Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin

  “Just like the sunsets beside the sea,” Elvis sings.

  “And you’ve seen the sea, have you?” Nono asks him.

  Elvis turns back to the window, without replying.

  “Me,” Jacques Lucchini picks up, “I’ve seen burials with masses of people, and others with five or six. But anyhow, as I say, they get buried all the same . . . But it’s true that at funerals, there have been slanging matches over an inheritance, rowing in front of the coffin . . . The worst I saw was two biddies who had to be separated because they were tearing each other’s hair out . . . Two hysterical lunatics . . . And my father, God rest his soul, took a few knocks that day . . . they were screaming, ‘You’re a thief, why did you take that, why do you want that,’ they were hurling insults . . . how sad is that.”

  “Right in the middle of a funeral . . . nice . . . ” Nono sighs.

  “That was before you, Violette,” Jacques Lucchini tells me. “It was still the old cemetery keeper, Sasha.”

  Hearing the name Sasha makes me have to sit down. Nobody had said it out loud in front of me for years.

  “What’s become of Sasha, anyway?” Paul Lucchini asks. “Anyone heard any news?”

  Quick as a flash, Nono changes the subject:

  “About ten years ago, a really old tomb was sold off . . . Everything on it had to be thrown away. We cleaned it all up, put everything into a skip, although we do return things to people if they want them. But that one, it was really ancient, a wreck, you know. I found an old plaque with the words, ‘To my dear departed ones.’ So, I chuck it into the skip. And then I see a lady, well dressed, I won’t say her name out of respect because she’s a nice one, a brave one . . . She pulls that plaque, ‘To my dear departed ones,’ out of the skip and stuffs it in a plastic bag. I say to her, ‘What on earth are you going to do with that?’ And, like a shot, she answers, totally seriously, ‘My husband’s got no balls, I’m going to give it to him as a present!’

  The men make such a noise laughing that My Way takes fright and goes up to my bedroom.

  “And God in all that?” Father Cédric asks. “Do all these people believe in God?”

  Nono hesitates before replying.

  “There’s those who believe in God the day he rids them of jerks. Me, I’ve seen joyful widows and happy widowers, and I can tell you that, in such cases, your God is mightily thanked, Father . . . Ah, come on, I’m just kidding, don’t make that face. Your God, he does relieve plenty of suffering. It’s simple, if he didn’t exist, he’d have to be invented.”

  Father Cédric smiles at Nono.

  “You see it all, in our line of work,” Paul Lucchini steps in. “Sadness, happiness, believers, time passing, the unbearable, the unjust, the intolerable . . . in other words, life. Basically, us undertakers, we deal with life. Maybe even more so than in other lines of work. Because those who come to see us, it’s them that remain, them that remain alive . . . Our father, God rest his soul, always said to us, ‘Sons, we’re the midwives of death. We deliver death, so make the most of living, and earn a good one.’”

  31.

  We were two loving each other,

  Only I remain to grieve for you.

  Philippe Toussaint’s motorbike didn’t take him very far from Brancion. He lives exactly one hundred and ten kilometers from my cemetery. He just switched regions.

  I often asked myself a whole load of questions: What made him stop in another life and stay there? Did he fall off his bike, or in love? Why didn’t he warn me? Why didn’t he send me a letter of dismissal, of resignation, of desertion? What happened on the day he left? Did he know he wouldn’t come back? Did I say something I shouldn’t have, or was it that I didn’t say anything? Toward the end, I no longer said a thing. I got meals ready.

  He hadn’t packed a bag. He’d taken nothing. No clothing, no bits and bobs, no photograph of our daughter.

  At first, I thought he was just lingering in another woman’s bed. One who spoke to him.

  After a month, I thought he’d had an accident. After two months, I reported him missing to the police. How could I have known that Philippe Toussaint had emptied his bank accounts, I had no access to them. Only his mother had power of attorney over all of it.

  After six months, I was scared he’d come back. Once I’d got used to his absence, I got my breath back. As if I’d been underwater for a long time, at the bottom of a swimming pool. His departure allowed me to push off and rise back up to the surface to breathe.

  After a year, I said to myself: If he comes back, I’ll kill him.

  After two years, I said to myself: If he comes back, I won’t let him in.

  After three years: If he comes back, I’ll call the police.

  After four years: If he comes back, I’ll call Nono.

  After five years: If he comes back, I’ll call the Lucchini brothers. More specifically, Paul, the one who’s an embalmer.

  After six years: If he comes back, I’ll ask him a few questions before killing him.

  After seven years: If he comes back, it’s me who’s leaving.

  After eight years: He won’t come back.

  * * *

  I’ve just visited Mr. Rouault, Brancion’s solicitor, for him to send a letter to Philippe Toussaint. He told me that he couldn’t do anything. That I must contact a solicitor specializing in family law, that was the procedure.

  Since I know Mr. Rouault very well, I dared to ask him to do that on my behalf. To call a solicitor of his choosing and write the letter for me, without me having to explain, justify, beg for, or order anything. Simply to inform Philippe Toussaint that I wished to return to using my maiden name, Trenet. I told Mr. Rouault that there was no question of claiming alimony or anything like that, it would just be a formality. Mr. Rouault spoke to me about “compensatory allowance for desertion,” and I replied, “No. Nothing.”

  I want nothing.

  Mr. Rouault told me that, in my old age, it could make things easier for me, more comfortable. My old age, I’ll spend it in my cemetery. I won’t need more comfort than I already have. He persisted, saying:

  “You know, dear Violette, maybe one day you won’t be able to work anymore, and you’ll have to retire, take it easy.”

  “No, nothing.”

  “O.K., Violette, I’ll take care of everything.”

  He wrote down Philippe Toussaint’s address, the one Julien Seul had scribbled inside the sealed envelope that I’d ended up opening.

  Mr. Philippe Toussaint, c/o Mme Françoise Pelletier

  13, avenue Franklin-Roosevelt

  69500 Bron

  “I hope you don’t mind me asking how you found him again. I thought your husband had disappeared. After all this time, he must have had to work, must have had a social security number!”

  It was true. The town hall had stopped paying him as a cemetery keeper a few months after his disappearance. That, too, I only discovered much later. The Toussaint parents received his paychecks and completed his tax returns. As level-crossing keepers and cemetery keepers, we’d never paid rent or utilities. I did the daily shopping with my salary. Philippe Toussaint used to say, “I give you a roof, I keep you warm, I give you light, and in exchange, you feed me.”

  Apart from paying for the upkeep of his motorbike, he’d not touched his pay for all the years we’d lived together. It was always me who bought his and Léonine’s clothes.

  “Are you sure this is really him? Toussaint is a common name. It could be his namesake. Or someone who looks like him.”

  I explained to Mr. Rouault that anyone could make a mistake, but not when you actually see the man you spent so many years married to. That even if he had lost his hair and put on weight, I could never confuse Philippe Toussaint with another man.

  I told Mr. Rouault about the detective, Julien Seul, that he really was called Julien Seul, how he turne
d up at my cemetery, his mother’s ashes, Gabriel Prudent, the research he’d done into Philippe Toussaint without asking my permission because of a red dress peeping under my coat, and the revival of Philippe Toussaint, who was living just a hundred and ten kilometers from my cemetery. That I’d borrowed Nono’s car—“Norbert Jolivet, the gravedigger,” I specified—that I’d driven to Bron, that I’d parked beside 13, avenue Franklin-Roosevelt, that No. 13 was a house not unlike the one I’d lived in previously, in Malgrange-sur-Nancy, when I was a level-crossing keeper in the east of France, except that it had nice curtains at the windows, an extra floor, and double-paned windows with oak frames. That opposite No. 13 there was the Carnot brasserie. That I drank three coffees there while waiting. Waiting for what, I had no idea. And then I saw him crossing the avenue.

  He was with another man. They were smiling. They were walking in my direction. They came into the brasserie. I’d put my head down.

  I’d had to grip the bar counter when Philippe Toussaint passed behind me. I’d recognized his smell, his particular scent, a mix of Caron’s “Pour un Homme” and that of other women. He always wore their smell like a loathed garment. Must be the smell of his former mistresses that had clung like bad memories, and that I alone noticed. Even after all those years.

  The two men had ordered two daily specials. I’d watched him eating his lunch, in the mirror opposite me. I’d said to myself that anything was possible, that he was smiling and that anyone could start a new life, that neither Léonine nor I had heard a word from him for a long time, and that no one knew that in his present life. That anyone could appear in one life and disappear in another. Here or elsewhere, anyone was capable of completely changing, of starting over. Anyone could be Philippe Toussaint, who went off for a ride and didn’t come back.

  Philippe Toussaint had got fatter, but he smiled openly. I’d never seen him smiling like that, back when we’d lived together. His eyes still showed no curiosity. He lived on avenue Franklin-Roosevelt and I knew that, even in this present life, the one in which he smiled more than before, he didn’t know who Roosevelt was, that even if he’d changed his life, if, in that one, someone had asked him who Franklin Roosevelt was, he would have answered, “The name of my street.”

  Gripping on to my bar, I’d realized that I’d been very lucky that he’d gone and never returned. I hadn’t moved. I hadn’t turned around. I had my back to him. All I could see of him was his smiling reflection in the mirror.

  The waiter had called him “Monsieur Pelletier,” but the guy I took to be his friend had called him “boss” twice, and the waiter had said, “Everything on the account as usual, Monsieur Pelletier?” And Philippe Toussaint had replied, “Yup.”

  I’d followed him in the street. The two men were walking side by side. They had entered a garage that was about two hundred meters from the brasserie, the Pelletier Garage.

  I’d hidden behind a car that looked as much of a wreck as I did when Philippe Toussaint had disappeared. Broken down, dented, scratched, left to one side until someone decided what to do with it. There must surely be a few motor parts to salvage. A bit of gasoline left in the tank. Enough to set off again. Finish the trip.

  Philippe Toussaint went into an office shielded by glass partitions. He made a phone call. He seemed like the boss. But when Françoise Pelletier arrived ten minutes later, he seemed like the husband of the boss. He looked at her with a smile. He looked at her lovingly. He looked at her.

  I left.

  I returned to Nono’s car. A parking ticket was wedged between the windscreen and the wiper, a fine of a hundred-and-thirty-five euros, because I was parked in the wrong place.

  “The story of my life,” I said, smiling at the solicitor.

  Mr. Rouault remained speechless for a few seconds.

  “My dear Violette, I’ve seen it all, in my time as a solicitor. Uncles who pretend to be sons, sisters who disown each other, false widows, false widowers, false children, false parents, false affidavits, false wills, but I have never been told a story such as that.”

  And then he showed me out.

  Before I left his office, he promised to take care of everything. The solicitor, the letter, the formalities of the divorce.

  Mr. Rouault is fond of me because whenever frost is likely, I take care of covering the plants, native to Africa, that he planted for his wife. Marie Dardenne, married name Rouault (1949-1999).

  32.

  My dear friends, when I die, plant

  a willow in the cemetery. I love its weeping foliage.

  Its paleness is sweet and dear to me, and its shadow

  will fall lightly upon the earth in which I sleep.

  In April, I put ladybird larvae on my rosebushes, and on those of the deceased, to combat greenfly. I’m the one who places the ladybirds, one by one, with a little paintbrush, on the plants. It’s as though I repainted my garden in the spring. As if I planted stairways between earth and sky. I don’t believe in phantoms or ghosts, but I do believe in ladybirds.

  I am convinced that when a ladybird settles on me, it’s a soul getting in touch with me. As a child, I imagined that it was my father coming to see me. That my mother had abandoned me because my father was dead. And since we tell ourselves the stories we feel like telling ourselves, I always imagined that my father looked like Robert Conrad, the hero in The Wild Wild West. That he was handsome, powerful, tender, and that he adored me from up in heaven. That he protected me from where he was.

  I invented my guardian angel for myself. The one who arrived late on the day of my birth. And then I grew up. And I understood that my guardian angel would never have a permanent contract. That he would often have to sign on at the employment agency, and, as Brel sings, would get drunk “every night, on bad wine.” My Robert Conrad aged badly.

  Placing my ladybirds, one by one, keeps me busy for ten days, if I do only that. If there’s no funeral in the meantime. Putting them on the rosebushes feels like opening the doors to the sun, letting it in over my cemetery. It’s like giving it permission. A permit. That doesn’t stop anyone from dying during the month of April, or from visiting me.

  Once again, I didn’t hear him arriving. He is behind me. Julien Seul is behind me. He watches me without moving. How long has he been there? He hugs the urn containing his mother’s ashes. His eyes shine like black marble covered in frost, when the winter sun glints on it. I’m speechless.

  Seeing him has the same effect on me as my closets: a black wool dress over a pink silk slip. I don’t smile at him, but my heart is pounding like that of a child arriving late at the door of a favorite pâtisserie.

  “I’ve come back to tell you why my mother wanted to be laid to rest at the tomb of Gabriel Prudent.”

  “I’m used to men who disappear.”

  That’s all I’m capable of saying to him.

  “Would you mind accompanying me to his tomb?”

  I put my paintbrush down carefully on the Monfort family vault, and head for Gabriel Prudent.

  Julien Seul follows me, and then says:

  “I have no sense of direction, so in a cemetery . . . ”

  We walk side by side, in silence, toward avenue 19. When we arrive at Gabriel Prudent’s tomb, Julien Seul puts the urn down and then moves it several times, as if he can’t get it right, as if trying to find the right place for a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. He finally sets it against the headstone, in the shade.

  “Since my mother preferred the shade to the sun . . . ”

  “Would you like to read her the speech you wrote? Would you like to be alone?”

  “No, I’d prefer you to read it, later. When the cemetery is closed. I’m sure you know how to do that very well.”

  The urn is a forest-green color. “Irène Fayolle (1941–2016)” is engraved in gold. He gathers his thoughts for a few moments, I remain beside him.

  “I’ve never kn
own how to pray . . . I’ve forgotten the flowers. Do you still sell them?”

  “Yes.”

  While choosing a pot of daffodils, he tells me he wants to go into town to buy a plaque. He asks me if I could accompany him to Le Tourneurs du Val, the Lucchini brothers’ funeral parlor. I agree to, without thinking. I’ve never been to Le Tourneurs du Val. For twenty years now, I’ve been telling others how to get there, having never set foot in it myself.

  I get into the detective’s car, which smells of stale smoke. He is silent. As am I. When he switches on the ignition, an already inserted CD blares out “Elsass Blues,” by Alain Bashung, at full volume. We jump. He turns it off. We start laughing. It’s the first time Alain Bashung has made anyone laugh with this magnificent, but terribly sad, song.

  We park in front of Le Tourneurs du Val. The Lucchini brothers’ funeral parlor is right next to the morgue, but also to Le Phénix, the Chinese restaurant of Brancion-en-Chalon. It’s the locals’ favorite joke. But that doesn’t stop Le Phénix being full to bursting at lunchtime.

  We push open the door. In the window there are funerary plaques and bouquets of artificial flowers. I loathe artificial flowers. A plastic or polyester rose is like a bedside lamp trying to imitate the sun. Inside, various woods for coffins are displayed like in a DIY store, where you can choose the color of your flooring. There are the precious woods for making very special coffins. And then the woods of inferior quality—soft, hard, tropical—and plywood. I hope the love we feel for a living person isn’t measured by the quality of wood we choose.

  On nearly all of the plaques in the window are the words, “Warbler, if you fly around this tomb, sing him your most beautiful song.” After reading a few of the texts Pierre Lucchini showed him, Julien Seul chooses, “To my mother” in brass lettering on a black plaque. No poem or epitaph.

  Pierre is amazed to see me in his funeral parlor. He doesn’t know what to say to me, even though he’s been visiting my place several times a week for years, and wouldn’t dream of entering my cemetery without coming to say hello.