The conclusion to the story. Don't miss out on part one! You can read it here!
I did not sleep the next night. I watched the sun creep up over the street through shaded windows, my gaze shifting from the light to the typewriter and back again. I was afraid to turn away from it, but also afraid to stay.
I decided to sell the typewriter.
It had been silent all morning, the sphinxes looking like painted figures again. The keys were still and silent. I wondered if the sphinxes knew my decision.
When morning came, I decided to go out. I will seek a buyer, I thought. I tugged on a coat and hat and walked slowly down the stairs to the back door. My knees ached and my back protested against all movement after a stiff night in a chair. The morning breeze hit my face and I briefly remembered the feeling of youth and vigor again.
But no. I could not keep the typewriter.
I sighed and kept walking.
All that day, I went searching for a buyer. I contacted many people I knew from my years of work, but no one would speak to me. It was as if all the doors were closed to me. I did not understand it.
And why did I want to sell it? The question penetrated my thoughts more than once. But...
I was thinking of my wife that day. As I walked the city streets, going from shop to shop and collector to collector, she came to my mind. My Odette. She has been gone these last twenty years. The sun is not as bright without her in the world.
I married her when we were both young and I have never regretted a moment of our lives together. She was magnificent. She gave me a son, who has also passed now. Odette died before him, thank heavens. It would have crushed her to stand at her own child’s funeral.
It did crush me.
Life is not what I expected. Most of it has been bad, but Odette was far better than I could have hoped for. You see, I was born during the second great war. I did not serve, no I was too young for that. However, I grew up in the aftermath. Europe struggled to rebuild for many years and the memories of horror lived on for many more years. My father died in the war and my mother never really recovered. My brother and I raised ourselves.
I expected to find work in a factory or maybe join on with a sailing boat. Hard work, but decent money is the most a boy like me could expect. Then I met Odette. She came sailing into my life like one of those gleaming vessels. She was beautiful and smart, a laugh that sounded like water running over rocks, and legs that seemed to stretch on for miles. I was in love with her from the moment I saw her. How could I not be?
It was Odette who saved me from myself. She loved me and taught me to love myself. In fact, it was Odette who brought me the first typewriter. I loved it because she had given it to me.
You see, all day, I was asking myself the same question over and over: What would Odette do? These dreams of being young again, they were tantalizing in a way I could have never predicted. But what would I do with youth and no Odette? Could I ever love anyone like I loved her? Impossible.
But what does it matter? They are just dreams, yes? A man cannot live in a dream forever. And after thinking of my Odette, I was not sure that I wanted to.
When I came home, the typewriter was waiting for me. I felt its presence like a living thing. I hung up my coat and hat and tried to brace myself for what I would find there.
The typewriter was on my bedside table as I’d left it, but fresh paper with new words were typed on it. I picked it up and read the words carefully.
Do you know the answer yet?
“The answer to what?” I asked. There was no answer, but I knew. What made life worth living?
I settled at the table in my kitchen with an espresso. I didn’t usually drink them so late, but they helped to settle my nerves sometimes. I sipped the black drink and thought about the paper, still in my hand.
I missed being young and being able to do things, but the sphinxes clearly expected another answer.
I imagined Odette, sitting across from me. I imagined her the way she looked when we were young, when our son was a babe in arms.
“What should I do?” I asked her. She smiled at me and leaned forward to grip my hand.
“What do you want to do, dear?” she asked me. I imagined her hand in mine and missed her more than I had all day.
“I want you, Odette. Always.”
“What does youth have to do with that?” she asked with a wink.
“I dislike being old. I want to do things and I can’t anymore.”
“You didn’t mind it when I was still around.”
I thought about that. Twenty years ago I was much younger, but still not a youth. At sixty, I had begun to have health problems. I was feeling the fatigue of old age and the loss of wind from too many years of smoking. But when Odette was holding my hand, her own youth fading, I had never minded.
I looked again and saw her in my mind’s eye as she had looked before she died. Her golden hair faded to white, her laughing eyes wrinkled at the corners, but still exquisite.
“You don’t want youth, silly old man,” Odette said with a laugh. “You want love.”
She was gone then. I put my face in my hands and cried. She was right. Of course she was right. My Odette had always been right.
I dreamed that night of the sphinxes again. This time, when they peeled away from the typewriter to take on living flesh, instead of excitement, I felt fear. What if they tried to eat me alive again? Surely I would not survive it.
The two sphinxes looked at each other with twinkling eyes and then back at me. The first spoke.
“Do you know the answer yet?”
“The answer to what?”
The second growled low in her throat, the deep rumble of a jungle lion, not a petite woman. I swallowed hard.
“What makes life worth living?” I asked, my voice weak. They nodded slowly. Their dark gaze fell heavily on me, and I bowed as if under a literal weight.
“Odette. She is the only thing that ever gave my life any meaning.”
They smiled at each other this time.
“That is the right answer, Monsieur Benoit.”
I woke up.
The typewriter was gone.
I could not explain it. I looked everywhere, but there was no trace of it. If I told anyone, they would believe that I made the whole thing up. I knew it was crazy, the imaginings of an old man whose mind is failing, but I believed that it had moved on to someone else.
Good riddance, I say!
And also, I would say to anyone who does not believe me, I have proof! The long jagged scars are still on my neck and shoulder. Where else would I have gotten them?
Tomorrow I will open the shop, I told myself. I looked forward to it. It was what Odette would have wanted for me.
The next morning, as I sat at my table drinking my espresso, I imagined her with me again. She smiled at me and I knew that the sphinxes were right. She was what always mattered.
But there was sadness, too. She was gone, gone to a place that I could not follow. I supposed I must learn to live with it until my time comes to journey on to that next plane and join her.
I opened the shop at 8 am sharp. I spent my morning dusting my inventory, sweeping and mopping the floor and cleaning the glass of my front window. It felt good to get back to life as normal.
But still. I missed my Odette more than ever. Now that the sphinxes had reminded me of that loss, I felt it keenly.
I had just settled down at my sales counter with the newspaper, when the bell rang. A customer! I looked up and the woman with the red hat was there waiting. For the first time, she seemed uncertain. She was not pinning me in place with her eyes and the hard line of her mouth had softened. She looked younger, and, I realized, very much like my Odette.
“Can I help you?” I asked, rising from my chair. Her eyes darted up to me, then back to the floor.
“I’m not sure. You see,” she stopped. At first I thought she would not finish. Then, “Are you Claude Benoit?”
“Yes,” I nodded. My interest piqued.
“And you had a son named Phillipe Benoit?” she asked, not moving. Her blonde hair fell forward, over one shoulder. She looked terribly young then.
“Yes,” I answered again. I grew very still. What would she know of my son?
“Monsieur, I…”
“Yes?” I stepped closer.
“I believe I am your granddaughter.”
I pushed my glasses up on my nose and looked at her hard. Could it be true? Could I have a grandchild and not know it?
“What is your name, child?” I asked, my voice stronger than I felt.
“Odette.”
I thought my heart had stopped. I put my hands gently to her face and it was as if my Odette were looking back at me.
“It is the only thing my father left me. He told my mother that he wanted me to carry his mother’s name.”
Tears filled her eyes, and I realized that they were filling my own eyes.
“Then it must be true!” I exclaimed. “You look just like her. Just like my Odette.”
The girl blushed, her gaze turning downward.
“So you are not…” she paused.
“Not what?”
“Disappointed? Shocked?”
I shook my head.
“This is the best gift you could have given me, ma cherie! This is what makes life worth living!”
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