At Christmas, the South feels nostalgic for the North. It is legitimate and does not last; it’s a delicious jealousy… « Are you coming back up? », my Roman friends asked me last week. “Are you going back up there?” » After I acquiesced, some replied that I was lucky to come back to Paris, to my people, that Christmas must be wonderful in a beautiful and cold city.
They were right, even if I didn’t think it was useful to tell them that I would have liked to extend the joy of Christmas elsewhere, not far from Paris, with my grandparents. They are dead, the years pass, and I am left with the memory of these few happy hours with them. Since their disappearance, after every New Year’s Eve, in the Paris suburbs, in Italy, wherever I am, I have been nostalgic for Christmases in Rouen.
We hit the road on the 25th in the afternoon, or the 26th in the morning, in the pleasant torpor of post-Christmas. People don’t honk their horns at the end of December. They remain patient. They smile. There were no crowds on the road, and the gray Normandy highway, this horizon of warehouses, shopping centers, quarries, this distant suburb of pavilions and large complexes did not distress me. . On the contrary. It was the road to Rouen, where I would soon find my dear grandparents and a multitude of cousins.
The journey was strewn with clues that brought me closer to a certain joy. The chimneys of Porcheville, the chalk cliffs, the cow roundabout… Earlier, the Épône area, where one day we picked up a woman who no longer wanted to get into her companion’s car. We dropped her off at the nearest police station, and every time I pass this highway rest area, I think of her. We arrived in Rouen via an ugly road which ran alongside the railway line, populated with dealerships, gas stations and hangars. Finally we reached the boulevard de l’Yser, damp and deserted.
We had dressed in the clothes offered that morning, determined to show our gifts to the cousins: a new scarf, perfume, brand new headphones, a pretty pair of gloves. We were spoiled and we would be again. My grandmother took care of all her grandchildren. Everyone came to get their gift; it was a ritual. She cooked dishes from another era, in jelly, raw vegetables and pâtés that were left for the adults. We were content with pickles and dessert. The adults were smoking on the terrace at the café.
Night fell amid the festivities. Besides, in Rouen, night does not fall. It rises from the city center and slowly takes over the hills. Mont-Saint-Aignan, Bois-Guillaume… In these pretty suburbs, there was only one danger, these sloping streets where I feared that our car full of children would end up tipping backwards.
At the start of the evening, the return to Paris was melancholy. All this waiting, these four weeks of Advent, the department store windows, the vigil, breakfast together and the presents under the tree… So the magic of Christmas was over? Basically, we had only spent a few hours in Rouen, but dozing on top of each other in this early night which was occasionally illuminated by the garlands of lights strewn on the road, the already outdated decorations, the roundabouts sprinkled with fake snow, we seemed to have just returned from a long stay.
We would see Grandfather and Grandpa again during the short holidays, no doubt, if not in August. Christmas is a new beginning and each year was the same as the last. In my memory, now, December 25 in Rouen all blend together. They form one big Christmas.
At the end of Marx can waitthe very beautiful family documentary by Marco Bellocchio, the director’s elderly sister, simple hearted, evokes those who are missing. To his brother’s question, “do you believe in the afterlife?», she replies: “I believe in religion, in God, but my greatest desire would be to see Mom and Dad again. Only, when we arrive in heaven, there will be billions and billions of us… How will we go about finding them? Seeing God doesn’t interest me much, it’s Dad, Mom and all my people that I want to see again…”
Oh sure, that might sound naive. But as we let children, in December, believe in wonderful things, let me hope that the afterlife will be populated with familiar faces. Those I loved will be there, gathered as in the apartment in Rouen, which was the nursery we went to every year. At Christmas, every loving family resembles the Holy Family.