‘Shall I bring your walking frame?’ asked Manelle, even though she already knew the answer.
‘He’s my walking frame,’ replied Hélène Fournier, gazing fondly at the love of her life who edged around the bed to offer her the support of his arm, as he did every morning.
Manelle bustled around making breakfast and soon the smell of toast filled the kitchen. She loved to start the day helping this delightful couple. Hélène Fournier was a resolute optimist. ‘Fifty-eight years ago, we vowed for better or for worse, and even when it seems that all that’s left is the worst, you can still find a little of the best,’ she’d say. ‘You just have to make the effort.’ The couple stayed afloat by clinging to each other. She was the head, he the feet, a wobbly tandem that got through the days, come what may. Hélène spoke for both of them, read, watched TV, concocted tasty little dishes, managed their affairs, kept the household accounts – all things which her reduced mobility in no way prevented her from doing. Meanwhile, Aimé dozed most of the time, despite his wife’s great efforts to keep him awake by asking him to do countless little jobs for her during the day. Go and fetch some potatoes from the pantry. Put the cheque book back in the desk drawer. Bring her book from the bedside table. Bring her a comb from the bathroom. Help her to go to the toilet. Come and give her a kiss. ‘It’s for his own good,’ she told Manelle. ‘His body’s still fine, you know, it’s his head that’s gone. He’d sleep all day long if I let him, and one day he just wouldn’t wake up again,’ she added on a serious note. Manelle put the two pill dispensers in front of Hélène, who flipped up the lids of the Thursday compartments with her thumb. ‘The daily pill dispenser is the old person’s diary,’ she said as she aligned the four morning tablets on the tablecloth in front of her Aimé, enumerating them: ‘The blue one for your blood pressure, the purple one for your cholesterol, the green one for your circulation and the yellow one for your urea. You just need an orange, an indigo and a red one and you’ll have all the colours of the rainbow, my poor darling,’ she remarked sadly. She meanwhile was entitled to three pills which she washed down with a big gulp of café au lait. She spread a piece of toast with redcurrant jelly and slid it in front of her husband. Manelle took advantage of the ten minutes that breakfast lasted to make the beds and air the bedroom. Ten minutes during which the kitchen was filled with the sounds of slurping and chewing made by the Fourniers avidly bolting down their slices of toast.
Before going into the bathroom, Hélène carefully selected the clothes they would wear that day. For her and for Aimé. A ritual Manelle threw herself into with the joy of a little girl dressing up her dolls. If the old woman took pride in her appearance, it was also, and above all, part of her determination not to let herself go. Letting oneself go was the enemy. ‘A stealthy foe that soon takes over if you’re not careful,’ she told Manelle one morning. ‘You start by getting your hair done less often, you stop wearing make-up, you forget to cut your nails, you stop plucking your eyebrows and you end up looking like nothing on earth.’ She, Hélène Fournier, had seen friends who had let go one fine day and slid into neglect without realizing it, before disappearing altogether. While Aimé took himself into the living room to slump in his armchair and have his first snooze of the day, Manelle flung open the wardrobe doors in front of Hélène, who concentrated hard. Shelves and rail on the right, her clothes; shelves and rail on the left, her husband’s. Side by side, like the beds.
‘I’ll wear the blue blouse, the floral one, it’s going to be warm today. With the beige trousers.’
‘Do you want the light blue silk scarf as well?’ suggested Manelle.
‘No, it’ll be too tone-on-tone with the blouse. Take the orange one instead. And for Aimé, give him a pair of jeans. I know he doesn’t like them, but they make him look younger. They’ll be perfect with the white shirt. And give him the grey waistcoat, he’s always cold.’
When everything was laid out, Hélène sent Manelle to fetch Aimé to wash and dress him. The vast walk-in shower installed at great expense when the old lady saw that the condition of her legs was deteriorating awaited them. The Fourniers took their shower together, Hélène sitting on the folding seat and Aimé standing beside her. They soaped each other, caressing with the washcloths each other’s bodies which they knew inside out, splashing, shampooing, laughing sometimes. When Aimé had finished, Manelle came back into the bathroom to dress Hélène. Despite her experience, she always struggled with putting on the flesh-coloured elastic support socks. She said to herself that the guy who invented them must never have had to put them on a granny aged over eighty with ankles as stiff as a board and calves as fat as thighs. Ten minutes later, primped and made up as if for her first dance, Hélène Fournier came out on Manelle’s arm, ready to attack a new day. From the sitting room came the sound of Aimé’s heavy snoring, from the vast depths of his weary spirit, before his loving wife brought him back to life asking him to bring her a litre of milk from the pantry, or the TV magazine open at the crossword page.
14
Ambroise recoiled slightly on coming across the fluffy ginger ball nestling between the calves of the deceased and glowering at him. When anyone tried to move the one-eyed cat from its place, it dug its claws into the dead man’s pyjamas. Ambroise had to chase the creature with a broom and clap his hands to get it to leave the room. The tomcat fled to the kitchen, spitting and hissing, and then vanished into the garden through the half-open French window. None of the family members present wanted to take in the mangy tom who was over sixteen years old. As often happened, the death of the master had sealed the fate of the cat. An appointment had already been made with the local vet to give him an injection the day after the funeral. Ambroise slipped on his overalls and got down to the task in hand. It took him less than an hour and a quarter to treat the body. After giving the sparse hair a final once-over with a comb, he put away his equipment, removed his gloves, mask and overalls, loaded the car and took his leave. That evening, the theatre company was performing. Just time to have a quick shower and bolt down the food that Beth was bound to have waiting for him, then he’d head off to the village where the show was taking place. Must remember to refill the vanity case with bottles of make-up remover. He was just thinking about that when the thing sprang out from between his feet as he stopped at a red light. The tomcat gave a hoarse mew, soon drowned out by Ambroise’s yells when the animal started climbing up his right leg, digging its claws in through his trousers. He grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck and pulled it off his calf, then threw it onto the floor mat on the passenger side. Huddled up, its ears lying back, the creature stared at him with its one eye. Its ginger fur was striped with battle scars. A long gash ran from its left ear to its nose in a mocking grin. Its tail, which was missing a third, made its scraggy body look unbalanced. Its dull, matted fur did not make you want to stroke it. A veteran fighter who must have taken part in all the neighbourhood battles, reckoned Ambroise. He didn’t know what to do. Take it back to where it had come from? The tom hadn’t survived so many fights to end up in the hands of a man in a white coat who was going to inject him with a one-way ticket to join his master. Abandon it by throwing it out of the car and letting fate take care of it? He would never forgive himself. Honking from the car behind him jolted Ambroise back into the moment. He parked his van by the roadside and, without really thinking, grabbed one of the cases and started emptying it of its contents. He put on several pairs of gloves, armed himself with courage, grabbed the cat and stuffed it into the case, then hastily fastened the leather flaps. Oblivious to the persistent caterwauling coming from the case, Ambroise set off again and stopped at the first supermarket he came to. He stood staring at the cat food section for ages without being able to make up his mind. The five metres of shelving, two metres high, offered an infinite variety of tinned and dry food. Chicken, beef, vegetable, fish flavoured, in chunks, or pâté. He finally decided on biscuits. The pictures of cats on the packaging all outdid each other in beauty
. Precious faces of competition animals, stars with fur that you wanted to plunge your hand into, fur that was a far cry from the specimen that he had just taken into his care. Each packet had its type of cat. Sterilized, kittens, tubby, indoor. No one-eyed moth-eaten toms. He picked up the bag of biscuits recommended for elderly cats. Ambroise chucked into the trolley the first cat tray within reach, added two bags of superabsorbent, wood-scented litter and headed for the checkout.
Twenty minutes later, he opened the door of the apartment and immediately released the cat from its makeshift jail. As he feared, the welcome Beth gave the tom took the form of a firm and definitive pronouncement that must have resonated throughout the building.
‘No animals under my roof!’
‘But I thought it was dogs you didn’t like,’ retorted Ambroise.
‘The two aren’t mutually exclusive, Ambroise Larnier.’
When Beth called him by his full name, it did not bode well.
‘Besides, have you seen the evil look in its eye? And its sly grin?’
‘You can see that’s a scar.’
‘Scar maybe, but in any case, he really is an ugly old thing.’
‘Haven’t you always told me not to judge people by their looks, Nana?’
‘Admit that your wounded soldier doesn’t exactly make you want to stroke him. And stop calling me Nana, you know I hate that.’
‘Just for a few days, please, just a few days, till I find a solution.’
‘I don’t see what solution you’ll be able to find with its face. Look at its fur! Never seen a mog like it.’
Completely oblivious to this argument even though it was of the utmost relevance to him, the mog in question was polishing off the plate of cat food that Ambroise had put down for him on arrival. He set up the litter tray in the passage under Beth’s disapproving eye, took the time to wash his instruments and dived into the shower. Beth ambushed him as he came out.
‘What’s more, I wouldn’t be surprised if the mangy fur of that animal of yours isn’t ridden with fleas!’
‘One, it’s not my animal. It’s hardly my fault if the cat preferred my car and freedom to the lethal jab at the vet’s. Two, first thing tomorrow I’ll run out and buy the best anti-flea treatment, I promise.’
‘And he’d better not try to mark his territory by spraying his pee all over the place. I wouldn’t survive that and nor would he!’
‘Listen, Beth, we’ll talk about it tomorrow. I’ve got to run, they’re relying on me and I don’t want to be late. I won’t be back before one o’clock in the morning. A far breton or a kouign-amann?’ asked Ambroise, grabbing the still-warm plate covered in aluminium foil.
‘An apple tart, that’s all you deserve.’
He kissed Beth, who was grumpier than ever, and left the old woman and the tom glaring at each other in silent confrontation.
15
That morning, there was no ‘my little turtle dove’ or ‘my Tinker Bell’ to greet Manelle’s arrival. She found Samuel slumped listlessly on a chair in the kitchen, his gaze absent. In front of him was a large blue envelope and on top of it the result of his tests. Grams and milligrams per litre, percentages, units, graphs, coloured curves. On the table were spread various images of his brain. On several of the scans, you could see a lighter patch like the eye of a cyclone in the midst of the grey. Without being a specialist, you could immediately see that the ugly patch had no business being there, that it was a blot on the landscape. Manelle gently moved the envelope aside and grasped the old man’s hands. For nearly ten minutes, she comforted him, explaining that all this didn’t tell them much, that he should wait to see the specialist to find out what it really meant. Samuel told her about the pain that was now permanently locked up inside his skull. How, even at night, he knew it was there, crouching behind his forehead, hiding, waiting for the daylight to strike his retinas before unfurling anew. He told her how the horrible MRI tunnel had completely swallowed up his body and then, on leaving the examination, the words of the man in white, all those words he hadn’t understood and had got muddled up in his head. Manelle pictured the old man coming out of the ordeal distressed and confused, clutching his blue envelope, getting into the patient transport ambulance to be taken home. ‘When do you have to go back and see the neurologist?’ she asked.
‘Monday afternoon, at three o’clock. I’ve got to order hospital transport,’ added the old man in a flat voice.
‘I’ll take you,’ said Manelle in a tone that brooked no argument. And as she tidied away the documents, she glimpsed the words in bold across the bottom of the page, like a death sentence: glioblastoma multiforme.
16
The key to the funeral parlour was under the flower pot on the window ledge, on the courtyard side, as the receptionist had told him over the telephone. The woman had informed him that the deceased’s daughters would be bringing his clothes over at around two o’clock. ‘Pacemaker to be removed,’ she added, before hanging up. Another one who used words sparingly, thought Ambroise with a smile. He let himself in and went over to the cold store. The deceased was in the second compartment. He slid out the drawer, opened the body bag and checked the man’s identity against the label on the door of the compartment. Serge Condrieux, aged seventy-nine. Died in his sleep during the night. Death often had the annoying habit of draining people’s faces then filling them out and refashioning them as it pleased. In Serge Condrieux’s case, it hadn’t had the time. His face was peaceful, with no sign of suffering. The illusion of a lovely death, as if it were possible for a death of any kind to be lovely. Ambroise transferred the body to the trolley and wheeled him into the treatment room. As he broke the rigor mortis, he read the history of the body in the scars life had left on the flesh. Above the groin, an old appendicectomy scar. At the base of the neck, the barely visible traces of thyroid surgery. The characteristic imprint of a BCG vaccination at the top of the left arm. The little finger on his right hand was missing, leaving only a pinkish stump, a vestige of an accident. To the touch, Ambroise could feel the callouses on the palms even through his gloves. A manual worker’s hands, he guessed. A tanned complexion and deep wrinkles spoke of a life spent outdoors. The bulge under the skin beneath the left collarbone indicated the position of the pacemaker. Ambroise made an incision in the skin in order to remove the device. He put it with the three others stored in the plastic box which he emptied once a week into a special collection bin. No pacemakers in the afterlife, that was the rule. Whether it was heaven or hell, cremation or burial, lithium batteries had no place there.
The sound of footsteps echoed through the funeral home. Ambroise put down his instruments for a moment to go and greet the two middle-aged women walking down the corridor. Although tired, their faces didn’t yet bear signs of grief. In the hours following the death, action sometimes prevented the family from thinking about the emptiness of loss. Informing the relatives, dealing with the funeral arrangements, and organizing the day and the time of the funeral with the priest were all things that needed to be done and which delayed the onset of tears for a while. As they handed him the clothes, he reassured them, saying that he would take the greatest care of their father’s body. The one who seemed to be the younger of the two spoke.
‘We would very much like him to wear this,’ she said, taking a red plastic ball from her pocket.
Perplexed, Ambroise stared at the object the size of an apricot that the woman had just slipped into his hand. It was only when her sister showed him the photo that he understood. The man was portrayed in full clown costume. A tiny pink hat, eyes and mouth outlined in white, giant bow tie, multi-coloured suit and outsize yellow shoes, not forgetting the vital red nose. Then they began to talk, telling him how when they were little, every Christmas, their father would bring the presents disguised not as Santa Claus, but as a clown, a crazy clown who made them laugh till they cried. He had kept up that joyous tradition ever since, Christmas after Christmas, with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
improving his performance each year, egged on by the kids’ excited shrieks, and the entire family called him Grandpa Clown. Ambroise listened to them pouring out their hearts, reminiscing between tears and laughter.
‘We’d really like to see him with his red nose, you see,’ the older sister concluded.
‘What about his clothes?’ ventured Ambroise. ‘Wouldn’t you like to see him dressed in his clown suit and made up like in your photo?’
‘We didn’t think it was possible,’ the deceased’s daughters chorused enthusiastically. ‘We’ve got his costume in the car. We wanted to put it in the coffin with him but if you could dress him in it and make him up, that would be wonderful,’ added the younger one.
The eldest sister was already coming back with the clown suit and accessories. Ambroise took them from her, reassured the two women one last time and invited them to come back after an hour or so, the time it would take him to finish off and dress their father. As soon as he had completed the germicidal treatment, Ambroise made the last sutures and washed the body before dressing it. He placed the bib over the vest, slid the deceased’s legs into the too-short and abnormally wide trousers, rolled on the striped socks that came to the top of his calves, laced up the shoes that gaped at the toes, raised the dead man’s torso while he clipped on the braces and eased him into the multi-coloured spotted jacket. Getting his hands into the white gloves was a struggle. Then Ambroise took out the cosmetics bag and, aided by the photo, made up the dead man’s face. He used the round brush to apply the rouge, the sponge to outline the mouth and eyes in white, pencilled in false black eyebrows, and redefined the lips, stretching them into a merry grin. He clamped the orange wig onto the head, tied the enormous bow tie around his neck, slipped the big plastic daisy into the jacket buttonhole and plonked the little pink hat on the chest, next to the folded hands. Then, Ambroise gently held the red plastic ball between his thumb and forefinger and put it on the nose of Serge Condrieux, alias Grandpa Clown. The result was striking. He folded up the body bag, arranged the velvet drape around the corpse, slid the cushion under the deceased’s head and wheeled the trolley into the funeral parlour. He put the frame and the photo on the pedestal table to the right of the dead man. Never had the place witnessed such a riot of colours. Contrasting with the surrounding half-darkness, the clown seemed to glow from within. Ambroise changed into his suit and went to fetch the deceased’s daughters. They were unable to hold back their tears on seeing their father in his luminous costume. Tears which Ambroise welcomed as the reward for a job well done. The two women thanked him profusely. ‘It’s the image we wanted to remember him by, you understand,’ explained the eldest. ‘A beautiful image,’ agreed Ambroise. Before he left, he gazed at the dead man one last time. A dead man who was entering the hereafter with a great big smile.
The Rest of Their Lives Page 5
