My list for Nono is done. This year, like every year, he’s the one who’s going to stand in for me, who’s going to take over watering the flowers on the tombs of families who are on holiday. As for Elvis, he will take care of Eliane and the cats. And Father Cédric will look after the vegetable garden, and the flowers in the garden. I’ve given him the index card handwritten by Sasha—he did one for every month.
AUGUST
Priority of the month: watering.
Watering must be done in the evening because then you get the coolness all night, but, importantly, not too early; otherwise, the earth is still hot and the water evaporates immediately, so watering too early is like pissing in the wind.
Watering must be done at nightfall with a watering can—use water from the well or collected rainwater. The can is gentler than the hose; use the hose and you flatten the soil and it can’t breathe anymore. The soil must breathe. That’s why, occasionally, you should scratch carefully with a hook around the base of plants, to aerate it.
Pick ripe vegetables.
Tomatoes can wait a few days.
Eggplants every three days, otherwise they fatten and harden.
Beans every day. And to be eaten at once. Either preserve them, or freeze them after removing stalks, or distribute them to people around you.
Ditto for everything else: never forget that one grows to share, otherwise it’s pointless.
Father Cédric won’t be alone in tending the vegetable garden. Since the dismantling of the “Jungle” in Calais, some Sudanese families have been lodged at the château in Chardonnay. He goes there three times a week to help the volunteers. A young couple, Kamal and Anita, both nineteen, are due to have a baby. Father Cédric got permission from the authorities to have them stay with him. He will try to protect them for as long as possible, once the child is born. Long enough for them to return to studying, get a diploma, and, crucially, a permanent right to remain. It’s a precarious situation—Father Cédric says he’s living on a powder keg, but it’s a vulnerability he welcomes. And as long as it lasts, he will embrace the joy of sharing his daily life with an adopted family. Whether it lasts a month or ten years, he will have lived it.
“Everything is ephemeral, Violette, we’re merely passing through. Only God’s love remains steadfast in all things.”
Since they have been living at the presbytery, Kamal and Anita come to my kitchen every day, and unlike the others, stay longer. Anita is madly in love with Eliane, and Kamal with my vegetable garden. He spends hours deciphering Sasha’s index cards and my Willem & Jardins catalogues, when he isn’t giving me a hand. He’s really good at it. The first time I told him he had a green thumb, he didn’t understand and responded, with bafflement, “But Violette, I’m black.”
I gave my Boscher reading-method book, The Little Ones’ Day Out, to Anita. She reads it aloud to me, and when she makes a mistake, stumbles over a word, I correct her without even looking at the pages, since I know it by heart.
When Anita opened the book for the first time, she asked me if it belonged to my child; I replied with a question, “May I touch your tummy?” She replied: “Yes, do.” I laid my hands flat on the cotton of her dress. Anita started laughing because I was tickling her. The baby gave me a few kicks. Anita told me that he was also laughing. And so, we laughed, all three of us, in my kitchen.
If someone dies and there’s a funeral to organize, it’s Jacques Lucchini who will stand in for me. Since I had to give Gaston something to do during my absence, I asked him to collect my mail and put it on the shelf beside the phone. I’m almost certain that he won’t be able to break one of my letters.
From my bed, I contemplate my still-open suitcase, sitting on top of my chest of drawers. I’ll finish packing it tomorrow. I always take too much stuff to Marseilles. I wear almost nothing at the chalet. There’s too much “just in case” in my luggage.
The first time I saw that suitcase was in 1998. Philippe Toussaint had gone for good, but I still didn’t realize it. Four days earlier, he had kissed me goodbye, mumbling, “See you later.” He was due to question Eloïse Petit, the second supervisor. The only one left he hadn’t spoken to. He had said to me, “After that, I’m done. After that, we change our life. I can’t stand any more of all this, these tombs. We’ll go and live in the Midi.”
He changed life on his own.
On Eloïse Petit day, he changed direction. Instead of going to see her, he headed to Bron, to see Françoise Pelletier again.
For four days, I was on my own. I was kneeling at the back of the vegetable garden, my nose in the leaves of the nasturtiums I’d attached to bamboo stakes. Like every time Philippe Toussaint was away, the cats had gravitated to the house, and were playing hide-and-seek around me, all darting about, and one of them ended up knocking over a basin of water, they all jumped, and, in their panic, landed in the water. I couldn’t stop laughing. I heard a familiar voice, coming from the door of the house, saying, “It’s good to hear you laughing all on your own.”
I thought I was hallucinating. That the wind in the trees was playing a mean trick on me. I looked up and saw the suitcase on the table under the arbor. It was as blue as the Mediterranean on really sunny days. Sasha was standing in front of the door. I went over to him and stroked his face because I couldn’t believe it was really him. I thought he had forgotten me. I said to him, “I thought you had abandoned me.”
“Never, do you hear me, Violette? Never will I abandon you.”
He gave me a rough outline of his first months of retirement. He had visited Sany, his almost-brother, in the south of India. In Chartres, Besançon, Sicily, and Toulouse, he had visited palaces, churches, monasteries, streets, other cemeteries. He had swum in lakes, rivers, and seas. Had soothed aching backs, sore ankles, and superficial burns. He had just come from Marseilles, where he had done some window boxes of aromatic plants for Célia. He wanted to give me a hug before going to Valence to pay his respects at the tombs of Verena, Emile, and Ninon, his wife and children who were buried there. Then he would return to India to be with Sany.
He had just dropped his things off at Madame Bréant’s. He was going to stay two or three nights there, long enough to see the mayor, Nono, Elvis, the cats, and the others.
That blue suitcase was for me. It was full of presents. Teas, incense, scarves, fabrics, jewelry, honeys, olive oils, Marseilles soap, candles, amulets, books, Bach LPs, sunflower seeds. Everywhere Sasha had been, he’d bought me a souvenir.
“I’ve brought you back an impression for each trip.”
“The suitcase, too?”
“Of course, one day you, too, will set off.”
He walked around the garden with tears in his eyes. He said, “The pupil has surpassed the teacher . . . I knew you’d do it.”
We had lunch together. Every time I heard an engine in the distance, I thought it might be Philippe Toussaint returning. But no.
* * *
Nineteen years later, it’s a different man I find myself waiting for. In the morning, when I open the gates, I look for his car in the car park. Sometimes, along the avenues, when I hear steps behind me, I turn around, thinking: He’s here, he’s come back.
Yesterday evening, I thought someone was knocking on my road-side door. I went down but there was no one there.
And yet, the last time Julien slammed his car door and said to me, “Be seeing you,” just as if bidding me farewell, I did nothing to keep him. I smiled and replied, confidently, “Yes, safe journey,” just as if I were saying to him, “It’s for the best.” When Nathan and Valentin waved at me from the back of the car, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing them again.
Since that morning, Julien has given me just one sign of life. A postcard from Barcelona to tell me that Nathan and he would be spending the two months of summer over there. And that Nathan’s mother would be joining them from time to time.
The meeting of Irène and Gabriel will have helped Julien and Nathan’s mother. I was a bridge, a crossing between them. Julien had needed to know me to realize that he couldn’t lose the mother of his child. And thanks to Julien, I know that I can still make love. That I can be desired. Which is at least something.