Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin

  I never heard a thing from Armelle and Jean-Louis Caussin, Anaïs’s parents. Not a phone call, not a letter, not a sign. They must have held it against me, not going to the burial of our children’s ashes.

  The old Toussaints returned to the cemetery several times. Each time, they brought their son with them. I never saw them again, either, after Léonine’s death. They no longer came inside my home. It was like a tacit agreement between us.

  Anger, and the promise of substantial compensation, kept Philippe Toussaint going. His obsession was that those who caused the fire should pay. But he was repeatedly told that no one “caused” the fire, that it was an accident. Which made him even angrier. A silent anger. He wanted compensation. He thought our daughter’s ashes were worth their weight in gold.

  He started to change physically, his features hardened, his hair whitened.

  When, twice a year, he returned from the Brancion-sur-Chalon cemetery, and his parents dropped him off outside the house without ever coming in, he said nothing to me. When he got up in the morning, he said nothing to me. When he went off on a ride, he said nothing to me. When he got back, hours later, he said nothing to me. At the table, he said nothing to me. Only the video games he played with his joysticks, sitting in front of the television, made a racket. And from time to time, when the police or the lawyers or the insurers phoned, he shouted and demanded an explanation.

  We still slept together, but I no longer slept. I was terrified by my nightmares. At night he stuck himself to me. And I imagined that it was my daughter, there, behind me.

  Once or twice, he said to me, “We’ll have another kid,” and I replied yes, but I took a contraceptive as well as the antidepressants and tranquilizers. My stomach was done for. Carry life in the death that was now my body? Never. Léo had made that disappear, too: the possibility of another child.

  I could have left, dumped Philippe Toussaint after the death of our child, but I had neither the strength nor the courage to do so. Philippe Toussaint was the only family I had left. Remaining close to this man was also staying close to Léonine. To see her father’s features every day was also to see her own features. Going past the door of her room was to be close to her world, her footprints, her passage on Earth. I would forever be a woman who would never leave, but who would be left.

  In September 1995, I received a parcel with no sender’s name. It had been posted from Brancion-en-Chalon. At first, I thought it could only come from my dear Célia. That she had been over there, at the cemetery. But I didn’t recognize her writing.

  When I opened the parcel, I had to sit down. I had in my hands a white funerary plaque with a lovely dolphin engraved to one side and these words: “My darling, you were born on September 3rd, died on July 13th, but to me, you will always be my August 15th.”

  I could have written those few words. Who had sent me this plaque? Someone wanted me to go and place it on Léonine’s tomb, but who?

  I put it back in the packaging and put it away in the cupboard in my room under a pile of towels we never used.

  While folding the laundry, I found a list of names and positions slipped between two sheets:

  Edith Croquevieille, director.

  Swan Letellier, cook.

  Geneviève Magnan, dinner lady.

  Eloïse Petit and Lucie Lindon, supervisors.

  Alain Fontanel, maintenance man.

  The list of the staff of Notre-Dame-des-Prés, scribbled by Philippe Toussaint. He must have noted down their names during the week of the court case. The list had been written on the back of a bill, a meal for three people in the café at the law courts, the year of the lawsuit, at Mâcon. Three people: Philippe Toussaint and, presumably, his parents.

  I took that as a sign coming from Léonine. On the same day, I received that plaque and I had before my eyes the list of the people who had seen her for the last time.

  It’s from that day on that I started to go out of my house, to wave at passengers in the trains from my barrier. And it’s from that day on that Philippe Toussaint started to look at me as if I’d lost my mind. But he didn’t understand me: I was finding it again.

  I started by ripping up my chemical life jacket. I stopped the medication, little by little. The alcohol completely. All the pains would lay into me, ruthlessly no doubt, but I would no longer die of them.

  I left the house, through the glass my eyes met Stéphanie’s, behind her register, and she gave me a sad smile. I walked for a good ten minutes, reflecting that before, when I went this way, past the houses, I had my daughter’s hand in my pocket. My pockets would always be empty from now on, but Léonine’s hands would continue to guide me. I pushed open the door of Bernard’s Driving School, to sign up for the written and road tests for a license.

  46.

  You’re no longer where you were,

  but you’re everywhere that I am.

  I’m gradually waking up while taking small sips of my piping-hot tea. The morning sun gets a few rays through the kitchen’s drawn curtains. A little dust floats in the room, I find it beautiful, almost magical. I’ve put some music on, quietly, Georges Delerue, the theme song of Truffaut’s film, Day for Night. I hold my cup in my right hand, and my left hand pets Eliane, who stretches her neck and closes her eyes. I love feeling her warmth under my fingers.

  Nono knocks, and comes in. Like Father Cédric, he never kisses me, or shakes my hand. Just good morning or good evening “my Violette.” Before pouring himself a coffee, he places the Journal de Saône-et-Loire on the table for me to read: “Brancion-en-Chalon: Road Tragedy, Biker Identified.” I hear myself saying to Nono, in a flat voice:

  “Could you read me the article, please, I don’t have my glasses.”

  Eliane, who senses the tension in my fingers, rubs up a little against Nono, as if to say hello, and then scratches on the door to be let out. Nono pets her, lets her out, and then returns to me. He pulls a chair over to sit opposite me, fumbles in his pocket, puts on his glasses, which are reimbursed one hundred percent by social security, and begins to read, a bit like a child in primary school, emphasizing each syllable. Like when Léonine was a baby and I read to her from the Boscher Method, “If all the girls in the world wanted to hold hands, all around the sea, they could dance in a ring.” But the words are not the same as in my colorful book.

  “The victim of the fatal accident in Brancion-en-Chalon is said to have been identified by his partner. He apparently lived in the Lyons area. The man was found lifeless on April 23rd in Brancion-en-Chalon. According to the initial police reports, his motorbike, a striking black 650cc Hyosung Aquila—its serial number had been removed—had hit the verge, causing the driver, who was wearing an unfastened helmet, to fall. On the day following his disappearance, his partner had alerted police stations and hospitals in the area, and that is how the connection could be established.”

  We’re interrupted by some family members of a deceased person, arriving at the cemetery in clusters. Some are playing acoustic guitars. Everyone is holding a balloon in one hand.

  Nono puts the newspaper down and says to me:

  “I’ll go.”

  “Me, too.”

  As I put on my black overcoat, I wonder whether I should tell the police that Philippe Toussaint had come from my place.

  “Only silence,” Sasha often said.

  Haven’t I given enough already? Don’t I deserve some peace?

  Even dead, Philippe Toussaint continues to torment me. I remember his final words and the bruises he left on my arms.

  I want to live in peace. I want to live how Sasha taught me to. Here and now. I want Life. And not to churn up a man who contributed nothing to mine. Whose parents took away my only sun.

  The hearse enters the cemetery and drives as far as the Gambini family vault. Today, a well-known fairground entertainer is being buried, Marcel Gambini, born one day in 1942 in the municip
ality of Brancion-en-Chalon. His deported parents only just had time to hide him in the village church.

  I found myself almost wishing that desperate people would come and hide their children at Father Cédric’s. The lottery of life sometimes just doesn’t work. I would have so liked to be brought up by a man like Father Cédric, instead of going from family to family.

  There are at least three hundred people at Marcel’s funeral, including guitarists, violinists, and a bassist, who play some Django Reinhardt around his coffin. Their music contrasts with the grief, the tears that flow, the somber looks, the lost, bowed figures. Everyone falls silent when Marcel’s granddaughter, Marie Gambini, a young girl of sixteen, starts to speak:

  “My grandfather had a soft spot for cotton candy, the crunch of toffee apples, the smell of pancakes and waffles, the sweetness of marshmallow, nougat, and churros. Chips dipped in the salt of life, fingers sticky with simple pleasures. He will forever have the smile of the boy triumphantly holding his goldfish in a bag of water. Fishing rod in one hand, balloon in the other, perched on a carousel horse. That was the struggle of his life: giving us a shooting gallery, cuddly tigers invading the bedcovers, hours of playing peek-a-boo with a child in the plane, fire engine, or racing car of a merry-go-round. My grandfather was about hitting the jackpot and first thrills, that first kiss in a conga, a haunted castle, a maze. That icing-sugary kiss that gave us an enduring foretaste of the roller coasters the future had in store for us. My grandfather was also a voice, music, the god of the Gypsy women who can read the lines of a palm. He had Gypsy jazz in his blood, and he has gone off to play new chords, where we can no longer hear him. The line on his palm has broken. I don’t ask you to rest in peace, dear Grandfather, because you’re incapable of resting. I simply say to you: have fun and see you later.”

  She kisses the coffin. The rest of the family follows suit.

  While Pierre and Jacques Lucchini lower Marcel Gambini’s coffin into his vault with the help of ropes and pulleys, all the musicians play Django Reinhardt’s “Minor Swing” again. Everyone releases their balloons, which float up into the sky. Then each member of the family scatters lottery tickets and soft toys onto the coffin.

  This evening, I won’t close the gates of my cemetery at 7 P.M.; the Gambini family asked my permission to remain beside the grave for supper. I gave them permission to stay until midnight. To thank me, they gave me dozens of tickets for big-thrill attractions at the next fun fair in Mâcon, in a fortnight. I didn’t dare turn them down. I’ll give them to Nono’s grandchildren.

  I don’t know if you can judge the life of a man by the beauty of his funeral, but Marcel Gambini’s is one of the most beautiful I’ve had the privilege to attend.

  47.

  The darkness has to intensify

  for the first star to appear.

  In January of 1996, four months after receiving the funerary plaque, I put it in my bag and told Philippe Toussaint that, for once, he was going to have to work, and take care of the barrier for two days. I didn’t give him time to react, I had already left, behind the steering wheel of Stéphanie’s car, a red Fiat Panda, with a stuffed white tiger dangling from the rearview mirror to keep me company.

  Normally, I would have had a three-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of me. It took me six. Nothing would be normal anymore. I had to stop several times. During the journey, I listened to the radio. I sang for Léonine, whom I imagined, two and a half years earlier, sitting in the back of the Caussins’ car, Cocculine in pocket, clutching doudou.

  “Like the bee, like the bird, swiftly, the dream flies away, like a cloud, like the wind, night falls as the moon tiptoes in, the fires in the hearths die down, even the embers will hide, the flower closes on the dew, only the mist will rise . . . ”

  As I scanned the houses, the trees, the lanes, the landscapes, I tried to imagine what had held her attention. Did she doze off? Did she do some magic tricks?

  On the rare occasions we had been together in a car, it was in Célia’s or Stéphanie’s. Otherwise, we took the train. We didn’t have a car, Philippe Toussaint just had his motorbike. That way, he didn’t have to take us anywhere. In any case, where would he have taken us?

  I arrived at Brancion-en-Chalon at around 4 P.M. Teatime, I thought. The door of the cemetery-keeper’s house was ajar. I saw no one. I asked for nothing. I wanted to find Léonine all on my own.

  This cemetery, it was like a treasure-hunt map, but the wrong way round. Harrowing, the right way round.

  After half an hour of weaving between the graves, clutching the white plaque, I finally found the children’s section, in the Yews wing. I thought to myself: I should be busy preparing for Léonine to start middle school, buying stationery, filling in enrollment forms, forbidding her from wearing eye makeup, and here I am, like a lost soul, a wandering soul, deader than the dead, hunting for her name on a tomb.

  For a long time, I asked myself what wrong I had done to deserve this. For a long time, I asked myself what someone had wanted to punish me for. I reviewed all my mistakes. When I hadn’t managed to understand her, when I’d been annoyed with her, when I hadn’t listened to her, when I hadn’t believed her, when I hadn’t realized that she was cold or hot, or really did have a sore throat.

  I kissed her surname and first name, engraved on the white marble. I didn’t ask her to forgive me for not having come sooner. I didn’t promise her to come back often. I told her that I preferred to be back with her in the Mediterranean in August, that it was much more like her than this place of silence and tears. I promised her that I would find out what had happened that night, why her room had burned down.

  And I placed my funerary plaque, “My darling, you were born on September 3rd, died on July 13th, but to me, you will always be my August 15th.” Among the flowers, poems, hearts and angels. Beside another one with the words: “The sun set too soon.”

  I couldn’t say how long I stayed there, but when it was time to leave, the cemetery gates were locked.

  I had to knock on the keeper’s door. There was some light inside the house. A soft, indirect light. I tried looking through the windows, but the drawn curtains stopped me from seeing anything. I had to knock again and again, on the door, on the windows, no one came. I ended up pushing open the door, which was already ajar. I went in, calling out, “Anyone at home?” No one answered me.

  I heard a noise from upstairs, footsteps above my head, and music, too. Some Bach, interrupted by a presenter’s voice, coming from a radio.

  I immediately liked this house. The walls and the aromas. I closed the door behind me and I waited, just standing there and looking at the furniture around me. The kitchen had been turned into a tea store. On the shelves there were around fifty labeled tea caddies. The names had been handwritten in ink. Terra-cotta teapots, also labeled, corresponded to the names on the caddies. Perfumed candles had been lit.

  Moments before, I was confronting my daughter’s ashes, and by pushing open a door, I had changed continents.

  I believe I waited a long time before hearing footsteps on the stairs. I saw some black mules, black linen trousers, and a white shirt. The man must have been around sixty-five. He was of mixed race, probably a combination of Vietnam and France. He wasn’t surprised to see me standing there, in front of his door, he simply said:

  “Sorry, I was taking a shower, do sit down, please.”

  His voice reminded me of the actor Jean-Louis Trintignant’s. Emotional, melancholic, gentle, and sensual. With that voice, he said, “Sorry, I was taking a shower, do sit down, please,” as if we had an appointment. I thought he was mistaking me for someone else. I wasn’t able to reply because he continued:

  “I’m going to make you a glass of soy milk with ground almonds and orange blossom.”

  I would have preferred a shot of vodka, but I didn’t let on. I watched him pouring the milk, orange blossom, and ground almonds into a b
lender and filling a large glass with his concoction and sticking in a colorful straw, as if at a child’s birthday party. Then he handed it to me. As he did so, he smiled at me as no one had ever smiled at me, not even Célia.

  Everything about him was elongated. His legs, arms, hands, neck, eyes, mouth. His limbs and features had been drawn with a two-meter ruler. Like they have in primary schools to measure the world on maps.

  I started drinking through the straw, I found it delicious—it reminded me of the childhood I’d never had, and of Léonine’s, it reminded me of something infinitely gentle. I dissolved into tears. It was the first time I was enjoying swallowing something. Since July 14th, 1993, I had lost my sense of taste. Léonine had done that, too, made my sense of taste disappear.

  I said to him, “Forgive me, the gates were locked.” He replied, “No harm done. Take a seat.” He took a chair and brought it to me.

  I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t speak. I was incapable of doing so. Léo’s death had also taken words away from me. I read, but I was no longer able to say. I stored things up, but nothing came out. The life of my words boiled down to, “Thank you . . . hello . . . goodbye . . . it’s ready . . . sorry, I’m going to bed.” Even to do the tests for my driving license, I hadn’t needed to speak, I’d just had to tick the right boxes and parallel park.

  I was still standing. My tears were rolling down into my glass of milk. He dabbed a cotton handkerchief with a perfume called “Rêve d’Ossian” and made me breathe it in. I carried on crying as if the floodgates had given way, but the tears I shed did me good. They cleansed me of nasty things, like bad sweat, like poisonous toxins oozing out of me. I thought I had cried all my tears, but there were more left. The dirty tears, the muddy ones. Like stagnant water, the sort that just festers at the bottom of a hole, long after the rain has stopped.