The First Garden (9 page)

I
T'S NOT THAT SHE IS
ill, but since Raphaël and Céleste left for Ile aux Coudres, she has shut herself away in her hotel room and refused to emerge.

In the solitude and the night of rue Sainte-Anne broad sweeps of memory give way as she lies in the dark, surrendered, bound hand and foot to old images that assail her.

The dead women make a noise in her throat. She names them one by one, and the companions of her childhood come as their names are called, from tall to short, intact and untouched by fire, wearing the same black serge uniform, white collars and cuffs, black ribbed stockings and laced boots, their short hair carefully bobbed every month.

Alfreda Thibault

Laurette Levasseur

Jacqueline Racine

Marie-Marthe Morency

Théodora Albert

Jeanne-d'Arc Racine

Estelle Roy

Corinne Picard

Georgette Auclair

Germaine Létourneau

Marie-Jeanne Binet . . .

All must be named aloud, and a witness must be present to hear them, the names of these children who were burned alive, and we must gather them to our hearts.

Raphaël is no longer there to share her evocation of the little girls from the Hospice Saint-Louis. Now that it's a question of her own life, she is alone, with neither pity nor compassion.

A long string of little girls dressed in mourning surround Flora Fontanges's bed on rue Sainte-Anne. The tallest, though, wears a blue smock cinched at the waist by a belt and she has curly hair. Her name is Rosa Gaudrault and she will be burned along with the children from the lower forms. She says “kitten, sweetheart, pet, my treasure, my lovely, my angel,” she laughs and talks very softly because the orphanage rules forbid giving the children any names but the ones inscribed in the register. At times she sings “the Blessed Virgin soon will come, with her long hair hanging down” and she is radiant as a bluebird in a black flock of starlings.

“Rosa,” says Flora Fontanges, holding out her arms in the night, and she weeps.

Who would venture across the live coals except Rosa Gaudrault, who has already made the gift of her life and renews it continually?

She is sixteen years old. She goes in and out, bringing children every time, passes through the flames and smoke, a wet cloth over her face. She calls them by name, begs them to come with her, she who is kind and good and has always thought of them as normal children with father and mother at their side and a normal house filled with laughter and warmth. She calls to them. Takes them in her arms. Pulls them outside. Goes back inside with a wet cloth that freezes along the way. She is calling still. Begging them to come outside with her. Even the firemen with their masks and long ladders do not have her courage and her daring.

When they found Rosa Gaudrault the next day in the rubble, there were two little girls in her arms who had burned to death with her, covered with ice, a single branch, gnarled and black.

“Dead wood! There, there!”

Fever overcomes her and makes her rave. She is writhing in the brand-new white bed with brass knobs at its corners. She is eleven years old. M. and Mme Edouard Eventurel have just adopted her and bought her a bed. She is a little girl who was rescued from the fire in the Hospice Saint-Louis.

“If the fever doesn't drop I guarantee nothing,” says the doctor.

There remains just a slim margin of life wherein she struggles, tormented by invisible flames that burn her and consume her. She begins to cry out again in a voice that is harrowing, insistent, that is not of this world. She begs them to take away the unbearable thing from the foot of her bed. She holds out her arm towards the chair on which her new clothes lie folded, cries out in a voice from beyond the grave:

“There, there! Dead wood!”

“If death should occur, wrap the body in a sheet soaked in carbolic acid.”

They will do what must be done. In the event of life or death. Have they not adopted her according to proper procedure, so that she will bear their name and become their daughter, with full rights? A nurse watches over her, day and night. In the next room M. and Mme Eventurel wait for word, hour by hour. Now and then they lift a corner of the sheet, soaked in disinfectant, that hangs in the doorway and isolates the sick child's room from the rest of the apartment. They look at her for a moment, sitting up in bed, her arm stretched out towards the chair on which her clothes are laid.

“Dead wood, there!”

“Rosa,” the little girl will say again, over and over, in the bedroom with flowered wallpaper made ready for her by M. and Mme Eventurel.

Then, nothing.

Nothing more at all. As the fever drops and her skin peels away in strips. Not another word. As if she had become mute following the scarlet fever. As if she had forgotten everything of her past. As if the present were a
glaring and empty place
wherein one need only be silent.

No sounds seem able now to escape from her throat, as she tears long strands of dead skin from her hands and feet. Must she not slough the skin of her whole body and even renew the inside of her body where her small past life lies hidden? When she has been turned inside out and made new, perhaps she will be able to exist a second time and say: “Here, here I am, this is me. I am alive again, pulled from the dead, snatched from the flames.” Is this the way M. and Mme Eventurel want her to be, subject to no ancient law, fresh as a newborn, without past or memory, as easy to read as an open book, reborn through their good will, planted firmly upon a known road that was chosen in advance and marked out by them?

They have taken every precaution that she will never be the same. A full quarantine, eight days longer than the doctor's prescription. Forty-eight days exactly, shut away in a bedroom, with a new doll and a magazine to read. Delirium and fever have erased all the horror and fear. This child needs only them to begin life anew. They have only to bring her naked from her bedroom, after they have shaved her hair.

They call her Marie Eventurel, speaking under their breath, not yet daring to name her aloud for fear of startling her. Both are waiting for her to come out of quarantine. A long time ago the notice “Scarlet Fever” was posted on the apartment on rue Bourlamaque, a long time ago she came to them reclusive and delirious and now she emerges from her room, bringing nothing, as they have instructed her. Her true life is beginning at this very moment and everything that has happened before today must disappear along with the mattress, the sheets and blankets, the nightgown and the doll, taken away by the city's sanitation department which will carry out the disinfection.

Her black hair, newly shorn, strews the floor of the bedroom, her nightgown forms a circle on the ground about her feet. For the first time since her birth she is naked from head to foot. She is ashamed and dares not move. Now she is being called to come out of the quarantine room. She does not yet have her own name, she is between two names, the old one having been consigned with the objects to be destroyed, the new one not yet ready to be assumed. They summon her, but not by name, and she must take a step, then two, stride over her nightgown on the floor. She is eleven years old. During her illness she became terribly thin. Her pelvic bones jut out under her white skin. They call her. Tell her to come. Her shaven skull is like ivory.

She must walk along the corridor. Each step is torture and she suffers from her nakedness as if she has been flayed alive, summoned to appear before strangers nude, defenceless, stripped to the bone, it seems to her. She walks toward the bathroom which smells of javel water. The nurse immerses her and washes her, scouring her generously with sulphured soap. Disinfected now from head to foot, she still carries the smell of chlorine on her skin and on the fresh linen and the new dress in which she has just been clad.

And now M. and Mme Eventurel advance, the two of them together, to kiss her and bid her welcome. They discover a child of silence and ice, petrified.

T
HE NIGHT WAS VILE IN
the hotel on rue Sainte Anne, thronged with nightmares and apparitions. Now the day is coming; its sound, its odour rap at the door and the closed window. The din of a vacuum cleaner and of keys clattering in the hallway, the hum of cars, blurred voices from the street. Her legs, her arms are heavy under the sheets, as if poorly drawn, formless. Dry-mouthed. A new day is breaking. She turns to face the wall. Enjoys the deep darkness. Refuses to get up.

She will spend three days in bed in her hotel room, while chambermaids grow impatient and tirelessly knock at the door.

“Can I make up the room?”

Until now, there was no real danger in bringing the women of the city to life as defenceless creatures mingled with her own flesh, to make them sing with us. Even though there was just one spectator facing her, it had taken place on stage. Raphaël was going along with the game like the archangel he is, with his dazzling smile and his great invisible folded wings.

Now that she has nothing more to invent, she is alone in the dark closed room. The imaginary women of the city escape her and dissolve into crumbs.

She clings to the night as to a dwelling place. The blackness of the night surrounds her, moves over her face, her body, sticky and opaque, it enters her veins, turns to shadows the vermilion root of her heart. Flora Fontanges is haunted, becomes herself the dead of the night, open and welcoming.

Above all, do not let the daylight in. Come to terms with the night, once and for all. Now that she is alone in the city. Flush out all the ghosts. Become brand-new and fresh again on the land that gave her birth, as on the first day, without memory.

The story to come has no visible thread, is apparently unravelled, gleaming and quick, like mercury which breaks apart, re-forms and flees.

T
HE IDEA OF ADOPTING AN
orphan girl occurred to them on the night of the fire, when the Hospice Saint-Louis was burning and it was impossible to get out all the little girls who were imprisoned by the flames. Those who could be saved were wrapped at once in blankets, coats, men's jackets, whatever could be found, and dispersed to hospitals, convents, hotels, families.

Dr. Simard brought home three little girls. The Eventurels, who were visiting the doctor that evening, were able to choose among the three at leisure.

The oldest had no more tears. She stared straight ahead, her eyes as dull as a statue's. Her lips were as white as her cheeks. Draped in a rug that she refused to shed, shuddering violently as if someone were shaking her from head to foot, she displayed the utmost dignity. Head erect, hands crossed on her breast, wordless, motionless, neither eating nor drinking nor replying when spoken to, she was there because that was where she had been placed, and she must be there because there was no longer any other place in the world for her to live and die. If weariness sometimes caused her head to droop she would straighten it at once, and that abrupt move gave her a certain haughtiness that pleased the Eventurels.

Madame Eventurel talked about innate distinction and Dr. Simard alluded to the formidable pride of some of the poor, to whom one cannot offer charity.

No one consulted her. She was transplanted from the Hospice Saint-Louis to the Eventurels' small apartment on rue Bourlamaque. The authorities concerned agreed to the transfer and the adoption. She was struck down by scarlet fever almost immediately. Delirium allowed her to cry out her pain and her dread. As the fever dropped, silence took hold of her again and did not leave for days and days. The time it took for her hair to grow back, the time it took to learn the Eventurels' language and manners.

Without ever uttering a word, she crossed out in her head all the ones that occurred to her, on this or that occasion when M. and Mme Eventurel used other words that she didn't know but retained as soon as she'd heard them, as if she were learning a foreign language.

One does not say: “I ain't, supper, her and me, sweat, I should of went.” Rather one says: “I'm not, dinner, she and I, perspire, I should have gone.” One does not dream of an American Beauty satin dress which would be vulgar, instead one selects a kilt from Holt Renfrew made of genuine Scottish tartan. Indeed, whatever is Scottish or English is entirely acceptable. As for the Irish, that's another kettle of fish. One does not eat with one's knife. One does not swing one's shoulders when walking. One does not crack one's knuckles. One removes one's nightgown before taking a bath. One does not prefer potatoes, molasses, and porridge to any unfamiliar dish that appears on the table.

One Sunday at the dining-room table, in the middle of the meal, all at once she broke the silence. She asked in a clear voice:

“May I please have a little
charlotte russe?”

It sounded as fine to her as her first lines on stage. She who had never seen either theatre or cinema suddenly found herself able to play the part the Eventurels intended for her. She was now becoming their daughter, with full rights, after waiting in silence for perfect mastery of their speech so she could talk to them as an equal, a child from the same world or so she thought, and nothing would show her up or incriminate her.

The first day at school, when she was asked her name, she replied in an exceedingly clear, loud voice:

“My name is Marie Eventurel.”

It started with a name that was given to her and that she took, and little by little she began to resemble Marie Eventurel, as people wished her to.

At prize-giving her new name, Marie Eventurel, was heard often, called out from the stage because she won almost all the prizes, even the first prize for piano and music. Singing, in particular, filled her with delight. It seemed to her that if she worked hard, one day she would be free to do anything with her voice, vocal flourishes and trills allowing her to express her whole life and the whole world, unfurled in its terrible magnificence through her throat.

When it was time to recite a poem in class or to explain a text, she came to adore the sounds and the words that formed in her mouth, on her tongue and teeth. She sometimes felt she had a vocation to speak and to sing, and there was nothing on earth more beautiful than human speech, full and resonant. She sang hymns one moment and love songs the next, like a saint in heaven or a romantic lover. She closed her eyes and her face was radiant. For a few moments, she possessed the earth.

At the Eventurels' house, what was done at the orphanage must be undone, she must conduct herself as if she had
never before known how to live and was just beginning to breathe. They sometimes said, quite frankly, that she was on the other side of the earth. The wrong side of the world, that must be it; the reverse of everything she has been required to learn up till now.

Madame Eventurel said:

“Don't shut your eyes when someone speaks to you.”

Useless to plead that at the orphanage they had to keep their gaze lowered as much as possible, above all never look one's superiors in the eye. At the Eventurels', the same law does not prevail, never again will the same law prevail, anywhere in the world. Draw a line through it once and for all. Look instead at the lovely things around her, books, dolls, games, roller skates and ice skates, and such pretty white paper with pink flowers and blue birds on her bedroom walls.

When her hair had grown long enough, curling over her forehead and ears, she was taken for the first time to Madame Eventurel's mother, in the house on the Esplanade. She stood for a long moment, very straight, facing the old lady who seemed to look through the little girl and see something troubling on the wall behind the child.

At table, even as she was sampling dishes she found distasteful, she felt very strongly that she no longer existed at all, neither as Pierrette Paul nor as Marie Eventurel, but was becoming a sort of transparent shadow sitting opposite an old woman who looked like the Queen of Hearts in
Alice in Wonderland.

Everyone who lived in the city filed through the grownups' conversation in the proper order. Some of the individuals who were conjured up had to undergo a severe examination by the old lady on the Esplanade, before the pitiless verdict.

“Not distinguished!” she declared in a peremptory tone. The little girl thought she was hearing the Queen of Hearts pronounce the death sentence:

“Off with their heads!”

She must have heard that sentence directed at her on the day in question, as they were leaving the house on the Esplanade. Just as Madame Eventurel was sticking a long pin into her hat and adjusting the veil over her face, the old lady came up to her daughter, pretending to whisper, but the acid voice seeped out on all sides and in all directions:

“You'll never make a lady of her.”

She knew the Queen of Hearts was condemning her to have her head cut off.