The Ninth Life of Louis Drax (6 page)

     —Madame, I am sorry. As I think you know, it would be unwise to assume an improvement will be ... immediately forthcoming. But of course we must never give up hope.

     —Do you realise, Dr Dannachet, that he actually came back from the dead? Isn’t that quite unusual? I mean, apart from in the Bible–

     At this point, I stop her quickly. I don’t like the way this is heading. The brittleness of her voice disturbs me.

     —It certainly is unusual. Remarkable. But death, you know ... death is never as definite as people think. There have been other cases of drowning where . . . I mean, there’s a thin line. It happens.

     I step back, feeling embarrassed, and look desperately at my watch. Time to go. Meeting nearly over. Jacqueline, too, is aware of needing to be elsewhere: she hasn’t washed Isabelle’s hair yet, she explains. Her father is arriving today while his ex-wife takes a much-needed break from their daughter’s bedside. It’s his first visit in a year; he lives abroad.

     —We’ll catch up later, Madame Drax, she says. —Just ask me or one of the ward nurses if you have any questions. And welcome again.

     —It wasn’t just a fluke, Dr Dannachet, Madame Drax says insistently as we watch Jacqueline’s full, cushiony figure heading back inside. —I hope that’s not what you’re telling me. It wasn’t. I know my son.
I know what he’s capable of
.

     I confess that much as I would like to encourage the poor woman to be positive, I don’t really want to go down this road with Madame Drax. People get strange things in their heads sometimes. I watch the progress of a Red Admiral that dances past us, zigzagging across the lavender and settling on a violet lupin.

     —Look, please just accept my apologies, I say gently. —And tell me about Louis. I need to get to know him.

     Her mouth purses in what I read as acquiescence; all of a sudden, our wrong-footed exchange seems to have exhausted her emotionally. She lowers her eyes for a moment, and then stares through the French windows at her son’s bed at the end of the ward, as though drinking in the new situation. Her hair shines in the sun, a fine mesh of copper and gold. I wonder what it would feel like to stroke, then feel a flush of guilt at the inappropriate thought. To quash it, I quickly think of Sophie and the flowers I will choose for her this afternoon. Zinnias. I’ll buy her zinnias.

     —Louis is an extraordinary boy, she says softly. —An extraordinary boy. We’re very close. And the thing is, I don’t know how I could live without him. Ever since he was born, we’ve always ... communicated. Known what the other one was thinking. Like twins. And now – She is swallowing down huge sobs.

     —Yes? I ask gently.

     —Well, I’m beginning to think – after what happened – She stops and inspects her hands – small, neat hands, the nails carefully manicured and varnished in pale, shell-pink. A good sign: ravaged though she is, she has not let herself go as so many of them do. Again I notice the pale band left by her wedding ring. —This will sound very stupid, she says. —And superstitious and ignorant, and not the kind of thing you’d expect to hear from anyone – well, anyone educated. But if you knew Louis, if you knew what he’s like, and everything he’s been through–

     —Then what? I ask. I can’t help it: tentatively, I permit myself to rest my hands, lightly, on her narrow shoulders, to look her full in the face, to try to read it.

     —I’ve come to believe something about my son. Listen, Dr Dannachet, he just isn’t like other children. He never has been. I think–

     —Yes?

     —I think my son’s a kind of angel, she blurts.

     And her despairing eyes flood with tears.

Boys shouldn’t make their mamans cry. And if their maman does cry, boys should be there to comfort them and say I’m sorry things went wrong, Maman, I’m sorry your heart’s in your mouth the whole time, I’m sorry the danger got me and I’m in a place where you can’t reach me. I know you tried to stop it. I know you said
Got to protect him, got to protect him
. I know you did. It’s not your fault it didn’t work.

     Boys shouldn’t make their mamans cry, especially if they’ve had a difficult life and
Grand-mère
lives in Guadeloupe that’s too far away to visit where they grow papaya that has seeds in it a bit like hamster droppings. And back in the time before Gustave, boys shouldn’t spy on their maman because they’ll get the wrong end of the stick, they’ll start thinking weird things and start inventing stuff just to impress people and it’ll end in tears. But sometimes you can’t help it because you need to know things and it’s not on a CD-ROM where you can click on the picture to make the creatures do stuff, and learn about their Habitat and their Nutrition and Life Cycle and How They Rear Their Young and blah blah blah. But I haven’t got the one about humans because maybe they haven’t made it yet. So I have to spy on them and listen to them doing secret things like sexing each other (
uh-uh-uh
) or crying or having an argument or a secret conversation about Disturbed Children.

     A good way is to use the baby monitor they keep in case you get Cot Death again in the night, even though you’re not a baby any more. You can switch it round so you can listen to what they say when you’re in your bedroom eating cereal, the kind with dried raspberries in, and they’re in the kitchen having a secret talk. You might not know how the raspberries get like that. They freeze-dry them, it’s a special process.

     —We should tell Louis the truth, says Papa. —I’m sorry Natalie. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

     —
And damage him for life?
says Maman.

     —You’re exaggerating. He has a right to know, and I’d rather he heard it from us. He knows there’s something that doesn’t fit. It’s quite uncanny how he picks up on things. Look at the way he senses all your moods. Anyway, he’d accept it. He knows how much I love him. It won’t be a problem.

     I put down my spoon. Mohammed’s running on his wheel so I put a pencil in to jam it and stop the noise. Because I need to hear but maybe I don’t.

     —He’d ask questions, says Maman. —You know Louis. One question always leads to another, and then another, and another. Until you get to the one you can’t answer.

     Her voice is wobbly.
Got to protect him, got to protect him
, she’s thinking. She’s probably looking in the little mirror now, the one by the sink. That’s what she does when she’s thinking. It’s her thinking mirror.

     —So let him. Perez is there. He can help him deal with it.

     —Surely you’re not saying we should tell him the whole story? About Jean-Luc and–

     Her face in the thinking mirror. Scared.

     —No. Of course not. Not all of it, obviously.

     Papa’s probably sitting at the kitchen table, cleaning his Swiss Army knife that Mamie gave him last Christmas, that he calls a Big Boy’s Toy.
Eighteen blades, and you don’t know what half of them are for
. Her back’s to him but he can see her face in the thinking mirror.

     —How much of it, then? About how he
came into the world?
About how you and I met? God, Pierre, I can’t believe you’d want to do anything so destructive. Don’t you think the poor kid hasn’t got enough problems as it is? You know what they call him at school? Wacko Boy.

     —That’s exactly why I suggested a shrink!

     —But it’s me who has to take him, isn’t it? I’m the one who gets driven half-crazy dealing with him afterwards!

     Then I guess she doesn’t want to look at her face in the thinking mirror any more, because she’s crying again. She cries at least once a day and sometimes twice, because it isn’t easy being the mother of a Disturbed Child.

     —I’m sorry, Pierre. But I’m just saying – no, I’m
insisting
, Pierre, I’m
insisting
– that we drop the subject. It’s best he doesn’t know. He’ll just get confused and anxious on top of everything else. Think of all the self-loathing. We drop it right here.

     Eating isn’t allowed in your bedroom. Maybe that’s why I stopped chewing and maybe that’s why I suddenly couldn’t swallow anything. Maybe that’s why I had to spit it out into Alcatraz before I took the pencil out of his wheel so Mohammed could run again. But afterwards when I thought about it, I couldn’t see the big deal because I already knew where I came from. The doctors had to cut her open like the emperor Julius Caesar’s mum, and pull me out with a meat-hook and we both nearly died. So it was all blah blah blah and not even worth spying on. But I wondered about Jean-Luc. Who’s Jean-Luc? What’s
self-loathing
?

Lots of people – not Maman of course, because she knows I’m not a liar – but other people, thought I was making the accidents up. I wasn’t though. Not all of them. Anyway I was lucky, because I never cared if people believed me, especially Fat Perez.

     Every Wednesday after school, when all the others are doing
ateliers
or
catéchisme
or watching TV, I’m visiting Fat Perez who’s a mind-reader who isn’t any good at mind-reading and to punish him you could post some hamster droppings to him in an envelope, except maybe he’d think they were papaya seeds and plant them in a pot because he’s so dumb and he’ll wait and wait and wait for them to grow but they never will. And sometimes I count aloud just to drive him mad,
un deux trois quatre cinq six sept huit neuf dix onze douze
, or in English,
one two three four five
except then I have to stop because I don’t know what comes after
five
.

     —Any accidents this week?

     —I got a burn from a match cos I was lighting candles. Maman hates me playing with fire, she’s scared of fire, she hates candles and bonfires but I love them. And then I got a graze on my knee, falling over in the playground. And then yesterday I got a blister on my hand. It nearly got infected with tetanus. I could’ve got lockjaw. I’ve got a plaster, look.

     —And how did you get this blister?

     I’ve learned this thing where you make your tongue do a click against the roof of your mouth called your palette, and it feels like time to do it. It’s quite a loud one, but he doesn’t say anything. —I got it from using a spade, cos I was digging a grave.

     —Ah, now tell me about the grave!
Squeak
. —Was it for a small animal you found, maybe?

     —If I found a small animal I wouldn’t kill it. Not right away.

     —I meant–

     —I’d keep it alive, in Alcatraz, with Mohammed. If it was a rat I’d probably feed it maggots and then maybe kill it later. After say about sixteen or seventeen days.

     And I do another click, a bigger one this time.

     —So, tell me. What was the grave for?

     —For a human.

     —A human. What kind of human?

     —A big huge fat man who lives in the rue Malesherbes.

     —Ah. And who might that be?

     Duh! Fatties are so slow!

     —These small accidents you had, says Fat Perez, looking at me with his thinking face.  —They weren’t bad enough to send you to hospital, were they? I mean, a little burn, a small graze, a cut.

     —So? I’m accident-prone. Sometimes the accidents are big and sometimes they’re small.

     —Let’s talk about the big ones. The ones that land you in hospital. I want to ask you something, Louis. Do you enjoy being in hospital?

     —I don’t like casualty. I hate that part. But the recovery bit, that’s OK.

     —What’s OK about it?

     —You don’t have to go to school. They make a fuss of you. She sits by the bed and talks to you like you’re a baby again and you can just lie there and listen. And she does anything you want, because she’s so glad the danger didn’t kill you.

     —The danger?

     I do the click again, but it isn’t such a loud one and my tongue fizzes from it. —There’s always danger. You don’t have accidents without danger. And then it’s good cos Papa brings you big Lego models. They bring you cool meals. Depending on the hospital. The best one’s here in Lyon. In Edouard Herriot you can have pizza or lasagne and there’s always ice cream for dessert if you want it, because Lyon’s the gastronomic capital of France.

     —So they say, says Perez.

     —Plus they usually have PlayStation or Nintendo.

     —Would you like to go back to Edouard Herriot again, Louis? Hospitals can be very comforting places, can’t they? Like you say, no school, and lots of people making a big fuss of you.

     I do the big click again. My tongue’s all right this time.

     —Do you think you might sometimes even be a little bit glad when you end up in hospital?

     —You’re saying I do it on purpose, right?

     —No, Louis. I never said that and it’s not what I mean.

     That’s when I start wanting to smash the bowl with water and seashells in that’s on the table, and see them skid all over the place in the broken glass and see the look on his fat face.