THE WOMAN AND HER DAUGHTER walk out of the Métro station and stop for a moment at the top of the steps. The woman stares into the cloudless blue sky. When they had left the hotel earlier, the streets of Saint-Germain were washed in pale predawn light. Now the sun is shining brightly. It is going to be a warm day.
There is a café on the other side of Boulevard de Ménilmontant, empty at this hour save for one or two early risers, hunched over steaming cups of coffee, and a waiter polishing glasses behind the counter. The buttery smell of freshly baked croissants floats by on the morning breeze. The girl grips a slim posy of camellias. In contrast to the beauty of the morning, her face is a thundercloud. The woman looks down at her daughter’s pinched scowl, and—not for the first time—regrets insisting that she come along this morning. For a moment she contemplates abandoning the whole enterprise. She can always come back later, on her own.
The girl points across the road. “Can I have a croissant?” she asks.
It’s a miracle, thinks the woman, how the young can distill so much sullen resentment into five simple words. She feels a fresh resolve, a stiffening of the spine. “No, Marie,” she says sharply. “No croissant. Come along.”
The sigh that follows is equal parts fury and triumph. Of course there was to be no croissant.
At this hour Avenue Gambetta is deserted but for a flock of pigeons that peck idly at the sidewalk. The pair walk up the hill in silence. The high walls of the cemetery cast the street into shadow. The place will not open for another few hours, but there is a small gate in the northwest corner, half hidden behind a crumbling wall, that is never manned and never locked.
“I still don’t understand why you put flowers on the grave,” says the girl, for perhaps the tenth time that morning.
“Because, ma chérie, that is how we honor the dead.”
“It’s not as if he will know they’re there.”
“Perhaps not. But everyone else who visits his grave will see them.”
Another incredulous sigh. “Who visits his grave except you?”
“I think you’d be surprised.”
Marie is silent. She is never surprised. She is ten years old. She knows everything.
The gate, at last. The woman looks up and down the street, and then steps inside, ushering her daughter in ahead of her.
At this time of day the cemetery is the most peaceful place in Paris. There are no slump-shouldered mourners traipsing between the tombstones on their meandering trails of sorrow. The birds have not yet begun their day of song. Even the leaves are motionless in the trees.
A sea of crypts and mausoleums crests the hill in front of them. The woman looks at the wave of polished marble that shimmers in the morning sun. The cemetery is its own city, with neighborhoods and thoroughfares, permanent residents and visitors. She sets off down the gravel path. Marie follows, her sighs reaching a quiet crescendo of outrage.
Just once, thinks the woman sadly. I wanted her to come just once. I wanted her to understand.
She strides ahead, not stopping to read the epitaphs of strangers or to admire the grand family memorials of Parisian aristocrats. She walks past the ranks of weeping stone angels without a second glance.
“Maman!” gasps Marie, struggling to keep up. “Wait for me!”
But she will not wait.
Finally she reaches her destination, an elegant rectangle of black marble, with simple gold lettering:
MARCEL PROUST
1871–1922
That is all. Amid these elaborate bids for immortality, not so much as a modest “écrivain.”
Nineteen twenty-two, she thinks. Five years already, she’s been coming here.
Her daughter arrives behind her, out of breath. She has been running. She does not want to be alone in the cemetery.
“Look, Marie. You see? Someone else has been here.” A handful of irises has been scattered across the tomb, but the flowers have withered and died, their petals a sorry mosaic of faded lavender. The woman sweeps them away. She takes the camellias from her daughter and arranges them on the marble.
Then Camille Clermont kneels down in front of the tombstone of her dead employer, and begins to weep. She turns away from her daughter, but too late.
“Maman,” whispers Marie. “What’s wrong?” At the sight of her mother’s tears, the child’s hostility has evaporated. Now she is worried, solicitous, scared, and this makes Camille cry harder still.
“I miss him, Marie,” she says. “I miss him every day.”
“Was he a nice man?”
“Oh yes. He was very nice. Very kind. I wish you could have known him better.” She smiles down at her daughter. “But he thought children were best enjoyed at a distance.”
“He didn’t have children himself?”
“Goodness, no.” Camille laughs and shakes her head. “He had the characters in his books, though. They were his children, I suppose.”
“Did you love him?” asks Marie.
“Very much.”
“More than papa?”
“Oh no. Never more than papa. And in a very different way.”
“Different how?”
“It’s more like you and Irène.”
Marie’s eyes grow big. “He was your best friend?”
“In some ways. We shared secrets, just like you and Irène. We told each other things nobody else knew.” She pauses. “That’s why I come and put flowers on his grave. I come to say hello, and to tell him that I miss him, and to say thank you for his friendship.”
And, she thinks but does not say, to tell him that I’m sorry for my betrayal. And to forgive him for his.
Marie nods. “I would put flowers on Irène’s grave, too.”
Camille takes her daughter’s hand. “Come on,” she says. “Perhaps it’s time for that croissant.”