I don’t know if you can judge the life of a man by the beauty of his funeral, but Marcel Gambini’s is one of the most beautiful I’ve had the privilege to attend.
47.
The darkness has to intensify
for the first star to appear.
In January of 1996, four months after receiving the funerary plaque, I put it in my bag and told Philippe Toussaint that, for once, he was going to have to work, and take care of the barrier for two days. I didn’t give him time to react, I had already left, behind the steering wheel of Stéphanie’s car, a red Fiat Panda, with a stuffed white tiger dangling from the rearview mirror to keep me company.
Normally, I would have had a three-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of me. It took me six. Nothing would be normal anymore. I had to stop several times. During the journey, I listened to the radio. I sang for Léonine, whom I imagined, two and a half years earlier, sitting in the back of the Caussins’ car, Cocculine in pocket, clutching doudou.
“Like the bee, like the bird, swiftly, the dream flies away, like a cloud, like the wind, night falls as the moon tiptoes in, the fires in the hearths die down, even the embers will hide, the flower closes on the dew, only the mist will rise . . . ”
As I scanned the houses, the trees, the lanes, the landscapes, I tried to imagine what had held her attention. Did she doze off? Did she do some magic tricks?
On the rare occasions we had been together in a car, it was in Célia’s or Stéphanie’s. Otherwise, we took the train. We didn’t have a car, Philippe Toussaint just had his motorbike. That way, he didn’t have to take us anywhere. In any case, where would he have taken us?
I arrived at Brancion-en-Chalon at around 4 P.M. Teatime, I thought. The door of the cemetery-keeper’s house was ajar. I saw no one. I asked for nothing. I wanted to find Léonine all on my own.
This cemetery, it was like a treasure-hunt map, but the wrong way round. Harrowing, the right way round.
After half an hour of weaving between the graves, clutching the white plaque, I finally found the children’s section, in the Yews wing. I thought to myself: I should be busy preparing for Léonine to start middle school, buying stationery, filling in enrollment forms, forbidding her from wearing eye makeup, and here I am, like a lost soul, a wandering soul, deader than the dead, hunting for her name on a tomb.
For a long time, I asked myself what wrong I had done to deserve this. For a long time, I asked myself what someone had wanted to punish me for. I reviewed all my mistakes. When I hadn’t managed to understand her, when I’d been annoyed with her, when I hadn’t listened to her, when I hadn’t believed her, when I hadn’t realized that she was cold or hot, or really did have a sore throat.
I kissed her surname and first name, engraved on the white marble. I didn’t ask her to forgive me for not having come sooner. I didn’t promise her to come back often. I told her that I preferred to be back with her in the Mediterranean in August, that it was much more like her than this place of silence and tears. I promised her that I would find out what had happened that night, why her room had burned down.
And I placed my funerary plaque, “My darling, you were born on September 3rd, died on July 13th, but to me, you will always be my August 15th.” Among the flowers, poems, hearts and angels. Beside another one with the words: “The sun set too soon.”
I couldn’t say how long I stayed there, but when it was time to leave, the cemetery gates were locked.
I had to knock on the keeper’s door. There was some light inside the house. A soft, indirect light. I tried looking through the windows, but the drawn curtains stopped me from seeing anything. I had to knock again and again, on the door, on the windows, no one came. I ended up pushing open the door, which was already ajar. I went in, calling out, “Anyone at home?” No one answered me.
I heard a noise from upstairs, footsteps above my head, and music, too. Some Bach, interrupted by a presenter’s voice, coming from a radio.
I immediately liked this house. The walls and the aromas. I closed the door behind me and I waited, just standing there and looking at the furniture around me. The kitchen had been turned into a tea store. On the shelves there were around fifty labeled tea caddies. The names had been handwritten in ink. Terra-cotta teapots, also labeled, corresponded to the names on the caddies. Perfumed candles had been lit.
Moments before, I was confronting my daughter’s ashes, and by pushing open a door, I had changed continents.
I believe I waited a long time before hearing footsteps on the stairs. I saw some black mules, black linen trousers, and a white shirt. The man must have been around sixty-five. He was of mixed race, probably a combination of Vietnam and France. He wasn’t surprised to see me standing there, in front of his door, he simply said:
“Sorry, I was taking a shower, do sit down, please.”
His voice reminded me of the actor Jean-Louis Trintignant’s. Emotional, melancholic, gentle, and sensual. With that voice, he said, “Sorry, I was taking a shower, do sit down, please,” as if we had an appointment. I thought he was mistaking me for someone else. I wasn’t able to reply because he continued:
“I’m going to make you a glass of soy milk with ground almonds and orange blossom.”
I would have preferred a shot of vodka, but I didn’t let on. I watched him pouring the milk, orange blossom, and ground almonds into a
