. Her dream body is torn at knee level.

  He wrote nothing else, no comment on the speech for Marie Géant, not a word about his mother. I wonder whether he’s far from Marseilles. Whether he’s already arrived. When did he set off? Does he live close to the sea? Does he gaze at it, or no longer pay any attention to it? Like those who’ve lived together so long that it’s separated them.

  Nono and Elvis arrive just as I’m opening the gates. They call out, “Hi, Violette!” and park the municipal truck on the main avenue to go into the hut and put on their work clothes. I can hear their laughter from the side avenues I’m surveying to check that all’s well. That everyone’s in their place.

  The cats come and rub themselves against my legs. At the moment, there are eleven of them living in the cemetery. Five of those belonged to the deceased, at least I think they did. They appeared on the day of the burial of Charlotte Boivin (1954–2010), Olivier Feige (1965–2012), Virginie Teyssandier (1928–2004), Bertrand Witman (1947–2003), and Florence Leroux (1931–2009). Charlotte is white, Olivier black, Virginie an alley cat, Bertrand grey, and Florence (a tomcat) mottled white, black, and brown. The other six turned up over time. They come and go. Because people know that the cats at the cemetery are fed and sterilized, cats are abandoned, even thrown over the walls.

  It’s Elvis who names them as he finds them. There’s Spanish Eyes, Kentucky Rain, Moody Blue, Love Me, Tutti Frutti, and My Way. My Way was left on my doormat in a shoebox for a size 43.

  When Nono sees a new little one turn up at the cemetery, he tells it like it is, “I warn you, the boss’s specialty is getting balls chopped off.” But that doesn’t stop the cats from staying close to me.

  Nono put a cat-flap on the door of my house for whoever wants to come in. But most of them slip inside the mortuary chapels. They have their habits and their preferences. Apart from My Way and Florence, who are always curled up in a ball somewhere in my bedroom, the others follow me as far as the landing, but don’t come in. As though Philippe Toussaint were still there, inside. Do they see his ghost? They say that cats converse with souls. Philippe Toussaint didn’t like animals. As for me, I’ve loved them since a tender age, although my childhood was only ever tough.

  Generally, visitors like stumbling across the cemetery cats. Many tell themselves that their lost loved one is using these feline creatures to give them a sign. On the tomb of Micheline Clément (1957–2013) it says: “If Heaven there is, Heaven it will only be if I’m welcomed in by my dogs and cats.”

  I return to the house, followed by Moody Blue and Virginie. When I push open the door, Nono is just talking to Father Cédric about Gaston. He’s speaking of his notorious clumsiness, of the permanent earthquake Gaston seems to be living through. Of the day when, during an exhumation, Gaston turned his wheelbarrow full of bones around, right in the middle of the cemetery, and a skull rolled under a bench without him noticing. And how Nono had called him back to tell him that he’d forgotten a “billiard ball” under the bench.

  Unlike the priests who came before him, Cédric drops by at the house every morning. As he listens to Nono’s stories, Father Cédric keeps saying: “My God, there’s no way, my God, no way.” But every morning, he returns and questions Nono, who feeds him with stories. Between each sentence, he bursts out laughing, and we join him. Starting with me.

  I love to laugh about death, to make fun of it. It’s my way of putting it down. That way, it pushes its weight around less. By making light of it, I let life have the upper hand, have the power.

  Nono uses the familiar “tu” with Father Cédric, but calls him “Father.”

  “Once, we took out a body that was almost in one piece. After more than seventy years, Father, in one piece! . . . Problem was, the opening for putting stiffs into the ossuary, it’s really small. Elvis ran off to find me, Elvis with his constantly dripping nose, who says to me, ‘Nono, come quick, come quick!’ And I says, ‘But what is it?’ And Elvis screams, ‘It’s Gaston who’s got a feller stuck in the thingamajig!’ And I says, ‘But what thingamajig?’ I arrives at the ossuary at a run, and I sees Gaston shoving the body to get it into the ossuary! I says to them, ‘God’s sake, guys, we’re not with the Germans in the war here . . . ’ The best one, yes, the very best, I’m always telling it to the mayor, and the mayor, hell, does it crack him up . . . the town hall gave us a cylinder of gas on a little four-wheeled trolley with a blowtorch on the end for burning away weeds. So, of course, that Elvis, he puts the blowtorch on and Gaston turns on the gas . . . just to clarify, Father, you have to turn the gas on very gently, except that Gaston, he turns it on hard when Elvis comes with his lighter, and it goes BOOM right across the cemetery! You’d have thought there was a war going on in there . . . And, wait for it! They even managed to . . . ”

  Nono starts splitting his sides. He gets back to his story, nose in a handkerchief:

  “There’s a woman who’s cleaning her tomb, she’s put her handbag on top of it, and they bloody set fire to the lady’s bag . . . I swear on the head of my grandson, Father, it’s true! Let me die on the spot if I tell a lie. Elvis started jumping with both feet on the lady’s handbag to put out the flames, with both feet on the bag!”

  Propped against a window, with My Way on his knees, Elvis starts gently singing, “I feel my temperature rising, higher, higher, it’s burning through to my soul . . . ”

  “Elvis, tell Father how the lady’s glasses were in the bag, and how you smashed the lenses! You should’ve seen the job he did, Father! And Elvis who was saying, ‘That Gaston bloody set fire to the bag . . . ’ And the little old lady who was screaming, ‘He’s smashed my glasses! He’s smashed my glasses!’”

  Father Cédric, in fits of laughter, is weeping into his cup. “My God, there’s no way, my God, there’s no way!”

  Nono spots his boss through my windows. He’s up like a shot. Elvis follows suit.

  “Talk of the devil, and you always sees his tail. And that one definitely uses his tail. Sorry, Father! May God forgive me, and if he doesn’t, no matter. Well, cheerio, folks!”

  Nono and Elvis leave my place and head for their boss. As the manager of technical services for the town, it’s Jean-Louis Darmonville who supervises the gravediggers. Apparently, he has as many mistresses in my cemetery as down Brancion high street. And yet he’s not much to look at. From time to time, he makes an appearance, and paces up and down my avenues. Does he remember all the women he barely held close? The ones who gave him a blow job? Does he look at their portraits? Does he remember their names? Their faces? Their voices? Their laughter? Their smell? What remains of his non-love affairs? I’ve never seen him paying his respects. Just strolling around, nose in the air. Does he
come to reassure himself that none of them will ever talk about him?

  As for me, I don’t have a boss. Only the mayor. The same one for twenty years. And I only see the mayor for the funerals of his people. Storekeepers, the military, municipal employees, people of influence, the “bigwigs,” as we call them here. Once, he buried a childhood friend, and his face was so contorted by grief that I didn’t recognize him.

  Father Cédric also gets up to leave.

  “Good day, Violette. Thank you for the coffee and the good cheer. It’s such a tonic.”

  “Good day, Father.”

  He places his hand on the handle of my door and reconsiders.

  “Violette, do you ever doubt, sometimes?”

  I weigh my words before replying to him. I always weigh my words. You never know. Particularly when I’m addressing a servant of God.

  “In recent years, less so. But that’s because I feel at home here.”

  He pauses awhile before continuing:

  “I fear not being equal to the task. I hear confessions, I marry, I christen, I preach, I teach catechism. It’s a weighty responsibility. I often feel as if I’m betraying those who place their trust in me. Starting with God.”

  At that, I quit weighing anything, and reply to him:

  “Don’t you think God is the first to betray men?”

  Father Cédric seems shocked by my remark.

  “God is only love.”

  “If God is only love, he inevitably betrays: betrayal is part of love.”

  “Violette, do you really believe what you’re saying?”

  “I always believe what I say, Father. God is in man’s image. That means he lies, he gives, he loves, he takes back, he betrays, just like each and every one of us.”

  “God is a universal love. Across his entire creation, God evolves thanks to you, thanks to us, thanks to all the hierarchies of light, he feels and lives all that is lived and he wants to create ever more perfection, ever more beauty . . . It’s myself that I doubt, never him.”

  “Why do you doubt?”

  Not a sound comes from his mouth. He looks at me, distraught.

  “You can speak, Father. There are two confessionals in Brancion, the one in your church, and this room. I’m told many things here.”

  He smiles, sadly.

  “I feel more and more the desire to be a father . . . It wakes me in the night . . . At first, I took this desire for fatherhood as pride, vanity. But . . . ”

  He approaches the table, mindlessly opens and closes the sugar bowl. My Way comes to rub up against his legs. He bends to pet him.

  “Have you thought about adoption?”

  “I have absolutely no right to do so, Violette. All laws prohibit me from doing so. Terrestrial ones as much as divine ones.”

  He turns around and automatically looks toward the window. A shadow passes.

  “Forgive me, Father, but have you ever fallen in love?”

  “I love only God.”

  14.

  The day someone loves you, the weather’s marvelous.

  During the first months of our life together in Charleville-Mézières, I wrote, in red felt-tip, on each day: MADLY IN LOVE. And that was right up to December 31st, 1985. My shadow was still wrapped in Philippe Toussaint’s. Apart from when I was working. He inhaled me. Drank me. Enveloped me. He was wildly sensual. He made me melt in his mouth like a caramel, like icing sugar. I was on a perpetual high. When I think of that period of my life, I’m at a fun fair.

  He always knew where to place his hands, his mouth, his kisses. He never got lost. He had a roadmap of my body, routes that he knew by heart and I didn’t even know existed.

  When we’d finished making love, our legs and our lips trembled in unison. We inhabited each other’s burning desire. Philippe Toussaint always said, “Violette, bloody hell, bloody fucking hell, Violette, I’ve never known anything like it! You’re a sorceress, I’m sure you’re a sorceress!”

  I think he was already cheating on me that first year. I think he always cheated on me. Lied. That he drove off to others as soon as my back was turned.

  Philippe Toussaint was like one of those swans that are so handsome on water and yet hobble on land. He turned our bed into a paradise, was considerate and sensual when making love, but as soon as he got up, was vertical, left our horizontal love behind, he lost a good deal of color. He had nothing to say, and was interested only in his motorbike and video games.

  He didn’t want me to be a bartender at the Tibourin anymore because he was too jealous of the men who approached me. I’d had to hand in my notice straight after we met. From then on, I worked as a waitress in a brasserie. I started at 10 A.M., to prepare for the lunch service, and finished at 6 P.M.

  When I left our studio in the morning, Philippe Toussaint was still asleep. I found it a wrench to leave our cozy nest for the cold streets. He told me that during the day, he went for rides on his motorbike. When I got back in the evening, he was stretched out in front of the television. I pushed the door shut and stretched out on top of him. Just as if, after work, I dived into a vast, warm swimming pool, bathed in sunlight. I’d wanted to inject some blue into my life, so this hit the spot.

  I would have done absolutely anything for him to touch me. Just that. Touch me. I felt like I belonged to him, body and soul, and I adored it, belonging to him body and soul. I was seventeen and, in my head, had a lot of overdue happiness to catch up on. If he’d left me, my body surely couldn’t have withstood the shock of a second separation, after that from my mother.

  Philippe Toussaint only worked occasionally. When his parents got mad. His father always found a friend to take him on. And he did it all. House painter, mechanic, deliveryman, night watchman, maintenance man. Philippe Toussaint would show up on time the first day, but usually didn’t finish out the week. He always had some excuse for not going back. We lived on my salary, which I had transferred into his account—since I was underage, it was easier. I just kept the tips for myself.

  Sometimes, his parents would turn up during the day, without warning. They had copies of the keys to the studio. They came to lecture their unemployed, twenty-seven-year-old only son, and fill up his fridge.

  I never saw them because I was working. But on one day off, they suddenly appeared. We’d just been making love. I was naked, lying on the sofa. Philippe Toussaint was taking a shower. I didn’t hear them come in. I was singing a Lio song at the top of my lungs, “And you, tell me you love me! Even if it’s a lie! Since I know you lie! Life is so sad! Tell me you love me! Every day’s the same! I need romaaaance!” When I did see them, I thought: Philippe Toussaint doesn’t look at all like his parents.

  I’ll never forget the look Mother Toussaint gave me, her grimace. I’ll never forget the disdain in her eyes. Even I, who could barely read, who stumbled on words, could interpret it. As if a malicious mirror were reflecting back at me the image of a degraded, diminished, valueless young woman. A piece of trash, a slut, a bad seed, a girl from the gutter.

  Her hair was auburn. It was pulled and gripped so tightly in her chignon, you could see the veins of her temples under her thin skin. Her mouth was a line of disapproval. Her eyelids, always covered in green shadow over her blue eyes, were a lapse of taste she took everywhere with her. Like an evil spell. She had a nose like the beak of some endangered bird and skin so white it had surely never been kissed by the sun. When she lowered her shadow-caked eyes and saw my little rounded belly, she had to grab a kitchen chair to sit down on.

  Father Toussaint, a cowed man who was born submissive, started to talk to me as if we were in a catechism lesson. I can remember the words “irresponsible” and “thoughtless.” I think he even spoke of Jesus Christ. I wondered what on earth Jesus would be doing here, in this studio. What he would say if he saw the Toussaint parents wrapped in all their contempt and finery, and me, star
k naked, wrapped in a blanket with skyscrapers and “New York City” emblazoned in red.

  When Philippe Toussaint emerged from the bathroom, with a towel around his waist, he didn’t look at me. Carried on as if I didn’t exist. As if only his mother was in the room. Eyes just for her. I felt even more wretched. The runt of a stray. The nothing. Like Father Toussaint. The mother and son started talking about me as if I couldn’t hear them. The mother in particular.

  “But are you the father? Are you quite sure of that? You were tricked, weren’t you? Where did you meet that girl? Do you want us dead? Is that it? Abortion wasn’t just invented for dogs! Where’s your head gone, my poor boy!”

  As for the father, he continued to spread the good word:

  “Everything is possible, nothing is impossible, one can change, one just needs to believe it, never give up. . .”

  Wrapped in my skyscrapers, I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I felt as if I were in an Italian farce, but without the beauty of the Italians. With the social workers and caseworkers, I was used to people talking about me, about my life, about my future as though it didn’t concern me. As though I were absent from my story, from my existence. As though I were a problem to be solved, not a person.

  The Toussaint parents were coiffed and shod as though going to a wedding. Occasionally, the mother would glance at me for a second; any longer and she’d have tainted her cornea.

  When they left without saying goodbye to me, Philip Toussaint started shouting, “Shit! They make me sick!” while kicking wildly at the walls. He asked me to leave while he calmed himself down. Otherwise, those kicks, they’d end up landing on me. He looked traumatized, when it’s me who should have been. I was no stranger to violence. I’d grown up close to it, without it ever physically touching me. I’d always come through without a scratch.

  I went out into the street, it was cold. I walked fast to warm myself up. Our daily life was totally carefree; it had taken Father and Mother Toussaint opening our door to shatter everything. I returned to the studio an hour later. Philippe Toussaint had fallen asleep. I didn’t wake him.