Free The Woman With the Bouquet by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt

took all evening?” Gerda guffawed.
    I understood that it was curiosity that was making her behave in such a friendly way toward me.
    “I’m sorry, Gerda. I swore I wouldn’t repeat anything.”
    “What a pity.”
    “In any case, you would be wrong to imagine that your aunt is an old maid who has known nothing in her life.”
    “Oh, really? My poor aunt, and here’s me who’s always believed she’d never met the wolf, and that she’d die a virgin!”
    “Well, that’s not the case.”
    “Well, I’ll be! How about that . . .”
    “Why were you so sure of it?”
    “Well, she’s an invalid . . .”
    “Wait a minute! The stroke that confined her to her wheelchair, that only happened about five years ago . . .”
    “No, I was referring to her disability. Aunt Emma was not immobilized before her attack but she couldn’t get around any easier. Poor woman! She had tuberculosis of the bones, back in the days when they didn’t have the medication they have today. It affected her hips. How old was she then? Twenty. That is why she left Africa: she came to the hospital here . . . To treat her, they laid her out on a wooden plank for a year and a half, in the sanatorium. When she moved into the Villa, in Ostend, at the age of twenty-three, she could no longer walk except with crutches. The children called her ‘the cripple.’ Children are so mean, so stupid and heartless! Because she was pretty, my aunt, very pretty in fact. And yet, who’d want a girl who hobbled around? She swayed from one hip to the other with the shortest step; it was frightening, mind. In the end, everyday life became easier after her attack, when she finally accepted the wheelchair. I ask you, try to get a twenty-three-year-old girl to sit in a wheelchair . . . You have to say things as they are: what a pity! Well, so much the better if there was a fine lad who, someday, made the sacrifice to . . .”
    Disgusted by the very idea, she shrugged her shoulders and went out.
    Thoughtful, I tucked into my solid Flemish breakfast, then had a quick shower and went down to join Emma Van A., who sat facing the day, a book on her lap, her gaze clinging to the clouds.
    She blushed when she saw me. The reaction of a woman who has given of herself. I felt that I needed to reassure her.
    “I spent a wonderful night, thinking back over your story.”
    “So much the better. I was sorry, after the fact, to have bored you with it.”
    “Why did you omit your disability?”
    She grew tense. Her neck stiffened, and gained an inch in length.
    “Because I don’t live the life of an invalid, and I never have.”
    Suddenly she inspected me from under her lashes, wary, almost hostile.
    “I see that my oaf of a niece has been filling you in . . .”
    “She mentioned it by chance and it certainly wasn’t to make fun of you; on the contrary, she spoke of your troubles with compassion.”
    “Compassion? I hate it when people look at me that way. Fortunately, the man of my life did not inflict his pity on me.”
    “He didn’t talk to you about your handicap?”
    “Yes, at one point when he was in a mood to get married, when he hoped to make our affair official . . . I was disoriented! I answered him that although the people might accept a commoner, they would reject an invalid. And so he told me the story of a French queen, Joanna the Lame. He even called me that for a few weeks. I had to make a huge effort to keep my sense of humor.”
    “Is that why you wanted your relationship to remain clandestine? Basically, he accepted your disability much better than you did . . .”
    She shoved her neck against the back of her chair. Her eyes clouded over.
    “It’s possible.”
    Her voice broke. Her mouth quivered. I understood that another secret was waiting for me behind her lips.
    “What’s the matter?” I said gently.
    “The tuberculosis was the actual cause of my sterility. Because of the infection in my bones and the treatment I received I could no longer