Free Invisible Love by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Howard Curtis Page B

else who was so humane, so kind, so perceptive about other people and their misfortunes. He grasped everything without explanation. He was truly gifted with enormous compassion.”
    Miranda and I exchanged looks of surprise. Although we would have liked to boast of Samuel Heymann’s qualities, those weren’t the ones we would have chosen, because, in our opinion, he didn’t have them.
    â€œDid he ever mention me?” the Comte de Sire asked Miranda.
    She made a face as she searched in her memory. “No.”
    The count blushed and smiled: this omission was yet more evidence of the dead man’s virtues.
    â€œWere you friends?” Miranda asked.
    â€œI wouldn’t say that. Let’s put it this way: I’d done everything to be his enemy, but thanks to his generosity of spirit, I wasn’t.”
    â€œI don’t understand.”
    â€œWe shared secrets. He’s taken his with him. I shall soon do the same with mine.”
    Irritably, Miranda struck the armchair with the flat of her hand. “That’s just like my father: a nest of secrets! I can’t stand it.”
    At this violent outburst, the count’s lower lip dropped, he foamed a little at the mouth, his eyelashes fluttered, then he emitted a few rumbling noises that were meant as words of comfort to Miranda, although he was not very good at comforting.
    She went up to him. “Does this have any connection with my mother?”
    â€œI’m sorry?”
    â€œYour quarrel with him! The thing he forgave you! Was it to do with my mother?”
    â€œNo, not at all,” he hissed, conclusively. He was offended that Miranda could have thought such a thing. In his eyes, she had crossed the threshold of vulgarity.
    â€œDon’t you have anything else to tell me?” Miranda insisted.
    The man fiddled with the gloves he had laid across his knees and coughed two or three times. “Yes!”
    â€œWell?”
    â€œI’d like to pay my respects to your father. Will you allow me to arrange his funeral?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI’d like to offer him a ceremony worthy of him, noble, dignified. Let me spend some money, organize the ceremony, put flowers in the church, bring singers and an orchestra, hire a luxurious hearse drawn by horses from my stable.”
    He was already in a rapture over the scenes he was imagining.
    Miranda threw me a glance that meant, “This old bird is crazy.” Then she shrugged. “I should answer: Why? But I’m going to say: Why not? Agreed! Organize away, monsieur, I’ll provide the corpse.”
    The man raised an eyebrow, shocked by Miranda’s insolence. But he refrained from reacting and contented himself, as he walked back to the front door, with thanking her profusely.
    Once he had left us, Miranda gave free rein to her astonishment. “The Comte de Sire! He shows up and behaves like his best friend, even though Daddy never mentioned his name to me! Secrets . . . Nothing but secrets.”
    I returned to the documents I was holding in my hand. “Miranda, I insist. If I were you, I’d go to the kennel where your father chose his dogs for the past fifty years.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI suspect he was capable of telling a Beauceron breeder what he hid from you.”
    â€œAll right. When do we leave?”
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    *
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    After three hours’ driving, we hit the Ardennes. The roads wound through windswept forests. Houses became sparser, and we had the feeling we were entering a world apart, a purely vegetable world. The spruces, their trunks attacked by fierce lichen, were neither high nor close together, but they stood there in numberless ranks, forming an impenetrable mass, like an army ready to attack. Their branches were heavy with rain and drooped low over our car. I dreaded breaking down in this hostile region.
    At last we got to the kennels of Bastien and Sons. Sur­rounded by the sounds of barking