Читать книгу Fresh Water for Flowers - Valérie Perrin - Страница 14

There are more than a thousand photographs scattered across my cemetery. Photos in black-and-white, sepia, color that’s vivid or faded.

On the day all these photos were taken, none of the men, children, women who posed innocently in front of the camera could have thought that that moment would represent them for all eternity. It was the day of a birthday or a family meal. A walk in the park one Sunday, a photo at a wedding, at a promotion party, one New Year. A day when they were at their best, a day when they were all gathered together, a particular day when they were wearing their finest. Or then in their military, baptism, or First Communion attire. Such innocence in the eyes of all these people who smile from their tombs.

Often, the day before a funeral, there’s an article in the newspaper. An article that sums up the life of the deceased in a few sentences. Briefly. A life doesn’t take up much space in the local paper. A little more if it was a storekeeper, a doctor, or a football coach.

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 is.

“Twenty-five kilometers away. Otherwise, just behind the church you’ll see a little house with red shutters. That’s Madame Bréant’s place, and she does bed and breakfast. Just one bedroom, but it’s never taken.”

He’s not listening to me anymore. He’s looking elsewhere. He’s gone, lost in thought. He comes back to me.

“Brancion-en-Chalon . . . Wasn’t there some tragedy here?”

“There are tragedies all around you. Every death is someone’s tragedy.”

He seems to search his memory, without finding what he’s after. He blows into his hands and murmurs: “See you later” and “Thank you very much.” He goes back along the main avenue to the gates. His steps are still silent.

Madame Pinto goes past me again to fill up her watering can. Behind her, Claire, the woman from Mâcon’s oncology unit, makes for Thierry Teissier’s grave, clutching a potted rosebush. I go over to her.

“Good morning, madame, I would like to plant this rosebush at Thierry Teissier’s grave.”

I call out to Nono, who is in his hut. The gravediggers have a hut where they get changed, take a shower at midday and in the evening, and wash their work clothes. Nono says that the smell of death cannot cling to his clothes, but no detergent exists to stop it sullying the inside of his noggin.

While Nono digs where Claire wants to plant the rosebush, Elvis sings: Always on my mind, always on my mind . . . Nono puts in a little peat and a stake so the rosebush grows straight. He tells Claire that he knew Thierry, and that he was a good guy.

Claire wanted to give me money for watering Thierry’s rosebush from time to time. I told her that I would water it, but that I never accepted money. That she could slip some change into the ladybird-shaped moneybox in my kitchen, on top of the fridge, and that such cash donations went toward buying food for the cemetery’s animals.

She said, “Fine.” And that, normally, she never did this, attend the funerals of patients from her unit. That it was the first time. That Thierry Teissier, he was too nice to be buried under the ground, like that, with nothing around him. That she’d chosen a red rosebush for what it symbolized, and she wanted Thierry to live on through it. She added that the flowers would keep him company.

I took her to see one of the loveliest tombs in the cemetery, that of Juliette Montrachet (1898–1962), around which various plants and shrubs have grown, combining colors and foliage harmoniously, while never being maintained. A garden tomb. As though chance and nature had come to an amicable agreement.

Claire said: “These flowers, they’re a bit like ladders up to heaven.” She thanked me, too. She drank a glass of water at my place, slipped a few notes into the ladybird moneybox, and off she went.