Paris (AFP)
She appeared in the middle of July, at the bend of an alley in Père-Lachaise.
A sculpture of a woman, a still empty tomb, an anonymous sponsor and a hint of megalomania: the perfect equation to fuel the myths and legends of Paris' most famous cemetery.
On this still sunny September morning, a couple of strollers lost in the "Carré des Romantiques", the oldest part of the cemetery where Chopin and Géricault rest in particular, contemplate the woman in Carrara marble, 1.85 meters high, overhanging a blank plaque of any inscription.
"For me, it's Deneuve," said the man, scrutinizing the face of the statue, which could indeed resemble that of the queen of French actresses.
The author of the sculpture, the Toulousain Gérard Lartigue, sketches a smile.
He came to discover his work in situ, which he learned, quite by chance, that it had finally been installed in the cemetery.
Bound by secrecy, he won't say who the sponsor is, simply letting go that this is a passionate writer from ancient Egypt, whom he has only met once.
"I received a call a little over a year ago, asking me if I wanted to do a work for Père-Lachaise," he told AFP.
It's yes, immediately.
The Parisian cemetery, with its famous graves - Molière, Maria Callas, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison ... -, its winding and tree-lined paths, its three million visitors per year, cannot be refused.
A 700 kilogram block of Carrara marble is then delivered to his workshop, and the sculptor will work for six months to create what he calls "the Pharaoh", because of the passion devoted by the sponsor to the queen of the Ancient Egypt Hatshepsut.
- "No is no" -
"Megalomania, the unusual, the unknown, the absurd: Père-Lachaise is a fantastic theater. There is no more beautiful reservoir of History and stories", s enthused Bertrand Beyern, writer and lecturer, who calls himself a "necrosopher" and has been walking through cemeteries since his adolescence.
Built in 1804, this park dominating Paris on a hill in the northeast of the capital, where more than a hundred Communards were shot by government troops in 1871, houses 70,000 graves and 26,000 urns in the colombarium.
Beyond the famous myths of the cemetery - drinking at Morrison's grave, lipstick kisses on Oscar Wilde's, esoteric visits to the father of spiritualism Allan Kardec ... -, the place is full of stories less known, but just as astonishing.
Rare, anonymous burials are worth the detour.
Like this plaque at the colombarium, without name, without first name, without date.
Just an inscription: "No, it's no".
"It is the most nihilistic epitaph imaginable," laughs Mr. Beyern, who also readily quotes the grave of a lady who died 150 years ago, on which the widower, in no hurry to join, had written: "Wait a long time".
- Telegraph and camera -
The construction of a funeral monument requires the authorization of the curator of the cemetery, as well as the opinion of the architect of the buildings of France, explains the town hall of Paris.
And theoretically, it is no longer possible to have his grave erected before his death.
This does not prevent the strangest monuments, such as the tomb of Claude Chappe, inventor of the optical telegraph at the end of the 18th century: a mass of mossy rocks surmounted by a small telegraph.
Or that of the daughter of the famous resistance fighter Berty Albrecht, Mireille, writer, gallery owner, traveler, muse of Saint-Germain-des-Prés: a bistro chair multicolored in blue white red, balanced on the tombstone.
Another astonishing monument, the one imagined by André Chabot, a French photographer - well alive - specialized in funeral art, for his future burial.
It is a huge black granite camera placed inside a chapel.
Again, no name, but a QR code at the entrance, which, scanned, returns to the artist's website.
"There are newcomers constantly, Père-Lachaise is an organism in movement", describes Bertrand Beyern, before stopping at the oldest monument in the cemetery, raised to the glory of a young dragon of the Napoleonic armies. .
His name was Guillaume Lagrange and he died "in the deserts of Poland" on February 4, 1807, where his body was buried.
His mother had a stone erected "to the glory of the most tender of sons and of friends", on which is engraved, in a childish style, the story of the young man's short life.
© 2020 AFP