Love Letters from Montmartre

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Love Letters from Montmartre Page 3

by Nicolas Barreau


  I’m going to drive to the Cimetière Montmartre tomorrow and deliver my first letter to you. I’m so sorry it took me this long. Now that the curse has been broken, the next will be with you much quicker. And you’ll be amazed because I’ve come up with something very special for our one-sided correspondence.

  Until then, my beloved Hélène, until my next letter – until you can be mine again, like once in May.

  Julien

  2

  Everyone needs somewhere they can go

  The spring-like sky was playing games with me. As I walked out of the Abbesses Metro station the following morning, it began to pour, causing the young girls trying to take their pictures in front of the belle époque Métropolitain sign to scatter like confetti. They shrieked and laughed, and scampered into one of those nearby cafés that are always quite full this time of day.

  I took cover in one of the doorways, until the rain let up and I could continue on my way to the Cimetière Montmartre. I absentmindedly reached up to verify that the letter was still tucked in the inside pocket of my brown leather jacket.

  Strangely enough, I felt better today than I usually did. Knowing that I’d finally written to Hélène gave me a good feeling, even if it made nothing get better. Had the writing had some kind of cathartic effect? Whatever the case, I didn’t wake up last night around 4 a.m., as had become my norm over the past few months. Over time, I had come to detest those early hours, when my thoughts crouched on my chest like evil spirits and the darkness gnawed at my soul.

  ‘What are you doing today, Papa?’ Arthur had asked at breakfast, as he gazed at me with interest over his mug of hot chocolate, his hands wrapped around it. He never asks me that. Maybe children really do have ‘a nose for things’, as my mother likes to say.

  I studied his cocoa-smeared mouth and smiled.

  ‘I’m visiting Maman today,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, can I come too?’

  ‘No, not today, Arthur. You have to go to nursery school.’

  ‘Pretty please!’

  ‘No, my love, next time!’

  Today I had a mission that couldn’t be interrupted.

  After I dropped Arthur off at nursery school – pitying looks from the nursery-school teachers, since I was the unfortunate man who’d lost his wife prematurely and who got a free pass for running late in the afternoons – I caught the 12 line, which took me through the underground Metro network to Montmartre. Since I lived in Saint-Germain, the cemetery that far north in Paris didn’t exactly sit on my doorstep. This distance was perhaps a good thing, otherwise I might have just moved into the graveyard. As it was, each trip through the dark tunnels of the swaying Metro became a short journey at the end of which I emerged into a different world, one that was green and silent.

  Here – between the weathered statues, the sunken gravestones draped with the patina of forgetfulness, and the fresh flowers that glowed brightly even while wilting, until their colour faded completely – time hung suspended, as if the earth had ground to a halt.

  I automatically slowed my pace as well as I passed through the cemetery gates and trailed along desolate paths, the puddles reflecting the clouds overhead. I followed the Avenue Hector Berlioz for several steps and nodded at the cemetery gardener who passed me, rake in hand, before taking a right turn down Avenue de Montebello. I strode along one of the smaller trails, on the lookout for the large chestnut tree. The flowers would soon be sending their enchanting scents. I instinctively patted my jacket pocket, where the chestnut I’d picked up on the day of the funeral was still nestling. I wrapped my fingers around the shell, which felt so comforting and smooth in my hand, like an anchor.

  I glanced to my right, in the direction of Heinrich Heine’s grave. It was sitting there, behind a screen of green bushes and gravestones that seemed to merge together in the distance. I could no longer recall what it was that had taken me to the Cimetière Montmartre all those years ago. I practically never went to the 18th arrondissement, one of those quarters that draw so many tourists, thanks to the Sacré-Cœur, the views across Paris, and its charming, winding alleys. It might have been my best friend Alexandre who’d insisted that at least once in life everyone needed to walk through the Cimetière Montmartre, even if for no other reason than to visit the final resting place of Marie Duplessis, the model for Marguerite Gautier, better known as the Lady of the Camellias, immortalised by Alexandre Dumas. On that particular day in May, which felt like an eternity ago, I was strolling through this enchanting cemetery, wandering lost in thought between the angels and the crumbling gravestones, which with their columns and sharply pitched roofs resembled small cottages, in search of the grave belonging to La Dame aux Camélias. I never made it there, though, because something else attracted my attention: a head of coppery curls that flared up in the sunshine and floated like a twilight cloud above the gravestones. These curls belonged to a young woman in a green dress, who was standing respectfully in front of the bust of Heinrich Heine and reading the lines of verse that are chiselled into the marble slab set into the ground. She was pressing a portfolio against her chest, and her head was cocked to one side. I fell in love at once with her soft red mouth and pert freckled nose. I quietly walked up beside her, also cocked my head a little, and quietly read the words once written by the German poet who had found his final resting place here:

  Where, for one who is weary of travel,

  will my last resting place be?

  Beneath palms in the south?

  Beneath lindens by the Rhine?

  Will I, somewhere in a desert,

  be buried by a foreign hand?

  Or will I rest by the coast

  of a sea in the sand?

  Still, I will be surrounded

  by God’s heaven there as well as here;

  and as funeral lamps,

  stars will float above me at night.

  She turned toward me and studied me curiously. She was tall, almost as tall as I am.

  ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ she finally said.

  I nodded. At the same time, my reading must have left much to be desired, meagre as my German skills are.

  ‘Do you like Henri Heine’s poems, too?’ She pronounced his name with a French accent, and so tenderly, as if he were a relative: onri ’äne.

  ‘Very much,’ I lied. I had read next to nothing by this poet before now.

  ‘I love Henri Heine,’ she explained fervently. ‘One of the last Romantic poets.’ She smiled. ‘I’m currently writing my master’s thesis about him and Romantic irony.’

  ‘Oh, how interesting!’

  ‘The poor man didn’t have an easy life. He was sickly and had no homeland, you could say. That’s enough to turn you ironic. After all, you have to find some way to save yourself, right? And yet he wrote such wonderful poems.’

  She stared pensively at the bust, whose face expressed a touch of misanthropy.

  ‘I’m just glad that he could have his final resting place here, and not under German lindens, where nobody understood him anyway. At least he is united with Matilde here. It was his express wish to be buried here, at the Cimetière Montmartre. Did you know that?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, but I can understand why. This really is a welcoming spot.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed absently. ‘I would also like to be buried here when I die. I love this cemetery.’

  A bird twittered somewhere, and the light filtered down through the trees, painting ripples along the path where we stood beside each other.

  ‘You shouldn’t think about death on such a pretty day as today,’ I said, having decided to make a risky suggestion. ‘Would you maybe like to have a cup of coffee with me? I would enjoy learning more about your friend Heine and Romantic irony.’

  ‘Hmmm. And I’d bet something about me as well, right?’ she replied, and shot me an impish glance. It hadn’t taken her long to see through me.

  I smiled, a little guiltily. ‘Mainly about you.’

  That is how I met
Hélène. At a cemetery. Later, we enjoyed telling the story as a humorous anecdote, but back then, on that day in May as we sat in the sunshine in front of a café, stretching our legs and playfully flirting, I never would have believed it possible that only a few years later I would actually be visiting her here.

  By the time I reached Hélène’s grave, my feet were wet. Lost in my memories, I’d trudged through a puddle where a few cigarette butts were disintegrating.

  A fresh bunch of forget-me-nots lay in front of the pale, narrow gravestone with the bronze relief of the angel’s head in profile, the one with Hélène’s features. Who could have left these?

  I glanced around but didn’t see anyone. I plucked a few chestnut leaves from the green ivy that covered the grave, stood back up, and let my gaze drift sadly across the plain marble block on which Hélène’s name and life dates were engraved in golden sans serif letters. Under these were three lines that would always remind me of our first meeting:

  Come, my love,

  be mine again

  Like once in May.

  Someday we would once again have each other. I’m not a pious man, but there was nothing I longed for more than this. Perhaps we would one day dance together as white clouds, perhaps we’d be entwined in an eternal embrace as the roots of two trees. Who knew?

  ‘Hélène,’ I whispered. ‘Are you doing well?’

  I gently brushed my fingers across the angel’s face, and my throat tightened. I swallowed. ‘Look, I kept my promise. Now, just watch.’

  I pulled the letter from my jacket and glanced around one more time before kneeling to reach out and feel around for a certain spot on the lower reverse side of the gravestone. When I pushed the button, it triggered a mechanism that opened a compartment built into in the stone but invisible to the casual observer. The cavity inside it was large enough to hold the thirty-three letters that would be preserved here for eternity. The stone flap opened. I quickly stuck the envelope inside and pressed it shut again.

  No one but my beautiful angel, lost in reverie and gazing ever outwards, and the stonemason who had fulfilled my request and whom I would never meet again, would ever know about the little compartment that I’d had made for my letters to Hélène. I was very proud of this idea that enabled me to place my correspondence in a secret mailbox and to bring them to so intimate a place.

  Everyone needs somewhere they can go when they need to visit a dead person, I thought. This desire might explain why we even have cemeteries. You could certainly set up a photo with a candle beside it, but that wasn’t a real place. Not the place where the beloved person was sleeping.

  A quiet rustling startled me and I turned and looked around the graveyard to see a marmalade cat spring out from behind a crumbling gravestone in pursuit of a leaf that the wind had torn from the tree. I laughed in relief. I hadn’t told anyone about Hélène’s unusual last wish. Not even Alexandre knew about the letters.

  A few minutes later I headed towards the cemetery gate. I was watching the ground as I walked, and almost collided with a woman hurrying down one of the winding paths that led to the gate. It was Cathérine.

  ‘Cathérine! What are you doing here?’ I said.

  ‘The same thing as you, I’d guess,’ she replied sheepishly. ‘I was at the grave.’

  ‘Yes, well . . . me, too,’ I admitted lamely.

  We were both self-conscious for some reason, and seemed to have no idea what to say next. Running into someone at a cemetery wasn’t quite the same as meeting them in a café or in the apartment corridor – maybe people prefer to be alone when they are sad.

  ‘It turned out nicely, the gravestone,’ she finally said. ‘Truly lovely. Especially the angel.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes.’ And just to have something else to say, I asked: ‘Were you the one who left the forget-me-nots?’

  She nodded. ‘I found a few old flowers there, but they were all wilted. I hauled them off. I hope that was all right. The rain . . . ’ She shrugged apologetically.

  ‘Sure, that was just fine.’ I smiled.

  I didn’t want to make it seem as if I wielded absolute control over what happened at Hélène’s grave. After all, anyone could visit any grave they wanted. The dead in Montmartre couldn’t prevent strangers from coming to their graves to leave flowers or take pictures. Besides, Cathérine had been Hélène’s friend.

  ‘Did you take the Metro here? Would you like to go back together? Or go somewhere for a cup of coffee? I have no class this morning.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at me with that mournful gaze.

  ‘I’d like that another time. I have to meet someone shortly. Alexandre,’ I quickly said, and it wasn’t a lie this time.

  ‘All right . . . ’ she remarked, then seemed to hesitate. ‘Are you . . . uh . . . doing okay, more or less?’

  ‘More or less,’ I said shortly.

  ‘You know you can bring Arthur down whenever you want. He likes to play with Zazie.’ She attempted a smile. ‘We could have supper together some time. I’d cook something nice for us. I know you’ve been through a hard time, Julien. We all . . . ’ Her half-moon eyes glittered, and I was afraid she would break down in tears any second.

  ‘I know. Thank you, Cathérine. I really have to go now. Take care . . . ’

  I threw her an indefinite gesture that could mean anything, and made my escape. It wasn’t very polite of me, but I left her standing there and could feel her disappointed eyes gazing after me, as I disappeared into the bustle of the busy streets surrounding the Place des Abbesses.

  3

  No man should be on his own for long

  ‘Old man, you look done in,’ Alexandre said. ‘Are you eating these days, or just smoking?’

  I shook my head. ‘Thanks for the support, Alexandre. That’s what I like about you.’

  I risked a quick glance into the old Venetian mirror hanging to the left of the shop door. I really did look remarkably grey. My full, slightly wavy hair was a little too long, and the rings beneath my eyes were spectacular.

  ‘It might be hard to believe, but today’s felt like one of my better days,’ I sighed, trying to smooth my hair.

  I had recently started categorising my days as good, better and bad ones, even though there hadn’t been any good ones yet.

  ‘Huh, really? I wouldn’t have guessed that.’ Alexandre held a signet ring in pink gold up to the light and nodded contentedly. He then slipped the ring into a little dark blue velvet bag, before eyeing me critically.

  ‘Tell me . . . Do you ever wear anything except that grey turtleneck?’

  ‘What do you have against my sweater – it’s cashmere!’

  ‘True, but have you made a vow or something? I’m going to wear this sweater until the trumpets of Jericho blow?’ He raised his eyebrows and grinned. ‘Every time I see you, that’s what you’re wearing.’

  ‘Bullshit. Besides, you don’t see me all the time.’

  I was standing in Alexandre’s shop on the Rue de Grenelle, and I was already feeling better, like every other time I was with him. Alexandre was the only person in my circle of acquaintances who treated me completely ‘normally’. He never took into account ‘my situation’, and even though his lack of sympathy sometimes annoyed me, I always knew that his surliness was just for show.

  Alexandre Bondy was one of the most empathetic people I knew, an artistic soul with crazy ideas and delicate manual skills. He was my closest friend, and he would have sacrificed his right arm for me if necessary. When we were younger, we used to go skiing together every winter in Verbier or Val d’Isère, and had a blast. We always pretended to be brothers who looked nothing alike, he with his black hair and dark eyes, I with my dark blond hair and blue eyes. We called ourselves Jules and Jim. Of course, I was Jules and he was Jim, in keeping with the characters’ appearances. However, fortunately, we never fell in love with the same woman, like the heroes in the film. For my thirtieth birthday, Alexander gave me a watch with ‘Jules’ engrav
ed on the back, executed by himself.

  Alexandre was a goldsmith, one of the most creative and expensive in Paris. His small shop bore the name ‘L’espace des rêveurs’, The Dreamers’ Space. I didn’t know of a single woman who hadn’t fallen instantly in love with his exquisite handcrafted jewellery. Some of his pieces were ornamented with tiny precious stones in pale spring colours, while others were studded with plump, gleaming, black South Sea pearls, which must be pretty rare if the price tag was any indication. Round or angular pendants of hammered matte gold or silver engraved with quotes from Rilke or Prévert. Shimmering pointy fairy hearts out of rose quartz, agate or aquamarine in golden, cross-shaped settings, a pinhead-sized ruby at their intersection. No one I knew was more detail-obsessed than Alexandre. Every three months he had his shop painted a different colour – maybe dark grey, linden green, burgundy – and along the walls, hand-fired square ceramic tiles in milky white were mounted. In his fine black cursive, he would write sentiments in the middle of each one, such as flower dust or chagrin d’amour or kingdom or Toi et moi – you and I.

  Anyone who could create and design such enchanting objects must be extremely sensitive, and I believe that there was nobody at this time who knew as much as Alexandre about what was going on in my heart and mind. He was a true friend, but he hated platitudes and spared me well-meaning sayings like ‘Time heals all wounds’ and ‘It’ll get better.’

  That was the problem right now. Nothing was getting better. I couldn’t find consolation, at least not yet.

  ‘I was just at the cemetery,’ I said.

  ‘Great, then you must be hungry. Fresh air always makes one hungry.’

  He gently set the velvet bag in the gigantic, dark grey safe that loomed against the shop’s back wall. He shut the heavy steel door and punched in a code.

 

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