Read You Changed My Life Online

Authors: Abdel Sellou

You Changed My Life (15 page)

BOOK: You Changed My Life
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As soon as I'm up, stomach empty, the pattern of the sheet still on my cheek, yesterday's socks on my feet, I find out what a tetraplegic is: a dead guy with a head that works. He asks me questions.
“How are you, Abdel? Did you sleep well?”
A talking puppet. They haven't asked me to help, yet. Babette, a mama from the West Indies at five foot two, all boobs and muscles, takes care of him with precision and energy. She activates what she calls the “transfer machine.” It takes forty-five minutes to get the body from the bed to a special shower seat made out of plastic and metal, with holes all over it. Then, after drying and dressing the guy, just as long to get him to his daytime chair. One night at Fleury, I watched a modern ballet. It was just as long and just as boring.
The puppet motivates his troops.
“Okay, Babette, put the Pozzo back!”
The Pozzo. The thing. The animal. The toy. The doll. I watch the whole thing without lifting a finger. Just as frozen as him. I add on to my inventory of humanity. But this guy's in a separate category, with the very special cases. He watches me watching him. He doesn't look away. Sometimes his eyes smile; so does his mouth.
“Abdel, shall we have breakfast at the café afterward?”
“Whenever you're ready.”
I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I look pretty rough. And not in the mood to chat. People see me and cross to the other side of the street. The Pozzo finds this hilarious.
We sit on the terrace, under the brazier. I sip my soda quietly, waiting for the next step.
“Abdel, could you help me drink my coffee, please?”
I dream up a cartoon superhero—SuperTetra. He looks at his cup, it floats up to his mouth, he opens his lips, and it tips. He give one quick blow and, abracadabra, the liquid is just the right temperature. Nah, the kids aren't gonna like it. Not enough action. I stow my idea and grab the coffee myself. But I change my mind just as fast.
“Sugar?”
“No thank you. On the other hand, a cigarette would be nice.”
“No, I don't smoke.”
“Well, I do! And could you please get me one!”
He laughs. I really look like an idiot. Luckily I don't know anyone around here . . . I put the filter between his lips, activate the Zippo.
“What do we do about the ashes?”
“Don't worry about it, Abdel, I'll handle it . . . Pass me the newspaper, please.”
Apparently, the
Herald Tribune
is part of the morning ritual because, just before we left, the blonde slipped it into my hands without him asking. I set it on the table. I take a gulp of soda. Tetraman doesn't say anything. He smiles, unblinking,
like the day before during my “interview.” I finally figure out something's wrong, but I don't know what. He enlightens me.
“You have to open the paper and put it in front of me so that I can read it.”
“Oh, right! Of course!”
The number of pages, columns, and the words in each column scare me a little.
“You really going to read all of that? And it's in English, too—that takes a long time!”
“Don't worry, Abdel. If we're late for lunch, we'll run back.”
He dives into his reading. From time to time, he asks me to turn the page. He leans his head and the ash from his cigarette falls, just next to his shoulder. He handles it all right . . . I look at him like he's an alien. A dead body disguised as a live rich man from the XVIth. A head that works by magic, and more curious than strange because this head doesn't work like any of the others I've known from this milieu. I like rich people because we rip them off but I hate them because of the world they're a part of. They usually have no sense of humor. Philippe Pozzo di Borgo laughs constantly and at himself more than anything else. I've decided to stay two, three days tops. I'll need some more time to unravel this mystery.
22
I've said that Fleury-Mérogis was like summer camp for me.
I'm stretching it a little. It's true the guards acted like mothers to the detainees, that sexual violence didn't exist inside those walls, that exchanges were made fairly and not as a kind of extortion. But I'm downplaying the negative aspects of prison a little. During the first days, they stuck me in a cell with two other guys. Promiscuity was the only thing I couldn't stand. I could accept having my freedom taken away, eating out of a metal bowl like a dog, having the toilet in my room and the odors that go with it. On the condition that the odors were mine.
My roommates decided,
That young one there, we're gonna get him into line fast
. . . I warned them just as fast. They had to tear me off them or there would've been broken bones. They didn't listen to me: one of the guys took a trip to the ER in Ivry. Considering I'd only defended myself against two pairs of arms full of bad intentions, management, eager to erase the incident as fast as possible, gave me a single cell. From that
moment on, the guards acted like mothers to me because I behaved myself like a good boy. In the courtyard, during our walk, I stayed mostly in the middle, at a safe distance from the walls where the druggies in withdrawal and the depressives negotiated their trade. The yoyo system wasn't any good for sheets of pills—too light. So these guys took the risk of doing business in the yard—they didn't really have a choice. A voice boomed out from the speaker:
“You in the yellow and blue jackets, next to the pillar, separate immediately.”
In prison, voices boomed out from everywhere, all of the time, though the cells were soundproofed: your neighbor had to turn the TV volume all the way up to bother the others. Strangely, the cries of men traveled through everything. I say that the guards played mother and the guys respected each other because I didn't see anything else. But I heard.
I like the sounds of the Beaugrenelle projects, the kids who hang out on the pavement and the concierge who sweeps the cigarette butts. Frrrrt, frrrt . . . I like the sounds of Paris, the mopeds that sputter, the metro that comes up to street level at Bastille, the whistles from the scalpers and even the screaming sirens from the police cars. At Philippe Pozzo di Borgo's, I like the silence. The apartment looks onto a garden that's invisible from the street. I didn't even know something like that could exist in the middle of Paris. After his coffee, he uses his chin to operate the mechanism on his chair and goes over to the bay window, where he stays for at least an hour. He reads. I discover
the indispensable toolkit of the tetraplegic: a portable reading lectern. You stick the book on it—a thousand-page brick with no pictures, printed in small letters, a veritable weapon of self-defense—and a strip of Plexiglas turns the page when Mr. Pozzo tells it to by moving his chin. Staying there is part of my job. There's no sound. I sit down on a couch, I sleep.
“Abdel? Hello, Abdel?”
I open an eye, stretch myself.
“Is the bedding no good up there?”
“Yes it is, but I went to see some buddies last night, so I'm catching up a little . . .”
“Excuse me for disturbing you, but the machine turned two pages at the same time.”
“Oh, well that's no big deal. You missing a part of history? You want me to tell you about it? It'll save you some time!”
I'll do just about anything for a laugh. I like to be paid to sleep, but if I have to choose, I'd prefer to be paid to live.
“Why not? Abdel, have you read
The Roads to Freedom
by Jean-Paul Sartre?”
“Of course, it's the story of little Jean-Paul, right, that one? So this little Jean-Paul, he goes for a walk in the forest, you see, he picks some mushrooms, he sings like this, a little like the Smurfs, la-la, lalalala . . . and suddenly, he reaches a bend. So he hesitates a little before going on, of course, because he doesn't know what's after the bend, right? Well, he's wrong, you know, because what's around the bend, Mr. Pozzo?”
“Well, I'm asking you, Abdel!”
“There's freedom. That's it. That's why it's called “The Roads to Freedom.” End of chapter, that's it, now we close the book. Come on, Mr. Pozzo, let's go for a walk.”
This guy has unbelievably white teeth. I can see them really well when he laughs. They look like the tile in my shower here.
23
I don't remember deciding to stay. Or signing a contract, or of
having said
hey, high five!
to the one who became my boss. The day after my arrival, and after that first bizarre bathing session and then the coffee with the
Herald Tribune,
I went back home to change my underwear and get a toothbrush. My mother laughed.
“So, son, are you moving in with your girlfriend? When are you going to introduce us?”
“You're never going to believe it: I found a job. Food and a place to live! With rich people on the other side of the Seine.”
“With rich people! Now, you're not doing anything bad, right, Abdel?”
“Well, you're not going to believe that, either . . .”
In fact, I don't think she believed me. I took off to find Brahim, who was now working at the Pied de Chameau restaurant (yes, Brahim also became a good boy). I told him about
Philippe Pozzo di Borgo, his physical state and the place where he lived. I barely exaggerated.
“Brahim, you can't believe it: at this guy's place, you squat down, you pull a string between the slats of parquet, and a banknote comes out. I could see the franc signs appearing in his eyes, like gold bars do in Uncle Scrooge's.”
“Come on, Abdel . . . you're kidding! That's not true.”
“Of course it's not true. But I'm barely exaggerating, I swear!”
“And the dude, he doesn't move at all?”
“Only his head. The rest is dead. Gone. Kaput.”
“But his heart still beats, right?”
“I don't even know. In fact, I don't know how a tetraplegic works . . . I mean, yeah, I do, I know that it doesn't work!”
I can't remember the first days at avenue Léopold II very well, probably because I was there off and on. I wasn't trying to please anyone and definitely not trying to make myself indispensable. I didn't stop for one second to think about the situation, or about what a job in this house with this strange handicapped man could bring me, or what I could bring to this family. Time had maybe done its work on me, like it does on any person, but I wasn't aware of anything. I'd already had pretty varied experiences and had learned some things from them, but I hadn't put all of it together, not out loud and not in my head. Even in prison, where the days are long and, you'd assume, ripe for thinking, I numbed my brain on television and news radio. I didn't have any fear of tomorrow. At Fleury, I knew the near future looked like the present. There was nothing
to worry about on the outside, either. No danger on the horizon. I had so much self-confidence that I knew I was invincible. I didn't
think
I was invincible: I
knew
I was!
BOOK: You Changed My Life
9.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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