17
Beth pounced on her grandson when he came home from work before he had even taken off his coat.
‘He likes it, Ambroise!’ she exclaimed ecstatically. ‘Just think, he likes it!’
‘What does he like?’
‘Far breton, he likes far breton!’
‘Who does?’
‘The mog, he likes far breton. He loves it!’
Ambroise smiled. She hadn’t said ‘your’ mog, but ‘the’ mog, a sign that she was beginning to accept him. Since the tom had been sharing their apartment, he had refused to be stroked and spent most of his time hiding under the furniture. As for food, he contented himself with gobbling a handful of pellets. Not even the can of tuna that Ambroise had opened the previous day had been much of a success. After lapping up some of the liquid, the cat had disdainfully ignored the luxury food. Beth presented her grandson with the tray on which nothing remained but a forlorn chunk eaten away on all sides.
‘Look at this! I left it to cool on the kitchen table as I always do. It was the noise that alerted me. The mog had gone crazy. Never seen anything like it. He was wolfing down great mouthfuls, without stopping for breath, prunes and all. I took it away from him in the end, otherwise he’d have polished off the whole thing. Come and see him,’ she said, dragging Ambroise into the living room.
Stretched out on the sofa, the tom was snoring, exposing his bloated belly for all to see. After watching him for a few moments, Beth tiptoed out, pulling Ambroise after her. The woman who not so long ago would have chased the animal off the soft cushions with a broom now showed herself to be as attentive as could be.
‘He’s been like that for nearly two hours. Let’s leave him to sleep, shall we? Far breton is heavy on the stomach. You have to allow time to digest. Nature sometimes rebels against such an intrusion.’
Half an hour later, the animal was still asleep between Ambroise and Beth who were snacking from a TV tray. The doorbell rang just as the geeky face of news anchorman David Pujadas filled the screen. The tom opened his good eye, stretched voluptuously and then let himself drop to the floor to go in search of a drink of water. Ambroise and Beth looked at each other and sighed. The distinctive way of pressing the bell left no doubt as to the tiresome visitor’s identity. Each ring was so brief that it could have been imagined.
‘This is the second time she’s come this week,’ groaned Ambroise, heaving himself up from the sofa.
‘What can I do?’ replied his grandmother, making her way resignedly to the door while he fled to his room.
Odile Chambon stood there in her pink slippers, stamping her feet impatiently on the doormat. The heiress to the Chambon plant nurseries, whose famous slogan ‘Du Beau, du Bon, du Chambon’ had been plastered over the region’s advertising hoardings in the 1970s, lived on the ground floor and, at a loss as to how to spend her time, over the years had ended up taking on the role of concierge. The building’s residents tolerated this usurpation with kindness, particularly because she did this for nothing, her only aim being to occupy her spare time. She watched over everything, kept an eye on all the comings and goings, managed the rubbish bins, distributed the post, took messages if necessary, and sent Jehovah’s Witnesses and other door-to-door peddlers of religion packing with a flea in their ear. Beth tried to block the doorway to avoid the intrusion of the concierge into the apartment. It was hard to fathom the age of this beanpole of a woman, all elbows and knees. She had a ghostly pallor from spending her days reading, never venturing out into the fresh air. Her auburn hair emphasized her translucent complexion even more. Odile Chambon worshipped Ambroise Larnier and never missed an opportunity to come and inhale him and devour him with her eyes, even if only for a few moments. Any excuse would do. She’d borrow a litre of milk one day, return the milk owed the next, come to inform them that the electricity man had been to read the meter, that the Jeandrons’ apartment on the second floor was being refurbished and there might be some noise during the day. Since this coming Thursday was a public holiday, the bins wouldn’t be emptied until Friday. Every 7 December, she came to wish Ambroise happy St Ambrose’s day, and every 4 July, to wish Beth happy St Elisabeth’s day. At Christmas, a little gift, at Easter, a chocolate egg, and for Valentine’s Day, it wasn’t unusual to find a scented card among the post. The spinster had found her Prince Charming, and this prince, whether he liked it or not, was called Ambroise Larnier.
‘Isn’t Ambroise home?’ inquired the lovelorn damsel. ‘I cut out this article from the latest Science and Life magazine. It’s an interview with his father about hospital-acquired infections.’
‘I’ll give it to him when he comes out of the shower. Thank you, Odile.’
‘Oh, isn’t he cute?’ gasped Du-Beau-du-Bon-du-Chambon.
Beth thought for a moment that the exclamation was prompted by her grandson before realizing that it was addressed to the tomcat who was ambling nonchalantly along the passage towards them. Flabbergasted, Beth watched the creature come and rub its flanks against the concierge’s bony calves, purring with pleasure, winding sinuously around her in increasingly tight figures of eight, then rolling over onto the mat to offer his belly for stroking. Odile Chambon crouched down to grab the cat who not only allowed himself to be caught without spitting, but purred even louder as she caressed him. Beth couldn’t believe her eyes. This animal, who until now had refused all contact and was as sociable as a lamp post, was literally swooning in ecstasy as the concierge’s fingers kneaded his ginger fur. His good eye bored into his benefactress, exuding affection, while his stumpy tail waved in all directions.
‘What do you call your lovely pussycat?’ asked Odile, scratching the neck of the mog who drooled with delight.
‘We don’t call him anything,’ confessed Beth, suddenly realizing that she and her grandson hadn’t taken the trouble to give the creature a name. ‘And anyway, it’s not my pussycat, it’s Ambroise’s,’ she added.
These words had such an effect on Odile Chambon that she closed her eyes. For a few seconds, it was no longer a cat she was holding, but the young man himself, bestowing countless caresses on him.
The bedroom door opened and Ambroise dashed into the bathroom, yelling a ‘Hello, Odile’ that sounded as neutral as possible. Don’t give her anything to latch onto, keep a safe distance at all costs so as not to raise any futile hopes. A lingering look, a cheerful tone, the ghost of a smile, an involuntary touch could become chinks into which Odile Chambon might slip without restraint. Generally when she came by, Ambroise tried to keep out of sight, or at least to ignore her, but it seemed that despite all his attempts to cool her ardour, on the contrary they only increased her attraction to him.
‘Isn’t he beautiful?’ intoned the spinster, devouring with her eyes the place where Ambroise had appeared a second earlier.
This time, there was no doubt in Beth’s mind as to whom the compliment was addressed.
She took advantage of Odile Chambon’s visit to ask her to take the rubbish down and put it in the bin outside, as she often did. Ambroise forgot half the time and it saved her wearing her legs out going down and up the three flights of stairs. She snatched back the cat, who yowled with annoyance, and plonked the bin bag in the concierge’s arms, then closed the door with a ‘Good night, Odile’, which echoed with a finality in the stairwell. Du-Beau-du-Bon-du-Chambon stroked the bin bag a couple of times before coming back down to earth and returning to her apartment with the fleeting image of the young Ambroise Larnier still etched on her mind.
18
The brass name plate gleamed brightly.
DR FRANÇOIS-XAVIER GERVAISE,
FORMER PARIS HOSPITALS RESIDENT,
NEUROLOGIST
An aristocratic first name followed by a surname from a Zola novel with a whiff of the farmyard. Enter without ringing the bell. Like a brain tumour, thought Manelle with a shudder. The secretary, with her immaculate chignon, grabbed Samuel’s file and health insurance card and invited them to take a seat
in the waiting room. The room exuded an overpowering odour of fresh paint. They sat down on the leatherette chairs with chrome armrests. Everything smelled new, except the pile of tatty magazines scattered on the low table. Magazines with crumpled pages, dog-eared, scrunched by the nervous fingers of anxious patients. A woman sat in one corner of the room knitting while she waited. Completely absorbed, she crossed and uncrossed her needles with the energy of a sword-fighter. Manelle patted Samuel’s hand and gave him a reassuring smile. The door at the back of the room opened, and two men stood framed in the doorway. One tall and thin, the other short and stout with a sickly pallor. ‘Madame Maillard, I’m returning your husband to you, he’s all yours,’ boomed the taller man, shaking the hand of the one with the ashen face. Doctor François-Xavier Gervaise vanished for five long minutes and then reappeared. ‘It’s our turn,’ he said, inviting Samuel and Manelle into his sorcerer’s den. He looks like a specialist, thought Manelle. A receding hairline with a shiny forehead that looked as if it had been polished, manicured hands, clean-shaven, dazzlingly white teeth – everything about him exuded hygiene and meticulousness. On the desk, a skull split open like a walnut revealed the whitish convolutions of two plastic hemispheres. ‘So, what brings us here today?’ asked the man of science in an artificially jovial tone. You know very well what brings us, thought Manelle, spotting the images of Samuel’s brain Sellotaped to the light panel on the wall. Faced with the old man’s silence and the young woman’s disapproving expression, the doctor cleared his throat, embarrassed, polished the lenses of his glasses with a cloth, perused his patient’s file for a few moments, then began again.
‘Well, yes, Monsieur Dinsky, your brain scan appears to show a tumour mass that cannot be ignored.’
Manelle could read him like an open book. It was clear that the specialist was extremely worried about Samuel Dinsky and his tumour mass that could not be ignored.
‘Appears to show or shows?’ asked Samuel.
‘Monsieur Dinsky, to be completely honest with you, you have a progressive cerebral tumour, which is generally known as glioblastoma multiforme or GBM.’
The doctor blurted out the words in one go, as if spitting out an annoying gob of phlegm. Glioblastoma multiforme, the name of the killer. A name redolent of metastases, thought Manelle.
‘Is it operable?’ she asked.
The man of science squirmed in his chair. These two with their point-blank questions were screwing up the conversation he’d planned. They were jumping the gun, sweeping aside the usual protocol. Of course the nasty thing wasn’t operable, but he had to inform them according to the rules, sugar-coat the bad news with platitudes, soothe the patient’s morale with a heavy dose of anaesthetic before telling him that he was fucked, totally fucked. The specialist tried to take things in hand and follow the recommended modus operandi for informing the condemned patient of their diagnosis.
‘Naturally we can’t deny the seriousness of the pathology Monsieur Dinsky is suffering from, and besides, we need to carry out further tests but there is still—’
‘Is it operable, Doctor?’ repeated Manelle, squeezing Samuel’s hand.
‘To tell you the truth, no,’ said the exasperated specialist. ‘In addition to the non-negligible progress of the glioblastoma, this type of invasive tumour characteristically penetrates the surrounding area and tends to erode the boundaries between the tumour tissue and healthy tissue, which makes it impossible to remove the growth through surgery.’
‘What is going to happen, Doctor?’ fretted Samuel, without letting go of Manelle’s hand.
François-Xavier Gervaise grabbed his pen and gently tapped the plastic brain nestled in the artificial skull.
‘If the tumour had developed here, in the anterior part of the frontal lobe, psychological disorders would already have appeared. In the posterior section, you would have suffered convulsions similar to epileptic fits. In our case, given its location, we can say that the effects should be confined to disruption of the senses – taste, smell and vision. And, of course, increasingly persistent headaches caused by the increased intracranial pressure, but we should be able to control that with appropriate palliative treatment.’
François-Xavier Gervaise straightened up, relieved to have been able to place his ‘in our case’, a key empathetic formula that reinforced the doctor–disease–patient relationship. Manelle had great difficulty banishing from her thoughts the repulsive image of a giant voracious tick latched onto Samuel’s brain and growing fat at the expense of its host.
‘How long, Doctor?’ asked the old man, who had slumped in his chair.
Relieved to get off so lightly, the specialist announced clearly, ‘About five centimetres.’
‘No, how long does he have left to live, Doctor?’ Manelle translated, infuriated.
The doctor’s Adam’s apple yo-yoed up and down. The dreaded question. Making medicine, in the space of a calculation, an exact science. Debit, credit, balance. The balance of a life.
‘Given the size of the tumour and the speed of its progression, I’d say maximum a year.’
‘I’m sorry to press you, but what I’m interested in is the minimum,’ said Samuel.
‘Three months, at worst,’ the specialist eventually admitted.
Ninety days. The time it took a parasite to kill its host. The equivalent of a season. The time for an embryo to become a foetus. The length of a short-stay visa. More than enough for a voyage around the world with Jules Verne. They paid and left without a word, holding on to each other. To see them, it was hard to tell whether the old man was supporting the young woman or she was supporting him. On leaving the consulting room, with its smell of fresh paint and its air conditioning, Samuel couldn’t help glancing at the clock on the wall behind the secretary. For a moment he was convinced that the seconds were ticking by much faster than when they had arrived. The warmth and noise of life outside engulfed them.
19
‘You haven’t forgotten that I’m with the living this evening, have you?’ yelled Ambroise from the bathroom.
‘No, I haven’t forgotten, and I’ve even made you a prune far breton. It’s still warm,’ replied Beth.
‘You’re a real grandmother to me,’ teased Ambroise as he stepped into the shower.
He particularly savoured that moment under the purifying water when he returned from the world of the dead. He’d had an exhausting day. Six customers including one who’d committed suicide with a shotgun, which involved a partial maxillo-facial reconstruction. Nearly thirty minutes of wax modelling to achieve an acceptable result. Ambroise let the scalding jet pound his aching back, and closed his eyes. Images of his work rarely haunted him, even though, naturally, he couldn’t prevent some of them from lodging in his mind. He knew they were there, those grisly visions, stored somewhere in a corner of his brain, ready to jump out of the horror chest when sparked off by a memory. He knew from having tried in the early days of his career that attempting to banish them was impossible. So he took ownership of them, aware of their presence in the way a healthy carrier can be aware of the disease they are hosting. He soaped and rinsed himself abundantly, then shook his mop of black curls and got dressed. Jeans, T-shirt, hoodie and a pair of Redskins. Colourful, comfortable clothes, a far cry from the black and white costume of the doctor to the dead.
‘And you, don’t forget Ding ding before you go,’ Beth intercepted him as he came out of the bathroom, holding out the little metal box containing the kit.
‘Yes, chief. And, as they say, left leg Tuesday . . .’
‘. . . good news day,’ said Beth with a smile.
Ambroise had already removed the metal lid. With a few deft movements, he drew the liquid into the syringe and tapped it with his index finger, then he disinfected the upper part of his grandmother’s thigh with a wad of cotton wool soaked in alcohol before jabbing in the needle. Elisabeth Larnier had suffered from diabetes for more than twenty years and needed a daily insulin injection. As a child, whenev
er he had the opportunity, Ambroise liked to help Beth administer her shot. The little fellow obeyed his grandmother’s orders like an operating-theatre nurse. She had taught him how to remove the packaging from the single-dose syringe, clean the skin around the injection site, pierce the rubber stopper and draw the colourless liquid into the syringe from the vial, and to gently push in the plunger to clear any air bubbles. Each time, she would chant him her made-up rhyme, Ding, ding, insulin. ‘So that you know where to inject,’ she told him softly. He learned the words by heart and recited them every night in bed, as if saying a prayer, at the time when he knew Beth would be injecting herself and wincing.
The Rest of Their Lives Page 6
