My breath comes to a halt before this cathedral of turquoise iron and glass. The rst heavy door, whose handle has become lower with the years,
opens slightly. The air that reaches me brings back forgotten scents. Behind the second door, Prim is waiting in ambush and jumps up to me, cradling
my neck with one arm. Beneath the birds’ songs she begins with,
“Daddy, I’m six.”
Her black eyes twinkle like stars. A perfumed gesture of her other
arm and she announces,
“All by myself I found the garden from the stories you told me at bedtime!”
Her smile lights up her face, showing me all her
little teeth. The wrought-iron table doesn’t seem to have moved since my rst picnic with her mother.
Prim races down the two steps which separate us from the rst pond, calling me back to the present.
“These red and white sh are strange, but they’re
so pretty.” “Japanese carp, my love.” “Are there a lot of them? Where are the birds?” “On the other side.” “Can we go? Can we see the rabbit, and
Alice, too?” “Not this time, Alice had to go to school and the rabbit would have eaten the pretty plants.”
My little princess extends her arms and hands
as if to grab the canopy surrounded by a leafy corridor of Latin American gracilis and palm trees. As she nears the red and green owers of the little
pond she exclaims,
“I can see the bird cage. Is this where you fell in love with Mommy?” “No, that’s just where he fell!”
replies her mother with a grin
just as roguish as her daughter’s. Prim pushes open the door to the main greenhouse herself.
“Look at the big sh, they’re all black, they’re not like the
other ones.”
Our feet slap against the stone oor and resonate under the vaulted ceiling. The sh poke their lips out of the water, making them look
like otters. Around us the colour green in all its shades, fuchsias and yellows perfectly assorted.
I come to nd you once again in this garden where everything began; where we drank to our
love, to your health, to my follies. In my pocket, warm and safe under a handkerchief,
I hold dreams to pass on to Primrose, here where her grandmothers brought us at her age;
in our garden, our greenhouses of Auteuil.
