Sunday
The heat wave is over. It lasted six days. I’m exhausted. Wiped out. I don’t count my hours as it is, but when there’s a crisis like that, it’s the hours that stop counting us.
I started my shift at 8 A.M. Didn’t sleep all night, went dancing at the Paradise until 5 A.M. I needed to be young, get drunk, go crazy, put make-up on, flirt, wear something low-cut, close my eyes and dance. Convince myself that I’m pretty.
Since last autumn, I often end the night in the same arms. Those of a guy who’s older than me. Maybe twenty-seven, called What’s-his-name. Between him and him, I have other one-night stands, but he often returns. Like some bimonthly apparition.
Sunday is visiting day. But not for everyone. I drank five coffees so I could look after the unvisited. Sunday is a day to “handle with care.” It’s steeped in sadness. You might think that every day here is like a Sunday, but there’s no getting away from it. It’s like a biological clock. Every Sunday, the residents know it’s Sunday.
After ablutions it’s Mass, broadcast on TV, and then a fancier meal. Avocado with prawns is renamed “seafood surprise with mayonnaise,” and chocolate éclairs become “filled sweet treats.”
It’s a bit like the daily vegetable soup. It changes name every day even though it’s just the same hot dishwater. On Monday, the concoction is called “soup of the season,” on Wednesday “garden velouté,” and on Friday, “vegetable-medley broth.” The residents love getting their menus for the week. It’s their treasure map. Apart from the obituaries column in the Journal de Saône-et-Loire, it’s the only reading matter that still interests them.
At lunchtime on Sunday, glasses of kir, followed by wine, help with digesting the morning. But we have to watch out that no one nabs another person’s glass, or else arguments can break out, even coming to blows. The dining room is a playground in which many residents sort out their problems by hitting others. Even I have received a few slaps.
At lunchtime on Sunday, my colleagues and I lay the tables with white cloths and stemmed glasses. Like in a restaurant.
After lunch, some residents return to their rooms, because of the afternoon visits, or the Michel Drucker TV show. The rest we entertain in the card room as best we can, with little shows, karaoke, lotto, belote, screenings . . . it varies. I like to put on Charlie Chaplin movies and make them laugh.
I also like getting them to sing “Le petit bal perdu” into a microphone connected to two speakers. It’s their favorite song. They each take turns on the mike. Sometimes, we even dance. It’s not quite Dirty Dancing with them, but their hearts are in it.
This afternoon, we got our magician to come along. It’s always the same one. A volunteer from my neighborhood, a kid who carries around a clutch of turtledoves and white rabbits as if they were bunches of keys. His conjuring nearly always goes wrong because he’s too clumsy, so his tricks are as obvious as the nose on my face. But for those forgotten on Sunday, simply seeing a turtledove or some rabbits in a hat is wonderful, and lightens the heaviness of their day.
At around 2 P.M., I sensed the blue eyes of the “ghost” on my back. I was just settling my residents down for the magic show. I heard his hello. One of the turtledoves escaped from the kid’s sleeve.
He was standing behind me. He smiled at me. He smiled at me. He smiled at me. He smiled at me. He was holding a book. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that was slightly too big.
“Hello, I’ve come to read to my grandmother, but I wanted to say hi first.”
Confirmation: when I see him, I completely fall apart.
He has the sweetest smile. His skin is pale and his hands are like a girl’s, fine and graceful. Beside him, I, Justine, don’t exist. I’m normal. An earthling. Blushing. And too lucid to imagine that a man like him could see me as anything but the girl who listens to his grandmother telling her about the sea.
“Hello,” I replied. “That’s nice, have a good read.”
And I promptly turned my back on him. Pretended to search for a turtledove with the magician. Again, I sensed his eyes, behind me, insistent. What did he want? To burn my nape like the sun through the window on the top floor?
After the show, I went up to see Hélène. I knocked. He was still there, his book open in his hands. He was reading aloud:
In the morning they met in the breakfast room: the one who got there first ate slowly, to give the other time to arrive. Every day grandmother was afraid that the Veteran might leave without telling her, or that he was tired of her company, or maybe would change tables and pass her by with a cold nod of greeting, like all those men of the Wednesdays so many years before . . . 2
His voice, beautiful, light and strong all at once. Like fingers on piano keys, moving from deep notes to high. Well, I say that, but I don’t know much about the piano. And even less about extraterrestrial specimens like him. Except for my brother. But he’s my brother. I’m not afraid to ruffle his hair.
He saw me and immediately stopped reading.
“What is it you’re reading to her?” I asked my feet.
“From the Land of the Moon,” he replied.
I didn’t dare tell him that she’d already read it. Or rather, that Rose had already read it to her. I looked up at Hélène. Saw her smiling from her beach. I replied to the walls:
“She seems to like it.”
He nodded. Well, I think he did.
I left, silently. Because I don’t exist when he’s there. I didn’t see him again that day. I took a quick look at the roof: the seagull was in its place and seemed to be sleeping. He left From the Land of the Moon on the bedside table, between Janet Gaynor and Lucien, with my name written on it in fountain pen. His handwriting is lovely. I’d never seen “Justine” written so beautifully.
“For Justine.”
He’d signed, “Roman.”
His name is Roman. The French word for “novel.” You couldn’t make it up.
It’s 9 P.M. I’m aching all over. Monsieur Vaillant asked me to massage his hands. “This evening,” I said. Then I’ll go and do Hélène’s. I like Monsieur Vaillant. He hasn’t been with us for long. He’s not happy here. He misses his house, much more than his wife. So he tells me every day. After Monsieur Vaillant and Hélène, I’ll go and switch off the TVs of those who have fallen asleep.
Then I, too, will reread From the Land of the Moon, before writing in the blue notebook, which I haven’t touched for weeks because of the heat wave.
2 Milena Agus, From the Land of the Moon, trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa Editions, 2011).