I sit out there sometimes in the evening, and look at the house we lived in together.
I see you, Luc, my beloved husband, roaming through some rooms, and I see you, Jean, in the others.
You’re searching for me.
I’m no longer in the sealed rooms, of course.
Look at me! Out here.
Raise your eyes, I’m here!
Think of me and call my name!
None of this is any less real because I am gone.
Death doesn’t matter.
It makes no difference to life.
We will always remain what we were to one another.
Manon’s signature was ghostly and feeble. More than twenty years later Jean Perdu bent over the scrawled letters and kissed them.
44
On the third day, without any warning, the mistral stopped. That was how it always went. It had tugged at the curtains, rearranged the strewn plastic bags into new patterns, made dogs bark and brought people to tears.
Now it was gone, having taken with it the dust, the spent heat and the fatigue. The countryside had also cast out the tourists, who were too fast, too frantic and too eager to invade the local towns. The Luberon swung back into its accustomed rhythm, one determined purely by the cycles of nature. Flowering, sowing, mating, waiting, being patient, harvesting and doing the right thing at the right time, without hesitation.
The warmth returned, but it was the mellow, genial warmth of autumn that rejoiced at the thought of evening thunderstorms and the cool of morning, which had been sorely lacking during the searing summer months, leaving the land thirsty.
The higher Jean Perdu climbed up the steep, rutted sandstone path, the quieter it became. The crickets, the cicadas and the faint lament of the wind were his only company as he scaled the massive hill on which Bonnieux’s church sat. He was carrying Manon’s diary and an open but loosely recorked bottle of Luc’s wine.
His gait was the one the steep, uneven path demanded, stooped like a penitent, with small steps, aches creeping up his calves and along his legs, back and head. Passing the church, whose steps vaguely resembled a stone ladder, and the cedars, he reached the top.
The view made him dizzy. The landscape lay fanned out far, far below. The day was bright after the mistral had bled the sky of its colour, and the horizon was virtually white where Jean imagined Avignon to be. He saw sand-coloured houses, scattered like dice on the green and red and yellow patchwork, as in an old painting. Long rows of vines, ripe and juicy, lined up like soldiers. Huge, faded squares of lavender. Green, brown and saffron-coloured fields, and among them the swaying, waving green of trees. The countryside was so beautiful, the view so majestic; anyone with a soul could not fail to be subjugated by it.
This Calvary, with its thick walls, solid tombs and stone crosses, seemed to be the bottom-most step to heaven. God must be secretly sitting here, gazing out from this bright summit; only he and the dead were granted the enjoyment of this solemn, sweeping panorama.
Head bowed and heart pounding, Jean crossed the coarse gravel to the iron gate.
The enclosure was long and narrow. It was laid out on two terraces, each with two rows of graves. Weathered ochre shrines to the dead and grey-black marble tombs on the top terrace, the same on the lower level. Gravestones the height of doors and the width of beds, many crowned with defiant crosses. Mostly family graves, deep deathly homes with room for centuries of grief.
Cropped, slender cypresses stood among the graves, casting no shadow. Everything here was naked and bare; there was no shelter anywhere.
Slowly, still breathless, Perdu paced along the first row and read the names. Porcelain flowers and stylised stone books stood on the large graves, polished and adorned with photos or short verses. Some were decorated with small figurines depicting the hobby of the deceased. One man, Bruno, in a hunting outfit, an Irish setter at his side. Another grave had a hand of playing cards on it. The next featured the outline of an island, Gomera, obviously the dead person’s favourite spot. Stone dressers with photos, cards and well-fastened trinkets on them. Bonnieux’s living sent the dead on their way with a host of tidings.
The decorations reminded Perdu of Clara Violette. She would cover her Pleyel grand piano with knick-knacks, and he had to clear them away before her balcony concerts.
Perdu suddenly realised that he missed the residents of 27 Rue Montagnard. Was it possible that all those years he had been surrounded by friends, but had never truly appreciated it?
In the middle of the second row, with a view of the valley, Jean found Manon. She lay next to her father, Arnoul Morello.
At least she’s not alone in there.
He sank to his knees, rested his cheek on the stone and placed his arms around the sides, as though he were trying to embrace the sarcophagus.
The marble was cool despite the sun glinting off it.
The crickets chirped.