Gisèle opened a hesitant eye, then propped herself up on the pillows with her elbows. Her neighbor Hédi stood in front of her bed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked him, pulling the blankets back up to her chin.
Gisèle had decided that her house, situated in the middle of the driest olive grove, was always cold and humid.
“I have aches and pains everywhere, and you come and frighten me. It’s not even noon!”
Hédi opened the window to look at the sky. He never wore a watch. “No, it’s past noon, and you said we’d go to the market.”
Gisèle closed her eyes again, squeezing her eyelids together with all her might. She wanted to show Hédi that she was drawing the curtains for the day.
Hédi hesitated, then went out. Then he came back and said, “Come on, Gisèle, it will be good for you! And I have to buy oats for the animals.”
“Then tell me why you continue to call me Gisèle, when you know my name is Jeanne?”
The old man did not respond. He knew his Gisèle told everyone at the market that he called her Gisèle because he had loved one, back when he was still in his passionate prime. He did not want to contradict her, or lie to her. He knew Gisèle loved him. He said, “I don’t know anymore.”
“Go on, then! Find another Gisèle to take you to the market.”
Hédi lowered his head and went out, this time for good. He was fond of Gisèle. But it was the kind of fondness that arises from solitude and a desire to be left in peace. He and Gisèle lived separately in two houses in this secluded corner of northern Tunisia, at the foot of the Jebel Ghorra. The second house, where Gisèle lived, belonged to Hédi too. She had begged him to rent it to her one day when she came over in an overloaded car. Hédi, who had been a ceramic artist not far from Nice, never earned his driver’s license. He began to fear he would die alone, and he agreed quickly, without even asking what in the world an old blond woman with two dogs might want to do on his patch of land.
One day, a while later, he asked her what had brought her here. They began a tradition of drinking coffee together behind the house at sunset. The Moka, placed between three stones, took flight over the coal embers.
“I want to die here, in the middle of the olive grove. And I want you to be the one to bury me,” she declared, absent of any apparent emotion, her stare rigid. However, her eyelid twitched.
Gisèle’s eyelids were always a better indicator of what she was feeling than her eyes.
Hédi had seen people who were tired of their lives, and he knew she wasn’t pretending. In the days that followed, he thought very seriously about her request, including its emotional, technical, and administrative aspects. On the seventh day, after the first morning prayer, he knocked on Gisèle’s door at dawn, which put her in a bad mood.
“Don’t grumble, I have good news for you,” he cried out, on the verge of tears, suddenly languishing to be recognized—to any degree—for all the effort he had expended during this week of contemplation. He had nonetheless lapsed into his old habits when, trapped by himself in a workshop he rarely visited, he began to reflect upon the great questions of life. Back then, equipped with good military-grade binoculars, he could study a cave painting in the Valley of Wonders that represented a human raising their arms to the sky. He didn’t need to move closer to reproduce it on a vase.
At present, he found himself between two voids: the locked door behind which lay Gisèle, who, despite all the love she had for him, didn’t know how to open up when he most needed it; and the mountain, so firm in its silence.
He had sat down in his pea field and was crying when Gisèle put a friendly hand on his back.
“I’m sorry, Hédi. I ignored you when you were being nice, and now you’re upset. You know that my demons haunt me at night. I have neither prayers nor virtue to help me like you do. Every morning, I need one good reason to get up. And most often, I find none, apart from the idea of seeing your face. But even this one takes a long time to materialize . . . What are we to do at our age? When you lived in France, why didn’t you come to Carcassonne? You would have surely stopped by my house. It’s one of the oldest. And I would’ve seen you through the window, then I would’ve come down and opened the door for you to show you the turrets. Because I would have liked you.”
“It’s even older than you?”
“A little bit,” Gisèle conceded, happy with her daydream.
Satisfied the misunderstanding had been resolved, Hédi contemplated the images Carcassonne brought to his mind. A postcard of a medieval fortress that might just as well be Saint-Malo. Finally, he answered, “Because of the Occitan language. I was afraid I wouldn’t understand the people who still spoke this language of knights. How do you say, ‘Give me a kilo of strawberries’ in Occitan?”
Gisèle burst out laughing, and continued laughing for a long time, which swept Hédi away. She planted a big kiss on his bony cheek.
“What did you want to tell me this morning at such an early hour?”
“If you are sure that you don’t want to be buried in Carcassonne, I’m willing to bury you in the olive grove. I even chose a tree. You want to see it?”
Gisèle made a funny face. She didn’t want to. Hédi would never understand anything.
“That’s what you wanted to tell me?”
“Yes. What do you say?”
“I don’t want to be buried in Carcassonne. No one would come and see me there.”
“And who would come here? No one will know where you’re buried. Except me, if I don’t disappear before you.”
“At least I won’t be sad like today. I’ll tell myself they don’t know where I am. As for you, Hédi, why do you want to be buried here, at the foot of the Jebel Ghorra, when your children are in France?”
“Because I know it will make them come back. Tunisian children always come back to honor their dead ancestors. They will raise their heads. They’ll see the zean oaks, the kermes oaks, and the cork oaks, and they’ll say, ‘My papa’s world was beautiful.’”
*
Before Hédi and Gisèle, the small goats pranced around, playing. They entered the stables, ran out, chased one another, climbed the trees, came to beg from Gisèle’s and Hédi’s hands, then left, even freer than before. Hédi rose with effort and hurried to retrieve his logbook of births. He was no longer up-to-date with his farm records. Two little twins had been born yesterday, which he would have previously noted in red, taking great care to list their distinctive markings. He also had logbooks for the animals he treated.
Coming back, as the sun rose high in the sky and nature exhibited an endless serenity, he was overcome by an immense joy. Gisèle was looking far into the distance, toward the palm trees that flowered the lowlands, with a sense of peace he did not know she had. Her blue, honey-speckled eyes, ordinarily impassive, flew with the birds. He approached gently, so as not to scare her. Then she stretched, moving the earth around with her two hands in a butterfly-like movement.
“I am happy, Hédi. From now on, we’re going to live and do so much together.”
The euphoria did not last. The next day, the melancholy Gisèle carried with her came to shroud her again. Hédi, who had engraved famous phrases into metal plates for his customers, asked himself if it was indeed Horace who said, “When you travel, you are the one who gets carried away.” He had realized once again that, in the long term, exile wasn’t good for suffering souls. Regardless, he was set on making Gisèle happy. The mornings when she didn’t open her shutters, when she shrank from the sun like a vampire, he knew it was particularly difficult, and he called upon the spirit of his deceased mother to help him find the things that made women laugh.
When she didn’t want to get up, even though she had promised to drive him to the market, he knew it’d be better to ensure his day would be full of anecdotes to tell her when he returned in the evening, to fill his arms with things he thought could please her. Because Gisèle never missed their evening coffee ritual.
So he climbed the Jebel Ghorra with his pilgrim’s staff, which was carved from a thick branch. He wanted to arrive at the summit before the worst heat. He would take a break at the halfway point in the shade, near the magnificent waterfall, where he would bathe fully dressed: his clothes would stay wet for just short of an hour to keep him cool until the moment he arrived.
Reaching the waterfall without much difficulty, he saw the water had fought its way into the rocky, overhanging plateau. It had carved a hole in the stone and, through this cavity, it fell with great strength. It first met a platform where it ricocheted to surge further, and then it reached the ground. There, it gave birth to a small stream that led to the plain. Next to the waterfall and stuck in the rock at a certain height sat a Roman ruin, a kind of small house. Intrigued, he approached it. He thought he heard the cry of a child. He listened closer. It was a tiny baby wild boar whose ear seemed to have been brushed by a bullet, which he found by its side.
Hédi came closer and murmured, “It’s not hunting season yet . . . People are hungry, and they must have shot you for food, little fellow. The price of meat today! More than a worker’s daily wage, can you believe that? And because you aren’t yet a hog . . . You eat acorns, seeds, and roots, and you are as bearded as a wise man. I am going to take you with me. Gisèle will take care of you.” He cradled the animal in the hood of his Moorish linen coat and continued to hike, admiring the mountain’s beauty every so often and giving words in praise of Creation.
At the top, Ali waited for his friend like an eagle in his nest. Sitting in front of his door, Ali counted prayer beads and pulled up his blue work pants that fell over his toes every so often. Birds of prey swirled above the thatched cottage he had built with his own hands, a testament to his work as a brickmaker in the Oasis: two layers of white clay, one of red clay and water. The birds seemed to uncoil an invisible mummy with their suspended talons. But, since nothing bad ever fell out of the sky onto Ali’s plate, he didn’t care.
“Hello there, Hédi! You took your time coming up,” Ali shouted, seeing his short-winded friend progress toward him. “Still a few more rocks to scale and you’ll be here, stay strong!”
Hédi paused for a moment to respond without seeming to breathe his last. “Hi there, Old Man of the Mountain!”
Ali reached out his hand, then they sat side by side. Ali gave Hédi a bowl of well water and waited in silence. It was Hédi who spoke first. “I don’t know how you live here all by yourself. I suppose you never get bored?”
Ali shrugged. Hédi took out the baby boar from his hood. They held him in silence, one after the other; a great tenderness filled their faces. Ali gave him a bit of water.
“Hédi, do you want to leave him with me? He would keep my head warm in bed. I’d take good care of him, and I’d give him back to you later. It gets terribly cold here at night, you know. Even if I stuff my bedding with sheep’s wool, my migraine never fully vanishes.”
Hédi studied the animal, then Ali, and shook his head. “I can’t, I must give him to Gisèle. It will take her mind off things.”
“But she already has two dogs!” Ali retorted.
“It’s not the same. This is a baby—she will feel obliged to take care of him.” He paused, then nodded his head to affirm his thought. “All women are like that.”
Together, they ate white semolina, chickpeas, and garlic carrots, along with the meat that Ali had dried in the sun, which delighted the bees. After taking a nap directly on the ground with straw hats placed over their faces for protection, Hédi got up, kissed Ali on the shoulders in farewell, then headed toward his friend’s horse, which was skinnier than Rocinante. This was the reason Hédi had visited Ali today: the horse, flanked with baskets in the saddles, would carry him to the market, which was open late. He hoped Gisèle would be astonished by his performance. And maybe she’d feel less indispensable with her car. This would force her to be nicer, even when she didn’t want to be.
It was late when he set off for home. Even though he guided the horse to stay to the side of the road, as they followed the path around the tree plantation oriented north–south, the day faded at such a speed he feared they would finish the journey in the dark. When he saw four olive trees moving together in the distance at considerable speed, he thought it was a mirage. But when the olive trees turned onto the road, he understood a truck was driving them to be planted in another field. The date palms, which grew black near the horizon, looked equally frightening, like bewitched trees from a fairy tale. Their bundles of dates, suspended under the hair in knobs, resembled swarms of nefarious insects. The anxieties of Hédi’s childhood resurfaced in this natural world that came alive at night. His mother used to send him to an old woman’s farm to fetch milk. He had to take the road, and he was scared of coming face to face with a snake. Wasn’t it said that a descendent of the legendary snake Utique roamed the region at nightfall, searching for food? Hédi sang loudly to repel the fear, because he had heard noise drove away reptiles. What did he sing, again? Oh, yes, a popular tune his mother always sang as soon as she started working behind the stove. He recalled a few fragments of it now. At one point, the lyrics went, “Our dinner plates, (our dinner plates), are full of peas! Thank you, o sweet mother.” Then, further on: “He comes to knock on the door with his hoof, so I tell him . . . .” His memory ended there.
He was exhausted when the hamlet—his house, Gisèle’s house, and the well—came into sight. He was surprised to see Gisèle dancing in a circle of candles. She had put an object on her head that he couldn’t make out. When she saw him, she ran to him and threw her arms around his neck.
“Oh, you took the horse today! Show me what you have in your baskets! Did you bring me the red-skinned prickly pears I love? Do you like my pea flower crown?”
“I like your pea flower crown, because it smells better than your breath. Where did you find the alcohol?”
“I made it.”
“Liar.”
“I went to buy it,” she said.
“You went to buy wine, and you didn’t take me to the market?”
“I thought you weren’t religious.”
“That’s not my question, you know.”
“Are you going to cry again?”
“Yes. I am sad and tired. You don’t know the distance I traveled today. Goodbye.”
“Take me into your arms.”
“No, if your eyes were less clouded with booze, you would see that I’m protecting a very small, fragile being that only wants to be hugged in your saggy, witch arms.”
He went to feed the young boar with a bottle he had bought at the pharmacy, ignoring Gisèle, who drummed incessantly at his door and even invited him to come watch a film outside. She knew he loved it when she placed the television under the stars, using two extension cords, and they would sit together on sheepskin rugs positioned against a thick tree. Every time a scene between a man and woman became slightly steamy, Hédi reminded Gisèle of the time they were censored by Tunisian television.
“Come, Hédi! There’s an old Fernandel film on, The Lord’s Vineyard, dubbed in Arabic. Come on, really, it’ll be fun!”
Hédi jumped up. “I forbid you to see it!”
“Why? Have you gone mad?”
“No, Gisèle, first of all, all Fernandel films are too old.”
“Ah . . . .”
“It brings back memories.”
“Oh, really!”
“I’ll let you in. Come see who’s here.”
He hadn’t been wrong: Gisèle was moved to tears and decided the little animal would live with her. As for Hédi, although the hike up the Jebel Ghorra hadn’t seemed too difficult at the time, he began to feel his muscles ache intensely. But Gisèle’s smile soothed him.
That night, she helped him put the animals away in the stable and feed them. They shared a coffee later than usual, after having prepared sardine and harissa sandwiches. The wine and the young boar kept Gisèle happy, but she nonetheless once more brought up the subject of her imminent burial.
“Tell me the truth, Gisèle. Do you want to be buried here so I’ll never forget you? As fat as you are, it will cost me a fortune! And if I die before you?”
“No, you are as solid as these trees. You’ll die at a hundred. Besides, you know this! I want to be buried under an olive tree because I wanted to get married under one, and no one made this dream come true. Yet it would have been so simple!”
“I’m not following your logic . . . .”
“It is important to make what you can out of your dreams. I was never married under an olive tree, so I’ll end up under an olive tree, and that’s that.”
Hédi didn’t understand all of what she said, as usual, but what he knew about her was enough. Enough for both him and her. Without further thinking, he asked her, “And if I married you under an olive tree, would you promise not to call me an assassin who buries his victim at nightfall?”
“If that’s your motivation, then it’s a no! I refuse to marry a man who hasn’t even told me he loves me.”
“You know, Gisèle, I have never said ‘I love you’ to anyone. We men of the Jebel Ghorra are reserved.”
Gisèle sighed. If only he could give her a single one of the caresses he gave to the little boar without thinking of it. She knew all the feelings that Hédi could carry, but he needed to use his words. She came from a country of troubadours.
*
Nevertheless, they lived happily for a few more years at the foot of the Jebel Ghorra, just like that, the two of them, practically side by side. As she predicted, the first to die was Gisèle, discreetly in her bed. One morning, when Hédi knocked at her door to go to the market, he felt it rang hollow inside. He telephoned Ali, who came down immediately on his horse. They said a prayer, then enveloped her in Hédi’s Moorish coat. The tree’s roots would take care of cleansing the body.
They wept for a long time.
“Do you want to carve her name into the tree?” Ali asked Hédi.
“We can’t do that, the police snoops around here! Her children will ask what had become of their mother, even if she hasn’t spoken to them for years. Maybe they’ll look for an inheritance.”
Ali pondered. “You said her name wasn’t really Gisèle? Why did you call her that?”
Hédi laughed and laughed again. “Because of Fernandel,” he said, nearly choking. “Poor thing, she died without knowing which Gisèle I compared her to. It was that bourgeois woman in The Lord’s Vineyard, the Fernandel film.”
Ali laughed in turn. Then he sat back to think. “Hédi, I have an idea. Let’s name this olive grove ‘The Lord’s Olives.’ We can register it with the municipality. All these trees belong to your lineage, right? The name will stick and be remembered. No one will know its origin except us, the sky, and Gisèle!”
“Let it be so, my honorable Ali.”
“And if the authorities come to search for Gisèle, we’ll tell them she went traveling and never came back. It won’t exactly be a lie that way.”
Hédi wiped a tear and sighed. No, it wouldn’t exactly be a lie. Gisèle would return every year when the olive trees blossomed. The crowns of pea flowers would be carried by the wind over the trees.
*
The next morning, they harnessed a cart to Ali’s horse and headed toward the municipality to change the olive grove’s name.
On the side of the road, a young boy without shoes made his way to school. He sang, “Our dinner plates, (our dinner plates), are full of peas! Thank you, o sweet mother.” Then, further on: “He comes to knock on the door with his hoof, so I tell him . . . .”
