I had mislaid my phone. When I found it again, I discovered that my sister had left a message. She started to say something, then gave up, left a long silence, and finally explained that the number displayed was hers, that she’d bought a cell phone at last. I called her back immediately and got her mailbox. I tried to be clear and concise. Our mother was going to die that night. She’d fallen into a coma so suddenly that I hadn’t been able to tell her earlier.
Léonard had taken refuge in his room, and Catherine had joined him there. He’d put his head on her chest. She was talking to him softly.
I went back to my mother. From time to time, her breathing got out of control, then became regular again. I saw that her ring had almost slipped off her finger, and I adjusted it. My father had given it to her on their fifteenth anniversary, accompanying this gift with a whole performance. He’d had the car washed. He took my mother to a posh restaurant, while we stayed at home, left to our own devices. But it was only years later I heard the real story, when I ran into the jeweler who’d sold him that ring. He was retired now, and he recognized me from all the times he’d shooed me away from the doorway of his shop, where I’d stop to eat ice cream I’d bought from the bakery opposite. At the time, he’d accused me of scaring away his customers, but now he didn’t care about any of that. I’d become a valuable witness of the old days when he’d still been active, and he confessed, as he would to a friend, that the famous ring was a fake. And he added that in spite of its modest cost—modest for such an impressive-looking ring—my father had asked if he could pay him in three installments, and that he’d never received the final installment.
Catherine came into the room and walked up to me. When she saw my hand lying on my mother’s, she left us alone again. I’d listened to Gabrielle under the bare cherry tree, and now I was answering her, although nobody could hear my words.
I closed the door of the room on the way out and crossed the corridor. Léonard had fallen asleep. I went to the kitchen. I needed wine. The back door was open. I took my glass out with me. Catherine was sitting looking out at the night. On the table, the cakes were still there, my mother’s mille-feuille only just started.
“Well?”
“She seems peaceful. And Léonard?”
“He wanted to know what becomes of bodies after death. What happens to them in cemeteries, if the coffin rots in the ground, if it gets moved, that kind of thing.”
“I think he also wanted your warmth.”
I put my legs up on a chair and knocked back my drink in one go. I felt the effect of the liquid throughout my body. An owl could be heard in the distance. On the other side of the fence, there was a row of houses, but after that, open countryside. I’d never realized that before.
“You’re starting to get a taste for wine.”
“Yes.”
“You should try the rum baba. Do you think your sister will come?”
“That’s up to her. I didn’t go to my father’s funeral, you know. I forgot all about it. What about you?”
“Me?”
“Are your parents still alive?”
“No.”
“Is there a connection with the terrified little girl?”
“Of course. My mother always went for walks on the banks of the Seine with my little sister Lucie. We lived in the sixteenth arrondissement in Paris, in a nice apartment, a bourgeois apartment, you could call it. My father was a well-known architect, my mother didn’t work but didn’t seem to mind. My father didn’t know what to do to spoil her. Not a day went by that he didn’t buy her a gift. She was always well turned out, always looked wonderful. She threw herself in the Seine, holding my little sister’s hand. Lucie’s body was found three days later, in a lock, my mother’s never was. Had she been planning it for a long time? Or did she act on impulse? Nobody knows. There were no clues. No painful family history, no thwarted ambition. Genetics maybe? My maternal grandfather killed himself with his hunting rifle. My father was someone who believed in logic. He couldn’t bear not knowing the reason for his wife’s suicide. His body gave way, he had leukemia, in six months he was gone. I’d always thought he was indestructible. He’d never had a cold. I clung to my studies, my books, to knowledge, as if was a life raft.”
“In order to understand.”
“Yes, or at least to try. You know, for years, an image haunted me. My little sister seeing herself dragged into the water . . . ”
“They drown themselves. And they try to take us with them.”
“Who?”
“Our parents.”
“When we met, in the hospital . . . I dreamed about you the following night. You were on the riverbank. You took Lucie in your arms. She was saved.”
“It was just a dream.”
“It’s possible sometimes, isn’t it?”
“We have to save ourselves first.”
“Do you think I’m shameless?”
“No, I wish I had your courage.”
“Do I still scare you?”
“Less than before.”