She stretches, looks at the window between the valleys of her sheets, guesses from the colour of the sky that it must be around six, then glances at the clock radio. The red numbers confirm it: 05:58. She sits up and yawns.
Bruz and Katou have fallen asleep at the foot of the bed. She buries her face in their fur; the cats answer by stretching and purring.
In front of the bathroom mirror, she tries to lift the skin of her cheeks, a gesture she knows is useless. She removes her nightclothes and looks at the desert her skin has become. Like one of Léo’s paintings, she thinks: pores connected by turbulent rivers, a pallor recalling the painter’s rare pastels. Her breasts are no longer those intoxicated mountains, her groin no longer that valley left breathless from too much love.
She steps into the shower, trying to catch the night’s meagre memories as they pass. There was water; she was walking on blue snow, almost liquid. She lets the images slip away. Armand was there, sitting astride a younger man, visibly impaled and happy to be so. But was that already another dream? The bathroom fills with warm humidity and Parisian fragrances. What do these images bring to mind? Léo, of course. Léo, Léo, Léo. The blue of Léo’s eyes, the softness of his sex. Armand? The end, gangrene, infertile pleasure. What was she to Léo? Snow? Stepping from the shower, she takes the towel, warmed in advance by a discreet radiator set into the wall.
She dries her hair, combs it back and gathers it into a loosely structured bun. She has given up makeup, retaining from the world of feminine cosmetics only a few creams: moisturizers, anti-wrinkle, anti-fine-line, anti-ageing, anti-redness.
“And what are you going to do about the rest of your body?” Léo often teased as he watched her from the bed, back in that distant time when she was already labouring to counteract age. She did not answer. Even so, Léo was partly right. One need only look at her body; she never paid it as much attention as her face, as though her gaze alone had been enough to deceive men.
She carefully closes her last bottle and lets her arms fall for a moment. It did not deceive Léo, in any case. She reconsiders. Surely her anti-ageing cream did not make the difference! The reasons for his departure run deeper; she has analysed, confused, recast and reinvented them countless times. She studies her eyes, which transmit the truth to her in the bright light. Letting her dressing gown fall so she can put on a dress taken from the wardrobe, she looks at her infertile body in the bedroom mirror. “Barren,” the English say. It sounds like the French barrée: barred. Her body is locked, without apparent cause, reason or justification.
She finishes dressing, makes her bed and slowly descends the stairs. She hears Lucienne in her kitchen, takes her shawl from the hook near the door and opens it as quietly as she can. The cats slip between her legs.
Bruz is already on the lawn inspecting his territory. Katou, being younger, still seems surprised by all these leaves that find it so difficult to remain in place. Marthe sits in her rocking chair and likewise begins a visual tour of her territory, sniffs the air and analyses its atoms. Gonna be fine again today. The calmer wind accompanies the trees, which ceaselessly play the autumnal music of their slow descent into numbness. The river is less rough than yesterday, the sky bluer and almost cloudless.
The air smells good; she gulps down as much as she can, silently praying for nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and water to purify her body and bless her day. She rests her head against the back of the rocking chair. Léo used to wake even earlier than she did. In summer, he would go and sit on the dock almost naked. He adored nudity, and since he had been blessed with generous anatomy, he willingly displayed it. She had always doubted his virility, sometimes sensing more Narcissus than Zeus in him; she had never quite grown accustomed to the almost erotic intimacy he shared with some of his friends. Yet if she had rarely shared Léo’s bed, too often occupied by a fellow painter, it was in hers that he sought refuge, feeding on her skin.
She mocks her memories. All that was long ago. When they were “young,” before fifty. The age of glory, of power, the age of countless artistic gatherings, patrons, cultural grovelling and his spontaneous escapes to Europe; of impassioned letters and the profound certainty that between them this mysterious Casimirian force had taken hold—they had turned it into a useful adjective.
How great the illusion was, she thinks. It took her wondering one day why she had never become pregnant in all those years. It is all so distant already, and so near. She had undergone tests that confirmed her infertility. Léo had greeted the news with a shrug.
She looks at the sky as though calling it to witness. Yet even then it had been too late to think of having a child. She would not have wanted one, had not desired one, had never truly dwelt on the idea. She loved her life as it unfolded and told herself, believed herself, fulfilled.
She presses her lips together. All the signs, all the symptoms had been before her; she could have read their story in sex manuals, yet still had not seen it coming. He was five years younger than she, a detail when one is young, a dangerously exponential slope as time races on. Distance creates itself: shortness of breath in one, endurance in the other. She looks at her hands. Léo must have refused the idea of dying without heirs. Though he had populated museums with paintings already predicted to become universal, he had allowed himself to be caught in biology’s trap, she heard herself reproach him one day after he admitted, in the course of a casual conversation, his sadness at having no children. He had cast her that look she knew so well, a kind of inquisitorial beam conveying disapproval and pity in equal measure.
Then nothing more for many years. Léo spent even more time in Europe, and for long months they scarcely saw each other at all. He left at the end of autumn and returned only in spring. At each return, they could see that they were changing. She corrects herself: that he was changing. He had grown sombre and hardly made love to her anymore.
How often has she replayed in her memory that summer five years ago? As usual, he had returned from Europe only to leave again a few days later. Like a thief.
The two cats reappear briefly between two cottages. Katou climbs the steps to Armand’s cottage, meows at the door and scratches the screen.
“Katou!” Marthe calls.
Galvanized by the cry, the cat takes refuge beneath the veranda, followed by Bruz, who immediately chases her out. They resume their game.
Like a thief and a liar. He had left only a note, which she burned. A short message, shamefully clumsy for a man of his stature: “I have been living with another woman for four years. We have a boy, Augusti. I lied to you. Forgive me. I will not return.”
He was asking her forgiveness!
The door of Hélène’s cottage opens. She appears, smiling as usual.
Like a thief, he stole her life, her pride; he tore away their forty years together the way one uproots a rotten stump. Five years she has been reeling from the blow.
Hélène waves to her.
She corrects herself. Not like a rotten stump one tears out, but like a stump treated with a slow poison to prevent any new growth, to turn the wood of its roots to shreds and allow the invasion of remorse, vermin, death.
Hélène takes her time beside the river. Gustave emerges, joins her; they kiss each other on both cheeks and look out at the horizon together. They turn; Gustave places an arm around Hélène’s shoulders, and they walk towards Marthe. The property is large, and Marthe has time to observe them, then compose a happy face.
“Sleep well?” Gustave calls.
“Yes, very well,” she says with more energy than she possesses, shaken once again by pain.
Life changes. That is what she tells herself now as she casts a quick look at the property and her friends. She stands to greet them. They kiss and quickly enter the house.
Lucienne is, as always, at her pots and pans; she is surprised to see them early. She is not ready. Hélène tells her to take her time, that they are in no hurry. They tell themselves that they should indeed have slept a little longer; they went to bed late after absorbing the news of Armand’s illness together.
Their nervousness is now palpable. Their friend’s empty chair draws their attention.
“Feeling better, Hélène?” Marthe asks.
Hélène nods and takes her hand across the table.
“Still, he could have told us sooner,” Gustave grumbles.
“You’re not going to start again?” Hélène says.
He shrugs.
“In any case, that port of yours was good, Marthe. Wasn’t it, Lucienne?”
“It certainly was!”
She chuckles. Lucienne does not laugh, she chuckles; her flesh trembles and contributes half the sound. On returning home, she had noticed the unusual light in Léo’s cottage and come to see what was going on. The three friends had already made a considerable start on a bottle of port Gustave fetched from Marthe’s house. “Whatcha all doin’ in here?” she had asked in her thickest country accent. She did not seem entirely sober herself. “You drove in that state?” Marthe had scolded. Lucienne had not answered, but surveyed the place disdainfully. Rather than offer explanations, Marthe arranged for the two of them to begin a thorough cleaning the following day.
Lucienne, however, was already elsewhere, excited even. She had been unable to meet her Haitian, whose wife prevented him from venturing any farther than the door. So she had decided to visit Pedro at his usual bar. The man, she said, had greeted her with countless kisses. “He was plastered, but when he drinks, he gets even harder!” Lucienne loved recounting her sexual exploits, and Gustave was certainly not going to stop her. Thus she spoke at length about Pedro, helped in her revelations by the port Hélène refilled whenever her glass was half empty. Pedro liked to make love slowly, she confessed. “He enters me like he’s entering a church, Holy Mother.” They had laughed. “And that kind of control—I wish it on every woman!” “I’m not lying, we come at the same time.” “He must be faking it,” Gustave abruptly retorted. The maid had looked him up and down with the same disdain she showed the cottage’s dilapidation, but said no more, confident in her sensations. Hélène and Marthe had seized the opportunity to lay out their own experiences in the matter beneath Gustave’s polite and slightly constrained gaze.
Taking advantage of a silence, Marthe had told her what the others now knew. The maid listened without flinching, searching the wreckage of her brain for sobriety but probably finding only sadness. Her face collapsed; she crossed herself and sighed a guileless “Well…,” suddenly recovering her country stoicism. “We’ll know in the coming days whether it’s truly serious…” Marthe had tried to reassure her. Lucienne rose and patted Marthe’s shoulder, signifying that it was best to adopt the wisdom of old people, who see things “the way they used to be.” She had staggered off to bed.
Hélène sighs, looking at Armand’s place.
“It still feels strange not seeing him there.”
Once again, Marthe tries to be reassuring.
“He’ll be back, come on.”
But it falls flat. Lucienne places croissants and jars of jam on the table.
“They were made by Pedro’s wife…”
The three of them laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Lucienne asks ironically.
She brings the cheeses.
“And which infidelity did these come from?”
Lucienne gives Gustave a small slap on the shoulder in rebuke.
“Come sit with us, Lucienne. I’m sure you haven’t eaten yet,” Marthe suggests.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Not hungry.”
She sits all the same, pouring herself only a cup of coffee.
“Old Bob will be here early this afternoon,” the maid says, as though they were now permitted to speak of something else. “I talked to him yesterday.”
A long silence settles as they begin eating their croissants. Then Gustave comments in an unfamiliar tone, pointing the end of his pastry at Lucienne:
“You’re going to kill us with all this fat.”
Lucienne shrugs. Hélène imitates Gustave, presenting him with another croissant.
“Eat, man. We’re sick of you!”
They laugh. Gustave returns to the attack.
“I still don’t understand why he hid it from us…”
Hélène looks at him sternly.
“Eat…”
“You really want to kill me?”
The joke turns sour. Marthe thinks it best to intervene.
“You know perfectly well this had to happen sooner or later…”
Dejected, Gustave pushes his plate away. Marthe softens, understanding how difficult it will be for him to go any further in expressing his emotions. Still, he says:
“I didn’t sleep much.”
“He’ll come back to us,” Lucienne says softly as she sips her coffee, her voice warm though her gaze retains its customary detachment.
Gustave draws his plate back and gobbles a large piece of croissant. They burst out laughing.
“Henri should be here soon.”
Marthe lists the things to be done. Above all, Léo’s canvases must be moved. With so many men there, it is the ideal moment. They can take them to the back bedroom. She is surprised to find the operation inconsequential.
“Still determined to give the cottage a thorough cleaning?” Hélène asks.
Marthe nods.
“Won’t have time to help you right away,” Lucienne says.
“That’s all right,” says Marthe. “We have plenty of time, and Henri’s men will do the heavy work, carry the paintings up to the house.”
“In a way, I’m glad you’re doing this,” Gustave says.
“You can say that again!” Lucienne adds rather abruptly.
“Life changes,” Hélène says softly.
Marthe registers the coincidence with her thoughts upon waking. The three look at one another and smile. The sun is already a little stronger; Marthe sees it invade the windows.
Henri arrives at that moment to receive his instructions. Marthe tells him about the paintings to be moved. They must discuss what can be kept, prepare a plan of action and come to an arrangement with Bob, the carpenter; they discuss how long it will take.
No price is mentioned. The hourly rate is known and paid immediately after the work, off the books, in the name of rural solidarity. The men will move the paintings that afternoon. Lucienne is instructed to prepare a meal for everyone. She nods without grumbling. Henri watches her from time to time, and she pretends not to notice, though everyone knows he does not mind “wetting his pencil” with her. Gustave has eyes only for this charade, a smile firmly rooted on his lips. Hélène occasionally elbows him to make him stop being so rude, while she too is amused by the situation, perhaps even more than he is.
After Henri leaves, they finish breakfast almost in silence. They agree to meet that afternoon for the great cleaning operation. Marthe goes up to her room and sits at her writing desk. She has a letter to write.