His forbidden, lifeless room in Rue Montagnard.
The warm, bright room where Manon had died.
Luc’s hand in his.
And all of a sudden the memory was there.
Jean had felt something when Manon died.
In the days leading up to Christmas, when he was often drunk and on the brink of sleep, in that confused state he had heard her talking. Scattered words he couldn’t understand: ‘friends’ windows’, ‘coloured crayon’, ‘southern light’ and ‘raven’.
He stood there in Manon’s room, her diary in his hand, and had a premonition that he would find these words inside. All of a sudden he felt a great inner peace, and the welcome pain of the deserved blow stung his face.
‘Can you eat with that?’ Luc asked sheepishly, pointing to Perdu’s chin. ‘Mila’s made lemon chicken.’
Jean nodded.
He no longer needed to ask why Luc had dedicated a wine to Manon. He understood.
MANON’S TRAVEL DIARY
Bonnieux
24 December 1992
Maman has made the thirteen desserts. Different kinds of nut, different kinds of fruit, raisins, nougat in two different colours, oil cake, butter cake with cinnamon milk.
Victoria is lying in her cradle, with rosy cheeks and sparklingly inquisitive eyes. She looks like her father.
Luc no longer blames me for the fact that I am going and Victoria is staying behind, and not the other way round.
She will be a southern light of great radiance.
I ask Luc to give this book to Jean to read if he should ever come, at some stage, whenever that might be.
I don’t have the strength to explain everything in a good-bye letter.
My little southern light. I only had forty-eight days with Vicci, and yet I dreamed of many years and saw so many lives that await my daughter.
Maman is writing these final words for me, for I no longer have the strength even to hold a pen. I have struggled this far so that I can eat the thirteen desserts myself, and not the bread of the dead.
Thinking takes me a long time.
The words have dwindled. Moved out, all of them.
Into the wide world. Many coloured crayons among pencils. Lots of lights in the dark.
Everyone loves one another, me included. Everyone is brave and deeply in love with the baby.
(My daughter wants to hold her daughter. Manon and Victoria lie there together, and the twigs crackle in the fireplace. Luc comes in and puts his arms around his two girls. Manon has signalled that she wants me to write something else. My hand holding the pen is ice-cold. My husband brings me some warm brandy, but my fingers don’t feel the warmth.)
Dear Victoria, my daughter, my beauty. It was so easy to sacrifice myself for you. That’s life: laugh about it, you’ll be loved, forever.
As for the rest, daughter, about my life in Paris, read this and be cautious with your judgement.
(Manon has blanks. I write only what she whispers now. She winces when a door opens somewhere. She is still waiting for him, the man from Paris. She is still hoping.)
Why didn’t Jean come?
Too much pain?
Yes. Too much pain.
Pain makes a man stupid. And a stupid man is more easily afraid.
The cancer of life, that’s what my raven had.
(My daughter is disintegrating before my eyes. I write and try not to weep. She asks whether she will live through the night. I lie to her and say yes. She says I’m lying, like Luc.
She briefly dozes off. Luc takes the baby. Manon wakes up.)
He received the letter, says good old Madame Rosalette. She’ll watch out for him, as much as she can, as much as he lets her. I tell her: Proud! Stupid! Pain!
And she adds that he has smashed his furniture and gone numb. Numb to everything. He’s almost dead, she says.
That makes two of us.
(Here my daughter laughs.)
Maman has secretly written some words she shouldn’t have.
Won’t show me.
We’re still jockeying for position, even on the home straight.
So what? What else are we supposed to do? Wait silently in our Sunday best for the reaper to swing?
(She laughs again and coughs. Outside, the snow has turned the Atlas cedars the colour of a burial shroud. Dear God, you are everything I hate, because you are taking my daughter before her time and leaving me to grieve with her child. Is that your idea of how things ought to be? Replacing dead cats with kittens, dead daughters with granddaughters?)
Shouldn’t we carry on living the same way until the last, because that is what vexes death the most – to see us drinking life to the final draft?
(Here, my daughter coughs, and twenty minutes pass before she next speaks. She gropes for words.
Sugar, she says, but it’s not the right one. She gets annoyed.
Tango, she whispers.
Friends’ windows, she shouts.
I know what she means: French windows.)
Jean. Luc. Both. The two of you.
In the end. I’m only going next door.
To the end of the corridor, into my favourite room.
And from there, out into the garden. And there I will become light and go wherever I want.