The director, Edith Croquevieille, had gray hair gathered in a chignon, wore glasses, and smiled sagely at the camera. One sensed that the photographer had given her these directions, “Smile, but not too much, you need to look friendly, trustworthy and reassuring.” I knew that photo. It was at the back of the publicity brochure that Mother Toussaint had handed me, years earlier. That brochure full of blue skies. Like in the brochures of undertakers.
“Only our reliability never takes a holiday.” How often did I berate myself for not reading between those lines?
Beneath the portrait of Edith Croquevieille, her address had been written.
The photo of Swan Letellier was from an automatic booth. How had Sasha got hold of it? Just as for the director, Sasha had written the cook’s address. But it didn’t seem to be his personal address. The name of a restaurant in Mâcon, “Le Terroir des Souches.” Swan must have been about thirty-five. He seemed thin, almond-shaped eyes, handsome and disturbing at the same time, a strange face, fine lips, a shifty look.
The photo of Geneviève Magnan, the dinner lady, must have been taken at a wedding. She was wearing a ridiculous hat, like the mothers of the bride and groom sometimes wear. She had put too much makeup on, and badly. Geneviève Magnan must have been about fifty. It was probably this plump little woman, squeezed into her blue flowery suit, who had served Léo her last meal. I’m sure Léo thanked her, because she was well brought up. I had taught Léo that—it had been my priority—always to say hello, goodbye, thank you.
The two supervisors, Eloïse Petit and Lucie Lindon, were posing together in front of their school. In the photograph, they must have been sixteen. Two cheeky and carefree young girls. Did they eat at the same table as the children? On the phone, Léo had told me that one of the supervisors “really” looked like me. And yet neither Eloïse nor Lucie, both blonde with blue eyes, looked like me.
The face of the maintenance man, Alain Fontanel, had been cut out from a newspaper. He was wearing a football jersey. He must have been posing, squatting with other players, in front of a ball. There was something of the rocker Eddy Mitchell about him.
Always an address, jotted down in blue ink, under each portrait. Those of Geneviève Magnan and Alain Fontanel were identical. And always the same writing as on the parcel containing the funerary plaque, the letter, and the labels on the tea caddies.
But who was this cemetery keeper who’d lured me here? And why?
I waited for him, he didn’t come home. I put the tea in my bag, along with the envelope containing the portraits and names of those present that evening. And I went around the cemetery to find Sasha. I came across unknown people watering plants, and walkers. I wondered who was buried here of theirs. I tried to guess by looking at their faces. A mother? A cousin? A brother? A husband?
After an hour of pacing the avenues in search of Sasha, I found myself back at the children’s section. I went past the angels and up to Léo’s tomb. I saw, once more, my daughter’s name on the headstone—the name I had sewn inside the collar of her clothes before packing them in the suitcase. That was the rule, otherwise the camp’s management accepted no responsibility in case of theft or disappearance. A little moss had started to appear on the marble since last time, in one shady corner. I kneeled to rub it away with the back of my sleeve.
50.
For me, it’s been years now, forever, that your dazzling smile
has sustained the same rose with its glorious summer.
Irène Fayolle and Gabriel Prudent went into the first hotel they saw, a few kilometers from Aix station. The Hôtel du Passage. They chose the Blue Room. Like the title of the novel by Georges Simenon. There were others: the Joséphine Room, the Amadeus Room, the Renoir Room.
At reception, Gabriel Prudent ordered pasta and red wine for four people, to be served in the room. He thought making love would make them hungry. Irène Fayolle asked him:
“Why four people? There’s just two of us.”
“You’re bound to think about your husband, I about my wife, so we might as well invite them for a bite from the get-go. It will avoid unspoken resentment, lamentment, and all that.”
“What’s ‘lamentment’?”
“It’s a word I invented to combine melancholy, guilt, regrets, steps forward, and steps backward. Everything that really bugs us in life, in other words. That holds us back.”
They kissed. They undressed, she wanted to make love in the dark, he said that there was no point, that since the trial he had undressed her several times with his eyes, that he already knew her curves, her body.
She insisted. She said:
“You’re a smooth talker.”
He replied:
“Obviously.”
He closed the blue curtains of the Blue Room.
There was a knock on the door, room service. They ate, drank, made love, ate, drank, made love, ate, drank, made love. They enjoyed each other, the wine made them laugh, they enjoyed, laughed, cried.
They decided, by mutual consent, never to leave this room ever again. They told themselves that dying together, there, then, that could be the solution. They envisaged running away, disappearing, a stolen car, a train, a plane. They went on quite a journey.
They decided they would go and live in Argentina. Like war criminals did. She fell asleep. He stayed awake, smoked cigarettes, ordered
