Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin

  During these few days, I felt as if I were in disguise. Someone else in different clothes. Those of another woman.

  For a long time, I wondered whether I was disguised, or whether it was myself that I had found, discovered for the first time.

  A week after our arrival in Cap d’Antibes, Gabriel had to attend court in Lyons, to defend a man accused of homicide. Gabriel was certain of his innocence. He begged me to come with him. I thought: One might be able to abandon roses and one’s family, but not a man accused of murder.

  We returned to Marseilles to collect Gabriel’s car, parked a few streets away from my rose nursery. I would leave my van, and the keys hidden on the front left wheel, as I often did, and we’d go to Lyons together.

  When I saw Gabriel’s car, a red convertible sports car, I thought how I didn’t know this man. That I knew nothing about him. I’d just had the most wonderful days of my life, and what then?

  I don’t know why, but it reminded me of those holiday romances. The handsome stranger on the beach you fall madly in love with, and see again, all stiff in his clothes, on a gray Paris street in September, having lost all his summer charm.

  I thought of Paul. About Paul, I knew everything. His gentleness, his beauty, his refinement, his love, his shyness, our son.

  At that very moment, I saw Paul at the wheel of his car. He must have just left the rose nursery. He must have been looking everywhere for me. He was very pale, lost in thought. He didn’t see me. I would have liked his eyes to meet mine. By not seeing me, he left me the choice. Return to him, or get into Gabriel’s car. I saw myself in a shopwindow. In my green-and-gold dress. I saw that other woman.

  I said to Gabriel, who was already at the wheel of his convertible, “Wait for me.” I walked to my rose nursery, went past it, there was no one there. My employee must have been in the gardens, at the back.

  I started running as though being chased. Never have I run so fast. I went into the first hotel I came to and shut myself in a room to cry in peace.

  The following day, I returned to my work at the rose nursery, put my beige clothes back on, placed the snow globe on the counter, and then went home.

  My employee told me that a well-known lawyer had come to the rose nursery the day before, that he had looked everywhere for me, like a madman. That he didn’t look as good in real life as on television, smaller.

  A week later, the newspapers announced that the lawyer Gabriel Prudent had got the Lyons man acquitted.

  63.

  The absence of a father strengthens the memory

  of his presence.

  At the trial, apart from Geneviève Magnan, just one thing had struck him, obsessed him: Fontanel’s face. His suit, his gestures, his attitude. Of all those who had come to testify, he could remember only him.

  Alain Fontanel had been called last by the plaintiffs’ lawyer. After the supervisory staff, the firemen, the experts, the cook. As Fontanel answered the judge’s questions in a confident voice, Philippe Toussaint saw Geneviève Magnan lowering her eyes. When he’d caught sight of her in the corridors of the court, on the first day of the trial, and had learned that she had been at Notre-Dame-des-Prés that night, he’d instantly thought: It’s her who set fire to the room, she took her revenge.

  And yet it was when Fontanel was speaking that Philippe Toussaint had felt deeply disturbed. He’d said to himself that he couldn’t be the only one feeling that way, that vertigo when faced with a lie. He’d studied the other parents, watched to see if Fontanel had the same effect on them as on him, but saw nothing. The other parents were dead. Like Violette, all dead. Like the director in the stand for the accused, staring into space, she’d listened to Fontanel without listening to him.

  Once again, Philippe Toussaint had said to himself: I’m the only one who’s alive. He’d felt guilty. Léonine’s death hadn’t destroyed him like it had the others. As if, within their couple, Violette had taken it all for herself. Hadn’t shared her grief. But deep down, he knew that it was anger that had picked him up off the floor, kept him above the fray. A subdued, heavy, violent, black anger, which he’d never spoken to anyone about because Françoise was no longer there. Hatred for his parents, hatred for his mother, hatred for those people who hadn’t reacted when the fire . . .

  He hadn’t been a good father. An absent father, a distant father, a seeming father. He was too selfish, too focused on himself to give out love. He’d decided only to take an interest in his motorbike and women. All those women waiting to be consumed, like ripe fruit at the grocer’s stall. Over the years, he’d helped himself so liberally to the neighbors that a friend had suggested L’Adresse to him, a place for having group fun. Where the women didn’t fall in love, didn’t take the lead, didn’t sulk, and came wanting just what the guys wanted.

  The verdict was announced: two years behind bars for the director, one without remission. And compensation, lots of compensation. Which he’d keep for himself. A habit that his bitch of a mother had instilled into him, “Keep everything for yourself. That woman, she’s just there to bleed you dry.”

  When he left the court, his parents were waiting for him outside, stiffer than the proceedings he’d just been through. He’d felt like bolting, leaving thorough a secret door to avoid facing their looks. He couldn’t tolerate them at all since Léonine’s death. His mother, who always blamed everything on Violette, hadn’t been able to lay into her after the tragedy. She’d tried her best, but it was she, after all, who’d insisted that Léonine go on holiday to that wretched place. He had given in and gone to have lunch with them. He’d not been able to swallow a thing or say a thing. On the back of the bill, he’d scribbled, with his father’s pen, used for writing the check: “Edith Croquevieille, director; Swan Letellier, cook; Geneviève Magnan, dinner lady; Eloïse Petit and Lucie Lindon, supervisors; Alain Fontanel, maintenance man.”

  He’d returned home on his motorbike, carrying with him, as his only luggage, Fontanel’s testimony: “Me, I was sleeping upstairs. I was woken by Swan Letellier’s screams. The women had already started evacuating the other children. The room downstairs was on fire, impossible to go in, it could have been worse.”

  Violette hadn’t reacted when he’d told her the verdict. She had said, “Right,” and had gone out to lower the barrier. At that moment he had thought again of Françoise, of those summers in Biot. He often thought of them, returned to the holidays in his memory when the present depressed him too much. And then he had grabbed the controller of his Nintendo game and played until he was exhausted, shouting, getting annoyed when Mario missed an obstacle, or was getting nowhere fast. When he switched the TV off, Violette had been asleep in their room for a long while. He hadn’t joined her. He had jumped on his bike to go to L’Adresse, to have sex with women who expected what he did: sad sex, climax, a booth. But he couldn’t get Fontanel’s words out of his head, “Me, I was sleeping upstairs. I was woken by Swan Letellier’s screams. The women had already started evacuating the other children. The room downstairs was on fire, impossible to go in, it could have been worse.”

  What could have been worse?

  Léonine’s death had been bad news for his navel. The navel his mother had taught him to contemplate, no matter what, “Don’t think of others, think of yourself.”

  Sometimes, he said to Violette, “We’ll have another kid.” She said yes to get rid of him. Get rid of the man who had abandoned her years ago, the one who cheated on her, not with all the women surrounding him, but with Françoise, the only one he had ever loved. He hadn’t married Violette to make her happy, he’d married her to free himself from his mother, who harassed him.

  He had felt enormous sorrow for Violette when she had lost their child. He had suffered more over the grief of his wife than over the loss of his child. He had suffered from not having been able to do anything for her. From not having to look after her. From her silence, never managing to s
peak to her about anything more than a shampoo brand or a TV program. Not having been able to say to his wife, “How are you feeling?” That, too, he had felt guilty about. He hadn’t even learned how to suffer. In fact, he had learned nothing. Neither to love, nor to work, nor to give. A good-for-nothing.

  He’d fallen for Violette the first time he’d seen her behind the bar. He had been attracted by all the sugar she seemed to be sprinkled with. Like a colorful lollipop at a fun-fair stall. It was nothing like what he had felt, and would always feel, for Françoise, but he’d wanted that particular girl. Her voice, her skin, her smile, her feather-lightness. Her tomboy looks, her fragility, her way of giving herself without restraint. That’s why he had got her pregnant so soon, he wanted to keep her for himself, all to himself. Like a pastry you don’t want to share. That you gobble in a corner, even if you end up covered in crumbs. And his mother had caught him red-handed, him, the child who could do no wrong, sweater smeared in grease. And a bun in the girl’s oven, to boot.

  In August of 1996, so nine months after the trial that sent Edith Croquevieille to prison, Violette had left to spend ten days in Marseille at Célia’s chalet. That woman he couldn’t stand, and he sensed the feeling was mutual. He’d said that, during that time, he would go biking with friends from Charleville, friends from before. Friends he no longer had. Not before, not now.

  He had set off for Chalon-sur-Saône, alone. Alain Fontanel worked in a hospital over there. The Sainte-Thérèse Hospital, built in 1979, where he took care of electrical maintenance, plumbing, and paintwork with two other colleagues, since losing his job at Notre-Dame-des-Prés. Philippe Toussaint didn’t know how he was going to tackle him. Should he speak nicely to him, or beat him up until he came clean? Fontanel was about twenty years older than him, not hard to overpower, put in an armlock. He hadn’t planned anything, apart from having a one-on-one with him. Asking the questions that no one had asked him during the trial.

  Philippe Toussaint had gone into the hospital, asked at reception to speak to Alain Fontanel, and been asked, “Do you know his room number?” Philippe Toussaint had stammered, “No, he works here.”

  “He’s a nurse? An intern?”

  “No, he does maintenance.”

  “I’ll find out.”

  As the receptionist was picking up her phone, Philippe Toussaint spotted Fontanel entering the ground-floor cafeteria, about fifty meters away. He was wearing gray overalls. Philippe Toussaint felt just as disturbed as at the trial, he couldn’t stomach this guy. Without thinking, he walked very fast toward him, until he was standing behind his back. Fontanel was carrying a tray and waiting in line at the self-service counter. Philippe Toussaint stayed behind him, took a tray himself, and requested the daily special. Fontanel went over to a window, alone. Philippe Toussaint joined him and sat opposite him, not asking if he minded.

  “Do we know each other?”

  “We’ve never spoken, but we do know each other.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “No doubt.”

  The guy cut his meat as if everything was perfectly normal.

  “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  “I usually have that effect on women.”

  Philippe Toussaint bit his cheek hard to remain calm, not get carried away.

  “So, I don’t think you said everything at the trial . . . Your testimony, it goes around in circles in my head, like a wildcat in a cage.”

  Fontanel showed no sign of surprise. He studied Philippe Toussaint for a minute, doubtless trying to remember him from the trial, to place him there, and then he mopped up the sauce from his plate with a hunk of bread.

  “And you think I’m going to add something, just like that, for your pretty face?”

  “Yup.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because I could become a lot less nice.”

  “You can do me in, I don’t give a damn. To tell you the truth, it would suit me. I don’t like my job, don’t like my wife, don’t like my kids.”

  Philippe Toussaint clenched his fists so tight, his hands went white.

  “I don’t give a damn about your life, I want to know what you saw on that night . . . You’re lying through your teeth.”

  “The Magnan woman, do you know the Magnan woman? She’s my wife.”

  “ . . . ”

  “At the trial, she pissed herself every time she laid eyes on you.”

  The moment Fontanel said her name, he saw Geneviève Magnan again in the school corridors, with sleep in her eyes, running after him like a bitch in heat. He saw himself again screwing her, always in the same place, feet in the mud, in the headlights of his motorbike. It made him heave. Fontanel, the smell of food and hospital combined . . . Had she set fire to the room to take her revenge? That question tormented him.

  “What actually happened, for Chrissake . . . ”

  “It was an accident. Nothing more, nothing less. A fucking accident. Don’t bother looking, you’ll find out nothing more, I’m telling you.”

  Philippe Toussaint leapt over the table, grabbed him, and laid into him as if he’d gone crazy. In the face, in the stomach, he was hitting in all directions, randomly. He felt like he was pounding a mattress dumped on a street corner. He struck out, ignoring the cries all around him. Fontanel didn’t defend himself. He let it be done to him. Someone pulled Philippe by the arm, to stop him from going further, tried to restrain him, get him on the floor, but he fought back, with superhuman strength, and then took off. His fists were stinging and bleeding, he’d hit that hard.

  As he had expected, Fontanel had said nothing, hadn’t lodged a complaint for assault and battery. He had stated that he didn’t know the identity of his assailant.

  64.

  Sleep, Daddy, sleep, but may you still hear

  our childish laughter in highest Heaven.

  Bron Cemetery, June 2nd, 2017, blue sky, twenty-five degrees, 3 P.M. Funeral of Philippe Toussaint (1958–2017). Oak coffin. Gray marble tomb. No cross.

  Three wreaths—“Beautiful flowers for beautiful memories that will never fade”—white lilies—“Accept these flowers as testimony of my deepest sympathy.”

  Funeral ribbons that read: “To my companion,” “To our colleague,” “To our friend.” On a funerary plaque, beside a golden motorbike: “Gone but never forgotten.”

  Around twenty people present at the tomb. People from Philippe Toussaint’s other life.

  As his lawful wife, I authorized Françoise Pelletier to bury Philippe Toussaint in the vault of Luc Pelletier. So he would be back with the uncle I didn’t know existed. Just like I didn’t know about an entire part of Philippe Toussaint’s life.

  I wait until everyone has left to go up to the tomb. I place a plaque on Léonine’s behalf: “To my father.”

  65.

  Just a little note to tell you we love you.

  Just a little note to ask you to help us

  overcome the great ordeals down here.

  AUGUST 1996, GENEVIÈVE MAGNAN.

  I expected him for a long time. I knew he’d end up coming. I knew it well before seeing Fontanel’s mug. Done in when he got home. Walking with crutches. Face red and blue, two teeth smashed in.

  “What’ve you done now?” I asked. I thought he’d hit the bottle, got into a brawl with his fellow winos again. He’d always had violence in his blood, rage. He’d also given me some hidings on nights when he was plastered.

  But he replied, “Go and ask the guy who was screwing you behind my back.”

  That sentence, it hurt me much more than any of my mother’s and Fontanel’s blows. Their hidings, compared with that sentence, no big deal. Just a knife cutting meat.

  He’s the one who was done in, limping, but it’s me who really copped it. So I couldn’t even move. Rooted to the spot, I was. Petrified.

  I t
hought of the pig slaughtered the week before at the neighbor’s. How it had the jitters, how it had trembled, how it had squealed. From terror and pain. Grotesque. The men who kept at it, their laughter. Afterwards, us women, we were drafted in to make the blood sausage. The smell of death. That day, I wanted to hang myself. It wasn’t the first time, that desire to “put an end to it,” as the rich say. No, it wasn’t the first time. But then, it gripped me for a long time. Longer than usual. I even picked up the money to go and buy the rope at Bricorama. And then I put it down again, thinking of the boys. Four and nine years old. What would they do, all alone with Fontanel?

  I knew that one day he would come to ask me questions, when I saw the look he gave me in the corridors of the court.

  Someone knocked, I thought it was the postman. I was expecting a delivery from La Redoute. But it wasn’t the postman. It was him, he was behind the door. His eyes were tired. I saw his sadness. I saw his beauty. And then his disdain. He looked at me like I was a pile of shit.

  I tried to shut the door, but he kicked it, violently. He was like a madman. I thought of calling the cops, but what would I have said to them? I’d been afraid of him since that night. He didn’t touch me, I disgusted him too much. I sensed he was full of both hatred and horror. I managed to say just one thing, “It really was an accident, I did nothing on purpose, I’d never have done any harm to kids.”

  He looked hard at me, and then he did something I wasn’t expecting. He sat at my kitchen table, put his head on his arms, and started blubbering. He was sobbing like a kid who’s lost his mother in the crowd.

  “D’you want to know what happened?”

  He replied no.

  “I swear to you it was an accident.”