‘The emergency services –’
‘Ah yes. Well, she utterly panicked. I think she’d been traumatized, I mean medically traumatized, “damage and injury to the structure or the functioning of the body”, by the early years of the Aids epidemic. I think she never got over it . . . And the knowledge that there was a strong chance, no, that’s the wrong word, a strong probability that her son would end up like all those poor wretches, it . . . I don’t know . . . It broke her in two. Snap. Like a stick. After that it got harder for her to hide her drinking problem. She hadn’t changed, but it wasn’t her any more. A ghost. A robot. A machine for smiling and bandaging; a machine you obeyed. A name and a number on a badge on a blouse that stank of booze . . . First she quit her position as head nurse, said she’d had enough of dealing with all the bloody paperwork, then she wanted to go halftime so she could look after Alexis. She went to great lengths to get him out of there and get him admitted into a better centre. It became her reason for living and, in a way, it saved her, too . . . You might say it was a good splint . . . But as a respite it was short-lived because . . .’
She removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, for a long time, then continued, ‘Because that . . . that bastard, forgive me, I know he’s your friend, but I can’t think of any better word –’
‘No. He . . .’
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing. I’m listening.’
‘He sent her packing. When he’d got enough strength back to be able to string two words together, he calmly announced to her that, as a result of the work he’d done with the “support team”, he mustn’t see her any more. He announced it very kindly, too . . . You understand, Mum, it’s for my own good, you mustn’t be my mother any more. Then he kissed her, something he hadn’t done for years and years, and he went off to join the others in his lovely garden surrounded by a tall iron fence . . .
‘And she requested sick leave for the very first time in her life. Four days, I recall. After the four days were over she came back and asked to work the night shift. I don’t know what reasons she gave them, but I know why she did it: it’s easier to tipple when the hospital’s quiet . . . The entire team was great with her. She had been our rock, our point of reference, and now she became our biggest convalescent. I remember this marvellous old man, Jean Guillemard, a doctor who’d spent his life working on multiple sclerosis. He wrote her a wonderful letter, full of detail, reminding her of the many cases they’d worked on together, and he concluded by saying that if life had given him more opportunities to work with first-class people like her, he’d probably know more than he knew now, and he’d be leaving for his retirement a happier man.
‘Are you all right? Another Coke, perhaps?’
Charles started. ‘No, no, I . . . thanks.’
‘I think I will have something, myself, if you don’t mind . . . Talking about all this, you’ve no idea how it upsets me. Such a waste . . . Such a monstrous waste. An entire life, do you understand?’
Silence.
‘No, how could you . . . Hospitals are another world, and people who don’t belong can’t possibly understand. People like Anouk and me have spent more time with sick people than with our loved ones . . . It was a life that was very hard and very sheltered at the same time . . . A life spent in uniform . . . I don’t know how they manage, nurses who don’t have that thing that’s considered a bit old hat nowadays – a vocation. No matter how I try I just can’t imagine . . . It’s impossible to last if you don’t have it. And I’m not talking about death, no, I’m talking about something that’s even more difficult. About . . . about faith in life, I think. Yes, that’s the hardest thing when you work in such a difficult industry, not to lose sight of the fact that life is more . . . I don’t know . . . legitimate than death. There are some evenings, I swear, when the fatigue is absolutely vicious. And you feel this dizziness, this sort of pull towards . . . and you . . . Well, listen to me,’ she chuckled, ‘I’ve gone quite philosophical all of a sudden! Ah, doesn’t it seem a long time ago that we were in your parents’ garden having those battles with the candied almonds!’
She got up and went into the kitchen. He followed her.
She poured a large glass of sparkling water. Charles stood with his back against the railing of the balcony, on the twelfth floor, above the void. Silent. Unwell.
‘Of course, all those kind things people said were very important to her, but what helped her the most, at the time – helped only in a manner of speaking, though, because of what came afterwards – was what one man alone, Paul Ducat, said to her. He was a psychologist who didn’t belong to any particular service, but who came several times a week to the bedside of the patients who asked for him.
‘He was very good, I have to admit. It’s daft but I really got the impression, I mean physically the impression, that he was doing the same job as the cleaning crew. He’d go into those rooms full of putrid fumes, close the door behind him, stay there sometimes ten minutes, sometimes two hours, never asked us a thing about our cases, never said a word to us and scarcely said hello, but when we’d come in after he’d gone, it was . . . how can I explain . . . the light had changed. It was as if the chap had opened the window. One of those huge windows without a handle and which are never opened otherwise, for the simple reason that they have been sealed shut.
‘One evening, late, he came into the office, something he’d never done before, but he needed a sheet of paper, I think, and . . . She was there, with a mirror in her hand, putting her make-up on in the half-light.
‘“Sorry,” he said, “may I switch on the light?” And he saw her. And what she was holding in her other hand, it wasn’t an eye pencil or a lipstick, but the blade of a surgical knife.’
Sylvie took a long swig of water.
‘He knelt down next to her, cleaned her wounds, that evening and for months afterwards . . . He listened to her for a long time, and assured her that Alexis’s reaction was perfectly normal. Better than that, even – vital, healthy. That he would come back, that he had always come back, hadn’t he? And no, she hadn’t been a bad mother. Never in her life. He had worked with a lot of addicts, and those who had been well loved made it through more easily than the others. And God knows he’d been loved, hadn’t he! Yes, he laughed, yes, God knew! And he was even jealous! He said that her son was well taken care of where he was, and that he’d ask around, he’d keep her up to date and she should go on behaving the way she’d always behaved. Which meant she should simply be there for him and, above all, more than anything, be herself, because it was up to Alexis to find his way now, and it could be that that way might lead him away from her . . . At least for a time . . . Do you believe me, Anouk? And she believed him and . . . You don’t look well. Are you all right? You’ve gone all white . . .’
‘I think I’d better eat something but I . . .’ He tried to smile. ‘Well, I . . . Do you have a bit of bread?’
‘Sylvie?’ he said, between two mouthfuls.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re a good storyteller . . .’
Her eyes misted over.
‘For good reason. Since she died, that’s all I think about . . . Night and day, little fragments of memories come back to me, all the time . . . I’m not sleeping well, I talk to myself, I ask her questions, I try to understand . . . She’s the one who taught me my profession, and it’s to her I owe the most important moments of my career, as well as the craziest laughs. She was always there if I needed her, she always found the right words to give people strength, make them more tolerant . . . She’s my eldest daughter’s godmother, and when my husband got cancer she was marvellous, as usual . . . With me, with him, with our little girls . . .’
‘Did he, uh –’
‘No, no,’ she said, her face lighting up, ‘he’s still around! But you won’t see him, he thought it was better to leave us alone . . . Shall I go on? Do you want something more to eat?’
‘No, no . . . I’m listening.’
br /> ‘So, she believed this man, as I was saying, and after that I saw, really saw with my own eyes, d’you hear? what people call “the power of love”. She pulled herself together, stopped drinking, lost weight, looked younger again, and from under that layer of . . . sorrow, as you called it earlier, out came her old face. The same features, the same smile, the same cheerfulness in her expression. You remember how she used to behave if there was an opportunity for mischief? She was lively, irresistible, crazy. Like a saucy schoolgirl who ends up in the wrong dormitory and doesn’t get caught . . . And she was lovely, Charles, so lovely . . .’
Charles remembered.
‘Well, it was him. That Paul. You cannot imagine how happy I was to see her like that. I said to myself, Right. Life has finally understood what it owes her. Life is thanking her at last . . . It was at about that time that I quit the profession. Because of my husband, in fact. He’d had a really close call, and if we tightened our belts, we could do without my salary. And then our daughter was expecting a baby, and Anouk had come back, so . . . It was time to retire, and look after my own loved ones. The baby was born, little Guillaume, and I went back to living the way normal people do. No stress, no shifts, no need to go hunting for a calendar whenever anyone suggested a day off, and I could forget all those smells . . . The meal trays, the disinfectant, the coffee brewing, the blood platelets . . . I swapped all that for afternoons in the park and packets of biscuits . . . At that point I lost sight of Anouk a bit, but we called each other from time to time. Everything was fine.
‘And then one day, one night rather, she called and I couldn’t understand what on earth she was on about. The only thing I did know was that she’d been drinking. So I went to see her the next day.
‘He’d written her a letter that she couldn’t understand. I was the one who had to read it to her, now, and explain it. What was he saying? What was he driving at? Was he leaving her or wasn’t he? She was . . . devastated. So I read it, that . . .’
She shook her head.
‘. . . that piece of shit, full of bullshit psychobabble . . . Oh, it was eloquent enough and all tangled up with lovely words. It was meant to be dignified and generous, but all it amounted to was . . . the most cowardly thing you’ve ever seen . . .
‘“Well, well?” she was pleading. “What does it mean, do you think? What does it mean for me?”
‘What was I supposed to say? That it meant she was nowhere? Look . . . You no longer even exist. He despises you so much that he can’t even be bothered to explain himself clearly . . . No. I couldn’t say that. Instead, I took her in my arms, and then, of course, she understood.
‘You see, Charles, it’s something I’ve often seen with my own eyes, something I’ll never manage to understand . . . why people who are so exceptional in their profession, people who, objectively, are able to do good on earth, turn out to be despicable bastards in real life? Huh? How can such a thing be possible? In the end, where did it go, all their fine humanity?
‘So I stayed with her all day. I was afraid to leave her. I was sure that at best she would drown herself in booze, and at worst . . . I begged her to come and stay a few days at our place; she could have the girls’ room, we’d keep out of her way and . . . She blew her nose, tied her hair back, rubbed her eyelids, lifted her chin and smiled. The most heartbreaking smile I’ve ever seen on her face.
‘Oh, and God knows that . . . Well. Never mind. She tried to make it last as long as possible, big show-off that she was, and she assured me, as she was walking me to the door, that I could leave now, that she wouldn’t do anything, that she’d been through rougher times than this and so, thanks to that, she had a thick skin.
‘I agreed, on condition I could ring her any time of the day or night. She laughed. She said okay. She added that one hassle more or less would hardly make any difference. And in fact, she held up. I couldn’t get over it. I saw her a bit more often at that point, and try as I might to find warning signs – scrutinizing the whites of her eyes, or sniffing her coat when I went to hang it up – there . . . no . . . she was sober.’
Silence.
‘With hindsight, I can see that, on the contrary, I should have been worried. It’s horrid what I’m about to say, but in the end, as long as she was drinking, it was proof that she was alive and, in a certain way, it meant that she was reacting . . . Well . . . all these thoughts come to me nowadays . . . And then one day she told me that she was going to hand in her resignation. I was utterly flabbergasted. I remember it very well, we’d just come out of a tea room and were walking along the Tuileries. The weather was fine, we were arm in arm, and that’s when she told me: it’s over. I’m quitting. I slowed down and didn’t say anything for a long time, hoping there’d be some explanation: I’m quitting because . . . or this is why I’m quitting . . . No. Nothing. I eventually managed to say, Why, Anouk, why? You’re only fifty-five . . . How will you live? What will you live on? What I was really thinking was who or what will you live for, but I didn’t dare put it to her like that. She didn’t reply. Okay.
‘And then she murmured, “All of them. They all abandoned me. One after the other . . . But not the hospital, do you understand? That’s why I have to leave first, otherwise I know I’d never get over it. This way, at least one thing in my bitch of a life won’t leave me stranded . . . Can you imagine me on the day of my farewell party?” she scoffed, “thanks for the present, kiss on the cheek to everybody, and then? Where do I go from there? What do I do? When is it time to die?”
‘I didn’t know what to say but it didn’t really matter: she was already climbing onto her bus, waving goodbye through the window.’
She put her glass down and didn’t say anything.
‘And then?’ ventured Charles. ‘Is . . . is that it?’
‘No. Well yes, in fact. Yes . . .’
She apologized, removed her glasses, tore off a paper towel and ruined her make-up.
Charles got up, went over to the window, and with his back to her this time, held onto the railing of the balcony as if he were on board a ship.
He wanted a smoke. Didn’t dare. There’d been cancer in this house . . . Perhaps it had had nothing to do with tobacco but how could he know? He looked at the tower blocks in the distance and thought about that family of hers . . .
The ones who had never loved her. Who had never called her by her real name. Who had filled her blood with addiction and affliction and alcoholism. Who had never held their hand out to her other than to take her money. The money she earned by forbidding her patients to die, while Alexis buckled his schoolbag all on his own and put the key around his neck. But to give them their due, those people were the ones who – one evening when they were all a bit down – had given Nana the chance to improvise a marvellous illusionist’s act.
‘Stop it, treasure, stop wasting your time with those useless dregs . . . What is it you want from them, anyway? Tell me?’
Digging around here and there in the kitchen to find his props, he had imitated them all.
Incarnated, rather.
The scolding dad. The consoling mum. The needling brother. The stammering little sister. The waffling granddad. And the old aunt who prickled beneath her suction-cup kisses. And the farting great-uncle. And the dog, and the cat, and the postman, and the priest, and even the gamekeeper, for whom he borrowed Alexis’s trumpet . . . And it was as cheery as any real family dinner, and . . .
Charles inhaled a good lungful of ring road air and – God knows what an ugly word this is – verbalized what it was that had been haunting him these last six months. No, twenty years:
‘I – I’m one of them.’
‘One what?’
‘One of those who abandoned her . . .’
‘Yes, but you cared for her very much . . .’
He turned around and she added, with a mocking dimple, ‘No, I don’t think care for is the right expression now, is it?’
‘Was it that obvious?’ asked the old little boy, anxious
ly.
‘No, no, don’t worry. You could hardly tell. It was every bit as discreet as . . . Nana’s outfits . . .’
Charles looked down. Her smile was tickling his ears.
‘You know, I didn’t want to interrupt you earlier on when you were saying that he had been her only love story, but when I went to the cemetery the other day and I saw those orange letters going off like a huge fireworks display in the middle of all that . . . desolation, well, there I was, and I’d sworn to myself no more crying, but I confess that . . . And then this horrid woman from the next plot came over to me going tsk tsk. She had seen him, too, the shameless fool who’d done that, and wasn’t it a crime . . . I didn’t say anything. How could you expect an old bag like her to understand anything? But I did think to myself, that shameless fool you’re referring to was the love of Anouk’s life.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Charles, I just told you I didn’t want any more crying. I’m up to here with it, really I am. And besides, she wouldn’t want to see us like this, it’s . . .’
Paper towel.
‘She had a photo of you in her wallet, she talked about you all the time, she never said a single unkind thing about you. She said that you were the only man in the world – and this means that poor Nana wasn’t even in the running – who ever behaved like a gentleman with her . . .