Petra didn’t understand, but the mention of a “very large audience” grabbed her attention.
“Is your name really Petra von Tannenbaum or is that just your stage name?”
Petra stiffened. “It’s my real name.”
“Since when?”
“Since I married Gustav von Tannenbaum, who died a year after we were married.”
“And your maiden name?”
“I won’t allow you to—”
“Trust us.”
Petra von Tannenbaum shrugged, looked away, and said, “Smith. Nicole Smith. I’m an American.”
“Where from?”
“Texas.”
“Really? You’re not a German aristocrat?”
“Yes, I am, I became one by marriage.”
“That’s a terrific story, you know. An ordinary American girl who becomes a sophisticated aristocrat, a widow, an artist . . . I’m sorry, there are romantic elements here, the public will be interested.”
“Really? Then why aren’t the media interested in me?”
Faustina stood up. “I’ll tell you why, Petra von Tannenbaum. May I be so bold as to give you some advice?” Not waiting for a reply, Faustina got into her stride. “Don’t push yourself forward. Don’t be so authoritative. Stop boasting about your career—it’s up to others to do that. Act simple. Don’t smoke with a cigarette holder, smoke rough, unfiltered cigarettes and puff at them like a woman who’s disoriented. Dress simply, you want to give people the impression that, even in a sweater, you can’t help being the height of elegance. Wear light, almost invisible makeup, so that nobody thinks you’ve prepared yourself for the cameras. Give the impression you’re always scared, as if every man who comes near you now might be a potential rapist. Don’t look people straight in the eye. Loosen your neck, look down at the carpet, appear wounded. Then you’ll make the headlines and the public will adore you.”
Patrick was petrified, fearing Petra von Tannenbaum’s reaction. Pale and tense, she had listened with evident annoyance. Her eyes, more fixed than those of a bird of prey, gave off an unbearably cruel glow.
“You’re perfect,” Petra von Tannenbaum finally said, uncrossing her legs. “I want to hire you for my PR. What do you charge per month?”
Nobody knew where Faustina disappeared to on Saturday mornings.
Officially, she went running in the Bois de la Cambre. Come rain or come shine, she would set off. Anyone who asked to go with her was turned down. Nobody had ever seen her there. Anyone wishing to investigate her would have noticed that she returned with a sports bag in which no piece of clothing carried the slightest trace of dampness.
Faustina parked her car outside the Résidence des Cèdres. She greeted the manageress, and an obese nurse took her up to the third floor, to room 201.
“How is she?” Faustina asked.
“There’s been no improvement.”
“Has she spoken in the last few days?”
“Not a word, from what we’ve seen.” She opened the door. “I’ll leave you to it as usual, shall I?”
Faustina walked in tentatively, suddenly much slower than usual, less noisy, less imposing.
“Hi, Mom, how are you?”
The old lady huddled in an armchair by the window, unaware of there being anyone else in the room, kept on staring at a tree in the grounds.
“How has your week been?”
Faustina knew perfectly well that her mother wouldn’t answer, but she acted as if everything was normal. What else could she do? Sit down and say nothing? In that case, she might as well not come.
Standing in front of her mother, Faustina started on her weekly report; her babbling was typical Faustina—cheeky and comical—but her unusually gentle voice and overarticulation showed that she was knowingly putting on an act. In this way, she announced her decision to marry Patrick Breton-Mollignon.
The old lady, who had a permanent smile on her face, wasn’t listening or looking at her.
“I’m telling you I’m getting married and you’re not reacting?”
She looked closely at the worn face and felt that if she insisted, she would start feeling sorry for herself, a woman announcing her wedding to a mother who was indifferent.
Faustina dragged a chair to the window and sat down opposite her. “Shall we sing something?”
The Alzheimer’s had deleted most of the patient’s memories: her daughter, her husband, her brothers, her sister, her parents. It would have been easy to say that she was just a vegetable if it wasn’t for the fact that singing sometimes, fleetingly, still linked her to humanity.
Faustina hummed:
Quand il me prend dans ses bras,
Il me parle tout bas,
Je vois la vie en rose . . .1
The worn eyelids, the lashes covered in pollen dust, reacted a little. Her mother sensed the presence of music. Faustina continued, and little by little the old lady started to mumble, venturing a word here, a sentence there, like a traveler hesitant to board a train.
Faustina finished the song then started singing La Mer. The patient immediately joined in.
La mer
Qu’on voit danser le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d’argent
La mer
Bergère d’azur infinie.2
As they uttered these lines, Faustina had the impression that her mother’s expression somehow underlined the words, her eyes seeming to say, “You hear that? That’s so refined,” just as she had in the past.
They yelled out the end together. Faustina was pleased. Since her mother had always loved singing, she felt as if she’d entertained her.
She was about to leave when the old lady, of her own accord, started a new song:
C’était un gamin, un gosse de Paris,
Pour famille il n’avait qu’sa mère
Une pauvre fille aux grands yeux rougis
Par les chagrins et la misère . . .3
The frail voice, as thin as her fingers, was droning out an old tune, Les Roses blanches.
Faustina dreaded this song so much, she stiffened. When she had heard it in the past, coming from her beloved mother’s mouth, at an age when her soul was totally unaware of mockery and cynicism, she had cried, saddened by the pathetic tale. Ever since, whenever she heard it, a strange phenomenon would take place: although she heard it with the ears of the present, her heart was still the heart she’d had in the past.
C’est aujourd’hui dimanche, tiens ma jolie maman,
Voici des roses blanches, toi qui les aimes tant.
Va quand je serai grand, j’achèterai au marchand
Toutes ses roses blanches, pour toi jolie maman.4
In spite of herself, she was touched by the words, which took her back to a time of love and innocence. She turned away and bit her lip. She found this emotion unbearable, because the pain of it brought a dead woman back to life, another Faustina, a Faustina of yesteryear, a Faustina who no longer existed or who was slumbering beneath layers of cruel, humiliating, hurtful experiences. Should this Faustina be awakened?
Au printemps dernier, le destin brutal,
Vint frapper la blonde ouvrière.
Elle tomba malade et pour l’hôpital,
Le gamin vit partir sa mère.5
Faustina was shaking . . . Had she been right to become hardened? The present-day Faustina would laugh out loud at this melodrama, find it totally stupid and idiotic. But the child she had been was reborn with this song, and made her realize the defensiveness in her sarcasm, the distress concealed beneath her insensitive self-confidence. What if she was wrong? Wouldn’t it be better to accept her feelings?
Puis à l’hôpital il vint en courant,
Pour offrir les fleurs à sa mère
Mais en la voyant, une infirmière
Tout bas lui dit, “Tu n’as plus de maman.”6
Faustina looked at her mother. Was she aware of what she was singing? The words followed phonetically, correctly, like pure music, but did they still have a meaning?
The old woman’s voice, reduced to a thread, quavered. Her eyes with their dull corneas reddened. Yes, she knew what she was saying . . .
Et le gamin s’agenouillant dit,
Devant le petit lit blanc:
“C’est aujourd’hui dimanche, tiens ma jolie maman,
Voici des roses blanches, toi qui les aimais tant.
Et quand tu t’en iras, au grand jardin là-bas,
Toutes ces roses blanches, tu les emporteras.”7
The old woman ended her song looking into her daughter’s eyes, holding her hands in hers. Faustina was smiling and crying. From the confused place where her consciousness had lost its way, her mother was sending her a message: “I know you’re my child, and that you bring me white roses; your visits are all I have left; thank you for these beautiful recollections of you: I’ll take them with me when I die.”
When the nurse who came to fetch her saw Faustina so transfigured, so blissfully happy, and at the same time so desperately unhappy, she was moved. “You’re a good daughter, you know. If only everybody was like you . . . ”
Faustina got back to her apartment to find Patrick waiting for her, a diary in his hand: he wanted to fix a date for the wedding.
It was becoming concrete now. They agreed on September 4th, and Faustina danced around the room, delighted. Flattered as he was by her joy, Patrick tried to moderate her fervor. “Don’t get too excited, organizing a wedding is exhausting.”
“How do you know, Bluebeard? From experience?” She indicated the desk, where Patrick’s computer was blinking, besieged by urgent messages. “You get on with work, Mr. Editor-in-Chief. Meanwhile, I’ll tell a few girlfriends.”
He sat down, and she went into her bedroom. As she was about to share her joy with her girlfriends, a message stopped her in her tracks.
Congratulations, my little bitch. I hear you’ve got your claws on a large morsel (I’m referring to the position, of course). Dany.
Her cheeks burning, she replied, cheerfully:
Thanks for your congratulations. I accept them.
A few seconds later, another message arrived.
I love married women. Especially frustrated ones, which is going to be your case.
She keyed in a response. I intend to be free.
Free for what?
Free to do whatever I like.
Like screwing me, for instance?
She bit her lip, took a furtive look around, and replied, Why not?
She waited anxiously for a new message to appear. It took a full minute to arrive.
As I said, I love married women. They’re the worst kind of bitches.
I wouldn’t know. I’ve never cheated on a husband.
Meet me at the Blue Moon in twenty minutes.
She burst out laughing. What a cheek! He really had gall, did Dany. Why was it they’d broken up?
OK.
She quickly changed her underwear, slipped a bottle of perfume into her bag, and went into the living room.
Facing the window that looked out on the noisy, excited parrots, Patrick was working, hunched over his computer, the very image of the conscientious workaholic.
“Will you be much longer, darling?”
Without looking up, he muttered, “Another two hours at least.”
He could have looked up at me. I’m not a servant. Honestly, if he’d looked up, I might not have gone.
“Then I might as well go out and run some errands.” She ran to him and stroked his shoulder. “I love you, darling.”
At this, he looked up. At last! He screwed up his eyes, grabbed her hand, and said solemnly, “I’m a happy man.”
She nodded, dying to laugh but managing to restrain herself. “You are, darling, you are. You’re the happiest of all of us.”
8
When the bus charged onto Place d’Arezzo, like a marble launched at high speed, Mademoiselle Beauvert huddled in her seat, hand over her face, heart pounding. Would she be able to see without being seen?
She had taken public transportation just so that she could get a glimpse of her old apartment, and revisit her native neighborhood. Fortunately, there were only two passengers on the bus—herself and a woman asleep in the back row—so there was nobody to be surprised by her unusual behavior.
Peering through her fingers as the bus drove around the circular garden, Mademoiselle Beauvert saw the Bidermann town house, outside which photographers idled, smoking, hoping to snatch a furtive shot. She then tried to catch a glimpse of the Couvignys, either the father or the children, to see how grief had transformed them. But in vain! When they drove past her own building, she quickly turned away on seeing Marcelle’s huge form taking out the garbage pails. As she did so, she discovered on the other side, under the trees, the council gardener, a dwarf, and a little girl playing bowls. What a nerve! she thought. So our taxes go on their amusements. No sooner had she formulated that thought than she came up with two counterarguments: firstly, she was venting her own bitterness because she found it intolerable that anyone should be happy without her; secondly, the municipal gardener was a handsome man. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?
In a cacophony of trembling steel, the bus fled Place d’Arezzo and continued on its way, plunging into darker neighborhoods with gray, smoky façades.
Mademoiselle Beauvert waited a while, then sat up straight. One more change of buses and she’d be home! Having mastered the bus, streetcar, and subway routes, she had become the queen of connections, her brain superimposing maps without difficulty and devising the most ingenious journeys. Her recent poverty offered her so many new activities that she had no time for boredom. Traveling for a few cents and eating for three euros stimulated her mind. Each day brought her incredible challenges: doing her hair by herself, dyeing it herself, looking spruce without a makeup budget, making sure her clothes were clean without expensive dry cleaning, economizing on water, gas, electricity. Her obsession with numbers was still with her, but this time they no longer corresponded to casino chips or roulette pockets but were written down in the small notepad she always had with her and in which she gathered sums, subtractions, rules of three, as well as ideas for improving her daily life without increasing her bills. Sometimes, she felt a kind of intoxication in discovering ways to save, an intoxication that recalled the ecstasies of the past; as she had before, she was savoring the joy of the struggle, not against chance now, but against necessity.
Mademoiselle Beauvert got off at her stop, in Madou.
Madou! If anyone had told me in the old days . . . But she wasn’t complaining, she was enjoying it. For decades, she had imagined Madou as a complete abstraction, a non-place she certainly had no wish to get to know. First of all, what language was the name of that shabby Brussels neighborhood? “Madou” was neither Flemish nor French . . . And it was nothing but a cluster of streets down which no normal person would have a reason to walk. Why would the Ixelles middle classes do their shopping in a Turkish grocery or a North African supermarket? And now Mademoiselle Beauvert was living in this maze, finding her bearings, and delighting every day in her new habits.
This wasn’t a decline, it was a rebirth. For as long as she had everything, she hadn’t realized the value of anything. Nowadays, the purchase of any item led to a debate. Did she really need it? Could she find something cheaper? What would she have to cut back on in order to afford it? So, for example, a bath mat made of synthetic fur with a white rubber base had occupied her thoughts for several days. It was ugly, true, but it cost only a few euros and, being nonskid, would stop her from slipping on the wet tiled floor of her tiny shower. Of course it wouldn’t be an object of admirat
ion if anyone visited her apartment, but firstly, she never invited anyone, secondly, she had nothing worth showing visitors, and finally, breaking her hips was beyond her means. She had been ecstatic when she bought that blue mat at the Sezer minimarket and now would gaze in satisfaction at it not only whenever she washed herself, but sometimes even during the day, for the sheer pleasure of it, the way you say hello to the household pet standing behind the door.
She walked into No. 5 Rue Bakmir, down the green and yellow corridor, across the courtyard, and into her studio apartment. Her few square feet enclosed her bedroom, dining room, and kitchen. Soon, as promised, the carpenter from No. 9 would give her his leftover paint, which she intended to use to rid her walls of the marks of posters and prints that previous tenants had hung on them.
When he heard the lock, Copernicus woke, shook himself, and cried excitedly, “Hello, Madame, hello!”
“Hello, Copernicus, dear.”
Besides her clothes, the parrot and his cage were the only survivors of the bailiffs’ raid. Like his mistress, the bird didn’t seem to be suffering too much from the move, and enjoyed spending more time with her.
Mademoiselle Beauvert unbolted the cage and freed the macaw, who rubbed himself against her. She stroked his beak, tail and belly. He welcomed her attention with wild, feverish, passionate joy, and a kind of melodious cooing emerged from his throat.
“We’re happy here, Copernicus, aren’t we?”
In reply, he nibbled her arm affectionately.
With the bird on her shoulder, she sat on her narrow bed and thought about the trip she had just taken. What was the point? Why go back there? Actually, it hadn’t had much effect on her. She hadn’t felt the least bit homesick, or been sorry she had left. Of course, it was nicer, a thousand times nicer than here. But those years on Place d’Arezzo were marked by her chronic sickness, her gambling frenzy, her night escapades, her secret weekend expeditions. She had spent far more energy fleeing her large apartment on the square with the parrots than living in it.