but you’re everywhere that I am.
I’m gradually waking up while taking small sips of my piping-hot tea. The morning sun gets a few rays through the kitchen’s drawn curtains. A little dust floats in the room, I find it beautiful, almost magical. I’ve put some music on, quietly, Georges Delerue, the theme song of Truffaut’s film, Day for Night. I hold my cup in my right hand, and my left hand pets Eliane, who stretches her neck and closes her eyes. I love feeling her warmth under my fingers.
Nono knocks, and comes in. Like Father Cédric, he never kisses me, or shakes my hand. Just good morning or good evening “my Violette.” Before pouring himself a coffee, he places the Journal de Saône-et-Loire on the table for me to read: “Brancion-en-Chalon: Road Tragedy, Biker Identified.” I hear myself saying to Nono, in a flat voice:
“Could you read me the article, please, I don’t have my glasses.”
Eliane, who senses the tension in my fingers, rubs up a little against Nono, as if to say hello, and then scratches on the door to be let out. Nono pets her, lets her out, and then returns to me. He pulls a chair over to sit opposite me, fumbles in his pocket, puts on his glasses, which are reimbursed one hundred percent by social security, and begins to read, a bit like a child in primary school, emphasizing each syllable. Like when Léonine was a baby and I read to her from the Boscher Method, “If all the girls in the world wanted to hold hands, all around the sea, they could dance in a ring.” But the words are not the same as in my colorful book.
“The victim of the fatal accident in Brancion-en-Chalon is said to have been identified by his partner. He apparently lived in the Lyons area. The man was found lifeless on April 23rd in Brancion-en-Chalon. According to the initial police reports, his motorbike, a striking black 650cc Hyosung Aquila—its serial number had been removed—had hit the verge, causing the driver, who was wearing an unfastened helmet, to fall. On the day following his disappearance, his partner had alerted police stations and hospitals in the area, and that is how the connection could be established.”
We’re interrupted by some family members of a deceased person, arriving at the cemetery in clusters. Some are playing acoustic guitars. Everyone is holding a balloon in one hand.
Nono puts the newspaper down and says to me:
“I’ll go.”
“Me, too.”
As I put on my black overcoat, I wonder whether I should tell the police that Philippe Toussaint had come from my place.
“Only silence,” Sasha often said.
Haven’t I given enough already? Don’t I deserve some peace?
Even dead, Philippe Toussaint continues to torment me. I remember his final words and the bruises he left on my arms.
I want to live in peace. I want to live how Sasha taught me to. Here and now. I want Life. And not to churn up a man who contributed nothing to mine. Whose parents took away my only sun.
The hearse enters the cemetery and drives as far as the Gambini family vault. Today, a well-known fairground entertainer is being buried, Marcel Gambini, born one day in 1942 in the municipality of Brancion-en-Chalon. His deported parents only just had time to hide him in the village church.
I found myself almost wishing that desperate people would come and hide their children at Father Cédric’s. The lottery of life sometimes just doesn’t work. I would have so liked to be brought up by a man like Father Cédric, instead of going from family to family.
There are at least three hundred people at Marcel’s funeral, including guitarists, violinists, and a bassist, who play some Django Reinhardt around his coffin. Their music contrasts with the grief, the tears that flow, the somber looks, the lost, bowed figures. Everyone falls silent when Marcel’s granddaughter, Marie Gambini, a young girl of sixteen, starts to speak:
“My grandfather had a soft spot for cotton candy, the crunch of toffee apples, the smell of pancakes and waffles, the sweetness of marshmallow, nougat, and churros. Chips dipped in the salt of life, fingers sticky with simple pleasures. He will forever have the smile of the boy triumphantly holding his goldfish in a bag of water. Fishing rod in one hand, balloon in the other, perched on a carousel horse. That was the struggle of his life: giving us a shooting gallery, cuddly tigers invading the bedcovers, hours of playing peek-a-boo with a child in the plane, fire engine, or racing car of a merry-go-round. My grandfather was about hitting the jackpot and first thrills, that first kiss in a conga, a haunted castle, a maze. That icing-sugary kiss that gave us an enduring foretaste of the roller coasters the future had in store for us. My grandfather was also a voice, music, the god of the Gypsy women who can read the lines of a palm. He had Gypsy jazz in his blood, and he has gone off to play new chords, where we can no longer hear him. The line on his palm has broken. I don’t ask you to rest in peace, dear Grandfather, because you’re incapable of resting. I simply say to you: have fun and see you later.”
She kisses the coffin. The rest of the family follows suit.
While Pierre and Jacques Lucchini lower Marcel Gambini’s coffin into his vault with the help of ropes and pulleys, all the musicians play Django Reinhardt’s “Minor Swing” again. Everyone releases their balloons, which float up into the sky. Then each member of the family scatters lottery tickets and soft toys onto the coffin.
This evening, I won’t close the gates of my cemetery at 7 P.M.; the Gambini family asked my permission to remain beside the grave for supper. I gave them permission to stay until midnight. To thank me, they gave me dozens of tickets for big-thrill attractions at the next fun fair in Mâcon, in a fortnight. I
