He went quiet for a few moments, then grabbed my arm and looked into my eyes.
“You see this garden? Twenty years I’ve had it. You see how beautiful it is? You see all these vegetables? These colors? This garden is seven hundred square meters, that’s seven hundred square meters of joy, love, sweat, endeavor, determination, and patience. I’m going to teach you how to look after it, and once you know, I’ll entrust it to you.”
I said that I didn’t understand. He pulled off his gloves and showed me the wedding ring on his finger.
“You see this wedding ring? I found it in my first vegetable garden.”
He led me under an arbor of climbing ivy and made me sit down on an old chair. He sat facing me.
“It was a Sunday, I must have been around twenty, and I was walking my little dog not far from the social housing I lived in, in the suburbs of Lyons. I left the car park behind me and took a random path. There was some so-called ‘countryside’ a bit higher up, a few meadows that had ended up in the midst of the concrete, arid meadows, not very attractive, and a cluster of old trees. At the end of the path, I fell upon a group of people sitting under an oak tree and cleaning beans at an old, oilcloth-covered table. I was struck by how happy they looked. They were neighbors, people who lived in the social housing whom I knew by sight, people who didn’t smile like that when I passed them in the stairwell. All around them, I could see their hodgepodge gardens. They grew fruit and vegetables. I realized that it was those little plots of land and the well that put those smiles on their faces. I asked them if I, too, could have a garden like them. They told me to phone the town hall, that they rented the plots for peanuts, that there were a few left, back there.
“I proudly dug up my plot in October and covered it with manure. The following winter, I grew my seedlings in empty yogurt pots. Squashes, basil, peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, zucchini. I had grand ideas. I was ambitious for my vegetables. I planted them in spring. I followed the gardening manuals, I gardened with my head, not my heart. Without paying attention to the lunar cycles, the frost, the rain, the sun. I also planted some carrots and potatoes directly into the soil. I waited for it all to grow. I dropped by occasionally to do some watering. I was counting on the rain.
“Of course, nothing grew. I didn’t realize that you have to spend days in the garden for the magic to work. I didn’t realize that the weeds, the ones that grow around vegetables, if you don’t remove them every day, they drink all the water, they kill off everything.”
He got up to go into his kitchen and returned with almond cakes on a china plate.
“Eat, you’re looking thin.”
I said I wasn’t hungry, he replied, “Don’t care.” We enjoyed his cakes, smiling at each other, and then he picked up his story:
“By September, as if my garden were mocking me, only one carrot had appeared. Just one! I saw its yellowing top, alone in the middle of the dry, badly aerated soil. Soil I hadn’t remotely understood. Mortified, I pulled the carrot up, ready to throw it to the hens, when I saw there was a silver wedding ring wedged onto my pathetic, deformed vegetable. A real silver wedding ring someone must have lost years before, in the soil of my garden. I rinsed my carrot, took a bite out of it, and pulled the wedding ring off. I took it as a sign. It was as if I’d failed my first year of marriage by not understanding my wife at all, but still had dozens more ahead of me to make up for it.”
54.
She hid her tears but shared her smiles.
Wash his clothes with powder detergent, dry them, except for the sweaters, fold while still warm, put away, according to color, on his shelves. Do the shopping: fluoride toothpaste, Auto-moto magazine, Gillette razorblades, chamomile anti-dandruff shampoo, shaving foam for tough stubble, fabric softener, polish for the biking leathers, Dove soap, packs of lager, milk chocolate, vanilla yogurts.
The things he likes. The brands he prefers.
In the bathroom, clean hairbrush and combs. Tweezers and nail-clippers ready for use.
Baguette, crusty. Everything cherry-flavored. Meat to chop up without breathing through the nose. Brown it and braise in a cast-iron casserole. Lift lid and check pieces of dead animal, add flour, put on a plate, bay leaves soaking in onion sauce.
Serve.
Eat only the vegetables, pasta, mashed potato. Eat only the side dishes. Which is what I am. A side dish.
Clear the table.
Wash the floor, the kitchen. Vacuum clean. Air the place. Dust. Change the channel immediately when he doesn’t like the program. Switch off the music. Never music when he’s around: my “moronic” singers give him a headache.
Him going off for a ride, me staying home. Going to bed. Him getting back late. He wakes me up because he makes a racket, doesn’t care about the water running in the sink, the stream of pee hitting the toilet, the doors slamming. He sticks himself right behind me. He smells of another woman. Pretend to sleep. But sometimes he wants me anyway. Despite the other woman, the one he’s just left. He slides inside me, strains, grunts, I close my eyes. I think of elsewhere, I go for a swim in the Mediterranean.
That’s all I knew. Just that particular smell. Just that particular voice, just his words and his habits. The last years of my life with
