“And was there anything in the letters?”
“Anything about her trip to Paris, do you mean? No, not a word. Those letters … oh, only she could have written them: they were enchanting, sad, and crazy. She talked about music, about those tall pine trees outside your door, mademoiselle, about the snow, and about what she was reading. The one dated the fifth of December started like this”—he closed his eyes and spoke in a low voice—“‘Last night it rained very hard on the snow-covered ground. The angry rain lashed down on the pure white snow; it was as if a young girl was being whipped by witches … I think I caught a chill. I got up very late …’ The rest of the letter was about Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik and about Christmas roses, which had died on All Saints’ Day, in spite of tradition …”
He fell silent.
“I don’t understand,” Mademoiselle Cousin said faintly.
“That chill she mentioned was so that she could have two or three days’ peace in Paris, without having to write to me. I would have learned afterwards that she had had a touch of flu and that she was better.”
“But there was nothing to stop her from telling you about the trip, for goodness’ sake! She could have thought up a perfectly reasonable excuse for going.”
“I’ve spoken to the servants. She had not given any orders for her arrival. She would never show up unexpectedly. She liked everything to be ready for her: a fire lit, her bath run, flowers … She didn’t intend to stay in the flat that night, I’m sure of it. Under those circumstances, of course, it was natural that she should want to keep her trip a secret.”
“But, monsieur, I must tell you again, her intentions were entirely innocent.”
“Oh, come on!” he said, looking straight at her. “You know there can’t be a shadow of doubt. I only have to look at the expression on your face, mademoiselle. The facts are clear. But don’t worry, I won’t ask you anything,” he added, forcing a smile, “not her lover’s name, nor how long their affair had been going on. You wouldn’t tell me. You were very attached to Florence. You did your best to help her deceive me. Now you will loyally keep her secrets, more loyally than ever, I’m sure. There can’t be much you don’t know. However, as I’ve said, I’m not going to ask you any difficult questions. I simply wanted to talk about Florence to someone who knew her well, who loved her; to talk about her tenderly, and at length … for one last time. You were very fond of my wife, weren’t you?”
She did not reply.
“She was such an exceptional person, wasn’t she? I always felt humble when I was with her. I knew perfectly well that one day she would be unfaithful or she would leave me. Everyone knows they must die someday. I was twenty-two years older than her.”
“But what are you saying? How can you talk like that?” she asked quickly, vehemently. “Monsieur Dange, have you forgotten who you are? Have you never seen the auditorium during one of your concerts, with all those people who admire you, who are grateful to you, who love you? Yes, monsieur, they love you. You artists, you live in a world that is …” She was searching for the words as she looked at him with wide, shining eyes. “… sublime. As for us, we are nothing—poor, useless creatures. It’s so rare, so wonderful for a great artist even to look at us, to take us away from the ordinariness of our lives, to speak for us. That’s something huge, monsieur. It’s almost your duty to understand that. Forgive me for speaking to you like this. If I seem to be lecturing you, it’s only because I admire you so much. What did it matter that you were twenty-two years older than Flora?”
“What?”
“Than Flora,” she repeated. “She was called Flora, you must have known that. Florence was her stage name. Twenty-two years older than her! But you, you’re a genius, one of the greatest musicians of our time! You did her a great honor by letting her into your world.”
He looked at her sadly. “Oh, how little you know,” he said gently. “I’m famous, yes, but that … Once I was probably someone who was worthy of your praise. But fame, you know, is a bitter fruit picked after the tree has fallen.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “To me, you’re a man above humankind. Your humility is not admirable; it’s morbid.”
“The man she loved must have been more brilliant than me and have had a greater intellect. I imagine him being like me as a young man.”
“Like you?” She shook her head. “Oh, no, Monsieur Dange, he certainly wasn’t like you!”
She stopped, and seemed to be waiting for him to put a question to her, but he asked nothing; he reached out toward the little table, now barely visible in the shadows, looking for his cup with shaking hands.
“Is there any tea left?”
“I’ll bring you some.”
“No, no, please, don’t move. I love cold tea and I’m dying of thirst.” He greedily drank the brick-colored tea.
“You’re being very sympathetic,” he said hesitantly, bending his thin face toward the fire. “But you helped her to deceive me.”
“I didn’t help her. On the contrary, I did my best to make her see reason, but I …”
“Yes, I understand, one couldn’t hold out against Florence. With her beauty, her grace, that aloof manner of hers … Yes, that’s the word I was looking for. She was so aloof, in society and with men. Sometimes she could appear cold and distracted. I knew people who thought she was superficial and not very intelligent. But what does intelligence matter? That streak of sadness and craziness she possessed … Her letters … God, how I loved her letters! I can’t tell you how I felt four days ago, when I saw her handwriting on those envelopes forwarded from Mexico. I was shaking. It was devastating, but sweet as well … It’s all over for me now, isn’t it? I’m not creative, all I can do is interpret. In the end that’s unrewarding, it’s not enough. You won’t understand that. I rediscover the dead and bring them back to life. It’s a medium’s job. Unfortunately I, Roger Dange, am sterile. I can’t create anything. I won’t leave anything behind: not a child, nor a masterpiece, not even love. Nothing.”
“You have a brilliant reputation.”
“All this has worn me out,” he said suddenly in a different tone of voice. He could hardly move his lips. “I haven’t slept for four nights, even after large doses of sleeping pills. They’re not enough to make me sleep, but they make me feel as if I’m in a strange state halfway between dreaming and being awake. It’s very bizarre. And this room, the fire … I feel feverish.”
“Would you like to lie down? I can make you up a nice bed, you can sleep, and …”
“But I’ve just told you I can’t sleep!” he exclaimed irritably. “No, leave me alone. I’m fine here, really I am. If you want to help, don’t talk to me about myself; tell me about Florence, just about Florence … the simplest, most trivial things. Her clothes, for instance. What was she wearing the day she died? It was very cold, so she must have been wearing her long, gray traveling coat, the one with the sealskin collar. And which hat did she have on?”
“Which hat?” the teacher muttered distractedly. “Listen, Monsieur Dange …”
She stopped, lost in deep thought. “I’ve got some old mementos,” she said at last. “Some pictures of Flora … of Florence, and some of her letters. Would you like to see them?”
He nodded. She stood up to take a photograph from the mantelpiece and gave it to him. It showed twenty little girls in a school playground, wearing black aprons and clogs. Their hair was unkempt and they were pigeon-toed. They were uncouth little country girls of thirteen or fourteen, sturdily built and broad-chested, bulging out of their stiff smocks and coarse woolens.
“Florence was one of these?” he asked with a tense, amused smile. “She must have been a swan among ducks.”
“That’s her,” Mademoiselle Cousin said. “She was solid and chubby, as girls can be at that age, but her face was charming; she had delicate features and big blue eyes. I had been boarding for a term in Besançon when this picture was taken. Flora sent it to me. Look,” she said, s
howing him the dedication. “‘To my dear Camille from her own Flora.’ I could not rest until she joined me. She didn’t want to carry on with her studies. She wanted to learn how to sew and then set herself up in town. She was quite happy with her vision of the future: a sewing machine in some shabby room and an outing to the cinema on a Saturday night with the assistant from the draper’s shop opposite. Like mine, her family was lower middle class and had no private means. Her father had remarried. She didn’t get along with her stepmother, although she actually wasn’t a bad woman, just one of those bitter, apathetic people … if you see what I mean. Flora was always moaning, sulking and complaining.
“During the Easter holidays, when I was at home, I went to see her parents—I was fifteen then. I don’t know how I did it, but after appealing to her father, as well as first begging and then terrifying her stepmother, I finally convinced them to send Flora to the boarding school I was attending in Besançon. We were there for five years and I stayed for a further year as a tutor, so I didn’t have to leave her behind. I tried to make her work, to make her take her exams so that she could become something, to stop her from giving up her singing lessons; above all, I tried to make sure that none of those horrible boys would come anywhere near her, because for me Flora was …”
She took the photograph from the widower and put it back in its place. She walked up and down the room for a long time, her arms folded across her chest. Her footsteps were extraordinarily quiet and light.
“No, you can’t imagine what Flora was to me. I was eighteen months older than she was. She had the face, the looks, and the smile that I would have liked to have had. I’ve never been pretty. I knew that. At first I was jealous of Flora. I remember once ripping up the sky blue coat she wore on Sundays, using my nails and teeth like a little savage. She had left it on a chair in the hall when she had come to play with me. Everyone said, ‘What a pretty pale color, and how well it goes with her blonde curls!’ Then, as I grew older, that feeling vanished and was replaced by something very strange … You asked me just now if I felt friendship for Flora. No, I felt neither friendship nor tenderness, but I was molding her in the way I wanted, do you see? It started with little things. When there was a prize-giving, I would help her to practice her reading. I would show her how to recite, how to stand, how to curtsy, and how to make the most of her pretty profile and her curly hair. When people applauded and complimented her, I felt a bitter joy that I can’t describe. I thought, ‘Well, that’s my doing; it’s thanks to me that Flora is being admired. She would be nothing without me. She’s my creation.’”
She stopped in front of Dange. “‘She’s my creation.’ That’s exactly what I thought. Like writing a book or painting a picture. Of course, it took me many years to understand that. It’s probably only for the last five or six years that I’ve completely understood it. In fact, I sometimes used to forget Flora. I was becoming ambitious for myself, particularly when I passed an examination with excellent marks. But then I’d say to myself, ‘With the ugly face God has given you, my girl, you must ask for nothing, hope for nothing. It’s for the best; at least you’ll spare yourself the cruelty of disappointments.’ And in any case, it was in my nature to enjoy being the éminence grise. As an adolescent I admired the Jesuits more than anyone, those clever, discreet men who advised the king behind the scenes. Don’t laugh at me, Monsieur Dange. No one else knows what I’m telling you, but for once in my life I’m talking honestly, and in any case, I’m the one who gave you the Flora you miss so much.”
“How can that be?” asked Dange. He was listening with intense concentration, crossing and uncrossing his pale hands while he did so.
“By the time she reached thirteen or fourteen, Flora had become very ordinary. I didn’t enjoy going to see her anymore. She disappointed me and she annoyed me, so that my life became meaningless. I got good marks on all my tests and examinations without making much of an effort and my end of year reports were glowing; I was an excellent pupil, but I was bored. You know, at the age I was then, only one thing mattered: my dreams, a sort of other life in which I imagined who I could be, what I wanted to become. For years, in my dreams, I had been Flora. I had drawn out her best qualities to turn her into something extraordinary, but then she became dull, almost stupid, aspiring to be nothing more than a dressmaker. A dressmaker, can you see her doing that? Flora the dressmaker, pregnant by a shop assistant or sensibly married to some petit bourgeois. Flora … And what about me?
“But one day I heard her sing. It was when we were by the river during the Easter holidays. The rivers are deep and fast-flowing in our part of the world. Spring had come early that year. We had gone to dip our feet in the water and pick flowers. We were a group of five or six girls. It was dark when we got back to the village. As we walked along, arm in arm, one of us began to sing. The others all joined in the chorus, and Flora’s voice rose above them with such natural grace and such purity that we gradually fell silent and were carried along, uplifted by her beautiful voice. Then, as I told you, I arranged for her to come to Besançon. It was important, you see, for her to become cultivated and well brought up, a young lady, in fact. I had read somewhere that one shouldn’t start singing lessons in adolescence, but I didn’t want her to waste those years without any general culture, education, or reading. I think I was quite a gifted teacher. Flora was lazy. I was the only one who could make her work. How I delighted in her progress! As for me, I was no longer such a remarkable student, merely average. I had deliberately put aside all personal ambition in order to concentrate on Flora. In a way I lived through her. You can’t imagine how much I used to enjoy having this secret. I felt proud and superior to everyone, especially to Flora. As soon as she turned eighteen, I made her study singing. She went to Paris where, as I’m sure you know, she almost immediately became the mistress of a very rich man, married but separated from his wife, and they lived together openly.”
“Yes, I did know that,” Dange said.
“I hardly ever saw her, but she didn’t forget me. She was fond of her lover, but at the same time she wanted her freedom … do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“That period of her life was a difficult one. The man was demanding and jealous. When their relationship became strained almost to the breaking point, Flora would come running to me. She would come in here and sit in that armchair where you’re sitting now. She would say, ‘I’ve done this … This is what I said to him … What do you think I should have done? What would you have done in my place?’ Then I would talk to her … for a long time. I would make her see reason. I … you see, I didn’t want her to leave this man. Thanks to him, she was becoming Parisian. She dressed well; in fact, she was really beginning to look the part. Her hair, her dresses, the way she held herself, everything was perfect. Meanwhile, in my head, I was building up a great future for her. Flora was my work of art. You think that’s stupid? Why? You can create a work of art with crude, inanimate material, with a stone and a hammer or a canvas and some colors, so why not with flesh and blood? Imprinting your personality on someone else, breathing your spirit into theirs is intoxicating, you know.”
“And Florence obeyed and listened to you, did she?”
“How often do I have to tell you, monsieur, that you didn’t know her! No one knew her, least of all Flora herself. She thought she was free, would you believe it! When I used to tell her, ‘You must do this or that. You must write to him like this. I’ll dictate a letter to you. You must send this man away, gently, without discouraging him, but …,’ she would sneer and exclaim, ‘Oh, my poor Camille, you have no idea! What do you know about men, love, or life, buried in your little backwater!’ I would answer, ‘Well, maybe you’re right, but just have a little think about it and you’ll see that I’m right. That’s what you must do.’ In the end, after she’d followed my advice, she would persuade herself it had all been her own idea. She was so typically feminine …”
She fell silent; the smile
on her face was sad, tender, and bitter all at the same time. Dange looked at her, aghast. After a moment’s silence, she continued:
“Her lover died suddenly and, as no provision had been made for Flora in his will, everything went to his lawful wife. Overnight Flora became poor. Nothing was in her name, neither the grand house where she was living nor her car. I managed to arrange leave for a few months and we lived together in Paris. Monsieur, do you understand? I wanted to make something of this woman. I was thinking about a career on the stage. With her voice, her beauty, and her charm, she could have had one, don’t you think? She could have been famous! Yet, thinking about it, that still wasn’t enough. You see, it had all become a sort of delusion. I would occasionally forget that I was Camille Cousin and she was Flora Leblanc. When she sang, it seemed to be my voice that I heard. Her singing freed me from myself. We led a very quiet, reclusive life, as she didn’t like people seeing her in the wretched state she had been reduced to by her lover’s death. She had no beautiful dresses, no jewelry, and often couldn’t afford the hairdresser. If she’d been on her own, she would have taken up with the first wealthy man who came along.”
Dange interrupted her. “She’s not here to defend herself,” he said quietly, his voice shaking.
“Monsieur, I’m speaking to you as before God. I am a believer and I know that her spirit is here, listening to us, and can see that I’m telling the truth. I was the one who looked after her for those two years, allowing her to glimpse a wonderful future, promising her glory and love if she would only listen to me. I’ll say it again, it was intoxicating to watch that beautiful creature unconsciously repeating my words, quoting my thoughts, or giving my opinions on the books we read … And her letters! Oh, I used to laugh sometimes … her letters that I wrote! She gradually came to understand what I wanted to do with her. She allowed herself to be molded and would sometimes call me her ‘producer,’ although she attributed the lowest of motives to me; she thought that I was assuming I’d sponge off her later on, and even—she laughed as she told me—marry some discarded lover of hers, one of Flora Leblanc’s rejects, me …”