Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin

  The three of us celebrated Christmas 1992 together. Like every year, Philippe Toussaint gave me a check for me to buy “whatever you want, but nothing too expensive, all the same.” As for me, I gave him his scent, “Pour un Homme” by Caron, and some nice clothes.

  Sometimes, I felt as if I were making him smell nice and dressing him for others, so that he continued to appeal elsewhere. And especially so that he continued to appeal to himself. Because as long as he liked what he saw, as long as he admired himself in mirrors or in the eyes of other women, he paid no attention to me. And I wanted him to pay no attention to me. You don’t leave a woman that you no longer see, who doesn’t make scenes, who doesn’t make a noise, who doesn’t slam doors—it’s far too convenient.

  For Philippe Toussaint, I was an ideal woman, one who is no trouble. He wouldn’t have left me for passion. He wasn’t in love with his conquests, I could smell it. He had their odor on his fingertips, but not their love.

  I think I have always had this reflex, of being no trouble. As a child, in my foster families, I said to myself: Don’t make any noise, that way, this time, you’ll stay, they’ll keep you. I knew very well that love had visited us a long time ago and had gone elsewhere, between other walls that would never again be ours. The chalet had been an interlude for our two salty bodies. I looked after Philippe Toussaint like you look after a housemate you have to play up to, for fear that one day he would disappear, taking Léo with him.

  For Christmas, Léo received everything she’d written on her list. Books that were exclusively hers, including Blue Dog by Nadja. A princess dress, videos, a doll with red hair, and a new magician’s kit. Even better than the one she got last Christmas. With two new wands, magical playing cards, and mystical cards. Léo has always adored doing magic tricks. Even when tiny, she wanted to be a magician. She wanted to make everything vanish inside hats.

  The following day, since it was a public holiday, there were fewer trains. Just one in four. I could rest, play with her. She made her hands disappear behind multicolored scarves.

  In the evening, I packed her suitcase. On the morning of December 26th, as in previous years, Philippe Toussaint’s parents came to collect my daughter to take her for a week in the Alps. They didn’t stay long, but the mother and son had time to shut themselves in the kitchen to talk to each other in muted voices. She must have given him a check for Christmas, and me, like every year, I was entitled to dark chocolates filled with a cherry in liqueur. Not the Mon Chéri ones, but a lesser brand in pink packaging called Mon Trésor.

  This time I was the one who went out onto the doorstep to wave at Léo when Mother and Father Toussaint’s car drove off. She had a smile on her lips and her magician’s kit in her lap. She lowered the window and we said to each other, “Until in a week.” She blew me kisses. I kept them.

  Every time I saw their very big car taking away my very little girl, I was scared that they wouldn’t bring her back to me. I tried not to think about it, but my body thought about it for me—I fell ill, I was feverish.

  Like every time Léo went away, I spent the week tidying up her room. Being in the middle of her dolls and her pink walls soothed me.

  On December 31st, Philippe Toussaint and I rang in the New Year in front of the television. We ate all his favorite things. Like every year, Stéphanie had given us unsold hampers of food. “Violette, you must eat them before tomorrow because after that it’ll be too late, O.K.”

  Léonine called us on January 1st, in the morning.

  “Happy New Year, Mommy. Happy New Year, Daddy. Happy New Year, Daddy, Mommy. I’m going to try for my first star!”

  She returned on January 3rd, glowing with health. My fever subsided. The Toussaint parents stayed for an hour. Léo had pinned her first star onto her sweater.

  “Mummy, I got my first star!”

  “Well done, darling.”

  “I know how to slalom.”

  “Well done, sweetheart.”

  “Mummy, can I go on holiday with Anaïs?”

  “Who’s Anaïs?”

  39.

  The essential is invisible to the eyes.

  No one’s dying right now.”

  Father Cédric, Nono, Elvis, Gaston, Pierre, Paul, and Jacques are deep in conversation in my kitchen. The Lucchini brothers have been going round in circles. It has been more than a month since anyone set foot in their funeral parlor. All the men are having a coffee around my table. I made them a chocolate marbled cake, which they are all sharing while chattering like little girls around a birthday cake.

  I’m finishing planting my chrysanthemum seedlings in my garden. The doors are open. Their voices carry to where I am.

  “It’s because the weather’s good. People die less when the weather’s good.”

  “Got the parent-teacher meeting this evening. Can’t stand it. Any case, they’re all going to tell me my kid does bugger all there. Thinks of nothing but clowning around.”

  “Our business is all about the human. We encounter living people who are lost, who attach enormous importance to the ceremony going well because it will allow them to mourn, so it’s a true service occupation, there’s no room for error.”

  “I baptized two children last Sunday, twins, it was very moving.”

  “What makes our work different from all the rest is that we deal with the emotional, not the rational.”

  “Oh, we had a jolly good laugh!”

  “Meaning?”

  “That there’s no room for error. For each family, there will be something that really matters. What suits one family won’t necessarily suit another. It’s all in the details. For example, for my last deceased person, there was just one thing that mattered: the watch being on the right-hand wrist.”

  “Saw a good film yesterday evening on the TV, with that actor, you know, the one who’s blondish, his name’s on the tip of my tongue . . . ”

  “And we can’t make spelling mistakes on the death notices, either, there’ll always be someone who is called Kristof with a K, or Chrystine with a Y.”

  “What time does Bricomarché close? I’ve got to go and get a part for the lawnmower.”

  “And it’s all about the relations with the deceased. Between the husband and the wife, the children and the parents, in short, it’s about dealing with the human.”

  “Hey, I ran into that little lady, what’s she called . . . Madame Degrange, her husband worked for Toutagri.”

  “Gaston, watch out, you’re spilling coffee everywhere.”

  “And we have to take care of the religious questions, and the whole emotional aspect.”

  “There’s the hairdresser, too, that Jeannot, he told me he’s had health worries with his wife.”

  “Paradoxically, very few people are in tears when they come through our door, they’re just thinking coffin, church, cemetery.”

  “And you, dear old Eliane, what do you think? Are you after a bit of cake, or a stroke?”

  “And when we talk to them about selecting music, readings, about what you can do, in homage, in memory, because there’s plenty you can do, they do give us pretty free rein.”

  “It’s been a while now that we haven’t seen Violette’s detective.”

  “Personally, I always find it strange when people come to thank me and say, ‘It was really beautiful.’ We are talking about a funeral, after all.”

  “Personally, I reckon he’s got the hots for her, have you seen how he looks at our Violette?”

  “People have been buried for five thousand years, but the market’s very recent. What we’re doing is ridding the trade of its cobwebs.”

  “Yesterday evening, Odile made us caramelized chicken.”

  “Our funeral rites have changed. Before, everyone systematically went to put flowers on graves on All Saints’ Day, but now people no longer live where their parents and grandp
arents live.”

  “I do wonder who on earth we’re going to have as our next president . . . As long as it isn’t the blonde.”

  “Nowadays, the management of memory is different: the dead are burnt. Customs change, the financial costs do, too; people organize their own funerals.”

  “It comes to the same thing. Left, Right, all they think about is lining their own pockets . . . All that matters is what we’ve got left in our wallets at the end of the month, and that, that will never change for the likes of us.”

  “Do you realize that in 2040, twenty-five percent of French people will organize their own funerals?”

  “I disagree, never forget that they’re the ones who vote the laws in.”

  “But that, that depends on the family, there are families that don’t talk about death. It’s like sex, it’s taboo.”

  “But for you, Father, it amounts to the same thing.”

  “We’re death’s representatives on Earth. So to other people, we’re bound to be sad.”

  “A nice, warm goat-cheese salad, with pine nuts and a drizzle of honey.”

  “You say ‘funeral chamber’ if it’s private, and ‘mortuary chamber’ if it’s public.”

  “For me, that’s it, I’ve got the barbecue out again.”

  “Cleansing, dressing, complete preservation care. The law doesn’t impose that yet, but it shouldn’t be long, for reasons of hygiene.”

  “And a new shop’s opening there, instead of Carnat’s. A bakery, I believe.”

  “Proposed law: keeping the deceased in the home is no longer permitted.”

  “And all the fuses blew yesterday evening, I think it’s the washing machine that’s acting up and short-circuiting everything.”

  “I say that there’s a place for the living and one for the dead. When you keep a dead person in the house, you risk not being able to mourn properly.”

  “She sure has a great figure. I’d have her in my bed, wouldn’t be sleeping in the bath.”

  “For me, there’s just one rule: to follow your heart.”

  “You going away on a little holiday this summer?”

  “When I started, I told myself: I will not do expensive coffins for cremations. A rookie mistake. My father told me, ‘Why, you think there’s more point three meters under the ground? A family wanting to pay a fortune for a coffin that’s heading for the flames, of course it’s irrational, but you can’t stop them from choosing an outrageously expensive coffin. You know nothing about people’s lives, it’s not for you to decide.’”

  “Me, I say retirement is the beginning of the end.”

  “Over time, as I’ve dealt with more families, I realize that our father was right . . . There are many people who want to spend astronomical sums on the coffin, for what reason? I don’t know . . . ”

  “We’re going to Brittany, to the brother-in-law’s.”

  “It’s the guys from the council who are organizing it, it’ll be early July. I, for one, really like fishing, I bother no one, apart from the fish, and even then, I chuck ’em back in the river.”

  “We have six days to bury someone, that’s the law.”

  “He gives piano lessons. Been around for at least three years now. A tall fellow, always dressed like he’s on TV.”

  “We’re not permitted to split up ashes because, in the eyes of the law, they’re a body.”

  “A little onion, and then you cook the mushrooms in the cream, delicious.”

  “Scattering ashes in the sea, you only see that at the cinema. The boat rocks, it’s windy, and the ashes rise to the surface. The truth is, ashes must be thrown, in a biodegradable urn, about a kilometer from the coastline.”

  “So, how many kids still come to catechism, Father? Can’t be a ton of them.”

  “With funerary contracts, people no longer want to spend thousands of euros on a family vault when their children live in Lyons or Marseilles. Lots of people say to us, ‘We weren’t keen on cremation, but after thinking about it, we prefer our children to benefit from the money while we’re alive.’ I tell them they’re absolutely right.”

  “I have three weddings scheduled for July, and two for August.”

  “It’s still a bit weird, organizing your own funeral. Seeing your name on a tombstone when you’re not yet in the box.”

  “What I said to the mayor was, when it comes to roads with that level of traffic, we should do something. One day’s never the same as another.”

  “People who plan their own funeral, they’re not grieving, there isn’t the shock of loss. So they spend half as much money.”

  “Well, the vet will be pleased!”

  “In the funeral business, it’s forbidden to forbid. But I do advise families against attending exhumations.”

  “Did you see it? That second goal, a masterpiece . . . Straight into the top corner.”

  “We must preserve a nice image of a person we’ve loved. It’s hard enough to lose a loved one, to bury them . . . Fortunately, embalming has improved a great deal. Nine times out of ten, the result is really very attractive, the person appears to be sleeping. I apply a little makeup, so the skin looks natural again, I dress them up, and I use the deceased’s usual perfume, which I request from the family.”

  “Don’t know, have to see, maybe the cylinder-head gasket. If it’s that, it’ll cost an arm and a leg.”

  “It’s serious, but not very, very serious, because I know what serious is now. Two weeks ago, I ripped the fender off the hearse, broke my phone, had leaks in the house—it’s annoying, but it ain’t serious.”

  “The other day, that Elvis, he opens the door of the technical office, and he comes face to face with the boss, that Darmonville, who was having it off with Mother Rémy. Sorry, Father. That Elvis, he about-turned and legged it.”

  “Tell people we love them, make the most of them while they’re alive. I think I have more joie de vivre now than before. A perspective on things.”

  “Love me tender . . . ”

  “I’m not saying one should become a cold-blooded creature. I understand grief, but I’m not grieving. I don’t know the deceased.”

  “It’s harder when you have memories of the deceased. When you’ve known them personally.”

  40.

  My grandmother taught me early on how to pick stars: at night, just place a basin of water in the middle of the courtyard, and you’ll have them at your feet.

  I went to Mr. Rouault’s office to ask him to stop everything. I told him that he was probably right, that Philippe Toussaint had disappeared, that we’d leave it at that. That I didn’t want to stir up the past anymore.

  Mr. Rouault didn’t ask me any questions. He phoned Mr. Legardinier in front of me, to tell him to stop proceedings. Not to follow up on my request. Today, whether I’m called Trenet or Toussaint really doesn’t matter. People call me Violette or “Mademoiselle Violette.” The word “mademoiselle” may have been erased from the French language, but not from my cemetery.

  On my way home, I stopped at the tomb of Gabriel Prudent. One of my pine trees was giving shade to Irène Fayolle’s urn. Eliane joined me, growled something, and then sat at my feet. Then, from nowhere, Moody Blue and Florence appeared, rubbed up against me, and then stretched right out on the tombstone. I bent down to pet them. Their bellies and the marble were warm.

  I wondered whether Gabriel and Irène were using the cats to give me a sign. Like when Léo went on the steps to wave at the passengers in the trains. I imagined the two of them, when Irène had returned to Gabriel at Aix station. I wondered why she hadn’t left Paul Seul, why she had gone back home. And what her final wish, to rest beside this man, really meant. Did she imagine that, although they hadn’t had a life together, they would have eternity? Would Julien Seul return to tell me the rest of this story? These thoughts led me to Sasha, toward Sasha.

>   Nono turned up beside me.

  “Dreaming, Violette?”

  “If you like . . . ”

  “At last, there’s a client at the Lucchini brothers’.”

  “Who?”

  “A road-accident victim . . . in a bad state, apparently.”

  “Who is it? Did you know him?”

  “No one knows who he is. He had no papers on him.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “It’s the guys from the council who found him in a ditch, apparently he’d been there for three days.”

  “Three days?”

  “Yes, a biker.”

  In the funeral chamber, Pierre and Paul Lucchini explain to me that they are waiting for the police requisition order. In a few hours’ time, the biker’s body will go to Mâcon. The pathologist had put some forensic obstacle in place so an autopsy would be carried out.

  Like in a bad TV series, with bad lighting and bad actors, Paul presents the body of the victim to me. Only the body, not the face. “There’s no longer a face,” Paul says. He also says that he doesn’t have the right to show me the deceased.

  “But for you, Violette, it’s not the same. We won’t mention it. Do you think you know him?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you want to see him then?”

  “To be totally sure of it. He wasn’t wearing a helmet?”

  “He was, but he hadn’t fastened it.”

  The man is naked. Paul has placed a cloth on his genitals and on his head. The body is covered in bruises. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a dead person. Usually, when I deal with them, they are already “in the box,” as Nono puts it. I feel unwell, my legs buckle, a black veil falls over my eyes.