“Dahlias have never grown in this basket again. Sometimes, when the weeds grow high, I pull them up, and move the earth around so it won’t look bad, and if I see dahlias at the florist, a kind of dizziness sweeps over me and I feel like vomiting. Forgive me.”
THREADED NEEDLE
She sighed deeply, sat down, and picked up her sewing from the table. The white satin glistened like sun-pierced water in the light cast by the floor lamp; a fantastical painter had decorated the parchment lampshade with pyramids surrounded by a landscape of sepia palm trees. Gold lettering on the satin selvage indicated the manufacturer and quality: GERMAIN ET FILS — CARESSANT.
Maria Lluïsa threaded the needle, cut the thread with her teeth, knotted it, and stuck the threaded needle in her bathrobe, above her breast. I wonder what the bride’s like? She never saw the customers. Mademoiselle Adrienne, the workroom manager, fitted and prepared the clothes; once they had been cut and basted they were sent to the workers. I wonder what she’s like? Blond? Brunette? She only knew the woman’s size: forty-eight. She must look like a sack of potatoes.
She laughed and reached up to unfold the nightgown. On the left was a piece of puckered lace. It’s almost as if they do it on purpose to waste my time. She positioned the nightgown on the mannequin, undid the basting on the puckered section, and secured it with needles. She worked, lost in thought, her mouth partially open, the tip of her tongue against her teeth. She was calculating how long it would take her to sew the lace. Thirty-six hours, if she was alert. She would tell the shop it was forty-two. After all, if she was sharp on the job, no reason to do any favors. Six hours for each garland. She would need to go over the design, leaf by leaf, flower by flower; then she would cut the tulle and pop it out. It was a delicate job that demanded skill and patience. Forty-two hours at eighteen francs.
She removed the nightgown from the mannequin, put on her thimble, and picked up the needle. She loved her job for many reasons; it allowed her a glimpse of a world of luxury, and because her hands worked mechanically, she could dream. That’s why she preferred to work at home and at night. When she arrived from the workroom with a new sewing job, she would undo the package slowly and caress the silks and lace edgings. If a neighbor came up to admire the delicate sewing, she proudly displayed it, as if the fine silks and crêpes were for her. The blues and pinks, the occasional lavender, soothed her tired, unwedded heart.
She sewed quickly. With great confidence she pushed the needle in and jerked the thread out. From time to time she would lift the fabric that slid toward the floor and return it to her lap with a precise gesture. Her light chestnut hair was swept back, revealing a few shiny silver threads. On both sides of her small mouth, two deep wrinkles hardened her congested face.
Three or four years from now I’ll set up business for myself. I’ll hang a brass sign on the door: MARIA LLUÏSA, BRIDAL SEAMSTRESS. At the workroom they would be green with envy. Especially Mademoiselle Adrienne. They had worked together for ten years — and cordially despised each other, both of them living in constant exasperation at not knowing how much money the other had. Sometimes Adrienne came up from the fitting room with a package and hid it under the counter, without a word, like a magpie. When Maria Lluïsa saw her coming back with a package, she would grow pale with irritation, a wave of blood rising to her forehead, spreading slowly, leaving shiny, red blotches on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. I’ll have girls working for me and design the clothes myself. The shop will be in my name and customers will lavish me with presents. Better that than getting married. Cooking for a man, washing his clothes, having to put up with a man day and night, only for him to look at young girls when I’m old. She smiled and cast a condescending glance at the bridal nightgown.
But before the dream could absorb her. .
Of course, he would probably die soon enough. She imagined him as he had looked two weeks before, his white hair, his restless, eager eyes and sunken cheeks, shaking with an almost imperceptible tremor beneath his old, stained cassock with the shiny elbows and frayed cuffs. The first day she sat with him at the hospital she heard two nurses whispering: “She’s the priest’s cousin.” She had worn her dark hat with the black bird, its wings spread toward the right. Over the years, one of the bird’s eyes had disappeared and dust had settled in the empty eye socket. She didn’t dare brush it for fear the feathers would come out. She would have it redone in the spring. I’ll tell them to remove the bird and add a pretty little bunch of flowers.
She yawned, dug the needle into the sewing, and rubbed her eyes. She had slept badly for seven nights, the nights she had watched over him, half seated, half stretched out in an armchair. When the doctor told her cousin he would have to be admitted to a hospital, he had someone contact her. “I’ll deposit a hundred thousand francs in your name; you may need the money if I’m sick for a long time. Operations are expensive, and I’d like you to take care of everything. You know if anything happens to me, everything I have is yours.” She had kept the fact that he was sick from the other relatives: What if in the end, in a moment of weakness, he put the old quarrels behind him and decided to leave them something? She alone had watched over him; and she would have spent the night sitting in the armchair by the head of his bed, if the shop hadn’t given her the urgent sewing. He would have greeted her like every night, with a feeble, wasted smile. “Thank goodness I have you, Maria Lluïsa.” And then, like every night, she would scrutinize his waxen face, marked by vague shadows, life blazing in his eyes.
She removed the thimble, picked up the scissors, and started to cut the extra tulle. She couldn’t be distracted now; an irreparable snip of the scissors was easily made. Adrienne went over her work meticulously. Nothing escaped her, not the vaguely crooked seam, not the occasional long stitch. “I don’t like these pleats, Maria Lluïsa.” She had a stray eye, and to look at the sewing she had to hold the material in front of her nose. It was almost as if the devil had given her some sort of miraculous double vision.
That winter she had gone to work every afternoon so she wouldn’t have to light a fire at home. One day she arrived a bit late, and they were talking about her. She stopped on the landing and listened: “When I got there, the priest was sitting in the dining room.”
It was the elderly Madame Durand, a tall, pale woman who did the ironing and lived in a perpetual state of irritation. The others were laughing. What were they thinking about her?
They wouldn’t be able to say a thing now. When her cousin was released from the hospital, he would live with her. They would hire a maid. He would be an easy patient, a tube to pee in, a saintly man who would spend his days praying, waiting patiently for death.
She finished sewing another flower. This is how she would grown old: bent over her sewing.
“Maria Lluïsa,” he used to call to her when they were little, “want to look for frogs with me?”