Don’t rush, I have plenty of time. Make the most of the sky seen from below for a little longer. Make the most, in particular, of the last snows.
See you later,
Gabriel”
March 19th, 2009
I visited Gabriel’s tomb for the first time. After all the crying, after wanting to dig him up, to shake him, to say to him: “Tell me it’s not true, tell me you’re not dead,” I placed a new snow globe on the black marble covering him. I promised Gabriel I’d be back to give it a shake from time to time. I gazed at this tomb that I will be in later.
I replied to his letter out loud:
“My love, you, too, will remain my loveliest memories . . . I’ve had fewer women than you, well, I mean fewer men than you, I’ve known so few. You only had to make a move to seduce. And even then, maybe not. You didn’t have to do a thing, just be you. You are my first love, my second love, my tenth love, my last love. You have taken my whole life. I will come and join you in eternity, I will keep my promise. Keep my place warm, like in the hotel rooms I’d meet you in, when you were early, you’d keep my place warm in those beds we passed through . . . You must send me the address to eternity, such a voyage needs preparation. I’ll see whether I find you in a train, a plane, or a boat. I love you.”
I stayed with him for a long while. I arranged the flowers on his tomb, threw away the ones in cellophane that had wilted, read the funerary plaques. I think that’s what they are called.
It’s a lady who looks after the cemetery where Gabriel is buried. Which is wonderful. He who so loved women. She went past me, greeted me. We exchanged a few words. I didn’t know such a job existed. That people were paid to look after cemeteries, watch over them. She even sells flowers at the entrance, near the gates.
Continuing to write this journal is continuing to keep Gabriel alive. But my God, how long life is going to seem to me.
90.
November is eternal, life is almost
beautiful, memories are dead ends
that we just keep turning over.
JUNE 1998
Although there were barely two hundred kilometers of highway between Mâcon and Valence, the journey had seemed interminable to him. When Philippe drove aimlessly, no journey seemed long to him. But when he had to get from point A to point B, he balked. Constraint was something he would never be able to handle.
Since Violette had discovered that he was trying to get to the truth, he’d lost the desire. As though it being his secret was all that kept him going on this wild goose chase. And having spoken about it had made him lose impetus. Totally. Talking hadn’t freed him, it had drained him.
Even Violette seemed to have turned her back on the past.
He’d speak to Eloïse Petit, and then move on to something else. This meeting with the former supervisor was like a final appointment with the past.
Eloïse Petit was waiting for him, as arranged, outside the movie theater where she worked. She was standing under the screening times. Above her hung a huge poster for The English Patient. Philippe had immediately spotted her, despite all the hustle and bustle around the ticket desk. The people streaming into or out of the various screenings. They had seen each other two years before, at the trial, and had recognized each other instantly.
As though afraid of gossip, Eloïse had taken Philippe to a Relais H café, two streets away, not far from the Valence railway station. They had walked side by side in silence. Philippe still felt that great emptiness, that despondency. He had wondered what on earth he was doing there, on that sidewalk. He didn’t even have any questions left to ask Eloïse. What the hell did she care about a water heater? What did she know about water heaters?
They ordered two croque-monsieurs, a small bottle of Vittel water, and a Coke. Eloïse exuded great gentleness. Philippe felt he could trust her, unlike all the others. She wouldn’t try to lie. She seemed sincere before she even opened her mouth.
Eloïse described the children’s arrival on July 13th, 1993. The allocating of rooms, according to friendships. The children who already knew each other didn’t want to be separated. She and Lucie Lindon had tried to make everyone happy, and seemed to have succeeded. With the supervisors’ help, the girls had put away their clothes and belongings in the lockers in their rooms, beside their beds.
Then there had been tea, and a walk in the grounds of the château, and out to the fields to see the ponies, and bring them back to the stables for the night. The children had loved hosing down the animals while splashing each other, then grooming them, leading them into their stalls, and feeding them with the adults’ help. They were happy as larks when they sat down for supper. The noisy refectory—twenty-four excited little girls, all chatting loudly. They had returned to their respective rooms at around 9:30 P.M., once they had visited the communal showers.
“Why didn’t they wash in the bathroom in their rooms?”
This question surprised Eloïse.
“I don’t know now . . . The shower room was new. I remember washing there, too.”
Eloïse thought about it while chewing her lip.
“I remember, there was no hot water in the bathroom in my room.”
“Why?”
She puffed out her cheeks as though blowing up a balloon, and replied, apologetically:
“I don’t know . . . The pipes were old. The château was falling apart, somewhat. It smelled pretty musty inside. And also, if you had to ask Fontanel to change even just a lightbulb, you’d be lucky if it got done.”
The children came from the north and the east of
