The Woman With the Bouquet Read Online Free Page B

aunt?”
    She shrugged her shoulders and said, as if it were self-evident, “The poor woman has no one else!”
    At which point she turned on her heels and went to attack her saucepans.
     
    The days that followed were fairly unpleasant. Getting news from Gerda about her aunt, who hadn’t returned, was like trying to get water from a stone. And then, as if Emma Van A. could no longer protect the city with her weak body, Ostend succumbed to an onslaught of tourists.
    The Easter holidays—I didn’t know this—mark the beginning of the season in resorts in the North and as of Good Friday all the streets, stores, and beaches were teeming with visitors speaking all sorts of languages—English, German, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, French—with Dutch still predominant. Couples and families arrived in hordes, I had never seen so many baby strollers at once, enough to make you think it was a breeding farm; thousands of bodies were scattered all along the beach even though the thermometer did not rise above 17, and the wind continued to cool everything down. The men, who were hardier than the women, exposed their torsos to the pale sun; for them, it was more a question, when getting undressed, of showing their bravery than their beauty; they were taking part in a male competition that had nothing to do with women, yet they remained cautious, and kept their trousers or shorts on, as if courage extended only to their torso. For someone like me who had spent my summers on the shores of the Mediterranean, I was surprised to see only two colors of flesh: white, or red; brown seemed to be rare. In this northern populace, no one was sun tanned: it was either pallor or sunburn. Between livid and scarlet, only the young Turkish people displayed a caramel color, and not without a certain awkwardness. Consequently, they banded together.
    Struggling to make my way through all the people, the dogs who were not allowed on the beach but who nevertheless tugged on their leashes toward the sand, the rented bicycles that hardly moved forward, and the pedal cars that were even slower, I suffered in this chaos as if it were an invasion. What right did I have, you may say, to use that word? What gave me the right to view others as barbarians when I had only preceded them by a few days? Did living at Emma Van A.’s house suffice to transform me into a native? It mattered little. I had the impression that by taking my landlady away, they had also taken my Ostend away.
    And so I was truly happy when I heard the ambulance bringing her back to the Villa Circé.
    The paramedics left her, in her wheelchair, in the hall, and while Gerda was conversing with her aunt, I had the impression that the old lady was fretting, as she glanced at me from time to time with a look that encouraged me to stay.
    Once Gerda had gone into the kitchen to prepare the tea, Emma Van A. turned to me. Something in her had changed. She seemed determined. I went over to her.
    “How did your stay in the clinic go?”
    “Nothing in particular. Yes, the hardest thing was to listen to Gerda clacking her needles by my bedside. It’s pathetic, no? Whenever she has a free moment, instead of picking up a book, Gerda embroiders, fiddles with some crochet, fusses with wool, that sort of thing. I hate it, women with their handiwork. Men, too, abominate such behavior. Take the North of Ireland, for example, the peasant women of the Aran Islands! Their husbands only come back to them—if they come back to them—with the wrecks of their ships, thrown up by the waves, eaten by salt, and the only way they can recognize them is from the stitches in their sweaters! That is what happens to women who knit: the only thing they attract is corpses! I must speak to you.”
    “Naturally, Madame. Would you prefer for me to take up residence elsewhere during your convalescence?”
    “No. On the contrary. I insist that you stay because I would like to converse with you.”
    “With pleasure.”
    “Would