‘It’s very quiet. It looks on to the cemetery.’
It was a clear night. The rows of little tombs were reminiscent of an outdoor cinema auditorium.
‘This is my father’s room. No one has slept here since he went. He didn’t go far – he’s over there, just behind the cypress. Would you like me to run you a bath?’
‘No, I just need to sleep. Thank you, Blanche.’
What the hell difference did it make to him whether the room was her father’s, the Pope’s or Napoleon’s? He collapsed on to the bed and removed his shoes by rubbing them against each other, one arm covering his eyes. He couldn’t get the taste of ash out of his mouth.
Blackened beams, twisted pieces of metal, shattered windows, melted plastic, objects bloated and reshaped by the fire … The end of the world had the acrid stench of saucepan bottoms. Through the holes in the roof, the sky glanced in at the debris with the half-curious, half-blasé look of a passer-by. The spectacle was not without a certain charm, rather like a visit to Pompeii on a rainy day. Apart from the insurance – and that would take time since the cause of the disaster was unknown – there was precisely nothing to be salvaged.
What miracle had enabled the cat to escape? It was a mystery. The most likely explanation was that it had found a way out through one of the gaps only it knew about, which make our impregnable fortresses veritable sieves. At all events, Brice had found it marching around in the blackened rubble, looking disgusted and carefully picking up its paws, but without a single hair singed.
‘Right, well, that’s over.’
Nestled in his arms, the cat gave a grunt of approval to Brice’s rigorous summing up of the situation. Goodbye boxes, stuff, whatsits and things: once again he could travel light.
A builder had been called in to make the house safe. The window openings were held in place by timber struts, and metal jacks were propping up the stumps of beams gnawed by the flames.
‘We didn’t last long together. We can’t have been suited. Sorry.’
A tile shattered on the pavement right behind him as he crossed the road.
‘And she bears a grudge!’
‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’
‘What’s wonderful?’
‘Springtime, and the two of us taking a walk through the vines. It’s like before.’
‘Before what?’
‘Like in Papa’s day.’
The sky was like the lid of a sweet jar, the breeze like a baby’s breath. The spring was pretty, if a little sticky. Everything you touched was dripping with sap – the buds, the grass shoots, even the insects struggling to get out of their chrysalises. Nature was running with amniotic fluid, streaming with glimmering saliva which was polished by the first rays of the sun. Everyone came out of their shells rumpled, amazed, greedy, and drunk on that insolent youth which made them ready to take on death.
Brice was walking in front, lifting flounces of foliage with his stick like a cad lifts girls’ skirts. He had been living with Blanche for a month already, and the time had flashed by. There was one place in the house that he was particularly fond of: the attic. It was huge and light. In the past Louis Montéléger had used it as his artist’s studio. The bare wooden floor was spattered with multi-coloured splashes of paint. It looked like the aftermath of a carnival. Even in dull weather, the light pouring in through the window was strengthened by reflecting off the whitewashed walls. The only piece of furniture was a sagging old club arm-chair, its arms torn by generations of tomcats.
The very next day after he moved in, he had put up two trestles and a plank and set to work immediately. In a week he had dashed off the drawings for his editor and received, by return of post, a cheque with the compliments of both Mabel Hirsch and Dominique Porte. He had not derived any pride from it; it left him completely indifferent. He hadn’t thrown himself into his work to make money or from virtue, but so as not to think any more, to watch his hand tracing lines and spreading colours from morning till night until his eyes were popping out of his head.
Blanche fussed round him, rather too much. Not an hour went by without her coming to offer him a cup of Viandox, or coffee, or tea …
‘No, thank you, Blanche. I’m working. Later.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
To be honest, after the drawings he hadn’t much to do. But he needed to be up there, on his own, with the cat on his knee, sitting in the armchair, gazing at the cemetery. Lonely but loyal old women, their fingers contorted by arthritis, would come to dust and lay flowers on the graves, which were neatly lined up like children’s cots. It wasn’t sad. It was still life, just. In the distance the crests of the hills stood out like a frieze on the horizon. Absolute silence. It was like being in a glider. Then he would come to himself a little, and for a moment leave behind all the lives he had had. He would dissolve in the pale incandescence of the sky. He lived the life of a cat, with no memory of the previous day and no awareness of the one to come, unable to make any plan at all. On certain days, he might think of Emma, and then he felt a profound guilt, as if by joining the ranks of those accepting the unacceptable, he had killed her with his own hands. In those moments, he would implore her forgiveness with all his heart, but with each passing day her face grew less distinct, becoming blurred as if she wished to be unrecognised in the very depths of his memory. He tried in vain to conjure up a precise recollection of the texture of her skin, her perfume. It was like trying to sculpt smoke, or running water. There is a life after death – other people’s, of course.
Some might have been astonished by the state in which he was living – vegetative, to put it mildly – but he had no alternative at his disposal. He was quite aware of how precarious his situation was, but what is there that endures if not our incomprehensible, deep-seated need to try to carry on?
Blanche and he would have lunch together. She made him little dishes with the aid of a cookery book. They weren’t always a success but then the two of them would laugh about it. After the siesta, which he spent alone, they would go out for a walk, or do some shopping. Blanche had developed a passion for superstores. They would come out with trolleys filled with no matter what. Things in boxes. Back at home they would watch TV, squeezed up in front of the tiny screen of Blanche’s television, or read by the fire. They led a family life. Élie came to dinner regularly, once a week, bringing a rabbit, a cabbage, some nuts – the kinds of things people bring to dinner in the countryside. Time, in its monotony, put scars on the wounds.
As they approached the spring, they emerged from the path bordered by thick bushes, dispersing a host of little birds which flew up in a flurry of feathers in search of higher perches. Blanche began leaping from rock to rock with the ease of a mountain goat.
‘Come and see, Brice. This is the bath from when I was a little girl.’
He was far from being as sure-footed as she was on the slippery rocks. The memory of his fall was still fresh. He advanced cautiously like elderly people do in winter-time, catching scornful cackles from the bubbling waters every time his foot slipped.
‘That’s where Papa used to bathe me, you see. Look how smooth the stone is … A bathtub just the right size for me. The waterfall used to come down on my shoulders and make me laugh!’
The pool was shaped like a large font. The water flowing down from the overhang grew calmer for a moment as it eddied, before pouring out through a sort of spout to continue on its way, lower and still lower, level after level, gathering strength and speed as it went.
‘We used to bathe stark naked, like savages, Papa and I. We’d play catch, and splash each other. Afterwards we’d have a picnic over there, under the tall pine tree. Once it’s warmer the two of us ought to come here for a picnic, don’t you think, Brice?’
‘That’s