Fresh Water for Flowers Read online

  And yet, that day had started off well: Nono’s arrival, Father Cédric, Elvis singing at the window, good humor, the smell of coffee, the men’s laughter, my ghastly dolls, the dust to remove, the cloth, the warmth in the stairs . . .

  “But why have you been investigating Philippe Toussaint?”

  “When Madame Bréant told me he’d disappeared, I wanted to know, to help you.”

  “Monsieur Seul, if there’s a key in the door of our cupboards, it’s so that no one opens them.”

  23.

  If life is but a passage, let us at least

  scatter flowers on that passage.

  W e arrived at the Malgrange-sur-Nancy level crossing at the end of spring 1986. In spring, everything seems possible, the light and the promises. You can sense that the trial of strength between winter and summer has already been won. That the dice are loaded. A game decided in advance, even if it rains.

  “Girls in care are happy with very little.” That’s what a caseworker had said to my third foster family when I was seven years old, as if I couldn’t hear, as if I didn’t exist. Being abandoned at birth must make me invisible. And anyhow, what is this “very little”?

  As for me, I felt I had everything: my youth, my desire to learn to read L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable, a dictionary, a child in the belly, a house, work, a family that would be my first family. A rickety family, but a family all the same. Since my birth, I’d never had anything, apart from my smile, some clothes, my doll Caroline, my LPs of Daho, Indochine, and Trenet, and my Tintin books. At eighteen, I was going to have a legal job, a bank account, and my very own key. A key I’d load with jangly charms, to remind me that I had a key.

  Our house was square, with a tile roof covered in moss, just like nursery-school children draw. Two forsythias were in bloom on either side of the house. They made the little white house with red windows seem to have blond curls. A hedge of red rosebushes, still in bud, separated the back of the house from the railway line. The main road, crossed by the tracks, twisted around two meters from the landing, where a tired doormat lay.

  The level-crossing keepers, Monsieur and Madame Lestrille, were leaving for their retirement two days later. They had two days to train us. Show us the ropes of the job: lowering and raising the barrier.

  The Lestrilles were leaving their dated furniture, their linoleum, and their blackened bars of soap. Picture frames that had hung on the walls for years had just been removed: the flowery wallpaper was left with lighter rectangles in places. They’d left a canvas Mona Lisa beside the kitchen window.

  In the kitchen, no kitchen. Just a greasy room boasting an old gas cooker and three units held together with rusty screws. When I opened the tiny fridge, seemingly forgotten behind a door, I found some badly wrapped, rancid butter.

  Despite the decrepitude and dirtiness of the place, I managed to picture what I’d do with it. How I’d transform these rooms with a lick of paint. I managed to smile at the color of the repainted walls hiding behind the faded flowers of this pre-war wallpaper. I was going to put everything right. Especially the shelves, which would help me to support our future life. Philippe Toussaint promised, in my ear, to repaper all the walls as soon as the Lestrilles’ backs were turned.

  Before leaving, the old couple left us a list of emergency phone numbers in case the barrier got stuck.

  “Now that we don’t raise the barrier with a crank anymore, the circuits can get jammed, and this sort of nonsense comes up several times a year.”

  They left us the train timetables. Summer timetables. Winter timetables. There wasn’t much more to add. On public holidays, strike days, and Sundays, there were fewer crossings and fewer trains. They hoped we’d been warned that the hours would be hard and the rhythm of work tiring. It took at least two people to do it. Ah, yes, they almost forgot: we would have three minutes between the start of the signal sounding and the train passing through to lower the barrier. Three minutes to press the switch on the control panel that activated the barrier and blocked the traffic. Once the train had gone through, regulations demanded a one-minute waiting period before raising the barrier.

  As he put his overcoat on, Monsieur Lestrille said to us:

  “It’s possible that one train might conceal another, but we, in thirty years at the barrier, have never seen that happen.”

  On the doorstep, Madame Lestrille turned around to warn us:

  “Beware of vehicles trying to cross when the barrier is down. There’ll always be nutters. And drunkards, too.”

  In a hurry to get going on their retirement, they wished us good luck and added, without a smile:

  “It’s our turn to take the train.”

  And we never saw them again.

  As soon as they had gone out the door, instead of repapering all the walls, Philippe Toussaint put his arms around me and said:

  “Oh, my Violette, how comfortable we’ll be here once you’ve arranged everything.”

  I don’t know whether it was L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable, which I’d started the day before, or the dictionary I’d bought that very morning, that gave me strength, but, for the first time, I felt brave enough to ask him for money. For a year and a half, my wages had been deposited into his account, and I’d managed on my waitress tips, but right then, I no longer had a penny to my name.

  He generously gave me three ten-franc notes, which it pained him to take from his wallet. A wallet I never had access to. Every day, he would count his money to be sure nothing was missing. When he did this, he lost me a little. Not me, but the love I was made of.

  In the mind of Philippe Toussaint, everything was simple: I was a lost girl he’d picked up in a nightclub, and he made me work in exchange for board and lodgings. And I was young and pretty, easygoing, good-natured, quite plucky, and he loved possessing me, physically. And in a more devious part of his mind, he had picked up that I was scared stiff of being abandoned, so I would never leave. And now with his child, he knew he had me stuck right there, at his beck and call.

  I had an hour and a quarter before the next train. I crossed the road with my thirty francs in my pocket and went into the Casino store to buy a bucket, mop, sponges, and detergents. I bought whatever I found and whatever was cheapest. I was eighteen, I knew nothing about cleaning products. Normally, at that age, you’re buying yourself music. I introduced myself to the checkout girl:

  “Hi, I’m Violette Trenet, I’m the new level-crossing keeper, from across the road. I’m replacing the Lestrilles.”

  The cash-desk girl, whose name, Stéphanie, was on her badge, wasn’t listening to me. She was mesmerized by my round belly, and asked me:

  “Are you the daughter of the new level-crossing keepers?”

  “No, I’m the daughter of nobody. I am the new level-crossing keeper.”

  Everything about Stéphanie was round, her body, her face, her eyes. She might have been drawn for a comic strip to personify a not very bright heroine, naïve and kind, with a permanent look of surprise. Forever staring wide-eyed.

  “But how old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Ah, I see. And the baby, when’s it due?”

  September.”

  “Right, nice one. We’ll see each other often, then.”

  “Yes, we’ll see each other often. Goodbye.”

  I started by washing the shelves in the bedroom, then put our clothes away.

  I looked under the grubby carpet, there were tiles. I was in the middle of pulling it away when the alarm for the barrier started ringing. The 15:06 train was on its way.

  I ran to the level crossing. I pressed the red switch that lowered the barrier. I was relieved when I saw it going down. A car had slowed down and stopped alongside me. A long, white car whose driver gave me a dirty look, as if I were responsible for the train timetables. The 15:06 went by. The tracks shook. The p
assengers were Saturday ones. Gaggles of girls off to Nancy, to spend the afternoon shopping or flirting.

  I thought: Maybe girls in care, the ones who are happy with very little. As I pressed the green switch to raise the barrier, I smiled: I had a job, keys, a house to repaint, a child in my belly, a carpet to remove, a rickety man, to whom I mustn’t forget to give the change from the shopping, a dictionary, music, and L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable to read.

  24.

  You must learn to be generous with your absence to those

  who haven’t understood the importance of your presence.

  Death never takes a break. It knows neither summer holidays, nor public holidays, nor dentist appointments. Slack periods, mass departures, the Highway to the Sun, the thirty-five-hour working week, paid leave, the festive season, happiness, youth, heedlessness, lovely weather—it couldn’t care less about all that. It’s there, everywhere, all the time. No one really thinks about it, or they’d go mad. It’s like a dog that’s forever weaving around our legs, but whose presence we only notice the day it bites us. Or, worse, bites a loved one.

  There’s a cenotaph in my cemetery. It’s on avenue 3, Cedars section. A cenotaph is a memorial erected over a void. A void left by someone who died at sea, on a mountain, in a plane, or in a natural disaster. A living person who just vanished, but whose death seems indisputable. The cenotaph in Brancion no longer has a plaque. It’s very old and I’ve never known in whose memory it was erected. Yesterday, by chance, Jacques Lucchini told me that it was put up in 1967 for a young couple who disappeared in the mountains. Before getting back into his hearse, Jacques said to me, “Youngsters who went mountain climbing, and apparently fell.”

  I often hear, “Losing a child is the worst.” But I also hear it said that the worst is not knowing. That there’s something more horrendous than a grave, and that’s the face of a missing person plastered across posts, walls, shopwindows, newspapers, a TV screen. Photos that age, but the face they depict never does. That there’s something more terrible than a funeral, and that’s the anniversary of the disappearance, the TV news, the releasing of balloons, the silent tribute march.

  A few kilometers from Brancion, a child simply vanished thirty years ago. His mother, Camille Laforêt, comes to the cemetery every week. The town hall made an exception and permitted her a tomb on which she could have inscribed the name of her missing son: Denis Laforêt. There’s no proof that Denis is dead. He was eleven when he just vanished between his classroom and the bus stop opposite his school. Denis had left class an hour earlier than his friends. He was supposed to go to a study period. And then nothing. His mother looked everywhere for him. As did the police. Every family in the area knows Denis’s face. It’s “the missing child of 1985.”

  Camille Laforêt has often told me that having Denis’s name inscribed on that false tomb saved her life. That having that name engraved on the marble kept her between the possible and the impossible: imagining that he might still be alive, somewhere, alone, without love, suffering. And every time she pushes open my door, sits at my table, has a coffee, says to me, “How are you, Violette?” she adds, “There’s worse than death, there’s disappearance.”

  As for me, I’d really got used to Philippe Toussaint’s disappearance. I’d never have wanted to know.

  I open the envelope containing the speech Julien Seul has written for his mother. The one he’ll read on the day he finally agrees to place her ashes at Gabriel Prudent’s tomb. A cursed meeting, that of those two. If Irène Fayolle hadn’t met Gabriel Prudent, Julien Seul would never have set foot in my cemetery.

  Irène Fayolle was my mother. She smelled lovely. She wore the perfume “L’Heure bleue.”

  Although born in Marseilles on April 27th, 1941, she never had a Midi accent. She didn’t have the South in her genes. She was reserved, distant, spoke little. She always preferred the cold to the heat, skies that blocked out the sun. Even her physical appearance singled her out. She had a pale complexion, freckles, and blond hair.

  She liked beige. I never saw her wearing colorful clothes or sandals, apart from a yellow dress in a photo taken on holiday in Sweden, before I was born. A garment that’s like a wrong turn.

  She loved English teas. She loved the snow. She took photos of it. In our family photo albums, there are only pictures taken in the snow.

  She rarely smiled. She was often lost in her own thoughts.

  By marrying my father, she became Madame Seul. Since she felt as if she were making a spelling mistake by not writing “Seule,” to agree with “Madame,” she stuck to her maiden name.

  She only had one child, me. For a long time, I wondered whether it was me or our surname that made my parents stop wanting to reproduce.

  First, she was a hairdresser, then she became a horticulturist. She created different varieties of rose that thrived in winter. Roses in her own image.

  One day, she told me that she liked selling flowers even when they were for decorating tombs. That a rose was a rose, and whether it was destined for a wedding or a cemetery was of no importance. That on all florists’ windows it said, “Weddings and funerals.” That you couldn’t have the one without the other.

  I don’t know whether she was thinking of the unknown man she’d chosen to spend eternity with, on the day she said that to me.

  I respect her choice, just as she always respected my choices.

  Rest in peace, dear Mom.

  25.

  A mother’s love is a treasure

  that God gives only once.

  Léonine waited until I had finished painting all the walls in the level-crossing keeper’s house to make her appearance.

  During the night of September 2nd to 3rd,1986, I had a first contraction that woke me up. Philippe Toussaint was sleeping against me. My daughter chose the right night to arrive: on the Saturday, there was a nine-hour break between the last train and the Sunday morning one. I woke up Philippe Toussaint. He had four hours ahead of him to take me to the maternity hospital and return to lower the barrier for the 7:10 train.

  Léonine took too long for her father to be there when she let out her first cry. It was midday when I pushed her toward life.

  Waves of love and terror engulfed me. A life that would count for much more than my own, and that I was responsible for. I struggled to breathe. I can say that Léo took my breath away. I started shaking from head to toe. Emotion and fear made my teeth chatter.

  She looked like a little old woman. Within seconds, I felt that she was the elder and I the child.

  Her skin against mine, her mouth seeking my breast. Her little head in the palm of my hand. Her fontanel, her dark hair, green slime on her skin, a heart-shaped mouth. The word “seismic” isn’t too strong.

  When Léonine appeared, my youth shattered as violently as a porcelain vase on a tiled floor. It’s she who buried my carefree girl’s life. Within minutes, I went from laughter to tears, from fine weather to rain. Like a March sky, I was sunny spells and sudden showers all at once. My every sense was awakened, heightened, like those of a blind woman.

  All my life, when coming across my reflection in the mirror, I wondered which of my two parents I looked like. When her big eyes stared at me, I thought she looked like the sky, the universe, a monster. I found her ugly and beautiful. Furious and gentle. Intensely close and unfamiliar. A marvel and venom within the same person. I spoke to her as if we were continuing a conversation begun a very long time ago.

  I welcomed her. I caressed her. I devoured her with my eyes, I breathed her in, I spat her out. I inspected every centimeter of her skin, I licked her with my eyes.

  When she was taken from me to be weighed, measured, washed, I clenched my fists. As soon as she had disappeared from my sight, I felt like a child, very small, helpless, useless. I called out to my mother. I didn’t have a fever, and yet I called out to her.

  I saw
my childhood again, speeded up. How could I make sure that my daughter never had to live what I had lived? Were they going to take her away from me? As soon as Léo arrived in my life, I was scared that we would be separated. I was scared that she would abandon me. And, paradoxically, I wanted her to disappear and come back later, when I’d be grown up.

  Philippe Toussaint came to see us in the afternoon, between the 15:07 train and the 18:09 one. I’d disappointed him. He wanted a son. He said nothing. He looked at us. He smiled at us. He kissed me through my hair. I found him handsome, with our child in his arms. I asked him to protect us, always. He replied to me, “Obviously.”

  And then there was the second seismic event. Léo was two days old. She had just breastfed. I had placed her on my bent thighs, her little head supported by my knees, her little feet against my stomach, her two fists gripping my index fingers. I was looking at her. I was looking for her face’s past, as if my parents were going to appear to me. I looked at her so much, the midwives told me I’d end up wearing her out. She stared at me while I spoke to her, I no longer remember what I was telling her. They say that babies don’t smile, that they smile at the angels. I don’t know which angel she saw through me, but she quite clearly stared at me and smiled.

  As if to reassure me. As if to say to me, “Everything’s going to be fine.” Never have I experienced such a disturbing feeling of love.

  The day before we were due to leave, Father and Mother Toussaint came to the maternity hospital in all their finery. She with precious stones on her fingers, he in absurdly expensive tasseled shoes. The father asked me if I would get “the child” baptized, the mother took her in her arms, even though Léonine was sound asleep in her see-through bed. She picked her up awkwardly, without asking me a thing, as if the little one belonged to her. The wicked stepmother made Léo’s fontanel disappear into the fabric of her blouse. Hatred engulfed me. I bit the inside of my mouth hard so as not to cry with rage.