Читать книгу Fresh Water for Flowers - Valérie Perrin - Страница 13

November 22nd, 2016, blue sky, 10C, 4 P.M. Burial of Thierry Teissier (1960–2016). Mahogany coffin. No marble. Grave dug straight into soil. Alone.

Around thirty people present. Including Nono, Elvis, Pierre Lucchini, and me.

Around fifteen of Thierry Teissier’s colleagues from the DIM factories laid a spray of lilies: “To our dear colleague.”

An employee named Claire, from Mâcon’s oncology unit, holds a bouquet of white roses.

The wife of the deceased is present, as are their two children, a boy and a girl aged, respectively, thirty and twenty-six. On a funerary plaque they have had engraved: “To our father.”

No photograph of Thierry Teissier.

On another funerary plaque: “To my husband.” With a little warbler etched above the word “husband.”

A large cross made of olive wood has been embedded in the soil.

Three school friends take turns reading a poem for him, by Jacques Prévert.

A distraught village listens To the song of a wounded bird It’s the only bird in the village And it’s the only cat in the village Who has half-devoured it And the bird stops singing The cat stops purring And licking its muzzle And the village gives the bird

A marvelous funeral

And the cat who is invited Walks behind the little straw coffin

In which the dead bird lies

Carried by a little girl

Who doesn’t stop crying

If I’d known it would upset you so

The cat said to her I’d have eaten all of it

And then I’d have told you

That I’d seen it fly off

Fly off to the ends of the earth To a place so far away That one never returns You’d have had less grief Just sadness and regrets One must never do things by halves.

Before the coffin is lowered into the ground, Father Cédric speaks:

“Let us recall the words of Jesus to the sister of Lazarus, just after her brother’s death: ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’”

Claire places the bouquet of white roses beside the cross. Everyone leaves at the same time.

I didn’t know this man. But the way some people looked at his grave makes me think he was kind.