My heart tightened as I once again saw Hélène in her green dress, on the day we met, her red curls set aflame by the May sun. And then, toward the end, her translucent body, her lovely mouth smiling so pale and brave as her coppery hair gleamed from the white pillow, like a final greeting to me.
But then another face appeared in front of Hélène’s, and my heart hammered against the mattress as if wanting to tell me something.
I got up. I got up in the middle of the night and sat at my desk, inspired by an idea. I didn’t know if it was good or bad, if it would lead to something or not. However, it was the only thing that seemed to be right to me at this moment.
I pulled out a sheet of stationery and unscrewed my pen, before gazing thoughtfully at the white page for a few minutes.
And then I wrote to Hélène, to the dead wife I adored more than anything, and opened my heart.
My beloved Hélène,
I haven’t written for a few weeks now, and there’s a reason for that. Your poor husband has found himself in a state of profound confusion. So many exciting things have happened in these past weeks, and I am increasingly doubtful when it comes to my crazy idea that you’re the one who’s been leaving the signs for me at the grave. I still think that you’re watching over me, Hélène, and that your love can transcend death and leave traces in my life. But perhaps those signs aren’t necessarily expressed in music boxes, maps or poems by Prévert, but rather in thoughts and feelings.
I’ve felt like I was going out of my mind these past few months. Like a detective, I have tried to follow the clues, along with Alexandre, and have suspected all sorts of people. And yet over and over again, I came to the conclusion that it was you. It had to be, even if that seemed completely impossible.
I wrote my letters to you, and each response seemed to point to you. However, everything has two sides, which is why I gradually realised that all these signs were leading me back to the cemetery, but also from there back into life.
Before you died, Hélène, you asked that I write to you, about how my life was without you. And now I have fully understood the idea that was behind this request. I mean, the fact that life will go on without you.
I still don’t know who is taking my letters and leaving me all the little tokens in the compartment, but that no longer matters so much now. Even if I did have a suspicion, I no longer care if it’s you, your friend Cathérine, a lovely stranger, my publisher, or someone else.
What is critical – what truly matters – is that I have opened my heart again – to life, and yes – perhaps also to love.
For a long time, I didn’t want to admit this. I tried to run away from it, but I feel something again, Hélène. There is something new, a tender dream that sometimes floats up to the surface of my consciousness and feels like a small, trembling bird in my hand.
Can it really be true that I’ve fallen in love again?
You – who know everything and can see everything from above – surely know the answer to the question that is keeping me awake on this night in which sleep is elusive.
The truth is: I will always love you, Hélène. And yet someone else has also found her way into my heart. It is Sophie, the woman up in the tree whom Arthur discovered on the day I took my first letter to your grave. The sculptor I occasionally mentioned to you, but who has tried so hard to guide me back into the world of the living. She was the one who told me that, in the end, you need to always choose life over death. She may have someone else, but that doesn’t change the fact that I think about her and miss her. Her dark eyes, her silvery laugh.
Do you know what Arthur said to Cathérine?
‘Sophie makes Papa laugh again.’
It is astonishing how children can always see the truth.
And now she has vanished, Hélène! I haven’t seen her at the cemetery in over three weeks, and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t even know where she lives, and she has no idea about my feelings, which I didn’t realise myself for a long time. I will now entrust them to you, my dear heart.
If she would just return to the Cimetière Montmartre, I could tell her everything. I would take that risk, even if I’m not sure what will happen in the end.
If you fall in love, you have to take your heart in both hands and risk everything, right?
I’m writing you this letter in the hope that you will help me, my marvellous angel, who always watches over us. Help me, Hélène!
In love,
Julien
22
The Courtyard of the Conservators
It was very difficult, but I let almost a week go by before returning to the Cimetière Montmartre to see if my night-time letter had found its mysterious recipient.
As I approached Hélène’s grave that morning, I at once caught sight of a single red rose glowing amidst the green ivy. My heart skipped a beat. That could mean only one thing – that someone had been to the grave since my previous visit.
I excitedly leaned down to the secret compartment and opened it. My last letter was gone, as well as the opened envelope that had sat there in the cavity untouched for such a long time.
The compartment was empty, completely empty.
I shut it again and looked over at the angel’s head. The angel was smiling, and so was I.
My letter seemed to have reached its destination, wherever that happened to be.
For a while, I stood there sunk in thought, hardly daring to believe that over the past six months I had actually written thirty-two letters. There was only one letter to go until I had fulfilled Hélène’s last wish and my vow. It was strange, but for the first time, I hoped that Hélène would win her bet.
I strolled through the cemetery, past the old trees, gravestones and statues warming in the sun. They were so familiar to me that I could have found them in the dark.
At the entrance, I heard voices. A man and a woman in work clothes were carrying a stone something, hauling it to a grave where they carefully set it upright. The man swore, the woman laughed. And as she turned around, it was Sophie.
A thousand stones fell away from my heart, and I increased my pace. She was here. She was finally here.
I was so relieved to see her that I didn’t think much about what should come next.
‘Sophie! Hey, Sophie!’ I called and waved.
As she caught sight of me, she flushed darkly.
‘Oh, the author,’ she said, taking a few tentative steps toward me.
‘Where have you been all this time?’ I asked.
The man in a dark grey work apron glanced over at us and studied me intently. He was older, and had a small moustache and alert brown eyes.
‘Papa, this is Julien Azoulay,’ Sophie declared in lieu of an answer, and the old man shook my hand so hard I almost fell to my knees. His handshake was just as firm as his daughter’s. ‘He’s an author.’
He didn’t look particularly impressed.
‘And this is my father, Gustave Claudel.’
Gustave – hadn’t I heard that name somewhere?
‘We were just bringing a statue over from the workshop. It’s as good as new again. The head and arms, everything had to be repaired . . . ’ Sophie was talking a blue streak. Her cheeks were pink, and she kept shooting me odd glances.
The old man put his hands on his hips and straightened his lower back. ‘This thing weighs a ton – we should’ve asked Philippe for help like I said. You shouldn’t be carrying anything so heavy, ma petite.’
Confused, I looked from one to the other.
Shouldn’t carry anything so heavy? Why not?
‘But . . . What happened?’ I asked. ‘Where were you the past few weeks?’
‘Ah . . . I sprained my ankle,’ Sophie admitted ruefully.
‘She fell out of a tree, silly girl.’ Gustave Claudel shook his head. ‘Why does she always have to scamper around on top of things like a little monkey? On walls, in trees. I’ve told her that a million times. Someday she’s going to break her ne
ck.’
Sophie watched me, a mixture of defiance and unease written across her face. Hadn’t I told her the same thing? On that day when she had teetered up on the wall and called out to me that I was in a bad mood. On that awful Wednesday when I hadn’t come back to pick her up because I’d been sitting on the grave wall with Cathérine, totally done in. I suddenly remembered the little sound that had come from the old chestnut tree. Hadn’t it sounded like a sneeze? Had Sophie possibly heard everything? My accusations, my furious shouting – I’d been loud enough. My assertion that she was just a random acquaintance and that I didn’t think I could ever fall in love again?
I stared at her and silently begged her forgiveness.
Sophie didn’t move. She just stood there in her cap, her lips pressed into a hard line.
Gustave scratched the back of his head. He seemed to sense the churning vibes at play between his daughter and me. He probably thought I was a very strange young man. An author to boot. Writers were bound to be questionable in the old stone worker’s eyes. He gave a curt nod to bring the matter to an end.
‘My pleasure, Monsieur,’ he said, turning his back on me and taking a few steps toward the grave. ‘Come on, Sophie. We have to get this thing back in place.’
‘No, wait!’ I begged quietly.
She stopped and threw me a mocking look.
‘Not a good time, author.’
‘I don’t care. I . . . I would like to tell you something, Sophie, but I don’t trust myself to.’
‘Oh! That again! The secret?’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘No. This time it’s something else. Something that has to do with you and me. With us!’ I whispered nervously, suggestively. I placed my hand over my heart.
Her eyes widened, and she bit her lower lip as she gazed at me thoughtfully.
‘I would also like to tell you something, Julien,’ she said hesitantly. ‘But I trust myself even less than you do.’
‘Are you coming, Sophie?’
‘I’m coming, Chouchou,’ she called, shooting me an apologetic look. ‘I have to go, or Papa will get impatient. Can you come back this afternoon, Julien? Around four or so?’
I nodded, and my heart leaped into my throat.
Sophie watched me, and my world was reflected in the darkness of her eyes.
‘Then we’ll tell each other everything,’ she whispered before she turned around and ran to her father.
To Chouchou.
I tried to somehow kill the next few hours. I prowled around Montmartre, working my way up and down the alleys. I eventually sat down in the little park located at the foot of the Sacré-Cœur. Every few minutes I saw the funiculaire climb up the hill, the small silvery car that ferries its passengers from the bottom of Montmartre up to the white basilica. After a while, the park grew too crowded and loud, so I stood up and walked over to the other side of the hill, where I turned down a side street close to the Musée Montmartre and found a quiet café. I ordered something to drink and forced myself to eat a sandwich as I smoked a cigarette. I sat there and waited, but I didn’t mind. I gazed up into the cloudless summer sky and yearned for the afternoon to end, like someone who longs for morning after a night spent with a toothache. Only in my case, I wasn’t plagued by the painful throbbing of a tooth, but by the anxious thumping of my heart, which simply refused to settle down.
Sophie was back. She was unattached. And Chouchou was her father! I had almost hugged the old man when I realised this.
And under these circumstances, was it really so presumptuous of me to think that Sophie’s friendliness had been motivated by more than compassion? That she might actually feel something for me – for me, this egocentric, morose, blind Orpheus? This man who had stared at nothing except a closed door? This man who was now ready to offer her his heart – even if she was sitting on the highest wall in all of Paris?
Yes, we will tell each other everything, I thought, as I stirred my espresso and smiled contentedly. I kept thinking this as I strode in joyful anticipation down the street that led to the Cimetière Montmartre. I kept thinking this as I stepped through the gate, my heart pounding, expecting to hear Sophie call my name at any moment.
But the cemetery was silent. The sun continued to arc through the sky, and the sculptor was nowhere to be seen.
I nervously fingered a cigarette out of my packet, and walked up and down the paths as I puffed on it. It was four o’clock, and we had definitely fixed to meet. Where was she? I took an uneasy seat on a bench close to the gate and watched for her.
It was four-thirty, then five, and still no sign of Sophie. I finally jumped back up and decided to go to Hélène’s grave and wait there. Maybe Sophie would come here.
I looked all around, and everything seemed peaceful and unchanged. The angel still smiled its enigmatic smile, and a bird fluttered in the old chestnut tree. However, the red rose was no longer sitting in the green ivy. Someone had placed it on top of the marble gravestone.
Someone?
I knelt down and opened the compartment.
I saw the small white envelope right away.
It was so light, as if it contained nothing except air. But when I tore it open, a small card fell out of it:
Sophie Claudel
La Cour des Conservateurs
Rue d’Orchampt
Paris
I swayed there for a moment, and the letters swam before my eyes. Sophie wasn’t here, but her calling card was sitting in the secret compartment. And now everything made sense. Sophie’s embarrassment. Her hesitation. What she trusted herself so little to reveal to me.
The heart of stone, the brochure from the Musée Rodin where I had admired the sculptures by Camille Claudel without understanding why I was there. The tickets for Orphée, the theatre on Montmartre where she had ‘coincidentally’ shown up and let me discover her. The wall to which the map had led me as a way to tell me ‘I love you!’ The CD with the song ‘Secret Heart’. It had all been Sophie.
She had read my letters.
She had provided the answers.
The blood rushed to my head as I hurried out of the cemetery. I knew the little street, which was located behind the shadowy Place Émile Goudeau. My heart raced as I climbed up the road.
My eyes searched each building I passed along Rue d’Orchampt, until I caught sight of the enamel sign with a blue border. It bore the words La Cour des Conservateurs in sweeping script – The Courtyard of the Conservators.
I pushed open the gate and entered a cobblestone courtyard, whose right-hand side housed a workshop for wood conservators. On the left side was the stone workers’ atelier. The door was standing open, and I stepped inside.
It smelled of dust and paint, and my gaze swept across this magical garden peopled with stone figures with upraised arms, some draped in pale cloths. My eyes took in the white marble hands, heads and feet strewn across a large table, and then travelled on to the elaborate sculptures that stretched up to the ceiling. I saw the long workbench that was standing underneath the large window on the opposite wall, before moving on to the saws, chisels and mallets that were lined up along it like tin soldiers.
‘Hello?’ I called. ‘Is anyone here?’
After a clatter, the door to the back room opened with a quiet squeak. Gustave Claudel stood there in his grey work apron, his eyes warm and amiable.
‘She’s up in her apartment,’ he declared, pointing to the building at the back of the courtyard. ‘She’s expecting you.’
23
I had so hoped it was you
Sophie’s apartment was located on the fourth floor. I ran up the well-worn wooden steps, but before I could press the doorbell, the door was opened from the inside.
Breathless and pale, Sophie stood before me. She was wearing a soft lilac dress, and her eyes were huge in the dim light of the hallway.
For a few seconds, we just mutely looked at each other, our eyes exploring the faces we dared not touch yet. She then twirled around toward a s
mall wooden chest on a table, only to turn back around to hold out a bundle of letters to me.
‘Can you forgive me?’ she asked quietly, her eyes shining.
I shook my head and gently took the letters from her.
‘No, I’m the one who needs your forgiveness!’ I said. ‘I was such an idiot.’
I cupped her face in her hands. All that existed at this moment were her and me. As our lips met over and over again, unable to stop, we whispered our love to each other. And the letters floated, as lightly as leaves, to the floor.
I didn’t return to Rue Jacob that night. I stayed on Montmartre, in a tiny, crooked attic apartment where I suddenly and unexpectedly discovered happiness.
Sophie and I told each other everything that evening.
She told me about how she had noticed me in the cemetery – the miserable man who sometimes came with his small son. How one day after we had met, she happened to see me open the gravestone and put something inside it. How later she had slipped over to Hélène’s grave and discovered the secret compartment.
‘And then I found all the letters. I can’t tell you how moved I was by them. Touched, and a little shocked, as well. I picked up the top letter – I couldn’t help it. I read it, Julien, but not out of nosiness.’ She looked at me affectionately. ‘I fell in love with you – the first day we met, when you were searching for Arthur and I was sitting up on the wall. Remember that?’
‘Oh, Sophie, how could I forget!’ I kissed her tenderly, as she leaned back against me. ‘It was so magical. Good grief, I thought you were a creature from another world when I saw Arthur standing there, talking to the tree. I was so happy to find him again, and then it was you sitting up there. And afterward, we went to L’Artiste. I think that was the first truly enjoyable evening since Hélène’s death, but I was still so eaten up by my own misery . . . ’
Love Letters from Montmartre Page 19
