The Woman With the Bouquet

I
believe I’ve never known anyone who proved to be as different from her appearance as Emma Van A.

The first time we met, she merely seemed a fragile, discreet woman, with neither depth nor conversation, so banal you’d think her doomed to oblivion. And yet, because one day I touched upon her reality, she will never cease to haunt me: intriguing, imperious, brilliant, paradoxical, inexhaustible, she has caught me for all eternity in the web of her charm.

Certain women are traps into which you fall. Sometimes you do not want to get out of those traps. Emma Van A. has ensnared me.

It all began during a timid, cool month of March, in Ostend.

I had always dreamt about Ostend.

When I travel, names lure me before places do. Standing higher than steeples, words ring out from afar, easily heard thousands of miles away, sending sounds that suggest images.

Ostend . . .

Consonants and vowels draw a map, build walls, specify an atmosphere. When a small town wears the name of a saint, my fantasy constructs it around its church; the moment the word evokes a forest—Boisfort—or fields—Champigny—green invades the narrow streets; if a certain material is referred to—Pierrefonds—my mind scratches against the rough casting in order to exalt the stone; and if it evokes a miracle—Dieulefit—then I imagine a city clinging to a rugged peak, overlooking the countryside. When I approach the town, before all else I have an appointment with the name.

I had always dreamt about Ostend.

I could have happily gone on dreaming about it, without going there, had a sentimental misadventure not forced me out on the road. Flee! Leave behind a city—Paris—saturated with memories of a love that was no more. Quickly, a change of scene, of climate . . .

The North seemed a good solution because we had never been there together. As I unfolded a map, I was immediately hypnotized by six letters inscribed on the blue that represented the North Sea: Ostend. Not only did the sound of it captivate me, but I remembered that a friend had a good address for a place to stay. After a few phone calls, everything was arranged, my room at the pension was reserved, my luggage was piled in the car, and I was on my way to Ostend, as if my fate were waiting for me there.

Because the word began with an O of surprise, then grew softer with the
s,
it anticipated the sensation of bedazzlement as I stood on a sand beach stretching to infinity . . . because I could hear the word “tender” and not “tend,” I pictured streets in pastel colors beneath a tranquil sky. Because its linguistic roots suggested to me that it was a town “situated in the West,” I imagined houses clustered by the sea, reddened with an eternal setting sun.

Arriving there at night, I did not really know what to think. While for certain elements, the reality of Ostend did coincide with my dream of Ostend, it also forced some brutal realizations upon me: although the municipality was indeed at the end of the earth, in Flanders, built between a sea of waves and a sea of fields, and it did have a vast beach and a nostalgic breakwater, it also showed to me the extent to which the Belgians had defaced their coastline on the pretext of sharing it with the greatest number of people. There were row upon row of apartment buildings taller than ocean liners, housing that was neither tasteful nor distinctive, but which corresponded to what was considered profitable real estate, and I discovered an urban chaos that spoke eloquently of the greed of entrepreneurs eager to get their hands on the money of the middle classes as they enjoyed their paid vacations.

Fortunately, the dwelling where I had rented one floor was a survivor from the 19th century, a villa constructed during the reign of Leopold II, the builder king. Very ordinary for its time, it was now exceptional. Set among recent buildings that incarnated a total lack of geometrical inventiveness, simple boxes divided into floors, which in turn were divided into apartments, apartments blocked off by horrible windows of smoked glass, all symmetrical—so rational as to leave you disgusted forever with rationality—my building remained a solitary witness to a desire for architecture; it had taken time to adorn itself, varying the size and rhythm of its apertures, venturing forward with a balcony here, a terrace there, or a winter garden, daring to use high windows, and low ones, and medium sized ones, or even corner windows, then, like a woman who draws a beauty spot on her forehead, taking sudden delight in sporting an
oeil-de-boeuf
beneath the slate roof.

A redheaded woman in her fifties with a broad face covered in red blotches was standing in the open door.

“What do you want?” she asked in a friendly but offhand manner.

“Is this indeed the residence of Madame Emma Van A.?”

“That’s right,” she grunted in a rustic Flemish accent that emphasized her sinister looking aspect.

“I’ve rented your second floor for two weeks. My friend from Brussels must have informed you.”

“Well yes, of course! We’ve been expecting you! I’ll tell my aunt. Come in, please, just come on in.”

With her rough hands, she grabbed my cases, set them down in the hall and pushed me into the living room with gruff amiability.

The silhouette of a frail woman stood out against the window: she was seated in a wheelchair, facing a sky that drank the dark ink of the sea.

“Aunt Emma, here’s your lodger.”

Emma Van A. swung around and considered me.

Where other people, in order to please, become lively when they greet someone, she set to studying me gravely. She was very pale, her skin more worn by the years than by wrinkles, her hair divided between black and white to form a whole that was not gray but two distinct colors, with contrasting highlights. And her long face rested on a slender neck: was it her age? was it an attitude? Her head was cocked to one side, her ear above her left shoulder, her chin raised toward her right shoulder, in such a way that, given her sideways attention, she seemed to be listening rather than observing.

I had to break the silence: “Good morning, Madame, I am delighted to have found a place to stay in your home.”

“Are you a writer?”

I understood the implication of her prior examination: she was wondering if I had the proper physique to write novels.

“Yes.”

She sighed, as if relieved. Visibly, it was my position as an author that had made her decide to open her home to me.

Behind me her niece understood that the intruder had passed his entrance examination, so she blared like a trombone, “Okay, I’m off to finish preparing the rooms, right, it’ll be ready in five minutes.”

As she was leaving the room, Emma Van A. gazed devotedly at her the way one gazes at a faithful but stubborn dog.

“You must excuse her, sir, my niece has not learned to speak politely to strangers in French. You see, in Dutch we are much less formal.”

“It’s a pity not to learn the pleasures of French formality.”

“The greatest pleasure would be to use a language where it’s not an issue, no?”

Why had she said such a thing? Was she afraid I might become too familiar? I remained on my feet, somewhat awkward. She invited me to sit down.

“It’s odd. I’ve spent my life surrounded by books but I’ve never met a writer.”

A glance around me confirmed what she had said: thousands of volumes filled the shelves of the living room, spilling over even into the dining room. To allow me to have a better look, she glided through the furniture in her wheelchair, as silent as a shadow, and lit some lamps that glowed faintly.

Although I enjoy nothing more than the company of printed paper, her library put me ill at ease, for a reason I was unable to determine. The volumes were very handsome, meticulously bound in leather or canvas, the titles and names of the authors engraved in gold letters; all different sizes, there were lined up in varying ways, with neither excessive disorder nor symmetry, according to a rhythm that was proof of constant good taste, and yet . . . Are we so used to original editions that a bound collection is disconcerting? Was I suffering because I saw no sign of my favorite dust jackets? I found it difficult to pinpoint my disquiet.

“You will forgive me, I haven’t read your novels,” she said, mistaken as to the reasons for my confusion.

“Please don’t apologize. Nobody can know everything. Moreover, I don’t even expect it of the people I see regularly.”

Relieved, she stopped shaking the coral bracelet she had around her thin wrist and smiled at the walls.

“And yet I devote all my time to reading. And rereading. Yes, above all. I reread a great deal. You only really discover a masterpiece after the third or fourth reading, don’t you agree?”

“And how can you tell something is a masterpiece?”

“I don’t skip over the same passages.”

She took a garnet leather volume and opened it, a wistful intensity in her gaze.

“
The Odyssey
, for example. I can open it at any page and enjoy it immensely. Do you like Homer, Monsieur?”

“Naturally.”

Her irises grew dark, and this suggested to me that she found my answer to be flippant, or even offhand. I struggled therefore to develop a more specific point of view.

“I have often identified with Ulysses, because he turns out to be more crafty than intelligent, he goes home without rushing, and he respects Penelope without disdaining any of the lovely women he meets on his journey. Basically, he has so little virtue, does Ulysses, that I feel close to him. I find him modern.”

“How odd to believe in contemporary immorality, it’s naïve, too . . . With each generation, young people are under the impression that they are inventing vice: such presumption! What sorts of books do you write?”

“My own books. They don’t belong to any particular genre.”

“Very good,” she concluded, and her professorial tone confirmed that I was passing an exam.

“Would you allow me to give you a copy of one?”

“I . . . did you bring one with you?”

“No. However, I am sure that in the bookstores in Ostend—”

“Yes, bookstores . . .”

She uttered the word as if someone had just reminded her of the existence of an ancient and forgotten thing.

“You know, Monsieur, this library was my father’s, he taught literature. I have been living among these publications since my childhood, with no need to add to his collection. There are so many opuscules that I have not yet read. Look, no further than just there behind you, George Sand, Dickens . . . I still have a few volumes of theirs to discover. And Victor Hugo, too.”

“The genius of Victor Hugo is that there is always a page of Victor Hugo that one hasn’t read.”

“Exactly. It reassures me to live like this, watched over, surrounded by giants! That is why there are not a lot of . . . new books, here.”

After a moment of hesitation, she had pronounced the words “new books” with caution and regret, articulating them reluctantly, as if they were vulgar, even obscene words. As I listened to her, I realized that it was indeed a commercial term, used to designate an item in fashion, but inappropriate to define a literary work; I also realized that to her eyes I was nothing but an author of “new books,” a supplier, in a way.

“But novels by Daudet or Maupassant—weren’t they ‘new books,’ when they came out?” I asked.

“Time has given them their place,” she replied, as if I had just said something insolent.

I felt like suggesting that she was the one, now, who seemed to be naïve, but as I felt I did not have the right to contradict my hostess, I merely tried to determine why I felt ill at ease: this library did not breathe, it had frozen into a museum forty or fifty years earlier, and it would never again evolve for as long as its owner refused to allow an injection of new blood into it.

“Forgive my indiscretion, Monsieur: are you alone?”

“I came here to recover from a separation.”

“Oh, I am sorry . . . very sorry . . . I’ve hurt you, bringing it up . . . oh, forgive me.”

Her warmth, her dismay, her sudden nervousness emphasized her sincerity: she really was cross with herself for having plunged my mind into a bucket of bad memories. She mumbled, distraught, “Ostend is the perfect place for a broken heart.”

“Do you think so? Do you think I’ll get over it here?”

She stared at me with a frown.

“Get over it? You want to get over it?”

“Heal my wounds, yes.”

“And do you think you will manage?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“That’s strange,” she murmured, staring at me intently, as if she had never seen me before.

The last steps of the staircase vibrated with her niece’s weight as she arrived, breathless, crossing her short arms over her shapeless chest, to declaim victoriously, “Okay, you can move in! All the rooms up there are yours. You can choose your bedroom. Follow me, if you please.”

“Gerda will show you the way, my good man. Since my health problems, I can only take care of the ground floor. Which means you can have the entire floor upstairs: you’ll be comfortable, there. Help yourself to any books you find, just remember to put them back in place.”

“Thank you.”

“Gerda will bring your breakfast in the morning, if you don’t get up too early.”

“Half past nine would suit me.”

“Perfect. A good evening, then, Monsieur, and enjoy your stay.”

Why did I have a sudden flash of inspiration? I sensed that she was the type of woman who expected me to kiss her hand. I had aimed correctly: no sooner did I approach her than she held out her wrist, and I bent over it in customary fashion.

Her niece watched us as if we were two clowns, shrugged her shoulders, grabbed the suitcases and began to climb up the wobbly staircase of varnished wood.

As I was leaving the living room, Emma Van A.’s voice stopped me: “Monsieur, I have been thinking about what you just said, that you thought your wounds would heal. Please don’t be misled by my reaction: it was approval. I do wish it for you. I would be very happy for your sake.”

“Thank you, Madame Van A., I too would be very happy.”