“I’d like to know what was said on the day of Léonine’s funeral.”
“I keep nothing. Vegetables don’t grow year after year. Every year, you have to start from scratch. Apart from cherry tomatoes: they grow all on their own, pretty messily, pretty much anywhere.”
“Why are you telling me that?”
“Life is like a relay race, Violette. You pass the baton to someone, who takes it and passes it to someone else. I passed it to you, and one day you will pass it on.”
“But I’m alone in the world.”
“No, I’m here, and there will someone else after me. If you want to know what was said on the day of Léonine’s funeral, write it yourself, write it later, before going to bed.”
On the third day, I read Léonine her eulogy.
I found Sasha in one of the cemetery’s avenues. We walked along the tombs, he spoke to me of the dead, both long-time residents and those who had just moved in.
“Do you have children, Sasha?”
“When I was young, I wanted to do like everyone else, I got married. And there’s a bloody stupid mistake, an idiotic idea: doing like everyone else. Good manners, pretenses, and received ideas are all killers. My wife was called Verena, she was very pretty, and had a gentle voice, like you. In fact, you resemble her a little. Like the young, pretentious twit that I was, I thought her beauty would turn me on. On the day of the wedding, when I saw her in her white lace, shy and blushing, when I lifted the veil covering her lovely face, I knew that I was lying to everyone, starting with myself. I placed a cold kiss on her mouth as the guests applauded us, and all that interested me was the muscles under the men’s shirts. I got myself drunk before the first dance. The honeymoon night was nightmarish. I tried my best, I thought of my wife’s brother, dark with big brown eyes. But it didn’t work, I didn’t manage to make love to her. Verena put ‘it’ down to emotions and drunkenness. As the weeks went by, the nights spent close to one another, I finally made it. I finally took her virginity. I can’t even tell you how unhappy it made me, her eyes full of love and affection when I had only managed to touch her thanks to my disgusting imagination. Night followed night, and all the men in my village got the same treatment, I touched them all through her.
“Then we moved house. Second stupid mistake: changing address doesn’t change your desire. It sticks to the suitcases. Unlike migratory birds and weeds, it doesn’t have the ability to adapt to all climates. I changed windows and doormat, but I continued to look at men. I cheated on my wife countless times in public restrooms. What a disgrace . . . Through continually pretending, I became ill. I wasn’t pretending to love Verena, I sincerely loved her. I devoured her with my eyes, but only with my eyes. I loved her gestures, her skin, her movements, but I saw the lovely lock of brown hair that fell across her face as barring me. I finally came down with blood cancer. My white blood cells started eating up my red ones. Those white cells, I saw them as women in bridal gowns multiplying in my veins; shame was devouring me. It may seem strange to you, but my stays in hospital came as a relief to me. They relieved me of that obligation to ‘honor’ Verena in our bed. To ‘dishonor’ her, more like. Between the sheets, I continued to close my eyes and caress her body while thinking of someone else, anyone else. Even TV presenters.
“Verena became pregnant. I saw this pregnancy as a ray of light, as the only positive to come from the three bleak years since our union. I watched her belly growing, I took up gardening again. I returned to being an almost happy man. That child was my dream. And he was born. A son we baptized Emile. Verena looked at me less, desired me less, she was devoted to her child, and I felt better and better. I had lovers, a gentle wife, the mother of my son, I was almost swimming in happiness, a polluted happiness, but happiness all the same. I’m a great father, you know? And a child is very handy when one no longer wants to touch one’s wife. She’s tired, vulnerable, often has a headache, hears him crying during the night, too hot, too cold, teething, a nightmare, an ear infection. I made love to Verena just once, after a boozy New Year’s Eve, and that was enough for her to get pregnant again. Three years after Emile’s birth, Ninon was born. An adorable little girl.
“I had two children with Verena. Two children. I gave life, the real thing, twice over. Which just shows that God has a laugh at everything, even poofs.”
“How old are they now?”
“The same age as my wife.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They no longer have an age. They died in 1976, in a car accident. On the Highway to the Sun. I was supposed to join them three days later, by train, at our seaside rental. Do you know why?”
“Why what?”
“Why I was supposed to join them three days later?”
“ . . . ”
“I told Verena I had some work to catch up with. In ’76 I was an engineer. The truth was, I’d planned three days of sex with a colleague. When I was told they had died, I went mad. I had to be confined to a mental hospital for a long time. It was there, between those white walls, that I learned how to heal others with my hands. You see, dear Violette, you and me, we’ve had our share of tragedy, and yet here we are. Between the two of us, we’re like all of Victor Hugo’s novels put together. An anthology of great woes, small joys and hopes.”
“Where are they buried?”
“Close to Valence,
