Read Online The Woman With the Bouquet by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
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overwhelmed her.
“Oh, I was not ready to become Guillaume’s mother! Not for a second—I loved him so much, so passionately. I became resolved therefore to act ‘as if.’”
She swallowed. Telling me must be as painful as it had been to do it.
“One morning, I informed him that I had to take him back to where I had found him several years earlier, in the dunes. He understood right away. He refused, he begged me to wait. He cried, dragging himself along the ground. I stood fast. We went to the place where he had first appeared to me, we spread some blankets in the sand, and there, despite the damp, dreary weather, we had our last embrace. And, for the first time, without resorting to our book of pleasures. It would be impossible to say whether it was enjoyable; it was savage, furious, disenchanted. Then I handed him a drink where I had placed a sleeping tablet.
“By his naked body, fast asleep, as similar to a sculpture as on the first day, I picked up his clothes, put them into my basket with the blankets, then I took out the Dictaphone that I had stolen from him.
“Above his long legs shivering with cold, my gaze wandering over his muscular rump, his tanned back, his hair curling over his long neck, I recorded my farewell message: ‘Guillaume, it was I who chose your mistresses; it is you who will choose your wife. I want to leave you the right to decide on your own how much you will miss me. Either you will suffer so much from our separation that you will choose someone completely the opposite from me, to erase any trace of me, or you will want to make me a part of your future and you will choose a woman who resembles me. I don’t know what will happen, my love, I just know I won’t like it but that it’s necessary. I beg you, we must not see each other under any circumstances. You must act as if Ostend were at the other end of the planet, inaccessible. Don’t torture me with hope. I will never open my door to you again, I will hang up if you call me, I will tear up the letters you send me. We are going to have to suffer the way we burned, terribly, inordinately. I will keep nothing to remind me of you. This evening, I shall destroy everything. What does it matter, no one can take my memories. I love you, our separation changes none of that. Thanks to you my life has meaning. Farewell.’ I dashed away. When I got to the house, I informed his aide-de-camp so that he would go to fetch him along the coast before nightfall, and then I threw our letters and photographs into the fire.”
She grew thoughtful, then continued, “No, that’s not entirely true. At the decisive moment, I refrained from throwing away his gloves. You see, he had such hands . . .”
Her gnarled old fingers caressed an absent hand.
“The next day, I sent one of the gloves to him, and put the other away in my drawer. A glove is like a memory. A glove keeps the shape of the body, the way memory keeps the shape of reality; a glove lives as far from flesh as memory does from vanished time. A glove is woven with nostalgia . . .”
She fell silent.
Her story had taken me so far away that I did not want to interrupt it with banal words.
We stayed like that for a moment, in the thickness of time, so small among all the books, in a darkness briefly yellowed by lamplight. Outside, a furious ocean was raging.
And then, I went over to her, took her hand, placed a kiss on it and murmured, “Thank you.”
She smiled to me, terribly moving, like a dying woman asking, “I’ve had a beautiful life, haven’t I?”
I went back up to my bedroom, luxuriating as I stretched out on the bed, where her story fed dreams so strong that in the morning, I almost wondered if I had slept.
At nine thirty, Gerda called to me from the corridor, insisting on serving me breakfast in bed. With a brisk gesture, she drew open the curtains, then set the tray among the quilts.
“Did my aunt tell you her life story, yesterday?”
“She did.”
“And it
“Oh, I was not ready to become Guillaume’s mother! Not for a second—I loved him so much, so passionately. I became resolved therefore to act ‘as if.’”
She swallowed. Telling me must be as painful as it had been to do it.
“One morning, I informed him that I had to take him back to where I had found him several years earlier, in the dunes. He understood right away. He refused, he begged me to wait. He cried, dragging himself along the ground. I stood fast. We went to the place where he had first appeared to me, we spread some blankets in the sand, and there, despite the damp, dreary weather, we had our last embrace. And, for the first time, without resorting to our book of pleasures. It would be impossible to say whether it was enjoyable; it was savage, furious, disenchanted. Then I handed him a drink where I had placed a sleeping tablet.
“By his naked body, fast asleep, as similar to a sculpture as on the first day, I picked up his clothes, put them into my basket with the blankets, then I took out the Dictaphone that I had stolen from him.
“Above his long legs shivering with cold, my gaze wandering over his muscular rump, his tanned back, his hair curling over his long neck, I recorded my farewell message: ‘Guillaume, it was I who chose your mistresses; it is you who will choose your wife. I want to leave you the right to decide on your own how much you will miss me. Either you will suffer so much from our separation that you will choose someone completely the opposite from me, to erase any trace of me, or you will want to make me a part of your future and you will choose a woman who resembles me. I don’t know what will happen, my love, I just know I won’t like it but that it’s necessary. I beg you, we must not see each other under any circumstances. You must act as if Ostend were at the other end of the planet, inaccessible. Don’t torture me with hope. I will never open my door to you again, I will hang up if you call me, I will tear up the letters you send me. We are going to have to suffer the way we burned, terribly, inordinately. I will keep nothing to remind me of you. This evening, I shall destroy everything. What does it matter, no one can take my memories. I love you, our separation changes none of that. Thanks to you my life has meaning. Farewell.’ I dashed away. When I got to the house, I informed his aide-de-camp so that he would go to fetch him along the coast before nightfall, and then I threw our letters and photographs into the fire.”
She grew thoughtful, then continued, “No, that’s not entirely true. At the decisive moment, I refrained from throwing away his gloves. You see, he had such hands . . .”
Her gnarled old fingers caressed an absent hand.
“The next day, I sent one of the gloves to him, and put the other away in my drawer. A glove is like a memory. A glove keeps the shape of the body, the way memory keeps the shape of reality; a glove lives as far from flesh as memory does from vanished time. A glove is woven with nostalgia . . .”
She fell silent.
Her story had taken me so far away that I did not want to interrupt it with banal words.
We stayed like that for a moment, in the thickness of time, so small among all the books, in a darkness briefly yellowed by lamplight. Outside, a furious ocean was raging.
And then, I went over to her, took her hand, placed a kiss on it and murmured, “Thank you.”
She smiled to me, terribly moving, like a dying woman asking, “I’ve had a beautiful life, haven’t I?”
I went back up to my bedroom, luxuriating as I stretched out on the bed, where her story fed dreams so strong that in the morning, I almost wondered if I had slept.
At nine thirty, Gerda called to me from the corridor, insisting on serving me breakfast in bed. With a brisk gesture, she drew open the curtains, then set the tray among the quilts.
“Did my aunt tell you her life story, yesterday?”
“She did.”
“And it
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