Love Letters from Montmartre

by Nicolas Barreau

  ‘Oh, Hélène, what are you up to?’ I whispered dazedly, watching the angel, which didn’t move a centimetre. ‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’

  I pulled out the letter with the Prévert poem from my satchel and placed it in the cavity.

  ‘I look forward to seeing if you like this,’ I whispered as I closed the compartment.

  I then took a step back and examined the gravestone thoroughly. To the uninformed eye, the hairline crack that marked the opening was hardly visible.

  I knew it was all quite extraordinary, but as I stood there at the grave with the wreath of flowers in my hand and my gaze fixed on Hélène’s face, I felt separated from the world. The force of Alexandre’s arguments faded.

  I tore myself reluctantly away, abandoned the narrow paths, and slowly strolled down the Avenue Hector Berlioz. But then I heard my name.

  I looked up and caught sight of a dark, delicate figure, sitting on a bench a short distance away, almost lost among the tall, steep-roofed family mausoleums. Her tool bag beside her, she was taking a lunch break.

  ‘Salut, Julien!’ Sophie called cheerfully. ‘Well? Back again? I haven’t seen you in ages.’

  ‘I was here yesterday, actually,’ I replied, and she cocked her eyebrows in astonishment. ‘But I was sick.’

  ‘And here I thought you had decided to rejoin the living, and I wouldn’t ever see you again.’ She straightened her cap, as her eyes sparkled impishly.

  If you only knew, little pixie, if you only knew, I thought.

  ‘I would’ve been disappointed if you had,’ she added with a grin. ‘To be honest, I was starting to miss our cemetery chats.’ She slid a little to one side. ‘Come and join me for a minute. I was just eating lunch. How are you doing?’

  ‘Oh . . . well . . . as good as could be expected,’ I stammered, staring at the wreath I was still holding. ‘Considering the circumstances.’ I shrugged.

  ‘Pretty flowers,’ she said abruptly. ‘Are they for your wife?’

  ‘No, no. I was already at the grave,’ I replied before thinking better of it. I almost bit my tongue when she glanced over at me in surprise.

  ‘Who are the flowers for then?’

  ‘The flowers . . . uh . . . The flowers . . . ’ I sounded like an idiot. ‘The flowers are for you!’ My heart dropped as soon as the words came out of my mouth. I knew it was silly, that they weren’t really from Hélène, but all the same I felt a pang at giving them away.

  ‘For me?’ A pale blush spread across her face. ‘But . . . ’

  ‘Yes,’ I hurried to add, depositing the wreath on her lap a little hastily, trying to disguise my reaction. ‘I had hoped we would run into each other. You might not believe it, but I missed you, too.’ I laughed and added jokingly: ‘After all, you were the one who said that flowers are wasted on graves, or something like that.’

  ‘Good memory, author,’ she said, laughing in response, although her eyes were doubtful. She brushed a few baguette crumbs from her overalls. ‘So . . . are they really for me?’ she asked again.

  I nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, of course, like I said!’

  ‘You really are good at inventing stories,’ she replied. ‘Nonetheless, thank you!’ She set the wreath beside her.

  ‘Forget-me-nots and daisies,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Do you know what they mean in the language of flowers?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘Well . . . Forget-me-nots stand for love and fidelity. Long ago, people used to say that the eyes of new lovers resembled the colour of forget-me-nots . . . ’ She looked into my eyes. ‘Oh . . . yes!’ she crowed. ‘Your eyes really are as blue as forget-me-nots.’

  She grinned as I smiled, feeling ill at ease suddenly. What was this? Was she flirting with me?

  ‘What else?’ She picked a daisy from the wreath and held it up. ‘The daisy represents genuine happiness. Isn’t that lovely? Do you know what else you can do with a daisy?’ She waved the flower in front of my face. ‘Well?’

  I had to laugh. ‘No clue. Tell me. I’m not as acquainted with the language of flowers.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Julien. Every child knows the old game!’ She started to pluck the flower petals. ‘He loves me . . . he loves me not . . . he loves me . . . he loves me not.’ She continued until only one petal remained. ‘He loves me not! What a shame!’ She tossed the stem over her shoulder before looking at me closely. ‘Don’t you want to tell me what’s really going on with the pretty wreath? Or is it some kind of secret? I love secrets.’ She smiled when I didn’t respond. ‘All right, something easier: How’s everything going with the book, author?’

  No, not flirting at all.

  ‘So so,’ I quipped. I looked at her, and then I had an idea. ‘And you, Sophie? I saw that the angel has new wings. Is your work coming along well? Must be better than mine. What are you working on right now?’

  ‘Oh, at the moment I’m restoring the inscription on a family vault. Not particularly challenging for a stonemason, but a job’s a job.’

  I nodded knowingly, even though I knew as little about sculpture projects as the dog did about the moon when he was howling at it. ‘Hey, Sophie, you’re here every day, right?’

  ‘Well, almost every day. I sometimes take the weekends off. There’s more to life than angels and gravestones, don’t you think?’ She picked up her ham sandwich and took a hearty bite from it. ‘For example, today I’ll be calling it quits earlier than usual. It’s my cousin’s birthday, and we’ve been invited over later.’

  I didn’t ask who ‘we’ was. Instead, I asked as casually as I possibly could: ‘In the past few days, have you happened to notice anyone around Hélène’s grave? Besides me, I mean.’

  Her eyes were curious, but she shrugged.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to think . . . ’ She began to tick them off. ‘The groundskeeper cleared the pathway. I also recall that a group of Japanese tourists took pictures of several graves. I think the bronze angel was one of them. An elegant gentleman also came by, as well as a woman in a large black hat and a small older lady.’ She paused to think. ‘Some blonde woman keeps coming by with flowers, too.’

  The blonde woman had to be Cathérine.

  ‘Anyone else?’ I asked.

  ‘Good grief! You want a lot of details. What for? Are you wanting to test your wife’s popularity rating? Anyway, I don’t see everything, of course, but I’d say that her grave is visited more often than others, excluding the celebrities.’ She wrinkled her forehead. ‘Who else? I saw a couple standing for a long time at the grave. They examined everything quite closely, and the man was even jotting down notes in a little book – but that was a while ago. And – oh, I saw a clochard totter around near the grave with his bottle of red wine a few days ago.’ She grimaced a little.

  ‘And yesterday? Did you see anybody yesterday?’

  She shook her head. ‘Sorry, but no. I mean, somebody might have been around there, but if so, I didn’t see them because I was too far away.’

  ‘And when you were working close to Hélène’s grave, on that angel back then – did one of those people, uh, do something to the grave?’

  Her eyes looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean by do something, Julien?’ she asked. ‘Vandalism? Has something been damaged or stolen?’

  I could feel my cheeks grow warm. Maybe I should just tell her the whole truth, but I didn’t. Sophie was bound to think I was every bit as crazy as my friend Alexandre did.

  ‘Uh, no,’ I said quickly. ‘I mean, yes. I’m missing my watering can. I keep it behind the gravestone.’

  ‘Aha.’ I wasn’t sure if she really believed me. For a moment, her eyes – large and round – rested on me. ‘So, grave robbers,’ she added with a smile and a click of her tongue. ‘Well, if you like, I’ll keep an eye out for you, Julien. I’m always here.’

  Her phone rang, and she shot me an apologetic look.

  ‘No, no,’ I assured her, as I stood up and waved goodbye. ‘Take it. I have to g
o, anyway.’

  Sophie smiled in farewell and gestured cheerfully once more at the wreath. As I walked away, I heard her voice take on a softer note: ‘No, of course, I haven’t forgotten, Chouchou. I’m wrapping up here soon like I said . . . Yes, yes, I’ll be back home no later than five . . . Yes . . . Love you, too.’

  And so I left the cemetery empty-handed, in the truest sense of the phrase. My subsequent visit to Bertrand & Fils, Gravestones and More didn’t shed much more light – at least, not in terms of Alexandre’s theory about the pretty widow with a romantic streak.

  I discovered Monsieur Bertrand outside among his gravestones. He was in the middle of a consultation with an older couple, holding forth on the advantages of using recycled headstones.

  ‘We could smooth out the old inscription, and replace it with something new and pretty,’ he proclaimed loudly. ‘That won’t cost as much in the long run, but it will still look nice. No one would ever need to know that the stone had been used before.’ He scratched behind his ear and glanced over in my direction. ‘But look around as you like. As I always say, looking doesn’t cost a thing.’

  The couple started to make their way through the displayed gravestones, sunk in quiet debate, as Monsieur Bertrand walked toward me with a smile. He obviously recalled me at once.

  ‘Monsieur Azoulay! What brings you back to me?’ He shook my hand. ‘I hope you aren’t in the market for another gravestone so soon.’

  I was able to quickly assuage his concern.

  Standing in the noon sun among all the unworked stones, I awkwardly explained my visit.

  Monsieur Bertrand’s reaction was swift and emotional. I had obviously insulted his professional honour.

  ‘Now, listen to me!’ he exclaimed indignantly, spreading his arms in a gesture of innocence. ‘You actually think I’d do that? I don’t know what to say.’ He kept shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Young man, I’ve been running this business for over forty years, and my father ran it before me. And when I’m dead and buried, which hopefully won’t be the case any time soon’ – he rapped a marble pedestal standing nearby – ‘my sons will take over the business . . . But no one has ever—’ He gazed at me reproachfully. ‘No one has ever filed a complaint.’

  ‘I’m not filing a complaint, either,’ I quickly replied. ‘I was only wondering if perhaps you had found yourself in a situation in which you told somebody about the . . . uh . . . uniqueness of the gravestone.’ I lowered my voice.

  Monsieur Bertrand sniffed. ‘If that did happen, please just tell me,’ I whispered. ‘It is critical for me to know if someone is aware of its unusual nature. It’s a matter of life and death, you might say.’ I stared hard at him, satisfied at having come up with a suitable metaphor.

  The stonemason took a step back, shutting his eyes in alarm. But then he returned my gaze without even the slightest flinch, lacing his fingers together over the work apron that spanned his generous stomach.

  ‘Absolutely not, Monsieur Azoulay. I built that compartment myself – me personally – I didn’t even allow my sons to help. At the time, you told me to handle the matter confidentially, which is what I did. I haven’t told a soul – the devil take me if that’s not the truth! The things that pass between me and the customer never leave this workshop. You can believe me on that. You’d be shocked at the kinds of stories I’ve heard. Or the peculiar wishes that survivors sometimes have.’

  He rolled his eyes dramatically, and I chose not to pursue this line of thought.

  ‘No, no, Monsieur, discretion is our business. I’m always telling my sons that. Discretion to the grave and beyond. I’m not only a stonemason, I can also be as silent as the grave. Hahaha!’ He laughed loudly. He probably trotted out this old chestnut with some frequency, considering it almost sounded like a slogan. ‘The silent-as-the-grave stonemason.’

  The couple, who were still strolling among the polished blocks of stone, stopped chatting and glanced over at us with interest.

  When Monsieur Bertrand noticed I wasn’t laughing with him, he tried again. ‘More like two graves, hahaha!’ His massive stomach shuddered.

  Such a high concentration of mirth among all the gravestones was a little too much for me. I made my exit and left Monsieur Bertrand to his new customers, who would doubtlessly soon benefit for all eternity from his discretion.

  15

  At the forest’s edge of memory

  When Alexandre called on Sunday morning, I was absentmindedly paging through the yellowing pages of a small antiquarian poetry volume, published by Librairie Gallimard, as I’d done often in recent days. They were filled with Prévert’s wonderful poems – and a few of the lines in this small book were obviously intended for me, though I was puzzled by several of them.

  Yes, I had been to Hélène’s grave again – curiosity propelled me. And yes, my previous letter had disappeared like the others. When I deposited my new envelope in the compartment, I found this old volume of poetry. I pulled it out, amazed, delighted, bewildered.

  This old, somewhat worn paperback, which resembled – maybe a trouvaille from the book stalls of the bouquinistes who lined the bank of the Seine to sell their old treasures – was an unmistakable response to my previous letter with the Prévert poem. The one that all lovers knew.

  While still at the grave, I began to leaf through the small book. A name written in somewhat old-fashioned cursive decorated the first page, but it didn’t mean anything to me – Augustine Bellier. She had obviously been the book’s previous owner, and had probably died long ago. I turned page after page searching for an annotation, a dog-eared page, anything that could give me a clue about the meaning behind this gift. I eventually discovered an old, uninscribed postcard decorated with white roses stuck between two pages, which was obviously functioning as a bookmark. The title of the poem on this particular page was ‘Cet amour’ – ‘This Love’.

  I didn’t know it.

  It was a long poem about love, which was personified in the text. What it was and how it could be. How people can sometimes forget about love, but love never forgets about us. And someone had lightly underlined the final lines in pencil.

  Standing there at the grave, the words touched me deeply. And even later – after I had left the cemetery and had read the poem over and over, trying to grasp the message being conveyed to me by either a heavenly or earthly being – I had to swallow every time I reached the words, Do not let us grow cold and stony. And the strong pleading at the end of the poem drew tears to my eyes: At the forest’s edge of memory / Suddenly appear / Hold out your hand / And save us.

  I understood it all. Hélène, my stony angel, whom I shouldn’t leave to turn cold and who continued to love me, even at the forest’s edge of memory. The reference must be to the cemetery, the intersection between life and death, so to speak.

  At that moment, when I discovered the Prévert volume, I knew without a doubt that there was no way Cathérine was behind all this, regardless of how often she visited the cemetery. Unlike her friend Hélène, Cathérine didn’t have a poetic bone in her body. She had studied science in college, and her thesis had borne the prosaic title of Tracking Down Microbes. I mean – good grief! – she was a biology teacher. She didn’t read poems. Nor did she give them as gifts. I mentally apologised to all the biology teachers who actually do read poetry. Of course, such a thing was possible. After all, Boris Pasternak had been a doctor, while also writing some of the most beautiful poems ever. But that wasn’t Cathérine, my neighbour. I doubted if she even had any poetry on her rather modest bookshelves.

  Thus, I was spending this particular Sunday morning in bed, slightly lost among the poet’s lovely words. I was already mentally formulating my next letter to Hélène when my phone went off, jerking me out of my thoughts.

  It was Alexandre, wanting to know how my visit to the stonemason had gone. ‘And . . . did you find out anything?’

  ‘You need to forget about him. He swore up and down he didn’t tell a soul,’ I
said, before giving Alexandre the details about my meeting with the discreet-to-the-grave Monsieur Bertrand.

  ‘Well,’ my friend replied. ‘How can you really know if he’s telling the truth?’

  ‘Come on, Alexandre. Just drop it!’ I groaned. ‘No more conspiracy theories. There isn’t a pretty widow somewhere who cares about my emotional health.’

  ‘What a shame,’ Alexandre declared. ‘Did you find out anything else?’

  I reluctantly told him about my conversation with Sophie, counting off all the people she had seen close to the grave

  ‘Aha, we do have something, then! The woman with the black hat!’ he cried triumphantly. ‘That sounds a lot like a widow, to my mind. Or do you know someone else with a black hat like that?’

  ‘Nobody. The last woman I saw in a large black hat was in a Fellini film. But since Monsieur Bertrand is as silent as the grave, this speculation is just a waste of time.’

  ‘And the older woman the sculptor mentioned?’

  ‘Well, I wonder if that might’ve been my mother. Maman goes to the cemetery occasionally, although it’s not her favourite hangout.’

  ‘Unlike you,’ Alexandre said.

  ‘Right, unlike me,’ I said, peeved. ‘You could’ve spared us both that commentary, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he replied contritely, but prodded nonetheless: ‘Did you find anything in the compartment this time?’

  ‘Yes.’ My interest in this conversation was fading quickly.

  ‘And? Don’t make it so hard to wheedle stuff out of you. I just want to help.’

  I sighed and told him about my last two discoveries.

  As soon as he heard about the wreath, he interrupted me.

  ‘It was the pretty neighbour, had to be! She’s the one who regularly brings forget-me-nots. You told me that yourself. And the sculptor – didn’t she say that a blonde woman keeps visiting the grave? Who knows? Maybe your neighbour’s infatuated with you, after all.’