He didn’t need to do a thing to get to kiss the pretty blondes that hovered around him. Like flies circling a piece of meat. Philippe Toussaint appeared not to give a damn about anything. He went with the flow. He didn’t have to lift a finger to get what he wanted, apart from raising his glass to his lips from time to time, between two fluorescent kisses.
He had his back to me. All I could see of him were the blond curls that turned from green to red to blue under the revolving lights. My eyes had been lingering on his hair for a good hour. Occasionally, he would lean towards the mouth of a girl as she whispered something in his ear, and I would study his perfect profile.
And then he spun around to the bar and his eyes landed on me, never to let go. From that moment on, I became his favorite toy.
At first, I thought his interest in me was down to the free shots of alcohol I poured into his glass. When serving him, I made sure he couldn’t see my bitten nails, just my white and perfectly straight teeth. I thought he looked like he came from a good family. To me, apart from the youths at the hostel, everyone looked like they came from a good family.
There was a traffic jam of girls behind him. Like at a tollbooth on the Highway of the Sun at the start of the holidays. But he continued to ogle me, eyes full of desire. I leaned against the bar, facing him, to be sure that it really was me he was looking at. I popped a straw in his glass. I looked up. It really was me.
I said to him: “Would you like something else to drink?” I didn’t hear his reply. I moved closer to him, shouting, “Sorry?” He said, “You,” to me, in my ear.
I poured myself a glass of bourbon behind the boss’s back. After a mouthful, I stopped blushing, after two I felt good, after three I was bold as brass. I went back over to his ear and replied, “After my shift, we could have a drink together.”
He smiled. His teeth were like mine, white and straight.
I reckoned my life was going to change when Philippe Toussaint moved his arm across the bar, lightly to touch mine. I felt my skin tighten, like it had a premonition. He was ten years older than me. That age difference gave him stature. I felt like a butterfly gazing at a star.
6.
For the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth.
Someone’s gently knocking on my door. I’m not expecting anyone; indeed, I stopped expecting anyone long ago.
There are two entrances to my house, one from the cemetery, the other from the road. Eliane starts yapping as she heads for the road-side door. Her mistress, Marianne Ferry (1953–2007) is buried in the Spindles section. Eliane turned up on the day of her burial and never left. For the first few weeks, I fed her on her mistress’s tomb, and gradually she followed me to the house. Nono named her Eliane after Isabelle Adjani’s role in the film One Deadly Summer, because she has beautiful blue eyes and her mistress died in August.
In twenty years, I’ve had three dogs that arrived along with their owners and became mine by force of circumstance, but only she remains with me.
Someone knocks again. I hesitate to open. It’s only 7 A.M. I’m just sipping my tea and spreading my biscottes with salted butter and strawberry jam, given to me by Suzanne Clerc, whose husband (1933–2007) is buried in the Cedars section. I’m listening to music. Outside cemetery opening hours, I always listen to music.
I get up and switch off the radio.
“Who is it?”
A masculine voice hesitates, then replies:
“Forgive me, madam, I saw some light.”
I can hear him wiping his feet on the doormat.
“I have some questions about someone who’s buried in the cemetery.”
I could tell him to come back at 8 A.M., opening time. “Two minutes, I’m just coming!”
I go up to my bedroom and open the winter wardrobe to put on a dressing gown. I have two wardrobes. One I call “winter,” the other “summer.” It has nothing to do with the seasons, but rather the circumstances. The winter wardrobe contains only classic, somber clothes, for the eyes of others. The summer wardrobe contains only light, colorful clothes meant only for me. I wear summer under winter, and I take off winter when I’m alone.
So, I slip a gray, quilted dressing gown over my pink-silk négligée. I go back down to open the door and find a man of around forty. At first, I see only his dark eyes, staring at me.
“Good morning, forgive me for disturbing you so early.”
It’s still dark and cold. Behind him, I can see that the night has left a covering of frost. Condensation is coming out of his mouth as if he were puffing on an early-morning cigarette. He smells of tobacco, cinnamon, and vanilla.
I’m incapable of uttering a word. As though I’ve found someone long lost. I’m thinking that he’s burst in on me too late. That if he could have turned up on my doorstep twenty years ago, everything would have been different. Why do I say that to myself? Because it’s been years since anyone knocked on my road-side door, apart from sloshed kids? Because all my visitors arrive from the cemetery?
I make him come in, he thanks me, seeming embarrassed. I serve him coffee.
In Brancion-en-Chalon, I know
