Pan Bouyoucas - Portrait of a Husband with the Ashes of His Wife

As it happens, Groslin is already getting to his feet, pretending to be sorry he couldn’t stay longer.

But Doctor Maras doesn’t let himself be thrown. He looks the director in the eye and says:

“You may have finished with the past but the past hasn’t finished with me. If you don’t want it to poison my future, tell me, in your soul and conscience: Where should I leave Alma’s ashes?”

Groslin shrugs.

“I don’t even know what was the happiest point of my own life. In France, some cemeteries reserve a corner for a memorial garden, where people can scatter the ashes of their dead and come back to visit them, like a grave. For me, all of Paris, all of France, the entire planet have become my memorial garden. Because every time I think that I’ve found that moment of fullness in one place, I recall ten more that are engraved in my memory and are equally dazzling.”

I should have gone to see his wife, thinks Doctor Maras, as the other man exclaims:

“Oh, I nearly forgot…”

He takes two folded sheets of paper from his pocket.

“I got this letter two weeks ago. I reread it before I came here and I thought that you’d like to have it.”

He glances again at his watch.

“One last question. Do you remember in what month you shot your film with Alma, twenty-two years ago?”

Serge Groslin reflects for a moment, then says:

“July. I remember because we’d shot one scene during the Bastille Day celebrations.”

It wasn’t nine months as he had thought but eleven months before Mélissa’s birth. Still, after Groslin left, he hesitates for a long moment before he unfolds the paper, as if his entire past depended on their contents. His future too.

THE DATE ONthe letter was the one when Alma had learned that she had to have surgery, and her long, slanted handwriting, usually so clear, was forced, jittery, agitated.

Dear Serge,

You can’t imagine how thrilled I was at the prospect of working with you again — and in front of the camera. Unfortunately, it won’t be possible: a narrowing of my aortic valve is so advanced that I’m to have emergency surgery the day after tomorrow. Even if I survive, the convalescence will take months, if not years. In case my heart packs it in, before I go I want to thank you for your offer and your friendship.

These past few days I’ve often wondered what kind of career I’d have had if I had slept with all the directors who wanted me. After all, we have just one life and my life has taught me that what’s important is not what we deserve but what we are bold enough to take. But I soon console myself with the thought that, unlike lots of actresses who think about nothing but their career, I will grow old with a man who loves me and whom I adore and a daughter who will give me even more joy when she gives me grandchildren.

Laugh if you want at my lack of ambition but on the eve of my surgery I have just one regret: not seeing Paris one last time and most of all, the island of Leros in the Aegean Sea where, with Alexandre and Mélissa who was still a child, I spent the most beautiful two months of my life, thinking about nothing except enjoying this world and its light. After our shoot next year I intended to bring them there. It would have been my surprise gift for our silver wedding. But if I wake up from my operation the day after tomorrow, I will ask my husband to take me there as soon as I can travel. I doubt that Mélissa will want to come. She has other fish to fry this summer. If she could talk about it with her father I wouldn’t worry. But she doesn’t dare tell him that medicine bores her for fear of letting him down.

Pray for me. Three more months of grace, three more months of life, to see Paris and Leros again, and above all to look after my little darling who is suffering right now the way we suffer at her age when we don’t know what it is we want from life.

My very best to Ninon.

FOR A LONGmoment he stared at the two sheets of paper and saw again his final image of her: Alma at the very moment of orgasm, murmuring Yes, yes, and then expiring.

Half an hour later he changed his return date for Montreal once again and bought a ticket for Athens. There was an airport on the island of Leros now but he decided to go there by boat as he’d done with Alma and Mélissa sixteen years before.

“Well?” Franck asked when Doctor Maras returned to his sister’s place to pack. “Was I right? You should have talked to Ninon Conti?”

“No. Alma told me everything I wanted to know.”

Hélène was still at work and he told her on the phone that he was leaving that same evening.

“If only she’d told me that it was in Leros…”

“You’d have concluded that, ever since then, she’d never been so happy with you.”

“That’s true…”

“You have to think about yourself now, Alex. A dead woman, no matter how much you’ve loved her, is no companion for a living man.”

Doctor Maras also called home to tell Mélissa that he would be delayed again.

“Are you relieved?” his daughter asked. “You won’t be coming home with the ashes but at least it will be settled; you won’t have to look any more.”

“Yes, I’m better now. What about you? How are you?”

“I’m trying to get used to the fact that I’ll never see her again.”

“Aside from that?”

“Looking after the garden…”

Should he mention her studies and what Alma had said in her letter? He’d had a first sign in Saint-Hilaire when Mélissa had told Zak she envied artists because they didn’t have to worry about their future, it was all mapped out by their talent. He had intended to talk with her about it when they were back at the house but Carmen’s letter had prevented it and he was travelling again while his child was overwhelmed by her grief and, as well, by all her doubts about her choice of career. Even now, he hesitated to broach the subject because he preferred to talk about such important matters face-to-face rather than on the phone. And while he was still hesitating Mélissa said:

“When you’ve finished in Greece, call and let me know when your plane gets in. I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

“Okay. Would you like something from Leros?”

“A wave.”

He smiled.

“I love you, papa.”

He was annoyed with himself for not having said it first and when, in a flood of tenderness he finally replied, Mélissa had hung up.

GREECE: A UNIGUE EXPERIENCE.

The poster hangs above the carousel where passengers on the flight from CDG-Paris are waiting to retrieve their baggage. It shows a young couple embracing on a golden sand beach.

It has been years since Doctor Maras has looked at his photos from Greece. Had he known he would end up there he’d have brought one to better recall what Alma looked like that summer when death, for her, was merely a notion as abstract as the horizon.

“Excuse me, Madame,” a woman behind him says to another. “You’ve taken my suitcase.”

Doctor Maras looks at the conveyor belt and, when he realizes that half the suitcases filing past look like his, he starts running left and right to check the label on each one that resembles his which the passengers take off the carousel. He looks ridiculous, he knows it, but he doesn’t want someone else inadvertently leaving with Alma’s ashes, especially because it’s nearly midnight and everyone is anxious to go to bed. When he finally picks up his suitcase, he doesn’t let go of it, especially on the ferry for the island of Leros that he takes the next morning at the port of Piraeus.