“And sweet peas too. They need planting. They were my mother’s favorite flower.”
“Whatever you like.”
Camille felt her bag. Good, she hadn’t forgotten her watercolors.
They rolled the wheelchair out into the sun and Philibert helped her sit down. Too much emotion.
“Look, Grandma, look who’s here!”
Franck stood on the porch, a huge knife in one hand and a cat in the other. He glanced at the cat, then said, “Actually, I think I’d rather make you some rabbit!”
They brought out some chairs and picnicked in their coats. By dessert, they had undone their buttons and, eyes closed, head back, legs outstretched, they breathed in the good country sunshine.
The birds were singing, Franck and Philibert were squabbling:
“I say it’s a blackbird.”
“No, a nightingale.”
“A blackbird!”
“A nightingale! Shit, this is where I live! I should know!”
“Stop,” sighed Philibert. “You spent all your time fiddling with mopeds, how could you possibly hear the birds? Whereas I was reading in silence, and had all the time in the world to become familiar with their dialects. The blackbird trills, and the robin’s song is like little drops of water falling. I promise you, that is a blackbird. Can you hear how it’s trilling? Pavarotti practicing his singing exercises.”
“Grandma. What is it?”
She was asleep.
“Camille. What is it?”
“Two penguins spoiling the silence.”
“Fine. If that’s the way things are. Come, Philou dear, I’ll take you fishing.”
“Ah? Uh . . . It’s just that I . . . I am not very good at it, and I al- always tangle up . . .”
Franck laughed.
“Come on, Philou dear, come on. Come tell me about your lover so I can explain to you where the reel is.”
Philibert rolled his eyes in Camille’s direction.
“Hey! I didn’t say a thing!” she protested.
“No, it’s not her. A little bird told me . . .”
The tall Mutt with his bow tie and monocle and the little Jeff with his pirate’s headband walked off into the distance, arm in arm.
“Tell me, boy, tell Uncle Franck what sort of bait you’ve got. Very important, bait is, you know that? Because those beasties are not stupid, ooh, noo, not stupid at all.”
When Paulette woke up, the two women walked around the hamlet with the wheelchair, then Camille forced her to take a bath to warm up.
She was biting the inside of her cheek.
All this was not very reasonable.
Never mind.
Philibert lit a fire and Franck prepared dinner.
Paulette went to bed early and Camille sketched the boys playing chess.
“Camille?”
“Mmm?”
“Why do you draw all the time?”
“Because that’s all I know how to do.”
“And what are you drawing right now?”
“The Bishop and the Knight.”
*
They decided that the boys would sleep on the sofa bed and Camille would take Franck’s old bed.
“Uh,” protested Philibert, “would it not be better if Camille, umm, took the big bed?”
They looked at him with a smile.
“I may be nearsighted, to be sure, but not that nearsighted, you know.”
“No, no,” Franck countered, “she goes in my room. We’re like your cousins: never before the wedding.”
Because he wanted to sleep with her in his childhood bed. Beneath his soccer posters and his motocross trophies. It would be neither very comfortable nor very romantic but it would be the proof that life was a good lay in spite of everything.
He’d been so bored in that room. So, so bored.
If someone had told him that one day he would bring home a princess and that he would lie down there, next to her, in this little brass bed where there was a deep hole, once upon a time, where he used to get lost as a child, and where in later years he would rub himself as he dreamt about creatures who were not nearly as pretty as she was . . . he would never have believed it. That pimply boy with his big feet and his bronze trophy above his head . . . No, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion, not by a long shot . . .
Yes, life was a strange chef: years in the cold store and then, boom! From one day to the next, you’re on the grill, dude!
“What are you thinking about?” asked Camille.
“Nothing important. Are you okay?”
“I can’t believe you grew up here.”
“Why not?”
She sighed. “It’s so far from everything. It’s not even a village. There’s . . . there’s nothing here. Just little houses with little old people in the window. And this house, where nothing has changed since the fifties. I’d never seen a kitchen stove like that one. And the other stove takes up the whole room! And the toilet’s out in the garden! How can a child grow and bloom here? How did you manage? What did you do to survive?”
“I went looking for you.”
“Stop . . . None of that, we said.”
“You said.”
“Come on.”
“You know how I managed, you went through the same thing. Except that I had nature. That was lucky for me. I was outdoors all the time. And Philou can say what he likes, it was a nightingale. I know so because my granddad told me and my granddad was like a singing magpie. He didn’t need any bird whistles.”
“So how do you manage to live in Paris?”
“I don’t live.”
“Isn’t there any work down this way?”
“No. Nothing interesting. But if I have kids someday, I swear I won’t let them grow up in the middle of traffic, that’s for sure. A kid who doesn’t have a pair of boots, a fishing rod and a slingshot isn’t a real kid. Why are you smiling?”
“Nothing. You’re sweet.”
“I’d rather you said something else about me.”
“You’re never satisfied.”
“How many do you want?”
“Pardon?”
“Kids?”
“Hey,” she whined. “Are you doing this on purpose or what?”
“Hold on, I didn’t!”
“I don’t want any.”
“Really?” He sounded disappointed.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
He caught her by the neck and held her by force close to his ear.
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Yes. Tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Because if I die, I don’t want the child to be all alone.”
“Of course not. That’s why you have to have lots of kids. And besides, you know . . .”
He squeezed her even tighter.
“You’re not going to die, not you. You’re an angel . . . and angels don’t ever die.”
She was crying.
“Hey, what’s the matter?”
“No, it’s nothing. It’s just because I’m about to get my period. It’s always the same. It gets me down and the littlest thing makes me cry.”
She smiled beneath her runny nose:
“You see I’m no angel.”
88
THEY’D been in the dark for a long time, uncomfortable and entwined, when Franck suddenly blurted out, “There’s something that’s been bugging me.”
“What?”
“You have a sister, right?”
“Yes ...”
“Why don’t you see her?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s lame. You have to see her.”
“Why?”
“Because! It’s great to have a sister. I would have given anything to have a brother. Anything! Even my bike. Even my most secret fishing holes. Even my extra balls at pinball. Like that song by Maxime Le Forestier, you know. The one about the brother he never had . . .”
“I know.
I thought about trying to see her at one point but then I didn’t dare.”
“Why?”
“Because of my mother, maybe.”
“Stop going on about your mother. She’s done nothing but hurt you. Don’t be masochistic. You don’t owe her a thing, you know.”
“But I do.”
“No, you don’t. You’re not obliged to love your parents when they behave badly.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Why?”
“Precisely because they’re your parents.”
He gave a sigh of disgust. “It’s not hard to become a parent, all you have to do is fuck. It’s afterwards that it gets complicated. In my case, for example, I’m not about to love a woman just because she got laid in a parking lot. I can’t do anything about that.”
“But it’s not the same for me.”
“No, it’s worse. I can see the state you’re in every time you come back from a meeting with your mother. It’s horrible. Your face is all—”
“Stop. I don’t feel like talking about it.”
“Okay, okay. Just one last thing. You’re not obliged to love her. That’s all I have to say. And you’ll say that I’m like this because of all the bad stuff I’m carting around and yeah, you’re right. But it’s precisely because I’ve been down this road myself that I’m showing you where to go: you’re not obliged to love your parents when they behave like big fucks, that’s all.”
Camille didn’t respond.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Forgive me.”
She was silent.
“You’re right. It’s not the same for you. She always took care of you, after all. But she mustn’t stop you from seeing your sister if you have one. Frankly, she’s not worth that sacrifice.”
“No . . .”
“No.”
89
THE next day, Camille set to work in the garden, following Paulette’s instructions. Philibert settled at the bottom of the garden to write, and Franck prepared a delicious salad.
After coffee, it was Franck who fell asleep on the chaise longue. God, what a backache he had . . .
He was going to order a mattress for next time. He couldn’t spend another two nights like that. No way. Life was a good lay but there was no point in being in pain. No way.
They came back every weekend. With or without Philibert. Usually with.
Camille—and she had always known she would—was becoming a regular pro at gardening.
Paulette tried to temper her enthusiasm: “No. We can’t plant that! Bear in mind that we’re only coming once a week. We need sturdy, hardy plants. Lupin if you like, phlox, cosmos . . . Cosmos are really pretty. So light. You’d like them, I think.”
And Franck, through the brother-in-law of Fat Titi’s sister’s coworker, dug up an ageing motorbike he could use to go to the market or to drop in on René.
He’d lasted thirty-two days without a bike and he was still wondering how he’d managed.
It was an old, ugly bike, but the noise it made when it revved was magnificent.
“Listen to that,” he shouted to them from the lean-to where he hung out when he was not in the kitchen. “Listen to this baby!”
They all raised their heads halfheartedly from their seeds or their book.
“Pttttttt . . . pet pet pet pet.”
“Well? Amazing, no? It sounds like a Harley!”
Yeah, whatever . . . They went back to their individual occupations without a word of encouragement.
Franck breathed a sigh of disappointment. “You just don’t get it.”
“Who is Carly, anyway?” Paulette asked Camille.
“Carly Davidson . . . A fantastic singer.”
“Don’t know her.”
Philibert invented a game for the trip. Each of them had to teach something to the three others in order to pass on some form of knowledge.
Philibert would have been a great teacher.
One day, Paulette told them how to catch cockchafers:
“In the morning, when they’re still numb from the nighttime chill and they’re not moving on their leaves, you shake the trees where they’re hiding, stir the branches with a pole and then gather them onto a canvas sheet. You pound them, cover them with lime and put them in a ditch; it makes very good nitrogen compost. And don’t forget to cover your head!”
One day, Franck carved up a calf for them:
“Prime cuts to start with: eye, leg, rump, loin, filet mignon, rib rack—that’s the first five ribs and the three secondary ribs—and the shoulder. Second category: breast, tendrons and flank. Finally the third category: knuckle, shank and . . . Shit, I’m missing one.”
As for Philibert, he tutored these miscreants who knew nothing about Henri IV—apart from the story of the chicken in the pot—his assassin Ravaillac, and his famous penis, which he did not know was not a bone . . .
“Henri IV was born in Pau in 1553 and died in Paris in 1610. He was the son of Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d’Albret. One of my distant cousins, let it be said in passing. In 1572 he married the daughter of Henri II, Marguerite de Valois, one of my mother’s cousins, actually. Head of the Calvinist party, he abjured Protestantism to escape the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre. In 1594 he was consecrated in Chartres and entered Paris. With the Edict of Nantes in 1598 he reestablished religious peace. He was very popular. I won’t go into all his battles, I expect you’re not really interested. But it is important to remember that his entourage included, among others, two great individuals: Maximilien de Béthune, the Duke of Sully, who cleaned up the country’s finances, and Olivier de Serres, who was a blessing for the agriculture of the era.”
Camille didn’t feel like telling any stories.
“I don’t know anything,” she said, “and I’m not sure what I believe.”
“Talk to us about art!” the others urged. “Movements, periods, famous paintings or even your painting supplies if you want!”
“No, I wouldn’t know how to talk about all that . . . I’m afraid I’d give you the wrong information.”
“What’s your favorite period?”
“The Renaissance.”
“Why?”
“Because. I don’t know . . . Everything is beautiful. Everywhere. Everything.”
“Every what?”
“Everything.”
“Come on,” joked Philibert, “can’t get much more precise than that! For those who would like to know more, I refer them to Élie Faure’s History of Art, which is located in our bathroom behind the special issue of Enduro 2003.”
“And tell us who you like,” added Paulette.
“Painters?”
“Yes.”
“Well . . . In no particular order, then . . . Rembrandt, Dürer, Leonardo, Mantegna, Tintoretto, La Tour, Turner, Bonington, Delacroix, Gauguin, Vallotton, Corot, Bonnard, Cézanne, Chardin, Degas, Bosch, Velasquez, Goya, Lotto, Hiroshige, Piero della Francesca, Van Eyck, the two Holbeins, Bellini, Tiepolo, Poussin, Monet, Zhu Da, Manet, Constable, Ziem, Vuillard and . . . it’s awful, I must be forgetting loads.”
“And can’t you tell us something about one of them?”
“No.”
“At random—Bellini. Why do you like him?”
“Because of his portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredan.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know . . . you have to go to London, to the National Gallery if I remember right, and look at the painting and you know for sure that it is—it is . . . No. I’m no good at this.”
“Okay,” they said, resigned, “it’s just a game, after all. We can’t force you.”
“Ah! I know what I forgot!” said Franck, exultantly. “The neck, of course! That goes in the blanquette . . .”
Camille felt her two selves at odds with each other again there, no doubt about it.
One Monday evening, however, in the traffic jam after the toll at Saint-Arnoult, when they were all tired and a bit grumpy, she
suddenly declared, “I’ve got it!”
“Sorry?”
“My knowledge! The only knowledge I have! Something I’ve known by heart for years!”
“Go on, we’re listening.”
“It’s Hokusai, an artist I adore . . . You know? The wave? And the views of Mount Fiji? Come ooonn, you know. The turquoise wave edged with foam? Well, he’s just marvelous. If you knew all he’s done—you just can’t imagine.”
“Is that it? Other than ‘just marvelous,’ do you have anything else to add?”
“Yes, wait, I’m concentrating.”
So there in the twilight of that predictable suburb, between a factory outlet to the left and a huge home decoration store to the right, amidst urban gloom and the animosity of the flock returning to the fold, Camille slowly uttered these words:
“ ‘At the age of six, I was seized by the mania of drawing the shape of objects.
“ ‘By the age of fifty, I had published an infinite number of drawings, but everything produced before the age of seventy is not worthy of consideration.
“ ‘It was at the age of sixty-three that I gradually began to understand the structure of true nature, of animals, trees, birds and insects.
“ ‘As a result, by the age of eighty, I will have made still greater progress; at ninety I will penetrate into the mystery of things; at one hundred I will have attained a degree of wonder and by the time I am one hundred and ten, whether I create a point or a line, everything will be alive.
“ ‘I ask those who live as long as I do to see if I keep my word.
“ ‘Written at the age of seventy-five by me, Hokusai, the old man mad about painting.’
“ ‘Whether I create a point or a line, everything will be alive,’ ” she repeated.
As each of them had probably found grist for their own poor mill, the rest of the journey continued in silence.
90
THEY were invited to the château for Easter.