The Woman With the Bouquet (3 page)

She sighed, and repeated her answer, distressed, “Yes, my own self . . .”

Her gaze suddenly held mine and with a burst of hopeless energy she said, “You know, I was young once, I was attractive.”

Why was she telling me this? What did it have to do with our discussion? Consequently, I stood there with my mouth open.

She insisted, nodding her head this way and that. “Oh yes, I was ravishing. And I was loved!”

“I’m sure you were.”

Incensed, she looked me up and down.

“No, you don’t believe me!”

“Yes, I do . . .”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what other people think about me or what they thought about me. Not only do I not care, but it is my fault if people spread untruths about me. I was the cause of them.”

“What sort of gossip have they been spreading about you, Madame Van A.?”

“Well nothing, actually.”

A pause.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

She shrugged.

“Gerda hasn’t talked to you?”

“About what?”

“About this nothing. My family thinks that my life has been empty. Confess . . .”

“Uh . . .”

“There, you see, she told you just that! My life is nothing. And yet, my life has been very rich. It’s wrong to call it nothing.”

I went up to her.

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

“No. I promised.”

“Sorry?”

“I promised to keep it a secret.”

“To whom? To what?”

“If I reply, I shall already begin to betray . . .”

She confused me utterly: inside this ancient damsel there burned a strong, sturdy temperament, inhabited by rage and a sharp intelligence, using words like daggers.

She turned to me.

“I was loved, you know. As almost no one ever is. And I loved. Just as much. Oh, yes, so much so that if it were possible . . .”

Her eyes clouded over.

I placed my hand on her shoulder to encourage her.

“It’s not forbidden to tell a love story.”

“To me, it is. Because the people involved are too important.”

Her hands slapped her knees, as if she were imposing silence upon those who wanted to speak.

“What would have been the point of keeping silent all these years if now I break my silence? Well? All my efforts, all these years, reduced to nothing?”

Her knotty fingers seized the wheels of her chair and gave a forceful shove, and she left the room to shut herself in her bedroom.

On coming out of the Villa Circé, I ran into Gerda on the sidewalk, busy sorting garbage into different bins for recycling.

“Are you sure that your aunt did not have a great love in her life?”

“’Course I’m sure, you bet. We teased her about it a lot. If there had been something, she would have told us ages ago, for sure, just to get us to leave her alone!”

Making a terrible racket, with her foot she squashed three plastic bottles so thoroughly they were the size of a cork.

“Allow me to differ with you, Gerda, I’m absolutely convinced of it.”

“It’s easy to see that you earn your living spouting lies! What an imagination!”

Her stubby fingers tore up the cardboard boxes as if they were sheets of cigarette paper. She suddenly stopped and stared at two seagulls flying overhead.

“Since you’re going on about it, I remember there was Uncle Jan. Yes. He was very fond of Aunt Emma. One day he told me the funniest thing: all the men who had tried to court Aunt Emma had gotten the hell out as fast as they could.”

“Why?”

“She was forever spouting such nasty things at them.”

“She was nasty?”

“That’s what he kept saying, Uncle Jan. You can see the result! Nobody would have her.”

“If you analyze what your Uncle Jan said, it’s more a case that she wouldn’t have any of them.”

Gerda was struck dumb by this point of view. I continued: “If she was anywhere as demanding with men as she is with writers, it’s easy to understand why no one found grace in her eyes. As she never met any who were good enough, she found a way to discourage them. In reality, your aunt wanted to remain independent.”

“I suppose,” conceded Gerda reluctantly.

“What’s to prove that, if she sent them all packing, it wasn’t to make it safe for the one man she was protecting, the only one she didn’t talk about?”

“Aunt Emma? A double life? Hmm . . . poor woman . . .”

Gerda grunted, skeptical. Her aunt was only interesting to her as a victim, and the only affection she had for her was pity, or even a touch of scorn; the moment you suggested there might be a rational reason or a source of fulfilment behind her behavior, Gerda no longer paid attention. The mystery did not intrigue her, and explanations only did insofar as they were small-minded. Gerda belonged to those people for whom understanding is a kind of self-abasement, and anything romantic or sublime was so much vapor to her.

I would have liked to plod along all day, but the weather curtailed my excursion. Not only did a nasty wind trouble my concentration, before long, dark low clouds released a downpour with thick, cold drops.

Two hours later, I sought refuge back at the Villa, and when I came in the door, Gerda assailed me, panic in her voice.

“My aunt is in the hospital, she’s had an attack!”

I felt guilty: she had been so distraught when I left her that the emotion must have brought on a mild heart attack.

“What do the doctors say?”

“I was waiting until you got back to go to the hospital. Now I’ll go.”

“Would you like me to come with you?”

“Hey, she’s the one who’s sick, not me. And have you got a bike? The hospital isn’t exactly next door. Wait here. It’s better. I’ll be back.”

I decided to make the most of her absence to explore the living room. In order to calm my anxiety, I studied the contents of the shelves. While there were classics of world literature, there were also complete editions of authors who had had their season of glory, but to whom nobody in the present day showed the slightest veneration. Consequently, I began to meditate on ephemeral successes, and the transitory nature of fame. I felt crucified by such a prospect. Just because I had readers today, would I have any tomorrow? In their stupidity, writers assume they can escape the mortal condition by leaving something behind them; but does that something last? And while I may know how to talk to a reader in the 21st century, what can I know about a reader in the 23rd? And isn’t this question itself rather arrogant? Should I not proscribe it? Should I not rid myself of this pretension? Accept the fact that I live in the present, and only in the present, and enjoy what there is without hope of what will be?

Unaware that such thoughts, by analogy, were increasing my anxiety regarding Emma’s health, I lapsed into a sort of prostration which destroyed all notion of time.

I was startled when Gerda shouted loudly, slamming the front door behind her, “Not too serious. She’s woken up. She’ll recover. Not this time round!”

“Oh, good. A false alarm, was it?”

“Yes, the doctors will keep her under observation for a while, and then they’ll send her back to me.”

I looked at rustic Gerda, her shoulders as wide as her hips, her face splattered with freckles, her short arms.

“Are you very attached to your aunt?”

She shrugged her shoulders and said, as if it were self-evident, “The poor woman has no one else!”

At which point she turned on her heels and went to attack her saucepans.

The days that followed were fairly unpleasant. Getting news from Gerda about her aunt, who hadn’t returned, was like trying to get water from a stone. And then, as if Emma Van A. could no longer protect the city with her weak body, Ostend succumbed to an onslaught of tourists.

The Easter holidays—I didn’t know this—mark the beginning of the season in resorts in the North and as of Good Friday all the streets, stores, and beaches were teeming with visitors speaking all sorts of languages—English, German, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, French—with Dutch still predominant. Couples and families arrived in hordes, I had never seen so many baby strollers at once, enough to make you think it was a breeding farm; thousands of bodies were scattered all along the beach even though the thermometer did not rise above 17, and the wind continued to cool everything down. The men, who were hardier than the women, exposed their torsos to the pale sun; for them, it was more a question, when getting undressed, of showing their bravery than their beauty; they were taking part in a male competition that had nothing to do with women, yet they remained cautious, and kept their trousers or shorts on, as if courage extended only to their torso. For someone like me who had spent my summers on the shores of the Mediterranean, I was surprised to see only two colors of flesh: white, or red; brown seemed to be rare. In this northern populace, no one was sun tanned: it was either pallor or sunburn. Between livid and scarlet, only the young Turkish people displayed a caramel color, and not without a certain awkwardness. Consequently, they banded together.

Struggling to make my way through all the people, the dogs who were not allowed on the beach but who nevertheless tugged on their leashes toward the sand, the rented bicycles that hardly moved forward, and the pedal cars that were even slower, I suffered in this chaos as if it were an invasion. What right did I have, you may say, to use that word? What gave me the right to view others as barbarians when I had only preceded them by a few days? Did living at Emma Van A.’s house suffice to transform me into a native? It mattered little. I had the impression that by taking my landlady away, they had also taken my Ostend away.

And so I was truly happy when I heard the ambulance bringing her back to the Villa Circé.

The paramedics left her, in her wheelchair, in the hall, and while Gerda was conversing with her aunt, I had the impression that the old lady was fretting, as she glanced at me from time to time with a look that encouraged me to stay.

Once Gerda had gone into the kitchen to prepare the tea, Emma Van A. turned to me. Something in her had changed. She seemed determined. I went over to her.

“How did your stay in the clinic go?”

“Nothing in particular. Yes, the hardest thing was to listen to Gerda clacking her needles by my bedside. It’s pathetic, no? Whenever she has a free moment, instead of picking up a book, Gerda embroiders, fiddles with some crochet, fusses with wool, that sort of thing. I hate it, women with their handiwork. Men, too, abominate such behavior. Take the North of Ireland, for example, the peasant women of the Aran Islands! Their husbands only come back to them—if they come back to them—with the wrecks of their ships, thrown up by the waves, eaten by salt, and the only way they can recognize them is from the stitches in their sweaters! That is what happens to women who knit: the only thing they attract is corpses! I must speak to you.”

“Naturally, Madame. Would you prefer for me to take up residence elsewhere during your convalescence?”

“No. On the contrary. I insist that you stay because I would like to converse with you.”

“With pleasure.”

“Would you agree to join me for dinner? Gerda’s cooking is no better than her coffee but I will ask her to make one of the two or three dishes she doesn’t mess up.”

“With pleasure. I am glad to see you are better.”

“Oh, I am not better. This wretched heart will eventually give way. That is why I want to talk to you.”

I waited for dinner impatiently. I had missed my dreamer more than I had realized, and I felt that she was in a confessional mood.

At eight o’clock that evening, once Gerda had straddled her bicycle to return home, no sooner had we begun our appetizers than Emma leaned over to me.

“Have you ever burned letters?”

“Yes.”

“What did you feel?”

“I was furious that I had been obliged to do so.”

Her eyes shining, she was encouraged by my response.

“Precisely. One day, thirty years ago, I too was obliged to toss into the fire all the words and photographs relating to the man I loved. I watched tangible traces of my fate disappearing in the flames; even though I was crying as I made that sacrifice, it did not touch me inside: I still had my memories, and always would; I told myself that no one, ever, could burn my memories.”

She looked at me sadly.

“I was wrong. On Thursday, with this third attack, I discovered that my illness was in the process of burning my memories. And that death would finish off the job. And so: at the hospital I decided that I would speak to you. That I would tell you everything.”

“Why me?”

“You write.”

“You haven’t read me.”

“No, but you write.”

“Would you like me to write what you are going to share with me?”

“Certainly not.”

“And so?”

“You write . . . that means you are curious about other people. I just need a little bit of curiosity.”

I smiled, and touched her hand.

“In that case, I’m your man.”

She smiled in turn, embarrassed by my familiarity. After coughing to clear her throat, she smoothed the edge of her plate with her fingernail and, lowering her lids, began her story.

One morning, over fifty years ago, I woke up with the conviction that something important was going to happen to me. Was it a premonition or a memory? Was I receiving a message from the future or following a dream that I had partly forgotten? In any case, a murmur from the fates had used my sleep to leave this certainty within me: something was going to happen.

You know how stupid you become after insights such as this: you want to guess what is about to happen, and you distort it with your expectations. At breakfast, I fabricated several intrigues: my father was going to come back from Africa where he was staying; the mailman would bring me a letter from a publisher agreeing to publish my young woman’s poems; I was going to see my best childhood friend again.

As the day progressed, all my illusions were destroyed. The mailman ignored me. No one rang at the door. And the ship coming from the Congo did not contain my father in its cargo.