Était tout bête
Les titis, les marquis
C’est parti mon kiki
Camille smiled. Les titis, les marquis . . . Street urchins and marquises—that’s us, Monsieur Montand is singing about us . . .
La, la, la, haut les coeurs
Avec moi tous en choeur
La chansonnette
Madame Carminot was fumbling with her rosary and sniffling.
How many of them were there in this fake chapel made of fake marble?
Perhaps a dozen?
With the exception of the English couple, they were all old people.
Mostly old ladies.
Mostly old ladies nodding their heads sadly.
Camille collapsed on Franck’s shoulder and he went on kneading his knuckles.
Trois petites notes de musique,
Ont plié boutique
Au creux du souvenir . . .
C’en est fini d’leur tapage
Elles tournent la page,
Et vont s’endormir
The man with the mustache gestured to Franck.
He nodded.
The door to the oven opened, the coffin rolled in, the door closed again and . . . Fffffoooooooff . . .
Listening to her beloved crooner, Paulette burned for him one last time.
Et s’en alla . . . clopin . . . clopant . . . dans le soleil . . .
Et dans . . . le vent1
And hobbling along, left us behind, in the sun, and in the wind . . .
People kissed and hugged. The old women reminded Franck that they had loved his grandmother very much. And he smiled at them. Grinding his molars to keep from crying.
People went their way. The undertaker had Franck sign some papers and another man handed him a little black box.
Very nice. Very chic.
Shining in the variable-intensity light of the fake chandelier.
Enough to make you puke.
Yvonne invited them for a little pick-me-up.
“No, thanks.”
“Sure?”
“Sure,” answered Franck, clutching her arm.
And they found themselves out in the street.
All alone.
The two of them.
A fifty-something woman came up to them.
She asked them to come to her home.
They followed her by car.
They would have followed anyone.
100
SHE made them some tea and took a sponge cake out of the oven.
She introduced herself as the daughter of Jeanne Louvel.
Franck still didn’t know who she was.
“That’s not surprising. When I came to live in my mother’s house, you’d been gone a long time already.”
She let them take their time to eat and drink.
Camille went out into the garden for a smoke. Her hands were trembling.
When she came back to sit with them, their hostess went to fetch a large box.
“Now let’s see, hold on. It must be here somewhere. Ah! Here it is.”
A tiny little cream-colored photo with a notched border and a fussy signature on the bottom right-hand side.
Two young women. The one on the right was laughing and staring at the camera, and the one on the left stared at the ground, beneath a black hat.
Both of them were bald.
“Do you recognize her?”
“Pardon?”
“There . . . that’s your grandmother.”
“This one?”
“Yes. And that’s my aunt Lucienne next to her. My mother’s older sister.”
Franck handed the photo to Camille.
“My aunt was a teacher. They said she was the prettiest girl for miles around. They also said she was really stuck-up . . . She was educated and she’d turned away more than one suitor—so yes, a strange stuck-up little woman. On July 3, 1945, Rolande F., a seamstress by profession, declared—and my mother knew the accusation by heart: ‘I saw her having fun, laughing, joking with them—the German officers—and one day I even saw her in the schoolyard splashing around in a bathing suit, in their presence.’ ”
Silence.
“They shaved her head?” Camille eventually asked.
“Yes. My mother told me she couldn’t get up on her feet for days and days, until one morning her good friend Paulette Mauguin came for her. Paulette had shaved her head with her father’s cut-throat razor and she stood laughing outside their door. She took Aunt Lucienne by the hand and forced her to go with her to town to a photographer’s. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘it will be a souvenir for us. Go on, hold your head up, little Lulu. You’re so much better than they are, go on . . .’ My aunt didn’t dare go out without her hat and she refused to take it off at the photographer’s, but your grandmother . . . Look at her. That mischievous air. How old would she have been at the time? Twenty?”
“She was born in November 1921.”
“Twenty-three years old. A courageous little woman, don’t you think? Here. This is for you.”
“Thank you,” said Franck, his mouth all twisted to one side.
Once they were out in the street, Franck turned to Camille and said bravely: “She was something else, my grandma, wasn’t she?”
And began to cry.
At last.
“My little old girl,” he sobbed. “My very own little old girl, the only one I had in the whole world.”
Camille suddenly froze, then ran back to fetch the black box.
He slept on the sofa and got up very early the next day.
From the window of her room, Camille watched him scattering a fine powder over the poppies and the sweet peas.
She didn’t dare go out right away and when she finally made up her mind to take him a mug of steaming coffee, she heard the roar of his motorbike in the distance.
The mug broke and she collapsed against the kitchen table.
101
CAMILLE got up several hours later, blew her nose, took a cold shower and went back to her cans of paint.
She had begun painting this bloody house and she would finish the job.
She tuned in to the FM and spent the following days at the top of a ladder.
She sent a text message to Franck every two hours or so to tell him how far she’d gotten:
09:13 Indochine, top of the buffet
11:37 Aïsha, Aïsha, écoute-moi, window frames
13:44 Souchon, cigarette in the garden
16:22 Nougaro, ceiling
19:00 News, ham and butter sandwich
10:15 Beach Boys, bathroom
11:15 Bénabar, C’est moi, c’est Nathalie, haven’t moved
15:30 Sardou, washing out the brushes
21:23 Daho, dreamland
He only answered once:
1:16 Silence
Did he mean: my work’s over for the night, peace and calm; or did he mean: shut up?
Uncertain, she switched off her cell.
102
CAMILLE closed the shutters, went to say good-bye to the flowers and stroked the cat with her eyes closed.
End of July.
Paris was stifling.
The apartment was silent. It was as if the place had already chased them out.
Wait, she protested, I still have something to finish.
She bought a very fine notebook, and glued the idiotic charter they had written that night at La Coupole to the first page. Then she gathered all her drawings, maps, sketches and so on, to create a record of everything they would be leaving behind, everything that would disappear with their departure.
There was room enough to build ten luxury rabbit warrens in this huge ship.
Only later would she start to empty out the adjacent room.
Only later . . .
When the hairpins and the tube of Polident had died too.
While sorting her drawings Camille put the portraits of her friend Paulette to one side.
Up to now she had not been very enthusiastic about the
idea of an exhibition, but suddenly she was. It became an obsession: to keep Paulette alive a while longer. To think about her, talk about her, show her face, her back, her neck and hands. Camille was sorry she had not recorded her while she was talking about her childhood memories, for example. Or about the great love of her life. “This is between you and me, okay?”
“Yes, yes.”
“His name was Jean-Baptiste. It’s a nice name, don’t you think? If I’d had a son, I would have called him Jean-Baptiste . . .”
At the moment, Camille could still hear the sound of Paulette’s voice but . . . for how long?
Since she had grown accustomed to listening to music while doing the painting, she went into Franck’s room to borrow his stereo.
She couldn’t find it.
And for good reason.
Everything was gone.
Except three boxes stacked along the wall.
She rested her forehead against the door frame and the parquet floor was transformed into shifting sands.
Oh, no. Not him. Not him too.
She bit her wrists.
Oh, no. It was starting again. She was losing everyone again.
Oh, no, fuck.
Oh, no.
She slammed the door and ran to the restaurant.
“Is Franck here?” she asked, breathless.
“Franck? No, don’t think so,” replied a tall limp boy, limply.
She was squeezing the end of her nose so as not to cry.
“He . . . he doesn’t work here anymore?”
“No.”
She let go of her nose and . . .
“After tonight, that is . . . Hang on . . . Actually, there he is.”
Franck was on his way up from the locker room with all his linen rolled into a ball.
“Well, well,” he said when he saw her, “here’s our lovely gardener.”
Camille was crying.
“What’s wrong?”
“I thought you’d gone . . .”
“Tomorrow.”
“What?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“To where?”
“England.”
“Wh-why?”
“First to have some vacation, and then to work. My boss found me a great job.”
“Are you going to feed the Queen?” She tried to smile.
“Nah, better than that. Chef de partie at the Westminster.”
“Ah?”
“Top of the line.”
“Ah?”
“You okay?”
Silence.
“C’mon, come have a drink. We’re not gonna leave each other just like that, surely.”
103
“INDOORS or on the terrace?”
“Indoors.”
Franck looked at Camille, peeved: “You’ve already lost all the weight I put on you.”
She didn’t reply; then, after a pause, “Why are you leaving?”
“Because, I told you. It’s a great promotion and then, uh . . . Well, that’s it. I can’t afford to live in Paris. You might tell me I can always sell Paulette’s house, but in fact I can’t.”
“I understand . . .”
“No, no, it’s not that. As far as the memories I have left there, well . . . No, it’s just that . . . The house doesn’t belong to me.”
“Does it belong to your mother?”
“No. To you.”
Stunned silence.
“Paulette’s last wish,” he added, pulling a letter from his wallet. “Here. Read it.”
My dear little Franck,
Please ignore my slovenly handwriting, I can’t see a thing nowadays.
But I do see that our little Camille loves the garden, and that is why I’d like to leave it to her if you don’t mind.
Take care of yourself and of her if you can.
With all my love,
Grandma
“When did you get this?”
“A few days before . . . before she left us. I got it the day Philou told me about the sale of the apartment. She . . . she understood that . . . that it was a shit situation, whatever.”
Phew. The sensation of a leash pulling like mad on a choke collar . . .
Fortunately the waiter arrived.
“Sir?”
“A Perrier with lemon, please.”
“And the young lady?”
“Brandy. Double.”
“She’s talking about the garden, not the house.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not going to quibble, okay?”
“You’re going away?”
“I just told you. I already have my ticket.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow evening.
“What?”
“I thought you were sick of working for other people.”
“Sure I’m sick of it, but what else do you want me to do?”
Camille rummaged in her bag and brought out her sketchbook.
“Nah, nah, that’s all over with,” he protested, crossing his hands in front of his face. “I’m not here anymore, I told you.”
She turned the pages.
“Look,” she said, showing him the sketchbook.
“What’s this list?”
“It’s all the places Paulette and I found when we were out on our walks.”
“What places?”
“All the empty places where you could start your business. We thought it through, you know. Before we wrote down the address, we would talk about it a lot, the two of us. The ones that are underlined are the best ones. This one especially, it would be fantastic. A little square behind the Panthéon. An old café still in its lovely original state, I’m sure you’d like it.”
She gulped down the last of her brandy.
“You’re completely out of your mind . . . Do you know how much it costs to open a restaurant?”
“No.”
“Off your fucking head. Okay, well. I have to finish sorting through my stuff. I’m having dinner at Philou and Suzy’s tonight, you coming?”
She grasped his arm so he wouldn’t get up.
“I have money.”
“You? You live like a little beggar girl!”
“Yes, because I don’t want to touch it. I don’t like it, but I’d be willing to give it to you.”
He said nothing.
“You remember when I told you my father was an insurer and that he died in an—in an accident at work, remember?”
“Yes.”
“Well, anyway, he did the right thing. Since he knew he was going to abandon me, at least he thought of protecting me.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Life insurance. In my name.”
“And why do you—why have you never even bought yourself a decent pair of shoes, then?”
“Because, like I said . . . I don’t want that money. It stinks of, of death. I wanted a father who was alive, that’s what I wanted. Not money.”
“How much?”
“Enough for a banker to smile sweetly and offer you a good loan, I think.”
She picked up her sketchbook.
“Hold on a sec, I think I drew it here somewhere.”
He grabbed the notebook from her hands.
“Stop it, Camille. Stop it right there. Stop hiding behind this fucking notebook. Stop. For once, I’m begging you.”
She looked over at the bar.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!”
She looked at his T-shirt.
“No, me. Look at me.”
She looked at him.
“Why don’t you just say, ‘I don’t want you to go’? That’s how I am. I don’t give a fuck about the money if it means spending it all on my own. I—I—shit, I don’t know. ‘I don’t want you to go,’ is that such a hard thing to say?”
“Awreadysaidit.”
“What?”
“I already said it.”
“When?”
“On New Year’s Eve.”
“Yeah, but that . . . that doesn??
?t count. That was to do with Philou.”
Silence.
“Camille?”
He articulated each syllable, distinctly: “I . . . don’t . . . want . . . you . . . to . . . go.”
“I—”
“That’s it. Go on. ‘Don’t—’ ”
“I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of you, of myself, of everything.”
He sighed.
And sighed again.
“Look. Do what I do.”
He struck the pose of a bodybuilder strutting his stuff for a beauty contest.
“Clench your fists, round your back, bend your arms, cross them and bring them right under your chin . . . Like this . . .”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because . . . You have to snap out of it, this skin of yours that’s too tight for you. See? You’re suffocating inside . . . You have to get out of it now . . . Go ahead. I want to hear the seam ripping down your back . . .”
She smiled.
“Fuck, no . . . Keep your pathetic little smile . . . I don’t want it. That’s not what I’m asking you! I’m asking you to live, for fuck’s sake! Keep your smile! There are plenty of women on the evening weather forecast for that . . . Okay, well, I’m getting out of here or else I’ll start to lose it again. See you tonight.”
104
CAMILLE burrowed deep into Suzy’s myriad multicolored cushions, didn’t touch her plate, but drank sufficient amounts so that she could laugh in the right places.
Even though there was no slide show, they were treated to a strange session of The World Around Us.
“Aragon or Castile . . .” Philou pointed out.