Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin

  In the car park, outside the cemetery, Gabriel said:

  “What would you like to do?”

  “What can you do, really, after that?”

  “Make love. I’d like to take off all your beige and make you see all the colors of the rainbow, Irène Fayolle.”

  She didn’t respond. They got into the van and drove as best they could, with all that love, alcohol, and sorrow in their blood. Irène drove and dropped Gabriel outside Aix’s railway station.

  “You don’t want to make love?”

  “A hotel room, like two thieves in the night . . . we deserve better than that, don’t we? And anyhow, who would we be stealing from, apart from ourselves?”

  “Would you like to marry me?”

  “I’m already married.”

  “So, I’ve come too late, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you use your husband’s name?”

  “Because he’s called Seul. Paul Seul. If I used his name, I’d be called Irène Seul. It would be a spelling mistake.”

  They hugged each other. Didn’t kiss. Didn’t say goodbye. He got out of the van, his widower’s suit all creased. She looked at his hands one last time. She told herself that it was the last time. He waved to her before turning and walking off down the platform.

  She took the road back to Marseilles. Access to the motorway wasn’t that far from the station. The traffic was moving well. In just under an hour, she would park in front of the house where Paul was waiting for her. And the years would go by.

  Irène would see Gabriel on the television, he would be talking about a criminal case, someone he would defend, and of whose innocence he would be certain. He would say, “This whole case is built around an injustice that I will dismantle, piece by piece.” He would say, “I will prove it!” He would appear agitated, the other man’s innocence would gnaw away at him, it would show. She would think he looked tired, his eyes shadowed, that he’d aged, perhaps.

  On the radio, Irène would hear a song by Nicole Croisille, “He was cheery as an Italian when he knows he’ll have love and wine.” And then she would have to sit down. Those words would knock her off her feet, would suddenly take her back to the transport café on February 5th, 1984. She would recall snatches of conversation between the fries, the gross curtains, the beer, the funeral, the white roses, the omelettes, and the calvados.

  “What do you love most of all?”

  “The snow.”

  “The snow?”

  “Yes, it’s beautiful. It’s silent. When it’s snowed, the world stops. It’s like a giant shroud of white powder is covering it . . . I find that extraordinary. It’s like magic, you know? And you? What do you love most of all?”

  “You. Well, I think I love you most of all. It’s strange to meet the woman of one’s life on the day of the funeral of one’s wife. Perhaps she died so I could meet you . . . ”

  “That’s a dreadful thing to say.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’ve always loved life. I love eating, I love fucking. I’m all for movement, amazement. If you fancy sharing my pitiful existence, to shed some light on it, you’re most welcome.”

  When Irène Fayolle would think about Gabriel Prudent, she would think: panache.

  Irène told herself that she didn’t want to live in the conditional, but in the present. She put her turn signal on. She changed direction. She took the Luynes exit, drove past a shopping complex, and started driving very fast in the direction of Aix. Faster than the train timetables.

  When she arrived in front of Aix station, she parked her van in a space reserved for staff. She ran to the platform. The train for Lyons had already left, but Gabriel hadn’t got on it. He was smoking in the “Au Depart” brasserie. Since it was forbidden, the waitress had said to him, twice, “Sir, we don’t allow smoking here.” He had replied, “I’m not acquainted with this ‘we.’”

  When he saw her, he smiled and said:

  “I’m going to go through your pockets, Irène Fayolle.”

  37.

  I loved you, I love you, and I will love you.

  Elvis is singing “Don’t Be Cruel” to Jeanne Ferney (1968–2017). I can hear it from a distance. Gaston has gone off to do some shopping. It’s 3 P.M., the cemetery is empty, only Elvis’s song fills the avenues, “Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true, I don’t want no other love, baby, it’s just you I’m thinking of . . . ”

  He often befriends a freshly buried person, as if he feels he must help them on their way.

  The weather’s really lovely. I’m making the most of it to plant my chrysanthemum seedlings. They have five months to grow, five months to burst into color for All Saints’ Day.

  I don’t hear him going in and closing the door behind him. Crossing the kitchen, going up to my bedroom, lying down on my bed, going back down, kicking my dolls, going out through the garden behind the house, my private garden, where I grow the flowers that I sell every day to meet our needs, because he never did protect us.

  “Baby, if I made you mad, for something I might have said, please, let’s forget the past . . . ”

  Did he know that, today, Nono wouldn’t be here? Did he know that this week, the Lucchini brothers wouldn’t be coming? That no one had died? That he would be alone with me?

  “The future looks bright ahead . . . ”

  I don’t have time to react, I stand up, hands covered in soil, the seedlings and watering can at my feet, I turn around when I see his shadow, huge and menacing . . . a sword of ice cuts right through me. I freeze. Philippe Toussaint is there, motorbike helmet on head, visor raised, his eyes looking straight into mine.

  I say to myself that he’s come back to kill me, to finish me off. I say to myself that he’s come back. I say to myself that I promised myself I’d never suffer again.

  I have time to say all that to myself. I think of Léo. I don’t want her to see this. Not a sound comes out of my mouth.

  Nightmare or reality?

  “Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true, I don’t want no other love, baby, it’s just you I’m thinking of . . . ”

  I can’t see whether the look in his eyes is one of disdain, fear, or hatred. I think he’s looking me up and down as if I were even less than less than nothing. As if I had shrunk with time. Just as his parents looked me up and down, especially the mother. I had forgotten that I’d been looked at in that way.

  He grabs me by the arm and grips it very hard. He hurts me. I don’t struggle. I can’t cry out. I’m paralysed. I never thought that, one day, he would lay his hands on me again.

  “Don’t stop thinking of me, don’t make me feel this way, come on over here and love me . . . ”

  It’s when living through what I’m living through now that you know everything’s fine, that nothing’s serious, that human beings have an extraordinary ability to rebuild themselves, to cauterize themselves, as if they had several layers of skin, one on top of the other. Lives one on top of the other. Other lives in store. That the business of forgetting has no limits.

  “You know what I want you to say, don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true . . . ”

  I close my eyes. I don’t wish to see him. Hearing him will be quite enough. Breathing him is unbearable. He grips my arm even harder, and says into my ear:

  “I received a solicitor’s letter, I’m returning it to you . . . Listen to me carefully, very carefully, NEVER write to me again at that address, do you hear? Not you, not your solicitor, NEVER. I don’t want to read your name anywhere anymore, otherwise I will . . . I will . . . ”

  “Why should we be apart? I really love you, baby, cross my heart . . . ”

  He stuffs the envelope into my apron pocket and then leaves. I fall to my knees. I hear him starting up his motorbike. He’s gone. He won’t come back again. Now, I’m sure of it, he won’t come back.
He’s just said goodbye to me. It’s finished, over.

  I look at the letter he’s crumpled up. The solicitor instructed by Mr. Rouault is called Gilles Legardinier, like the author. The letter informs Philippe Toussaint that a request for divorce by mutual consent has been submitted on behalf of Violette Trenet, married name Toussaint, to the registrar at the court of Mâcon.

  I go upstairs to have a shower. I scrub away the soil from under my nails. He’s passed his hatred on to me. Transmitted it to me like a virus, an inflammation. I pick up my dolls, and put my bedcover into a plastic bag to take it to the dry cleaners. As if a crime had taken place in my house and I wanted to erase the evidence.

  The crime is him. His footsteps in mine. His presence in my rooms. The air he inhaled and exhaled between my walls. I air everything. I spray a scent of assorted roses.

  In the bathroom mirror, I’m scarily pale, almost translucent. It’s as if my blood has stopped circulating. That it’s all gone to my arm, which is blue. He has left imprints of his fingers on my skin. That’s all I’ll have left of him: bruises. I’ll cover it up very quickly with a new skin. As I have always done.

  I ask Elvis to stand in for me for an hour. He looks at me as if he can’t hear me.

  “Do you hear me, Elvis?”

  “You’re white, Violette. Very white.”

  I think of those youngsters I terrified a few years ago. Today, I wouldn’t need any disguise to make them bolt.

  38.

  The memory of the happy days soothes the pain.

  And so, we returned home to get the garlands ready for the Christmas tree, cutting up bits of paper in the middle of August. We turned our backs on the sea, we did the same journey in reverse.

  In the trains that brought us back to our barrier at Malgrange-sur-Nancy, Léo and I drew boats on the sea with turquoise felt-tip pens bought at the station, and suns, and fish and cicadas, while Philippe Toussaint tried out his tan on the girls he came across, on platforms we stopped at, in the train’s bar, from one compartment to the next. He seemed delighted by all the looks he was getting.

  When we arrived, our replacements were waiting for us on the doorstep. They barely greeted us. They didn’t allow us time to open our suitcases. They told us that everything had gone smoothly, that there was nothing to report, and then left us just like that, leaving an unbelievable mess behind them, too.

  Fortunately, they hadn’t set foot in Léo’s bedroom. She sat on her little bed and wrote two lists: one for her birthday and another for Father Christmas.

  I started putting things away while Philippe Toussaint went off on a ride. He had to make up for lost time. The time he’d wasted with me in the bed at the chalet.

  By the following day, I had cleaned everything and life returned to normal. I raised and lowered the barrier to the trains’ rhythm, Philippe Toussaint continued to go off on rides, and I to do the shopping.

  Léo and I went back to sharing bubble baths, and we looked at our holiday photos a hundred times. We pinned them up all over the house. So as not to forget, so as to be back there now and then, just for a glance.

  In September, between two trains, I repainted her walls pink. She helped me, she wanted to do the skirting boards. I had to go over them after her, without her noticing.

  Léo started primary school, and very soon we were back in our woolly cardigans.

  We made our paper garlands and bought a synthetic Christmas tree, so it would do all our Christmases to come and avoid a real one being killed every year.

  I thought to myself that it was the last year she would believe in Father Christmas, the following year it would be over. Some older kid would tell her that he didn’t exist. All through life, we encounter older kids who inform us that Father Christmas doesn’t exist, we stumble from one disappointment to the next.

  I could have found it intolerable, Philippe Toussaint chasing anything in a skirt, but it suited me. I no longer wanted him to touch me. I needed sleep. I slept little between the last train at night and the first in the morning. I needed peace and quiet. And his body on mine was a disturbance that I had once liked, but no longer liked at all.

  Sometimes I dreamt of a prince when I listened to songs on the radio. Male and female voices coming out with sweet, crazy, coarse words. Voices full of promise. Or when I told stories to Léonine in the evening. Her bedroom was my refuge, an earthly paradise in which dolls, bears, dresses, necklaces of glassy beads, felt-tip pens, and books slept, all mixed together, jumbled up, in a magical mess.

  I could have found it intolerable, not speaking to anyone apart from my daughter and Stéphanie, the checkout girl at the Casino. Stéphanie who commented on my purchases, which were always the same. Recommended a new dish soap to me, or said to me, “Did you see the ad on TV? You spray the product on the bath, you wait a good five minutes, and all the grime washes away. Well, it works, you should try it.”

  We had absolutely nothing to say to each other. We would never be friends. We would remain two lives that brushed against one another every day. Sometimes she dropped by to have a coffee at mine during her lunch break. I liked it when she came, she was gentle. She gave me samples of shampoo and body lotion. She often said to me, “You’re a good mother, that’s for sure, really nice as a mother.” And off she’d go in her smock, back to her register and her shelves to be stacked.

  Every week, Célia wrote me a long letter. I could read her smile in her words. And when we didn’t have time to write to each other, we phoned each other on Saturday evening.

  Philippe Toussaint would have supper with me once I had put Léo, an early sleeper, to bed. We’d chat about this and that, but never shout at each other. Our relations were at once cordial and nonexistent. Our relations were silent, but never violent. Although, couples who don’t shout, never get angry, are indifferent towards each other, are sometimes suffering the worst violence of all. No smashing of china at our place. Or closing of windows to avoid disturbing the neighbors. Just silence.

  After supper, when he didn’t go off on a ride, he would switch the television on, and me, I would open L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable. In ten years of living together, Philippe Toussaint never noticed that I was still reading the same book. When I didn’t read, we’d watch a film together, but that very rarely brought us any closer. We didn’t even share television. He often fell asleep in front of it.

  As for me, I waited for the last train, the Nancy-Strasbourg at 23:04, and went to bed until the Strasbourg-Nancy at 04:50. When I raised the barrier after the 04:50, I would go to Léo’s bedroom to watch her sleep. It was my favorite thing. Some people treat themselves to a sea view, but me, I had my daughter.

  During those years, I didn’t hold it against Philippe Toussaint, leaving me in solitude, because I didn’t feel it, didn’t experience it, it just slid over me. I think solitude and boredom touch the emptiness in people. But I was full to the brim. I had several lives that took up all the space: my daughter, reading, music, and my imagination. When Léo was at school, and my novel was closed, I never did the washing, cleaning, or cooking without listening to music and dreaming. I invented myself a thousand lives during that particular life, at Malgrange-sur-Nancy.

  Léonine was the bonus of the everyday. The bonus of my life. Philippe Toussaint had given me the most wonderful of presents. And, cherry on the cake, he’d given her his looks. Léo is totally beautiful, like her father. With grace and joy on top. Whether she was horizontal or vertical, I gobbled her up with my eyes.

  Philippe Toussaint had the same rapport with his daughter as with me. I never heard him raise his voice at her. But Léo didn’t interest him for long. She amused him for five minutes, but very quickly, he moved on to something else. When she asked him a question, it was me who answered her. I completed the sentences that her father didn’t bother to finish. He didn’t have a father’s rapport with her, but rather a friend’s. Th
e only thing he liked to share with his child was his motorbike. He would put her behind the engine and go once around the block of houses, very slowly, to entertain her for ten minutes. And then, as soon as he accelerated a little, she was scared, she screamed.

  He may have found the right buttons to press more easily with a boy. For Philippe Toussaint, a chick was a chick. Whether she was six years old or thirty. And could never be better than a guy, a real one. One who plays football and races a supersonic truck. One who doesn’t cry when he falls down, who gets his knees dirty, and can handle throttle levers and steering wheels. The complete opposite of Léonine, who was a candy-pink-with-sequins little girl.

  She belonged to the Malgrange-sur-Nancy library. It was a room adjoining the town hall that was open twice a week, Wednesday afternoon included. Every Wednesday, between the 13:27 train and the 16:05 one, we would dash, hand in hand, to get Léo’s quota of books for the week, and return those borrowed the previous week. On our way back from the library, we would stop at the Casino, where Stéphanie would give Léo a lollipop as I picked up a Papy Brossard “Savane” marbled cake. I would dunk mine in my tea, and she would dunk hers in an orange-blossom infusion after I had raised the barrier for the 16:05 train.

  As soon as Léo was three years old, whenever a train was due, she would go out onto the landing to greet the passengers as the train went past our house. She would wave at them. It had become her favorite game. And some passengers waited for this moment. They knew they would see “the little girl.”

  Malgrange-sur-Nancy was just a level crossing, the trains went through without stopping; there were another seven kilometers to the next station, Brangy. Several times, Stéphanie took us in the car so that we could do the Brangy-Nancy round trip together. Léo wanted to ride in the train she saw going by every day, she wanted a ride on that merry-go-round.

  Her cries of joy the first time we did this strange, pointless journey, I will never forget. To this day, I still sometimes dream of them. She would have been less thrilled going around an amusement park. We, of course, took the train that went past our house, where her father was waiting on the doorstep to wave at her as it went by. It’s funny how happy children can be when you reverse the roles.