87
How many years is it that they have been married? The bridal wreath has withered but has not yet turned to dust. Fragile and eternal, it sits enthroned above the hearth. They live in a tiny lodge, a kind of chalet, at the far end of the grounds. The trees are so close, their leaves rustle so loudly, that when the windows are left open you have the impression that an invisible forest is coming to life in the middle of the rooms. The Comtesse long ago granted them this lodge. Her benevolence toward them is measureless.
As soon as spring arrives, the Comtesse grows impatient, she is waiting for a miracle of blooms. André Francartin has never disappointed her.
It is a Sunday afternoon. He and his wife have taken an afternoon nap. He has just possessed her, unhurriedly, with a controlled fervor. That is when Julienne starts to calculate how many years the two of them have been married. Images disrupt the figures. Clear images. Their first kiss, their engagement, the edge of this wood, their first embrace, the births of their children, and the sight of her man in the grounds, surrounded by flowers, and the mad desire she had for him. Clear images, yes, but they end up overlapping, merging, producing a vagueness, a glistening mist that nevertheless evokes happiness, fulfillment, something that endures through, and in spite of, everything. Is it love?
88
She is going to get up, she gets up, it is slightly cold, even in summer, too many trees around the lodge, she has gone to make him a bowl of milk in which she crumbles a slice of bread, he calls it a delicacy, she spoils him, they are no longer in the first flush of youth, the children are married, yes, no longer in the first flush of youth, their teeth are bad and their joints rusty, they make do, they are together, she pours the milk into the bowl, she crumbles the bread, she smiles, and then her smile fades, she realizes that he has not called out to her from the bed, where are you, what are you doing, today he isn’t playing at being anxious, where are you, what are you doing, and she starts to wonder, what’s happening, why that silence, and fear, a very small fear for now, enters into her, they have possessed one another, they have never said “my love” or “I love you” and yet how to deny that there is love between them, where are you, what are you doing, and it is she who calls out to him those two unimportant phrases, from the depths of their shared life.
89
She knows the bulk of it. He is no longer really with her. She knows that he is abandoning her, even when he possesses her, even when he asks her how her day has been. Even when he says: Come to me, even when he kisses her neck and strokes her hair. She knows and says nothing. She also knows that he will never leave her.
90
He ages all at once. The migraine will not leave him.
His inability to come to a decision torments him.
To flee, no matter where, he cannot stand it anymore.
Sébastien has painted his face on a flat stone. It is a perfect likeness, almost embarrassingly so. He has painted all he has been, all he is, all he is living through, he has painted his joy and his heartbreak.
That’s me, he says.
And he runs away.
91
He is betraying her, but with whom? She needs a name, she needs to judge her rival, evaluate her own chances, if she wants her man back. Twenty-nine women live in the chateau and its outbuildings. That includes the Comtesse. But her title, Julienne tells herself, is a barrier between her body and those of her servants. In addition, her reputation is spotless. And her kindness, a fortress behind which she takes refuge most of the time. No, surely the Comtesse cannot be suspected of having a love affair with André. But what of the others? And which of them? If she is no longer the only one, then what is she now? Are jealousy, pain, distress sufficient to believe one is still alive?
All emotion, all feeling weighs heavily on her.
She wishes she were dead.
92
The migraine will not leave him. It paralyzes him, nails him to his bed. Crucified on a raft that never sinks but drifts, and the drifting adds to his pain.
The Comtesse is there, by his bedside, every day.
Do not speak.
She dissolves a powder in a little water.
Drink.
He drinks.
The migraine does not give ground.
His skull is still in a vise.
He also feels as if he is floating.
Close your eyes.
He does not argue with her orders. With closed eyelids, he breathes in her scent with more intensity and becomes more sharply aware of the rustling of her dress, and it is as if a wave has suddenly struck him on the brow, as if his eyes were filled with the buzzing of a thousand wasps, it is torture, but he will not open his eyes.
Thank you.
93
She has begun addressing him more formally, as if he were her equal, just as she addresses her husband, her relations, her friends, those of her kind, and she has barely been aware of it.
Drink. Close your eyes. Sleep.
Julienne is present at all of the Comtesse’s visits.
The Comtesse has stopped addressing him like a servant, Julienne has noticed it and since then has lost her wish to die. Jealous, that she is, very much so, and her jealousy has a target. Hate has taken possession of her, more powerfully than any man could ever do.
The Comtesse and her man are becoming closer, she sees that clearly now. Julienne lurks in a corner of the bedroom, unseen, forgotten by the two lovers, for that is what they are, how could she doubt it?
What is the name of the goddess of vengeance? Does she even have a name?
94
Since André has been an invalid, Sébastien has been promoted to head gardener, master of the flowers and the trees, the avenues and the honeysuckle-wreathed bridge over the artificial stream.
He misses André’s voice, his glances, his shadow, their rare, fleeting embraces. But he grows accustomed to his absence. Sometimes he talks, to whom or what he does not know, telling their story, their love, his regret that he could not persuade his lover to venture with him out on the roads. And his dreams, what are they? Does suffering allow one to have dreams?
I would like to be a dream, and to visit you as a dream.
There is André and once again there is, very intensely, Balthazar, more intensely than yesterday or even than the old days, there is the Incomparable.
We are still one, you, Balthazar de Créon, and I. I thought you had left me, abandoned me, choose the word that suits you, my love, I thought I had turned away from you, I thought of what could not be.
95
At dusk, and on nights when there is a full moon, Sébastien wades in the cold water of the river, not the artificial one but the one beyond the grounds, that runs past the fields of corn and rye. It is not very deep. From it he gathers pebbles, the flattest smoothest ones he can find, and takes them back to his room, where he puts them in a trunk. Then he chooses from a previous harvest, and by the light of a candle paints his lover’s mouth on the stone, or his chest, or his shoulders, or his penis, or his feet. He does not limit himself to resuscitating fragments of the beloved body. On one pebble, he has painted a cat rolled up like a turban, and on this other a beech tree, or a fully opened rose, or a hedge-lined path, or part of a hedge with a bird in its foliage, or a maid’s cap, or the pendant with its glittering cross of diamonds the Comtesse always wears. He paints the world that is his, in small pieces, he paints whatever he likes. How many pebbles will he need to make an inventory of everything this world consists of? Myriads, no doubt.
His room is like a rockery.
He would kill anyone who, for fun, attempted to enter it.
96
And why not paint what is not but may yet happen?
What, for instance?
Well, the chateau in ruins, the scrub colonizing the banks of flowers, the grass invading the avenues, and the animals walking along them—stray dogs, cats and horses that have reverted to wildness, stags, foxes, wolves.
But no
men or women.
Tonight he will get down to the task of depicting his vision.
Collapsed walls, brambles, wild animals.
97
He will bury them all. It is more than an intuition.
Look at him, he has been dying for weeks and months, and still he is not dead. He seems outside time, barely human, who would recognize him, he is tough, a bag of bones mocking the Grim Reaper, he says neither yes nor no, he says, I don’t give a damn about dying, I don’t give a damn about living, while children are born, men and women die, time passes.
His endless death throes make him terrifying. He scares people. They cross themselves if they chance to pass the Francartins’ lodge.
Only his wife and the Comtesse (what does she see in this dying man? Is there such a fine line between unfathomable pity and madness?) dare approach him and watch over him. They must seem like ghosts to him, or perhaps mothers, or sisters.
98
Yesterday, she caught the Comtesse becoming bolder—feeling his chest, stroking his hands and shoulder, whispering to him gently. Today is the same. They have been lovers, you would have to be blind not to see it.
She dares do that in front of my eyes. As if I didn’t exist.
A dying man and a whore. A fine pair.
But between the two of them, she is still there, his wife, how can they forget her?
Lace. Silk. Satin. Cross of diamonds.
The Comtesse de C.
His lover.
In the chest, she finds an ax, a little ax, almost nothing.
99
Eyewitness, silent witness.
He was unable to get out of bed—like being stuck in pitch.
He saw the axe fall and the lady collapse, he heard the victim’s silence, and the killer’s.
He will hear that silence for a long time, until his death.
A death that does not come.
He sees the scene over and over, it lays waste to everything in him, wipes out everything, even the memory of his love for Sébastien.
A sharp sound of broken bones, a deafening noise, the last music he hears.
He asks his body to let go.
100
She was arrested six miles from the chateau, mumbling and disheveled, a senile witch, André’s wife.
The Comtesse’s funeral will take place tomorrow, it will be very grand, they say.
I will not paint that.
And in his bed, André was dead, and the look in his eyes, my God, what did you see?
No more death throes. The bed, the look in his eyes, and that is all.
I will not paint that.
The C. family will dismiss the servants and close the doors of the chateau. It is reluctant to live here, facing these grounds with their accursed little lodge.
I will not paint that.
I am here, Balthazar said. We will again be as one. But have we ever stopped being as one?
Be like me, he said to me, the prey of flames.
Do you not like flames?
I will not paint the fire. I will not paint my death.
But why paint them, my love? Why not accept the fire, why not accept death?
You are here, so close, almost body to body.
The curtain at my window catches fire, all it took was one candle, every fire starts from almost nothing, it is always thus, and the fire advances, it is on me, it embraces me, I am a torch, I collapse, and the fire sets everything ablaze, sets the world ablaze, and then I let go, I am dead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Arsand was born in Avignon in 1950 and currently works as an editor with Éditions Phébus in Paris. He is the author of several novels, including The Land of Darkness, winner of the Prix Femina for First Fiction, and In Silence, winner of the Jean Giono Second Novel Grand Prix.
Lovers (9781609459192) Page 6