Right arm Monday, fun day
Left leg Tuesday, good news day
Right buttock Wednesday, friends’ day
Left arm Thursday, the worst day
Right leg Friday, don’t cry day
Left buttock Saturday, natter day,
And last is Sunday, stomach day!
One Sunday evening, his grandmother had asked him to perform the operation from beginning to end. Aged all of twelve, utterly focused and without trembling, he had pushed the needle into Beth’s abdomen, surprised to feel the ease with which the needle went into the soft flesh. ‘Not bad at all. You do it a lot better than I do,’ she’d congratulated him, ruffling his hair. She’d left him to dispose of the needle in the plastic box. ‘Never forget to do that, Ambroise,’ she liked to remind him. ‘A needle left lying around always finds a finger to prick.’
When he had come to live with her almost ten years later, she found it natural to entrust him with this daily task. So, every evening, with the same tenderness, even though he’d repeated those gestures a thousand times, Ambroise administered the old woman’s dose of insulin.
‘You’re my favourite junkie,’ he’d tease, pulling Beth’s skirt back down.
‘If only you would bring one of them home,’ she sighed as Ambroise put the kit away.
‘A junkie?’ he asked, even though he knew very well what Beth meant.
‘No, you idiot. One of your “living”, as you call them.’
‘The last one I brought home fell in love with your kouign-amann and she’d have ended up obese if we’d stayed together,’ replied Ambroise. ‘I left her for her own good. Don’t wait up for me,’ he added, ‘I won’t be back before two or three o’clock in the morning. I’m not working tomorrow and it’ll do me good to hang out with young people. I can’t stand living with an old woman any more,’ he went on, planting a kiss on Beth’s forehead as he walked past, while she gave him her prize pout as she placed the dish containing the far breton in his hands.
20
The parish hall where the company was performing was thirty minutes away. Ambroise parked his car in the adjacent car park and took the little case from behind the passenger seat. Even though the make-up products used for the living were absolutely identical to those he used for his habitual patients, he had still bought duplicate supplies of all the products and a vanity case to put them in covered in a brightly coloured fabric, very different from the dark leather of his embalmer’s cases. And if he was missing a blusher, a jar of gel or rice powder, it would never have occurred to him to go and borrow the missing item from the cosmetics bag of the dead. It was a rule he never broke. He would not mix the two worlds between which he constantly oscillated, even though for him, the one couldn’t exist without the other. He went over to Jean-Louis, the director, who was smoking a cigarette in the car park with Xavier and Sandrine, two of the actors.
‘How is it?’ asked Ambroise as he greeted them all with kisses.
‘Five-star luxury, my lord,’ replied the director. ‘Toilets the size of Versailles where you’ll be able to powder and primp these ladies and gentlemen without being cramped. You even have a wall mirror. The actors find the stage a little small, but you know what they’re like, never satisfied,’ he joked, clapping Xavier on the back.
The company never really knew what kind of theatre they would be performing in. A church hall, like this evening, a cinema, a gym, a library, a covered school playground or, more rarely, a real theatre. Adjusting to the venue and transforming it as far as was possible was the challenge every time. Exactly as for a home procedure, thought Ambroise. A body lying on the floor of a tiny bedroom, a deceased person lying on an old door on trestles in the middle of a garage, a family that categorically refuses to leave the room during the process, relatives even more silent than the body, others who won’t stop talking, not to mention the general condition of the body which often brings its share of surprises – there was never a dull day for the embalmer. Ambroise walked into the hall where stagehands and actors were rushing around. He shook hands, kissed cheeks and gave hugs. Whenever he was with the living, he had the pleasurable feeling of belonging to a lovely big family whose members came from all different walks of life. Jean-Louis was a dentist, Xavier a teacher, Sandrine worked in a supermarket, Yves was a painter, Louise a lifeguard, Mireille a secretary. And so on with all the fifteen enthusiasts who made up the amateur dramatics company.
Ambroise had discovered them two years earlier through an ad by the reception desk at his hair salon. The Fountain Players amateur theatre company are looking for a volunteer make-up girl for their forthcoming season and longer if the fit is right. GSOH essential. Even though he was the wrong gender, the GSOH had decided him to try his luck. They’d taken to him immediately. Especially the women, who were only too happy to put their faces in the hands of this cute young Apollo who wielded brushes, eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick like a real pro.
‘Larnier? Are you related to the Nobel laureate?’ they’d asked him the first evening.
‘Vaguely,’ he’d replied evasively. ‘He’s a very distant relative.’
And it wasn’t long before they asked the question he feared most:
‘What’s your day job?’
Instead of lying, when Ambroise was asked this question he would sometimes use an expression of the Master’s: ‘I spend my days among the dead.’ Or, if he was in a jocular mood, he’d say restorer, which invariably led to a misunderstanding. Here in town? Yes, here and around the region. Which museum? Ah, but I didn’t say I worked for a museum, he would reply. But you said you’re a restorer. Do you restore paintings or what? I sometimes carry out restorations but not in connection with a museum. The conversation could go on for ages. You restore paintings? No, but you’re getting warm, Ambroise would encourage. Furniture? No. Buildings? No closer. A guessing game that he spun out as he pleased, until he uttered the two words which instead of stemming the tide of curiosity, had the effect of unleashing a new avalanche of questions: body restorer. With the amateur dramatics company, he’d had to lie: honesty would have certainly resulted in his being thrown out. It was hard to get people who were about to entrust their faces to your hands to accept that those same hands had been messing around with corpses all day.
‘I work for a company that collects infectious medical waste from hospitals, clinics and labs. Not very exciting but a guy has to make a living.’
Medical waste collector. They’d swallowed the lie easily. Ambroise hadn’t even needed to show them the sunshine yellow bins with clinical waste stickers he kept in his van for disposal of the day’s waste.
Less than an hour before curtain-up, the company was in a flurry of excitement. While the stagehands finished assembling the mobile panels that formed the set, Ambroise was setting up in the toilets. Jean-Louis hadn’t been kidding. They were spacious with a huge wall mirror above the washbasins. He opened the vanity case and laid out the array of brushes and crayons. Louise, who’d just slipped on her costume, was the first to be made up. The company had been touring the new play around the region for nearly three months now, and had a well-oiled routine. Later, Ambroise would sneak into the back of the hall to enjoy the play among the audience. Afterwards, once the scenery had been stashed away in the two vans and the projectors put away in the cases, he would join the others for the post-mortem amid joking and laughter, over a meal of salads, cold meats, cheese and cakes which they’d all brought. But the most intense moment for Ambroise was the one when the actors came one by one to offer him their faces to be made up. Painting the living in the evenings after applying cosmetics to the dead all day was the best way of reminding himself that life could be something other than a succession of dead bodies and grieving families. Seeing moist flesh again, running his hands over warm, supple skin, feeling eyelids fluttering beneath his fingertips, massaging mobile faces and chatting re-energized him. A profusion of life, such a far cry from the silence of inert bodies. As if by chance, six
corpses had passed through his hands that day, and that evening, six living actors were waiting for him in make-up. The perfect balance.
‘I’m knackered,’ gasped Louise, slumping down on the chair. ‘I don’t know what got into the kids today at the pool, but they killed me. I look half dead, what a sight.’
‘No, beauty,’ retorted Ambroise drawing her hair back into a crude bun while he did her make-up. ‘I promise you your face is nothing like that of a corpse,’ he reassured her with a smile.
21
‘Can you pop in for a minute, Ambroise my boy?’
Ambroise smiled. Bourdin’s questions often sounded like commands, and this was a summons to come into the office immediately. And when Roland Bourdin said ‘Ambroise my boy’, he could expect anything. ‘For worse or for worse,’ as Beth would have said. About to leave to go to a client some distance away, Ambroise made a detour via head office. He parked at the rear and went into the vast hangar where the company’s equipment and vehicles were kept, entering via the showroom. The atmosphere was conducive to contemplation and remembrance. Crystal-clear water cascaded gently to the right of the street entrance, its continual burble mingling with the music coming from speakers concealed behind the lushness of an artificial ivy. An army of crucifixes covered the left-hand wall from floor to ceiling. Hanging from the display stand next to the counter, brass inscriptions conveyed their posthumous messages: To my husband, To our uncle, To our grandmother, To our grandfather, To my godson. A bed of artificial wreaths was laid out either side of the central aisle. Ambroise walked past the row of coffins on show in the second room and climbed the stairs to the first-floor office. This was the world of paperwork, accounts, invoices and estimates, light years away from the hushed, orderly world downstairs. There was a smell of reheated coffee and stale tobacco. Everywhere the shelves groaned under the weight of files. Roland Bourdin tore himself away from his computer screen to come and greet him. His daughter Francine acknowledged Ambroise with a brief nod while continuing to tap at her keyboard. Over the years, she’d become the son Bourdin had never had. Short hair, always dressed in shirt and trousers, broad-shouldered, the woman everyone in the funeral world called Francis had consciously cultivated and internalized this masculinity to perfect the gender identity theft desired by her father. Bourdin invited Ambroise to sit down.
‘Coffee? Francine, two coffees, please, dearest. I asked you to come in, Larnier, because there’s no one else I can trust to do this job. Oh, nothing especially complicated. A body to be embalmed and repatriated from Switzerland. Eighty-two years old, less than sixty kilos. Two days for the return journey, plus three days there. Don’t ask me why three days, the client is king, especially when he pays well. The deceased has no family left apart from a twin brother. He’s the one who contacted us. He’ll travel with you, there and back. A nice sum for the firm plus a fat bonus for you, Ambroise my boy. You haven’t taken a single day off for ages. Treat it as a holiday, Larnier. A junket. Four-star hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. And at this time of year the lakeside is quite something. I confess that if I didn’t have to steer the ship, I’d have been tempted to go myself. No need to tell you that we’re offering the client a turnkey service and that everything must be flawless. You leave on Monday.’
Ambroise said to himself that his boss was a master of brevity. A broad grin spread across Roland Bourdin’s craggy face as he leaned towards him. ‘You’ll take the Vito,’ he whispered magnanimously.
The Mercedes Vito, the crowning argument. Roland Bourdin’s pride and joy. The most luxurious hearse in the company’s fleet, with a cold storage compartment for transporting the dead and four proper seats for living passengers.
‘One more thing, you have an appointment tomorrow afternoon with the deceased’s brother. He wants to go over all the details of the trip with you and will pay upfront. It won’t take you more than half an hour. Francine has written down the address and prepared the contract for him to sign.’
As Ambroise set off again, he realized he hadn’t uttered a single word from the moment he’d set foot inside the office until he left. Pressured as he often was by Bourdin, his silence had been taken for tacit agreement. Then he thought of Beth, of her daily insulin jab, how he was going to have to abandon his grandmother for five days. Even though she still had all her marbles, increasingly she would muddle up the days, and sometimes mistake the moment when the sky takes on an evening glow for morning, confusing dusk with dawn. Forgetting an injection could have serious consequences. The Vito had four seats. That was more than were needed. He had made up his mind even before leaving behind the suburbs. Beth would come with him. Bourdin wouldn’t know anything about it. He had often heard his grandmother say she dreamed of seeing the famous Geneva fountain. He was going to make her dream come true. As for the theatre, the next performance wasn’t for another three weeks. And for the cat, Ambroise had a little plan.
22
Fragrant smells greeted Manelle’s nostrils as she went into the apartment. An aromatic bouquet, a subtle blend of rosemary, bay leaves, onions and roast meat, was coming from the kitchen. On the last Thursday of each month, Samuel shared his meal with his home help. A meal he made it a point of honour to cook himself, and which he began several hours, even several days, in advance. When Thursday dawned, the old man was up at daybreak, lining up the utensils, taking the ingredients out of the fridge and laying everything out on the worktop. Then he bustled around amid his pots and pans concocting the dish of the day. Manelle couldn’t resist the temptation to slip into the kitchen and peep inside the casserole dish. On a bed of potatoes, carrots and onions, a joint of meat was simmering over a gentle heat, exposing its golden surface. Manelle didn’t bother to open the fridge. She knew that the Black Forest gateau in a sea of home-made Chantilly cream which always rounded off the monthly dinner date would be there. A dessert that she was convinced must keep Samuel busy for most of Wednesday afternoon and which had probably sapped his little remaining strength.
The disease was progressing rapidly, much too rapidly in Manelle’s view. Each day the beast gained a little more ground, feeding on the old man’s defenceless body. The tumour would gradually empty him of his substance until nothing remained but an emaciated wretch. Almost one month after the visit to the neurologist, he had grown even thinner. He ate less and less and sometimes vomited the little he did manage to swallow when the headaches became unbearable. Above his prominent cheekbones, his sunken eyes had lost the sparkle that used to light up his face. On Monday, Manelle had come across the old man standing stock-still in the middle of the living room, dazed, his eyes vacant, the pain having mercifully given him a moment’s reprieve. A lost creature in the midst of the lull, waiting apprehensively for the return of that insatiable mistress who now shared his life. At the rate things were going, Doctor Gervaise’s prognosis of three months seemed highly optimistic.
‘How’s my little ray of sunshine?’ asked Samuel as Manelle planted a kiss in the hollow of his rough cheek. Despite the illness consuming him, he always worried about how she was. Even if increasingly his cheerful tone was feigned, his concern for her never was, and he took a genuine interest in her welfare. Had she slept well? Was she eating enough? Did she have the time to have fun, go out, see people other than old folk at the end of their lives? She reassured him, gave an evasive ‘Yes, no worries,’ or more often threw the question back at him. She never talked to him of her solitude filled with bland TV dinners, books avidly devoured to savour the words of others, sleepless nights dreaming of being elsewhere. After a workday spent flitting from one home to another, cleaning, tidying, ironing, scrubbing and cooking, once she finished she wanted nothing more than to get home as quickly as possible and flop on her sofabed. Even the thought of going out again was exhausting. As time went by, it felt more and more difficult to escape the life in which she had imprisoned herself. Entering into solitude the way a nun enters a religious order. That’s your punishment, girl, she often told her
self. A lifetime to pay for her crime. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the little creature, bloody and shrieking, would drag her from her sleep. As if the embryo created in her adolescent womb a few years earlier and suctioned towards death by an obstetrician had never stopped growing inside her. The nineteen-year-old girl she’d been at the time had felt utterly incapable of keeping a child and the decision to have an abortion had seemed like the only option. VTP. Three ordinary-sounding letters spelling out the solution. Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy. Because that was what it was about: a lump, a cluster of insignificant cells no more desired than a malignant tumour, the result of a fling with a guy whose face she couldn’t even remember, let alone his name. She’d found out too late that the choice to abort could be much worse than the gamble of having the baby. Manelle had never got over the grief of losing those few grams of life that had been torn from her.
As every last Thursday of the month, Samuel didn’t wait until Manelle had finished her household chores to invite her to come and sit down at the table. They ate with the strange awkwardness that the disease, like an invasive squatter, had insidiously created between them. Silence crept in amid the discreet sounds of chewing, piled up in thick layers hardly diluted even by the driving rain beating against the kitchen window. An unbearable silence which Manelle broke before it drowned everything.
‘You don’t have to make a Black Forest gateau every time, you know. It really is a huge amount of work.’
For a man in your condition, she nearly added. Even unstated, the implication was there between them, hovering in the renewed silence, before Samuel broke it again.
‘You’ve never asked me any questions about it,’ he said, jerking his chin at the rich cake sitting on the table. ‘In all the time I’ve been forcing it on you, you haven’t once asked me why a Black Forest gateau and not something else. Just as you’ve always had the tact never to mention this,’ Samuel went on, tapping the series of purple numbers tattooed on the inside of his forearm. ‘They go hand in hand. I mean the cake and this number. I was twelve. There was this Black Forest gateau made by my mother, a Black Forest gateau as only she knew how to bake. I’d just taken my first bite when the men in black leather coats appeared. My last image of the world before the horror is of that gateau. Its chocolate sponge topped with Chantilly cream and sprinkled with cherries in kirsch sitting in the middle of the table, and all around, the sounds of boots, orders being barked, and screams.’
The Rest of Their Lives Page 7
