On the top of the world

by Madeleine Ruh

killing, a dark serie about a murder. I tried the one with blood, but I couldn't bear it.

  I called my team, like being here at the office without being here. I felt emotional about decisions to take, or lacking of mind speed. I felt so frustrated not to be part of the game.

  One day the doctor said I had to undergo a surgery. And a bone-marrow transplant. The only person that could be acceptable was my son after the blood diagnosis.

  I remember the evening when I heard that. I'm an auster father, a strict one. Believing that our role on earth is to educate our children, giving them values.

  I felt awkward, like depending on a becoming adult. My time to protect him was over, he was the one to try to save my life.

  That was a period where I dreamt a lot. Nightmares, where I was alone in the countryside with my horse. It was a hot day. No clouds. I could see the house far away. Suddenly the horse became nervous, and I could control it. A huge sun appeared, it was looking like Hiroshima bomb far away, or Tchernobyl, at least it how I imagine it was.

  The horse stopped in a village. It was like a desert, I could only hear a dog, a cricket song, and the wind in the trees.

  My grand mother came to me and asked me if I enjoyed life. She was looking good, thing and healthy, like the time we took teas together, with the old windows closed in our dark flat in Paris.

  I said "very much so", thinking perhaps she could say to anyone, god or death, that I was not ready.

  I had my garden to take care of, and the farm tractor, newly acquired, was like waiting for a ride.

  That same month, my daughter finally refused to go in a London University, she dreamt of. I hope it was not for me. Perhaps it's for her mother.

  My children are closer to their mother than to me.

  My sense of humor perhaps. My angry behavior when things are not under control.

  I'm not a patient man. I've learnt with the cancer to be patient. Not knowing what's going on in the next minutes, wether because the nurse is late, or because your body simply doesn't obey to you.

  When I was young I wanted to grow old and be wise. I don't know if I will be younger when I get old, which is my aim.

  No more constraints and frame. I'm a lucky guy, I still have my mother. I'm nearly sixty and she's alive. She has been happy when I had my picture in the newspaper when I had my latest promotion as Deputy General Manager.

  I miss the little conversation in the morning, at the coffee machine.

  The sales guy Patrick arguing that the guys were taking too many initiatives compared to the action plan, or the financial head imitating the corporate team.

  I take one sugar in my morning coffee. I would love to take a coffee, it's like wine, I nearly have lost the taste of it with the leucemia.

  I'm someone we could defined as traditional. I like flee markets, antique auctions.

  I recently realized that I spent twenty years of my life to improve, every week-ends and vacations, the castle and the beautiful garden around.

  My children won't care if we disappear with my wife. The word is not appropriate, they're young adults, I mean, they could manage.

  It's a generation concerned by the planet's future but not interested by owning a land, as being wise would be to enjoy present and not having belongings in this time of uncertainty.

  I'm in the period after the surgery where I want to come back to work. My Ceo is moving to another company, and media talk a lot about it. I'm concerned that if people don't see me, they forget me, and don't put me in the new landscape.

  I'm stressed as my hair didn't come back. My skin is dull and white. And I have to borrow my son's suit and shirt, as I've lost so much weight.

  But I'll try my best.

  I take the car. It's a bizarre feeling, like it was hundred years I didn't take it.

  I don' t feel well. My god, I've got an accident by myself, bumping in the highway rail.

  An old man, that's what I am.

  I miss my family, as if the sickness had made me distant from them, whatever their efforts to be patient and with empathy.

  I don't know why I react to love by what could be qualified as a certain distance, as if to protect myself. If I die I won't loose anything if I'm alone on earth, and they won't loose anyone except a tough fellow.

  I know it's false. But it makes me feel better.

  On the top of my list if I recover :

  - a ride with my horse, early in the morning, when everything is quite and looking fresh as a new day, new start

  - eat a macarron, I love sugar, I must say

  - kiss my wife on the forehead. yes, I was educated by Jesuits, how do you know ?

  - say something nice to my children, encouraging them to make their own life and being courageous and bold, perhaps I should have taken a different path, who knows

  - a glass of wine from my personal wine cellar, and enjoying it with an old friend.

  When you fight with a cancer, you fight with the time. Weeks look like disappearing in blink of an eye, minutes look like hours because you suffer or you afraid of everything. I've decided to have more suprises in my life. Like the diner with my son one day when I felt better, we did awful scrambled eggs, but they were tasty, he just read Machiavel, and we were discussing about contemporary art. Or the smile of my wife because I was watching her and listening carefully what she said. When she asked me to repeat, her old game, I could mention she was talking about her sister going to Firenze for the first time. She was impressed.

  You know what, I feel already better.

  My daughter will be a beautiful person, and she'll meet great people in her new experience. I'm sure of that.

  Tuscany August 2015

  Ruben Espinosa has been murdered in Mexico

  I'm under shock. I vomitted in my hotel toilets in Mexico, and stayed sitted close to them, embracing them with my arms as the only friend of a sad day.

  Ruben Espinosa was a photoreporter. Murdered and tortured. Because writting the truth is a threat, even for the the powerful ones. So they eliminate you as an insect.

  I'm disgusted. I'm facing hatred, violence, cynism and impunity at the same time.

  He was found dead in Mexico city with four women. All had been beaten, tortured then shot to death.

  Mexican's authorities' failure to tackle escalating violence against reporters and activists who dare to speak out agains political corruption and organised crime exasperate me and make me feel angry like I could believe I would be one day.

  Espinosa had covered state wide protest, after the disappearance of forty three students, who vanished last September, after being attacked by corrupt police officers and drug cartel gunmen.

  Eighty journalists have been killed in Mexico. Seven teen have disappeared.

  It's three weeks I'm based in Mexico City. The guy at the reception didn't remember my booking when I arrived exhausted after a flight in coach, and he looked at me with shark eyes, no emotion, no interest. A big and flat nose and an oily skin with scars in the neck.

  Could he murder someone ? Could he call someone to murder someone ?

  My bedroom as a tiny shower, with a soap smelling a toxic lemon, and a plastic shower protection that has become yellow with time and has seen at least two generation of customers. My bed is a double bed but small even for me alone, with my one meter and eighty nine skinny skeleton. My body hurts as if I had done two hours of sport, but the reason is the thin matelas on the bed. I spent hours looking at the dark circle near the window with a grill. It looked like a terrible monster out of an Andersen's story. My foot are black under, last time the house keeping was done must have been a long time ago.

  Not that it matters, at least the voices of the prostitutes, shouting or singing, and the noise from the kitchen dishes and the chinese cooks under my floor give a content to my nights.

  My wife is still in Paris with our teen agers. I'm not sure I want them to live in Mexico city. I'm concerned by kidnapping, robberies (or false ones). I still need to look f
or a flat.

  I was young when I decided to become a reporter. I've got the dream to make the truth come soner or clearer. If the truth exists. At least to inform people better, and to make them think democracy is fragile. I'm now in charge of spending the money. There are news and I decide who covers it, which team, if more than one. The exercice is to allocate the means in a clever way. Not that easy. I cover many subjects by myself. I love to write. I've learnt how to shoot pictures, but not anything as beautiful as the portraits of Ruben, for sure. The guy was gifted. Disappeared. Brutally. Someone has said something like "Enough is enough, get rid of him, and make the other scared".

  I'm disgusted, like the day when I realised that nobody would save the blogger in Saudi Arabia, especially when the smart head of FMI in her perfect blue suit with her grey pearls and her beautiful ring asserted that this country was a friend of European culture. The guy has not yet undergone the one thousand strokes, he was nearly dead after fifty of them. He just fought for separating religion from state, but not the way they appreciate it. You go to jail for that and your merit punishment. The issue is to make journalists aware, then the people in democracies to believe it's a fair cause.

  Two bloggers have been killed in Pakistan in the last few weeks, nobody cares about it. Same for the thousands of black students tortured and killed in their University in Nigeria, just because of their religion. As if life according to which color of skin, which nationality take a full cover with a