“Burn them.”
Her hands are trembling. It could only be this new Cassandra cold that has settled in over the past few days. It’s the time of the bad passage, her father used to say, the beginning of the strong winds, the freezing rain or even, as now, the early snow, as abundant as it is fleeting. But she is under no illusion; the season has nothing to do with it.
She sets down the letter and closes her eyes, for the words are harsh. She has taken care to dress warmly and lay a blanket over her knees. Bruz followed her out and is asleep beneath the fabric, sheltered from the troubled waters of human life. She watches the snow attack the green of the property, weigh down the river’s swell, decorate the branches. Then she looks at Léo’s cottage, transformed into a construction site. The snow muffles every sound; she can no longer hear the wind or the trees. Her legs are cold. She adjusts the blanket and tosses the letter to the ground. Léo’s handwriting fades instantly on contact with the antibody snow. Marthe strokes her cat. She is grateful to the snow for erasing the insult.
Lucienne opens the door, impassive. Lucienne waits.
“He wrote to me.”
“That, I know.”
“He’s asking me to burn the paintings.”
Lucienne sighs and turns on her heel, saying:
“The bastard…”
She closes the door, and soon pots and pans are clattering loudly. Marthe rocks, tries to erase her memories, tries to isolate her thoughts from her consciousness, turns her attention back to the curtain of snow collapsing at the edge of the veranda, as if venturing any farther would amount to desecration.
The door opens on a Lucienne red with anger.
“I hope you’re not going to burn those paintings, and that you’re going to sell them… for a fortune!”
She closes the door again, and Marthe has time neither to answer nor to smile. A strong gust carries the flakes as far as her chair, but the snow, still seeming frightened and timid, collapses and dissolves.
Lucienne is right; Léo is a bastard, but Marthe knows the man too well to stop at that first impression. He did it deliberately, she can feel it, to sever their ties once and for all.
She kept the envelope and studies the stamp. Sant Cugat, Spain. She shakes her head, convinced he does not belong there. The letter she threw into the snow is now nothing but a misshapen fibre. His handwriting was different and, thinking back, might not have been his at all. Could he be ill? She takes the time to listen to the question again. Will she always worry about him this way?
Lucienne is right about something else: she will not burn the paintings, but sell them at auction. It will get people talking. She pets Bruz under the blanket. Silently, the snow paints a matte picture. Would he object to what she is doing? She looks once more at the illegible letter. She has just destroyed her only proof of ownership.
Hélène comes out of Armand’s cottage carrying a tray. She examines the sky, grimaces, then resolves to walk towards the house. As she climbs the steps, she holds out Armand’s untouched meal, one of the portions she had prepared with Lucienne.
“He’s not hungry.”
“Is Gustave with him?”
“Yes, they’re playing cards.”
“I got a letter from Léo. He wants me to burn the paintings.”
Hélène’s face hardens.
“Old fool…”
Hélène goes into the house, then returns to the veranda and sits in the other rocking chair. Marthe hands her a blanket she had kept beneath the first in case she grew cold. Bruz does not take much offence at being disturbed and settles back into place.
“Thank you.”
“How is Armand?”
“Better than last week. The mass is large.”
She pauses briefly; an analytical cast comes over her eyes.
“It’s already too late.”
She begins to rock and continues in a clinical tone:
“When I used to do home care, I once looked after an old gentleman. Monsieur Anselme. He had a cat, probably as old as he was. Monsieur Anselme could no longer get out of bed. He didn’t have much time left. His wife, who was half-blind, looked after him as best she could. You practically needed a nurse to help the lady who was helping the gentleman…”
She laughs.
“Anyway, Monsieur Anselme’s cat never left the bedroom. It lay there on the windowsill and moved only to eat or relieve itself. It wouldn’t let anyone pick it up and would scratch you if you insisted. When I expressed surprise at its wild behaviour, old Anselme, whose mind was still perfectly sound, confided in me: ‘When I’m about to die, you’ll see, he’ll come and lie at my feet. That cat doesn’t belong to me. We’ve been passing him around for the past ten years.’ I didn’t know who ‘we’ meant, and Monsieur Anselme didn’t seem to want to tell me. I remember giving a gentle shrug, but he added, ‘You’ll see. Those animals can sense death, and when it comes, they draw close to you, as though they wanted to accompany you.’ I looked after that old man for three months. I visited on Wednesdays and Fridays; the cat was always at its post, imperturbable. It was a big, handsome grey cat, quite ordinary, with yellow eyes. A little like Katou… Then one Friday, when his wife opened the door, she solemnly told me the cat was at her husband’s feet. I hurried into his room and found that Monsieur Anselme was already in a coma. He died that very day. I remember the cat clearly; it stayed at the old man’s feet until they came to collect the body. ‘What are you going to do with the cat?’ I asked his wife—Gilberte, I think her name was. She smiled and answered, ‘My sister Claudine wants him. She doesn’t have long either.’”
Hélène falls silent.
“Lovely story…”
“Katou settled on the windowsill this morning. It gave me a shiver. I tried to move her, but Armand told me to leave her be. I know perfectly well it’s a coincidence, but…”
She does not finish. The two women watch the snow do what it can to whiten the muddy roadways. Marthe has never allowed the lanes to be paved, and every so often more gravel must be laid once spring comes. That will be for next season, she thinks. Workers go in and out of the cottage under renovation.
“I’m going to auction the paintings.”
“Good idea…”
“They’ll fetch a tidy sum. We’re going to be rich.”
“We?”
Marthe gives her a conspiratorial look.
“I already have all the money I need, Hélène.”
“So do I, and Gustave too,” she replies, setting her chair rocking again.
Marthe shrugs.
“We could take a long trip when Armand is dead.”
Hélène starts, then absorbs the blow and nods.
“He could last six months in this condition. Cancers are unpredictable things.”
“I’m in no hurry…”
Hélène does not appear offended; she understands the idea behind the apparent coldness. Marthe takes a deep breath.
“What are our new tenants called again?” Hélène asks, probably to change the subject.
“Luc Dulon and Marie-Claire Trépanier. They’ll be here in three weeks.”
“Nice people, from what I saw.”
“I should have consulted all of you more.”
“We trust you. It’s not your fault they were leaving just as we arrived. And that Luc is quite something, don’t you think?”
“Yes, he looks like Léo.”
“He does, strangely enough. Armand is delighted that a musician will be moving into the cottage.”
“So am I. The cello is beautiful. And Marie-Claire strikes me as an intelligent, down-to-earth girl. Chance arranged things rather well.”
“Chance?”
“Chance, or at least…”
Marthe searches for the words.
“There could be any number of explanations, couldn’t there? Chance, or an invisible force.”
She laughs.
“How I believed in that Casimir effect…”
“Do you miss Léo?”
Marthe lets herself observe each flake tumbling madly before her. Her vision blurs.
“How could I not? I could have done without everything that’s happening. My mind and body are burdened with so many memories. They can only weigh me down, prevent me from moving forward. You see, memories resemble those experiments in quantum physics: until something is measured, everything remains indeterminate, but when we choose to learn one aspect of reality, the others retreat, remain invisible. The same experiment can yield many answers, each as valid as the next, all true and contradictory. It’s the same with human beings and their regrets or memories. Yesterday, I still had this wild hope of I don’t know what. Then this simple letter arrives, like one of those bad experiments that confront us with harsh reality while obscuring the other mysteries. Yes, I have regrets, but tomorrow will be another matter, another story.”
“You’re complicated.”
Marthe smiles.
“Are you surprised?”
“Of course not!”
Hélène scowls.
“Still, Léo is one hell of a bastard.”
“I’m past the age of letting it trouble me, Hélène.”
“Be careful you don’t tell yourself another princess story.”
Marthe looks at her, amused.
“We live best when we are blind, but before putting out our own eyes, we must make sure we have other ways of seeing within us.”
Hélène yawns.
“You’re deep this morning.”
They laugh.
“I’m always deep. You know me.”
“That I do, and I love you that way. You’re the one who saved me.”
“You saved yourself.”
“No, Marthe, no one saves themselves alone.”
Marthe looks at the river, unmoved by the snow it patiently absorbs.
“We are not alone, it’s true. Everything around us vibrates in one way or another…”
“That’s it. Life is a microwave.”
“Are you ever going to stop making fun of me?”
Under the blanket, Bruz gets up and stretches. The two women laugh as they watch the animal play at being a mole. He wriggles as best he can towards the opening at the top, near Marthe’s neck.
“Well, my cat, have you decided to get some air?”
The wind has risen and the snow is intensifying, yet it still respects the veranda’s invisible barrier.
“Winter’s early this year,” Hélène remarks.
“Almost November…”
“Almost…”
The two women continue rocking, pulling their blankets a little higher. Bruz has lain down again, providing Marthe with welcome warmth. Hammer blows and power tools can be heard.
“It still isn’t right to think about Armand’s death that way…”
Marthe does not answer at once, uncertain how to explain this desire to speak the unsaid without restraint. Hélène seems to come to her rescue.
“A long trip would be nice. I wouldn’t mind that, I admit. It would take our minds off things.”
“I talk to Armand a great deal, Hélène. He surprises me. He has become so… solid.”
“All dying people are like that.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, almost all, especially at the end.”
“Now you’re the one speaking of Armand as a dying man.”
Hélène does not answer.
“Blah, blah, blah,” Marthe adds.
Hélène laughs and concludes:
“We’re a couple of old bitches.”
“Do you truly feel old?”
“Yes! Don’t tell me you leap out of bed bright-eyed every morning! The day I wake up without hurting somewhere, it’ll mean I’m dead!”
She snickers.
“It’s funny you should mention that. Just yesterday, a young man approached me in the village. He thought I was beautiful and serene.”
“He was looking for his mother.”
“Marthe!”
Hélène laughs.
“I’m not beautiful, I told him, only slower. I don’t think he understood.”
“But you are beautiful, Hélène.”
“So are you. Like autumn, in fact. Just before the wind turns.”
She smiles, lost in thought.
“Our best years are behind us.”
“Ahead, behind…”
“You can’t play with words for long when you’re thinking about death, Marthe.”
“We’ll live to be a hundred, my girl.”
“I’ll believe it when I get there!”
“Shall we go in? It’s getting too cold.”
“Gladly.”
They settle in the sitting room. Lucienne has gone back to her room.
“Lucienne hasn’t left yet?”
“She’s waiting for her Mexican… he’s coming to get her!”
“Good Lord! Is he really leaving his wife?”
“Looks that way!”
The fire wraps them in welcome warmth. Hélène holds her hands out to it.
“It’s only when you get close to the fire that you realise how cold it was outside! I’m frozen through!”
Hélène sinks into her armchair, removes her shoes and tucks her feet beneath her. Marthe watches her for a moment.
“Are you writing?”
“A little, yes, but too much is happening. I’m going to wait for things to settle down before I continue…”
“What are you writing?”
“Not much, only scattered thoughts. It’s almost a journal. Sometimes I feel like telling the story of what is happening to Armand, and then I tell myself I wouldn’t be the first to do it.”
“It depends how the story is told.”
“I know… I wonder whether I could describe the everydayness of it—the fire, the two of us passing the time, in a way, our old lives clinging to one another, Armand slowly dying. It is interesting and utterly devoid of interest at once. Beneath the title, I would write ‘a quiet novel.’”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Perhaps not a very original one… I wish I could write the way one makes music… Words are so ungrateful. And there is so much to do… retirement is complicated! All those seconds to live!”
She rests her head against the back of the chair and continues with a yawn:
“And death to manage…”
“We’ve grown quiet.”
“Still waters.”
Hélène seems to dive into her memories and swim there slowly. Marthe notices her softened smile.
“Thinking about your old loves?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Your smile.”
Hélène laughs heartily. She gets up and moves closer to the fire, sits down and holds out her hands.
“Weren’t caresses marvellous nourishment?”
Marthe does not answer, allowing her friend to elaborate.
“Actually, life itself is marvellous, in spite of everything. In spite of the fact that most of the time we cry out with hunger… I’ll probably die on an empty stomach… with empty hands.”
“We are here.”
Hélène smiles and brings her hands to her face.
“Warmth, warmth on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”
“Surely not the old ladies warming themselves in front of a fireplace!”
Hélène gets up again.
“Bah! Beauty lies elsewhere. We know that.”
“Exactly, we know it, but the others don’t.”
They laugh.
“Speaking of beauty, it will do us good to have young people in the house! The work is moving quickly!”
“Yes, old Bob is an excellent workman. Our two lovebirds will be happy there. It’s a lovely place to give birth.”
“She wants to give birth at home?”
“Yes. She told me a midwife would come to see her, so I’m not worried. We talked while her Luc went for a walk along the shore. I was surprised by how well we got along, so quickly. I feel as though I’m seeing myself at her age.”
“Except that she’s pregnant…”
Marthe takes no offence at the remark.
“She seems to be having an easy pregnancy.”
“Are they married?”
“No. And I’m not sure Luc is the right man for her.”
“Now it’s getting complicated.”
They laugh.
“History repeats itself.”
Hélène looks at her watch.
“Noon.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not really.”
The sun reappears, giving the day a festive air, disappears just as quickly, then seems to return for good.
“I told you it wouldn’t last…”
Hélène continues:
“You still haven’t told me what you and Armand talk about.”
Marthe concentrates on the flames for a moment, lets herself be gently hypnotised.
“You may find this strange, but I have never known other people’s deaths. I saw neither my father nor my mother die and, until now, I have been kept apart from deathbeds.”
“Quite the opposite for me…”
“Sometimes I tell myself I’ve missed something.”
Hélène gives her a puzzled look.
“You haven’t missed anything. You probably learned your lessons some other way, that’s all. Besides, there’s still time…”
“Indeed… time. I was a psychoanalyst for more than forty-five years and I don’t know where it got me…”
Marthe knows herself too well not to hear the sly note of almost adolescent self-pity in her words. Hélène cuts her off:
“Oh, come on…”
She laughs a little, then continues:
“But what do you and Armand talk about? Is it a secret?”
“No, not at all. Do you remember when he arrived here last week? We were shaken to see him sitting in the back, pale as death, with a greenish cast to his eyes and yellowed hair. And Gustave kept scowling while Armand cried out with every movement, ‘Oh, the bastards! Oh, the bastards!’”
“They did a number on him, that’s for sure. Against his will too. Damn doctors, sometimes. They mean well, but they could at least ask permission before making you swallow their poisons.”
“You told him to shut up. It was both terrible and moving. His silence made us all cry. We carried him to his cottage and put him to bed. Then he thanked you.”
“He was in a bad way. I should have shown more compassion…”
“No, that was exactly what you shouldn’t have done. It would have lulled him to sleep. I stayed beside him for hours while he told me about his chemo, then he apologised again, especially for refusing to let us visit. He told me that seeing us made him regret not having us with him. ‘I bawled like a child finding his mother again,’ he admitted… He isn’t going to continue treatment, you know?”
Hélène does not flinch.
“He won’t make it through the winter, and he knows it. He showed me his birth chart. He pointed out Pluto, and what he calls the Midheaven.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. If it gives him comfort in the face of his fate…”
“He could live a few more years if he made the effort.”
“Made the effort?”
“Yes!”
“You think he’s spineless?”
Hélène absorbs the blow, then softens.
“A little, yes…”
“He no longer wants to live,” Marthe replies in a toneless voice.
“That’s no reason… I’m fond of Armand…”
Marthe understands and waits a few moments before continuing:
“You’re probably right. You’ve seen so many people die; you know what life is worth…”
Hélène shrugs. Marthe cannot tell what is taking shape in her friend’s thoughts.
“But what else?” Hélène asks.
“Well, we talk and talk. He tells me about his life, rather as he did when he first came to consult me. We tell each other our shared memories. He seems to savour every recollection. Doesn’t he do the same with you?”
“Yes and no. He asks me a great many questions about the next stages of the disease. It gets rather clinical at times…”
Marthe half closes her eyes, as though trying to understand Hélène’s words more clearly that way. Hélène smiles at her.
“You know, I’ve always envied your ability to enter people’s minds like that.”
“As a nurse and a writer, don’t you have access to similar sources?”
“Yes, of course, but I think I would have liked to possess your… distance.”
Distance… Effacement. Empathy. Marthe hates those words, afflictions of the witches of the mind. She rises, walks to the window and glances absently outside.
“It is the same with death, Hélène. Each of us has our own path. Armand is experiencing suffering—the ultimate suffering.”
“The thought of dying?”
“No, the thought that he has forgotten his life, that he has been too patient with boredom… the finest sleeping pill ever invented. Sometimes it is called leisure, but it is the same thing… People see it merely as a grey area in their lives, even as something inevitable. Armand has no time left to be bored, as you can imagine. He is no longer afraid; in a way, he is no longer in pain.”
She turns towards Hélène.
“We don’t realise how many moments in our lives suffering has come knocking at our door. We pay no attention. We forget those wounds at once, or rather conceal them beneath good manners and bad habits, or behind boredom. We form alliances, make friends, let our wounded antennae guide us. Léo’s letter is, so to speak, one of those pebbles hurled into my boredom.”
“A paving stone, you mean.”
“Armand, his approaching death, shows me that—this great boredom of old people like us.”
Hélène listens without a word.
“No matter which path we take, we inevitably choose it according to the same old pains. Do you see?”
Hélène nods.
“What if all of us—you, Armand, Gustave, Lucienne, Léo, the two young people who will come to live near us—were part of the same suffering? What if this place were haunted by boredom?”
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
Marthe smiles at the Freudian allusion.
“Am I making my life too complicated?”
“Do I really have to answer that?”
Marthe falls silent and swallows.
“Why don’t you simply admit that Léo’s letter hurt you?”
“You know me.”
“Yes! You’re bored.”
Marthe laughs. Hélène gets up and stands beside her, looking at the snow, now bombarded by sunlight.
“Strange landscape,” she says. “The snow looks out of place.”
Marthe places a hand against the window.
“Put your hand next to mine.”
Hélène does so.
“You see, two hands that have lived, helped, cared for others, loved. Our individual stories are of very little importance in the grand accounting of the species and the universe. We perform a function, like good ants. We are valiant, dutiful slaves who have accepted their lot.”
Hélène lifts her hand and traces the outline of Marthe’s fingers with her index finger.
“And where, Madame Psychoanalyst, does our wound fit into all this?”
Marthe imitates her friend and circles Hélène’s fingers. They amuse themselves by waltzing this way around their slaves’ hands.
“I honestly don’t know. Something drew us in and then bound us together. Have you ever met people again after ten or twenty years apart and realised they were still orbiting the same people, that their lives had not really changed, yet they seemed happy, like moons that had found their orbits?”
“Yes, certainly…”
“When we become aware of our wounds, perhaps it is because we discover that we have been caught in their pull.”
Hélène smiles and returns to the fire.
“Don’t tell me Léo’s betrayal is a blessing for you,” she says flatly, picking up the poker. “What was your wound before Léo betrayed you?”
Marthe draws an invisible heart on the glass.
“The same one, no doubt.”
Hélène stirs the fire. Marthe turns and watches her scatter the embers in every direction.
“You’re going to put it out…”
Hélène laughs.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“But I answered you!”
Hélène returns the poker to its stand.
“No, you played with words,” she says, smiling.
“There you are. All I have ever done is play with words. The void, Hélène, the void…”
Hélène sits down again.
“Plenty of people would tell you to stop asking yourself all those questions. All they do is give you heartburn and, at our age, gas or incontinence. I admit, you’ll always amaze me. Your clinical experience should have protected you from human scheming.”
“A priest must necessarily have faith, mustn’t he?”
She approaches the bookcases surrounding the fireplace. The books, arranged alphabetically by author, stand silent and frozen in their gilt bindings. There was a time when the mere sight of them seemed to awaken their learned contents in Marthe’s mind. Freud, of course, Jung, Adler, Laing, more modern works, theses, antitheses, clinical studies, all identically bound. A small fortune invested in appearances. With her customary nonchalant gesture, she brushes the spines; at her touch, words awaken and ring the academy’s bells: transference, power, drive, countertransference, archetypes, rape, aggression, sex, unconscious, individual, self, superego, and hysteria here and there, and dreams.
“Have you ever read a book on psychoanalysis?”
“Yes, at university. Mostly Jung, during my mystical phase.”
“‘There is no light without shadow…’”
“Is that his?”
Marthe nods.
“Jung wasn’t an easy man…”
“Did he beat his wife?”
“Worse. He ignored her.”
“Pfft, I should have become a lesbian…”
They laugh. Marthe continues her physical listening to her books. She stops at Traumdeutung, pulls it out and shows it to Hélène.
“Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, in German. I never read it in the original; I’ve always been hopeless at languages, apart from English.”
She opens it, leafs through it and moves closer to the fireplace. The German words are dense. Her years of study return to her. She sits on the hearth and flips through a few more pages.
“All of this is dead and joyless now. Like old sins…”
She opens the fire screen and throws the book into the flames.
“What are you doing?”
Marthe looks at Hélène.
“I could burn one book a day. We could put ornaments in their place. What do you think?”
“Are you going to turn into one of those old things who collects crystal kittens?”
Marthe smiles.
“Léo asked me to burn his paintings, and here I am burning my books.”
“Because you could buy this same library a thousand times over with a single one of Léo’s paintings.”
“True… I’m no match for him.”
They look at each other, smiling. Hélène says softly:
“You’ve always been a very beautiful woman.”
Marthe stands.
“Am I to take that as a compliment?”
Hélène gets up in turn, fetches a book and throws it into the fire.
“That’s what a compliment is… Beauty is like salt: it brings out the flavour of life, but it gives you high blood pressure.”
Marthe takes her in her arms.
“You’re beautiful too, Hélène. Very beautiful, in fact.”
“I know, Marthe.”
They laugh again. The front door suddenly opens to reveal Armand, livid and undeniably short of breath, supported by Gustave.
“Girls, we’ve come to sing!”
“What?” Hélène exclaims. “Armand, you shouldn’t be moving around!”
“Shut your mouth, Nurse…” Armand shoots back under Gustave’s amused gaze.
Hélène bursts out laughing and helps him towards the piano.
“A chair, not the bench, or I’ll fall over backwards.”
“It was no piece of cake getting here! We’ll have to think about moving the piano into Armand’s cottage,” Gustave suggests.
“There’s no room, for heaven’s sake,” Hélène reasons.
“Hey! I’m not dying yet, my friends! I can still get around. Besides, I’ll have to stop playing one day.”
His words cause a slight uneasiness, quickly dispelled by the first notes of a beautiful melody, which Armand begins to play before he is even properly seated.
“John Field,” he announces, “a contemporary of Chopin and the true precursor of the nocturne.”
Marthe sits by the fire and closes her eyes, surprised by the sudden change in atmosphere. She takes her time before opening them again. Hélène is sitting beside Gustave, who is mopping his brow.
Ravaged by chemotherapy, Armand is no longer the same man. He has aged ten years. She glances at the fire, which has almost finished with the two books. Looking at the bookcase, she realises Hélène threw the French translation of the German book into the flames. She sighs. Léo gave it to her thirty years ago, to replace the copy she had lost. On the flyleaf he had drawn a beautiful sketch—flowers transforming, in the manner of Escher, into butterflies, then clouds. She closes her eyes again and sees the drawing perfectly. Amid the clouds, among the seemingly chaotic lines, one could read her name. Léo always had a gift for making the unfathomable tangible. He had been so devoted to her, so deeply in love.
His friends remain silent while Armand plays. Lucienne appears in the entrance to the sitting room. Marthe gestures for her to come and sit down. The housekeeper does nothing of the kind; she adjusts her hat and pulls on her old-fashioned gloves. A car can be heard, then a horn. Lucienne approaches Armand, kisses him on the forehead and leaves without saying goodbye.
Armand suddenly seems to have regained some colour, happy as he sits at his piano. Perhaps she should follow Gustave’s advice and move the instrument. Or she could buy him one… Another reason to sell Léo’s paintings.
With a subtle modulation, Armand leaves Field’s world and launches into a piece they all know. Everyone’s eyes open wide, their listening abruptly jolted. They smile, rise and gather around the pianist… They wait through the final bars of the introduction before Gustave begins the opening words of Fauré.
“Word equal to the Most High…”
Marthe feels herself weaken slightly, caught off guard. She regains her composure and instead welcomes the return of the sun with joy. For the moment she forgets the shadows and the German lessons, the past and the heavy cloak of memories she struggles to carry. Soon they will all die, her memories and her friends.
She places one hand on Armand’s shoulder and strokes Hélène’s hair with the other. She draws breath. It is her turn to sing; she tries to be as true to the note as she can.