Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin

  I had only caught sight of her, not looked properly; she was part of the school furniture, and those drawers were double-locked to me. Can’t even remember, Violette. After I had discovered it, that unacceptable fact, Sasha replaced me for the daily running of the cemetery, because I went back to being good for nothing. Good for just staying like that, sitting or lying down, dazed, and searching.

  If Sasha hadn’t come back at that very moment in my life, with the blue suitcase and presents, Philippe Toussaint would have finally finished me off. Once again, Sasha looked after me. Not to teach me how to plant, but how to weather this new winter that had hit me. He massaged my feet and back, made me tea, lemon juice with water, and soups. He cooked me pasta and made me drink wine. He read to me and kept the garden going, from the stage it was at. He sold my flowers, watered them, and accompanied bereaved families. He told Madame Bréant that he would be staying for an indefinite period of time.

  Every day, he forced me to get up, wash, get dressed. And then he let me lie down again. He brought meals up to me on a tray, which he made me eat, grumbling, “Some retirement you’re giving me here.” He put music on in the kitchen, leaving the corridor door open so I could hear it from my bed.

  And then, just like the cemetery cats, the sun reached as far as my room, reached under my sheets. I opened the curtains, and then the windows. I went back downstairs to the kitchen, boiled the water for the tea, and aired the room. I finally returned to the garden. Finally gave fresh water to the flowers. I welcomed the families once again, served them something hot or strong to drink. I went on a lot: “Can you imagine, Sasha? Philippe Toussaint slept with Geneviève Magnan!” All day long, I kept on at him about the same things, “I can’t even turn her in, she’s dead, can you imagine, Sasha? She’s dead!”

  “Violette, you must stop looking for reasons, otherwise it’s yourself you will lose.”

  Sasha reasoned with me:

  “It’s not because they knew each other that she took it out on some children. It is, without any doubt, an appalling coincidence, a pure accident. Really. Only an accident.”

  While I harped on, Sasha convinced me. While Philippe Toussaint sowed evil, Sasha sowed only goodness.

  “Violette, the ivy is stifling the trees, never forget to cut it back. Never. As soon as your thoughts are turning dark, take your pruning shears and cut back those troubles.”

  Philippe Toussaint disappeared in June of 1998.

  Sasha left Brancion-en-Chalon on March 19th, 1999. He left once he was sure that I had fully accepted that the tragedy was accidental, not intentional.

  “Violette, with that under your belt, that certainty, you’ll be able to move forward.”

  I presume he left at the beginning of spring to be sure I would have all summer to get over his absence. The flowers would grow again.

  He spoke often of his last trip. But as soon as he mentioned it, he sensed I wasn’t yet ready to let him go. He wanted to get another flight to Mumbai and go down to the south of India, to Amritapuri in Kerala. He wanted to settle there, just like at Madame Bréant’s, for an indefinite period of time. Sasha often said:

  “Being in Kerala, close to Sany, until I die is an old dream. In any case, at my age, no dream is young. They’re all long in the tooth.”

  Sasha didn’t want to be buried beside Verena and his children. He wanted his body to be burned on a pyre, over there, on the Ganges.

  “I’m seventy years old. I still have a few years ahead of me. I’m going to see what I can do with their soil. How I can pass on the little I know about plants. And also, I can carry on soothing pain. These plans delight me.”

  “You’re going to give your green fingers to the Indians?”

  “To anyone who’ll have them, yes.”

  One evening, we were having supper together and talking about John Irving, and L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable. I told Sasha that he had been my personal Dr. Larch, my surrogate father. And he replied that one day soon, he was going to let go of my hand, that he sensed I was ready. That even surrogate fathers had to let their children go. That one morning, he wouldn’t come to the house bringing me fresh bread and the Journal de Saône-et-Loire.

  “But surely you wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye to me?!”

  “If I said goodbye to you, Violette, I would never leave. Can you imagine us hugging each other on a station platform? Why put ourselves through the unbearable? Don’t you think we’ve given enough to sorrow already? My place is no longer here. You are young and the sun is shining, I want you to make a new life for yourself. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be saying goodbye to you every day.”

  He kept his promise. From the next day forward, every evening before leaving for Madame Bréant’s, he would hug me, saying, “Goodbye, Violette, look after yourself, I love you,” as if it were the last time. And the following day he would be back. He would put the baguette and newspaper down on my table, between the tea caddies and the flower, tree, and garden magazines. Then he would chat with the Lucchini brothers, Nono, and the others. He would go around the avenues with Elvis to see the cats. Help the visitors who were looking for a particular avenue or name. Give a hand to Gaston with the weeding. And in the evening, after the supper we shared, he would hug me again, saying, “Goodbye, Violette, look after yourself, I love you,” as if it were the last time.

  His goodbyes lasted all winter. And on the morning of March 19th, 1999, he didn’t come. I went knocking on Madame Bréant’s door, Sasha had left. He had packed his suitcase several days before, and, when he had returned the previous evening, he had finally decided to fulfill his old dream, the one that was longest in the tooth.

  89.

  We lived together in bliss.

  We rest together in peace.

  IRÈNE FAYOLLE’S JOURNAL

  February 13th, 2009

  My old sales assistant just phoned me, “Madame Fayolle, on the TV, they’ve just said that your lawyer friend had a heart attack, in court, this morning . . . He died on the spot.”

  On the spot. Gabriel died on the spot.

  I often told him that I would die before him. What I didn’t know was that I would die at the same time as him. If Gabriel dies, I die.

  February 14th, 2009

  Today is Saint Valentine’s Day. Gabriel hated Saint Valentine’s Day.

  When I write his name, Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel, in this journal, I feel that he’s close to me. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been buried. Until the dead have been buried, they remain close by. That distance they put between us and heaven isn’t yet there.

  The last time we saw each other, we argued. I asked him to leave my apartment. Furious, Gabriel went down the stairs without a backward glance. I waited for the sound of his steps, I waited for him to come back up, but he never did. He usually called me every evening, but since our argument, my telephone has remained silent. I’ll never be able to change those things now.

  February 15th, 2009

  What I still have of Gabriel is the freedom I relish every day, thanks to him. It’s the clothes bought in Cap d’Antibes at the bottom of a drawer; an open bottle of Suze in the bar; a few train tickets, round-trip; three novels, L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable and Jack London’s Martin Eden. And Une femme, by Anne Delbée, which he gave me in a very rare edition. Gabriel was fascinated by Camille Claudel.

  A few years ago, I joined him to spend three days in Paris. As soon as I arrived, he took me to the Musée Rodin. He wanted to see Camille Claudel’s works with me. In the garden, he kissed me in front of Les Bourgeois de Calais.

  “It’s Camille Claudel who sculpted their hands and feet. Look how beautiful they are.”

  “You also have beautiful hands. The first time I saw you pleading in court, in Aix-en-Provence, I looked only at them.”

  That’s what Gabriel was like: where you didn’t expect him to be. Gabri
el was a rock, he was solid and powerful. A macho man, who would never have accepted a woman paying a bill, or pouring herself a glass of wine in front of him. Gabriel was masculinity incarnate. When I presumed he would worship Rodin rather than Claudel, that he would prostrate himself before his Balzac, or his Penseur, I saw him bowing down to La Valse, by Camille Claudel.

  Inside the museum, he didn’t let go of my hand. Like a child. He had all of Rodin’s most majestic sculptures in front of him, but he wasn’t interested.

  When he spotted Les Causeuses, the little sculpture by Camille Claudel, on its pedestal, he squeezed my fingers very hard. Gabriel leaned toward them, stayed like that for a long while, as time stood still. He seemed to be breathing them in. His eyes shone in front of these four little women, in green onyx, born more than a century ago. I heard him murmur, “Their hair’s messy.”

  As we left, he lit a cigarette and admitted to me that he had waited for me to be with him before visiting this museum, that he knew, before even entering, that he would need my hand to hold to avoid stealing Les Causeuses. As a student, he had fallen in love with them from a photograph. He had always desired them, so much so that he wanted to possess them. He knew that when he first saw them in the flesh, he would need restraining.

  “Just because I defend louts doesn’t mean I’m not one myself. These chattering girls, they’re so delicate, so small, I knew very well I could slip them under my coat and run off with them. Can you imagine owning them at home? Looking at them every evening before going to bed, finding them there every morning while drinking your coffee?”

  “You spend your life in hotels, it would have been slightly tricky, all the same.”

  He burst out laughing.

  “Your hand stopped me from committing a crime. I should have lent it out to all the idiots I defend, it would have prevented them from making all sorts of stupid mistakes.”

  That evening, we dined at the Jules Verne restaurant, at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Gabriel said to me, “During these three days, we’re going to pile on the clichés, nothing in the world beats clichés.” As he was finishing his sentence, he fastened a diamond bracelet around my wrist. A thing that shone like a thousand suns against my pale skin. It sparkled so much, you would have thought it a fake. Like the imitation stuff the actresses wear in American soaps.

  The following day, at the Sacré-Coeur, I was just placing a candle at the feet of the golden Virgin when he fastened a diamond necklace around my neck, while kissing my nape. He took me by the shoulder and pulled me toward him, whispering in my ear, “My darling, you look like a Christmas tree.”

  On the last day, at the Gare de Lyons, just before I got on my train, he took my hand and slipped a ring onto my middle finger.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I know you don’t like jewelry. I haven’t given it all to you to wear. I want you to sell these trinkets and treat yourself to holidays, somewhere to live, whatever you like. And never thank me. That would kill me. I don’t give you presents so you can thank me. It’s just to protect you, should anything happen to me. I’ll come and see you next week. Call me when you get to Marseilles. I’m missing you already, these separations are too hard. But I love that I miss you. I love you.”

  I sold the necklace to buy my apartment. The bracelet and ring are in a safe at the bank, my son will inherit them. My son will inherit from my great love. Poetic justice. Gabriel sought justice.

  Gabriel was a man of forthright character. Woe betide anyone who annoyed him. Including me. And yet, the last time I saw him, I did just that. He had openly criticized a female colleague of his, the newspapers were all commenting on it. This colleague had defended a woman who, having suffered her husband’s sadism for years, had finally killed him. I dared to reproach Gabriel for criticizing his colleague.

  We were both in my kitchen, after making love, he was smiling, seemed lighthearted, simply happy. As soon as Gabriel came through my door, he relaxed, as if jettisoning suitcases that were too heavy. While drinking my tea, I questioned him, reproachfully: how could he have criticized a lawyer who was defending a persecuted woman? How could he be so Manichean? What sort of a man had he become? Who did he think he was? Where were his ideals?

  Wounded, Gabriel flew into a mad rage. He started yelling. That I knew nothing about it, that this case was far more complex than it seemed. What business was it of mine? I should just drink my tea and shut up; all I’d ever managed to do was create wretched roses that I just ended up cutting; in fact, I spoiled everything.

  “You haven’t got a clue, Irène! You’ve never bothered to make one fucking decision in your whole damn life!”

  I finally put my hands over my ears, not to hear him anymore. I asked him to leave my apartment immediately. When I saw him getting dressed, looking solemn, I already regretted it. But it was too late. We were both too proud to apologize. We deserved better than that. Parting in the middle of a fight.

  If I could just go back . . .

  I feel like opening my windows and shouting out to any passersby, “Make it up to each other! Apologize! Make peace with those you love! Before it’s too late.”

  February 16th, 2009

  A solicitor has just called me: Gabriel had arranged things so I would be buried with him in the cemetery in Brancion-en-Chalon, the village he was born in. The solicitor asked me to come by his office, where Gabriel had left an envelope for me.

  “‘My darling, my sweet, my dearest, my wonderful love, from dawn to dusk, I still love you, you know. I love you.’

  I who plead, object, improvise, defends murderer, the innocent, victims, I steal Jacques Brel’s words to tell you my deepest thoughts.

  If you’re reading this letter, it means I’ve passed on. I’ve beaten you to it, definitely a first. I have nothing else to write to you that you don’t already know, except that I’ve always hated your name.

  Irène, how ghastly is that, Irène. Everything suits you, you can wear anything. But a name like that, it’s like bottle green or mustard yellow, it suits no one.

  That day I waited for you in my car, I knew you wouldn’t come back, that I was waiting for you for nothing. It’s that nothing that kept me from immediately driving off.

  She won’t come back, I have nothing left.

  I’ve missed you so much. And it’s only just beginning.

  Our hotels, love in the afternoon, you under the sheets . . . You will remain all of my loves. The first, the second, the tenth, and the last. You will remain my loveliest memories. My great expectations.

  Those provincial towns that became capital cities as soon as you hit their sidewalks, that I’ll never forget. Your hands in your pockets, your perfume, your skin, your scarves, my native land.

  My love.

  You see, I didn’t lie, I’ve left you a place beside me for eternity. I wonder whether, up there, you’ll carry on saying ‘vous’ to me.

  Don’t rush, I have plenty of time. Make the most of the sky seen from below for a little longer. Make the most, in particular, of the last snows.

  See you later,

  Gabriel”

  March 19th, 2009

  I visited Gabriel’s tomb for the first time. After all the crying, after wanting to dig him up, to shake him, to say to him: “Tell me it’s not true, tell me you’re not dead,” I placed a new snow globe on the black marble covering him. I promised Gabriel I’d be back to give it a shake from time to time. I gazed at this tomb that I will be in later.

  I replied to his letter out loud:

  “My love, you, too, will remain my loveliest memories . . . I’ve had fewer women than you, well, I mean fewer men than you, I’ve known so few. You only had to make a move to seduce. And even then, maybe not. You didn’t have to do a thing, just be you. You are my first love, my second love, my tenth love, my last love. You have taken my whole life. I will come and join you in eternity, I will kee
p my promise. Keep my place warm, like in the hotel rooms I’d meet you in, when you were early, you’d keep my place warm in those beds we passed through . . . You must send me the address to eternity, such a voyage needs preparation. I’ll see whether I find you in a train, a plane, or a boat. I love you.”

  I stayed with him for a long while. I arranged the flowers on his tomb, threw away the ones in cellophane that had wilted, read the funerary plaques. I think that’s what they are called.

  It’s a lady who looks after the cemetery where Gabriel is buried. Which is wonderful. He who so loved women. She went past me, greeted me. We exchanged a few words. I didn’t know such a job existed. That people were paid to look after cemeteries, watch over them. She even sells flowers at the entrance, near the gates.

  Continuing to write this journal is continuing to keep Gabriel alive. But my God, how long life is going to seem to me.

  90.

  November is eternal, life is almost

  beautiful, memories are dead ends

  that we just keep turning over.

  JUNE 1998

  Although there were barely two hundred kilometers of highway between Mâcon and Valence, the journey had seemed interminable to him. When Philippe drove aimlessly, no journey seemed long to him. But when he had to get from point A to point B, he balked. Constraint was something he would never be able to handle.

  Since Violette had discovered that he was trying to get to the truth, he’d lost the desire. As though it being his secret was all that kept him going on this wild goose chase. And having spoken about it had made him lose impetus. Totally. Talking hadn’t freed him, it had drained him.