sad! Once again I show my mean teeth. All she had to do was follow his example instead of having her parents’ bones put into ossuaries to make room for her in the family tomb. Who made her do that? —You’re monstrous, Ernest. —That’s nothing new, I say. Jeannette would like us to be buried together so that passersby could see our two names. Jeannette Blot and her devoted husband, securely stashed away in stone. She’d like to erase forever the humiliations of our married life. In the past, when I’d stayed out all night, she’d rumple my pajamas before the housemaid arrived. My wife is counting on the grave to outfox spiteful gossips, she wants to remain a petit bourgeois even in death. The rain drums on the tiles. When I’d return from Bréhau-Monge to Lamballe, where my boarding school was, the evening breeze would be blowing. If raindrops streaked a windowpane, I’d press my nose against it. Renan says somewhere, “When the bell rings at five in the afternoon …” What book is that in? I’d like to read it again. Jeannette has stopped manipulating the dishcloth. She’s gazing vacantly into space, into the gray weather. When she was young, she had a kind of impudent look about her. She resembled theactress Suzy Delair. Time changes everything, including the soul of a face. I say, don’t I even get a cup of coffee? She shrugs her shoulders. In the old days, I never paid any attention to this dizzying loop of day and night, I wouldn’t even know whether it was morning or afternoon or anything else. I’d go to the ministry, I’d go to the bank, I’d chase after women, I’d never worry about eventual consequences. I’ve still got enough joy left in me to do a little chasing, but after a certain age, the preliminaries are wearying. Jeannette says, you can also choose to be cremated without having your ashes scattered. I don’t even react. I turn back to my false cybernetic activity. I’m not opposed to learning something new, but to what end? To stimulate my brain cells, my daughter says. Is that likely to change my worldview? There’s already enough pollen and crap in the air without adding corpse dust, it’s not worth the trouble, Jeannette says. I say, I’ll ask someone else to do it–Odile, or Robert. Or Jean, but I’m afraid he’s going to pass on before I do, that idiot. He wasn’t looking very good last Tuesday. Throw me in the Braive. I’ll rejoin my father. Just take care not to inflict any kind of ceremony on me, no funeral service or other foolishness, no tiresome blessed words. For all you know, I’ll die before you, Jeannette says. —No you won’t, you’re robust. —If I die before you, Ernest, I want there to be a service with a blessing, and I want you to tell the story of how you proposed to me in Roquebrune. Poor Jeannette. In a distant time that’s nothing more than a subject of confusion now, I asked her for her hand through the judas window of a medieval dungeon I’d shut her up in. If she only knew how utterly Roquebrune has lost all meaning for me. How that past has dissolved and turned into vapor. Twopeople living side by side, and every day their imaginations separate them more and more conclusively. Deep down inside themselves, women build enchanted palaces. You’re mummified somewhere in there, but you don’t know it. No licentiousness, no lack of scruples, no act of cruelty is considered real. The moment of eternal farewell arrives, and a story about two youngsters must be told. Everything is misunderstanding, and torpor. —Don’t count on it, Jeannette. Happily, I’ll disappear before you do. And you’ll attend my cremation. And don’t worry, that sort of thing doesn’t smell like roasting pork the way it used to in bygone days. Jeannette pushes back her chair and stands up. She throws the dishcloth on the table. She turns off the gas stove – the water for my eggs has almost boiled off anyway – and unplugs the toaster. As she leaves the room,
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