I’ve started writing Adèle’s book. I’ve been calling it that in my head for months. It’s a physical being that is ever present in my thoughts, my dreams, my desires, my conversations with myself, my reading. Her presence is so extraordinary that sometimes I long for her never to go away. When she’s there I feel as if she were a fountain at which I quench my thirst. This tide of words, I can’t get over it. Where were they all those years when I was calling out to them? Perhaps because I had nothing to say, no story to tell? Adèle’s story never leaves me now. It’s as if it were my own story, my childhood, my body, my husband, my child.
Shivers run through Adèle. She glances swiftly through the rest of the binder. It is a journal kept by Anita, but there are also photographs cut out of magazines (a white Fiat, cactuses with orange flowers, a blue porcelain tea service, a typewriter), newspaper cuttings (the maloya concert, the bus accident, police raiding a factory that only employed illegal immigrants, an article on mourning), dried flowers, a sprig of lavender, a drawing of Laura’s, showing a man and two women beneath an enormous tree with heart-shaped leaves and a fairy flying above it.
Adèle hears a noise downstairs and swiftly picks up the binder and the pile of pages. She does not completely understand what she is holding in her hands but she knows it is connected to her, so it must disappear too. She has allowed herself to stray from her path, the path she had chosen so many years ago. All it has taken was a grass snake, an accident, a conversation on the beach, a ride in an old car. She picks up her black bag from her bedroom, puts the binder and the pages into it. Her actions are swift, precise. She closes the door, walks downstairs, and, as she crosses the living room, notices the paintings on the sofa.
“Are you going away?”
Adèle gives a start. Adam is there, beside the fireplace. He is crouching, bent in on himself, his arms hugging his stomach.
“Adam?”
“Are you going away, Adèle? Take this stuff with you, please. Take it all far away from here.”
Adam stands up grimacing, and in a broad, weary gesture indicates the paintings on the sofa. Adèle notices his shirt is incorrectly buttoned and Adam suddenly seems to her like a giant with feet of clay, a man lost in his own body. What has happened to the flamboyant architect, the magnificent swimmer, the secret artist, the tireless marathon runner, the man who could construct both a solid house and a dream catcher as light as a soap bubble?
“Everything I’ve painted is for you. I’ve no talent of my own, you know. Look at those things on the wall, soldiers, wooden houses, beaches, water, it’s all nothing. I’m just a Sunday painter, terrible daubs all my life until you came along. Take them, please. Do what you like with them. Burn them, throw them away. It’s all one to me.”
Adèle hugs her bag to her. Where have these paintings come from? What is that binder and that text in her bag? But as she edges toward the sofa something happens, it is like a change in the composition of the air and the light. The paintings come to life, the shapes move. That thick yellow circle is the winter sun she loved so much, beside the sea on the island of Mauritius. That black S is the march of the ants. Those are mustard seeds about to burst open and soon their sweet and piquant scent will fill the room. There is the blue mist that covers the mountain of Port Louis at nightfall. This is precisely the color and shape of the eggplant for curried fish. Here is the great wave and its foaming spray mixed with drops of blood. Here is her childhood, her life, her unhappiness. Here is Melody calling her back.
Adèle chokes back a cry and rushes out of the house but there is no longer any way she can truly escape, is there? She heads swiftly toward the forest and as she walks along, her heart and mind are silently swimming toward that cocooned spot where Melody has been sleeping for years.
“Will it soon be Christmas, maman?”
“Yes, ma chérie, it’ll soon be Christmas. I think Papa plans to fetch the Christmas tree on Saturday.”
“Can I go with him this year?”
“Yes, I’m sure you can. You’re big enough now.”
“Will you come with us?”
“Well, I work on Saturdays … but, yes, why not? I’ll fix it, don’t worry.”
“So it’ll be all three of us, like before?”
“Yes, like before. In the evening we’ll decorate the tree with angels and glass balls.”
“Will we make cookies?”
“Yes, big cookies and heart-shaped shortbread. Look, we’re almost there.”
The world is surely studded with countless such conversations, shining like fireflies in the night. Should we not capture them in glass jars and place them on windowsills, so as to enjoy their light and hearken to their murmuring?
Laura is walking with her mother along a marked trail through the forest. It is cold but Anita was right not to postpone this little expedition, promised for such a long time. Adèle won’t mind her not having called at the house to pick her up. When Laura had asked her if the two of them could go to the lake together, just us two, Maman, Anita could not refuse. That evening she will
