“And why are you sleeping in the sitting room? Why’s Daddy sleeping all dressed on the bed? Who is the lady? Why aren’t there any more trains? Who are they, Mommy, these people? Who is that little girl? Is she from our family? Are they going to stay here?”
Sadly, no. Célia and Emmy left us two days later.
When they got back on the train, I thought I would die of sadness. As if I’d always known them. All strikes come to an end. Holidays, too. But I had met someone, my first girlfriend. Through the half-open window of the train, carriage 7, Célia said to me:
“Come and live with us in Marseilles. You’ll be happy there, I’ll find you some work . . . Usually, I don’t pass judgment, but since France is on strike, let’s say that I, too, am on strike and I’m going to tell you what I really think: Violette, it’s obvious that your husband isn’t right for you. Leave him.”
I replied that I had already been deprived of my parents, that I would never deprive Léonine of her father. Even if Philippe Toussaint was a father in quotation marks, he was still a father.
A week after their departure, I received a long letter from Célia. In this letter, she had slipped three round-trip Malgrange-sur-Nancy–Marseilles train tickets.
She had a chalet in the Calanque de Sormiou and was putting it at our disposal. The fridge would be full. It should be enjoyed, at last. She had written that, “Enjoy it, at last. You will be able to have a proper holiday, Violette, and see the sea with your daughter.” She also wrote that she would never forget that I had welcomed her into my home. That in exchange for those two days I had given her, it would be holidays every year in Marseilles.
Philippe Toussaint said he wouldn’t go. That he had “better things to fucking do than going to a dyke’s place.” That’s what he called all women he wasn’t sleeping with, “dykes.”
As for me, I told him that it was perfect that he wasn’t going, that way he could work the barrier while Léo and I went there. He can’t have liked the thought of us having a good time without him. He had a sudden fit of love: for the first time in six years, at his request, the SNCF found replacements for us within a matter of hours.
A fortnight later, on August 1st, 1992, we discovered Marseilles. Célia was waiting for us at the end of the platform at Saint-Charles station. I threw myself into her arms. It was even sunny on the platform, I remember saying that to Célia, “It’s even sunny on the platform . . . ”
When I saw the Mediterranean for the first time, I was in the back of Célia’s car. I lowered my window and sobbed like a child. I think I’d had the shock of my life. The shock of the majestic.
35.
Everything fades away, everything passes,
except for memory.
Love letters, a watch, a lipstick, a necklace, a novel, children’s stories, a mobile phone, a coat, family photos, a calendar for 1966, a doll, a bottle of rum, a pair of shoes, a pen, a bunch of dried flowers, a harmonica, a silver medal, a handbag, sunglasses, a coffee cup, a hunting gun, an amulet, an LP, a magazine with Johnny Hallyday on the cover. You find all sorts of things in a coffin.
Today, Jeanne Ferney (1968–2017) was buried. Paul Lucchini told me that he’d slipped a portrait of her children inside her coffin, as she had requested. Last wishes are often respected. We don’t dare thwart the dead, we’re too scared that they will bring us bad luck from the beyond if we disobey them.
I’ve just closed the gates of the cemetery. I pass in front of Jeanne’s tomb, decked with fresh floral tributes. I remove the cellophane from around the flowers so they can breathe.
Rest in peace, dear Jeanne.
Maybe you’ve already been born elsewhere, in another town, on the other side of the world. There’s your new family around you. Celebrating your birth. They are looking at you, kissing you, showering you with gifts, saying that you look like your mother, while here you are being mourned. And you, you are sleeping, you are preparing yourself for a new life with everything to be done again, while here you are dead. Here you are a memory, over there, the future is you.
* * *
When Célia’s car took the steep little road down to the Calanque de Sormiou, I looked beauty in the eye. Léo told me that she felt sick; I took her on my lap and said, “Look, can you see the sea down there? We’re nearly there.”
We opened the chalet’s shutters, we let in the sun, the light, and the aromas.
The cicadas were singing. I’d only ever heard them on the television. They drowned out our voices.
We pulled on our bathing suits without bothering to unpack our suitcases. The sea awaited us! We walked a hundred meters and, already, we had our feet in the limpid, pale-green water. From afar, the Mediterranean was blue, close up crystal-clear. All I had ever known was the chlorinated water of municipal swimming pools.
I inflated Léo’s swan-shaped rubber ring and we entered the cool water, squealing with joy.
Philippe Toussaint made us laugh, he splashed us. He kissed me. He left salt on my lips. Léo said, “Daddy gave Mommy a kiss.”
Léo’s laughter on her father’s shoulders, the cicadas, the coolness of the water, and the sun—it all made me giddy. It was like a merry-go-round going round too fast. I plunged my head under the water
