She removes her hat and places it with her gloves on the small hall table. She surveys the place, walks forward and slowly roams the rooms. Lucienne has already washed the sheets and cleaned the many trails of blood from the floor. Armand suffered terribly, the doctor said: his diseased liver caused a gastrointestinal haemorrhage, while the massive doses of morphine he administered to himself plunged him into deep confusion. All of that is already far away in her memory, a week and a scattering of hours, of no importance. Armand has joined Time, reduced to ashes. They will have to wait until spring to scatter him. She can no longer feel sad; the life within her takes pride in still being there.
The cold snap outside has not abated; people are already tiring of enduring it after three weeks. The wind circles the cottage as though searching for a breach. She hears its course through the silent chimney. She looks around once more. Nothing has moved, and the place is fairly tidy. Armand hardly moved about toward the end.
She stops before the armchair where he had taken to spending his days, smiles sorrowfully, sits down and for a moment attempts the impossible, imploring the dead man to return and give her at least the goodbye she misses so much. But only absence answers, a flowered murmur of memories.
That is all death is, she thinks, echoing the terrible morning when she found him near the river. It is only furniture that has lost its warmth, grown deaf to the presence of the living, seemingly awaiting its master’s return.
She examines the papers left on the small table that served as his makeshift desk. Many astral hieroglyphs. She reads their names there, along with several obscure annotations. She gathers the sheets into a motley bundle and carries them to the main desk, takes inventory, picks up what lies about, returns the pens to their holder and throws away the many scattered tablets, probably dropped when Armand, overcome by pain, tried to drive it away too quickly. All of this will have to be discarded or burned.
He had little family that anyone knew of; he was an only child, a dead end, as he used to say. His distant relatives never took an interest in him. His aunts and uncles shut themselves behind the protective shutters of a Catholicism that died with them. Victor found a handwritten will that spoke only of his possessions, not his body. Armand left her his meagre estate. She had kept from the others the fact that he paid no rent during his final years. She could give the art books to Rémi or Victor. As for the rest, she realizes, apart from the records and the few drawings Léo gave him, everything can be dispersed and forgotten.
Someone knocks. Hélène immediately comes in.
“Brrr, it’s cold! What are you doing?”
Marthe takes time to watch the silence of things flee before all this noise. She does not resent Hélène and instead welcomes her with a smile.
“Not much. Probably saying one last goodbye to this place before it becomes something else.”
Hélène unfastens her coat, drops heavily into Armand’s chair and appreciates its comfort.
“I’ve always liked this chair.”
“Take it home with you.”
“Really? Wonderful! It will make a lovely keepsake. Every time I sit in it, I’ll think of him.”
“You’re in very good spirits. No one would think you’d just come from a funeral.”
Hélène snickers.
“Everything is lighter now. Grief is easier to manage when it is no longer burdened with pills to administer…”
“I wish he had died differently.”
“Are you keeping anything?”
Marthe rises.
“I’m not sure. Perhaps this old clock. He told me about it a few months ago, about how his grandfather watched it during the final months before his death.”
“Really? What did he say? That interests me.”
“His grandfather said he could perceive the elasticity of time, that even time itself, which we take so much for granted, suddenly changed colour and texture near the end. Armand did as he had done: he listened to it. Sometimes, he said, he could have sworn it stopped or moved too quickly. Time became as palpable as water, and at death, since everything freezes, one could feel the grain of time approaching and play with it.”
“I would like to be able to live with that knowledge.”
“Believe me, it will come soon enough.”
“We’ll miss him.”
“What are the others doing?”
“They’re in the kitchen, waiting for us before they start eating.”
“I’m hungry too.”
“A beautiful ceremony, at any rate. Marie-Claire made me cry with her cello.”
“We’ll have to empty this cottage quickly so we can move on.”
“There’s no hurry.”
“We must turn the page quickly, Hélène. I’ve had enough of dragging the past behind me. You know, long ago I went on a short retreat with Buddhist monks. Yes, yes, me among Buddhists, during my hippie period. At the end of my stay, the lama told us: ‘Go for a walk in the forest. Of everything you found here, keep nothing. Leave each of your thoughts beneath the trees, offer them for the benefit of all beings, and leave as though all of it had been only a dream.’”
She pauses and looks at a photograph of them on the wall, taken some ten years earlier. She smiles.
“Armand is already that dream. There is no point weeping any longer. I felt it already this autumn. The season seemed different from the others. In truth, I was the one changing, listening without fully realizing it to the spirit of the times. I have always been impressed by the way our inner, secret, intimate journeys produce an echo outside us. I opened my mind to dreams and, in doing so, disturbed the calm waters of our lives. Armand died from it.”
“Still living in your fables.”
Marthe smiles at her.
They laugh.
“One thing is certain: I no longer want to mourn anything, not even the seasons, not even Léo.”
“The hour of your revenge has struck.”
“This is not about revenge. I feel more like an old animal that needs to migrate toward lands that are more nourishing and less demanding.”
“It’s sad, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“That one day, you or I will end up selling or throwing away the other’s things.”
“We cannot do anything about it, so we might as well move on—and, if possible, do more than merely pass the time.”
“When do you want to leave on the trip?”
“In the spring, after Marie-Claire has given birth? The auction will be held in March.”
“Those are two fine projects.”
“Aren’t they? Will you help me take down the clock?”