Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin

  41.

  The earth conceals you, but my heart still sees you.

  On January 3rd, 1993, Mother Toussaint gave me a brochure before she left. Anaïs was Catherine’s friend (my mother-in-law never called Léonine by her real name), she was the daughter of “very nice people” they had befriended during their holiday in the Alps. The father was a doctor, the mother a radiologist. When Mother Toussaint said the words “doctor” or “lawyer,” she was ecstatic. Like me when I swam in the Mediterranean with a diving mask. To her, “frequenting” doctors and lawyers was the pinnacle of happiness.

  Anaïs was in Léo’s skiing group. They had gained their first stars together. By happy coincidence, Anaïs’s family lived in Maxeville, near Nancy.

  Every year, little Anaïs went on holiday to La Clayette, in Saône-et-Loire, and it would be nice if Léonine went with her in July. Anaïs’s parents had even offered to come and collect Léonine on the way, and Mother Toussaint had said yes, without asking us, because “poor little Catherine, spending a whole month stuck beside a railway line . . . ” Mother Toussaint always spoke about Léo as if she felt sorry for her. As if she had to take things in hand to save her from the great misfortune of being my daughter.

  I didn’t reply that the “poor little girl” wasn’t unhappy beside the railway line, whatever the season. That between each train, we did plenty of things in the summer; that we inflated a swimming pool in the garden—of course, our swimming pool was small, but we could still swim in it, and we had great fun. We laughed in our plastic pool. But the verb “to laugh” didn’t feature in Philippe Toussaint’s parents’ vocabulary.

  I merely said that in August we were going back to Sormiou, but if Léo wanted to go away with a friend in July, why not.

  Once the Toussaint parents had gone, I looked at the brochure for the Notre-Dame-des-Prés holiday camp in La Clayette. “Only our reliability never takes a holiday.” Beneath the slogan, there were the general conditions for enrollment, and in the photos, a blue sky. Rain must have been banned by the person who had compiled the promotional brochure. On the first page, there was a photo of a very fine château and a large lake. On the next page, a refectory where children aged about ten were eating; a studio with the same children painting; the lakeside beach with the same children swimming; and finally, in the biggest picture, some impressive countryside where the same children were riding ponies.

  Why is it that all little girls dream of riding a pony?

  Personally, I was wary of ponies after seeing the film Gone with the Wind. I was more fearful of Léo riding a pony than of her riding on the back of Philippe Toussaint’s motorbike.

  Mother Toussaint had drummed the idea into Léo’s head, “This summer, you’re going to go pony riding in the countryside with Anaïs.” The magic words, the words that make all seven-year-old little girls dream.

  The months and the trains went by. Léonine learned to tell the difference between a tale, a diary, a dictionary, a poem, and an essay. She solved some problems, “I get 30 francs for Christmas, I buy a sweater for 10 francs, a cake for 2 francs, and then Mommy gives me 5 francs in pocket money, how much do I have left at Easter?” She learnt about France, its position on the map, its major cities, its place in Europe, in the world. She drew a red spot on Marseilles. She did magic tricks. She made everything vanish, apart from the mess in her room.

  Then, on her report card, she proudly showed me, “Promote to next grade.”

  On July 13th, 1993, Anaïs’s parents came to our place to take away my daughter.

  They were charming. They were like the holiday-camp brochure. There was only blue sky in their eyes. Léo threw herself into the arms of Anaïs. The little girls couldn’t stop laughing. I even thought to myself: Léo doesn’t laugh as much with me.

  “I’m tired, I’d like to rest . . . ”

  Julien Seul is facing me. He looks drawn. Perhaps it’s the wan light from the walls of the hospital room. It was Nono who called him after paramedics picked me up from the Lucchini brothers’ floor. Nono thinks we’re lovers and that Julien Seul will take care of me. Nono is wrong, no one will take care of me apart from me.

  All that I’m able to say to the detective, who seems concerned for me, is, “I’m tired, I’d like to rest.”

  If Irène Fayolle hadn’t turned back between Aix and Marseilles to rejoin Gabriel Prudent at the station, Julien Seul would never have entered my cemetery. If Julien Seul hadn’t noticed my red dress peeping out from under my coat on the morning I took him to Gabriel Prudent’s tomb, he would never have got mixed up in my life. If he hadn’t got mixed up in my life, he wouldn’t have found Philippe Toussaint. And if Philippe Toussaint hadn’t received my request for a divorce, he would never have returned to Brancion. That’s all it takes.

  I told no one that Philippe Toussaint had come to my house last week, not even Nono.

  The first thing Julien Seul noticed, on entering my hospital room, was my arms. He doesn’t miss a thing. He said nothing, but I felt his eyes focusing on my bruises.

  But there’s something crazier: when he left my place, Philippe Toussaint was killed at exactly the same spot as Reine Ducha (1961–1982), the young woman who died in an accident about three hundred meters from the cemetery, and who, some say, appears at the side of the road on summer nights.

  Did Philippe Toussaint see her? Why hadn’t he fastened his helmet, when he hadn’t removed it between arriving at and leaving my place? Why didn’t he have any identity papers?

  Julien Seul gets up, telling me he’ll be back later. Before leaving my room, he asks me if I need anything. I shake my head and close my eyes. And I go over everything for the thousandth time, maybe more, maybe less.

  Anaïs’s parents didn’t set off immediately. They wanted to “get acquainted.” Give the girls time to catch up. We went to Gino’s, the pizzeria run by the Alsatians who have never set foot in Italy. Philippe Toussaint stayed at home to take care of the barrier and the “midday trains”: 12:14, 13:08, and 14:06. It suited him fine. He loathed making conversation with people he didn’t know, and for him, talking about holidays, children, and ponies, that was chick stuff.

  The girls had a pizza topped with a fried egg, while chatting about ponies, swimming suits, school, that first star, magic tricks, and sun cream.

  Anaïs’s parents, Armelle and Jean-Louis Caussin, went for the daily special. I copied them, thinking that it should be me paying the bill. That that was the least I could do, since they were covering Léonine’s transport. Since I had just finished paying for the holiday camp, I risked going into the red.

  I thought about that all through the meal, between each mouthful. I wondered how I was going to deal with this overdraft at the bank, with it not being authorized. I was adding everything up in my head: Three daily specials, plus two children’s meals, plus five drinks. I remember saying to myself: Thank goodness they’re driving, there won’t be any wine. Philippe Toussaint still gave me nothing. All three of us lived on my salary. I had to count every centime.

  I also remember that they said to me: “You’re so young, at what age did you have Catherine?” They didn’t know that Léonine was called Léonine. And I remember Léo dipping her pizza dough into the egg yolk. She said, “A poke in the eye for you!” And she laughed.

  And I remember thinking to myself: That’s it, she’s a big girl now, she has a real friend. My first friend, it took a train strike for me to meet her at the age of twenty-four.

  I was saying, “Yes . . . no . . . oh . . . ah . . . O.K. . . . that’s wonderful,” while gazing now and then at the Caussins’ beautiful blue eyes, but I wasn’t listening to them. I was finding it hard to tear my eyes away from Léo. And I was counting: Three daily specials, plus two children’s meals, plus five drinks.

  Léo punctuated her sentences with laughter. She’d just lost two teeth. Her smile was like a piano abandoned in an attic.
I’d done her hair in two braids, more practical for traveling.

  Before leaving the restaurant, she made the paper napkins vanish. I would have loved her to make the bill vanish. I paid by check, quaking with fear. Thinking that if it bounced, I would die of shame. It’s strange, I presume that all of Malgrange knew that my husband was cheating on me, but people’s looks in Grand-Rue didn’t bother me. On the other hand, if it had been known that I wrote bouncing checks, I would never have left the house again.

  We made our way back to the barrier. Léo got into the Caussins’ car, in the back, next to Anaïs. She almost forgot her doudou; she’d hidden it in my handbag so Anaïs wouldn’t know she needed it for the journey. I made her take some Cocculine because she got carsick and there were three hundred and forty-eight kilometers to be covered. I slipped the tube in her pocket for the return journey.

  They would be arriving late afternoon, they would call me when they did.

  During the afternoon, while tidying Léo’s things, I found the list I’d written a fortnight earlier so I wouldn’t forget anything when packing her suitcase.

  Pocket money, 2 swimming suits, 7 undershirts, 7 pairs of underwear, sandals, sneakers (riding boots supplied), sun cream, hat, sunglasses, 3 dresses, 2 dungarees, 2 shorts, 3 trousers, 5 T-shirts (sheets and towels supplied), 2 swimming towels, 3 comics, mild + anti-lice shampoo, toothbrush, strawberry toothpaste, 1 warm sweater and 1 cardigan for evening + rain cape + 1 pen and sketchbook. Disposable camera + magician’s kit.

  Doudou.

  Close to 9 P.M., Léo phoned me, overexcited, everything was REALLY great. When she’d arrived at the camp, she’d seen the really cute ponies, she’d given them some bread and carrots, which was really cool, the weather was really lovely, the bedrooms were really pretty, there were two bunk beds in each room, Anaïs would sleep in the bottom bed and she in the top. After eating she’d done some magic tricks, everyone had really laughed. The supervisors were really nice, there was one who really looked like me. No, I couldn’t hand her over to Daddy, he’d gone for a ride. “Love you, Mommy, big kiss. Big kiss to Daddy.”

  After hanging up, I went out into my little patch of garden. I saw a Barbie swimming on her back in the plastic swimming pool. The water had turned green. I emptied it out. The water ran along the rose bushes. I would fill it again the following week, when Léo would be back home.

  42.

  Love is when you meet someone who gives you news about yourself.

  Julien Seul came to pick me up from the hospital. We drove in silence. He left for Marseilles immediately after dropping me off outside my house. Detective Seul told me he’d be back soon. He took my right hand and placed a kiss on it. It was the second one since we’ve known each other.

  I returned to my cemetery with a prescription for tonic and vitamin D. And test results that were good. Eliane was waiting for me at the door. In the house, Elvis, Gaston, and Nono were also waiting for me. Gaston’s wife had prepared a meal for me that just needed heating up. They gently teased me because I had passed out at the sight of a dead body, and “for the keeper of a cemetery, that really takes the cake!”

  I asked for news of the dead man like one asks for news of a retired colleague. The body of the “unknown biker” was taken to Mâcon. No one knew who he was. His bike wasn’t registered, and it was a standard model from which the serial number had been removed. Probably a stolen bike. The police had issued a description.

  Nono showed me the article in the Journal de Saône-et-Loire, headlined: “Cursed bend.”

  It’s been described as a tragic accident in the very place that Reine Ducha met her death in 1982. The biker hadn’t fastened his helmet and was riding at high speed. He was disfigured. Hence the impossibility of taking a photograph for identification, and using an Identikit picture instead.

  I look at the Identikit, which has been sketched. Philippe Toussaint is unrecognizable. In the caption it says, “Man of around fifty-five years old, light skin, brown hair, blue eyes, 1.88m, no tattoos or distinguishing features. No jewelry. White T-shirt. Levi’s jeans. Black boots and black leather biker jacket with Furygan label. For all inquiries, go to nearest police station, or telephone 17 (emergency services and police stations).”

  Who is going to look for him? Françoise Pelletier, I imagine. Did he have friends apart from her? When we lived together, he had mistresses, but not friends. Two or three fellow bikers in Charleville and Malgrange. And his parents. But his parents are dead now.

  I don’t dwell on the pages of the newspaper. I go up to my bedroom to have a shower and change. When I open my summer and winter wardrobe, I wonder whether to put on my pink dress under my raincoat, or wear a black dress. I’m a widow and no one knows it.

  I did recognize him in the mortuary chamber. I recognized his body. I think that, after the horror, it was disgust that made me fall to the ground. Disgust at him. The hatred, when he came to terrorize me in my garden, the hatred of him, which he passed on to me through my arm that he gripped too hard. So hard that I still have some marks.

  I’ve always worn colors under my dark clothes to cock a snook at death. Like the women who wear makeup under their burka. Today, I feel like doing the opposite. I feel like putting on a black dress, and slipping a pink coat over it. But I would never do that, out of respect for others, for those who remain, and who pace up and down the avenues of my cemetery. And I’ve never owned a pink coat.

  I go back down to the kitchen, avoiding tripping on my vacuum-packed dolls, pour myself a drop of port at the bottom of a glass, and wish myself good health.

  I set off to do the tour of my cemetery. Eliane follows me. I cover all four wings, Bays, Spindles, Cedars, and Yews. All in perfect order. The ladybirds are starting to appear. The tomb of Juliette Montrachet (1898–1962) is just as beautiful.

  From time to time, I pick up pots of flowers that have fallen over. José-Luis Fernandez is there. He’s watering his wife’s flowers. Tutti Frutti is keeping him company. Madames Pinto and Degrange, too. They are each scratching the surrounds of their husbands’ tombs in silence. They are scratching at earth that can’t take any more scratching. The weeds surrendered long ago.

  I come across a couple I know by sight. The woman comes occasionally to visit the tomb of her sister, Nadine Ribeau (1954–2007). We exchange greetings.

  It’s not raining anymore. It’s pleasant. I’m hungry. Philippe Toussaint’s death hasn’t ruined my appetite. I feel the silk of my pink dress brushing against my thighs. I say to myself that Léo won’t have to go through that. Burying her father. Me neither.

  By choosing to disappear from my life, Philippe Toussaint chose to disappear from his death. I won’t have to scratch around his tomb, or buy flowers for him. I think back to the love we made when we were young. It’s been years since I made love. In the Yew wing, I make for the children’s section.

  Most of the tombs are white. There are angels everywhere, on the plaques, on the banks of flowers, on the tombstones. There are pink hearts and teddy bears, many candles, and an abundance of poems.

  Today, no parents. When they come, it’s often after work, at around five or six o’clock, and often the same parents. At first, they spend all day there. Numb. Dazed with grief. Dead drunk. More dead than alive. After a few years, they space out their visits, and it’s better that way, because life goes on. And death is elsewhere.

  And then, in this section, there are children who would be a hundred-and-fifty years old. As the song goes:

  And in a hundred-and-fifty years’ time, we’ll no longer even

  think

  About those we have loved, about those we have lost,

  Come on, let’s empty our coffins for the thieves in the street!

  All ending up in the earth, my God, what a letdown!

  And look at these skeletons giving us dirty looks

  And don’t sulk, don’t wage war on
them

  There’ll be nothing left of us, any more than of them

  I’d stake more than my life on it

  So smile.

  I crouch down in front of the tombs of:

  Anaïs Caussin (1986–1993)

  Nadège Gardon (1985–1993)

  Océane Degas (1984–1993)

  Léonine Toussaint (1986–1993)

  43.

  Like a flower crushed by the wind of the storm,

  death snatched him away in the spring of his life.

  My daughter, you cannot imagine how bitterly I regretted giving you that magician’s kit for Christmas. Your trick worked, you really did vanish. And you made three of your friends, including Anaïs, vanish, too.

  The other rooms in the castle weren’t affected. Or they were evacuated in time. I don’t know anymore, that I have forgotten.

  Only yours. Only yours and your friends’. Your particular room was the one closest to the kitchens.

  A short circuit. Or a hot plate not quite turned off.

  Or food that might have caught fire in the oven.

  Or a gas leak.

  Or a cigarette end.

  Later, I’ll know what it was later.

  No trickery in your magic trick. No trapdoor hidden in the floor, no applause, no dramatic reappearance with music and bowing.

  Nothingness, ashes, the end of the world.

  Four small lives obliterated, turned to dust. All of you, placed end to end, you don’t even measure three meters; thirty-one years of little girls.

  After that night, you all flew away.

  One finds consolation where one can: you didn’t suffer. You were asphyxiated in your sleep. When the flames started to reach you, you were already gone. You were dreaming and that’s how you all remained.