Who is going to look for him? Françoise Pelletier, I imagine. Did he have friends apart from her? When we lived together, he had mistresses, but not friends. Two or three fellow bikers in Charleville and Malgrange. And his parents. But his parents are dead now.
I don’t dwell on the pages of the newspaper. I go up to my bedroom to have a shower and change. When I open my summer and winter wardrobe, I wonder whether to put on my pink dress under my raincoat, or wear a black dress. I’m a widow and no one knows it.
I did recognize him in the mortuary chamber. I recognized his body. I think that, after the horror, it was disgust that made me fall to the ground. Disgust at him. The hatred, when he came to terrorize me in my garden, the hatred of him, which he passed on to me through my arm that he gripped too hard. So hard that I still have some marks.
I’ve always worn colors under my dark clothes to cock a snook at death. Like the women who wear makeup under their burka. Today, I feel like doing the opposite. I feel like putting on a black dress, and slipping a pink coat over it. But I would never do that, out of respect for others, for those who remain, and who pace up and down the avenues of my cemetery. And I’ve never owned a pink coat.
I go back down to the kitchen, avoiding tripping on my vacuum-packed dolls, pour myself a drop of port at the bottom of a glass, and wish myself good health.
I set off to do the tour of my cemetery. Eliane follows me. I cover all four wings, Bays, Spindles, Cedars, and Yews. All in perfect order. The ladybirds are starting to appear. The tomb of Juliette Montrachet (1898–1962) is just as beautiful.
From time to time, I pick up pots of flowers that have fallen over. José-Luis Fernandez is there. He’s watering his wife’s flowers. Tutti Frutti is keeping him company. Madames Pinto and Degrange, too. They are each scratching the surrounds of their husbands’ tombs in silence. They are scratching at earth that can’t take any more scratching. The weeds surrendered long ago.
I come across a couple I know by sight. The woman comes occasionally to visit the tomb of her sister, Nadine Ribeau (1954–2007). We exchange greetings.
It’s not raining anymore. It’s pleasant. I’m hungry. Philippe Toussaint’s death hasn’t ruined my appetite. I feel the silk of my pink dress brushing against my thighs. I say to myself that Léo won’t have to go through that. Burying her father. Me neither.
By choosing to disappear from my life, Philippe Toussaint chose to disappear from his death. I won’t have to scratch around his tomb, or buy flowers for him. I think back to the love we made when we were young. It’s been years since I made love. In the Yew wing, I make for the children’s section.
Most of the tombs are white. There are angels everywhere, on the plaques, on the banks of flowers, on the tombstones. There are pink hearts and teddy bears, many candles, and an abundance of poems.
Today, no parents. When they come, it’s often after work, at around five or six o’clock, and often the same parents. At first, they spend all day there. Numb. Dazed with grief. Dead drunk. More dead than alive. After a few years, they space out their visits, and it’s better that way, because life goes on. And death is elsewhere.
And then, in this section, there are children who would be a hundred-and-fifty years old. As the song goes:
And in a hundred-and-fifty years’ time, we’ll no longer even
think
About those we have loved, about those we have lost,
Come on, let’s empty our coffins for the thieves in the street!
All ending up in the earth, my God, what a letdown!
And look at these skeletons giving us dirty looks
And don’t sulk, don’t wage war on them
There’ll be nothing left of us, any more than of them
I’d stake more than my life on it
So smile.
I crouch down in front of the tombs of:
Anaïs Caussin (1986–1993)
Nadège Gardon (1985–1993)
Océane Degas (1984–1993)
Léonine Toussaint (1986–1993)
43.
Like a flower crushed by the wind of the storm,
death snatched him away in the spring of his life.
My daughter, you cannot imagine how bitterly I regretted giving you that magician’s kit for Christmas. Your trick worked, you really did vanish. And you made three of your friends, including Anaïs, vanish, too.
The other rooms in the castle weren’t affected. Or they were evacuated in time. I don’t know anymore, that I have forgotten.
Only yours. Only yours and your friends’. Your particular room was the one closest to the kitchens.
A short circuit. Or a hot plate not quite turned off.
Or food that might have caught fire in the oven.
Or a gas leak.
Or a cigarette end.
Later, I’ll know what it was later.
No trickery in your magic trick. No trapdoor hidden in the floor, no applause, no dramatic reappearance with music and bowing.
Nothingness, ashes, the end of the world.
Four small lives obliterated, turned to dust. All of you, placed end to end, you don’t even measure three meters; thirty-one years of little girls.
After that night, you all flew away.
One finds consolation where one can: you didn’t suffer. You were asphyxiated in your sleep. When the flames started to reach you, you were already gone. You were dreaming and that’s how you all remained.
I hope you were riding a pony, my darling, or in the Calanque, being a mermaid.
After the 5:50 train, I’d stretched out on the sofa, and had just dozed off. My heart raced when the phone rang—I thought I’d forgotten the 7:04. I answered it. I’d just been dreaming
