Leonora (13 page)

‘It doesn't matter, nothing matters now …' Leonora assures him, by now having flown as high as a kite.

14

POSTMAN
CHEVAL

T
HERE'S NOT MUCH TO DO
besides either walking or scaling the rocky heights. Max knows about astronomy, Leonora about the moon, which she believes waxes and wanes like a woman's body, and governs her monthly cycles. Her master of astronomy, Father O'Connor, taught her the constellations which she now teaches Max. She also informs him about green, blue and grey crickets and, when a vulture swoops down out of the blue, announces sadly:

‘There must be an animal lying dead in a field somewhere near here.'

Max explains that the insides of particular mushrooms are like egg whites and, since Leonora relishes eating eggs, she eats the mushrooms. Max seems to carry a great burden inside him, keeps silent much of the time and, when he doesn't, restricts himself to explaining to Leonora the tortuous and magical ways in which nature behaves.

Sometimes, while out walking, they meet a postman with a white moustache. In order to assume his profession, he was obliged to swear an oath. In France, postmen have to vow that every letter will arrive at its destination intact. They wear military-style uniforms: to become a postman is to undertake a sacred mission. Those who have no bicycles sometimes cross long distances on foot, following breaks in the lines of trees in order to reach their destination. The sun burns them, the rains soak them and the snows freeze them. The postman of St. Martin d'Ardèche has penetrating eyes half-hidden beneath his navy blue cap, and all at once Max is reminded of
Facteur Cheval
– ‘Postman Horse' – and his expression alters immediately:

‘Let's go by train to Hauterives, Leonora. Do you remember the poem that Breton read to you, dedicated to a postman? We are near Ferdinand Cheval's Ideal Palace. It won't matter how long it takes, nor the conditions of the journey, if we keep the prospect of that place in mind. You really must meet him.'

‘Is he a horse, like his name?' Leonora claps her hands in anticipation.

On one of his deliveries, Ferdinand Cheval tripped on a stone that caused him to fall; he had never seen one like it, so he looked for more, and he found them. He was no longer a young man, already forty-three years old. First he kept the stones in his pockets, and then he began storing them in a barrel, until finally he took them in a wheelbarrow to the place where he was going to build his castle. ‘He has respected his name,' Leonora thinks. ‘He has worked like a horse.'

With mortar and cement and over a period of thirty-three years, Ferdinand Cheval converted the stones into insects, feathers, palms, towers, draw-bridges, animals, waterfalls, star fish, angels, horns, roses … so building his
Palais Idéal
, which had a little about it of a Swiss chalet, a Hindu temple, and the niches and minarets of a mosque.

On top of the little wheelbarrow, Leonora discovers a plaque on which Cheval pays the palace due homage with the lines:

‘Now that its work is done

may it rest in peace from its labours

and in the house it built

I, its humble friend,

occupy the seat of honour.'

‘What did his neighbours make of it, Max?'

‘The same thing they make of us: they decided that he was weak in the head. Do you know that I dedicated a painting to him?
To Postman Cheval
.'

‘Where do you keep it?'

‘I gave it to Louise.'

During the return journey from Hauterives, Max reads and Leonora keeps her nose glued to the window, watching the children waving vigorously as the train goes by. Barely has she closed her eyes when a voice that seems to emerge from the depths of a tunnel awakens her: ‘St. Martin d'Ardèche.'

Leonora is respectful of her lover's silences and amuses herself in recollections of the best times of her life at Crookhey Hall: the day she first went skating on the iced-over lake, the night she got drunk on tepid beer with Tim, the chauffeur's son, in her father's car, and the hangover that went on for so long that she vomited in front of all the guests on the tennis court the next afternoon.

Alphonsine knocks on their door in a state of high agitation to announce: ‘There's a woman downstairs who insists she's Ernst's wife. She tried to snatch the tray I was holding in my hand: “
I'll
take his
café au lait
upstairs to him.” I wasn't going to have that, though.'

‘Curses!' The painter awakes. ‘I shall go down and see her.'

Leonora is left waiting for three hours.

Alphonsine comes back upstairs to tell her what has been going on in the living room: ‘He has taken her down to the river.'

‘What?'

‘Yes, the first thing he asked her was: ‘What are you doing here?' He did not seem in the least put out, and suggested they take a walk together. They took the path that runs down to the Ardèche, and he was holding her by the arm.'

‘He was holding her by the arm?'

Finally, Max returns: ‘I have to take her to her aunt's house over at Valence, not far from here, to let her calm down. If I spend three days there with her, she promises faithfully to leave us in peace.'

It is a blow for Leonora thus to discover the extent of Max's weakness. There's a sharp flare in her nostrils when he repeats that Marie-Berthe wants only three days of his time. Three days are not nothing; they don't flow by like water.

‘What about me?' cries out Leonora.

‘Just three days. You and I have our whole lives ahead of us, she has understood that I am going to leave her.'

Leonora looks him up and down, while he is begging her to wait there for him. Marie-Berthe is in a very bad way, and he has to accompany her to Valence. She, Leonora, is not in a bad way. Quite the opposite, she is a dynamo and a goat. The other woman is the desperate case. Leonora grows angry, he can take his ex-wife to the station, he can put her on a train; if Marie-Berthe has managed to find her way this far, she has sufficient strength to get back home by herself.

Leonora is besieged by the vipers of fear. Marie-Berthe will snare him, prevent him from returning at all costs. She is the one Max will leave behind, not his legitimate partner. The person who'll lose in this game is her, the Englishwoman. The one who's now set to win the match is the Frenchwoman, the one who belongs to him, the one on home turf, the one who supports Max.
Maurie … Mama … where are you? Maurie, help me, what shall I do?
And her mother's voice helps her by aiding her anger.

‘Max, if you leave, you won't find me here when you come back.'

She spits it out at him, but with her head held high. There is no way this German man is going to humiliate her. If he wants to play the fool, believing she'll come back to him, the more fool he. Leonora is a mare and she's rearing on her hind legs, her front hooves ready to pound down on him. Max jumps backwards before the fury of the Englishwoman's onslaught.

‘Do you take me for an imbecile?'

Alphonsine leans out of the window: ‘Your wife is pacing up and down like a caged animal.'

‘I promise I'll be back in three days, little Leonora.' Max embraces her.

‘Don't call me little, I am not an idiot. If you leave now, then I'll leave in the opposite direction.'

‘Where to? What will you do?'

‘That's my business,' she responds, incandescent with rage, while she ponders if she could find some menial job or other to support herself.

‘Wait here for me!'

‘Clear off.'

The last Leonora sees of her lover is his bowed head. His overcoat still hangs in the hall, and Leonora is on the point of calling him back – ‘Max, your overcoat!' – but instead stands staring at it, as if the garment were capable of hypnotising her.

‘What a weak man!' comments Alphonsine.

‘Help me pack. I'm off.'

‘Are you going to leave us too? I won't let you go. A young woman like you, all alone, would be putting herself in danger. Just wait here for three days and he'll be back.'

‘And in the meantime I am supposed to play the Lady of Shalott?'

‘Who on earth is she?'

‘Her body appears floating down all the rivers of England. Because her lover abandoned her, she decided to drown herself.'

Despite the fact that her hands feel icy and will hardly feel a thing, Leonora gathers up her possessions.

‘Look, my fingers have turned to stone.'

She can carry everything she has in one small bundle.

‘I'm done. Let's go down to the café and get drunk.'

She sits down and starts on the cheap brandy known as
marc
. It instantly goes to her head.

‘Max has left poor little Leonora all alone,' reconstructs Alphonsine. ‘Look at her now, bottle in hand …'

‘Don Pascual, the grape picker, has promised to take me to the train station at Orange.'

Fonfon tries to restrain her.

The stationmaster watches her walk down the empty platform.

‘The fast train leaves at half-past nine tonight,' he informs her.

Leonora leaves her bundle of clothes in a station locker and sets off around the town. In a brasserie she orders one glass of red wine after another until she has drunk a whole bottle. She buys a book and sits down on a bench in the main square.

The hours stagnate as they pass and the afternoon grows cooler. She gives up on the book: it's impossible to read as the twilight is making the letters merge with the page, and she goes back to the station. On the way she steps out in front of a car, trying to get herself run over:

‘Are you mad?' the driver furiously shouts at her as he gets out of his car. ‘You stink of wine, young woman!'

Leonora shrugs her shoulders and walks across to the tobacconist. Then she sets off towards the ancient Roman arena, the biggest tourist draw in town. At the entrance, she realises she hasn't got the strength to go in. She buys a newspaper and then throws it away. She longs to hurt herself. She scratches her left shin with her right foot. ‘If they poisoned Lucrezia Borgia, why not me?' She goes into a café and makes a phone call to Alphonsine right in front of a couple of other drinkers.

‘Stay there until tomorrow morning,' implores Alphonsine. ‘Or at the very least give me a phone number so I can call you back with any news.'

The café owner recommends a hotel to her. Hardly has Leonora installed herself there than she is ringing Alphonsine again, to let her know the address and phone number. At nine o'clock she retires to bed, but she can't sleep and at dawn she is up and walking around the town once more. As soon as the first shops begin to open, she buys a bottle of Hennessy and goes back to her room hugging the bottle in her arms. From her window Leonora can see and count the roofs of Orange, as she slugs her way through half the bottle. At eleven o'clock there is a knock at the door.

‘Téléphone, mademoiselle, de la part d'Alphonsine.'

She can hardly speak, her mouth is burning from so many cigarettes.

‘Max called,' Alphonsine tells her. ‘I told him you had gone to Orange, and gave him your phone number. I also warned him that if he didn't ring you, you would probably leave for China or America. He said he would call you immediately.'

15

THE HANGOVER

L
EONORA DOES NOTHING
except wait and smoke. No sooner does she let the waiters know that she is going to sit on the bench in front of the hotel, than she changes her mind:

‘I'll be in my room.'

She goes upstairs to her room, and then comes back down again, finding it unbearable.

‘Eat something,' recommends the kindly waiter.

Rather than eat, she orders two black coffees and stares at her reflection in the mirror. ‘How pale I am, I look as if I am crazy!' She relishes the thought. Perhaps she'll die and the suffering will be over. Her eardrums pound and a vein in her left temple stands out. She rushes to the telephone every time it rings, regardless of who sees her.

‘It is not for you,' the same sympathetic waiter is obliged to keep telling her.

At noon she has finished the bottle and thrown herself down on her bed, intending to go to sleep with it in her arms. An impossibility. At three-thirty in the afternoon she orders a taxi.

‘If someone called Max Ernst phones, tell him that I have
not
left for America, but I
have
left to return to St. Martin d'Ardèche.'

The waiters watch her leave with expressions of compassion, because Leonora has explained things to them: ‘The man whom I love has genital obligations to another woman.'

‘I don't understand,' her accomplice Alphonsine informs her. ‘He seemed desperate to know where you were. I do so hope nothing has gone wrong. The people in the village said he took a revolver with him.'

‘I don't think so for a moment,' Leonora replies angrily.

‘You look like some poor demented female, let me bring you up a cup of cocoa.'

‘As you wish. Meanwhile, I'll run quickly to the phone box.'

She returns breathless and with her hair ruffled.

‘There's no news.'

‘Help yourself to a freshly made cup of coffee,' proposes Marie, ‘while I read your cards.'

She cuts the pack and starts to deal.

‘You will marry a dark-skinned man and be extremely wealthy. But difficulties will also await you along the way.'

‘Will Max return to me?'

‘The cards say no,' answers Marie.

That evening some clients were drinking
marc
in the café while Alphonsine recounted the tales of the English girl's fall from grace.

‘The way things look to me, I don't think her lover will be back,' opines Mathieu. ‘I'll invite her to join us for a drink.'

Leonora canvasses support at one table after the next, and everyone offers her a drink. She puts through another call to Orange. ‘No, Madame, no-one has left a message for you.' Instead of returning to Alphonsine's café, she walks towards the river whose icy waters descend from the mountains. It has rained heavily.

‘It seems quite likely that the English girl will kill herself,' Alphonsine comments to her neighbours, ‘and the river will carry her poor little body out to sea.'

Finally, Jimmy Ernst rings to tell her his father is too tired to travel to St. Martin d'Ardèche. Could Alphonsine send on his luggage? ‘Of course not!' she replies furiously. She relays this to Leonora who lets forth a violent stream of curses.

‘Those are not words fit to be spoken by a lady!' Alphonsine protests.

The Englishwoman, on the point of replying, is left standing with her mouth wide open, as Max appears in the square on
Darling Little Mabel.
He climbs the stairs with his coat torn and his shirt dishevelled.

‘It looks as if he spent the night with a couple of tigers!' Alphonsine's hands fly to her mouth.

‘Come with me, Leonora,' Max calls her. ‘I've never suffered so much in all my life.'

No sooner has he begun to explain to her what he has been through than Alphonsine comes into their room.

‘She's coming up.'

Shrieks and pummelling at the door force Leonora to open it, only to receive a resounding slap.

She turns and confronts Max, still holding her hand to her cheek. ‘Are you going to send her to hell, or are you leaving with her right now?'

Standing square in the doorway, the legitimate wife awaits him.

‘What are you going to do, Max?' Leonora persists.

‘I don't know,' he answers, terrified.

His eyes shift from one woman to the other. Marie-Berthe laughs hysterically.

‘If you can't decide, to the devil with you straight away!'

Max obeys and goes down to the street, where, five minutes later, Leonora sees him mounted on
Darling Little Mabel
, pressing his right foot down on the pedal, and Marie-Berthe placing both her hands on the handlebars of
Roger of Kildare.

‘My bicycle!' cries out Leonora.

Marie-Berthe puts her tongue out at her.

Aroused by the sound of scandal, the villagers lean out of their windows.

Without looking at any of them, Leonora heads for the church and urinates in the middle of the aisle, standing erect before the altar:

‘How's that for your holy water, you crappy saints.'

Her skirts still lifted, she descends to the river, now clogged with mud and tree trunks. The little beach where their tent and camp once stood has vanished. Leonora spies a ghost on the other river bank: Max removes his rucksack and shirt and throws himself in the water to swim across to her.

The Ardèche woods are painted in their early autumn colours and the water has turned to shining gold. Leonora thinks it a good thing that summer is behind her. The streets look even more abandoned than she feels. Vine leaves catch at her cheek and a bird falls at her feet, staining the dust with its blood. Crickets sing away furiously and fill her head with their chirruping. The sound causes a stinging in her eyes.

Leonora hides behind the chapel to smoke her Curls of Miralda. As inhaling them has no effect, she eats one by one all the tiny spiky leaves which numb her palate to sleep. ‘I am a cow masticating her thoughts.' The bats sing a Bach Mass, Leonora joins in and sings so loudly that the stained glass windows in the chapel shiver then shatter. Nothing could have afforded her greater pleasure. After swallowing the whole handful of Curls of Miralda she returns to Alphonsine's café, only to find a large table covered with a linen cloth.

‘What's happening, Alphonsine?'

‘It's the village fete. I want to introduce you to Panthilde and to Agathe from Drues Airlines, two of the great personages doing us the honour.'

‘Where is Drusille de Guindre?'

‘We did not invite her.'

Leonora sits down at the table and suddenly remarks on how the roses are sprouting out of the cloth and growing all the way up to the ceiling. Buds of every colour are opening – red, white, blue, scarlet, black – climbing from the table-cloth up the walls.

‘You'll soon be feeling much better,' Alphonsine says in a loud voice. ‘I can't let you go anywhere in this state.'

A cascade of wine reaches the edges of the table, and Leonora watches while Fonfon calls a waiter, whispering something into his ear as she points at her.

‘This fete is in your honour. You are to deliver a speech.'

The waiters emerge from the kitchen, serve the main course, and retire to prepare the next one. Alphonsine issues the orders:

‘Hurry up. But be sure to wash the glasses.'

Leonora addresses her neighbour at the dinner table: ‘The right hemisphere of my brain is just as powerful as the left one.'

She lifts her hand to her head and discovers it has changed into that of a horse.

‘Do I look odd?' she asks him.

‘To me, everyone looks odd,' he replies. ‘You, for example, have the profile of a mare.'

‘Yes,' says Leonora. ‘From this day onwards, I shall keep my horse's face. I also know someone who has had the face of a pig from the day he was born.'

‘And what does my face look like?'

‘Like a bear. I am English and my absolute favourite is the bat.'

A child dressed as an angel, standing stiff-backed on the table, recites a poem by Lautréamont, while the guests pinch her legs, smack her bottom, and flick balls of paper at her head as if they were all back in the classroom. When she has done her cabaret turn, Alphonsine shoves the girl's head under water until the bubbles stop surfacing. The little corpse floats its way around the table and the guests chuck leftovers from their dinner at her.

‘Now open your presents,' Fonfon commands.

The guests exchange vipers, frogs, nightingales, scorpions, butterflies, bats, rabbits, snails, revolvers, knives and red hot coins. A drunken Agathe from Drues Airlines insists that someone teach her how to fire a gun.

‘Do you realise this banquet is being held in your honour?' Fonfon repeats. ‘We are all waiting for your speech.'

Leonora climbs onto the table, lifts up her head, and sings
Hark, hark, the lark
, bows her head with her hand over her heart, and sits down again in the midst of applause.

Leonora does not manage to overcome her nausea.

‘Here comes your surprise,' Alphonsine tells her, poking her in the ribs with a sharp finger. ‘Just you wait and see.'

The spectators open a way for three men dressed in black to come through. When they have mounted the scaffold, Leonora notices that the third man, who is very slight, bears a phenomenal resemblance to herself. He is carrying a basket of lilies.

‘I can't bear to witness this,' she tells Alphonsine.

‘Do you have something to say?' the executioner asks the squat and shortest man.

He leads him to the guillotine and places a cushion under his knees.

‘Thank you,' is his only answer.

After one terse strike, the head tumbles into the basket of lilies, bathing them in blood. Leonora recognises her own head.

‘Would you like a dead egg or a burnt foot?' she enquires of the person seated beside her.

‘A sugar lump.'

‘I always bring sugar for my horses,' she answers.