Anthony’s mother asked him to accompany her to Luc Grandemange’s funeral, and he didn’t have much choice. It was his first funeral and he’d gotten dressed up: white shirt, jacket, and tie. It felt odd to be outfitted like that, looking halfway between a cop and an executive, but it wasn’t actually unpleasant. He was even wearing dress shoes, which they’d had to buy for the occasion. Like weddings, funerals involve expenses. His mother had wanted to buy him shoes that would last; Anthony wanted stylish Kenzos. Fortunately, shoes were on sale.
During the whole drive to the church, Hélène kept fiddling with her hair, a sign that she was extremely nervous. Also, she smoked continuously. Anthony twice had to warn her that a light had turned red.
“It’ll be fine,” he said protectively.
She said, “Yes, sure, nothing to be done about it, anyway.” Behind her big sunglasses, Hélène was hanging in there. She would be seeing Patrick for the first time since their divorce became final. That was a drawback of funerals: you always ran into old acquaintances.
They arrived quite early, so parking in the church’s lot was easy. The church itself stood in the very center of town, not far from City Hall. It was an impressive Roman-looking building with a symmetrical, pilastered facade and a square belfry tower. The Wendel family had had it built during the German annexation and asked the architect for something with a Renaissance, Italian feeling, as a slap at the kaiser and his visigothic leanings. They had spent lavishly on a significant building, probably out of guilt, since they were living in the 8th arrondissement of Paris while Heillange was under German rule. A hundred and ten years later, Saint-Michel d’Heillange now stood as a luxurious relic surrounded by poverty. Each time a family buried a drunkard or a silicosis victim, it felt as if they had somehow earned the right to a national funeral.
The church’s little forecourt soon filled with people. Anthony and his mother, who had stayed off to one side, joined the crowd. Hélène led the way. She was wearing a dark dress cinched at the waist by a shiny belt. A small purse shaped like a seashell hung from her shoulder. In the sea of faces, Anthony recognized a few, mainly people he was used to seeing in town. Everybody was smiling and chatting quietly. You might have mistaken it for a charity bazaar, except for a certain restraint, and all the black. A thunderstorm loomed overhead like a promise. This was no weather in which to be wearing a suit.
“Look,” said Hélène.
Vanessa had just spotted the two of them, and crossed the forecourt to join them. She, too, was wearing a dark dress and high heels. She looked pretty.
“So you came?” said Hélène, pleasantly surprised.
“Yes, sure.”
“Do you know the Grandemange family?”
“Not really.”
Vanessa smiled, looking natural and sweet. Hélène was very fond of the girl. She used to come to the house from time to time, and she said hello and stayed downstairs to chat for a few minutes before running upstairs and shutting herself in Anthony’s bedroom. She ate dinner with them a few times and always offered to help setting the table or doing the dishes. She was intelligent and not a show-off, the kind of girl who could have raised Anthony up. Then she stopped coming, and Anthony didn’t mention her anymore. But it was none of Hélène’s business.
Anthony saw the situation differently. As soon as he could, he took Vanessa aside.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
“Am I bothering you?”
“No, but you have no business being here. I didn’t ask you to come.”
“All right, don’t get uptight. I’ll split.”
But Anthony kept her from leaving. He was dying of the heat. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt collar. Searching for some fresh air, he looked up at the close, low sky. It was marbled and gray, as languid as soup.
“It’s gotta break soon. I can’t stand this anymore.”
“There’s nothing forecast before tonight.”
That was something Anthony was well aware of, having checked the weather earlier. He had a date behind the old power plant that evening at nine and intended to be there come rain, wind, or snow.
Meanwhile, Hélène had started making the rounds. Neighbors were there, as well as Luc’s family and old workmates. She greeted each person with an appropriate expression, but conversation soon drove away the show of sadness. People caught up with each other’s news. So-and-so was dead; that other one’s son left for China; the Hartz’s bakery found a buyer. Expressions flitted across Hélène’s face like clouds. She was friendly, solicitous, always interested in other people’s lives, their joys and sorrows. When she raised her sunglasses, you saw the bags under her eyes and her ashy skin, wrinkled by worry and scored by tears, that made her look quite old. She’d gone through a ton of shit in the last two years.
For their part, Vanessa and Anthony watched as the little crowd complacently milled about in the shadow of the church. Vanessa hadn’t said anything for some time. He turned to her.
“Are you in a bad mood?”
“No.”
“Seems that way.”
Vanessa was angry at herself for having come. True, Anthony hadn’t asked her for anything. She was trying to make a place for herself in his life, but why bother? He was a punk and a jerk-off. Ugly, too, with that screwed-up eye. She looked at him to make sure. He really wasn’t that ugly, worse luck.
“Come on,” he said, nudging her with his shoulder. “It’s all right. I apologize.”
“You’re not so aggressive when you come to fuck me.”
He turned on her in surprise.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s a bitchy thing to say! You enjoy it as much as I do.”
This time she turned to face him. In her heels, she was almost as tall as he was.
“Yeah, I just love it when you wake me up in the middle of the night to drain your balls.”
“So what do you want?” he snapped irritably. “For us to get married?”
“Asshole.”
It was less of a reproach than a regret. Vanessa didn’t expect anything from him, of course. He was a kid, a loser, hopeless at school, always going on about his motorbike, not her type at all. Besides, they had their agreement to get together and fuck, basta. Except that after sex, when you’re lying there looking at the ceiling, you can’t help but confide in each other. When Anthony’s mother wasn’t home, they sometimes stayed like that for a long time in his darkened room, talking. He had those long lashes, that brown skin. He kept saying that he didn’t give a damn, but clearly, the opposite was true. She sometimes thought about him even when she was in her studio apartment in Metz or watching a movie with Christopher. She constantly felt an urge to grab him, pull his hair, bite him. She hated herself for being that way. She had put on her prettiest dress.
The little crowd suddenly seemed to part in the middle and began to move in a circle, like a school of fish. Évelyne Grandemange, the widow, had just appeared. Holding her arm was a very tall, slim, hunched man with a pockmarked face. This was her nephew Brice. Everybody knew him; he had that truck and van rental place on the road to Étange.
“She seems to be doing okay,” said Vanessa.
It was true. Évelyne seemed in good shape. She was even doing a bit of a star turn, all smiles, saying hello to everyone, an eternal Gauloise in her hand. Anthony, who hadn’t seen her for a few months, was startled to see how deeply she had settled into old age. She looked sunken, withered, her face somber and furrowed, as if kneaded by the years. Her shining eyes and tireless smile almost clashed with the rest of her looks. Her legs, especially, didn’t bode well. They looked like two wooden sticks. Anthony hoped he wouldn’t have to kiss her; it would feel cold.
“Do you think we ought to go over?”
“Whatever you like,” answered Vanessa.
“I don’t know what to say to her.”
“Well, just tell her you’re so sorry. That’s all.”
“I don’t really feel it.”
“Haven’t you ever been to a funeral before?”
“No. What about you?”
“My grandmother, when I was a little girl.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Pfff! You doofus!”
They stopped talking and stood there. All in all, Anthony was quite pleased that she’d come. The hearse appeared, bearing the coffin. It was a long, old-fashioned pachydermic Citroen CX bright with chrome, with lots of windows to show the interior. There was something majestic about its movement, and people parted as it passed. It was so quiet, you could hear the sigh of its hydraulic suspension when it stopped. The crowd fell silent as well. A body inside was on the verge of disappearing. A cold future that awaited us all. People stopped kidding around.
“Damn, I wonder where my father is,” said Anthony.
“Are you sure he’s going to come?”
“I hope so.”
Even after all this time, Anthony still worried that Patrick would show up dead drunk. He had too many memories from before, from his childhood and then the rest, the crises during the divorce, finding his father in a pathetic state, weeping and saying he was going to shoot himself. Best not to think of it.
Two men wearing identical eggplant-colored polyester suits got out of the CX. The taller one’s tennis socks were visible. His shorter partner wore glasses that darkened in sunlight. They lowered the tailgate, and Brice the nephew and another man came over to lend a hand. When they hoisted the coffin, it seemed surprisingly light, and too small.
“How did they ever fit him in there?” someone wondered.
“At the end, he was just skin and bones.”
“Still, it’s not like they folded him in half.”
The crowd gradually arranged itself into a cortège behind the deceased. The coffin led the way, followed by the widow, all alone. Behind her, people came in twos and threes, walking in silence, with children held by the hand and the old by the arm. In the nave, which was cool and empty, the organ was already playing drawn-out notes that echoed in people’s chests and under the stone arches. The pews gradually filled as the coffin was set on stands. Two white candles stood guard on either side.
Anthony, Hélène, and Vanessa slipped into a row halfway between the choir and the porch. Unused to being in church, Anthony looked at the stained glass windows, the sculptures, and the images of agony and glory without understanding any of it. For him and for many others, the meaning of that language had been lost. All that remained was pretentious decorum and empty gestures. At least it was cool.
The priest tapped the microphone to make sure that the speakers worked. He began:
“Dear brothers, we are gathered today to remember…”
Anthony turned around in the hope of spotting his father in the crowd, but he still wasn’t there. On the other hand, his cousin was a few rows away, with his girlfriend, Séverine. He and Anthony shared a smile, and his cousin even winked at him. He’d completely dropped out of circulation after he started going with her. She was a knockout biracial girl who competed in beauty contests. Even here, dressed in sober black, she still caught people’s eye. The cousin was totally at her beck and call. You could understand why. Still, it was stupid.
Aside from that, the rogues’ gallery of faces summed up old Grandemange’s life pretty well. The family, the neighbors, old workmates, two deputy mayors, business owners, drinking buddies, and guys from the Société des fêtes. Gathered at the back were his CGT union brothers, guys who shared a look of cocky aloofness that went with their refusal to get dressed up. And then there was Dr. Reswiller, in a houndstooth jacket and black polo shirt, with glasses on his forehead and Paraboots on his feet, as usual. He had suspected that there was something wrong with Luc’s pancreas from the very beginning. He ordered some extra tests, which confirmed his diagnosis. Reswiller had been Grandemange’s doctor for nearly forty years, and together they agreed to put off hospitalization as long as possible, since he was as good as dead anyway. When the pain became unbearable, he was put in a double room with a parking-lot view, television, and a morphine drip. Very soon, he sank into a coma. In two weeks, it was all over.
During the ceremony, the priest summed up the deceased’s life, which had been neither very long nor very exemplary. It filled a single sheet of paper. To begin with, he had a father and a mother who died during the war, leaving two children. Luc was the youngest and had a rough time, growing up in boarding schools as a war orphan. For people who had only known him as a big, easygoing mastodon of a guy, always joking and complaining, those memories seemed almost impossible. Grandemange had loved nature, rock ’n’ roll and Charles Trénet, hunting, and drinking. He met Évelyne in 1966 and married her. The priest then ran through the list of his jobs, which paralleled the valley’s economic history: Metalor, Rexel, Pomona, City2000, Socogem. But he said nothing about the lean years, unemployment, layoffs, union activism, politics, or the most recent campaign, during which Grandemange had put up posters for the National Front.
The priest concluded soberly, noting that for Luc Grandemange “friendship” wasn’t an empty word, and that he had always been deeply involved in the town’s life. Seated in the front row, Évelyne listened in silence, her hands gripping a dry handkerchief. Along with that, you had to stand up, sit down, pray. In general, everything that had been said was forgotten. The nephew read a poem by Éluard. People sang, tentatively. Those who wished to bless the coffin did so. The organ played. It was over.
As they went out, Anthony was relieved to see his father standing in the back near the door, hands in his pockets. He had gotten a haircut and put on his blue suit. That’s when you realized that he’d lost quite a bit of weight, in spite of the belly that stretched his shirt.
“Stay close to me,” whispered Hélène, who was as white as a sheet.
Anthony reassured her. In the distance, his father watched them, a slight smile playing on his lips. Aside from that, he seemed in great shape.