since all cemeteries one day end up as parks.
In 1997, when our level-crossing was automated, my husband and I lost our jobs. We were in the newspaper. We were seen as the last collateral victims of progress, the employees who worked the last manual level-crossing in France. To illustrate the article, the journalist took a photograph of us. Philippe Toussaint even slipped an arm around my waist as he posed. I’m smiling, but God how sad my eyes look in that photo.
The day the article appeared, Philippe Toussaint returned from the employment agency with a sense of dread: it had just dawned on him that he was going to have to do some work. He’d got used to me doing everything for him. When it came to laziness, I’d won the lottery with him. The correct numbers and the jackpot to boot.
To cheer him up, I handed him a piece of paper: “Cemetery keeper, a job with a future.” He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. In 1997, he looked at me as if I’d lost my mind every day. Does a man who no longer loves a woman look at her as if she’s lost her mind?
I explained to him that I’d come across the ad by chance. That Brancion-en-Chalon’s council was looking for a couple of keepers to look after the cemetery. And that the dead had fixed schedules and would make less noise than the trains. That I’d spoken to the mayor and he was ready to hire us immediately.
My husband didn’t believe me. He told me that chance wasn’t something he believed in. That he’d rather die than go “over there” and do the work of a vulture.
He switched on the TV and played Mario 64. The aim of the game was to find all the stars in every world. As for me, there was just one star I wanted to find: the lucky one. That’s what I thought when I saw Mario running around to save Princess Peach, abducted by Bowser.
So, I persevered. I told him that by becoming cemetery keepers, we’d each have a salary, and a much better one than at the level-crossing, and that the dead were more profitable than trains. That we’d have very nice on-site accommodation and no expenses. That it would make a nice change from the house we’d been living in for years, a place that let in water like an old boat in winter, and was as warm as the North Pole in summer. That it would be a new start, and we needed one, that we’d hang pretty curtains at the windows so we couldn’t see the neighbors, the crucifixes, the widows, and what have you. That those curtains would be the boundary between our life and others’ grief. I could have told him the truth, told him that those curtains would be the boundary between my grief and everyone else’s. But no way. Say nothing. Make believe. Pretend. So that he gives in.
To convince him once and for all, I promised him he’d have NOTHING to do. That three gravediggers already took care of maintenance—of the graves and the upkeep of the cemetery. That this job was just a matter of opening and closing gates. Of being present. With working hours that aren’t demanding. With holidays and weekends as long as the Valserine viaduct. And that me, I’d do the rest. All the rest.
Super Mario stopped running. The princess tumbled down.
Before going to bed, Philippe Toussaint reread the ad: “Cemetery keeper, a job with a future.”
Our level-crossing was at Malgrange-sur-Nancy. During that period of my life, I wasn’t really living. “During that period of my death” would be more accurate. I got up, got dressed, worked, did the shopping, slept. With a sleeping pill. Or two. Or more. And I looked at my husband looking at me as if I’d lost my mind.
My working hours were horrendously demanding. I lowered and raised the barrier almost 15 times a day during the week. The first train went through at 4:50 A.M., and the last at 11:04 P.M. I had that automatic barrier bell ringing in my head. I heard it even before it went off. We should have been sharing that hellish routine, taking turns. But all Philippe Toussaint took turns at was his motorbike and the bodies of his mistresses.
Oh, how the passengers I saw travelling by made me dream. And yet the trains were only small, local ones linking Nancy to Epinal, stopping a dozen times on every journey at godforsaken villages, as a favor to the natives. And yet I envied those men and women. I imagined they were going to appointments, appointments that I would’ve liked to have, just like the travelers I saw shooting past.
* * *
We set off for Burgundy three weeks after the article appeared in the paper. We went from grayness to greenness. From asphalt to pasture, from the smell of railroad tar to that of the countryside.
We arrived at the Brancion-en-Chalon cemetery on August 15th, 1997. France was on holiday. All the locals had taken off. The birds that fly from grave to grave weren’t flying anymore. The cats that stretch out between the potted plants had disappeared. It was even too warm for the ants and lizards; all the marble was burning hot. The gravediggers had the day off, as did the newly deceased. I wandered alone around the paths, reading the names of people I would never know. And yet I immediately felt good there. Where I belonged.
4.
Being is eternal, existence a passage,
eternal memory will be its message.
When teenagers haven’t stuck chewing gum in the keyhole, I’m the one who opens and shuts the heavy gates of the cemetery.
The hours vary according to the seasons.
8 A.M. to 7 P.M. from March 1st to October 31st.
9 A.M. to 5 P.M. from November 2nd to February 28th.
The jury’s still out on February 29th.
