Last Lovers. William Wharton

      4

      ‘We were a very happy family in this house, Jacques. Perhaps it is only because my memories are so old, so worn down by wishes, by tears, that it seems so. Still, I remember many wonderful things.

      ‘My father worked in reliure, book binding. He had a beautiful reliure on the rue des Canettes. It had been the place of his father and his grandfather before him. He loved his work. Sometimes he would bring it home with him to share with us. It was wonderful to feel the smooth leather and rub our fingers over the mounds of string bindings and etching of titles on the spines of books.

      ‘He was kind to us. Always on Sundays and Mondays he took us to the Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Jardin des Plantes, or the Parc Zoologique at Vincennes. He loved life, he loved us, and he loved our mother. I do not think it is only time which makes it seem this way. I remember so clearly. It is one of the things about being blind, there is not so much to cloud the vision one has of the past.

      ‘Our mother was a nervous woman, she was afraid of many things, but when my father was there, she was never afraid. We would row in the wooden boats in the Bois de Vincennes or in the Bois de Boulogne. We had picnics and played games. It was a very calm, beautiful life.

      ‘Then, when I was only ten years old, came the Great War. My father had to leave immediately. My mother cried for days. When she stopped crying, I never remember her smiling again, except when she received letters from my father, or on the two times he came home to us on leave.

      ‘My sister and I went to school at the Alsacienne on the other side of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Rolande was three classes ahead of me. We were happy students.

      ‘It was October eleventh and I was released from school three hours before Rolande, because she had piano lessons on that day. Each of us had our own key around our neck, under our uniforms. I had my books in my arms. All this I remember very well.

      ‘I came into the house, calling for Maman. It was the time when she always had a goûter for us. In the kitchen there was nothing. I could not imagine Mother not being home. She rarely went out, especially after Father was gone. I looked into each of our bedrooms and there was nothing. The door to the WC was open. I carefully knocked on the door to the room of my parents, then pushed the door open. There was nothing. I was beginning to be frightened. The only room left was the bathroom, la salle d’eau. I knocked and no one answered. I pushed open the door, it was not locked.

      ‘There was my mother. She was in the bathtub and the tub was filled with blood! Her eyes were open. I went down on my knees beside her. I still did not know what could have happened. I was so young. I had just had my fourteenth birthday and also had begun with my règles. My first thought was that somehow my mother had had her règles and was bleeding to death.

      ‘When I touched her she was cold. The blood in the tub was only slightly warmer. I saw the razor of my father on the edge of the tub. I still did not know, could not understand. I only wanted to lift my mother out of the blood. I reached down into the depths, staining my school uniform, and pulled the plug to let the blood and water drain. As it drained, my mother sagged into the depths of the tub. I started running fresh water, crying, screaming, but nobody came. I washed the blood from my mother, calling her name over and over, not her name but Maman, MAMAN!

      ‘When she was clean, I lifted her in my arms and somehow struggled to her bed. I stretched her out as best I could, crying and screaming all the time for help. I pulled her nightgown over her cold, naked body. I wanted so for everything to be all right again, for my mother to be warm, to speak to me. I remember I could not fit her arms into the sleeves, so I pulled the nightgown down over the tops of her arms. I opened the covers and slid her into the bed. I pulled off my own clothes, down to my chemise, and crept in beside her.

      ‘I wanted to warm her. I had seen the slits, the gaping wounds of her wrists, but they did not seem bad enough to kill. They were not bleeding and they were water-shriveled. My only thought was to hold her in my arms and make her living, warm again, bring her back. I held her to me and cried until I went to sleep.

      ‘When Rolande came home, that is how she found us. Afterward, she told me she almost backed out and closed the door, thinking we were only taking a nap, but then saw blood on the floor, went into the wet, still-blood-soaked bathroom, and came out screaming. She was three years older than I and knew enough to be aware that something terrible had happened.

      ‘She tried to waken us and I woke, saw her first, then looked over and saw the eyes of my mother, empty, staring, not seeing. It was the last thing I remember, the last time I saw. It was her eyes, open and not seeing. I did not want to see any more. Inside, I think I wanted to be like my mother, my eyes open but not seeing.

      ‘I do not remember the funeral. It was as if I were dead. I did not want to eat, to breathe, to live. In the bedroom, they found a telegram saying my father had been killed. It seemed everything I loved in life, my mother, my father, was gone, and I wanted to be gone, too.

      ‘The mother of my mother, our grandmother, came to live with us and take care of us. Her husband was also dead. She was always tired, and Rolande had to stop school before graduating, in her “Terminale,” and help with the house and help take care of me. When I was twenty, my grandmother died, too. The shock of losing her husband, then her only daughter, my mother, had killed something inside her.