“In terms of volume and processing, the mind’s chief activity is taking in visual information. Its second-most active function is getting rid of it. It’s as if there are a billion little clerks who continually sort, identify, and jettison. We cleanse, dump, and dispose of most of what we receive.”
David was intrigued. Although doing her best not to be, so was Cathérine.
“What happens when you’re as old as I am? To begin with, I’ve taken in twice as much information, useless and otherwise, as you have. By definition I’ve exercised the facility for erasing things twice as much as you have. Also, as the time left to me rapidly narrows, I reject with greater and greater vigor that which isn’t important – just as, because I can’t take them with me, I lose attachment to my possessions. I’m also clearing out the attic in here,” he said, pointing to his head.
“The facility for getting rid of what I don’t need is working at high-speed and not always flawlessly. In general, I hardly need to know about movies. How could whatever is helping me clean house have predicted that this evening it would have been useful had I remembered this one?
“I’m not embarrassed or disturbed that I’ve lost so much, anymore than a farmer would be embarrassed or disturbed that the wind has blown the chaff from the threshing floor and left only the wheat. You may not understand this until you’re much older, but to people of my age it’s given, if one will take it, that things become at once more beautiful, more intense, and more inexplicable. You learn to see with your emotions and feel with your reason. If at its end the life you’re living takes on the attributes of art, it doesn’t matter if you’ve forgotten where you put your reading glasses.”
“PLEASE,” DAVID BEGGED. “I can drive you. There’s no traffic, and I’ll be back in an hour.”
“That’s not necessary. I like to walk, and the trains are running.”
“When you change at Nanterre you might be standing in the cold for an hour.”
“It’s not that late, David. I won’t have to wait more than ten minutes, if that. And I don’t mind the cold.”
“At least let me drive you to the station. And this time of night, Jules, the trains are not necessarily safe.”
“Here? They’re perfectly safe. And I don’t have to worry about such things anymore.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Nor did you worry about such things when you were younger. I know that, too.”
“I didn’t, especially when I was a soldier.”
“You’ve never been bothered by ….”
Jules interrupted. “Only in the middle years, when my family was in tow. Then I’d worry a lot. Now that’s your job.”
The train ride was smooth and dull. Unlike the old cars that creaked because there was so much wood in them, the new ones whined. Everything inside was plastic, glass, or steel, and fluorescent light reflected coldly from the glass of windows blackened by the night. Part of the coach ceiling, slanted over the steps leading to the upper-level seats, was a color that did not exist in nature, at least not in the temperate regions: a pinkish, melon color, neither cantaloup nor orange, that was at least faintly nauseating. Every time Jules rode the RER, there it was. And every time he saw it he thought of the immensely tall African he had seen, wearing pants of exactly the same color, who had bumped his head ascending to the second level. Angry at himself, he had hit the plastic panel with one fist, swearing at it in an African language as if it were alive, before striking it with the other. Jules was in total sympathy.
He didn’t want to miss his stop, but in the hypnotic rocking of the carriage he was half asleep even though the closely set ties were concrete and the welded rails had no joints. Brilliantly colored, moving images from his past rose in rapid, random succession.
In August of 1966, on the train from Paris to Bordeaux, he had finished with the army, Jacqueline was twenty-two, the windows were open, and fragrant air rushed by. Every color outside glowed as in a medieval miniature, even the flags at military bases, whipping in the breeze. At an American base next to the rail line a thousand tanks were visible in row after row. As Jacqueline and Jules were served framboise in the dining car, they watched them in their endless ranks. A huge American flag and the Tricolor furled and unfurled above the base, both the colors of blood, snow, and the sea.
Another image, from years later, when Cathérine was a little girl and they stayed in a shack between Contaut and the sea. Always high strung, Cathérine had had trouble sleeping, but not at Contaut, where the sound of the waves allowed her to find deep rest a minute or so after she closed her eyes. The first time she returned to Paris from Contaut she thought she’d never fall asleep again, and would lie awake for hours. They took her to a doctor, who gave them sleeping pills, which they accepted out of politeness but then threw away. Instead, Jules bought forty jewelry chains with tiny, delicate links, and a box of Cuban cigars. He gave the cigars to anyone who wanted them, and put the chains into the wooden box, which, when rocked back and forth sounded remarkably like the ocean. After a few minutes, she would be fast asleep.
Perhaps because at Contaut they had left their worries in Paris, and for two weeks were relieved of making a living, paying bills, going to school, and answering mail or the telephone, parents and child made a bond as strong and yet as invisible as the forces holding fast in the atom.
Contaut then was still a naval base. Seaplanes that patrolled the Bay of Biscay made their home and found shelter on the enormous lake that stretched south, and the German fortifications on the Atlantic beaches were as intact as if squads of infantry were still inside. But they were empty, forbidding, dark, and piled with sand. The biggest one was shaped like a German helmet, with firing slits looking out at the surf, its massive concrete the color of gunmetal and pin-striped with impressions of the long-vanished wooden cement forms.
One summer they ran out onto the beach the way one does arriving at the open ocean after a long drive. Turning from a distant blue so deep it was painful, they saw that, undermined by the tide, the fortress had rolled over onto the sand. Firing-slits pressed against the ground, steel doors ajar, the interior full of seawater and echoing like a shell that holds the sound of the waves, it could no longer stand in what its builders had vainly conquered only a generation before.
THE ONLY OTHER occupants of the train car on the RER were a boy and a girl in their teens sitting across from Jules, two seats behind. They had been there when he got on, and he had taken note of their fast, jerky, almost violent movements, which he knew did not seem that way to them. To him, their gestures were explosive. Their arms flew around and their speech was loud and rushed. He hadn’t been like that when young, but then again he had had a special maturity that he would never have wished upon anyone.
For these kids, Jules didn’t even exist. That is, until he was seized by rapidly advancing confusion and darkness and could neither move nor speak, nor hear, nor see. In the seconds in which he remained conscious he was sure he was dying. Keeling over to his right, he fell into the aisle. The boy and girl stopped their talking. “Drunk,” the boy said. A moment passed.
“Maybe he died,” the girl added.
“No,” her boyfriend added, as if he knew.
“Go see.”
“I’m telling you, he’s drunk.”
“You should check.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
He got up, walked up the aisle, and stepped over Jules as if stepping over a log. Peering at him, he said, “He’s breathing. He’s not drooling or anything, and I don’t smell alcohol. Maybe he had a heart attack.”
“What can we do?”
“Call it in. I don’t have my phone.”
“My battery’s dead.”
“Why do you do that all the time!”
“It’s too old. You know it’s old. I’m waiting to get the new one. What are we going to do?”
“At the next stop,” the boy said, “we’ll tell someone. What else can we do? I’m not a doctor.”
r />
The train rolled on for five minutes, and when it stopped, the boy and his girlfriend ran out to look, but found no one. Then they watched as the doors closed and the train moved on. Eventually they found two policemen, one of whom asked, “How do you know he wasn’t drunk?”
They argued, but the police were stubborn, they were just about to end their shift, they were tired, and they didn’t want to complicate things. So the train kept moving, just as it was supposed to, into the center of Paris.
The Patient, Barely Alive, Had Collapsed on the RER
FOR AN INSTANT after he fell and just prior to his loss of consciousness he had seen something extraordinary and comforting. The world is full of stories and reports about the brief impressions that flash before the eyes of the dying and those who have come close to death. It’s easy to say that these are nothing more than the creations of minds under extreme stress, dreams and desires coming forth in an instant as images of a life’s hopes and loves – no longer held in check – break their ways to the surface. But is it possible to create a new color, in new light?
Jules saw a horizon of three hundred and sixty degrees. Dark gray clouds circled like a low wall. But it gave way to a glow above it in a color that did not exist on earth. It was simultaneously all but none of the known colors of white, beige, and platinum. It had the texture of mother-of-pearl or alabaster, but no veins, imperfections, or spectra of interference. It glowed as if the source of illumination were behind it, and pulsed almost imperceptibly. Its light immediately banished all fear and pain, washed away all regret. As it seemed to exist independently of time, and though he saw it for only a second or two, he felt as if he had been bathed in its light for eternity.
When he awakened in the ICU at La Pitié-Salpêtrière he felt disappointment at having once again re-entered the world. No one else was in the room, only the beeping machines, illuminated numbers, and dancing lights that these days keep watch over the sick and the dying. How easy it would have been to fall back into the gentle off-white glow. He tried to summon it by closing his eyes, but he couldn’t. He’d been thrown back, and would have to see it through. Coming awake, he assessed what was left to him and prepared for the useless tests, questions, and examinations that he was sure would follow. Having had them in New York he knew more or less where he stood.
AFTER NEUROLOGICAL WORKUPS, consultations, and visits from Cathérine and David, he discovered to his great relief many hours of happiness and contentment in La Pitié-Salpêtrière, a place he had hated but now loved, because it was the gate to the road upon which he would follow Jacqueline. Even if he would never find her, following was enough.
Things leveled off, the doctors were done with him, and he would be going home the next day. He didn’t know how he was able to adjust happily, but he had gotten used to the food and the routine, and even watched a movie on television. It was about a dog who, to find a female dog he had seen in a crate on a train, crossed the Australian continent to ask for her paw. Jules liked it. He loved dogs. The only reason he hadn’t gotten a dog was that he knew that the central component of a dog’s emotions is loyalty, and he didn’t want to break its heart when he died. But even dogless he looked forward to going out once again into Paris at the end of April.
Lying quietly propped up in his bed, he heard the well practiced knock of nurses and doctors about to enter a patient’s room. What did they imagine? That he would be with a tart? In fact, imprisoned in the hospital, all he could think about was sex. He tried not to include Élodi but he did, often, imagining every part of her body and how he would be lost in his love of it. Now he realized that Dante had been playing a double game when he created the eternal kiss of Paolo and Francesca, because when Jules thought of touching, holding, and kissing Élodi, he wanted it to last forever, and in the way he perceived this it would not have been punishment but paradise.
After the knock, a nurse half-entered the room, her right hand holding the door. “You have a visitor,” she said.
His obsession having tricked him that it was Élodi, he started with pleasure and fear. “Send her in.”
The nurse was puzzled at first, then said, “A man, I assure you. A Monsieur Marteau. As big as an ox. It’s okay?” She saw Jules’ disappointment.
“Okay.”
Armand Marteau ducked slightly as he came through the doorway, although he didn’t have to.
“How did you know I was here?” Jules asked.
“You were responsible enough to carry the card I gave you. Still, it wasn’t so easy to find you. This is a big place. Neuropathologie, Bâtiment Paul Castaigne, Secteur Vincent Auriol, Hôpital Universitaire La Pitié-Salpêtrière, quarante-sept à quatre-vingt-dix e trois Boulevard de l’Hôpital, Treizième Arrondissement, sept cinq zero un trois, Paris. Geo graphical coordinates to the second would have been a fifth as long. But I found you.”
“Why would they, without my permission, contact you?”
“It says so on the card. It says ‘death or disability,’ and you’re disabled.”
“I am not disabled.”
“Medically and legally, you are. Your diagnosis ….”
“How do you know my diagnosis?”
“Don’t forget, you signed waivers. Full transparency, and with a basilar aneurysm that is both on the edge and inoperable, you are technically and legally fully disabled.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means that your disability benefits started as soon as we received official notification, and that you cannot any longer work. It means you must resign your post and refrain from any activity related to either ongoing or future compensation, or even without compensation, from any activity related to your previous career or careers.”
“I can’t teach?”
“No.”
“Not even privately, without compensation?”
“Perhaps you don’t remember, but we’ve been over this before.”
“I can’t write music, without compensation, for my own pleasure?”
“No. If you write it down or record it, it has the potential of being sold.”
“May I play the cello?” Jules asked, sarcastically.
“Yes, you can, as long as it is unrelated to compensation, performance, or teaching.”
“How would anyone know?”
“They might not,” Armand said patiently, “but if they do, the policy would be voided and you’d be sued for the costs of its implementation.”
“What if I give up the policy, or don’t take the disability payments? Can I refuse them?”
“You can give up the policy after two years if you’ve paid the premiums in full. If you refuse the disability payments, the policy is voided, with the consequences I described. Given your economic status, you have many options. For some people, the conditions might be a kind of trap, but if money is of little consequence you can more or less do what you wish. And how did you end up here? I would have thought you’d gone private immediately. Switzerland. England. The U.S.”
“That’s not important. What about you?” Jules asked.
“Me?”
“How would you fare with the various options that you relate?”
“Since you bought the policy, they’ve directed me to much more than my share of high-value business. They think I’m magic. I’ve purchased new equipment for our farm in Normandy, paid off its debts, and reacquired the land we had to sell to meet previous obligations. I’m going to go back there. You saved me. If there’s anything I can do ….”
“I’m happy that it’s been good for you.”
“I want things to work out, and I don’t want you in trouble,” Armand said. He moved closer so he could whisper. “Everything would be fine except for the fact that when you were brought to the emergency room, and were in and out of consciousness ….” Armand looked around to make sure that no one was there, “you diagnosed yourself. Correctly.”
“I did?”
“You did. You said, ‘inoperable basilar aneury
sm.’ It took them an MRI, a radiologist, and two neurosurgeons to come to the same conclusion. This was noted in their report, the supposition being that you had received a previous diagnosis. When we got the report, all ears pointed up. Our chief has referred it along.”
“To whom?”
“Merde!” Armand said.
“What?”
“He ….”
“‘He’?”
“You will be scrutinized.”
“On everything?”
“Probably just the medical, although they can open up the whole case. I wanted to let you know,” he whispered. “That’s why I came.” Armand turned away, then back again, still whispering, and with urgency. “You’ll be getting a visit from our investigator. Terrible!”
“What do you mean, ‘terrible’?”
“His name fits him to a T. He hates everyone.”
The last thing Jules needed was a dogged investigator. “What’s his name, then?”
“Damien Nerval.”
“I guess it sounds satanic.”
“A little, yes. He likes to fight. We used to call him Flagellons, until someone did and he hit him with a stick.”
THEY WANTED TO bring him out in a wheelchair, the standard procedure, but he jumped up and ran down the hall, with the nurse calling after him in panic. What would they do, arrest him? For walking? Running? You are forbidden to run, because you’re not supposed to be able to walk. If he actually needed a wheelchair he would sit in one, but as long as he didn’t need one, he wouldn’t. In so many ways already outside the law, he didn’t care about rules.
Just before exiting the hospital he saw a young doctor in surgical scrubs, a stethoscope draped around his neck. “Excuse me,” Jules said. “The way the stethoscope hangs, it looks like mink heads.”
“I beg your pardon?”