Sadness (that’s the nickname I’ve given to my landlord, the prosecutor) waits for me every day to come back home. He strolls in his park, says hello. I return his greeting and give him a smile. He can’t begin to cope with his loneliness, the housekeeper says. His wife died when they were very young.
Christmas is coming. Remember our last Christmas, how happy we were! Write me soon, my darling, write me . . .
I love you and kiss you tenderly.
Your Lyse
January 7, 1915
My darling,
Your letter, at last! It arrived today, though you wrote it December 26th. And to think you are so nearby. Sadness handed it to me in person. He must have suspected the nature of the correspondence when he saw my excitement, but he was discreet. He knocked at my door, said hello, gave me the envelope, and promptly left.
I wept with joy as I read your words. I hold your letter close; yes, I hold it close, I press it to my skin, as though it’s you there with your warmth and your scent, when I close my eyes.
I’m so afraid for you. Here we have a hospital where every day the wounded arrive by the truckload. I dread so much that I might see you among them. The poor things are in an inhuman state; some of them don’t have faces anymore, others moan as though they’ve lost their minds.
Keep safe, my darling, and think of me. I love you and long to be your wife. I kiss you tenderly.
Your Lyse
January 23, 1915
My darling,
I miss you. I’ve spent so many months already without seeing you, without talking to you, without touching you. Why on earth can’t you get some leave? I’m so very sad. I try to stay cheerful around the children, but sometimes I can feel tears coming to my eyes, and then I turn to the blackboard and write some words so they won’t notice anything.
I shouldn’t complain. Everybody is nice to me here, and I feel at home in this little house. Sadness still keeps his respectful distance, but he never fails to cross my path at least once a day so he can say hello. I don’t know if it was only the cold weather, but yesterday I think he blushed. His old servant Barbe lives there with her husband. She and I get along very well. Sometimes I join her and Solemn—that’s her husband’s name!—for a meal.
I’ve gotten into the habit of climbing to the top of the hill every Sunday. There’s a big meadow up there where you can take in the whole horizon. You’re just beyond it, my darling; I see the fumes, the horrible explosions. I stay as long as I can, till my hands and feet go numb from the bitter cold; I want to share your suffering. My poor darling. How much longer will this drag on?
I kiss you tenderly. I’m waiting for your letters.
With love,
Your Lyse
XXV
In the little notebook of red morocco there were many pages like that, covered with finespun slanted writing like a delicate frieze, pages on which were composed many letters from Lysia Verhareine to the man she loved and had followed. I could imagine her rewriting them on lovely vellum before she put out the light.
Bastien Francoeur was his name: twenty-four years of age, corporal in the 27th Infantry. She wrote him every day. She told him about the long hours, the children’s mischief, Destinat’s blushes, the presents from Martial Maire—the simpleton for whom she’d become the divinity of the park—the breath of spring that came to plant primroses and crocuses. She told him about all that in her small light hand, in phrases just as light, behind which anyone who’d known her even a bit could detect her smile. Above all she told about her love and her loneliness, that heart-break she concealed from us so well; though our paths crossed hers every day, we had never suspected a thing.
The notebook didn’t contain any letters from her lover. Besides, she hadn’t received very many: nine in eight months. She counted them, of course. She read them again and again. Where did she keep them? Maybe she held them close, close to herself, even pressed to her skin, just as she’d written.
So few letters—why? Not enough quiet time? Or not enough desire? We always know what others mean to us, but we never really know what we mean to them. Was Bastien’s love as strong as hers? I’d like to think so, but I couldn’t say.
The fact remains that the little teacher lived by this correspondence; her lifeblood flowed into her words. After she’d corrected her pupils’ exercise books, the light in the house must have shone late as she took up her pen to write out the letter she’d first composed in the red morocco notebook. Maybe writing them there first answered another need: to create a journal of absence, a book of lonesome days she spent far from the man for whose sake she’d exiled herself among us—a more eloquent form of Destinat’s bundles of dutifully preserved stubs.
She mentions Sadness quite often; I believe she was full of affection for the cold lonely man who’d given her a home. While perfectly aware of his pitiful efforts to find favor with her, she noted them with only a tender irony; there was no malice when she described his face turning crimson at times, his stammers, his pompous getups, his circuits around the little house, the way he would gaze up at her bedroom window imagining no one saw him. Sadness amused her, and I think I can swear without fear of contradiction that Lysia Verhareine was the only human being in his entire life the prosecutor ever managed to amuse.
As for that improbable meal that had flabbergasted Barbe, the girl described it in a long letter dated April 15, 1915:
My darling,
Yesterday evening I was invited for the first time to dine with Sadness. Such formality. Three days ago I had found a little card slid under my door: “Prosecutor Pierre-Ange Destinat requests the pleasure of the company of Mademoiselle Lysia Verhareine for dinner, Wednesday, April 14th, at eight o’clock.” I got myself ready for a dinner in society, but it was only a tête-à-tête with him—just the two of us in an immense dining room that could have seated sixty! A real romantic rendezvous! I’m teasing you! Sadness, as I’ve told you, is almost an old man. But yesterday he looked like a minister or a chancellor, standing straight, in tails worthy of an evening at the opera! The table was dazzling, the china, the tablecloth, the silver—I felt like I was in . . . I don’t know, Versailles perhaps!
Instead of Barbe, a very young beautiful child served at table. Eight years old, maybe nine. But she took her role very seriously and seemed to know all the ropes. Sometimes she stuck out the tip of her tongue, as children do when they try to apply themselves. Occasionally our eyes met and she smiled at me. It was all rather strange—the dinner for two, the little girl. Barbe told me today that the child—who is called Morning Glory—is the daughter of an innkeeper in V. Her father had prepared the meal. Everything was superb, though one could hardly enjoy it. I don’t know when I’ve seen such a feast—but suddenly I feel ashamed, thinking of you, hunting for a potato and maybe even going hungry! Forgive me, my darling, I’m stupid. . . .
I miss you so much. Your last letter was dated six weeks ago. And still no leave. Even so, I know somehow you are safe—I can sense it. Write me, my darling. Your words give me strength to continue here, just as knowing that you are so close by sustains me, even if I can’t see you or hold you in my arms.
Sadness hardly spoke at dinner. I would sometimes look up to catch him looking at me, and he would look away, like a shy adolescent. When I asked him whether his solitude didn’t weigh on him too much, he paused for a moment and then he said, softly and solemnly: “To be alone is the human condition, in any event.” I thought that very beautiful, even knowing it to be untrue: You are not with me, yet I feel your presence every moment. A little before midnight he escorted me to the door, where he said good night and kissed my hand. Romantic, but so passé, like an antique gentleman, which I suppose is what he is.
Oh, my darling, how much longer is this war going to last? I’m laying my head down to sleep now. Sometimes when I dream of you, in the morning I can’t bear to open my eyes right away and leave the dream for the nightmare that awaits me by day.
Desperate for
your embrace, I kiss you with all the force of my love.
Your Lyse
In time, the young teacher’s long-unanswered letters turned to bitterness, despondency, and occasionally venom. All we knew of her was the glowing smile and the pleasant, courteous word she had for everyone; underneath, pain and darkness were filling her heart. She began with greater regularity to express disgust at the men in our town, the ones who reported to work at the factory clean and rested. Even the wounded released from the hospital to loiter in our streets did not escape her contempt; she called them the lucky ones. Still, I can hardly describe my surprise to have been singled out for special loathing, a distinction I became aware of when I read the letter she’d written the evening of that indelible day when I’d seen her on the crest of the hill, staring at the distant plain as if she could divine from it some meaning.
June 4, 1915
My darling,
Your letters are like old newsprint, I’ve unfolded them, reread them, and cried over them so often. How I suffer. Time seems like a monster, born to divide lovers. They have no appreciation of how lucky they are, these cows I see every day, separated from their husbands for only a few hours, and these children whose fathers come home for supper each evening.
Today as every Sunday I climbed to the top of the hill to be closer to you. Up there a great wind brought me the noise of the big guns. They banged and banged and banged. I wept at the thought of you sheltering under that downpour of iron and fire, of which I could see only ominous smoke and flashes. My darling, where were you? Where are you? I stayed there a long time, as usual; I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that immense field of suffering where you’ve lived for months.
Suddenly I sensed a presence behind my back. It was a man I know by sight. He’s a policeman, and I’ve always wondered what on earth he’s doing in this little town. He’s older than you are but still young and fit. I suppose he’s on the right side, the side of the cowards. He was looking at me dumbfounded, carrying a hunting rifle, a ridiculous shiny gun for children or the stage. Can you imagine ambling around with a weapon for idle killing while a few miles away men are slaughtering and being slaughtered with rifles? That moment I hated this comical buffoon more than anything in the world. He mumbled incoherently, and in my disgust I turned my back on him.
I’d gladly send thousands of his like into the jaws of hell for a few seconds in your arms. I’d sever their heads with my own hands just to taste your kisses again, to touch your hands and look into your eyes. I don’t care if I seem horrible. I don’t care about judgments, morality, or other people. I would kill to keep you alive. I hate death because it chooses without care.
Write me, my darling, write me. Each day without you is a bitter eternity.
Your Lyse
I couldn’t hold it against her. She was right. I had acted like a prick on the hilltop, and what was I now, as I read her private thoughts? Would I not have killed to have kept Clémence alive? I found the living no less detestable than Lysia Verhareine did. I bet the prosecutor felt the same. Anyone could tell he felt that life had spat in his face.
Through the little notebook I traveled a road that passed from flowering countryside to savage expanses full of pus, acid, and blood, black bile, pools of fire. As the days flew by, not only the landscape but Lysia Verhareine was changing, though the rest of us never saw any signs. Inside this beautiful girl, so sweet and delicate, was growing a creature who screamed in silence and tore at her own heart. A being in free fall who never stopped falling.
Sometimes her fiancé himself came to bear the brunt of her anguish, as she reproached him for his silence and the infrequency of his letters, doubting his love. But the following day she would never fail to offer him profuse apologies and caresses as tender as the first. It seems neither tack, however, moved him to write more often.
I can never know which camp he was in, this Bastien Francoeur: whether he was with the bastards or on the side of the just. I’ll never know what sparkle may have been visible in his eye as he held one of Lysia’s letters, when he opened and read it, if indeed he did. I’ll never know if he kept those outpourings of hers with him in the trench, a suit of armor made of paper and of love, when the attack was about to start and his whole life whirled by him once more like a leering lurid carousel. For all I can know, he skimmed them wearily, perhaps with a dark suppressed laugh, before he crumpled them up and chucked them into a mud puddle.
The last letter, a short one filling the last page of the notebook, was dated August 3, 1915. In it she still professes her love, in simple words; she speaks of the summer too, of the vast and beautiful days that are filled with nothing when one is waiting and alone. I’m abridging a bit, but not much. I could copy it out verbatim, but I don’t want to. It’s already enough that Destinat and I laid our eyes on the notebook, as though gazing through a window at someone undressing. There’s no call for others to see this last letter. Let it remain sacred, her farewell to the world, her final words—even if the young teacher wrote them scarcely dreaming they would be her last.
Following this letter, there’s nothing more. Nothing but blankness, pages and pages unmarked. The blankness of death.
Death inscribed.
XXVI
When I say there’s nothing more, I’m lying. I’m lying twice over, in fact.
In the first place there’s a letter, though not from Lysia. A little sheet, slipped into the notebook after her final words, signed by a certain Captain Brandieu, on July 27, 1915. It must have arrived at the château on August 4th. That much is clear.
Mademoiselle,
It is a with a great sadness that I bring you this news: Ten days ago, during an assault on the enemy lines, Corporal Bastien Francoeur was struck in the head by a sniper’s bullet. Aided by his comrades, he was brought back to our trench, where a medic could do no more than bind his wound. Corporal Francoeur died in the minutes that followed without regaining consciousness.
I hope it will be of comfort to know that he died a soldier’s death for his country. In the months he had been under my command, he conducted himself with an unwavering stout heart, always first to volunteer for the most dangerous missions. He was loved by his men and esteemed by his superiors.
Please forgive my ignorance of the nature of your relationship with Corporal Francoeur, Mademoiselle, but as several of your letters have arrived since his death, I thought it well to inform you of his tragic end, in case word had not yet reached you from his family, who are some distance from you.
Rest assured, Mademoiselle, that I share in your grief and o fer my sincerest condolences.
Captain Charles-Louis Brandieu
It’s strange, the varied instruments of death. You imagine a knife, a bullet, a shell, but those aren’t the only ones. A little letter can be as lethal; a mere letter, full of fine sentiments and compassion, can kill as surely as any weapon.
Lysia Verhareine received this letter. I don’t know whether she cried out, wept, screamed, or fell silent. I’ll never know. All I can say is that within a few hours’ time the prosecutor and I were in her room, standing over her body, looking at each other without understanding. At least I didn’t understand. He already knew, or soon would, upon finding the red morocco notebook.
Why had he taken it? To preserve the memory of their dinner, so he could continue to live with the miracle of her smiles and her words? Something like that, I suppose.
The soldier, the beloved, was dead. For him she had abandoned everything, for him she had climbed to the crest each Sunday, for him she had taken up her pen every day. It was for him that her heart beat. And this beloved soldier, had he seen any face before him when the bullet shattered his skull? Lyse? Another woman? No one? A mystery, and quite beside the point.
I’ve often imagined Destinat poring over the notebook, coming to the testaments of love that must have pained him, seeing himself called Sadness and mocked—though with a gentle, endearing mockery. He didn’t get his right between
the eyes, as I did!
Yes, reading again and again, just as you might continually turn over an hourglass, to pass the time watching the sand flow, nothing more.
I said a while ago that I was lying twice over. Besides the letter slipped into the notebook, there were also three photographs. They were pasted side by side on the final page. And this little scene of frozen cinema had been composed by none other than Destinat.
In the first picture you could recognize the model who’d posed for the painter of the large portrait in the entrance hall: Clélis de Vincey might have been seventeen then. Here she was in a meadow dotted with umbellifers, the ones nicknamed meadowsweets. A girl laughing. She wore country clothes, and the simplicity only accentuated her elegance. A wide-brimmed hat cast a dark shadow across half her face but could not obscure her dazzled grace, her eyes in the light, her smile, the sun glow of her hand as she held down the brim lofted by the wind. She was the sweetness of the meadow.
The second photograph had been rough-cut from a larger, broader one, and in that oddly elongated slice a happy little girl looked straight out. In this way Destinat’s scissors had isolated Morning Glory from the photograph Bourrache had given him. “Just like the Blessed Virgin,” her father had told me, and he was right. The little girl’s face radiated something religious, a beauty without artifice, a goodness, a simple splendor.
In the third photograph, Lysia Verhareine was leaning against a tree, her hands flat against the bark, her chin raised a bit, her mouth half open. She seemed to be waiting for a kiss from the one holding the camera. She was just as I had known her. It was only her expression that had changed. She had never offered any of us that smile. It was the unmistakable smile of desire, of mad love, and it was very disturbing to see her this way, because with that her mask had dropped; you understood her true nature and what she was capable of doing for the man she loved—or to herself.
By a Slow River Page 16