We only saw them in this impromptu evening with friends. Hélène and Georges. Just these two first names side by side, it would make a charming title for a novel, wouldn’t it? When we write, it seems to me that we sometimes see the world as book covers. Away from the hubbub of the party, seated on a couch too big for them, their bodies slightly hunched, their hands intertwined as if everything depended on their proximity, they carried a dose of hope that they — I didn’t know it yet — would infuse me with the influx of cynicism linked to the global chaos which, these days, afflicts even the most positive among us.
Observing them, I knew they were elsewhere, carried by something else, a kind of magic that only bewitches free and loving spirits. Like at 15 when you discover beautiful thrills for the first time. This is what we all hope for a little, even the most grumpy ones.
Hélène and Georges, then. She is 87 years old, he is 92. Both widowers, they met almost eight months ago during an activity for the elderly. Unless it was through friends… It seemed like a detail to me, in the end, given the strength of the bond that united them. It was he who broke the ice by telling me that they were experiencing “last chance love”. I was going to remember this title too… He told her that she was beautiful, that her green blouse gave shine to her eyes. He repeated it in front of me. It’s true that she shines with all her lights, the beautiful Hélène. “My Hélène,” insisted Georges, the retired intellectual from teaching with sparkling blue eyes. Let’s not see in it any desire for possession or a macho trait, that wasn’t it, and I remain on the lookout for that, precisely… Feminist, ex-career woman versed in literature who once juggled between her role of mother and her desire for independence, before all of us, it was certainly not this unexpected love that was going to make her lose her mind. “Yes, it’s still possible to fall in love at our venerable ages,” she said, laughing like a kid caught drinking a tear of white wine. “Just a little tear,” my late grandmother would say on the tip of her lips when she asked to be served again… I think she was making fun of me a little, the beautiful Hélène, as if she surprised me by tangled in my prejudices. She was absolutely right.
They never leave each other anymore. This is how. Their respective descendants may fear for them a little: their desire to travel to the other side of the world, the distances traveled by car day and night to see each other, their way of being obsessed with each other. , etc. I hear Daniel Lavoie singing in my head:
They love each other like children
Eager hopeful love
And despite the looks
Filled with despair
Despite the statistics
They love each other like children
Despite the statistics… Hélène and Georges are aware of it, more than everyone else around, even. On the verge of death, they are preparing to spend their first Christmas together, which will undoubtedly be one of their last. They are right to be full of impatient hope. Eager to fall asleep stuck in his own little room after the party. “For us, from now on, it’s tenderness more than anything else, as you can imagine…” underlines Georges, who reads my naughty thoughts. They both laugh. They are right to make fun of me. Tomorrow, they will chat about rain and shine, they will recommend readings to each other, they will talk about their grandchildren on school strike, and about the war too. They’ll be angry, of course, but they’ve seen it snow. Once, they were charmed by others, got married, for better and for worse, they mourned losses, departures, disappointments, births, illnesses… The folds on their skin speak of all that . It’s what they saw in each other and that made them find each other, ignoring their frivolity abandoned somewhere in the department of superficialities.
I didn’t want them to leave. I gave more than a tear of the good nectar. George’s son, who was one of the hosts of the festive gathering, will drive to accompany them. The new couple will stick together in the back seat. It’s starting to get very cold. Another kiss. The grown-up son will see them in the rearview mirror and smile silently. The number of times his father got up in the night to go get him… Now the world belongs to these lovebirds who are no longer young. The future too, and even after.