She let Franchise break in on the line, greeting her with serene detachment as if she were another visitor. Submissively, almost with relief, she let herself be led down what seemed an endlessly long hall and drank a hot broth, which was like yet another obligation imposed upon her. “No, I don’t want to rest,” she said in response to the girl’s affectionate solicitude. “I’m not tired, and you needn’t worry about me. I’ll bear up.” The words came from far away, as if someone else were pronouncing them, and she let Francoise oblige her to lie down, unlacing her shoes and passing a handkerchief dipped in eau de cologne across her forehead. He was running on the beach; behind the beach were the ruins of a Greek temple, and he was stark naked, nude like a Greek god with a laurel crown on his head. His testicles danced in a comical way as he ran, and she couldn’t help laughing. She laughed so hard that she thought she was choking, and then she woke up.
She woke up abruptly, with a feeling of anxiety because she must have slept too long and everything must be over; visits, speeches, ceremonies, the funeral, perhaps even the day. Now it must be evening; Franchise was surely waiting in the hall, with reddened eyes and the air of a stoic sparrow, waiting to tell her: “I had to let you sleep. You couldn’t hold out any longer.” She went to the door, where she could hear the murmur of the guests below. From the anteroom she heard the Chinese clock strike two frivolous strokes. All of a sudden and for the first time, she hated that tiny, precious, monstrous timepiece. And yet she had bought it herself, imagining that she’d always treasure it. No, she said to herself forcefully, I won’t think of Macao. For today I don’t want to remember anything. In fact, she had slept for only ten minutes. She went into the bathroom and redid her make-up. The short sleep had disarranged her hair and left two deep furrows in the powder on her cheeks. She thought of masking their pallor with some rouge, then decided against it. She brushed her teeth in order to dull the taste of camphor in her mouth. Strange that the nausea brought on by so many flowers in the house should take on the taste of camphor.
She went out, knowing that Franooise would be waiting in the small drawing room. She had made an appointment with the German publisher for two o’clock and didn’t want to keep him waiting. When she came in, the solemn gentleman stood up and made a brief bow. He was stout, obese in fact, and somehow this cheered her. Franooise was sitting down with a notebook on her lap. “If you prefer to speak in your own language, my secretary will serve as interpreter.” The corpulent gentleman nodded. He spared her banal outpourings and came straight to the point, in honest, businesslike fashion, a procedure that had its advantages. “I’m buying the diary,” he said in French. “Your husband lived in my country during crucial years; he knew important political and literary people, and his memoirs are valuable to us.” He gave a slight cough and fell silent, in anticipation of a response that was not forthcoming. This seemed to perplex him because he stiffened and advanced, boldly, into the area of money. “I’ll pay in marks,” he said, “right away, before there’s a contract; all I need is an option.” He spoke in German, and Franooise promptly translated. The interposition of a translation made the proposal less vulgar, and she was grateful to him for this subtlety. Also it facilitated her reply; her words, passed on by Franchise in other words that were to her incomprehensible, took on a life of their own, which did not belong to her or concern her, which no longer had a meaning. She would have her secretary write to him, she said, but surely he understood that this was no time for decisions. Of course she would take into account that this was the first offer, but for the moment, if he would excuse her, she must fulfil other obligations… She looked to Franchise. Other obligations… she didn’t quite know which, and didn’t care. Franchise was looking at her notebook and taking care of everything. As she followed Franchise, she gave in to this childish feeling. The sensation of being an abandoned child rose from the buried depths of her weary old body and broke through the ruins of the intervening years, giving her, once more, an overwhelming urge to sob and weep without restraint, and, at the same time, an almost feverish lightheartedness. For a moment she felt that the child reawakened within her might jump and dance or sing a nonsense song. Whatever had given her the urge to cry also took the urge away. And then a harsh light was coming out of the library, the floor was covered with wires, and someone was talking overloudly. “They’re after an interview for the TV evening news,” said Franchise. “The agency president called in person. I set a limit of three minutes, but if you don’t feel up to it, I’ll send them away. lis sont des betes” she added scornfully.
It wasn’t actually so. The TV reporter was an emaciated, intelligent-looking young man, tormenting the microphone with his bony hands. He seemed to be very well acquainted with the dead writer’s work, and began by quoting from one of his youthful books. Beneath his acute but casual manner she felt a touch of embarrassment. He asked her to interpret a sentence which had become proverbial, symbolic of a whole generation, a sentence which even schoolbooks had picked up, in a positive sense, of course, because schoolbooks go for the positive. And here he was, asking her whether, in that definition of man, there wasn’t a grain of irony, a perfidiously disguised negative hint. The insinuation made her feel happy. It allowed her to make an evasive reply, disguised as improvisation, to take refuge in the role of the great man’s widow, who can reveal his taste in neckties. And so her answer was disarmingly banal, so inadquate that it lived up to exactly what the reporter expected. It confirmed, in the highest degree, that she was a subtly intelligent woman, the perfect helpmeet, who could provide precious first-hand information. All of which led, inevitably, to a biographical indiscretion, a subtle indiscretion, because the reporter was well-mannered and hoped, for the benefit of the TV audience, that she would tell him an episode of their life story. Which meant his life story. And she obliged — why not? — with a moralistic tale, one tinged with nobility, because that is what the public relishes, especially the everyday public. As she spoke, she had a feeling of bitterness towards herself. She would rather have told a quite different story, but not to this well-mannered young man, under the dazzling lights. She fell silent and smiled, in an exhausted but dignified manner.
Of the drive to the cathedral she registered nothing except for such confused fleeting images as the senses take in but do not retain. She was driven in a black car, upholstered in grey, with a muffled engine and a silent driver. At the service, too, she was there and not there, present with her body alone while she allowed her mind to range at random through the geography of memory: Paris, Capri, Taormina, and then, suddenly, a picturesque humble cottage which — it was almost funny — she couldn’t place. She concentrated her efforts on a room whose insignificant details she vividly remembered, on a plain brass bed with a simple picture of the Holy Family hanging above it. Incredible that she couldn’t recall the location. Where was it? Meanwhile the archbishop had pronounced a long homily, doubtless of a very high calibre. She felt cold. This, she thought, was the only sensation, indeed the only feeling that could hold her attention. Her stomach was cold, as if a huge block of ice were pressing against its walls, so that during the rest of the service she kept her hands tightly folded on her lap. Then the cold spread to her Hmbs, not into her hands, which were burning, but into her arms and shoulders, her legs and feet, which were without feeling, as if frozen, although she spasmodically wriggled her toes. Shivers ran through her body, and she couldn’t hide them. She clenched her teeth so that they would not chatter, until she felt pain in the muscles of her face and neck. Franchise became aware that she was ill at ease; she took her hands into her own and whispered into her ear something which she did not catch, perhaps that she should leave. It didn’t matter, because the ceremony was over, the coffin was being borne down the central aisle, and she found herself back in the same car with the same driver, who was taking her home, while Franchise had thrown her coat over her and put an arm around her shoulders in an attempt to warm her. It wasn’t easy to part company graciously, to convey to Franchise, tactfully but firmly, that she didn’t want her to stay overnight, that she wanted to enter and remain in the big, empty house unaccompanied, that the maid could attend to any need, that this was the first evening of her solitude and she wanted to enter into her solitude alone. Finally she drew herself away, Franchise kissed her, her eyes shining with tears, and she went into the silent front hall. Immediately she rang the bell for the maid and told her to withdraw because there was nothing to be done, except, please, to disconnect the telephone. As she went up the stairs she heard the odious Chinese clock strike seven times. She stopped on the landing and opened, almost greedily, its glass case, then deliberately advanced the minute hand to eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve o’clock. When it reached there, she said to herself: It’s already tomorrow. After that she went through another full cycle and said: It’s already the day after tomorrow. Then she turned the hand the other way, and the clock obediently struck decreasing numbers. She went back down the stairs and into the library, where there was a vague smell of stale cigarettes. In order to drive it away, she lit a stick of incense and threw open a window. It was pouring rain. In the fireplace the maid had laid a little pyramid of logs, with pine cones for kindling. At the touch of a match flames shot up so brightly that there was no need for the hanging lamp. She turned it off. Then she opened the safe and took out a mahogany box. The manuscripts were piled up in perfect order, like banknotes, with rubber bands around them.