Hunting and Gathering (55 page)

Paulette didn't reply.

“Hey! Yoo-hoo, Paulette! Answer me! Are you going deaf as well?”

“I didn't want to disturb you.”

“Liar! You didn't want to disturb
yourself
!”

 
The rest of the time Camille gardened, puttered around fixing things, worked, thought about Franck, and read, at last,
The Alexandria Quartet
. Out loud sometimes. For Paulette. And then it was her turn to tell the stories of operas . . .

 
“Listen here, it's really beautiful. Don Rodrigo suggests to his friend that he go and die in the war so that he'll forget he's in love with Elisabeth.

“Wait, I'll turn up the volume. Listen to this duet, Paulette. ‘God, you sowed in our souls . . .' ” she hummed, wiggling her wrists, “na ninana ninana . . .

“Beautiful, isn't it?”

Paulette had nodded off.

 
Franck did not come the following weekend but they had a visit from the inseparable Monsieur and Madame Marquet.

Suzy had placed her yoga cushion in the wild grass, and Philibert sat reading in a deck chair—guides to Spain, where they would be headed the following week for their honeymoon.

“To Juan Carlos's domain: my cousin by marriage.”

“I might have guessed.” Camille smiled.

“Wait a minute, where's Franck? He's not here?”

“No.”

“Off on the motorbike?”

“I don't know.”

“You mean he stayed in Paris?”

“I suppose so.”

“Oh, Camille,” he said sorrowfully.

“What, Camille?” she replied, annoyed. “What? You're the one who told me when you first talked about him that he was impossible. That he never read a thing except
Motorjerk Magazine
, that . . . that . . .”

“Shh. Calm down. I'm not criticizing you.”

“No, what you're doing is worse.”

“You seemed so happy.”

“Yes. Precisely. Enough, let's stop right there. Let's not spoil everything.”

“You think they're like your pencils? That they get worn down if you use them?”

“What?”

“Feelings.”

 
“When did you last do your self-portrait?”

“Why do you ask?”

“When?”

“A long time ago.”

“That's what I thought.”

“That's got nothing to do with it.”

“No, of course not.”

“Camille?”

“Hmm?”

“October 1, 2004, at eight in the morning . . .”

“Yes?”

He handed her the letter from Maître Buzot, notary in Paris.

 
Camille read it, handed it back and stretched out in the grass by his feet.

 
“I beg your pardon?”

“It was too good to last.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“Stop.”

“Suzy is looking at ads for places in our neighborhood . . . It's a good one too, you know. It's . . . quaint, as my father would say.”

“Stop it. And does Franck know?”

“Not yet.”

 
He informed them he'd be coming the following weekend.

“Are you missing me too much?” purred Camille on the phone.

“No. I've got stuff to do on my motorbike. Did Philibert show you the letter?”

“Yes.”

He was silent.

“Are you thinking about Paulette?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

“We've been playing yo-yo with her. We would have done better to leave her where she was.”

“Do you really believe that?” asked Camille.

“No.”

96

THE week went by.

 
Camille washed her hands and went back out into the garden to join Paulette, who was enjoying the sun in her chair.

She'd made a quiche. Well, a sort of pie with bits of bacon in it. Well, something to eat, let's say.

 
A genuine little housewife, waiting for her man.

 
She was on her knees digging in the soil when her elderly companion murmured to her back: “I killed him.”

“Pardon?”

Heaven help us.

She had been talking nonsense more and more lately.

 
“Maurice . . . my husband . . . I killed him.”

 
Camille sat up straight without turning around.

 
“I was in the kitchen looking for my wallet to go down to the bakery and I . . . I saw him fall. He had a bad heart, you know. He was groaning and sighing and his face was . . . I—I put on my cardigan and went out.

“I took my time. I stopped outside every house. ‘And your little boy, how's he doing? And your rheumatism, has it gotten any better? And have you seen the storm that's brewing?' I'm not a very chatty person but that morning I was particularly friendly. And the worst of it is that I bought a lottery ticket. Can you imagine? As if it were my lucky day. Anyway. When I finally got home he was dead.”

Silence.

“I threw out my lottery ticket because I never would've had the nerve to check all the winning numbers, and I called the ambulance. Or the emergency rescue people . . . I don't remember exactly. But it was too late. And I knew it.”

Silence.

“You have nothing to say?”

“No.”

“Why aren't you saying anything?”

“Because I think his time had come.”

“You think so?” Paulette implored.

“I'm sure of it. A heart attack is a heart attack. You told me once that he'd had fifteen years of borrowed time. Well, there you go, he'd used them up.”

And to prove her good faith, Camille went on digging as if nothing had happened.

 
“Camille?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

 
When Camille stood up a good half hour later, Paulette was sleeping, a smile on her face.

Camille went to fetch her a blanket.

 
Then she rolled a cigarette.

Then she cleaned her nails with a matchstick.

Then she went to check on her “quiche.”

Then she chopped three little heads of lettuce and some chives.

Then she washed them.

Then she poured herself a glass of white wine.

Then she took a shower.

Then she went back out into the garden and pulled on a sweater.

She put her hand on her shoulder: “Hey, you'll catch cold, Paulette, love.”

She shook her gently: “Paulette?”

 
Never had a drawing taken so much out of her.

She made only one.

And perhaps it was the finest . . .

97

IT was after one o'clock when Franck woke the entire village.

 
Camille was in the kitchen.

 
“Still keeping company with the bottle?”

 
He put his jacket down on a chair and reached for a glass in the cupboard above her head.

“Don't move, I'll get it.”

 
He sat down across from her.

“My grandma already in bed?”

“She's in the garden.”

“In the gar—”

And when Camille looked up, he began to moan.

“Oh, no, fuck. Oh, no.”

98

“WHAT sort of music? Any preference?”

Franck turned to Camille.

She was crying.

“You can think of something nice, can't you?”

She shook her head.

“And what about the urn? Have you—have you had a chance to look at their rates?”

99

CAMILLE didn't have the strength to go back to town to look for a decent CD. Moreover, she was not sure she'd find one. And, well, she just didn't have the strength.

 
She took the cassette from the car stereo and handed it to the gentleman from the crematorium.

“Nothing to do, then?”

“No.”

 
Because this really was Paulette's favorite music. The proof was that he'd even sung a song just for her, so what more . . .

 
Camille had compiled the tape for Paulette to thank her for the horrible sweater she'd knitted that winter, and they'd listened to it again intently just the other day on their way back from the gardens at Villandry.

She'd watched Paulette smiling in the rearview mirror.

 
When that tall young man began to sing, Paulette was twenty years old again.

She'd seen him in 1952, back in the days when there was a music hall next to the movie house.

Ah, he was so handsome, she sighed, so handsome.

 
So it was to Yves Montand that they entrusted the task of delivering the funeral oration.

And the requiem . . .

 
Camille smiled.
Les titis, les marquis
. . . Street urchins and marquises—that's us, Monsieur Montand is singing about us . . .

 
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.

 
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.

 
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.' ”