by Rose Tremain
So Mercedes paid a franc and took a new candle and lit it and put it in the last vacant space on the rack. She admired it possessively: its soft colour, its resemblance to something living. But what is it? she asked herself. What is my candle? If only it could be something as simple as rain!
At this moment, the door of St Vida’s opened and Mercedes heard footsteps go along the nave. She turned and recognised Madame Picaud, proprietor of the lost laundry. This woman had once been a café singer in Montparnasse. She’d worn feathers in her hair. On the long laundry afternoons, she used to sing ballads about homesickness and the darkness of bars. Now, she’d lost her second livelihood and her head was draped in a shawl.
Madame Picaud stood by the alcove of St Vida, looking up at the lemon branch and the saint’s broken foot. Mercedes was about to slip away and leave the silence of the church to her former employer, when she had a thought that caused her sudden and unexpected distress: suppose poor Madame Picaud came, after saying a prayer to Vida, to light a candle and found that there was no space for it in the rack? Suppose Madame Picaud’s candle was a laundry rebuilt and re-equipped with new bright windows looking out at the sea? Suppose the future of Madame Picaud – with which her own future would undoubtedly be tied – rested upon the ability of this single tongue of yellow fire to burn unhindered in the calamitous air of the Church of St Vida? And then it could not burn. It could not burn because there were too many other futures already up there flickering away on the rack.
Mercedes looked at her own candle and then at all the others. Of the fifteen, she judged that five or six had been burning for some time. And so she arrived at a decision about these: they were past futures. They had had their turn. What counted was the moment of lighting, or, if not merely the moment of lighting, then the moment of lighting and the first moments of burning. When the candles got stubby and started to burn unevenly, dripping wax into the tray, they were no longer love letters or olive harvests or cures for baldness or machines that manufactured flowers; they were simply old candles. They had to make way. No one had understood this until now. I understand it, said Mercedes to herself, because I know what human longing there is in Leclos. I know it because I am part of it.
She walked round to the back of the rack. She removed the seven shortest candles and blew them out. She rearranged the longer candles, including her own, until the seven spaces were all at the front, inviting seven new futures, one of which would be Madame Picaud’s.
Then Mercedes walked home with the candles stuffed into the pockets of her red anorak. She laid them out on her table and looked at them.
She had never been petty or underhand.
She went to see the Curé the following morning and told him straight out that she wanted to be allowed to keep the future burning in Leclos by recycling the votive candles. She said: ‘With the money you save, you could restore St Vida’s foot.’
The Curé offered Mercedes a glass of wine. He had a fretful smile. He said: ‘I’ve heard it’s done elsewhere, in the great cathedrals, where they get a lot of tourists, but it’s never seemed necessary in Leclos.’
Mercedes sipped her wine. She said: ‘It’s more necessary here than in Paris or Reims, because hope stays alive much longer in those places. In Leclos, everything vanishes. Everything.’
The Curé looked at her kindly. ‘I was very sorry to hear about the laundry,’ he said. ‘What work will you do now?’
‘I’m going to do this,’ said Mercedes. ‘I’m going to do the candles.’
He nodded. ‘Fire, in Corsica, has always been an enemy. But I expect Madame Picaud had insurance against it?’
‘No she didn’t,’ said Mercedes, ‘only the free kind: faith and prayer.’
The Curé finished his glass of wine. He shook his head discreetly, as if he were a bidder at an auction who has decided to cease bidding.
‘I expect you know,’ he said after a moment, ‘that the candles have to be of a uniform size and length?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And I should add that if there are savings of any import . . . then . . .’
‘I don’t want a few francs, Monsieur le Curé. I’m not interested in that. I just want to make more room for something to happen here, that’s all.’
Collecting the candles and melting them down began to absorb her. She put away the anisette bottle. She went into the church at all hours. She was greedy for the candles. So she began removing even those that had burned for only a short time. She justified this to herself by deciding, once and forever, that what mattered in every individual wish or intention was the act of lighting the candle – the moment of illumination. This alone. Nothing else. And she watched what people did. They lit their candles and looked at them for no more than a minute. Then they left. They didn’t keep on returning to make sure their candles were still alight. ‘The point is,’ Mercedes explained to Honorine, ‘they continue to burn in the imagination and the value you could set on the imagination would be higher than one franc. So the actual life of the candle is of no importance.’
‘How can you be sure?’ asked Honorine.
‘I am sure. You don’t need to be a philosopher to see it.’
‘And what if a person did come back to check her individual candle?’
‘The candles are identical, Honorine. A field of basil is indistinguishable from an offer of marriage.’
She had ordered six moulds from the forge and sent off for a hundred metres of cotton wick from a maker of night-lights in Ajaccio. The smell of bubbling wax pervaded her apartment. It resembled the smell of new leather, pleasant yet suffocating.
She began to recover from her loss of the job at the laundry. Because, in a way, she thought, I’ve become a laundry; I remove the soiled hopes of the town and make them new and return them neatly to the wooden candle drawer.
The Social Security Office paid her a little sum of money each week. She wasn’t really poor, not as poor as she’d feared, because her needs were few.
Sometimes, she walked out to the coast road and looked at the black remains of what had been spin-dryers and cauldrons of bleach, and then out beyond this pile of devastation to the sea, with its faithful mirroring of the sky and its indifference. She began to smell the spring on the salt winds.
News, in Leclos, travelled like fire. It leapt from threshold to balcony, from shutter to shutter.
One morning, it came down to Mercedes’ door: ‘Someone has returned, Mercedes. You can guess who.’
Mercedes stood in her doorway, blinking into the February sun. The bringer of the news was Honorine. Honorine turned and went away up the street leaving Mercedes standing there. The news burned in her throat. She said his name: Louis Cabrini.
She had believed he would never return to Leclos. He’d told her twenty-seven years ago that he’d grown to dislike the town, dislike the hill it sat on, dislike its name and its closed-in streets. He said: ‘I’ve fallen in love, Mercedes – with a girl and with a place. I’m going to become a Parisian now.’
He had married his girl. She was a ballerina. Her name was Sylvie. It was by her supple, beautiful feet that the mind of Mercedes Dubois chained her to the ocean bed. For all that had been left her after Louis went away were her dreams of murder. Because she’d known, from the age of eighteen, that she, Mercedes, was going to be his wife. She had known and all of Leclos had known: Louis Cabrini and Mercedes Dubois were meant for each other. There would be a big wedding at the Church of St Vida and, after that, a future . . .
Then he went to Paris, to train as an engineer. He met a troupe of dancers in a bar. He came back to Leclos just the one time, to collect his belongings and say goodbye to Mercedes. He had stood with her in the square and it had been a sunny February day – a day just like this one, on which Honorine had brought news of his return – and after he’d finished speaking, Mercedes walked away without a word. She took twelve steps and then she turned round. Louis was standing quite still, watching her. He had taken her future
away and this was all he could do – stand still and stare. She said: ‘I’m going to kill you, Louis. You and your bride.’
Mercedes went down into her apartment. A neat stack of thirty candles was piled up on her table, ready to be returned to St Vida’s. A mirror hung above the sideboard and Mercedes walked over to it and looked at herself. She had her father’s square face, his deep-set brown eyes, his wiry hair. And his name. She would stand firm in the face of Honorine’s news. She would go about her daily business in Leclos as if Louis were not there. If she chanced to meet him, she would pretend she hadn’t recognised him. He was older than she was. He might by now, with his indulgent Parisian life, look like an old man. His walk would be slow.
But then a new thought came: suppose he hadn’t returned to Leclos alone, as she’d assumed? Suppose when she went to buy her morning loaf, she had to meet the fading beauty of the ballerina? And hear her addressed as Madame Cabrini? And see her slim feet in expensive shoes?
Mercedes put on her red anorak and walked up to Honorine’s house. Honorine’s husband, Jacques the plasterer, was there and the two of them were eating their midday soup in contented silence.
‘You didn’t tell me,’ said Mercedes, ‘has he come back alone?’
‘Have some soup,’ said Jacques, ‘you look pale.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ said Mercedes. ‘I need to know, Honorine.’
‘All I’ve heard is rumour,’ said Honorine.
‘Well?’
‘They say she left him. Some while back. They say he’s been in poor health ever since.’
Mercedes nodded. Not really noticing what she did, she sat down at Honorine’s kitchen table. Honorine and Jacques put down their spoons and looked at her. Her face was waxy.
Jacques said: ‘Give her some soup, Honorine.’ Then he said: ‘There’s too much history in Corsica. It’s in the stone.’
When Mercedes left Honorine’s she went straight to the church. On the way, she kept her head down and just watched her shadow moving along ahead of her as, behind her, the sun went down.
There was nobody in St Vida’s. Mercedes went straight to the candle sconces. She snatched up two low-burning candles and blew them out. She stood still a moment, hesitating. Then she blew out all the remaining candles. It’s wretched, wretched, she thought: all this interminable, flickering, optimistic light; wretched beyond comprehension.
After February, in Corsica, the spring comes fast. The maquis starts to bloom. The mimosas come into flower.
Mercedes was susceptible to the perfume of things. So much so that, this year, she didn’t want even to see the mimosa blossom. She wanted everything to stay walled up in its own particular winter. She wanted clouds to gather and envelop the town in a dark mist.
She crept about the place like a thief. She had no conversations. She scuttled here and there, not looking, not noticing. In her apartment, she kept the shutters closed. She worked on the candles by the light of a single bulb.
Honorine came down to see her. ‘You can’t go on like this, Mercedes,’ she said. ‘You can’t live this way.’
‘Yes, I can,’ said Mercedes.
‘He looks old,’ said Honorine, ‘his skin’s yellowy. He’s not the handsome person he used to be.’
Mercedes said nothing. She thought, no one in this place, not even my sister, has ever understood what I feel.
‘You ought to go and meet him,’ said Honorine. ‘Have a drink with him. It’s time you forgave him.’
Mercedes busied herself with the wax she was melting in a saucepan. She turned her back towards Honorine.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ asked Honorine.
‘Yes,’ said Mercedes, ‘I heard.’
After Honorine had left, Mercedes started to weep. Her tears fell into the wax and made it spit. Her cheeks were pricked with small burns. She picked up a kitchen cloth and buried her head in it. She thought, what no one understands is that this darkness isn’t new. I’ve been in it in my mind for twenty-seven years, ever since that February morning in the square when the mimosas were coming into flower. There were moments when it lifted – when those big sunsets came in at the laundry window, for instance – but it always returned, as night follows day; always and always.
And then she thought, but Honorine is right, it is intolerable. I should have done what I dreamed of doing. I should have killed him. Why was I so cowardly? I should have cut off his future – all those days and months of his happy life in Paris that I kept seeing like a film in my head: the ballerina’s hair falling on his body; her feet touching his feet under the dainty patisserie table; their two summer shadows moving over the water of the Seine. I should have ended it as I planned, and then I would have been free of him and out of the darkness and I could have had a proper life.
And now. She was in Leclos, in her own town that she’d never left, afraid to move from her flat, gliding to and from the church like a ghost, avoiding every face, sunk into a loneliness so deep and fast it resembled the grave. Was this how the remainder of her life was to be spent?
She prised the buttons of wax from her cheeks with her fingernails. She took the saucepan off the gas flame and laid it aside, without pouring its contents into the candle moulds. It was a round-bottomed pan and Mercedes could imagine the smooth, rounded shape into which the wax would set.
She ran cold water onto her face, drenching her hair, letting icy channels of water eddy down her neck and touch her breasts. Her mind had recovered from its futile weeping and had formulated a plan and she wanted to feel the chill of the plan somewhere near her heart.
She lay awake all night. She had decided at last to kill Louis Cabrini.
Not with her own hands, face to face. Not like that.
She would do it slowly. From a distance. With all the power of the misery she’d held inside her for twenty-seven years.
Morning came and she hadn’t slept. She stared at the meagre strips of light coming through the shutters. In this basement apartment, it was impossible to gauge what kind of day waited above. But she knew that what waited above, today, was the plan. It was a Friday. In Mercedes’ mind, the days of the week were different colours. Wednesday was red. Friday was a pallid kind of yellow.
She dressed and put on her apron. She sat at her kitchen table drinking coffee and eating bread. She heard two women go past her window, laughing. She thought: that was the other beautiful thing that happened in the laundry – laughter.
When the women had walked on by and all sound of them had drained away, Mercedes said aloud: ‘Now.’
She cleared away the bread and coffee. She lit one ring of the stove and held above it the saucepan full of wax, turning it like a chef turns an omelette pan, so that the flames spread an even heat round the body of the wax. She felt it come loose from the saucepan, a solid lump. ‘Good,’ she said.
She set out a pastry board on the table. She touched its smooth wooden surface with her hand. Louis Cabrini had been childishly fond of pastries and cakes. In her mother’s kitchen, Mercedes used to make him tarte tatin and apfelstrudel.
She turned out the lump of wax onto the pastry board. It was yellowy in colour. The more she recycled the candles the yellower they became.
Now she had a round dome of wax on which to begin work.
She went to the bookcase, which was almost empty except for a green, chewed set of the collected works of Victor Hugo and an orange edition of Lettres de mon moulin by Alphonse Daudet. Next to Daudet was a book Mercedes had borrowed from the library twenty-seven years ago to teach herself about sex and had never returned, knowing perhaps that the library, never very efficient with its reminders, would close in due time. It was called Simple Anatomy of the Human Body. It contained drawings of all the major internal organs. On page fifty-nine was a picture of the male body unclothed, at which Mercedes used to stare.
Mercedes put the book next to the pastry board, under the single light. She turned the pages until she found the drawing of the heart. The acco
mpanying text read: ‘The human heart is small, relative to its importance. It is made up of four chambers, the right and left auricle and the right and left ventricle . . .’
‘All right,’ said Mercedes.
Using the drawing as a guide, she began to sculpt a heart out of the wax dome. She worked with a thin filleting knife and two knitting needles of different gauges.
Her first thought as she started the sculpture was: the thing it most resembles is a fennel root and the smell of fennel resembles in its turn the smell of anisette.
The work absorbed her. She didn’t feel tired any more. She proceeded carefully and delicately, striving for verisimilitude. She knew that this heart was larger than a heart is supposed to be and she thought, well, in Louis Cabrini’s case, it swelled with pride – pride in his beautiful wife, pride in his successful career, pride in being a Parisian, at owning a second-floor apartment, at eating in good restaurants, at buying roses at dusk to take home to his woman. Pride in leaving Leclos behind. Pride in his ability to forget the past.
She imagined his rib-cage expanding to accommodate this swollen heart of his.
Now and again, she made errors. Then, she had to light a match and pass it over the wax to melt it – to fill too deep an abrasion or smooth too jagged an edge. And she noticed in time that this slight re-melting of the heart gave it a more liquid, living appearance. This was very satisfactory. She began to relish it. She would strike a match and watch an ooze begin, then blow it out and slowly repair the damage she’d caused.
It was becoming, just as she’d planned, her plaything. Except that she’d found more ways to wound it than she’d imagined. She had thought that, in the days to come, she would pierce it or cut it with something – scissors, knives, razor blades. But now she remembered that its very substance was unstable. She could make it bleed. She could make it disintegrate. It could empty itself out. And then, if she chose, she could rebuild it, make it whole again. She felt excited and hot. She thought: I have never had power over anything; this has been one of the uncontrovertible facts of my life.