I know a few ladies from Brancion who specialize in widowers. They prowl the avenues, dressed all in black, and locate the solitary men watering the flowers on the tombs of their late spouses. I observed, over a long period, the little game played by a certain Clotilde C., who, every week, invented new dead people to cherish in my cemetery. The first inconsolable widower she spotted, she hooked by starting a conversation about the weather, about life going on, and would get herself invited to “have an apéritif one of these evenings.” She finally got herself hitched to Armand Bernigal, whose wife (Marie-Pierre Vernier, married name Bernigal, 1967–2002) lies in the Yews section.
I’ve found and picked up dozens of new funerary plaques thrown in the bin or hidden under the bushes by outraged families. Plaques with the words, “To my beloved for eternity,” placed by a lover.
And every day, I see the illicit discreetly coming in to pay their respects. Especially mistresses. It’s mainly women who haunt cemeteries, because they live longer. Lovers never come on the weekends, at the times when they might run into someone. Always when the gates are just opening or closing. How many have I already locked in? Bent over tombs, I don’t see them, and they have to come and knock on my door for me to release them.
I remember Emilie B. Ever since her lover, Laurent D., had passed away, she always arrived half an hour before opening time. When I’d see her waiting behind the gates, I’d slip a black coat over my nightdress, and go and open them for her in my slippers. She’s the only person I did that for, but I just felt so sorry for her. I’d give her a cup of sweetened coffee, with a little milk, every morning. We’d exchange a few words. She’d talk to me about her passionate love for Laurent. She spoke of him as if he were present. She’d say to me, “Memory is stronger than death. I can still feel his hands on me. I know he’s watching me from where he is.” Before setting off, she’d leave her empty cup on the window ledge. When visitors came to pay their respects at Laurent’s grave—his wife, his parents, or his children—Emilie would change tombs, waiting, hiding in a corner. As soon as they’d all gone, she’d return to Laurent to think about him, to talk to him.
One morning, Emilie didn’t come. I thought she must have finished mourning. Because, most of the time, a person does eventually finish mourning. Time unravels grief. However immense it is. Apart from the grief of a mother or a father who has lost a child.
I was wrong. Emilie never finished mourning. She returned to my cemetery between four planks of wood. Surrounded by her loved ones. I don’t think anyone ever knew that she and Laurent had loved each other. Of course, Emilie wasn’t buried close to him.
On the day of her burial, once everyone had left, just as one plants a tree on the day of a birth, I took a cutting. Emilie had planted a lavender bush at Laurent’s tomb. I cut a long stem of that lavender, made lots of little incisions to favor root growth, cut off the top, and stuck it through the pierced base of a bottle that was filled with soil and a little compost. A month later, the stem had sprouted roots.
Laurent’s lavender would also become Emilie’s. They would have that for years, that plant in common, offspring of the mother plant. I nurtured the cutting all winter, and replanted it in the spring at Emilie’s tomb. As Barbara sings, “spring is lovely for talking about love.” Laurent’s and Emilie’s lavenders are still splendid today, and perfume all the neighboring tombs.
16.
We never meet people by chance. They are destined to cross our paths for a reason.
Léonine.”
“What did you say?”
“Léonine.”
“No, you really are nuts . . . What kind of name is that? A brand of detergent?”
“I love that name. And anyway, people will call her Léo. I like girls who have boys’ names.”
“Call her Henri, while you’re at it.”
“Léonine Toussaint . . . it’s very pretty.”
“It’s 1986! You could find something more modern, like . . . Jennifer or Jessica.”
“No, please, Léonine . . . ”
“In any case, you do what you like. If it’s a girl, you choose. If it’s a boy, I do.”
“And what would you call our son?”
“Jason.”
“I hope it’s a girl.”
“I don’t.”
“Shall we make love?”
17.
I hear your voice in the world’s every sound.
January 19th, 2017, gray sky, 8 degrees, 3 P.M. Burial of Dr. Philippe Guyennot (1925–2017). Oak coffin, yellow and white roses on top. Black marble. Small gilt cross on headstone.
Around fifty sprays, wreaths, casket tributes, plants (lilies, roses, cyclamens, chrysanthemums, orchids.)
Funeral ribbons saying, “To our dear father,” “To my dear husband,” “To our dear grandfather,” “Thoughts from the class of 1924,” “Retailers of Brancion-en-Chalon,” “To our friend,” “To our friend,” “To our friend.”
On the funerary plaques: “Time passes, memories remain”; “To my dear husband”; “From your friends who will never forget you”; “To our father”; “To our grandfather”; “To our great-great-uncle”; “To our godfather”; “Thus all passes on earth, intellect, beauty, grace, and talent, like an ephemeral flower felled by a puff of wind.”
About a hundred people are present around the grave. Including Nono, Gaston, Elvis, and me. Before the burial, more than four hundred people congregated at Father Cédric’s little church. Not everyone could fit inside and sit in pews, so the elderly were allowed in first, to be seated together. Many people remained standing, gathered on the church’s small forecourt.
Countess de Darrieux told me she had thought back to when the good doctor would arrive at her home after midnight, his shirt all crumpled, and, after traveling across the countryside, he would return to make sure that her youngest’s fever had abated since morning. She said to me, “Each one of us thought back to their anginas,
