Whatever: a novel (7 page)

I settle myself on one of the concrete slabs, determined to get to the bottom of things. It seems highly likely that this square is the heart, the central nucleus of the town. Just what game is being played here exactly?

I observe right away that people generally go around in bands, or in little groups of between two and six individuals. No one group is exactly the same as another, it appears to me. Obviously they resemble each other, they resemble each other enormously, but this resemblance could not be called being the same. It's as if they'd elected to embody the antagonism which necessarily goes with any kind of individuation by adopting slightly different behaviour patterns, ways of moving around, formulas for regrouping.

Next I notice that all these people seem satisfied with themselves and the world; it's astonishing, even a little frightening. They quietly saunter around, this one displaying a quizzical smile, that one a moronic look. Some of the youngsters are dressed in leather jackets with slogans borrowed from the more primitive kind of hard rock; you can read phrases on their backs like
Kill them all!
or
Fuck and
destroy!
; but all commune in the certainty of passing an agreeable afternoon devoted primarily to consumerism, and thus to contributing to the consolidation of their being.

I observe, lastly, that I feel different from them, without however being able to define the nature of this difference.

I end up tiring of all this pointless people-watching and take refuge in a café. Another mistake. Between the tables there circulates an enormous Alsatian, even more monstrous than most of its race. It stops in front of each customer, as if making up its mind if it should or shouldn't permit itself to bite him.

Six feet away a young girl is seated before a big cup of frothy chocolate. The animal stops for a while in front of her, it sniffs the cup with its snout as if it were going to suddenly lap up the contents with one lick of its tongue. I sense that she's beginning to be afraid. I get up. I want to intervene, I hate such beasts. But finally the dog departs.

After that I drifted through the narrow streets. Completely by chance I went into the Aître Saint-Maclou: a huge and magnificent square courtyard entirely bordered with Gothic sculptures in dark wood.

A bit further on I saw a wedding procession coming out of the church. A truly oldstyle affair; blue-grey suit, white dress and orange blossom, little bridesmaids ... I was sitting on a bench not too far from the church steps.

The bride and groom were getting on a bit. A stocky, rather red-faced man who had the look of a rich peasant; a woman a bit larger than him, with a bony face and glasses. I must say, alas, that the whole thing had something ridiculous about it. Some young people passing by were taking the piss out of the newly-weds. Quite.

For a few minutes I was able to observe all this in a strictly objective manner. And then an unpleasant sensation started to come over me. I got to my feet and quickly left.

Two hours later, night having fallen, I came out of my hotel once again. I ate a pizza, standing up, alone, in an establishment that was deserted - and which deserved to remain so. The pizza pastry was revolting. The decor was made up of squares of white mosaic and wall lamps in brushed steel - you'd have thought yourself in an operating theatre.

Then I went to see a porno movie in the one Rouen cinema specializing in such things. The place was half full, which is pretty good these days. Mainly pensioners and immigrants, of course; there were, however, a few couples.

After a while I was surprised to see that people were often changing seats, and for no apparent reason. Wanting to know the rationale for such behaviour I too changed places, at the same time as another guy. In fact it's very simple: each time a couple arrives they find themselves surrounded by two or three men, who install themselves a few seats away and immediately start to masturbate. Their great wish, I think, is that the woman of the couple cast a glance at their dicks.

I stayed in the cinema for around an hour, then recrossed Rouen to go to the station. A few vaguely menacing beggars were hanging about in the concourse. I didn't take any notice of this and jotted down the train times for Paris.

The next morning I got up early, I arrived in good time for the first train; I bought a ticket, waited, and didn't get on it; and I can't for the life of me think why. It's all very unpleasant.

4

It was the following evening that I took ill. After dinner Tisserand wanted to go to a club; I declined the invitation. My left shoulder was hurting me and I was shivering all over. Returning to the hotel, I tried to sleep but it was no good; once out flat I was unable to breathe. I sat up again; the wallpaper was discouraging.

An hour later I started having difficulty breathing, even sitting up. I made it over to the sink. My colour was cadaverous; the pain had begun its slow descent from the shoulder towards the heart. That's when I said to myself that maybe my condition was serious; I'd clearly overdone the cigarettes of late.

I remained leaning against the sink for some twenty minutes, registering the steady increase of the pain. It vexed me greatly to go out again, to go to the hospital, all that.

Around one in the morning I banged the door shut and went out. By now the pain was clearly localized in the heart region. Each breath cost me an enormous effort, and manifested itself as a muffled wheezing. I was scarcely able to walk, except by taking tiny steps, thirty centimetres at very most. I was constantly obliged to lean against the cars.

I rested for a few minutes against a Peugeot 205, then began the ascent of a street that appeared to lead to a more important crossroads. It took me around half an hour to cover five hundred metres. The pain had stopped getting worse, yet went on being intense. On the other hand my difficulty in breathing was becoming more and more serious, and that was most alarming. I had the feeling that if this continued I was going to die within the next few hours, before dawn at any rate. The injustice of such a sudden death hit me; it could hardly be said that I'd abused life. For a few years I was, it's true, in a bit of a bad way; but that was no reason to
interrupt the
experiment
; on the contrary it could be maintained, rightly so, that life was contriving to smile on me. In truth, it was all rather badly organized.

What's more, this town and its inhabitants had been instantly repugnant to me. Not only did I not want die, but above all I did not want to die in Rouen. To die in Rouen, in the midst of the Rouennais, was especially odious to me, even. That would be, I was telling myself in a state of slight delirium probably engendered by the pain, to accord them too great an honour, these idiot Rouennais. I recall this young couple, I'd managed to flag down their car at a red light; they must have ... the impression they gave. I ask the way to the hospital; somewhat annoyed, the girl cursorily points it out to me. A moment of silence. I am barely able to speak, barely able to stand, it's obvious I'm in no fit state to get there on my own. I look at them, I wordlessly implore their pity, wondering in the meantime if they actually realize what it is they're doing. And then the lights change to green, and the guy drives off.

Did they exchange a word afterwards to justify their behaviour? There's no certainty they did.

Finally I spot an unhoped-for taxi. I try and seem blasé when announcing that I want to go to the hospital, but it doesn't really work, and the driver comes close to refusing. This pathetic creep will have the gall to say to me, just before moving off, that he `hopes I won't muck up his seat covers'. As a matter of fact I'd already heard it said that pregnant women face the same problem when going into labour: aside from a few Cambodians all the taxis refuse to take them for fear of finding themselves lumbered with bodily discharges on their back seat.

So let's be off!

Once in the hospital, it has to be said, the formalities are very quick. An intern looks after me, makes me do a whole series of tests. He wishes, I think, to assure himself that I'm not going to die on him within the next hour.

Once the examination is over he comes over to me and announces that I have a pericardial, and not an infarction as he'd first thought. He informs me that the early symptoms are exactly the same; but contrary to the infarction, which is often fatal, the pericardial is a completely benign complaint, it's not the kind of thing you die of.

`You must have been scared,' he says. So as not to complicate things I reply that yes, but in fact I wasn't in the least bit scared. I just had the feeling I was about to snuff it at any moment; that's different.

Next I'm wheeled into the emergency ward. Once sitting on the bed I start sobbing. That helps a little. I'm alone in the ward, I don't have to worry. Every once in a while a nurse pokes her head round the door, assures herself that my sobbing remains more or less constant, and goes away again.

Dawn breaks. A drunk is conveyed to the bed next to mine. I continue sobbing softly, regularly.

Around eight a doctor arrives. He informs me that I'm going to be transferred to the cardiology ward and that he's going to give me an injection to calm me down. They might have thought of this a little sooner, I say to myself. Sure enough the injection sends me straight off to sleep.

On waking up, Tisserand is at my bedside. He has a distracted air, yet is glad to see me at the same time; I'm rather moved by his solicitude. He panicked on not finding me in my room, he has telephoned all over the place: to the departmental headquarters for Agriculture, the police station, our company in Paris ... He still seems rather worried; what with my white face and my perspiring I can't have a very healthy appearance, that's for sure. I explain to him what a pericardial is, that it's nothing at all, I'll be back to rights in less than two weeks. He wants to have the diagnosis confirmed by a nurse, who knows nothing about it; he demands to see a doctor, the top man, whoever ... Finally the intern on duty will give him the the necessary assurances.

He comes back over to me. He promises to do the training on his own, to phone the company to tell them, to take care of everything; he asks me if I need anything. No, not for the moment. Then he leaves, with a friendly and encouraging grin on his face. I go back to sleep almost straightaway.

5

`These children belong to me, these riches belong to me.' Thus says the foolish man,
and he is full of woe. Truly, one does not belong to oneself. Wherefore the children?

Wherefore the riches?

- Dhammapada

One soon gets used to hospital. For a whole week I have been quite seriously ill, I haven't wanted to move or to speak; but I was seeing people around me who were chatting, who were speaking to each other of their illnesses with that febrile interest, that delectation which appears somewhat improper to those in good health; I was also seeing their families coming to visit. Well, nobody was complaining, anyway; all had an air of being rather satisfied with their lot, despite the scarcely natural way of life being forced on them; despite, too, the danger hanging over them; because at the end of the day the life of most of the patients on a cardiology ward is at risk.

I remember this fifty-five-year-old worker, it was his sixth stay: he greeted everyone, the doctor, the nurses ... He was visibly delighted to be there. And yet here was a man who in private led an extremely active life: he was fixing up his house, doing his garden, etc. I saw his wife, she seemed very nice; they were rather touching in their way, loving each other like that at fifty-odd. But the moment he arrived in hospital he abdicated all responsibility; he happily placed his body in the hands of science. From then on everything was arranged. Some day or other he'd be staying for keeps in this hospital, that much was clear; but that too was arranged. I can see him now, addressing the doctor with a kind of gluttonous impatience, dropping in the odd familiar abbreviation which I didn't understand: `You're gonna do my pneumo and my venous cath then?' Oh yes, he swore by his venous cath; he talked about it every single day.

By comparison I was conscious of being a rather difficult patient. In point of fact I was experiencing some difficulty getting a grip on myself once again. It's an odd experience seeing one's legs as separate objects, a long way off from one's mind, to which they would be reunited more or less by chance, and badly at that. To imagine oneself, incredulously, as a heap of twitching limbs. And one has need of them, these limbs, one has terrible need of them. All the same they seemed truly bizarre at times, truly strange. Above all the legs.

Tisserand has been to see me twice, he has been wonderful, he has brought me books and pastries. He really wanted to cheer me up, I knew; so I listed some books for him. But I didn't actually fancy reading. My mind was drifting, hazy, somewhat perplexed.

He has made a few erotic wisecracks about the nurses, but that was inevitable, quite natural, and I'm not miffed with him about it. Plus it's a fact that, what with the room temperatures, the nurses are usually half naked beneath their uniforms; just a bra and pants, easily visible through their light clothing. This undeniably maintains a slight but constant erotic tension, all the more so since they are touching you, one is oneself almost naked, etc. And the sick body still wants for sensual pleasure, alas. If the truth be told, I cite this from memory; I was myself in a state of almost total erotic insensitivity, at least during the first week.