Today is a great day
Yvette asked that the caregiver wake her up from her nap earlier than usual. They are so alike, the days in a row, at the Bosquets residence, for able-bodied and dependent elderly people!
Since her Désiré left her, Yvette lives there, in her small studio where she was able to bring some furniture, some photos, some trinkets. Her son and daughter-in-law haven't come to see her for a long time. What's the point of wasting a Sunday sitting in front of an old lady in a pink bathrobe who no longer speaks?
From her walks in the shady park, Yvette sometimes brings back a few flowers, modest daisies or buttercups which she places in a glass of clear water on the varnished wooden dresser.
Her son and daughter-in-law advised her to sell her apartment.
– You will live much better at the residence! We will take care of you!
- But the cat?
"We'll take care of it, Mom, we'll take care of it. So sign there…and there! Still behind, here!
A very nice couple bought it.
– Of course, we will have to redecorate, change this worm-eaten parquet floor which stinks of polish (the children will have allergies), replace these horrible curtains on the windows.
As the future owners shattered everything that had sheltered her happiness, Yvette cowered in memories so strong they went beyond the very idea of grief. And when she crossed the threshold of the Bosquets residence, with all her belongings in two large canvas suitcases, she simply stopped talking.
All the efforts of the staff, of the other residents, of her son – when he still came to visit her at the beginning – were in vain. Yvette was silent and communicated only by pulling the call cord and writing what she wanted on a pad of recycled paper, in her big round handwriting.
Today is a great day
Yvette took her blue dress, which Désiré liked so much, out of the wardrobe. She looks at herself in the mirror screwed to the door, pressing the bustier adorned with lace to her withered chest. A shy gleam of tenderness crosses her eyes. She sees herself again, with her love, going to the show, then having supper on a few oysters in a noisy brasserie on the boulevards before returning on foot through the dark streets. Sometimes Désiré shook her hand so tightly that she would say to him:
– Less strong, darling … with this smile which meant: “I am so happy! »
Yvette put on the dress, she applied her make-up diligently, she put on her little patent shoes, the ones that hurt her a little but are so elegant...
In the dining room, tables and chairs have been arranged so as to face an improvised stage, where there is a piano. Yvette settles down between Albert, a former railway worker, and Catherine, who loses her mind from time to time.
Today is a great day
In the room, silence falls. A young pianist is seated in front of the piano and Véronique, a pretty soprano, steps forward to meet this audience of old ladies and gentlemen.
She is impressed, she takes a deep breath and she sings, with all her heart, with all her soul, for these wrinkled faces, marked by trials and years, but where the gaze is intact, as if preserved from the distress of the years .
In Yvette's eyes, which cloud a little, the past scrolls by, as if through a dream! Forgotten songs come back to her and she sees herself again, as a young girl, at the Châtelet or in Mogador, with her Désiré, so elegant in his Sunday clothes! Véronique's voice awakens such sweet moments that suddenly, without even realizing it, Yvette starts humming:
– “Heure exquise, qui nous grise…”
Albert and Catherine turned at the same time to this lady in a blue dress who no longer speaks but who sings… oh yes… how she sings, with her twenty-year-old smile!
(c) Fabrice Roy 2006
In his art history lectures, Fabrice Roy combines the past with the present, in a poetic and playful evocation of the French 19th century...
