Fresh Water for Flowers Read online

  The following day, I was eighteen years old. By way of a birthday present, Philippe Toussaint announced to me that his father had found work for both of us. We were going to become level-crossing keepers. We’d have to wait for the position to become vacant, soon, close to Nancy.

  15.

  Sweet butterfly, spread your lovely wings

  and go to his tomb to tell him I love him.

  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.

  16.

  We never meet people by chance. They are destined to cross our paths for a reason.

  Léonine.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Léonine.”

  “No, you really are nuts . . . What kind of name is that? A brand of detergent?”

  “I love that name. And anyway, people will call her Léo. I like girls who have boys’ names.”

  “Call her Henri, while you’re at it.”

  “Léonine Toussaint . . . it’s very pretty.”

  “It’s 1986! You could find something more modern, like . . . Jennifer or Jessica.”

  “No, please, Léonine . . . ”

  “In any case, you do what you like. If it’s a girl, you choose. If it’s a boy, I do.”

  “And what would you call our son?”

  “Jason.”

  “I hope it’s a girl.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Shall we make love?”

  17.

  I hear your voice in the world’s every sound.

  January 19th, 2017, gray sky, 8 degrees, 3 P.M. Burial of Dr. Philippe Guyennot (1925–2017). Oak coffin, yellow and white roses on top. Black marble. Small gilt cross on headstone.

  Around fifty sprays, wreaths, casket tributes, plants (lilies, roses, cyclamens, chrysanthemums, orchids.)

  Funeral ribbons saying, “To our dear father,” “To my dear husband,” “To our dear grandfather,” “Thoughts from the class of 1924,” “Retailers of Brancion-en-Chalon,” “To our friend,” “To our friend,” “To our friend.”

  On the funerary plaques: “Time passes, memories remain”; “To my dear husband”; “From your friends who will never forget you
”; “To our father”; “To our grandfather”; “To our great-great-uncle”; “To our godfather”; “Thus all passes on earth, intellect, beauty, grace, and talent, like an ephemeral flower felled by a puff of wind.”

  About a hundred people are present around the grave. Including Nono, Gaston, Elvis, and me. Before the burial, more than four hundred people congregated at Father Cédric’s little church. Not everyone could fit inside and sit in pews, so the elderly were allowed in first, to be seated together. Many people remained standing, gathered on the church’s small forecourt.

  Countess de Darrieux told me she had thought back to when the good doctor would arrive at her home after midnight, his shirt all crumpled, and, after traveling across the countryside, he would return to make sure that her youngest’s fever had abated since morning. She said to me, “Each one of us thought back to their anginas, their mumps, their influenzas, and to the death certificates he had filled in, leaning over the kitchen table, because when Dr. Guyennot started practicing, one still died in one’s own bed, not in a hospital.”

  Philippe Guyennot leaves a very fine legacy behind him. During his speech, his son said, “My father was a devoted man, who charged for just one consultation, even when he visited several times on the same day, or had placed his stethoscope over the hearts of an entire family. He was a great doctor, who made the correct diagnosis after asking three questions and looking deep into the patient’s eyes. In a world where the world hadn’t yet invented generic drugs.”

  A medallion depicting Philippe Guyennot was soldered onto the headstone. The family chose a holiday snapshot where the doctor is around fifty. He’s beaming, he’s tanned, and one can see the sea behind him. A summer when he must have got a replacement, and left behind countryside and coughing fits to close his eyes in the sun.

  Before blessing the coffin, Father Cédric’s last words are, “Philippe Guyennot, as the Father has loved me, I have loved you. There is no greater love than dedicating one’s life to those one loves.”

  Drinks have been organized in the function room at the town hall, in honor of the deceased. I’m always invited, but I never go. Everyone leaves, except Pierre Lucchini and me.

  While the stonemasons close up the family vault, Pierre Lucchini tells me that the deceased met his wife on the day of her marriage to another man. During the first dance, she had sprained her ankle. Philippe was urgently called to attend to her. When the doctor saw his future wife in her wedding dress, ankle in ice bucket, he fell in love with her. He carried her off to get an X-ray done at the hospital, and never returned her to her new, and short-lived, husband. Smiling, Pierre adds, “It’s while fixing her ankle that he asked for her hand.”

  Before closing time, Philippe’s two children return. They watch the stonemasons at work. They remove the condolence cards attached to the flowers. They give me a wave before getting in a car and heading back to Paris.

  18.

  The dead leaves are shoveled away,

  the memories and regrets are, too.

  I talk on my own. I talk to the dead, to the cats, to the lizards, to the flowers, to God (not always nicely). I talk to myself. I question myself. I shout at myself. I buck myself up.

  I don’t fit into boxes. I’ve never fitted into boxes. When I do a test in a women’s magazine—“Get to know yourself,” or “Know yourself better”—there’s no clear result for me. I’m always a bit of everything.

  In Brancion-en-Chalon, there are people who don’t like me, who are wary or scared of me. Perhaps because I seem to be forever dressed in mourning garb. If they knew that, underneath, there’s the summer, maybe they’d burn me at the stake. All jobs connected with death seem suspect.

  And then, my husband disappeared. Just like that, from one day to the next. “You must admit, it is strange. He goes off on his bike and, snap, he’s disappeared. Never to be seen again. A handsome man, too, more’s the pity. And the police just do nothing. She’s never been investigated, never questioned. And she doesn’t seem upset about it. Dry eyed. If you ask me, she’s hiding something. Always dressed in black, and up to the nines . . . she’s sinister, that woman. There are some dodgy goings on in that cemetery, I wouldn’t trust her. The gravediggers are always round at her place. And just look at her, talking to herself. Don’t tell me it’s normal, talking to yourself.”

  And then there are the others. “A good woman. Generous. Dedicated. Always smiling, discreet. Such a hard job. Nobody wants to do a job like that anymore. And all alone, too. Her husband abandoned her. She deserves credit. Always a little glass of something on hand for the most distraught. Always a kind word. And well turned out, so elegant . . . Polite, friendly, compassionate. Can’t knock her. A real hard worker. The cemetery’s shipshape. A simple woman who doesn’t rock the boat. Head’s a bit in the clouds, but having one’s head in the clouds never killed anyone.”

  I’m the main cause of their civil war.

  Once, the mayor received a letter requesting my dismissal from the cemetery. He politely replied that I’d never done anything wrong.

  Occasionally, youngsters chuck stones at the shutters of my bedroom to scare me, or start banging on my door in the middle of the night. I can hear their giggling from my bed. When Eliane starts barking, or I ring my startlingly loud bell, they’re off as fast as their legs can carry them.

  I prefer youngsters to be full of life, annoying, noisy, drunk, stupid, rather than in coffins, followed by people bowed with grief.

  In the summer, adolescents do sometimes climb over the cemetery walls. They wait until midnight. They come in a group and have fun scaring themselves. They hide behind the crosses, howling, or slam the doors of the mortuary chapels. Some also hold spiritualism seances to terrify, or impress, their girlfriends. “Spirit, are you there?” During these seances, I hear girls screaming and then bolting at the slightest “supernatural manifestation.” Manifestations that are really the cats chasing moths between the graves, hedgehogs knocking over the bowls of cat food, or me, hidden behind a tomb, aiming a pistol full of red-dyed water at them.

  I won’t tolerate the resting place of the dead not being respected. At first, I switch on the lights outside my house and ring my bell. If that doesn’t work, I get out my water pistol and pursue them around the avenues. There’s no light in the cemetery at night. I can move around without ever being spotted. I know it off by heart. I know my way with my eyes closed.

  Leaving aside those who come to make love, one night I discovered a group who were watching a horror film, sitting on the tomb of Diane de Vigneron, the first to be interred in the cemetery. It’s her ghost that, for centuries, some inhabitants of Brancion have claimed to have seen. I crept up behind the intruders and blew a whistle as hard as I could. They bolted like rabbits. Leaving their computer behind on the tomb.

  In 2007, I had serious problems with a gang of youths on holiday. People just passing through. Parisians, or suchlike. From July 1st through 30th, they came every evening, over the cemetery walls, to sleep on the tombs, under the stars. I called the police several times; Nono gave them a few kicks up the backside, explaining that the cemetery wasn’t an adventure playground, but they’d be back the following night. I could switch on all the lights outside my house, shake my bell, target them with my water pistol, impossible to make them clear off. Nothing seemed to have any effect on them.

  Fortunately, on the morning of July 31st, they left. But the following year, they returned. On the evening of July 1st, there they were. I heard them at around midnight. They settled down on the tomb of Cécile Delaserbe (1956–2003). And, unlike the previous year, they were smoking and drinking a good deal, leaving their bottles all over the cemetery. Every morning, we had to collect the cigarette butts from the potted plants.

  And then a miracle occurred: during the night of July 8th to 9th, they left. I’ll never forget their screams of terror. They said they had seen “something.”

/>   The following day, Nono told me he’d found “little blue pills” near the ossuary, an overly strong drug that must have distorted the sight of a will-o’-the-wisp, in their altered minds, into some sort of specter. I don’t know whether it was the ghost of Diane de Vigneron or Reine Ducha, the white lady, that rid me of those young idiots, but I’m eternally grateful to it.

  19.

  If a flower grew every time I thought of you, the earth would be one massive garden.

  I was about to push open the main door beneath our studio, when I saw a red apple in the shopwindow, on the cover of a book, L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable, a French translation of John Irving’s The Cider House Rules. I couldn’t understand the title. It was too complicated for me. In 1986, I was eighteen, with the educational level of a six-year-old. Tea-cher, sch-ool, I go, I have, you have, I am go-ing home, it is, good mor-ning Miss, Panzani, Babybel, Boursin, Skip, Oasis, Ballantine’s.

  I bought that eight-hundred-and-twenty-one-page book, even though just reading one sentence and understanding it could take hours. As if I were a size 50 and had bought myself size-36 jeans. But buy it I did, because the apple made my mouth water. And for a few months, I had lost my desire. It started with Philippe Toussaint’s breath on the nape of my neck. That breath that meant he was ready, that he wanted me. Philippe Toussaint always wanted me, never desired me. I didn’t move. I pretended to be asleep. To breathe heavily.

  It was the first time my body didn’t respond to the call of his. And then the lack of desire passed, once, twice. Then it returned, like the hoarfrost that reappears from time to time.