Trio (20 page)

Bound in calfskin, but that costs a fortune.

Well, believe it or not, the last time I saw Mademoiselle Francine she offered to make us a present of both the leather and her work, it’s true that she can afford it but we should never underestimate a generous gesture.

And how long is it now, more than a year, yes, since the volume has been finished, three hundred manuscript pages, incredibly thick, about thirty-five by twenty-five centimeters in its blond binding with Memoirs of Monsieur Mortin written on the back, and when you ask Mademoiselle Moine for it, because she also acts as librarian seeing that she lives at the Foundation, and incidentally she hasn’t done so badly out of the deal, she lives like a princess in the founder’s own room, she who used to be so impecunious, that’s the least you can say, and when people who want to consult it ask her for the volume she tells them you aren’t allowed to make notes of any sort, you’ll expose yourself to legal proceedings, and that’s also written on a label inside the book, it even makes you wonder whether it’s in conformance with Monsieur Alexandre’s intentions that the book should be read at all, but his nephew had taken it upon himself to interpret the codicil in the wider sense.

What’s a codicil.

It’s a supplement to a will.

And what does that big book talk about.

About things that aren’t for children, go on.

One more detail, the volume is fastened to a desk by a chain so that no one should be tempted to take it away, but even without that it would be impossible because our president never leaves the attic on Thursdays, the day the library is open, and I can assure you that she keeps her eyes open.

Not that our library is much frequented, far from it, whether it was at the town hall as it used to be or at the Foundation as it is now, young people go to the cinema and the people of our age have the television, even so there are still one or two people who are faithful to the culture of literature, or let’s just say to culture, for example our town clerk who’s also a poet as everyone knows, a man of great merit, the ladies say, because what with all his woes, he’s lost his wife, his son, and his two daughters, and even just recently his daughter-in-law, as if destiny had got its knife into the family, he might well have taken to drink like everyone else, but no, he
 
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What’s destiny.

It’s misfortune, go on.

He goes on, as before, with his work at the town hall, and reading the newspapers, and frequenting the library, and occasionally publishing sylvan or rustic or rupestrian odes in our local rag, but I think I’ve said that before, or was it apropos of Alexandre, which is no less touching.

Ah, these poets.

And there’s also Mademoiselle Francine, she’s no longer in her first youth, she’s getting more and more like her Aunt Ariane, same kindly face, same corpulence, same walk, and also the tone of her voice, you might easily think you were hearing the dead woman but as for the social round, she’s dropped it, she stays at home with her housekeeper and only very occasionally sees her cousin, Monsieur de Broy’s nephew, and Madame de Longuepie who was a Ballaison, if my memory serves, if memory serves, I’ve said that before too, it’s so humiliating to be reduced to harping on the same old
 
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It’s funny, the gentleman’s losing his marbles too, like you.

You don’t say marbles to your uncle.

What do you say then.

You don’t say anything, go on.

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harping on the same old memories, or something of the sort, don’t let’s commit ourselves.

But you, Uncle, had you read the book by Monsieur
 
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I
 
.
 
.
 
.

Had you, tell me, had you read it.

I
 
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Why don’t you answer.

It wasn’t a book, it was notes, yes, I read them during his lifetime, and I found them mediocre and I told him so, that was why he never wanted to publish them.

But what did those notes talk about, were they stories, tell me, Uncle.

Stories, yes, thousands of stories.

Then they were for children.

You’re right, Théo, I’ll try and tell them to you but don’t interrupt me or I shall lose the thread, well then, there was the one about the café of illusions, and the one about the down-and-outs, and the one about the manor house, and the one about the pond with the water lilies, and the one about the path through the wood, and the one about the underground passages being hollowed out, and hollowed out, and the one about the cemetery, and the one about the word that sticks in your throat, and the one about the lost letter, and the one about the so-called nephews, and the one about the law court and its sentence, and the one about the dethroned king, and the one about the murderers everywhere, and the one about the garden with the nettles, and the one about the knife, and the one about the dead children, and the one about the grief, and the one about the rats, and the one about the innocents, and the one about the journeys to nowhere, and the one about the town, and the one about the crossroads, and the one about the grief, and the one about the dead children, and the one about the lost letter, and the one about the murderers, and the one
 
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You’ve already said that, Uncle.

I’ve already said everything, my boy, but everything has to be said over again for fear of
 
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and you shouldn’t interrupt me, I don’t know anymore now, too many stories you see, far too many, I don’t remember them anymore.

The old eyes closed, the old head dropped, and the child called the maid who
 
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You understand, said Marie, he’s old and ill, that’s why we sometimes don’t understand him, but I who have known him so long, I
 
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And I would come back from my walk, he confided to Théo, and go back to my notes, and I’d make a list of all the situations in which I could get it off my chest, but it became so difficult that
 
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Entry crossed out.

But Louis too, who’d known him well in the old days, Louis said none of that is of the slightest importance, don’t let’s worry our heads, Monsieur Théo was absolutely right to let the public have access to the book, and he remembered a particular morning when he had rushed into the kitchen, Marie had told him to wait in the salon, he’d been looking through some illustrated magazines and between the pages of one of them he’d come across a manuscript note which said roughly, if my memory serves, I distrust all my intentions, even my last will and testament, even though it was drawn up by a notary, is it really mine, I sometimes doubt my signature, as if the other, the invisible manitou was taking its revenge by fits and starts, that’s the fate reserved for those as pride themselves on their lucidity.

This Louis, anyway, you might wonder who he was, but what was the point, like all the rest a relic of a situation that had become illusory.

A missing link.

Or, once again asking himself the question about Louis and that meeting one morning, he told himself that it was of no importance, a minor matter, a minor matter, he’d probably come to arrange a date for the move, the books, the kitchen utensils and the dog, what was its name, Léo or Dodo or something.

Ask Marie name of dog.

Even so it was the meeting in the cemetery that he came back to the most frequently in his moments of lucidity, the circumstances changed from day to day, as did the identity of the person encountered, sometimes he spoke of an old man, sometimes of a young man, sometimes even of a dog, which couldn’t fail to be touching, unless he took it into his head to draw some philosophical or whatever conclusions from it, I’ve always had a horror of that, also of his propensity to see symbols in the slightest hazards of existence.

But we really weren’t spoiled, what with the maid and Théodore, and you know how it is, the evenings are long in the country, so that the old crackpot’s monologue sometimes entertained us, and there was the advantage that we could always leave the room at any time, he took not the slightest notice of our presence, a bit like an old record, if you like, which went on playing nonstop and in whose outmoded music we might discover contrapuntal details which had previously escaped us or which we’d forgotten from one time to the next.

At such and such a page he says what illness, I’ve never been ill.

At such and such a page he says old record, old record, contrapuntal my ass.

At such and such a page the maid asks where the corpse has gone.

At such and such a page Magnin is standing another round.

The holy water sprinkler hidden behind the counter which was being used as a catafalque.

And the family vault had become a puppet theatre where the ancestors’ mugs appeared on All Saints’ Day, jabbering for the delight of the faithful a dialogue of the dead in pure showbiz tradition, crowned by an Aunt Sally where you chucked pots of chrysanthemums, wham on Auntie Jeromine’s phiz, wham on Grandma Estelle’s phiz, and then that character, who was he, with his curé’s hat, wham on his phiz, wham.

Even so he was sometimes amusing, was Uncle Alexandre, but it never lasted very long.

A candle was burning at the deceased’s bedside.

A handle was churning up his diseased backside.

The poor man took one word for another.

His dossier in facsimile in the drawer of the deluge.

Cut.

This imposition, invincible fatigue.

Ah yes said the excellent Marie, what didn’t he put me through with his drunken babble, no sooner was he back from the bistro than he started spouting for hours, his stories were only ever about putting an end to it, finishing it, cutting it short, yes but was it logical, either you talk or you keep your trap shut and there was me, great ninny that I was, listening to him and thinking he was unhappy, but just between you and me that kind of fellow never believes a word he says, I ought to have dismissed at least half of what he said or told him to go jump in the lake, especially on those occasions, what an idea, to drink yourself silly just because you’ve made a mess of your life, can you see me running around from one bar to the next.

The time it takes to transcribe a phrase.

June, its flowers, its crickets, its perfumes.

Ah, poetry, ladies, he was saying, our town clerk at the parish fête, do you even know what it is, and Madame Thiéroux answered sweetly, oh, Monsieur, all ladies know that, it’s when people write verse when they’re twenty, all our sweethearts did that for us.

Poetry, yes, it’s something, but just imagine if it went beyond the twentieth year, where would that get us, but that poetry is addressed to ladies, there they were all agreed.

A really nice fête with a cavalcade and everything, pity it had rained but it’s the same every year, and apropos of rain, snails, because her boy catches them in the hedges, sometimes there are a hundred or even two hundred, obviously she’s obliged to cook them, it’s a shitty job salting them, excuse the expression, and it takes such a time, after that you need a lot of garlic and parsley to make them really taste like snails.

Poetry, yes, but that kitchen was enough to make you sick.

She was fed up, just between you and me, with never being able to get away from her stoves, especially on fine evenings, sunsets, she could put them you know where, it’s true, the condition of women, basically
 
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And that every time you had to say to yourself, we mustn’t let ourselves get depressed again, there’s a far more beautiful sunset elsewhere, unique of its kind, within everyone’s reach, whence we derive the strength to overcome all life’s sadnesses, just a little effort and you’ll see it and all your troubles will pass, a bit like that old remedy, the Fountain of Youth, that Abbé what was his name used to make, you remember, well that’s what poetry is, but as for the effort, in the first place it takes some making and there are days when it’s easier to say shit.

Or else she was kicking herself for having got married, what the hell does that have to do with anything, she was in favor of free love and no children, or just love children that you put into a modern institution so they lose all taste for family life, and the mother can take an interest in politics and reform the man-made society we live in, men, the stinkers, good God, they bash up our cunts, our hearts, our brains, and, oh come now Madame Buvard, watch your words, there are a young girl’s ears here, it was strawberry time, doesn’t it fly, and the first cherries
 
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blather, that’s all pure blather.

And ass time too, yeah, and time for the first nettles, careful, you lovers, nature’s all very fine but it stings, it stings, I remember one day my boyfriend had forgotten the rug, and me in the meadow stark
 
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Madame Buvard, that’ll be eight francs seventy-five, plus fifty centimes for the parsley, nine twenty-five.

But what does he do all day.

I can see him in the mornings, opening his shutters at eight, and then, toward nine o’clock, he walks around his garden, at that season he bends over a rose, and then over the honeysuckle, according to Madame Marie he’s very sensitive to smells, and then all of a sudden he stops, he seems to be thinking, unless his intestines are bothering him, then goes on toward the well, always that well, I wonder what it inspires in him, you never know, he may chuck himself in it one day.

Rose time, goodness.

And then.

And then I see him going back to the house, and he comes out again around two o’clock, and then around five, and finally around seven, until the moment when his maid calls him in to dinner with her boozy voice.

Ah, because she drinks too.

She says she doesn’t, but ask the grocer’s wife.

What she couldn’t understand, then, was what some other people said about him, that he spent his days in the bistro or elsewhere, let’s not be too specific, led the dissolute life of an old vagrant, and when I say vagrant, picking up any old junk, never sleeping at home, or pretending to be a beggar, a low-grade salesman, a third-rate actor, a down-and-out and everything, how could you make sense of all these contradictions.