The skin on her hands was rough.
A few times, I did her perm for her.
To save money, she never let the tap run to rinse the dishes.
Towards the end of her life, she would say: “What did I ever do to the Good Lord to end up here?” referring to the retirement home.
I started to desert her little flat when I was seventeen to sleep at my aunt’s, about 300 meters away. A fine apartment above a large café, and also a cinema popular with youngsters, with its table football, video games, and choc-ices. I still went to eat with the old dear, but I preferred to sleep at my aunt’s for the cigarettes we’d smoke on the sly, the all-day cinema, and the bar.
I’d always seen Madame Fève, a sweet lady, doing the housework and ironing at my aunt’s. Then one day, I came face to face with my grandmother as she was vacuuming the bedrooms. She was replacing Madame Fève, who was on holiday or unwell. It happened occasionally. So I discovered.
The day she died, I couldn’t sleep all night because of “that.” Because of the awkwardness there had been between us at that moment. When I pushed open a door, laughing, and came face to face with my grandmother doing the housework. Doubled over a vacuum cleaner to supplement her income. I tried to remember what we’d said to each other that day. It stopped me from sleeping. I kept revisiting the scene, a scene I had completely forgotten until the day she died. All night long, I pushed open that door and saw her behind it, doing the housework in other people’s homes. All night long, I carried on laughing with my cousins, and she carried on vacuum cleaning.
Next time I see her, I’ll ask her this question, “Old dear, do you remember the day when I saw you doing the housework at my aunt’s?” She’ll probably shrug her shoulders and reply, “And the poppets, are the poppets well?”
13.
There’s something stronger than death, and that’s the presence of those absent in the memory of the living.
I’ve just found the 2015 register slipped behind my blue window box. The detective has scribbled, “Thanks a lot. I’ll phone you,” on the back of a leaflet for a gym in Marseilles’s 8th arrondissement. There’s a photo of a smiling girl on it. Her dream body is torn at knee level.
He wrote nothing else, no comment on the speech for Marie Géant, not a word about his mother. I wonder whether he’s far from Marseilles. Whether he’s already arrived. When did he set off? Does he live close to the sea? Does he gaze at it, or no longer pay any attention to it? Like those who’ve lived together so long that it’s separated them.
Nono and Elvis arrive just as I’m opening the gates. They call out, “Hi, Violette!” and park the municipal truck on the main avenue to go into the hut and put on their work clothes. I can hear their laughter from the side avenues I’m surveying to check that all’s well. That everyone’s in their place.
The cats come and rub themselves against my legs. At the moment, there are eleven of them living in the cemetery. Five of those belonged to the deceased, at least I think they did. They appeared on the day of the burial of Charlotte Boivin (1954–2010), Olivier Feige (1965–2012), Virginie Teyssandier (1928–2004), Bertrand Witman (1947–2003), and Florence Leroux (1931–2009). Charlotte is white, Olivier black, Virginie an alley cat, Bertrand grey, and Florence (a tomcat) mottled white, black, and brown. The other six turned up over time. They come and go. Because people know that the cats at the cemetery are fed and sterilized, cats are abandoned, even thrown over the walls.
It’s Elvis who names them as he finds them. There’s Spanish Eyes, Kentucky Rain, Moody Blue, Love Me, Tutti Frutti, and My Way. My Way was left on my doormat in a shoebox for a size 43.
When Nono sees a new little one turn up at the cemetery, he tells it like it is, “I warn you, the boss’s specialty is getting balls chopped off.” But that doesn’t stop the cats from staying close to me.
Nono put a cat-flap on the door of my house for whoever wants to come in. But most of them slip inside the mortuary chapels. They have their habits and their preferences. Apart from My Way and Florence, who are always curled up in a ball somewhere in my bedroom, the others follow me as far as the landing, but don’t come in. As though Philippe Toussaint were still there, inside. Do they see his ghost? They say that cats converse with souls. Philippe Toussaint didn’t like animals. As for me, I’ve loved them since a tender age, although my childhood was only ever tough.
Generally, visitors like stumbling across the cemetery cats. Many tell themselves that their lost loved one is using these feline creatures to give them a sign. On the tomb of Micheline Clément (1957–2013) it says: “If Heaven there is, Heaven it will only be if I’m welcomed in by my dogs and cats.”
I return to the house, followed by Moody Blue and Virginie. When I push open the door, Nono is just talking to Father Cédric about Gaston. He’s speaking of his notorious clumsiness, of the permanent earthquake Gaston seems to be living through. Of the day when, during an exhumation, Gaston turned his wheelbarrow full of bones around, right in the middle of the cemetery, and a skull rolled under a bench without him noticing. And how Nono had called him
