Читать книгу Fresh Water for Flowers - Valérie Perrin - Страница 20

Once again, Gaston has tumbled into a grave. I can’t count the number of times it’s happened now. Two years ago, during an exhumation, he fell into the coffin on all fours and found himself facedown on the bones. How many times, during funerals, has he tripped on imaginary ropes?

Nono had turned his back on him for a few minutes to push a wheelbarrow of soil some forty meters away. Gaston was talking to Countess de Darrieux, and when Nono returned, Gaston had disappeared. The soil had slipped and Gaston was swimming in the grave and screaming, “Fetch Violette!” To which Nono responded, “Violette isn’t a lifeguard!” And yet Nono had warned him, the soil is crumbly during this season. While he helped Gaston out of his predicament, Elvis sang: Facedown on the street, in the ghetto, in the ghetto . . . Sometimes, I feel as if I’m living with the Marx Brothers. But reality catches up with me every day.

Tomorrow, there’s a burial. Dr. Guyennot. Even doctors end up dying. A natural death at ninety-one, in his bed. He cared for all of Brancion-en-Chalon, and its vicinity, for fifty years. Should be a good turnout for his funeral.

Countess de Darrieux is recovering from her shock by sipping a little plum brandy, given to me by Mademoiselle Brulier, whose parents are buried in the Cedars section. The countess got a real fright when she saw Gaston diving into the grave. She says to me, with a mischievous smile, “I thought I was back watching the world swimming championships.” I adore this woman. She’s one of those visitors who do me good.

Both her husband and her lover are laid to rest in my cemetery. From spring to autumn, Countess de Darrieux maintains plants and flowers on the two graves. Succulents for her husband and a bunch of sunflowers in a vase for her lover, whom she calls her “true love.” Trouble is, her true love was married. And when the widow of this true love finds the countess’s sunflowers in their vase, she throws them into the bin.

I’ve tried before to save these poor flowers, to put them on another grave, but it’s impossible because the widow tears off all the petals. And she definitely isn’t murmuring, “He loves me, he loves me not,” while she strips the countess’s sunflowers.

In twenty years, I’ve seen plenty of widows weeping on the day of their husband’s funeral, never to set foot in the cemetery again. I’ve also encountered many widowers who remarried while their wife’s body was still warm. At first, they slip a few cents into the ladybird so I carry on looking after the flowers.

I know a few ladies from Brancion who specialize in widowers. They prowl the avenues, dressed all in black, and locate the solitary men watering the flowers on the tombs of their late spouses. I observed, over a long period, the little game played by a certain Clotilde C., who, every week, invented new dead people to cherish in my cemetery. The first inconsolable widower she spotted, she hooked by starting a conversation about the weather, about life going on, and would get herself invited to “have an apéritif one of these evenings.” She finally got herself hitched to Armand Bernigal, whose wife (Marie-Pierre Vernier, married name Bernigal, 1967–2002) lies in the Yews section.

I’ve found and picked up dozens of new funerary plaques thrown in the bin or hidden under the bushes by outraged families. Plaques with the words, “To my beloved for eternity,” placed by a lover.

And every day, I see the illicit discreetly coming in to pay their respects. Especially mistresses. It’s mainly women who haunt cemeteries, because they live longer. Lovers never come on the weekends, at the times when they might run into someone. Always when the gates are just opening or closing. How many have I already locked in? Bent over tombs, I don’t see them, and they have to come and knock on my door for me to release them.

I remember Emilie B. Ever since her lover, Laurent D., had passed away, she always arrived half an hour before opening time. When I’d see her waiting behind the gates, I’d slip a black coat over my nightdress, and go and open them for her in my slippers. She’s the only person I did that for, but I just felt so sorry for her. I’d give her a cup of sweetened coffee, with a little milk, every morning. We’d exchange a few words. She’d talk to me about her passionate love for Laurent. She spoke of him as if he were present. She’d say to me, “Memory is stronger than death. I can still feel his hands on me. I know he’s watching me from where he is.” Before setting off, she’d leave her empty cup on the window ledge. When visitors came to pay their respects at Laurent’s grave—his wife, his parents, or his children—Emilie would change tombs, waiting, hiding in a corner. As soon as they’d all gone, she’d return to Laurent to think about him, to talk to him.

One morning, Emilie didn’t come. I thought she must have finished mourning. Because, most of the time, a person does eventually finish mourning. Time unravels grief. However immense it is. Apart from the grief of a mother or a father who has lost a child.

I was wrong. Emilie never finished mourning. She returned to my cemetery between four planks of wood. Surrounded by her loved ones. I don’t think anyone ever knew that she and Laurent had loved each other. Of course, Emilie wasn’t buried close to him.

On the day of her burial, once everyone had left, just as one plants a tree on the day of a birth, I took a cutting. Emilie had planted a lavender bush at Laurent’s tomb. I cut a long stem of that lavender, made lots of little incisions to favor root growth, cut off the top, and stuck it through the pierced base of a bottle that was filled with soil and a little compost. A month later, the stem had sprouted roots.

Laurent’s lavender would also become Emilie’s. They would have that for years, that plant in common, offspring of the mother plant. I nurtured the cutting all winter, and replanted it in the spring at Emilie’s tomb. As Barbara sings, “spring is lovely for talking about love.” Laurent’s and Emilie’s lavenders are still splendid today, and perfume all the neighboring tombs.