Marcel digs holes and buries the dead; at least, he prepares their last home and makes sure everything is perfect, sometimes dislocated bodies do not come back one full moon night bang on his door to complain about the state of affairs, nibbled on all sides in their Sunday clothes, all decomposed and all bulging.
Because Marcel is afraid of the grim reaper. He’s waiting for her. He knows she will come. He waits for her, behind the door, as he waits for the baker in front of the fence, as he waits for the cuckoo clock spring ejected by the spring, every hour spent doing nothing when no one dies. He’s waiting for it, because he’s not waiting for Mary anymore.
He waits, hands crossed on the plastic tablecloth full of printed mushrooms, all the same, big mushrooms very appetizing in wicker baskets, all the same, here stained with wine, there scratched by the sponge or burned by the ashes from his cigarettes. He waits and drinks, encircled by hunting on his four walls; they are on horseback, all the same, in red clothes, galloping in the background, between the firefighters’ calendar and the picture of his parents and then the deers, all the same, at bay, which bleed from the neck, pasture for the pack, on the sidewall. But as the walls are crooked, horses sometimes have rider heads and riders sometimes deer heads and then dogs, sometimes, devour the riders. It’s funny walls not straight; it makes lopsided stories that Marcel reads and re-reads in front of his broth and his bottle of wine because, when no one dies, Marcel dies of boredom, of this boredom that gnaws at him and intoxicates him little by little, of this uselessness which crushes him from the inside and dig a hole like a grave to his broken heart to tap all the beats and live in his place. So, to appease all this, he leaves to the bloodthirsty hunters the mushrooms in wicker baskets and goes out, already drunk, drink a few last glasses of coffee at the corner.
There, there is Mary, trapped in the middle of the thirsty pack and empty-handed, in combat clothes, the rifle on the shoulder and the verb high, bulging and spitful to not to have killed. Over there, there is Mary at bay, encircled on all sides, makeup to excess to hide her black eye and her bruised eyelid, in a short skirt to please Dave and hungry dogs, with her big butt in the firing line that the drunkards brush with their big, vulgar hands, as she passes between them to serve some liquid fire for other dry gorges grouped around the tables. There, there is Mary all these hangovers rave and secretly dream to hunt down at nightfall because the prey would be easy to track as the scent is so intoxicating.
Dave and Mary, it is an amputated love, an open wound that hush when she fills the tankards and the foam overflows, all strange as she is when he is there, to question her with the eyes, to ask why. But she can not answer him, as busy as she is, so stealthy and fearful because Dave spies the slightest smile and the slightest suspicious gesture. Dave, this thief, this impostor arrived from the south with his beautiful accent and his arms all tattooed, all tanned by the sun of the islands, this freshwater marine with a thousand female conquests, not being able to count all those which he scuttled, imposing frame against frail sailboats, to make the free-riders tremble and reluctant to leave when the closing bell sound. And Mary capsized, like a walnut shell against the beautiful ship with her veils all swollen; to the tempestuous advances she could not resist; she who dreamed of leaving only found prison in bilge.
Then one evening, no longer holding, Dave dug a hole; at least he prepared the last home of this caffetier corsair and made sure everything was perfect. A distant forest with dark undergrowth, a consumed body, sometimes if men come back one full moon night banging on his door in their police clothes.
And since then, Dave is no longer afraid; he is waiting for Mary; he knows that she will come; he knows that the mushrooms in the baskets do not last, that the seasons change and that the horsemen in red clothes and deer at bay soon give way to newly picked flowers; he knows that his walls will thus form giant bouquets all around them, intoxicating bouquets as is the Mary’s perfume.
