Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin

  I know almost everything about Pierre, his bags of marbles, his first love, his wife, his children’s tonsillitis, his grief at losing his father, the products he applies to his scalp for hair loss, and now, it’s like I’m a stranger in the middle of his plastic flowers and his plaques that speak only of eternity.

  Julien Seul pays and we leave.

  On the way back to my cemetery, Julien Seul asks me if he can invite me to dinner. He wants to tell me the story of his mother and Gabriel Prudent.

  And to thank me for everything. And also in the hope of being forgiven for having researched Philippe Toussaint without asking me. I reply to him, “Fine, but I’d rather we ate at my place.”

  Because we’ll have time, and won’t be disturbed by a waiter between every dish. There will be no meat for dinner, but it will still be good. He tells me that he’s going to book his room with Madame Bréant, even though it’s never taken, and that he’ll be back at my place at 8 P.M.

  33.

  Along with time, goes, everything goes, you forget

  the passions and you forget the voices, telling you

  quietly what pathetic folk say: don’t get in

  too late, above all, don’t catch cold.

  Irène Fayolle and Gabriel Prudent met in Aix-en-Provence in 1981. She was forty, he fifty. He was defending a prisoner who had helped another prisoner escape. Irène Fayolle had found herself in this court at the request of her employee and friend, Nadia Ramirès. She was the wife of an accomplice of the defendant. “We don’t choose who we fall in love with,” she had said to Irène, between a root-lift and a blow-dry, “that would be too easy.”

  Irène Fayolle attended the trial on the day of Mr. Prudent’s speech for the defence. He spoke of the sound of keys, of freedom, of this need to extricate oneself from ageless walls, to rediscover the sky, the forgotten horizon, the smell of coffee in a bistro. He spoke of the solidarity among prisoners. He said that close confinement could prompt a true brotherhood between the men, that freedom to speak was an escape route. That to lose freedom was to lose a loved one. That it was like a grieving process. That no one could understand this if they hadn’t lived through it.

  Just like in Stefan Zweig’s Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman, Irène Fayolle looked only at Mr. Prudent’s hands during the speech for the defense. Large hands, which opened and closed. With pale, perfectly buffed nails. Irène Fayolle said to herself: It’s strange, this man’s hands haven’t aged. They have remained childlike, they are those of a young man. Pianist’s hands. When Gabriel Prudent was addressing the jury, his hands opened up; when addressing the counsel for the prosecution, they closed again, clenching so much that they seemed shriveled, as if resuming their true age. When he focused on the magistrate, they froze, when he turned to the public, they couldn’t keep still, like two overexcited teenagers, and when he returned to the accused, they came back together, curled up like two kittens seeking warmth. In but a few seconds, his hands went from confinement to joy, restraint to freedom, and then to a kind of praying, or entreaty. In fact, his hands were just miming his words.

  After the speech for the defense, everyone had to leave the court to go and have a drink in Aix while the jury was deliberating. The weather was lovely, as always in Aix, and that neither gladdened nor saddened Irène. Lovely weather had never had any effect on her. She didn’t give a hoot about it.

  Nadia Ramirès went off to the Saint-Esprit church to light a candle. Irène went into a random café, not fancying sitting at a terrace like all the others. She went upstairs to have peace. She wanted to read. The previous evening, when Paul, her husband, was already asleep, she had started a novel, which she now longed to get back to.

  Mr. Prudent, who liked the sun but not the crowds, was there alone, sitting in a corner. Waiting for the verdict on his client, leaning against a closed window. Staring into space, he smoked one cigarette after another. Although he was alone upstairs, a smoky fug filled the room, right up to the lights. Before stubbing one out, he would use it to light the next. Once again, Irène froze at the sight of his right hand as it crushed the butt in the ashtray.

  In the novel from the previous day, she had read that an invisible thread links those who are destined to meet, that this thread can become tangled, but never break.

  When Gabriel Prudent saw Irène Fayolle at the top of the stairs, he said to her, “You were in court earlier.” It wasn’t a question, merely a comment. There had been many people in the court. And she had been at the back, on the second-to-last bench. How had he noticed her? She didn’t ask. She sat in a corner, in silence.

  And as if he had heard her thoughts, he began to describe to her the outfits worn by each member of the jury and the deputies, by the defendants, and by all those in the public gallery. One after the other. He used strange words to describe the color of some trousers, a skirt, or a sweater, “amaranthine,” “ultramarine,” “whiting,” “chartreuse,” “coral.” He might have been a dyer, or a fabric seller at the Saint-Pierre market. He had even noticed that the lady at the far left of the third bench, “the one with a jet-black bun, poppy scarf, and linen-gray outfit,” was wearing a brooch in the form of a scarab. During this extraordinary sartorial description, he flapped his hands at certain moments. Especially when he needed to say the word “green,” which he hadn’t said. As if this word were forbidden him, he had used the words “emerald,” “peppermint cordial,” pistachio,” and “olive.”

  Still silent, Irène Fayolle wondered what, for a lawyer, was the point of identifying each person’s clothing

  Once again, as if he had heard her think, he told her that, in a court, everything was written in the clothing. Innocence, regrets, guilt, hatred, or forgiveness. That each person chose exactly what he or she wore on the day of a verdict, whether it was on them or on someone else. Like for one’s funeral or one’s marriage. That there was no room for chance. And that according to what each individual wore, he was able to predict whether it was someone from the plaintiff’s side or the opposite side, the prosecution or the defense, a father, brother, mother, neighbor, witness, lover, friend, enemy, or busybody. And that he adapted his speech for the defense according to the clothing and appearance of each individual when he directed his words and eyes at them. And that, for example, she, Irène Fayolle, from the way she was dressed today, it was clear that she was not implicated in this business. That she was totally unbiased. That she was there as a dilettante.

  “As a dilettante.” He actually used those words.

  She didn’t have time to respond because Nadia Ramirès had just joined her. She told Irène that she was crazy to shut herself away in this bistro in such beautiful weather, that her man, he would have dreamt of sitting at a terrace. And that if he were acquitted, they would sit at every terrace in Aix, one after the other, to celebrate. And Irène Fayolle thought: Well, my dream is to continue reading the novel at the bottom of my bag . . . or to set off for Iceland with the man with the hands who is chain smoking at the end of this room.

  Nadia greeted Mr. Prudent, told him that his defense speech was outstanding, that, as agreed, she would pay him a little every month, that her Jules would surely be acquitted thanks to him. And the lawyer replied, between two drags, in a deep voice:

  “We’ll know that later, after the deliberations. You’re looking lovely, I really like the dragée-pink dress you’re wearing. I’m sure it must have raised your husband’s spirits.”

  Irène had a tea, Nadia an apricot juice, and Gabriel a draft beer with no foam. He paid for it all and left before them. Irène looked at his hands one last time; they were clutching his files. Two great pincers gripping the case in progress.

  Irène Fayolle couldn’t access the public gallery for the verdict; only family members were admitted. But she waited outside the court, at the end of the walkway, to observe the color of people’s clothes as they came out. She saw the ultramarine sweate
r, the coral dress, the mint-cordial skirt, and the scarab of the woman with the jet-black bun. She clocked them all, one after the other.

  Irène returned alone to Marseilles. Nadia Ramirès stayed in Aix to celebrate the acquittal of her Jules from terrace to terrace.

  A few weeks later, Irène closed her hairdressing salon and took up horticulture. She felt that she wanted to do something else with her hands, she’d had enough of cutting hair, products full of ammonia, shampooing sinks, and, most of all, chatter. Irène Fayolle was, by nature, taciturn, too secretive to be a hairdresser. To be a good hairdresser, you have to be curious, amusing, and generous. She didn’t think she possessed any of these attributes.

  For years, soil and roses had obsessed her. With the money from her salon, she bought a plot of land in Marseilles’s seventh arrondissement, which she turned into a rose-nursery. She learned how to plant, grow, water, pick. She also learned how to create new varieties of rose in tones of carmine, raspberry, grenadine, and “maiden’s blush,” all while thinking of Gabriel Prudent’s hands.

  She created flowers as though creating hands that open and close, depending on the weather.

  A year later, Irène Fayolle accompanied Nadia Ramirès back to Aix-en-Provence for a second trial. Her husband had again got caught over some drugs business. Before leaving, Irène wondered how to dress so as not to look like a “dilettante.”

  She was disappointed. Mr. Prudent wasn’t there anymore. He had left the area.

  Irène discovered this in the car on the way from Marseilles to Aix when Nadia told her that she was worried because this time it wouldn’t be Mr. Prudent pleading in her Jules’s defense, but a colleague.

  “But why?” Irène asked, like a child going on holiday who discovers that there won’t be any sea there.

  A divorce situation, he had moved. Nadia knew nothing more.

  The months passed, until the day a woman entered Irène Fayolle’s rose-nursery to order a spray of white roses to be delivered to Aix-en-Provence. As she filled in the delivery note, Irène saw that the roses were to be taken to Aix’s Saint-Pierre cemetery, for Mme Martine Robin, wife of Gabriel Prudent.

  For the first time, it was Irène who did the delivery, on the morning of February 5th, 1984, to Aix-en-Provence, where frost had appeared overnight. She took special care of the spray of flowers to be delivered. It took up all the space in the back of her Peugeot van.

  At the Saint-Pierre cemetery, a municipal employee allowed her to drive along the avenues to deliver the roses close to the tomb of Martine Robin, who hadn’t yet been buried. It was only 10 A.M. and the burial wasn’t until the afternoon.

  Into the marble had been engraved, “Martine Robin, married name Prudent (1932–1984).” Under her name, her photo had already been soldered: a beautiful, dark-haired woman smiling straight at the camera. The photo must have been taken when she was around thirty.

  Irène went off to wait. She wanted to see Gabriel Prudent again. Even from a distance. Even from a hiding place. She wanted to know if he was the widower, if it was his wife being buried. She looked through the death notices, but found no actual mention of him.

  “It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden death of Martine Robin, at the age of fifty-two, in Aix-en-Provence. Martine was the daughter of the late Gaston Robin and the late Micheline Bolduc. She leaves behind, in grief, her daughter Marthe Dubreuil, her brother Richard and sister Mauricette, her aunt Claudine Bolduc-Babé, her mother-in-law Louise, numerous cousins, nephews and nieces, and her close friends, Nathalie, Stéphane, Mathias, and Ninon, along with several others.”

  No mention of Gabriel Prudent. As if he had been crossed off the list of those permitted to grieve.

  Irène left the cemetery and drove to the first bistro she found, about three hundred meters away. A transport café. She thought to herself: Strange, this transport café stuck between the cemetery and Aix’s municipal swimming pool. As if it lost its way.

  She parked, and then almost turned back because the windows were filthy and the curtains hanging behind them beyond old. But a shadow stopped her. Inside, a hunched silhouette. She recognized him despite the dirty glass. He was there. Really there. Leaning against a closed window, smoking a cigarette, staring into space.

  For a few seconds, she thought she was hallucinating, getting confused, taking her desires for reality, in a novel rather than in life, real life. The one that’s less fun than the life you promise yourself at fourteen. And also, she had only seen him once, three years ago.

  He looked up when she entered. There were three men leaning on the bar and just Gabriel Prudent sitting at a table. He said to her:

  “You were in Aix for the trial of Jean-Pierre Reyman and Jules Ramirès the year Mitterrand was elected . . . You’re the dilettante.”

  She wasn’t surprised that he recognized her. As if it stood to reason.

  “Yes, hello, I’m a friend of Nadia Ramirès.”

  He shook his head, lit another cigarette with the dying embers of his butt, and replied:

  “I remember.”

  And without inviting her to join him at his table, as if that were obvious, he ordered two coffees and two “calvas” by pointing his index finger at the ceiling and then the waitress. Once again, Irène Fayolle, who had never drunk coffee in her life—just tea—and even less so, calvados at ten in the morning, stared at Gabriel’s large hands and sat in front of him. His hands still hadn’t aged.

  He was the first to speak, a lot. He said that he’d returned to Aix to bury Martine, his wife, well, his ex-wife, and that he couldn’t stand stoups, priests, and guilt. So he wouldn’t go to the religious service, just the burial, that he’d wait here, that he’d lived with another woman in Mâcon for two years, that he’d never seen Martine, his wife, well, his ex-wife, again since he’d left, that since he’d left her because he’d met someone else, his kid—who wasn’t one anymore—wasn’t speaking to him, that he’d been devastated by the news—Martine, dead!—but that no one would understand, that he would forever be the total bastard who had abandoned a wife, his own. And as postmortem revenge, Martine, his wife, well, his ex-wife, or his daughter, he no longer really knew, had had his name engraved on the tombstone. She had taken him with her to her eternity.

  “And you? Would you have done that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You live in Aix?”

  “No, Marseilles, I delivered some flowers this morning, to the cemetery, for your wife, well, your ex-wife. Before going back, I wanted to have a tea, it’s cold, not that the cold really bothers me, on the contrary, but I was cold. Now, at least, calvados warms one up, I think it’s gone to my head, in fact, I don’t just think, it has gone to my head, I won’t be able to hit the road straight away, it’s strong stuff, calvados . . . Forgive me if I’m being indiscreet, I’m not normally, but how did you meet your new wife?”

  “Oh, nothing original, because of a man I defended for years; through preparing his defense, explaining it to his wife, through returning to the prison year after year, we were the ones who ended up falling in love with each other. What about you, has that ever happened to you?”

  “What?”

  “Falling in love.”

  “Yes, with my husband, Paul Seul, we have a son, Julien, who is ten.”

  “You work?”

  “I’m a horticulturist. Before, I was a hairdresser, but I don’t only sell flowers, I cultivate them, too, I do some hybridization.”

  “Some what?”

  “Some hybridization. I combine varieties of roses to create new ones.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like it . . . Cross-breeding.”

  “And what kind of colors does it produce? Two more coffee-calvas, please!”

  “Carmine, raspberry, grenadine, or even ‘maiden’s blush.’ I do varieties of white, too.”

/>   “What kind of white?”

  “Snow. I adore the snow. My rosebushes also have the particularity of not being affected by the cold.”

  “And you, you never wear any colors yourself? Back in Aix, during the trial, you were all beige.”

  “I prefer bright colors on flowers and pretty girls.”

  “But you’re worse than pretty. Your face has its whole life ahead of it. Why do you smile?”

  “I’m not smiling. I’m drunk.”

  Toward midday, they ordered two omelettes with salad and a plate of fries to share. And a tea for her. He said, “I’m not sure tea and omelette go well together,” to which she replied, “Tea goes with everything, it’s like black and white, it goes with everything.”

  During the meal, he licked his fingers, he licked the salt off the fries. He drank a draft beer. As she combined English tea and her nth glass of calvados, he said, “Normandy and England are like black and white, they go well together.”

  He got up twice. She watched the dust, the static electricity around him. In the sunbeams, it looked like snow. And they ordered more fries, tea, and calva. Usually, in such a grimy place, Irène would have wiped the glasses on the lapel of her jacket, but not this time.

  When the hearse drove past the café, it was ten past three. She hadn’t noticed the time pass. It was like she’d entered this transport café 10 minutes ago. They’d been together for five hours.

  They got up in a hurry, he paid in a hurry, and Irène told him to get in her van, she would take him there. She knew where Martine Robin’s tomb was.

  In the van, he asked her what her first name was. He said he’d had enough of addressing her as “vous.”

  “Irène.”

  “And I’m Gabriel.”