"I will hold you in my arms and we’ll feed them together.”
I closed my eyes. Everything would start over again.
MY MOTHER CARRIED ME into the emergency room.
"You have a hole in your head,” she told me.
Now that was news. I was delighted. I wanted to know more about it.
"Where is it?"
"On the side of your head. Where you hit the bottom.”
"Is it a big hole?"
"Yes. You’re losing lots of blood.”
She put her fingers against my temple and showed me that they were covered with blood. Fascinated, I put my own finger in the wound, not caring that this might reveal how crazy I was.
"It’s torn.”
"Yes, your skin is open.”
I looked at my blood, delighted with it.
"I want to look in the mirror! I want to see the hole in my head!"
"Calm down, calm down.”
The nurses took over and reassured my mother. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I was thinking about the hole in my head. They wouldn’t let me see it, so I had to imagine it. I saw my skull with a hole on the side. This was ecstasy.
I put my finger back there, because I wanted to explore what was inside, but a nurse gently took my hand and stopped me.
"They’re going to sew up your head,” said my mother.
"With a needle and thread?"
"Something like that.”
I don’t remember whether or not they put me to sleep. I believe I can still see the doctor standing over me, stitching up my temple with a thick black thread and a needle, like a tailor working on a suit.
AND SO CAME to an end my first and—to mis day— only suicide attempt.
I never told my parents that what happened was not an accident.
Nor did I ever tell them about Kashima-san, and what she had done, or not done. That would have caused her some problems. She hated me and must have been delighted at my approaching death. Nonetheless, I still feel there’s the chance that she understood the true nature of what I was doing, and had respected my choice.
Did I feel disappointed that I was still alive? Yes., Was I also glad to have been taken from the waters in time? Yes. I had chosen indifference. At bottom, it was all the same to me, being alive or being dead. It was only a question of time.
Even today I can’t decide. Would it have been better had my life ended in August of 1970, in the pool of carp? How can I know? I have found life to be very interesting, but how can I know whether the other side might not be more interesting?
It doesn’t really matter. We will eventually find out. And, when death comes, even the best-inten-tioned people in the world won’t be able to help us.
What I remember most clearly is how at home I felt between the waters.
Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t simply dream all this—or just make it up. Then I look at myself in the mirror, and I see on my left temple the admirably eloquent scar.
AFTER THAT, nothing more happened.
Amélie Nothomb, The Character of Rain
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