No question of going to a restaurant, they would eat at my house. No question of sleeping at Madame Bréant’s, they would sleep here. I made them croque-monsieurs with extra cheese, pasta shells, fried eggs, and a tomato salad. Julien helped me set the table. For dessert, I had some strawberry sorbets in the freezer. Stashing sweets, ice cream, chocolate cakes in my drawers, yogurts in the fridge. The same old habit as taking Nathan’s hand in mine.
I made Julien drink a lot of white wine so he couldn’t change his mind, so he wouldn’t go to sleep at Madame Bréant’s, but stay here, with me.
Once I had cleared away the dirty dishes, I made up a bed for the two children on the big sofa, the one I slept on when I visited Sasha. The boys cheered and started jumping on the poor old springs, which squeaked with joy.
Before going to bed, they begged me to take them around the avenues of the cemetery “to see the ghosts.” They asked me many questions as they read the names on the headstones. They asked me why some tombs had lots of flowers and others didn’t. They read out the dates, told me that most of the dead were really, really old.
Frightfully disappointed not to have seen a single ghost, they asked me to tell them some “scary stories.” I told them about Diane de Vigneron and Reine Ducha, supposedly glimpsed in the vicinity of the cemetery, at the edge of the road, or in the streets of Brancion-en-Chalon. The children started to blanch, so, to reassure them, I told them that these were just legends, and that, personally, I’d never seen them.
Julien was waiting for us on a bench in the garden. He was smoking a cigarette beside Eliane, and stroking her, lost in thought. He smiled when the children told him that we hadn’t seen a single ghost, but that some people had already encountered some inside and beside the cemetery. They urged me to show them the images of Diane as a ghost on the old postcards. I convinced them that I had lost them.
All four of us went inside. The boys checked three times that the doors were double-locked. I left the light on for them in the corridor leading to my room. But one look at Madame Pinto’s dolls, and they requested a night-light each.
Julien and I went upstairs, avoiding knocking over the dolls. He followed me. At one moment, I stopped. I felt his breath in the nape of my neck, he stroked the small of my back, and whispered, “Hurry up.”
Barely had we closed the door before the two boys were opening it to come and sleep in my bed. We lay on either side of them until they fell asleep, stroking their heads, and sometimes our hands met, found each other, linked in Nathan’s hair.
And then we went downstairs to the sofa, to make love. At around 4 A.M., the boys lifted our sheets to curl up with us. We were packed together like sardines. I didn’t sleep a wink as I listened to their breathing, with the rapt attention I gave the Chopin sonatas that Sasha always played.
At 6 A.M., Julien took me by the hand and we went back up to my room to make love. I never thought I would make love several times with the same man. Only with someone passing through. A stranger. A visitor. A widower. Someone desperate. Just once, to kill time.
Now we’re whispering, noses in our mugs of coffee. My hands smell of cinnamon and tobacco. My body smells of love, roses, and perspiration. My hair is tangled, my lips chapped. I’m afraid. Later, when Julien leaves, because he will leave, solitude will be back to keep me company, faithful and undying.
“And you, why didn’t you have other children, after Nathan?”
“Same thing. Didn’t meet the mother that went with them.”
“What’s Nathan’s mother like?”
“In love with another man. She left me for him.”
“That’s tough.”
“Oh yes, really tough.”
“You still love her?”
“I don’t think so.”
He gets up and kisses me. I hold my breath. It’s so lovely to be kissed in summertime. I feel clumsy, all fingers and thumbs. I’ve forgotten the moves. One learns how to save lives, but never how to bring one’s own skin, and that of another, back to life.
“As soon as the children are awake, we’ll be off.”
“ . . . ”
“If you’d seen your face, yesterday evening, when we turned up . . . God, I felt bad . . . If Nathan hadn’t been there, I’d have bolted.”
“It’s because I’m not used to it anymore . . . ”
“I won’t be back, Violette.”
“ . . . ”
“I don’t want to come to have it off with you, once a month, at your cemetery.”
“ . . . ”
“You live with dead people, novels, candles, and a few drops of port. You’re right, there’s no place for a man in all that. Let alone a man with a kid.”
“ . . . ”
“And also, I can see in your eyes that you don’t believe in our story.”
“ . . . ”
“Speak, please. Say something.”
“You know the two of us can’t last.”
“Of course, I know it. Well, no, I know nothing. It’s you who knows. Get in touch from time to time. But not too often, or I’ll keep waiting.”
84.
Here we are today, at the edge of the void,
Because we’re searching everywhere
for the face we have lost.
IRÈNE FAYOLLE’S JOURNAL
February 13th, 1999
I don’t know how Gabriel knew about Paul’s death. I caught sight of him this morning at the St-Pierre cemetery. Standing back, hiding behind another tomb, like a thief.
My husband was being buried, and me, I only had eyes for Gabriel. Who am I? What kind of monster am I?
I lowered my eyes to say a silent prayer to Paul, and when I raised them, Gabriel had gone. My eyes searched desperately for him, scoured every corner of the
