It’s important to put photos on tombs. Otherwise, you just become a name. Death takes away faces, too.
The loveliest couple in my cemetery is Anna Lave, married name Dahan (1914–1987), and Benjamin Dahan (1912–1992). We see them in a tinted photograph taken on their wedding day in the thirties. Two wonderful faces smiling at the photographer. She, blonde like a sun, translucent skin; he, a fine face, almost carved; and their eyes sparkling like starry sapphires. Two smiles they offer up to eternity.
In January, I give the photos in my cemetery a wipe with a cloth. I only do so on tombs that are abandoned or very rarely visited. A cloth soaked in water containing a drop of methylated spirits. I do the same thing to the plaques, but with a cloth dipped in white vinegar.
I have around five to six weeks of cleaning ahead of me. When Nono, Gaston, and Elvis want to help me, I tell them no. That they’ve already got enough to do with the general maintenance.
I didn’t hear him arrive. That’s rare. I notice people’s steps on the gravel of the avenues immediately. I even know whether it’s a man, a woman, or a child. A walker or a regular. But him, he moves without making a sound.
I’m in the middle of cleaning the nine faces of the Hesme family—Etienne (1876–1915), Lorraine (1887–1928), Françoise (1949–2000), Gilles (1947–2002), Nathalie (1959–1970), Théo (1961–1993), Isabelle (1969–2001), Fabrice (1972–2003), Sébastien (1974–2011)—when I feel his eyes on my back. I turn around. He’s standing against the light, I don’t recognize him immediately.
It’s from his “Good morning,” from his voice, that I grasp that it’s actually him. And just after his voice, with two or three seconds’ delay, from his cinnamon and vanilla smell. I didn’t think he’d come back. It’s been more than two months since he came knocking on my road-side door. My heart quickens a little. I sense it whispering to me: Beware.
Since Philippe Toussaint’s disappearance, no man has made my heart beat a little faster. Since Philippe Toussaint, its rhythm never changes, like an old clock nonchalantly humming away.
Except for on All Saints’ Day, when its rate speeds up: I can sell up to a hundred pots of chrysanthemums, and I have to guide the many occasional visitors who get lost in the avenues. But this morning, although it isn’t the day of the dead, my heart quickens. And it’s due to him. I think I detect fear; my own.
I still have my cloth in my hand. The detective looks at the faces I’m in the middle of polishing. He smiles shyly at me.
“Are they members of your family?”
“No. I’m maintaining the tombs, that’s all.”
Not knowing what to do with the words buzzing in my head, I say to him:
“In the Hesme family, people die young. As if they were allergic to life, or it didn’t want them.”
He nods his head, draws in the collar of his coat, and says to me, with a smile:
“It’s bitter in your parts.”
“It’s certainly colder here than in Marseilles.”
“Are you going there this summer?”
“Yes, like every summer. I see my daughter over there.”
“She lives in Marseilles?”
“No, she travels around a bit.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s a magician. Professional.”
As though to interrupt us, a young blackbird lands on the Hesme family tomb and starts singing its head off. I don’t feel like polishing faces anymore. I tip my bucket of water onto the gravel and tidy away my cloths and cleaner. As I bend down, my long gray coat opens a little, allowing my pretty crimson floral dress to be seen. I see that it doesn’t go unnoticed by the detective. He doesn’t look at me like the others. There’s something different about him.
To divert his attention, I remind him that, to place his mother’s ashes at Gabriel Prudent’s tomb, the authorization of the family will have to be requested.
“No need. Before dying, Gabriel Prudent informed the town hall that my mother would be laid to rest with him . . . They’d thought of everything.”
He seems embarrassed. He rubs his unshaven jaw. I can’t see his hands, he’s wearing gloves. He stares at me for a little too long.
“I would like you to organize something for the day I’ll be laying her ashes to rest. Something that’s like a celebration, but without celebration.”
The blackbird flies away. It was scared off by Eliane, who’s come to rub against me in the hope of a pet.
“Ah, but I don’t do that. You’ll need to speak to Pierre Lucchini at the undertaker’s, Le Tourneurs du Val, on rue de la République.”
“Undertakers are for funerals. All I would like is for you to help me write a little speech for the day I place her ashes on that guy’s tomb. There’ll be no one there. Just her and me . . . I’d like to say a few words to her that remain between us.”
He crouches down to pet Eliane himself. He looks at her while speaking to me.
“I saw that in your . . . registers, well, your burial notebooks, I don’t know what you call them, you had copied out speeches. I could perhaps lift bits here and there . . . from others’ speeches, to write the one for my mother.”
He runs a hand through his hair. He’s got more gray hair than last time. Maybe it’s because the light’s different. Today, the sky is blue, the light white. The first time I saw this man, the sky was overcast.
Madame Pinto goes past us. She says: “Morning, Violette,” and looks at the detective suspiciously. Around here, as soon as a stranger goes past a door, a gate, a porch, they’re looked at suspiciously.
“I have a burial at 4 P.M., come and see me after 7 P.M., at the keeper’s house. We’ll write a few lines together.”
He seems relieved. Like a weight’s been lifted. He takes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and puts one in his mouth without lighting it, while asking me where the nearest hotel
