The Shattered Sky

by Bernard Uzan

  Then the bleeding starts all over again, blood drips into the plastic tube that came out of his stomach; the blood reminded me of tiny snakes sliding along the side of his chin and his shoulder dropping into the bottle. At every breath white and black blood spurts out, spilling over, flooding the bed with life just as life was leaving it. The nurse comes in; his blood pressure is at 40; it is impossible to stay alive for more than one hour under those conditions.

  Saturday

  Everyone is present and he is as well. Every breath taken in generates excruciating pain and every breath out is a gush of blood; but where does all that blood come from?

  There isn’t a single inch of his face without pain on it; he’s full of uncoordinated gestures, his bloated stomach sinks again and lifts up at the same rhythm as the blood flow and his damn heart is still there holding up. The professors from the medical college come in to observe this exceptional case.

  His blood pressure becomes impossible to measure: it’s less than three and his heart is still holding up. The creases have now disappeared from his face, he looks smooth but every hiccup is a cry of pain answered by the quiet breathing of the man who is in the bed next to his. His sad look has changed into a mask of suffering, his arm is moving in search of something he can’t find, and from time to time he half opens his eyes to look at something he can’t see. It’s three in the afternoon.

  And his heart is still holding, as regular as a machine. Tic tac, tic, tac, pompom, pompom, pompom, pompompompompompom, pom, pom, pompom, pompom, pom, pom, pompom, pom. It is now midnight and blood is still flowing through the plastic; his hands have become cold and he continues to cry.

  At one o’clock “they” decide to go home; the messiah has declared: “It won’t happen tonight, I know it.” Amen!

  That’s when I burst out laughing because I had the sudden thought of killing him while they were gone, to stab him to death or choke him with his pillow.

  Let him die! At last!

  Suddenly, while the others were babbling, he stops moaning, he looks better, more peaceful. And then I don’t understand anything; the messiah is praying in Hebrew very quickly without catching his breath; he just died, like that without saying anything, without warning anyone… He has just died, tears penetrate into me like knives, I bite my fingers in order not to scream, I feel physical pain, everything is turning, my eyes see nothing except for his wide open eyes that are locked on me in pain, I’m shaken by sobs and shivers, tears flow, my hands tremble, my knees give way, he is dead, my father.

  In the commotion the messiah asks for a mirror and holds it close to his mouth to make sure:

  “YES. He’s dead, I don’t see any breath.”

  He’s dead, dead.

  The messiah turns to me and with a pompous and almost professional attitude asks me to close his eyes as my father had requested. My fingers touch his eyes softly, it feels as though they will sink into his eyeballs, everything is flabby, strangely flabby, he’s flabby, I’m flabby, the others are flabby, the room is flabby, the air is flabby. Everything is flabby. That’s what death is like.

  Now I’ll work at erasing the past. I have to start over and be born a third time! I’m still very young, my whole life is in front of me, the world is mine, I’m in Paris, I have an education, I can walk, I’m handsome. I’m going to work on my acting career, forget about past sorrows, forget… forget everything. Forget Tunis, forget my legs, forget Fabien, forget the sorrow, the physical suffering, the fear and humiliation, forget who I am…

  When I thought at the time that such a thing as forgetting was possible…it now sounds so ridiculous, and grotesque! You must not forget, you can’t forget, ever, nothing, you must appropriate some things that happen, they must be digested and the chapter must be closed, benefit from your experiences, and go forward and in short become an adult.

  But all this has remained inside me, stuck in my throat.

  “He’ll never make it.”

  “Yes, he will, you’ll see.”

  “He’ll never make it.”

  “Yes, he will, you’ll see.”

  “He’ll never make it, he’ll never make it, never, never, never…”

  And I will never forget. I have a black book where I write in red the names of the people who have hurt me, who have wronged me, and later I’ll remember those who humiliated me, wounded me, covered me with shit, those who sniggered behind my back, those who made me lose all the women I loved, those who doubted me, those who hated me, those who didn’t love me well enough. I don’t write the names in alphabetical order, they are inscribed as I meet them, chance encounters, chance hatreds.

  Marianne’s parents have a place of honor among the others on the list; they called me a pimp because I couldn’t make any money for one month.

  “He’s a pimp, he does no work!” says Marianne’s mother.

  “You are prostituting yourself!” says Marianne’s father.

  “At least a prostitute gets paid, while you pay him to go to bed. I’ll tell him that you used to have a drug addict for a lover and since he’s so jealous it’ll make him suffer! And he’ll get out of your life!” adds Marianne’s sweet and generous mother.

  Marianne’s parents dared say such things while they forced their daughter to pay the premium on a life insurance policy in their favor—it’s hard to believe, I was the pimp of her body and they were the pimps of her life.

  Well! Those dramatic and taunting memories were all very interesting, the anecdotes of hatred, the disgorging of the soul, but this afternoon I must actually do something. I strangely feel something akin to the need to suffer, to recall cruel things and bring them back from the past. To remain inactive drives me out of my mind! What shall I do this afternoon? I’ll go sell myself to the companies that dub American movies even though it’s the kind of thing that makes me sick. The mediocrity of what I’m required to do is depressing; I have to say in French in a false tough guy tone because the actor I am dubbing is supposed to be a gangster like Robert De Niro or a cowboy like Clint Eastwood. I have to go and humiliate myself for a fee of a few hundred francs.

  What good will it do for me to have one or two hundred francs more? I’ll be able to buy a pair of corduroy pants for sixty francs or take a girl out to dinner. And then? So what… What will it do for me? Nothing…strictly speaking nothing… I don’t want to live just to make a living…

  Nicolas has decided to produce a new play and offered me the part of a neurotic. It’s the kind of character role that obviously doesn’t suit me, as I am the perfect example of mental health. The Butterfly’s Game is a terrible play by a third-rate Polish writer with absolutely nothing new to offer any audience and I have no desire whatsoever to be in it. But my best friend Jean is part of the cast, which is a major plus, and I don’t know how he managed to pull it off, but Nicolas has somehow convinced a famous old actor to also be in the production. Lucien Raimbourg was part of the original cast of a play by Samuel Beckett.

  I quickly become very friendly with Raimbourg who has so much to teach us about acting but who also works closely and is still in regular contact with one of my idols, none other than the great Samuel Beckett. I have acted in several of his plays and his work also happens to be the main topic of my doctoral dissertation.

  One afternoon after rehearsal, Lucien asks me if I would like to join him the next day for a cup of coffee at the great writer’s apartment located just a few streets from the theater where both of us appear in that Polish masterpiece that no one will want to go and see for many good reasons.

  I am overjoyed at the thought of meeting the genius, the inventor of the contemporary theater, a towering master of modern literature, a model for my generation, and a great man. The thought keeps me awake all night as I recall every single title of his works that I know by heart, and I repeat out loud the intelligent words I plan to say to him when we meet the next day. I’m ready. I go to sleep early to rest my mind and be fresh and worthy of the incredible moment when I sh
all be face to face with Samuel Beckett himself!

  I meet Lucien Raimbourg at the corner of the boulevard Montparnasse and the boulevard Raspail and we walk down to the Odéon-Mabillon neighborhood in the Latin Quarter where the great man lives. We reach his place at exactly two in the afternoon as agreed and my friend Lucien searches unsuccessfully for the doorbell until he finally decides to discreetly knock three times—what else—directly on the apartment door… After several long minutes the door opens…. The great man is right there facing us, and he appears much more craggy and emaciated than I expected, which I attribute to his age. He’s wearing a filthy old greenish bathrobe covered with oily spots and dried up tobacco stains and a worn out pair of grey corduroy pants riddled with holes. He shuffles around in his brown leather slippers that are just about ready to fall apart. He walks round shouldered as he drags his feet and belches at every third step. We enter what he must consider his work space, a rather smallish room cluttered with old newspapers, dirty clothes, open and half-eaten cans of food, dirty dishes everywhere, empty bottles, some empty glasses, and other glasses filled with wine, gin and other indescribable liquids…. I thought I was on the set of one of his plays.

  I carefully sit on the extreme edge of his sofa; the great man takes a seat facing us, his hair is as white as snow and his eyes are so intensely blue and shiny that they also appear white to me. He doesn’t offer us any coffee, doesn’t utter a word to me or even glance in my direction… He speaks nonstop in flawless French to my friend, punctuating his speech with loud fits of belching and guffaws as he discusses the women he fucked, those he would want to fuck, and the fact that he can still get a hard on and keep his erection for a very long time, and of the advantages of bigger tits over smaller ones… My friend Lucien is crimson and can’t stop snickering as he appears to derive the greatest pleasure at the wild sexual imaginings of the genius. The great playwright’s interesting monolog goes on for a very long time, during which I have not opened my mouth once or uttered a single word, nor have I even been blessed by a passing look… After an entire hour of chuckling and snickering, belching and telling gross anecdotes, the great man’s eyes finally shift and descend toward me at last… His white eyes shoot through me for some twenty endless seconds without him saying a single word… Then the great man’s eyes move away from me and back to_Lucien and, pointing at me with his index finger in a gesture of obvious disgust, he asks:

  “Why have you brought this little turd here?”

  He immediately rises without looking at either one of us, and turns his back to us to make us understand that the visit is over, and we walk back down the same hallway to the door. He doesn’t see us out and remains motionless, standing in the center of his study as if he were in a stupor, probably getting ready to write another masterpiece after that most inspiring moment. As we leave, we quietly shut the door behind us. Our visit with the literary genius is over.

  The Polish play closes after a single triumphant week with a grand total of six performances and an audience of no more than two hundred, most of them being older ladies using discounted tickets. I never did see Lucien Raimbourg again after that, and I have learned to forget about Beckett and all the other geniuses, living or dead, and life goes on.

  I am exhausting myself in my attempt to become the great actor I deserve to be…Well then I’ll go home to bed or just lay down for a while and then we’ll see…

  I hope that Nicolas will not be there. Nicolas is really beginning to lose it. Yes, I know we’re supposed to be friends since we share an apartment in the rue Vavin near Montparnasse, across the street from La Coupole, very chic and fashionable with the Café Select practically next door where we meet all the great future failures and those rejected by success.

  Nicolas comes from a good family and is a student in political science. Four times a week he drives a taxi around Paris to make ends meet and pay for his theater classes that he hopes will turn him into a great director.

  He often tells me that the conversations he overhears while he’s driving the taxi are an invaluable source of important references for his future work as a great director and how those living experiences while he’s driving prove that you can have a life of great adventure without ever getting out of your car.

  Actually he managed to demonstrate the true extent of the talent and knowledge he acquired while directing the Polish masterpiece that we performed. He spends the rest of his time in the apartment we share and often is nice enough to wait for me for dinner and offer me his usual concoction of rice and mushrooms that has become his daily diet… I understood that he was losing his mind the day he was waiting for me around dinner time but that evening there was neither rice nor mushrooms; he looked much more serious than usual.

  He’s placed a blackboard in the very center of his bedroom and is waiting for me, sitting in his plastic armchair with his pipe stuck in his mouth, wearing a velvet bathrobe and a black beret on his head, his well-bred aristocratic good looks, tall and emaciated, just enough to convince you that life’s trifles are of no interest to him. He must think of himself as some kind of Sherlock Holmes.

  “Julien, I have to talk to you. Well, this is it… As you know I come from a well-to-do family from the provinces.”

  I immediately thought I was about to hear the confession of a petty bourgeois from a small town somewhere far away from Paris.

  “Nicolas, to tell you the truth I’m a bit tired. You’ll have to excuse me; it’ll have to wait for another time.”

  “No, no Julien, sit down. You must listen to me! Well, this is it… My parents are divorced and my father lives alone. He’s got lots of money but he’s a disgusting miser and doesn’t want to share any of it; he hates the idea that I should want to make the theater my profession; no rather, that I am in the theater. Well, this is it… I think he can still last another twenty years and I really don’t intend to wait, because knowing him, he’s very capable of leaving all his money to charity. Well, this is it… If he dies I can be rich, very rich. Well, this is it… I have an idea…”

  He begins drawing something on the blackboard that turns out to be the blueprint of a house. He draws it very quickly and very clearly.

  It all takes a few minutes and I remain patiently seated there looking at him without uttering a word. I can see that it’s not the first time he’s outlining his plan. He must have thought about it, drawn it over and over several times. Every conceivable detail is on the blackboard: the bedrooms, the hallways, the doors. I thought I was in gangster movie where they’re getting ready to rob a bank.

  “Well, this is it…”—he’s so irritating when he constantly repeats “Well, this is it.” He must be very nervous—“If you take the 7 p.m. train you’ll reach Auxerre, where he lives, at 10:30 p.m.; his house is only a ten-minute walk from the train station on a road that is generally deserted, especially at night. You go to the house; he always goes to sleep at 9 p.m. after taking his pills. He has a dog but I have a way of preventing him from barking. In any case I hate that dog, he poisoned my childhood. You understand what I mean when I say poisoned?

  “Well this is it… You’ll enter his room from the hall right there that comes from the rear doorway… You see the door right there?”

  “You’re asking me to enter your father’s house while he’s asleep and steal whatever he has there?”

  Nicolas stops drawing on the blackboard where he happens to be tracing the steps I should take to penetrate into his father’s bedroom, turns around and looks at me with a smile. He has a strange look on his face that seems almost without any shape as if it appeared behind a smokescreen.

  He looks at me and says:

  “He keeps nothing at home, only a few worthless works of art that would be impossible to sell. No it’ll take more than just that. Because of his pills he always sleeps very deeply, like a baby, with no fears and no regrets. He’s grabbed all of his family’s money and feels absolutely no obligations toward me, the bastard! I despise and ha
te him; he’s a worm who is totally useless to society, a turd, filth, an insult to my intelligence. He doesn’t deserve to live.”

  Nicolas says all this without getting excited, without hate or emotion but almost with a smile. He looks at me; I look at him; he’s waiting for my answer. He just sat in his armchair with his hands on his knees and his pipe in his mouth.

  “But Nicolas, he’s your father.”

  He bursts out laughing, he laughs uncontrollably holding his stomach, and he has a hoarse kind of laughter like a series of hiccups.

  “Julien, I never suspected you could be such a petty bourgeois. Really, you’ll always be a surprise to me… Yes, he’s my father, so what? I owe him my life and then? Must I wait for him to die before I can have my grandparents’ money? After all it’s my money isn’t it? Why should I wait? Let all that money rot in a bank vault? No, no. Imagine all the plays we could produce with all that money.”

  His logic is iron clad; we can have all of his father’s money and produce twelve other Polish masterpieces. I look at him and he goes on:

  “Well, this is it then, I could give you a percentage of the inheritance. What do you think?”

  I look at him for a few seconds and then leave the room without saying a word. Since then I have been avoiding Nicolas as much as I can.

  I decide against going back to the rue Vavin. Nicolas must still be there with his pipe in his mouth, drawing on his blackboard and attempting to convince another petty bourgeois to help him murder his father. He looked at me with unmitigated disgust when I said no, since I had now become another one of his enemies, co-opted by the system, the future employee of some government agency with an iron-clad pension. Therefore no rest today, but more walks through the streets of Paris.

  Paris that I know so well by now, my streets, my stores, my cafés, my merchants, my own little world; some of them even wave or nod at me as I go by, but they never really say a word, not even hello.