Trio (16 page)

And that he should have gone like that when he was in perfect health, every thing was like clockwork, his liver, his stomach, his intestines, no one ever knew what of, according to his maid it was a sudden bad chill, according to the doctor it was some filthy thing he’d had for years, it didn’t stop him doing his work every day, I used to see him on his way to the cemetery, his greasy little hat on top of his head, for that business of the concessions, a government employee I believe in the department of the deceased, what’s it called, was he going to check on where the graves were, their upkeep, what space was available, the person who could have told us was the caretaker, he died last week.

And Monsieur Théodore, what could he have told us on this subject, he only knew him very late in life, already on his way out, practically gaga, it was an act of charity he was doing him, sorting out his papers, you can’t imagine the disorder and lack of interest of it all, he used to collect any old printed stuff, he was incapable of throwing away even an advertising leaflet, Théo really went through the mill, to put all that junk away in suitcases in little piles, little bundles held together with string or rubber bands, et cetera, the old man never went out without taking a bag or a leather briefcase full of those papers, he went from bistro to bistro getting plastered, people took him for a down-and-out salesman, it happened more often than it should that he got thrown out by the waiter when he’d had a skinful and he used to sit for hours on a bench in the park, or else, when it was cold, take refuge in the post office and snooze against the radiator before he got his wits back and went home where he didn’t even have anything to
 
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What are you saying, I tell you you’re on the wrong page.

The little head dropped forward, the beautiful little eyes closed, and the maid
 
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Then they went over the text again together and saw that it was right after all, it was just that the child had skipped one or two lines, really, for one or two lines, no need to make a drama out of it.

And it was the same with restoring the decor, he found it impossible, it’s all very well telling yourself that such and such an object was there, such and such another there, or even having a detailed photo of the place, restoration doesn’t depend on the material elements you have at your disposal but on something very different, and anyway, restoration, what does that mean, and who does it interest, one imposture more or less, the uncle wasn’t going to come back to life to order.

That voice on the slate which is becoming effaced.

As for the remarks about the family, the greedy, guzzling, insatiable family, no text, no paper, but the sound of things said, re-said, forbidden to be said from one generation to the next, which are swarming in the accursed head of the scapegoat of the herd.

Slaughter the animal before contagion sets in.

Or tie the heretic to the stake.

The procession of masks paraded through the corridor, then went out through the garden and got back into the carriages which drove off noiselessly, leaving the master alone under the vault, she heard his sobs, nothing impresses Monsieur Léo, she said, when Monsieur Albert took to his bed he didn’t even call the doctor, it was left to me to telephone but it was too late, the harm had been done, we never really knew what it was all about, and the other said even so, listen, couldn’t you make an effort, who was that Albert again, didn’t we have enough with Alphonse, and Alfred, and Alexandre.

Cut.

They’d got to the evocation of the gala dinner which was supposed to recall the former splendors, but how could they suggest them with the facts at their disposal and in that framework of a sadness that almost kills you, we mustn’t ask the impossible of them.

And then the great figures became blurred, became symbolic, no matter what you did the hour was past, the heart was no longer in it.

When my niece came to tell me that, I said at once let’s wait a bit before we break the news, Monsieur Alfred might well have a heart attack, we must find the right way, and above all the right moment, but he didn’t react the way I feared, after all he’s getting old too, a touch of indifference came to his aid, no, definitely, nature hasn’t done things too badly, and he said thank you, we’ll wait until tomorrow to go and see him, people’s temperatures go up in the evening, he’ll be calmer in the morning, and he asked me to bring him the herb tea they drink every evening at half past ten, my niece stayed with me until half past eleven.

That evening confused with the one she spent ten years later with her niece in almost identical circumstances but apropos of Monsieur Alexandre’s end, very distressing days which hadn’t helped her poor brain, she’s in an old people’s home now as you know, her end seems to be never-ending, I hardly ever go to see her these days, it upsets me, she hasn’t recognized me for years, really, nature, what bad workmanship, what a wretched thing.

Imagining himself in ten years’ time, thinking back to this day, the everyday things, the people he’d loved, there’ll be no one left but the person thinking back to what he imagined then, waste of courage, mind wandering, desire obliterated.

But Marie said to him, what is Monsieur thinking of, does he remember at this moment what he imagined ten years ago, surely not, we forget, look at me, my poor husband, the first one I mean, I can barely remember his voice, the color of his eyes, whatever Monsieur may say the imagination is two-edged, let him use it for his memoirs but in life it’s a waste of time.

Imagination in place of memory.

Memory in place of imagination.

The days slimy.

Impossible anamnesis.

They’d finished the soufflé, I was in my kitchen waiting for them to call me but the bell didn’t ring, there were still the endive and the cheese to serve, I was getting impatient and then I began to worry, all of a sudden I saw them both immobilized, sitting opposite each other, they’d had a heart attack, I headed for the dining room, I listened at the door first, I didn’t hear them talking, I open the door, there was no one there, the table had been cleared, everything was in order, the clock said three o’clock.

It was at this period that she started being unable to sleep, she used to prowl around at night from her bedroom to the kitchen, she noted down on the slate whatever came into her head, she went back to bed and in the morning she couldn’t read what she’d written, she quickly got scared, she effaced it with the sponge, or else
 
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Apparently they found on her bedside table drafts of letters she had taken out of the master’s wastebasket, and cuttings from newspapers which mentioned, but I
 
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Impossible to hear yourself speak in this din, dangerous crossroads, why don’t we go and sit in the square for a moment, it’s going to be a nice day.

And indeed the first signs of spring were in the air, the blackbird this morning, the cold less cutting, the daffodils in bud, a certain resonance between the houses, a certain light, in short the ladies went and sat under the war memorial, a brand new bench, they put their bulging shopping bags down beside them and talked once again of that prehistoric story that had shattered everyone, they’d been in a real nightmare, they were suspicious of their neighbors, they didn’t dare go out after nightfall, but it was all so allusive and mixed up with present day preoccupations that a third person who wasn’t in the know wouldn’t have understood a word.

That’s the way life is in a little country district, the stranger is lost there, their habits have been formed since time immemorial, woe betide anyone who doesn’t conform to them.

Like the life of people’s brains, at that, a different organization, a different balance, the amateur can only find his way around them with difficulty, and she compared the brain to a soufflé, you put it in the oven at around the age of reason, it rises very gently, it swells, it dilates until it gets to the age of manhood, which varies with every individual, then it gradually sinks and ends up quite flat, or else burned, which was certainly the case with Marie and her master, what’s going to become of them, I was only speaking of it the other day to Mademoiselle Moine who said that in serious cases where there’s no family the mayor has to intervene but he’d never dare risk it after all the tales you hear about madmen barricading themselves into their houses, she could already see Monsieur Alexandre and his maid armed with shotguns refusing access to the castle.

As for Monsieur Léo, we have very few souvenirs of him left, that photo as a soldier, and a pair of trousers and a pullover in his wardrobe which have been there for thirty years, as well as the little drawings pinned onto his bedroom walls which he did as a child, and the painting of the harvest when he was a young man, and even his hairbrush on his dressing table had belonged to his grandmother, no one has touched them, he left us when he was twenty-five, at first he wrote from America, and then less and less, and finally nothing at all until the announcement of his funeral.

He loved the mountain, that blue one over there, oh dear, its name escapes me, but all you could see through the window was the little garden and the fields up to the forest.

Cut.

Work of trial and error, of fresh starts, of hypotheses, no trace on the slate, and yet words were written, they appear somewhere, the limbo of the discourse to be explored, noting down those scraps, then effacing them with the sponge, searching for a problematic, urgent redemption, step by step, keep hold of the handrail here.

She listened behind the door to the child reading, he stumbled at every sentence, the master gave a little cough, he poked the fire, he poured himself out a cup of herb tea, the little voice grew fainter, the old man said go on, then he rang.

Those voices that come back to you.

No longer finds any comfort in them.

A deep, inner joy that doesn’t
 
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Make a note on the slate, leeks, washing powder, soap.

She went back to her stove, as if propelled by an old spring, but at that period it was a long time since she had cooked anything just for herself in her kitchen where we used to go and visit her at New Year.

What’s marvelous is fritters with sugar.

She used to make her own tonic wine, using concentrated essence of quinquina.

A slightly unpleasant smell of clothes that had been worn, and of mold and frying, a crocheted antimacassar was fastened to the back of the armchair with double-pointed gilt pins to conceal a grease mark, maybe the uncle’s head when he took his nap there.

And then, insofar as what concerns us, the end of a period of metaphorical tergiversations, of individual malaise, which had given rise to certain so-called poetic developments, all that was so long ago that when you leafed through the manuscript you were seized with vertigo at so much totally wasted activity, ah yes the end of an era, roll on the next one and to hell with our nephews.

Théo said, it was useless me searching through the papers, I didn’t find the slightest indication of any dates, impossible to establish any sort of chronology, either Uncle had systematically muddled them all up, or more likely he wrote down several samples of his bizarre thought when he was relatively young, and all he did later was return to them as the whim took him, so no development.

What conjuring tricks he had to get up to but it was only fair to his uncle, after all he owed him his fortune, his education, his house, his place in society, do you really think he could ever have managed that on his own, or pushed by his parents, you must be joking, by the way what became of them, wasn’t the mother a bit mad, it was congenital, yes, or else contagious, since the maid
 
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All alone in her kitchen, not a living soul to talk to, have you seen the price of oysters, where are the days when I used to buy them every Sunday, even so you can’t live on cod the whole year around, what times we live in, in the old days it was Good Friday, that’s going to be in two weeks isn’t it, doesn’t time fly, not nearly so cold, no, you’ll be with the family for the holiday won’t you, didn’t Magnin fix you up a little room in your son’s house.

Her daughter-in-law brought her her coffee in the mornings, really spoiled, she would have liked to stay there a couple of weeks but you can’t impose yourself on people, people, what people, am I people, she answered, her daughter had planted her beans too early, they may get caught by the frost this year, she would put in some begonias.

The repetition of facts from one age to the next, this never-ending story, life is just a few years of drifting nothings.

Or the fruit of silence suddenly.

Entry deleted.

Concentrated his attention on those papers, a whole maniacal existence in which he recognized his own, page after page, the terrors of the old man who used to get up in the middle of the night to make a note of his obsessions, Théo’s education, the bills to be paid, the remembrance of goodness knew whom, mixed up, when he was having nightmares, in an overwhelming confession of helplessness, the familiar illness, the fight, step by step, against its ascendancy, and the delirium finally recorded at the same time as the humble everyday duties.

Do you understand what you’re reading.

No M’sieur.

Go on.

The mountain, that blue one over there, the smell of junipers and geraniums.

The whole so allusive that you completely lost the thread, then why go on listening.

She was standing behind the door, imagining Théodore one fine day dealing with the master’s papers, invalidating page by page the legend the old man had woven around his family, his person, and his occupations, he too would get caught up in the game and then it would be his turn to use his own existence to pulverize that of his uncle, vanity too is contagious.

To pulverize, that’s to reduce to dust.

Legend, something that has to be read.

These written words that appear somewhere, we’ll get there in the end with a little method.