Finally, the sergeant asked me if Philippe Toussaint might have had a mistress.
“Many.”
“What do you mean, many?”
“My husband always had many mistresses.”
There was an awkward moment. The sergeant hesitated before writing on his form that Philippe Toussaint screwed everything that moved. He blushed a little, and poured me another cup of coffee. He would call me if there was any news. Would issue a missing-person’s description. I never saw that man again until the day he buried his mother, Josette Leduc, née Berthomier (1935–2007). He smiled sadly at me when he saw me.
* * *
Once I did know that Philippe Toussaint had had a relationship with Geneviève Magnan, I lost Léonine a second time. His parents had taken her from me by accident; their son had snatched her from me intentionally. The accident became murder.
I ransacked my memory, searched a thousand times through those mornings I took my daughter to school, the late afternoons I went to fetch her, I tried everything to remember that nursery assistant at the back of the classroom, in a corridor, in front of the coatracks, in the playground, under the shelter, one word, one sentence she might have said to me. Even just a “Hello,” or a “Goodbye, see you tomorrow,” “Lovely weather,” “Wrap her up warm so she doesn’t get cold,” “She seems tired today,” “She forgot her activities book, the one with the blue cover.” At the school party, between the songs and the streamers, the exchanges Geneviève Magnan might have had with my husband. Looks, a smile, a gesture. The silent complicity of lovers.
I searched for when they saw each other, how many times, why she had taken revenge on children, how on earth Philippe Toussaint must have treated her for her to end up doing such a thing. I searched until I was banging my head against a brick wall. But I found nothing. Like an absence of myself.
I had only caught sight of her, not looked properly; she was part of the school furniture, and those drawers were double-locked to me. Can’t even remember, Violette. After I had discovered it, that unacceptable fact, Sasha replaced me for the daily running of the cemetery, because I went back to being good for nothing. Good for just staying like that, sitting or lying down, dazed, and searching.
If Sasha hadn’t come back at that very moment in my life, with the blue suitcase and presents, Philippe Toussaint would have finally finished me off. Once again, Sasha looked after me. Not to teach me how to plant, but how to weather this new winter that had hit me. He massaged my feet and back, made me tea, lemon juice with water, and soups. He cooked me pasta and made me drink wine. He read to me and kept the garden going, from the stage it was at. He sold my flowers, watered them, and accompanied bereaved families. He told Madame Bréant that he would be staying for an indefinite period of time.
Every day, he forced me to get up, wash, get dressed. And then he let me lie down again. He brought meals up to me on a tray, which he made me eat, grumbling, “Some retirement you’re giving me here.” He put music on in the kitchen, leaving the corridor door open so I could hear it from my bed.
And then, just like the cemetery cats, the sun reached as far as my room, reached under my sheets. I opened the curtains, and then the windows. I went back downstairs to the kitchen, boiled the water for the tea, and aired the room. I finally returned to the garden. Finally gave fresh water to the flowers. I welcomed the families once again, served them something hot or strong to drink. I went on a lot: “Can you imagine, Sasha? Philippe Toussaint slept with Geneviève Magnan!” All day long, I kept on at him about the same things, “I can’t even turn her in, she’s dead, can you imagine, Sasha? She’s dead!”
“Violette, you must stop looking for reasons, otherwise it’s yourself you will lose.”
Sasha reasoned with me:
“It’s not because they knew each other that she took it out on some children. It is, without any doubt, an appalling coincidence, a pure accident. Really. Only an accident.”
While I harped on, Sasha convinced me. While Philippe Toussaint sowed evil, Sasha sowed only goodness.
“Violette, the ivy is stifling the trees, never forget to cut it back. Never. As soon as your thoughts are turning dark, take your pruning shears and cut back those troubles.”
Philippe Toussaint disappeared in June of 1998.
Sasha left Brancion-en-Chalon on March 19th, 1999. He left once he was sure that I had fully accepted that the tragedy was accidental, not intentional.
“Violette, with that under your belt, that certainty, you’ll be able to move forward.”
I presume he left at the beginning of spring to be sure I would have all summer to get over his absence. The flowers would grow again.
He spoke often of his last trip. But as soon as he mentioned it, he sensed I wasn’t yet ready to let him go. He wanted to get another flight to Mumbai and go down to the south of India, to Amritapuri in Kerala. He wanted to settle there, just like at Madame Bréant’s, for an indefinite period of time. Sasha often said:
“Being in Kerala, close to Sany, until I die is an old dream. In any case, at my age, no dream is young. They’re all long in the tooth.”
Sasha didn’t want to be buried beside Verena and his children. He wanted his body to be burned on a pyre, over there, on the Ganges.
“I’m seventy years old. I still have a few years ahead of me. I’m going to see what I can do with their soil. How I can pass on the little I
