Trio (15 page)

…
 
who told him about meeting the young man in the cemetery one All Saints’ Day, he was going to put some flowers on the grave of
 
…

At the what, the grave of whom.

The names have been effaced.

Go on.

…
 
and that he told him at the end of his life something he had never had a chance to tell anyone, that is, his reactions toward what he himself would have called problems, but which our times had solved, both within the domain of instincts
 
…
 

Articulate properly, sit up straight .

…
 
main of instincts and their implications in the moral order, and within that of metaphysics and its impact on the balance of the mind, he nevertheless remained perplexed when he observed that the light of reason did nothing to dispel the shadows of
 
…

The child had fallen asleep, and the maid
 
…
 

The old man picked up the document and in a sudden inspiration decided to sort out his old papers.

Then suddenly nothing left on the slate, nothing left in the dossiers, the registers, not a single line, blank sheets.

No trace anywhere of the torment, what should it be called, distress, or fever, or pain.

Was it grief.

Something importunate.

Nothing left.

Vanished.

It happened just before dinner, he was already at table, annoyed that his nephew had canceled his visit, old people dread solitude and the habits they adopt to ward it off are sacred, as they say, in short, he’s hardly sat down when pff, he takes a header into his plate, Marie was just coming in with the soup, they laid him down on the sofa right away, who’s they, she and Monsieur Alfred, and the telephone always on the blink, when the doctor arrived he was coming round, he asked for Théodore.

Or whether she was confusing it with the second heart attack, it seems to me that the first one was only a slight malaise, the third one on the other hand was fatal but we haven’t got there yet, and a packet of washing powder, she added, it’s like with my sister, what a fright she gave us even though we were expecting it, she’d got so frail, the old people’s home hadn’t done her any good, when they can stay in their own homes they last longer, that’s unless they get themselves stabbed like that old man, what was his name again, last year, you remember, all by himself with his head in his chamber pot.

In his plate, in his chamber pot, something was wrong somewhere, but just think, at his age and in the state he was in, still writing reports, not surprising that it was all as clear as mud.

A new washing powder, it’s been advertised so much on the television that you’re tempted to try it, it’s only human, a sou is a sou, there’s no such thing as small economies, oh, you remind me of my mother.

She went back into her kitchen where she cried her eyes out thinking of it, it was All Saints’ Day, it’s understandable.

She wasn’t so very fond of apples, personally, stewed fruit, except for those red ones there used to be, you remember, chataignes, they were the best cookers, you just boil them up for a few minutes and there you are, you can’t find them anywhere these days, there’s nothing but golden delicious in the whole market, there was a terrific crowd, that music in the streets, that’s new, have you seen the little woollies on the stall outside the Magasins-Prix, they’re letting them go for twenty francs, I finally found some shoes that fit me, I can’t wear heels anymore, the shape they make them these days my muscles would never stand up to it, can you imagine, my toes have seized up, massage, nothing’s any good, it’ll be my cross, you have to have at least one, what was I saying, the poor woman, yes, did you know that she’d left her daughter on the Friday to go and stay with her son and on the Saturday morning her daughter-in-law takes her up her coffee, she was already cold, that pretty little room Magnin had fixed for her in the attic, I heard it yesterday from Madame Moine, and I’ll take this lettuce too.

Fresh flowers, clients, salesman, a chilly morning, here we were in November again.

For a dinner of that importance, all the local bigwigs, but there was no longer all the fuss there used to be in the old days, less expense and less of the real upper crust, the heroic days are far off, abracadabra.

Cut.

They arrived in full dress, one evening, through the forest, in open carriages harnessed with larger than lifesize horses, you couldn’t hear them on the gravel, the occupants got out and climbed the steps up to the main entrance where the master was waiting for them under the vault wearing a carnival mask, they paraded past him for hours and then dispersed into the salons, and he said I recognized you, you can’t bamboozle me, for in fact those fine gentlemen had concealed their faces too, out of consideration for their host, they were no longer really there, they were simply the medium for the old man’s obsessions, his papers, his nightmares.

What a lot of dead people around us.

The maid got out of a carriage coming from her niece’s, she went up the steps, he was waiting for her under the vault in full evening dress, she inquires after the deceased and goes into the bedroom with its black crêpe hangings, the fine gentlemen stand in a circle around her, the room was filled with a pink light, she brought some more suitable candles, and he was looking through his papers to find those concerning the deceased but there was a page missing on which the hour, the date, the place, the circumstances were written.

No one ever knew what he died of, according to Léo it was a heart attack, his third, found with his head in his plate, according to Théo in his chamber pot, according to Monsieur Alexandre with a knife between his shoulder blades, but at the time he was questioned he was already losing his wits.

Poor Monsieur Alfred, we were very fond of him, always effacing himself, in the shadow of his brother, he had an exaggerated admiration for him, when you think how spiteful Alexandre was, all the work for that review, what was it called again, that was interested in their family and the history of the place it had lived in for generations, all the work, yes, had been done by Alfred but signed by his brother, a glib talker who frequented this one and that, boasted of his efforts, complained about his
 
…
 

Alfred who spent his whole life on his researches between Fantoine and Agapa, town halls and presbyteries, for their registers, but also all the stories going around about this one and that as far as Sirancy where they still had some family, pages and pages of notes, sketches, plans, which Alexandre used to consult unmethodically to give people the impression that he knew all about it but which he made a shambles of, this didn’t make Alfred’s work any easier, he never complained, you can understand why after his death the other couldn’t find his way around in them, and that the chronicle, that was the word I was looking for, came to an abrupt end.

After that it was the period of Alexandre’s delirium, he used to go the rounds of the cemeteries, you can imagine the sort of thing, you might well wonder who would ever write its history, it looked as if there would be no one but that cook who was losing her marbles at the time she was being questioned, ever since then any sort of evocation being devoted to
 
…
 

That package of jumbled-up pages looking as if they’d been hit by a hurricane, what patient hand would restore it to order.

A missing link.

An invisible manitou.

Or else the nephew, which of the two, goodness how they bored us with that mythological figure, Uncle Alexandre, the old crackpot, there was nothing to be proud of.

To relive one of Mortin’s days in that house, not that one, the other one, to go into all the details, salon, dining room, corridor, hall, yes really it was enough to make you lose your marbles.

Enough to make you believe that the deceased had only ever existed in the mind of a dangerous maniac.

To make it go down to posterity as Alfred’s creation, but what of the memory of the survivors, then, those who were still around to be questioned, they remembered Alexandre as someone exceptional, inoffensive yes, sickly yes, furtive yes, but nevertheless there in their midst from this date to that, as his epitaph testified.

As if the dead man by that joke from beyond the grave were using the only power that remained to him to reproduce endlessly the image of his failures.

Two or three words, you can’t hear very well, at your slightest movement piles of documents collapse, cuttings fall out, muddle up the words, waste of time, lack of method.

And the grandmothers, the grandfathers, the great-great ones, not forgetting the lateral branches, the children of, the children of, the whole tribe in the drawers, the wardrobes, the closets, he’d lost his specs, or was it a retouched photo of an uncle by marriage, what was his name again, I must have it in a notebook, a beautiful frame with a colored border in artificial tortoiseshell with wavy silver lines.

Or those visits to Aunt Marie for the New Year, her fritters were marvelous and she made her own tonic wine from essence of quinquina, a charming stout lady, a bit reddish, wore a wig, a little girl’s voice, perfect diction, what memories she had, never left her kitchen, she lived in an annex of the ancestral house, their coat of arms in the armorial of our province, very corpulent, yes, wasn’t there perhaps a smell of, note the refinement of the decor, of that little brownish-red dish, you can’t find those anymore, wallflowers maybe, the garden will be full of them in a month.

He went on looking in the notebook for the name of the grandmother’s brother, or of the sister of the one who
 
…
while they were looking at the details of the angular yellowish face, deep-set, very pale grayish-blue eyes, as if they were inwardly fixed on a disappearing landscape, problematical paradise, aquiline nose, very little hair, he’s always in his dressing gown.

While they were changing something in the order of the, would it be pages or passages, you can’t hear very well, last moments, a question of killing what remains of them, personally his habit of never finishing his phrases gets me in such a state.

As for the nephews, how many times did I tell him you spoil them too much, you’ll turn them into delinquents, as if not spoiling them could change the fundamental rottenness of their nature, the little hoodlums.

She added, where have I put my glasses, I can’t see a thing, what you could do to make yourself useful, here, the dust on all these little frames, I’m getting tired, they went downstairs, the aunt and the niece I mean, into the hall, the old woman was dragging her steps, I must go and see to the onions, she said, they adore that, a nice tart, and then you do the dishes, put an apron on, where did you find that little blouse, it’s charming, those flowers with a big M embroidered over the left titty, she’s called Marie as well, in short all the household worries, a fine November morning, no, doesn’t time fly, the end of February, they’d already celebrated Candlemas, go over it all again from the beginning, from before the beginning, the central event, phenomenal upheaval, concierge’s terminology but we’ll get there in the end with a little method.

To reflect other people’s hidden truth, as if our own mannerisms and obsessions could only create people who don’t resemble us.

To give an idea of the vagueness that seemed to him to emanate from the spectacle.

The old man, cut to the quick, what vagueness, do I exist or don’t I, shit, what more do you want, certificates, sworn statements, aren’t there enough people around me, maybe there’s not enough furniture, not enough junk.

Mythological figure of Uncle Alexandre.

Problem concerning Uncle Alfred, something wrong there.

Those people who run around from one folder to the next in the dossiers.

As for the house, he apparently never even lived in one until a few days before his death.

Remarks which certainly seemed somewhat long-winded to us, but who would have suspected that he was already not quite right in the head, such a clean, nice little old man, so levelheaded, so punctual, that work he had been doing so methodically for half a century, surely that was a reference, poor Monsieur Alphonse, I can still see him coming back from the library at a quarter past noon, writh his bum-freezer frayed at the elbows, his leather briefcase under his arm, with the other one he used to raise his hat politely to his numerous acquaintances, at that hour everyone was going home to lunch, and with what amiability he accepted a drink in the café, always sitting in the corner near the window on the left as you went in, with the men he still used to call his pals, they used to tease him, they got him to drink one too many and he became so merry it broke your heart, telling about his youth, the pranks he used to get up to as a student, the Saturday evening dances, the war, the ration coupons, all this in an adorable confusion, his little pince-nez on a little ribbon failing off his nose, he would smooth his little moustache and repeat the story of the sick little elephant and the little mouse, what was it again, that story.

It seems that his maid used to give him a good hiding when he came home tipsy.

His maid, do you mean the first or the second.

He never had more than one until a few days before his death, poor fellow, and I’ll take that piece of pumpkin as well.

Careful, you’re on the wrong page.

No, it’s the same one, what’s pumpkin.

Go on.

He was lapsing into second childhood, memories assail you, two or three moments’ inattention, bang, it’s soon done, ah, he wouldn’t have been the one to oppose the idea of evoking one of his days, not he, poor little angel, at six o’clock it was the first feed, his mama could barely open her eyes, exhausted as she was by all her housework, never in bed before midnight, you know what it’s like when you’re breastfeeding, the sound sleep you fall into just at the moment when the kid starts whining, quick she pulls him out of his crib so that the father, for Christ’s sake, shitting hell, come on my love, bares her breast, shoves the nipple in his mug, how often have I fallen asleep with the brat on top of me, after that it’s the father’s turn, half the time he misses the pot he’s supposed to be pissing into, even so couldn’t you go as far as the WC in the morning, he managed to find some pretext for his filthy language, a sock under the bed, or a button coming off his pants, he’s got a belly now, does yours
 
…