The Woman With the Bouquet Read Free Page A

sailing.”
    “Oh, yes? You would only stay here on condition that you could leave again? A typical male remark.”
    “You’re quite right. Men become sailors and women . . .”
    “. . . the wives of sailors! And then their widows.”
    “What is one waiting for, when one spends an entire life above a port at the ends of the earth?”
    She was aware of how incongruous my statement was, and she gazed warmly at me, without answering, encouraging me to go on. And so I did: “Is one waiting for a departure?”
    She shook her shoulders to rule out that hypothesis.
    “Or a return, rather?”
    Her large gray irises held my gaze. I thought I glimpsed a shadow of a pain, but her voice was firm, denying it: “One remembers, Monsieur, one remembers.”
    Then she turned her face to the open sea. Again she was so absorbed that I was no longer there; she stared out into the distance the way I would contemplate the blank page, and in her dreaming she ventured out there resolutely.
    What was she remembering? Nothing under this roof spoke of her past, everything belonged to previous generations—books, furniture, paintings. It was as if she had come here like a magpie with a stolen treasure, and she had put it down, and had only bothered to replace the curtains and the wallpaper.
    Upstairs, I asked her niece, “Gerda, your aunt has told me that she spends her days remembering the past. In your opinion, what is she remembering?”
    “I have no idea. She didn’t work. She was an old maid.”
    “Really?”
    “Yep, for sure. We never saw no men around Aunt Emma, poor thing. Ever. The family knows that. Know what, as soon as you say gentleman or marriage, she snaps shut like a clam.”
    “A broken engagement? A fiancé who died in the war? Some disappointment she thinks of as her tragedy, and that she’s still nostalgic about?”
    “Not even! Back in the days when there were more of us in the family, uncles and aunts tried to introduce suitable suitors. Oh yes. Very acceptable fiancés. One fiasco after the other, Monsieur, can you believe it?”
    “It’s odd . . .”
    “To stay on her own? Yes indeed! I know I couldn’t . . . I may not have married the most handsome man round these parts, but at least he’s there, he gave me children. A life like the one my aunt has had? I’d rather commit suicide right away.”
    “And yet she doesn’t seem unhappy.”
    “You got to give her credit: she doesn’t complain. Even now, when her strength is leaving her, and her savings have melted like butter, she doesn’t complain, does she now! No, she turns to the window, she smiles, she dreams. Basically, it’s not much of a life she’s lived, but she’s had her dreams . . .”
    Gerda was right. Emma lived elsewhere, not among us. Wasn’t there something about the way she carried her head, her oblique face on her long slender neck that made it tilt to one side, that gave the impression her dreams weighed too heavily with her?
    After that discussion, I secretly began to call her the dreamer . . . the dreamer from Ostend.
     
    The next morning, she heard me come down and she pushed her wheelchair over to me.
    “Would you like to join me for coffee?”
    “With pleasure.”
    “Gerda! Would you bring us two cups, please.”
    For my benefit, she whispered: “Her coffee is like dishwater, so weak it wouldn’t arouse a newborn baby.”
    Gerda proudly brought us two steaming cups, as if our desire to chat over her brew paid homage to her culinary talents.
    “Madame Van A., I have been quite upset by what you suggested the first evening.”
    “What was that?”
    “I have recovered quickly from the affair that drove me away from Paris: so I did not lose a great deal by putting an end to it. If you remember, you had asserted that one can only get over something if it is not important; on the other hand, one never recovers from an important love.”
    “I once saw lightning strike a tree. I felt very close to the tree. There is a moment