I told myself, “My heart will give way, it will give way, as fast as possible,” I hoped it would be as fast as possible. My only hope was to die.
I was clutching two old bottles of plum brandy to my chest. Bottles that Philippe Toussaint had already had back in the studio. From time to time, I downed a mouthful, which burned me inside, just where I had carried you.
We took the steep road down to the Calanque de Sormiou. It’s known as “the road of fire.” I hadn’t noticed that the previous year.
I didn’t undress before going into the sea. I went under the water, I closed my eyes, and I heard the silence, and I heard our last holidays, the happiness, the opposite of tears.
I immediately sensed you, I sensed your presence. Like a dolphin’s strokes, brushing against my stomach, my thighs, my shoulders, my face. Something gentle that came and went in the currents of the water around me. I sensed that you were fine where you were. I sensed that you were not afraid. I sensed that you were not alone.
Before Célia grabbed me by the shoulders and got me back up to the surface, I heard your voice clearly. You had the voice of a woman, a voice that I would never hear. I think I heard, “Mommy, you must know what happened that night.” I didn’t have time to reply to you. Celia screamed:
“Violette, Violette!!!”
Some people, vacationers in bathing suits, like us last year, helped her bring me back to the shore, just to the shore.
44.
Warbler, if you fly above this tomb,
sing him your sweetest song.
The weather is magnificent. The May sun caresses the soil I’m turning over. Three of the older cats rediscover their youth in the middle of the nasturtium leaves and chase after imaginary mice together. A few wary blackbirds sing, a bit further along. Eliane sleeps on her back, all four legs in the air.
Squatting in my garden, I finish planting my tomato seedlings while listening to a program on Frédéric Chopin. I had put my little battery radio on a wooden bench I picked up in a yard sale a few years ago. I repaint it blue or green, from time to time. The passing years have given it a fine patina.
Nono, Gaston, and Elvis have gone for lunch. The cemetery seems empty. Although it’s lower than my garden, there are certain avenues I can’t see due to the stone wall separating them.
I’ve taken off my grey-jersey top to liberate the flowers on my cotton dress. I’ve pulled on my old boots.
I like giving life. Sowing, watering, harvesting. And starting again every year. I like life just as it is today. Bathed in sunshine. I like being at the essence of things. It’s Sasha who taught me how.
I’ve set the table in my garden. I’ve made a salad of multicolored tomatoes, and a lentil one, bought a few cheeses and a large baguette. And I’ve opened a bottle of white wine, which I’ve placed in an ice bucket.
I like fine china and cotton tablecloths. I like crystal glasses and silver cutlery. I like the beauty of objects because I don’t believe in the beauty of souls. I like life just as it is today, but it’s worthless if it isn’t shared with a friend. While watering my seedlings, I think of Father Cédric, who is such a friend, and whom I’m expecting. We lunch together every Tuesday. It’s our ritual. Unless there’s a burial.
Father Cédric doesn’t know that my daughter rests in my cemetery. Apart from Nono, nobody knows. Even the mayor is unaware of it.
I often speak of Léonine to others because not speaking of her would be to make her die all over again. Not to speak her name would make the silence win. I live with my memory of her, but I tell no one that she is a memory. I make her live elsewhere.
When I’m asked for a photo of her, I show her as a child, with her gappy smile. People say she looks like me. No, Léonine looked like Philippe Toussaint. She had nothing of me.
“Hello, Violette.”
Father Cédric has just arrived. He has a pastry box in his hands and says to me, smiling:
“A love of fine food is very naughty, but it’s not a sin.”
His clothes have a whiff of incense from his church, and mine of powdery roses.
We never shake hands or embrace, but we do clink our glasses.
I go to wash my hands and then rejoin him. He’s poured us both a glass of wine. We sit facing the vegetable garden and, as usual, we speak first of God, as of a mutual old friend not seen for a while: for me, a villain I give no credit to, and for him, an extraordinary person, exemplary and devoted. Then we discuss international and Burgundian news. And then we always end with the best, novels and music.
Usually, we never transgress into the personal. Even after two glasses of wine. I don’t know if he has ever fallen in love with anyone. I don’t know if he has ever made love. And he knows nothing about my private life.
That day, for the first time, while stroking My Way, he dares to ask me if Julien Seul is “just a friend,” or if there’s more between us. I reply to him that there’s nothing between us apart from a story that he started telling me and that I’m waiting to hear the ending of. The story of Irène Fayolle and Gabriel Prudent. I don’t say their names. I just say that I’m waiting for Julien Seul to tell me the end of a story.
“You mean to say that when he’s finished telling you this story, you won’t see him anymore?”
“Yes, probably.”
I go to get the dessert plates. The air is sweet. The wine has gone to my head.
“Do you still want to have a child?”
He
