by Paul Morand
“It’s really strange,” thought Pierre, “I’ve travelled in succession on a stopping train, an express, a fast car and a state-of-the-art aeroplane, that is to say I’ve increased speed each time, and the faster I go the more things appear to slow down. We’re doing five hundred kilometres per hour, and it seems to me that we’re not moving. Here I am suspended in total space, detached from the world; everything becomes never-ending; the bigger it is the less it moves; the port barely drifts out of sight because it is enormous; the sea becomes stiller the more it becomes ocean.
“I probably didn’t see the universe looking turbulent because I was looking down on it. We only go fast at ground level. As soon as I step back to take a look at my old planet, it seems dead to me. Speed is a word invented by the earthworm.”
All at once Pierre felt a terrible pain in his left side. He searched for a cause, because he liked to understand in order to guess what might happen next.
“We climbed too quickly,” he thought.
Abruptly, his pulse fluttered and his body grew limp. It seemed to him that a suddenly exposed gun was firing at him from point-blank range. A two-hundred-kilo weight fell on his thoracic cage beneath which he crumpled, as if his ribs, which had become concave, were going to touch his backbone. He wanted to resist this dreadful feeling; the more he tried to expand his chest, the more he felt himself pierced by a burning thrust. It was as though a spear had remained stuck inside his body.
The plane banked to the right and showed its passengers the marvellous sight of the new docks in the Hudson with all the jetties, which resembled the rays of an aureole, whereas the tip of Manhattan, which was made to look as though it was on fire by the setting sun, was dipping its bows like a red-hot iron into a sea streaked with barges, lighters and tugs bewigged with black smoke. Pierre saw nothing; he could no longer breathe or move his neck.
The pain reached his shoulder, passed under his armpit like a sling, and made his arm numb as far as the elbow, as far as his little finger. He sweated, his teeth chattered, his temples were trapped in an iron door that was closing. He had no time to think: “But wait a minute, I’m not going to explode in mid-air,” not even time to call out: “Go down, because I’m dying!”; he would simply pass away in his seat without anyone being aware.
What a comfort it would be if the four engines had suddenly exploded and he had been hurled down from a height of ten thousand feet!
He clenched his teeth, his eyelids, the palms of his hands, the small of his back, his nostrils, his toes; he squeezed one part against the other, just as the oyster clamps its shells tightly against attack from the knife, everything in his body that was paired or twinned. One moment he was bent double and the next he was huddled up and rolled into a ball so as to allow the torture as little surface as possible.
The stewardess, wearing white and heavily made-up, passed down the aisle and brushed against him without him being able to call or cry out, so immobilized was he by a needle of iron, so much did it seem to him that the slightest movement would cause him to break apart, the slightest pause in his resistance smash him against the partition.
Explosions took place one after another inside his head, alarm bells that reduced him to pieces. He pouted so as to keep his lips away from his teeth, which would have sliced them off instantly. Stabbed, battered and ripped apart, his only thought was to curl up small, to huddle up while waiting for the attack to end. Be it life or death, at the point he had reached either could only mean a reduction in his suffering. A paroxysm of this kind does not endure. The organism either yields or it recovers.
All around him, people were exclaiming. The passengers were rushing over to the west side, their faces lit up by the sunset like Sioux wearing warpaint; their gazes were converging below; noses were flattened against the windows the length of the aisle; shrieks of admiration echoed against the metal partitions. Sparks crackled: interviews were being given over the cordless phone.
All of a sudden, Pierre had the impression that rescuers with large shovels were digging him out of the avalanche that had fallen on him. The oxygen was filtering into his lungs once more, his pulse was steadying itself. A moment later, he could even expel the air from his ribs, which could now move again. The spear that had perforated him still hacked into him as it withdrew, but at last it came out. The nails were being removed from his Cross.
He subsided into feelings of well-being and he set foot again among sensations that were unpleasant but ordinary: nausea, headache, intermittent electric shocks in his hands and feet. The shadowy cone which he had entered ebbed away and the light reappeared as soon as he was able to open his eyes.
“Death is a slow and weighty animal,” was his first thought, once he found he was free of pain. “When I almost killed myself in a car at Saint-Vallier, I had already understood this.”
His attack had lasted for quite a while, since the sun had set and the aeroplane was now returning to its base. Wrapped in his overcoat, with his hat over his eyes, no one had noticed him.
The plane was already lowering its undercarriage, rather as pigeons that are about to land on a roof extend their legs, hidden beneath their bellies.
Just as Pierre was setting foot on the cement landing area that was surrounded by reporters, the organizers insisted he say a few words in the microphone about his aerial impressions. Still shaking, still alarmed at having been in such pain, he did not know how to refuse.
“Every time the genius of one man has conquered the inertia of matter, his parents and friends have dismissed him as restless, God has punished him and fate has struck at him. In short, everybody is always in agreement that Prometheus should be chained to his Caucasus, everybody including the vultures and the journalists.”
Nobody understood a thing about these words spoken in a panting voice, in an inarticulate language, by a “French guy” who shuffled from one foot to another like a turkey on a hot plate. But they were taken for enthusiasm.
CHAPTER XXIII
PIERRE HOPPED ON the first ship leaving for Europe, even though he had booked his cabin on the second.
Curtailing your schedule is unwise: you are greeted by solitude. Not being expected, Pierre found a Paris unconcerned with him, an empty apartment, an absent wife. Not even a note from her. All that the concierge handed to the new arrival was a bundle of administrative bills, each more threatening than the other, and meter readings. Hedwige’s cupboards were empty, she had taken away her dresses, her underwear, her furs. She had never been back. She had had her post forwarded to Saint-Germain.
According to Pierre’s calculations, the birth was due to take place in a fortnight’s time. Separated from the present, evicted from the future, he sat down in the centre of a drawing room that had become as vast as the steppes, feeling astonished at the havoc that absence can bring; his trunks, one tall, the other long, set down their geometrical shapes with complete lack of consideration among the fretted, grumpy-looking armchairs. Picture frames, which can never remain straight, had been cast more askew by the stillness than by any earthquake. Movement can justify disarray, but disorder that is dead is far more distressing than the most inextricable living mess. The gramophone, with its broken records, looked as though it had received a punch from the piano, the telephone cord had become entangled like ivy around the feet of the standard lamp, the inlaid floor panels had become slightly unstuck due to moisture in the ceiling, the ceiling that was “full of ’oles”, as Chantepie would say.
The clutter of objects, the dusty emptiness of this room and the ruined furniture were for Pierre an image of the discord between himself and Hedwige, of the disorder of their love life.
“What would Hedwige say if she were here?” wondered Pierre.
Pierre did not dare call her. He went and prowled around Saint-Germain, waited for her to emerge, and exhausted himself waiting for something that did not happen. He wrote a great deal and sent none of it off.
The less he dared, the more overexcited he became
.
Finally, he telephoned his brother-in-law at the office.
“Hello? Pierre here.”
“So you’re back!”
“How is Hedwige?”
“As well as she can be in her condition.”
“When is it due?” asked Pierre.
“In two weeks’ time.”
“Another two weeks! Are you sure I can’t see her before then?”
“I don’t advise you to,” replied Amyot. “The doctors disapprove.”
“Then is it because she’s very ill?”
“No, even though she was in a wretched state when she reached us, after she had left you.”
“Does she really not want to see me? Does she still hate me?”
Pierre spoke with such passion that the sound of his voice made the microphone crackle, splutter and explode.
“They’re afraid,” Amyot continued, “that you might do her more harm than good.”
“How do you know?”
“I know that Hedwige prefers not to see you…”
“Is she happy, at least?”
“Yes, indeed, very happy, very well looked after. The whole family is there, as you may imagine. They’ve put a mattress on the floor for the duty nurse and they cook dreadful Negro stuff on the stove.”
Pierre exploded:
“So, she doesn’t miss me?”
“Not much,” Vincent Amyot replied phlegmatically, without appearing to notice his brother-in-law’s agitated state. “Not much, not much… She’ll be just as wonderful a mother as her own mother was. Basically, that’s all that matters to them… How I wish Angélique could have given me a child! You’ve never understood the Boisrosés: they’re vegetables. With Hedwige, at least, you have a plant that is happy to reproduce.”
It was agreed that as soon as Hedwige went into labour, Amyot would call his brother-in-law.
Pierre reverted to his solitary stamping around. Nothing stirred in his home apart from Chantepie, whom he had asked to come back. The lift was out of use, the clocks had stopped, the electricity had been cut off. It was the middle of the All Saints holiday period: three million Parisians, bearing chrysanthemums, had set off to suburban and regional cemeteries.
Pierre was bored; he wanted to go out, drawn by the summer weather of St Martin’s Day and driven by the violent shock of having nothing better to do, but his legs were numb and he felt breathless and very weary. Along with this sense of languidness came a tiresome feeling of sickness throughout his body, a feeling of deep disgust.
“Midday on All Souls’ Day… who on earth can I ring?”
Placide was away. The Mas Vieux was too far. The only recourse in a situation like this are foreigners.
“I find Regencrantz fairly entertaining. I shall invite him.”
Pierre had, as it happened, found a letter from the doctor in the post. Regencrantz described his most recent disappointments and the story of his last visa: it was from Labrador that he was now expecting one that had been too long delayed. He was no longer living in Bordeaux, but in Marnes-la-Coquette, with a doctor friend; working for a pharmaceutical products company, his job was to put calves’ liver in pills.
“Is it you Regencrantz?”
“Dear Pierre Niox!”
“Come and have lunch.”
“Impossible, I’m on duty over the holidays. But why don’t you come over here and share my lamb chop.”
Pierre dashed off to Marnes and was reacquainted with the wandering Jew’s floppy handshake and his passport adventures, filled with dreary incidents. Strengthened by a time-honoured experience of misfortune, Regencrantz knew how to use it, philosophically, to adapt to every situation. Pierre, in turn, described his trip to America in a gay and lively manner.
He ate lunch with his elbows on the table, bent over the tablecloth like a skier on a snow run. With his spoon held out, he lunged at the soup which, in German fashion, the doctor had offered him, and he kept his head over his plate. Regencrantz listened to him, arching his back and slumping farther and farther back as the meal progressed.
“By the way,” said Pierre, “a strange thing happened to me while I was in New York. As a doctor, it would be of interest to you. Although I have an iron constitution, it appears that I am not suited to flying. And yet this isn’t the first time: I’ve flown a good many times. Would you believe that in the course of a very short flight, I was overcome with a peculiar ailment, a sort of attack…”
“What do you mean? An attack? Explain yourself better. A headache? Buzzing in the ears?”
Pierre described his blackout while flying. He would normally have related it in a couple of words—as he did with anecdotes that he reduced to the minimum or the stories that he dashed off and summarized so quickly that no one ever understood them—had not Regencrantz, in his anxiety, plied him with questions.
“Will you allow me to listen to your chest? Not here, there’s too much noise… I should also take your blood pressure.”
After lunch, they went into a nearby building and walked up to the laboratory.
Pierre undressed and bared his chest. Regencrantz listened carefully, in the way people do when they eavesdrop.
“And now, the X-ray.”
Regencrantz pressed his face to the frosted-glass screen. The shadow of Pierre’s heart rose above the diaphragm with each intake of breath and then dropped down again. In the darkness, Pierre could feel the cold of the glass on his naked chest and he could see Regencrantz’s bald head following the motions of his thorax, like a collector searching for the signature on the work of a master.
“Now, lie down here. Don’t tense up. Let yourself relax.”
An electromagnet crackled behind the screen. In a tube, on the phosphorescent quartz filament, of the type of orchid colour we associate with lightning, Pierre could see a sort of magnetic signature developing and being repeated in interrupted quavers, a bright and irregular cast of his breathing.
“They are my heart’s cries expressed luminously,” he thought. “What on earth can my heart have to say to that old rabbi Regencrantz?”
In the pitch-darkness, Pierre watched with amazement as the secrets of his body were made legible, his pulse transformed into a coloured ray, his heartbeat covered in sparks, his entire life diverted into this tube.
The doctor switched on the light in silence.
“Well?”
“Are you sure, Pierre Niox, that you had only one attack of the kind you have described to me?”
“I’m certain of it.”
Regencrantz nodded absent-mindedly, looked at a note, opened and shut some drawers.
“Come now, Regencrantz, why are you asking me this? Talk to me, for heaven’s sake!”
“Given the condition of your heart, I would have thought that you had already had five or six attacks,” said Regencrantz hesitantly.
“The condition of my heart? So is something wrong with my heart?”
Regencrantz replied with a wave of his hand that signified nothing, that was merely the outer reflection of an unspoken thought.
Pierre considered the matter. Snatches of medical conversations at the end of dinner parties, items read in magazines or dictionaries all fused together.
“Bend your knees two or three times, if you would…”
“I get out of breath quickly,” said Pierre, “but that must be lack of fitness.”
“Yes, indeed… Why not?”
“Come on,” said Pierre abruptly. “What is it? Tell me what it is straight away! Vasomotor problems? No? False angina? Heavens… the real thing?”
Regencrantz nodded as he pushed away the X-ray machine, which was on a track, with his shoulder.
“And even… well developed, apparently?” Pierre continued insistently.
“By taking care, avoiding muscular strain… keeping an eye on your blood pressure… What’s your previous medical history? Nephritis? Scarlet fever?”
“Regencrantz, I don’t like being made a fool of… You have
either said too much or not enough. You care for me as a friend. Don’t make that odd face. What I want to know is whether I’m done for or not. Are you sure it’s not intercostal?”
Regencrantz’s lips opened, ready to give a harsh verdict.
“Classic stenocardia, unfortunately.”
In a deep silence, Regencrantz could hear a blackbird whistling, a car pass by. But none of Pierre’s senses were focused on the outside world any longer.
“I know it’s relentless, but sometimes one can live for years,” he said very quietly at last.
“Sometimes,” replied Regencrantz, without much enthusiasm.
Pierre had plunged into a murky, suffocating world where no light or sound reached him.
“How should I consider my attack? As a warning?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have many others… I’ll know when I’m nearing the end… I’ll know, won’t I?”
Regencrantz lectured him.
“No chlorides… No tobacco… No staircases.”
“None of that is of any interest to me, my dear Regencrantz. One thing alone concerns me, you must understand: I absolutely insist on knowing at what time death will knock at my door.”
Regencrantz said nothing, watching Pierre constructing his assumptions like castles of cards.
“What!” Pierre continued, pressing the point, “I really will see death approaching? Don’t tell me otherwise, I have arrangements to make.”
“Your heart is really thumping. Your left ventricle is not a friend you can depend on when times are bad: that is all I can tell you with any certainty.”
“I’m not asking you to cure me, Regencrantz, I know that one doesn’t recover. I’m simply asking you to mark out the path… to tell me as precisely as possible how many attacks will there be along the road that leads me to… the cemetery.”
“In your heart’s present condition,” Regencrantz replied slowly, “if I’m to tell you what I think deep down, I don’t believe that you would survive another attack.”
