In 2007, I had serious problems with a gang of youths on holiday. People just passing through. Parisians, or suchlike. From July 1st through 30th, they came every evening, over the cemetery walls, to sleep on the tombs, under the stars. I called the police several times; Nono gave them a few kicks up the backside, explaining that the cemetery wasn’t an adventure playground, but they’d be back the following night. I could switch on all the lights outside my house, shake my bell, target them with my water pistol, impossible to make them clear off. Nothing seemed to have any effect on them.
Fortunately, on the morning of July 31st, they left. But the following year, they returned. On the evening of July 1st, there they were. I heard them at around midnight. They settled down on the tomb of Cécile Delaserbe (1956–2003). And, unlike the previous year, they were smoking and drinking a good deal, leaving their bottles all over the cemetery. Every morning, we had to collect the cigarette butts from the potted plants.
And then a miracle occurred: during the night of July 8th to 9th, they left. I’ll never forget their screams of terror. They said they had seen “something.”
The following day, Nono told me he’d found “little blue pills” near the ossuary, an overly strong drug that must have distorted the sight of a will-o’-the-wisp, in their altered minds, into some sort of specter. I don’t know whether it was the ghost of Diane de Vigneron or Reine Ducha, the white lady, that rid me of those young idiots, but I’m eternally grateful to it.
19.
If a flower grew every time I thought of you, the earth would be one massive garden.
I was about to push open the main door beneath our studio, when I saw a red apple in the shopwindow, on the cover of a book, L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable, a French translation of John Irving’s The Cider House Rules. I couldn’t understand the title. It was too complicated for me. In 1986, I was eighteen, with the educational level of a six-year-old. Tea-cher, sch-ool, I go, I have, you have, I am go-ing home, it is, good mor-ning Miss, Panzani, Babybel, Boursin, Skip, Oasis, Ballantine’s.
I bought that eight-hundred-and-twenty-one-page book, even though just reading one sentence and understanding it could take hours. As if I were a size 50 and had bought myself size-36 jeans. But buy it I did, because the apple made my mouth water. And for a few months, I had lost my desire. It started with Philippe Toussaint’s breath on the nape of my neck. That breath that meant he was ready, that he wanted me. Philippe Toussaint always wanted me, never desired me. I didn’t move. I pretended to be asleep. To breathe heavily.
It was the first time my body didn’t respond to the call of his. And then the lack of desire passed, once, twice. Then it returned, like the hoarfrost that reappears from time to time.
I’d always been at one with life, I’d always seen the fine side of things, rarely their darker side. Like those waterfront houses, facades gleaming in the sun. From the boat, you can see the bright color of the walls, the picket fences white as mirrors, and the verdant gardens. I rarely saw the back of these buildings, the side along the road, the shadowy side where trash cans and septic tanks are hidden.
Before Philippe Toussaint, despite the foster families and my bitten nails, I saw the sunlight on the facades, rarely the shadows. With him, I came to understand what disillusion means. That it wasn’t enough to derive pleasure from a man to love him. The gorgeous guy’s picture on glossy paper had become dog-eared. His laziness, his lack of courage when facing his parents, his latent violence, and the smell of other girls on his fingertips, had stolen something from me.
He’s the one who wanted a child from me. He’s the one who said, “We’re going to make babies.” The same man, ten years my senior, who whispered to his mother that he’d “picked me up,” that I was a “lost cause,” and that he was “so sorry.” And when his mother had turned her back after writing him the umpteenth check, had kissed me on the neck, explaining that he always told his “old folks” anything to get rid of them. But the words were cast, loaded.
I, too, pretended that day. I smiled, I said, “Fine, of course, I understand.” This disillusion produced something else inside of me. Something strong. As I saw my belly gradually expanding, I yearned to learn again. To know what “mouthwatering” really meant. Not through somebody, but through words. The ones that are in books, and that I’d run away from because they scared me.
I waited until Philippe Toussaint had left, on his bike, to read the back cover of L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable. I had to read out loud: to understand the meaning of the words, I had to hear them. As though telling myself a story. I was my double: the one who wanted to learn and the one who would learn. My present and my future bent over the same book.
Why do books attract us the way people do? Why are we drawn to covers like we are to a look, a voice that seems familiar, heard before, a voice that diverts us from our path, makes us look up, attracts our attention, and could change the course of our life?
After more than two hours, I was only
