"That's enough," she murmured. "That's good. Take me back. Please."
We turned around. She curled back into the case. I put it in the car, and we went back to the house.
During lunch, Delia insisted I accompany her that afternoon. She wanted to show me a cross she'd found by the wayside. Delia was interested in crosses, medieval wash houses, ancient sheep barns… As though there were something to see in the world. She implied that if I agreed to go out and catch a cold with her, she'd be grateful.
She'd hung her raincoat by the door. I'd gulped down my coffee and, as we were about to head out, went up to the bedroom to find mine. I took the chance to check in on Gaud. She gave me one of those pitiful smiles that moved me so much.
"Nothing can hurt me, you know, but that walk we took did me good," she whispered, as I was worried about how tired she seemed.
"Rest up," I said.
"Yes… Leave the lid open a little, please. Sometimes I feel like I'm suffocating."
I studied her suspiciously.
"Please! I won't do anything stupid. No more pranks."
Did I believe her? I gave in to her request. When we got back from our walk, Delia and I found her almost completely consumed in the hearth. All that remained was a trace, in relief, of her body curled up on a bed of embers. I wanted to recover the eyes that divine glassmaker had given her, but I didn't have the heart. Delia took the poker from my hands. Digging through the embers, she found only two shapeless drops of glass she gave up on saving. She picked up a shovel instead and patted the reddish burial mound flat.
Later, back in Paris, I remembered what the taxidermist had said when he gave me the certificate of authenticity. "Fire, theft, nothing's safe. These days, everything disappears or goes up in smoke. Make sure you're insured!" I'd followed his advice. Now I called in the insurance. I was reimbursed for Gaud in cash, and with that cash I bought our wedding rings: Delia's and my own.
Lozere, Sept.-Oct. 1995
Ecorcheville
hen Orne heard that several automated firing squads had been set up around town, he was unimpressed. Of all the innovations constantly being introduced to the surroundings, how mane turned out to last? Of course certain amenities, like phone or photo booths, had established themselves by proving their usefulness. But how would the use of an automatic firing squad-one that you used yourself-ever catch on? Once the novelty had worn off, such an invention was doomed never to be more than a gimmick. Besides, from just what point would such contraptions break even and ensure returns? How many shootings would it take per month to pay the upkeep alone? Even though it was all in theory automatic and self-cleaning, someone had to pay workers to remove the bodies and gunsmiths to regulate and reload the weaponry. Orne had trouble seeing how an entrepreneur might make back his investment, cover his costs, and show any profit.
Orne's predictions, pronounced on the terrace of the Cafe du Centre, in no way surprised his listeners. He was a known disbeliever and belittler. Not a bad sort, though, all things considered. The absence of any unforgivable defect in his personality, aside from a tendency to criticize, brought him, on the part of his acquaintances, a measured attachment more lukewarm than loving, but real. In his circle his skepticism was credited to his frustration. He was a man lucky neither in leisure nor love. Leisure-well, that was a manner of speaking. Orne never relaxed: he worked. And despite the lengths to which he went, his business languished. His glove shop had never managed to attract the refined clientele of his dreams. The dandies and damsels of Ecorcheville were faithful to Damien Letoile, perhaps because his competitor came from the class of which they themselves were part. Damien hailed from the very heart of one of Ecorcheville's oldest families, whose prosperity, born of the slave trade, had been further consolidated by the importation of poppies at a time when opium was sold by the seed at every apothecary's. In this gloved, hatted, and cravatted milieu, Damien was related to everyone. The men greeted him with a "Hallo, old sport;" and the women kissed both his cheeks upon entering his boutique. From a much more modest background, Orne did his best to sell gloves and ties to those whose parents had lived bare-handed, with unbuttoned collars, like his own. This accounted for fully half his bitterness.
The other half had to do with women. He had long believed that what made them keep their distance was his way of being in the world. He was not all of a piece, simple and adaptable, as they expected a man to be. Reticence marked him, reservations plain as the nose on his face. To all appearances, women wanted men who were men the way women were women, with an almost animal innocence and authenticity akin to a gazelle's artlessness, a crocodile's candor. Whereas he had never managed to forget himself enough to feel wholly within his rights, a fact that lent almost all his acts, especially his amorous overtures, hints of haste and hesitation that most often led to disaster.
The skewed relationship Orne was aware of entertaining with conventional reality wasn't the only cause of his failure. He was also ugly. Large eyes over a large nose that jutted out above a lipless mouth like an open razor wound in winter, the opposite of a lover's mouth, and all of it framed by two oversized, indelicately colored ears. To this was added an extremely elastic expressiveness that led him to underline the slightest proposition with a grimace, as though to reveal bad teeth that no one wanted to see. One wondered how he'd managed to age in such ignorance, but the fact was that after fifty years, Orne was just beginning to suspect he was ugly.
Around the time the firing-squad machines made their appearance, Orne grew quite enamored of Philippina December. This splendid dollop of womanliness had remained single into her early forties. Nor had she been born to anything. When Orne fantasized about making a decisive connection with her, he considered the modest origins they shared a favorable sign. But although he managed his trade quite poorly, she conducted her career with verve. This pretty beanpole was generally held to be a lady of means. The fortunes of Ecorcheville had few secrets from the woman who saw them file through her office in her position as manager of the region's most prestigious banking institution.
There they were, then, having an aperitif at the Cafe du Centre, Orne and Philippina and a few members of a small circle of singles, divorcees, and premature widowers. They dubbed themselves the Club of Available Hearts. They applied themselves to the task, in fact, of availing, unavailing, and availing themselves once more of one another in a private ronde as the years grayed the men's temples and altered the ovals of the women's faces. The only strangers to these intricate exchanges were Orne and Philippina: Orne because he no longer managed to couple up even temporarily, and Philippina, who'd only have had to say the word, because she refused to say it. Also present that evening were the speculator Macassar; Ludwig Propinquor, rich like all the Propinquors; the dolceola virtuoso Blandeuil, who'd founded a conservatory devoted to his chosen instrument in Ecorcheville; and for the ladies, Brunehilde Laurencais and Gina Mordor in addition to Philippina. Brunehilde was a beauty-reconditioned but warrantied, according to the somewhat tactless Macassar, who sponged off her between bouts at the Exchange. Gina Mordor, a peach-golden, velvety, perfumed-had occupied Orne's thoughts before Philippina. He'd gotten nothing from her, and was almost certain she'd mocked him behind his back the whole time he'd wooed her.
"You'll see: they'll all have forgotten it in a month;" he flung into the conversation after spitting out the stone from the olive in his cocktail. "If it's death you're after, you do it at home, without making a spectacle of yourself."