The Woman With the Bouquet Read Online Free PDF Page A

you agree to join me for dinner? Gerda’s cooking is no better than her coffee but I will ask her to make one of the two or three dishes she doesn’t mess up.”
    “With pleasure. I am glad to see you are better.”
    “Oh, I am not better. This wretched heart will eventually give way. That is why I want to talk to you.”
    I waited for dinner impatiently. I had missed my dreamer more than I had realized, and I felt that she was in a confessional mood.
    At eight o’clock that evening, once Gerda had straddled her bicycle to return home, no sooner had we begun our appetizers than Emma leaned over to me.
    “Have you ever burned letters?”
    “Yes.”
    “What did you feel?”
    “I was furious that I had been obliged to do so.”
    Her eyes shining, she was encouraged by my response.
    “Precisely. One day, thirty years ago, I too was obliged to toss into the fire all the words and photographs relating to the man I loved. I watched tangible traces of my fate disappearing in the flames; even though I was crying as I made that sacrifice, it did not touch me inside: I still had my memories, and always would; I told myself that no one, ever, could burn my memories.”
    She looked at me sadly.
    “I was wrong. On Thursday, with this third attack, I discovered that my illness was in the process of burning my memories. And that death would finish off the job. And so: at the hospital I decided that I would speak to you. That I would tell you everything.”
    “Why me?”
    “You write.”
    “You haven’t read me.”
    “No, but you write.”
    “Would you like me to write what you are going to share with me?”
    “Certainly not.”
    “And so?”
    “You write . . . that means you are curious about other people. I just need a little bit of curiosity.”
    I smiled, and touched her hand.
    “In that case, I’m your man.”
    She smiled in turn, embarrassed by my familiarity. After coughing to clear her throat, she smoothed the edge of her plate with her fingernail and, lowering her lids, began her story.
     
    One morning, over fifty years ago, I woke up with the conviction that something important was going to happen to me. Was it a premonition or a memory? Was I receiving a message from the future or following a dream that I had partly forgotten? In any case, a murmur from the fates had used my sleep to leave this certainty within me: something was going to happen.
    You know how stupid you become after insights such as this: you want to guess what is about to happen, and you distort it with your expectations. At breakfast, I fabricated several intrigues: my father was going to come back from Africa where he was staying; the mailman would bring me a letter from a publisher agreeing to publish my young woman’s poems; I was going to see my best childhood friend again.
    As the day progressed, all my illusions were destroyed. The mailman ignored me. No one rang at the door. And the ship coming from the Congo did not contain my father in its cargo.
    In short, I found myself making fun of the enthusiasm I had had that morning, considering myself half insane. In the middle of the afternoon, almost resigned, I went for a walk along the shore with Bobby, the spaniel I had at the time; there too, in spite of everything, I found myself staring at the sea to make sure there wasn’t some miracle taking place . . . Because of the wind, there were hardly any ships offshore, and no one on the beach.
    I was making my way slowly, resolved to drown my disappointment in fatigue. My dog, who had understood that our stroll would be a long one, unearthed an old toy to play with me.
    He began to bound toward the dune where I had thrown his missile, when suddenly he recoiled as if he had been stung, and began to bark.
    I tried in vain to calm him down, checked beneath his pads to make sure he hadn’t been stung by some insect, then I made fun of him openly, and went myself to pick up the ball.
    A man came out of the bushes.
    He was naked.
    When he saw