Mend the Living (5 page)

She must have screamed loudly, loud enough in any case that the little one reappeared, slow and serious, eyes wide, and froze in the bedroom doorway, head pressed to the doorframe, eyes fixed on her mother who doesn’t see her, who pants, like a dog, movements quick and face twisted, tapping furiously on her phone to call Sean who doesn’t answer – pick up, pick up, goddammit! – her mother who throws on clothes in a rush, warm boots, huge coat, scarf, then hurries into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face, but no cream, nothing, and when, lifting her head from the sink, she catches her own eye in the mirror – glazed irises beneath lids that are swollen as though by a blow, Simone Signoret eyes, Charlotte Rampling eyes, green line beneath her lashes – and she’s struck by not recognizing herself, as though her disfiguration had begun, as though she was already a different woman: an entire slice of her life, a massive slice, still warm, compact, detaches from the present and capsizes into the past, plummets and disappears. She makes out piles of rubble, landslides, faults that sever the ground beneath her feet: something is closing off, from now on something is out of reach – a portion of cliff separates from the plateau and crumbles into the sea, a peninsula slowly tears itself from the continent and drifts out to the open, solitary, the door to a magnificent cavern is suddenly obstructed by a rock; the past has grown massive all at once, a life-guzzling ogre, and the present is nothing but an ultrathin threshold, a line beyond which nothing is recognizable. The ringing of the phone has cleaved the continuity of time, and before the mirror where her reflection freezes, hands clutching the edges of the sink, Marianne turns to stone from the force of the shock.

Grabbing her purse, she turned around and there is the little girl, she hasn’t moved, oh Lou, the child lets herself be hugged without understanding anything, but everything in her is asking her mother questions that she evaded, put on your slippers, get a sweater, come with me, and as she slammed the apartment door behind them, Marianne suddenly thought – an icy slash – that the next time she put her key in the lock, she would know exactly what was wrong with Simon. On the next floor down, she rang the bell of an apartment, once and then again – Sunday morning, still asleep – and when the woman opened the door, Marianne murmurs hospital, accident, Simon, it’s serious, and the woman, eyes widening, nodded her head, whispered gently we’ll take care of Lou, and the little girl in her pyjamas went into the apartment, gave a little wave to her mother through the half-open door, but then suddenly changed her mind, threw herself into the stairwell calling: Mama! And Marianne ran back up the stairs, knelt down to face her daughter, took her in her arms, and then looked deep into her eyes and repeated the cold litany, Simon, surfing, accident, I’ll be back, I’ll be back soon, the child didn’t blink, placed a kiss on her mother’s forehead, and went back into the neighbour’s apartment.

Then there was the matter of getting the car out of its spot, second level down in the underground parking lot, and in her panic, it took two tries to extract herself from the spot, manoeuvring within a millimetre up the ramp that comes out onto the road. The roll-up door opened and she blinked her eyes, blinded. The light of day was white, sallow, it diluted the dullness, the shitty white of a snowy sky that isn’t snowing, and, summoning all her strength and reason, she concentrated on what route to take, driving due east across the upper part of the city, following arteries as straight-lined as IVs penetrating space horizontally, plunging onto rue Félix-Faure, then rue du 329e, then rue Salvador-Allende, names in succession on the route toward the suburbs of Le Havre, names woven into the book that is the city – she passed affluent villas overlooking the cesspool of downtown, vast and perfectly aerated lawns, private institutions and dark sedans, all of this giving way to decrepit buildings, to little suburban houses embellished with verandas or tiny gardens, small paved courtyards where rainwater, mopeds, and cases of beer stagnate, and now delivery vans and custom cars were gliding past these sidewalks too narrow for two people to pass side by side; she drove past the Tourlaville fort, the funeral parlours beside the cemetery, marble headstones on display behind tall windows, caught sight of a well-lit bakery near the quartier de Graville, a church with open doors – she makes the sign of the cross.

The city was inert, but Marianne could feel the threat – the apprehension of the sailor before a calm sea. It even seemed to her that the space around her had bowed in slightly, to contain the phenomenal energy crouching inside matter, this power that could change into a sudden destructive force if anyone came to split open the atoms; but the strangest thing (she had this thought when she looked back later) is that she didn’t pass anyone that morning, no other car, no other human being, and not a single animal – dog, cat, rat, insect – the world was deserted, the city emptied of people as though the residents had taken refuge inside their houses to protect themselves from disaster, as though the war had been lost and they were standing huddled behind their windows to watch enemy troops pass by, as though each one had quickly moved out of the way of a contagious fatality – anguish pushes people away, everyone knows it – the iron curtain had fallen before the front windows, shades lowered, only the gulls that slackened over the estuary greeted Marianne on her way, whirling above her car that, seen from the sky, was the only moving entity in the whole landscape, mobile capsule that seemed to gather up the last bit of life remaining on earth, shooting out along the ground like the steel ball inside a pinball machine – irreducible, solitary, shaken by spasms. The outside universe dilated slowly, trembled even and paled as the air trembles and pales above the desert sand, above the pavement of sun-baked roads, it changed into a fleeting, far-off scenery, it whitened, nearly to the point of erasure, while inside the car Marianne drove with one hand, the other wiping away everything that flowed down her face, these tears, stared ahead at the road, tried desperately to ward off the intuition that had been sedimenting in her since the phone call, this intuition that shamed her, that hurt her, and then it was the descent toward Harfleur, the outskirts of Le Havre, the express interchanges where she redoubled her attention, and a closed, unmoving forest – the hospital.

She turned off the car in the parking lot and tried to phone again. Tense, she listened to the regular ring of the call and visualized its pathway: the sound scurried off toward the south of the city, conveyed by a radio wave that shaped the invisible air, it crossed the space from one relay mast to another riding a hertzian frequency that was always different from one to the next, reaching the port and a perimeter of industrial wasteland near the inner harbour, then snaked along buildings in disrepair to finally arrive at the freezing workshop that Marianne didn’t visit anymore, not for a long time; she tracked the call that rushed between the palettes and the wooden beams, between chipboard and plywood panels, mixed with the sound of the wind stuffing itself in through cracked tiles, mixed with the whirlwinds of sawdust and grit spinning in the corners, meddled with wafts of polyurethane glue, resin, or marine varnish, pierced the fibre of heaped-up work shirts and thick leather work gloves, kicked in the tin cans turned paintbrush holders, turned ashtrays, turned kitchen drawers – a fun fair knock ’em down – fought against the continuous vibrations of the circular saw, those of the song on the old ghetto blaster – Rihanna, “Stay” – and against everything that pulsated, twitched, whistled, including the man who worked there, Sean, leaning at this moment over a table saw with an aluminum rail to feed boards through evenly, a supple, massive man, with weathered hands, who moved slowly, leaving footprints on the powdery ground; equipped with a mask and crowned with an anti-noise helmet, he whistled, like a painter whistles on his ladder, a high melody that curled in the air like the gift ribbon under the scissor blade; she listened to the call that reached the inside pocket of a parka hanging there and released a ring in a telephone casing – the sound of rain on the surface of the water, a sound he’d downloaded the week before, and that he wouldn’t be able to hear.

The ringing stopped, then it was the voicemail, preceded by a horrible jingle. She closed her eyes, the workshop appeared, and suddenly, laid out on metal racks lining the walls, splendid and bronze, the taonga stood out, Sean’s treasures: skiffs from the Seine Valley, the umiak, sealskin kayak built by the Inupiat people of northwestern Alaska, and all the wooden canoes that he built there – the largest of them had a finely carved stern like those of the waka, Maori dugouts propelled by long poles and used during ritual processions; the smallest was supple and light, a hull of birch bark and an inside papered with strips of pale wood, Moses’s cradle when he was placed upon the Nile to save his life, a nest. It’s Marianne, call me back as soon as you can.

Marianne sets off through the lobby. It’s long, this crossing, interminable, each step weighted with urgency and fear, she finally reaches the too-large elevator, takes it down to the basement, wide corridor, ground lined with big white tiles, she doesn’t pass anyone but can hear women’s voices speaking to each other, the corridor turns and reveals a crowd of people who come and go, standing, sitting, lying in wheeled beds parked against the walls, diffuse activity where complaints and murmurs weave together, the voice of a man who’s growing impatient, I’ve been waiting over an hour, the trembling of an old woman veiled in black, the cries of a child in the arms of its mother.

A door is open, it’s a windowed office. Again a young woman sitting in front of a computer who lifts a round face toward her, a very open face, maybe twenty-five years old, no older, it’s a nurse intern, Marianne says I’m Simon Limbeau’s mother, the young woman frowns, disconcerted, then pivots in her chair to speak to someone behind her: Simon Limbeau, the young man admitted this morning, know where he is? The man turns, shakes his head no, and seeing Marianne says to the nurse: try calling the ICU. The young woman picks up the receiver, inquires, hangs up again, nods, and then the man comes out of the office, a movement that releases a shot of adrenaline somewhere in Marianne’s belly, she suddenly feels hot, unties her scarf and opens her coat, wipes away the sweat pearled on her forehead, it’s suffocating in here, the man holds out a hand, he’s small and frail, neck of a fledgling in a pale-pink shirt with a collar that’s too big, his white coat clean and buttoned, the badge with his name placed neatly on his chest. Marianne holds out her hand too but can’t help wondering whether it’s just custom or if this movement, however banal, manifests an intention, a solicitude or something else, motivated by Simon’s state, when she doesn’t actually want to hear anything, know anything, not yet, doesn’t want to listen to any information that would come to alter the affirmation “your son is alive.”

The doctor pulls her down the corridor toward the elevators, Marianne bites her lip while he continues: he’s not in this department, he was admitted straightaway to intensive care – his nasal voice crushes
a
s and
en
s, his tone is neutral, Marianne stops, eyes staring, voice breaking: he’s in intensive care? Yes. The doctor moves soundlessly, taking small steps in crepe-soled shoes, he floats inside his white coat, his waxy nose gleams in the light, and Marianne, who is a head taller, makes out the skin of his scalp beneath thin hair. He crosses his hands behind his back: I can’t tell you anything more, but come along, they’ll explain everything, no doubt he was admitted there because of the state he was in. Marianne closes her eyes and grits her teeth, suddenly everything within her retracts, if he keeps speaking she’ll scream, or else throw herself at him and smack her hand over his stupidly verbose mouth, please God make him shut up, and as though by magic he lets his sentence trail off, wordless, and stops in front of her, head wobbling on the collar of the pink shirt; stiff as cardboard, his hand comes up palm open toward the ceiling – a vague gesture in which all the contingency of the world fans out, the fragility of human existence – then falls back to his side: the ICU knows you’re on your way, someone will come to meet you. They’ve reached the elevators and the meeting comes to an end; the doctor indicates the other end of the corridor with a movement of his chin, and concludes, calm but firm, I have to go, it’s Sunday, emergency is always crowded on Sundays, people don’t know quite what to do, he presses the button, the metal doors open slowly, and suddenly, while their hands are once again shaking each other, he smiles at Marianne, a smile from rock bottom, goodbye ma’am, be brave, and turns back toward the cries.

He said be brave, Marianne repeats these words to herself as she goes up another floor – the path to Simon is long, these corridors like labyrinths are trying – the elevator is papered with signs and union flyers, be brave, he said be brave, her eyelids stick together, her hands are damp, and the pores of her skin open because of the heat, a cutaneous dilation that scrambles her features, goddamn “be brave,” goddamn heat, isn’t there any air to breathe?

The intensive care unit takes up the whole east wing of the main floor. Access is restricted, signs saying Hospital Personnel Only are posted on doors, so Marianne waits in the corridor, ends up leaning against the wall and letting herself slide down to a crouch, head moving right and left without lifting from the wall, she taps her head against it, digs in gently with the back of her skull, face lifted toward the fluorescent tubes that run along the ceiling, lids closed, she listens, always these busy voices that badger or update each other from one end of the corridor to the other, these feet in rubber soles, gymnastics shoes or ordinary little sneakers, these metallic jinglings, these ringing alarms, these rolling stretchers, the continuous rustle of the place. She checks her phone: Sean hasn’t called. She decides to move, she has to go in, approaches the double fire door edged in black rubber, stands on tiptoe to look through the window. It’s quiet. She opens the door and goes inside.