Luc has implored me to undergo the therapy.
Quite apart from the fact that the odds are as lousy as betting on a horse, a part of me would die anyway; a gravestone would have to be ordered anyway, Mass read and the handkerchiefs ironed.
Will I feel the gravestone’s weight?
Papa understands. When I told him why I don’t want chemo, he went to the barn and wept. I was fairly convinced he was going to hack off one of his arms.
Maman: petrified. She looks like a petrified olive tree; her chin is gnarled and hard, her eyes are like two chips of bark. She wonders what she has done wrong, why she was unable to turn her first deathly premonition into a bad dream, or into motherly love, which worries her more than the worries merit.
‘I knew that death was waiting in Paris, that godforsaken city.’ But she can’t bring herself to blame me. Ultimately she blames herself. Being hard on herself enables her to carry on and to prepare my last room according to my exact wishes.
You are lying there now like a dancer doing a pirouette. One leg stretched out, the other pulled up. One arm above your head, the other almost braced against your side.
You always looked at me as though I were unique. In five years, not once did you look at me with anger or indifference. How did you manage it?
Castor is staring at me. We two-legged creatures must seem very strange to cats.
I feel crushed by the eternity that awaits me.
Sometimes – but it is a truly evil thought – just sometimes I wished there were someone I love who would go before me. To show me that I can make it too.
Sometimes I thought that you had to go before me so I could do it too, certain that you are waiting for me.
Adieu, Jean Perdu.
I envy you for all the years you still have left to live.
I shall go into my last room and from there into the garden. Yes, that is how it will be. I shall stride through tall, inviting French windows and straight into the sunset. And then … then I shall become light, and then I can be everywhere.
That would be my nature; I would be there always, every evening.
34
The travellers spent a heady evening together. Salvo served pot after pot of mussels, Max played the piano, and they took turns dancing with Samy out on deck.
Later the four of them enjoyed the view of Avignon and the Saint Bénézet Bridge, which had been immortalised in song. July showed itself in all its splendour; even after sundown, the air was a velvety 28 degrees.
Shortly before midnight Jean raised his glass.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For friendship. For truth. And for this unbelievably delicious meal.’
They all raised their glasses. Their clinking sounded like a bell tolling for the end of their journey together.
Despite this, Samy said with glowing cheeks: ‘By the way, I’m happy now,’ and half an hour later: ‘I still am’; and another two hours later … well, she probably said it in many other ways that did not require words, but neither Max nor Jean heard her. Deciding not to cramp Samy and Salvo’s style, the two men left the couple on Lulu for the first of what, hopefully, would be many thousands of nights and ambled through the nearest gate into the old part of Avignon.
The narrow streets were thronged with aimless wanderers. The summer heat had naturally postponed activity till the late hours. Max and Jean bought ice cream on the square in front of the magnificent city hall, and watched buskers juggle with fire, perform acrobatic dances and amuse their audiences in the cafés and bistros with their slapstick comedy. This city didn’t appeal to Jean; it seemed to him like a hypocritical whore, living off her past papal glories.
Max caught the rapidly melting ice cream on his tongue. With his mouth half full, he said in a deliberately casual tone: ‘I’m going to write children’s books. I’ve got a couple of ideas.’
Jean glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.
So this is Max’s moment, he thought. This is the moment he starts to become the man he will one day be.
‘May I hear them?’ he requested, rousing himself from his affectionate astonishment at being allowed to share in this instant.
‘Whew, I thought you were never going to ask.’
Max pulled his notebook from his back pocket and read aloud: ‘The old master magician was wondering when a brave girl might finally come along and dig him up from the garden where he had lain forgotten under the strawberries for a century and a half …’
Max gazed at Perdu dreamily.
‘Or the story of the little cow?’
‘Little cow?’
‘Yeah, the holy cow that always has to take the blame. I imagine that even the holy cow used to be a young calf once, before people started saying, “Holy cow, what did you say you want to be? A writer?”’ Max grinned. ‘And another one about Claire, a girl who swaps bodies with her kitty cat. Then there’s …’