The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 39

the foolish and merry young wife over whose loss he cannot console himself, but all he finds is his father standing there waiting for him in the kitchen. No sound ever escapes his white lips and he peers at his youngest son through the lashes of his burned eyelids, peers at him as if to reproach him for so many missed encounters with worlds that no longer exist and Marcel subsides beneath the weight of this reproach, he knows that no one can restore his youth, nor does he want this, for there would be no point. Now that he has seen his nearest and dearest into the grave, one after the other, the demanding mission he has accomplished must fall to someone else, and he waits for his perpetually wavering and steadfast health to suffer defeat at last for, in the sequence established by the register of births, his turn has now come to walk alone to the grave.

“For all God has made

for you is a perishable world”

In this village the dead walk to their graves alone—not truly alone but upheld by strangers’ hands, which comes to the same thing, and so it is proper to say that Jacques Antonetti took the path to the tomb alone, while his family, gathered together outside the church beneath the June sun, were receiving condolences far removed from him, for grief, indifference and sympathy are manifestations of life, the offensive sight of which must henceforth be concealed from the one who has passed away. Three days earlier Jacques Antonetti had died in a hospital in Paris and the aircraft bringing him home had touched down at Ajaccio that very morning, just when his son Matthieu was getting up from the waitresses’ bed and heading down to the bar to make himself a coffee. Libero was already behind the counter dressed in a suit, and starting the coffee machine, Matthieu was grateful to him for being up already to keep him company.

“Did you sleep here?”

Matthieu nodded in confirmation. He would have preferred to be able to spend the past two nights at home, he had intended to do so, and even attempted it the evening before last, but his grandfather had just sat there without saying a word and had not even seemed to be aware of his presence, so that Matthieu, too, had sat there in an armchair staring at the closed shutters and when night began to fall he had got up to light a lamp but his grandfather had said,

“No,”

without stirring, without raising his voice, simply said,

“No,”

and had added,

“That’s not the way things are done,”

and made a gesture which Matthieu hastened to interpret as a license to take his leave, or it may even have been something more absolute and violent, an imperious invitation to distance himself immediately from a solitude that called only for the silence of the night and Matthieu had obeyed, he had freed his grandfather from his importunate presence at the same time as freeing himself and had not been back to see him since. Libero set down a coffee in front of Matthieu and came to sit beside him, scrutinizing him from head to toe.

“Are you going to go like that? Are you going to go to your father’s funeral like that?”

Matthieu was wearing a clean pair of jeans and a black shirt which he had rather vaguely ironed. He reviewed his attire with a puzzled air.

“Won’t this do?”

Libero leaned over and took hold of him by the neck.

“No, it won’t. You can’t bury your father like that. You smell of sweat. You smell of perfume. You stink. You look dreadful. We’ll go to my mother’s, and first off you’ll take a shower. And then you’ll shave. And we’ll find you a suit and tie. We’ll find something that’ll fit you. And it’ll all be fine. You’ll do everything you have to do. It’ll be O.K. You’ll see. I promise you.”

Matthieu felt the tears welling up into his eyes but they stopped short at the brink of his eyelids, lingering for a moment before retreating abruptly. He caught his breath and briefly hugged Libero before going after him and two hours later as the hearse, followed by an interminable line of cars, entered the village to the sound of the bell tolling, Matthieu was standing there waiting in front of the church, at his grandfather’s side, swamped in a suit much too big for him, whose jacket he was under strict instructions not to unbutton for any reason, so that the disgraceful folds in the pants which a belt now held suspended above his navel should remain hidden. Libero gave him a thumbs-up sign, it’s all going fine, and all of a sudden, at the moment when the coffin was being lifted out of the hearse, a crowd of people emerged from their cars and rushed up to him to kiss him in an appalling melee, women who did not know him squeezed him against the black lace of their mourning dresses, his cheeks were sticky with strangers’ tears, he caught the pungent smells of eau de cologne, day creams and cheap perfumes, and out of the corner of his eye he could see yet more unknown people jostling one another to hurl themselves at Marcel, and one of the undertaker’s men called out,

“Afterward! Condolences afterward. After the service!”

but no one was listening to him, and the crowd had backed Matthieu up against the wall of the church and were overwhelming him with their clammy embraces, he felt giddy, he could see his mother holding out her arms toward him and called out to her, but she was trapped by shoals of relentless hands seeking to touch the bruised flesh of bereavement, Aurélie was weeping beside the hearse, overwhelmed by a dense surge of hungry compassion, moist lips proffered well before the contact of the kiss, gold teeth