But what had she done yesterday that was so exhausting? At eight o’clock in the morning they had gone skating at Molitor; at half past nine they had gulped down a hot chocolate at Prévost’s; at ten o’clock they had chosen fabrics for a coat (Pierre, let loose among the samples, went straight to the prettiest material, depriving himself of the pleasure of making up his mind); at half past ten they went to buy some American corned beef from a charcuterie at Les Halles; from there he had taken her to the Doucet Library where he needed to make a sketch (very quickly, without even getting down from the librarian’s ladder), then to the Cernuschi Museum; after that, she had waited for him in the car while he negotiated a deal with Gulbenkian; since the time for lunch was well past, they made do with a few sandwiches soaked in beer in a bar on the Champs-Elysées. At three o’clock, while he took part in the committee meeting of the Musées Nationaux, he had sent Hedwige to try on her dresses, with instructions to collect him at four o’clock at the printers of an art magazine he owned and to drop him at the Arts of Benin exhibition in the avenue Matignon, from where she had driven back to Saint-Germain. Well? What was so tiring about that? An absolutely normal day. But her indolent sisters must have persuaded her that she needed to rest.
Pierre stretched exultantly. How good it was in the morning, ideas had clarity, things were back in their proper place, seen in their true proportions and in their natural colours; in the morning they had the transparency of crystal whereas in the evening the sun had stained them yellow like a bad Venetian painter, and at night it was the fakes that proliferated! Pierre had rediscovered sanity and reason and clear common sense, those “very French” virtues.
But nothing is so blinding as complete clarity; mirages are a diurnal phenomenon. It’s during the dark hours of insomnia, the hours of pessimism par excellence, that the heart probes deepest and attains the truth.
*
Nine o’clock and Hedwige is not there.
When you arrange a time with a woman, you do so without believing she will keep it, it’s inclined to be a time you arrange with yourself: you tell yourself that it’s only after that time that you will have to suffer. That is the consolatory virtue of the rendezvous, the rendezvous at which they do not turn up.
Half past nine. Pierre is still waiting and time is flowing by. People talk of time flowing by as though it were tumbling from a spring and as though this spring were situated somewhere uphill. When Pierre looks up, it is as if he were searching for the fountain that marks the beginning of this great stream.
“It must be a salt-water source,” he sighs, “heavy with all the tears of those who have waited.”
At ten o’clock, Pierre was due to meet the director of the Bremen Museum of Ethnography. He rings the Hôtel Bradford to cancel the meeting. Then, since his morning has been wasted and the weather is fine, and because he is very much on edge, not having slept, and because he needs to keep himself busy, he climbs up to the terrace to do a little gardening, for it’s the right moment, one needs to be ready for the arrival of spring.
It is not the right moment, mid-February is too early.
“February or March, aren’t they more or less the same?”
No, the great frosts are the worry; they’re even obligatory. But the weather is as it is in April, it’s so still this morning. All of a sudden the west wind, while staying loyal to its traditions of warmth, no longer carries its cargo of large Atlantic clouds — there has been an inexplicable delay in the arrival of the tide — and it has left the sky completely blue, completely empty, like its colleague the east wind, but without the cold.
Pierre climbs up the spiral staircase and reaches the terrace. He is very proud of his garden, which measures barely ten by thirty metres and which only has three sides, being enclosed on the fourth by a wall from which three of the building’s chimneys protrude, quickly transforming any visitors into chimney sweeps. In the middle of the three trimmed box hedges that protect the little garden there are small ovals through which you can see Paris, her distinctive monuments, her layers of variously coloured smoke with, in the centre, the basilica of Montmartre ready to ring out like the President’s bell, before he takes the floor.
“There’s the west, and over there, it’s the north-east…”
When Pierre brings his friends up here, they are as lost as they would be at sea.
At the foot of each section of box hedge there is a small flower bed where Pierre grows common flowers that bloom in about mid-June: flax, poppies, foxgloves, lupins. In the centre there is a larger bed containing early fruit and vegetables, consisting of two cold frames and lit with neon lighting, which he is not a little proud of and which soothes all the disappointments that somnolent nature inflicts on him.
“And above all, give me something that grows quickly!” Pierre exclaims to Monsieur Priapet when he calls at Le Bon Cultivateur on the Quai de la Mégisserie to place his horticultural order.
Imperturbable, having retained his florid countryman’s complexion in the heart of the city, Monsieur Priapet, the god of gardens, believes only in the established order of gardening traditions and in the celestial code. But since chemical products make a good profit, he happily yields to the impatient fervour of his Parisian and suburban customers.
“Give me something that grows quickly! Why do we have to wait till June when we have sown seeds in March?” asks Pierre, hopping from foot to foot.
“Because the earth is cold, monsieur.”
“Let’s warm it. What have you got in here?”
“Some Subitosa. Keep to the proportions of one spoonful to five litres of water. I know what you’re like, Monsieur Niox, don’t go and do what you did last year and put five spoonfuls to one litre. Remember that you burned all your spindle trees. Eh, do you remember?”
“And what does this sack contain?”
“Some Précipital.”
“What a beautiful name! Vilmorin has a genius for neologisms. How do you use it?”
Monsieur Priapet winks and brings out a Molière-like syringe.
“You apply injections.”
“A good crack of the whip on nature’s behind, that’ll teach her!” said Pierre. “Then give me some Activitte too. And add some Superroburella, one kilo, ten kilos!”
“Be careful. It’s a very stimulating product! Try some of our selected seeds instead,” advised Monsieur Priapet as he rubbed his bright red cheeks.
“Really? Are they guaranteed? Are they quick?”
“I wouldn’t just recommend them to anyone, except to a gardener like you! Look, you’ll get some ‘interesting’ results with the Bursting tomato and with the Lightning chervil. Do you know the extra-early Express sweet peas from Suttons?”
“Give me twenty packets. And put a sack of arsenic mash in my car; and another of Sulphuretted Prefoliate.”
“That’s hyperactive, Monsieur Niox. Watch out! I’ll do as you ask, but for a truly reinforced fertilizer that’s anti-cryptogamic and that will really benefit you, there’s nothing like Prematurol from Truffaut’s. Have you seen their Begonias semperflorens on the Cours-la-Reine when they’ve been watered with that? They’re huge.”
And Pierre departs straight away, his pockets filled with the Horticulturalist’s Diary, the Manual of Floriculture, eager to start planting and transplanting.
Once back home, he will increase his efforts, naturally, and fill his flower beds with stimulating substances and ashes that are so blazingly hot that they still burn the feet at the moment of planting.