You Changed My Life (17 page)

“Are you okay? Not too bumpy?”

“Watch the road, Abdel!”

“What's that?”

I drove a Renault 25 GTS, thank you very much. Okay, these days it's kind of cheesy, but back then it was first-class. A car driven by guys who'd made it big. I bought it at auction in 1993, just after getting my license. It had been repossessed from some poor guy who couldn't keep up with the payments. As for me, the delinquent, the ex-con, I paid in cash. That's class . . . it had excellent pickup and a sweet stereo system. Worlds away from the cattle wagon.

I ended up going on strike. We were about to load up the Pozzo. I had my finger on the remote control for the platform, and I said no.

“What do you mean no, Abdel?”

“No, Monsieur Pozzo. No.”

“No what?”

“No, I'm not driving this thing anymore. You're not a sheep, you know. You can get into a normal car.”

“Unfortunately, Abdel, I can't.”

“And you also couldn't do without the transfer machine, right? So. Don't move, I'm going to get my car.”

“Trust me, Abdel, I'm not moving!”

I push the wheelchair to the handicapped spot where I'd parked my car equipped with a fake plate bearing a handicap symbol. That little sticker was great and definitely worth the
botte prioritaire
in the game Mille Bornes.

“Where did you get that sticker, Abdel?”

“It's a photocopy of the one on the cattle wagon. A laser color copy—it cost me a fortune!”

“Abdel, you can't do that, it isn't right . . .”

“It's so practical for parking in Paris. And it is right since I'm driving you in my car.”

I open the passenger door, push the seat back as far as it will go, and park the wheelchair against the body of the car.

“What, you're not cheering for me? You cheer for Babette and not me?”

“Go, Abdel! Lift the Pozzo!”

Obviously, as I had just shown, you could get him into a normal car. We took off for Porte de la Chapelle. I knew that there we'd find some real gems on four wheels; this lover of beautiful things would find something he liked. I liked all cars.

When we looked at the cars there, I didn't say anything, just watched the Pozzo weaving around in his wheelchair between the Chrysler and the Rolls-Royce, the Rolls and the Porsche, the Porsche and the Lamborghini, the Lamborghini and the Ferrari . . .

“This one's not bad! The black is sober. What do you think, Abdel?”

“Monsieur Pozzo, the Ferrari's trunk might be a little too small.”

“Did you plan on putting me in the trunk?”

“Not you, but the chair?”

“Oh shit! I forgot about that . . .”

He finally decided on a Jaguar XJS 3.6 liter, square headlights, walnut dashboard, leather interior . . . It was due to be sold by auction.

“Do you like it, Abdel?”

“Yeah, it'll do . . .”

“Shall we buy it?”

“We'll have to be patient, Monsieur Pozzo. The auction is in three days.”

“Okay, we'll wait . . . but not a word to my wife, all right?”

“I swear. I'll be as quiet as a roach.”

“As a mouse, Abdel, as a mouse.”

“As a mouse, too, if you want!”

So now I drive the Pozzo or his wife, who just had a bone mar
row transplant, to the hospital in a Jaguar. The operation's a last chance: the doctors only give her four to six months to live. Everything went well in the OR and in post-op, but it isn't over yet. Her immune system is shot. She has to stay in a bubble in a sterilized room.

Every morning for weeks, I take the Pozzo in the Jaguar to go be next to her. As next to her as he can get: behind the isolation curtain. With a hospital bonnet on his head and plastic socks over his Westons, he rolls up to the barrier you're not supposed to cross. He watches his wife for hours, lying in her bed, a little delirious. We leave her in the evening with the fear that we won't find her in better condition the next morning. And then, the verdict comes from the doctors' mouths.

Madame Pozzo is going to die.

I'm silent in the Jaguar.

No more nurse's assistants. No more nurses. I am now the last face Philippe Pozzo di Borgo sees at night and the first one he sees in the morning. Since that first time I carried him, we haven't really needed anybody. Now that his wife is dead, he is sleeping alone. He watched her go, unbelieving, crazy with rage. He'd only ever known her while she was sick and he'd loved her despite that, despite the everyday discomfort, even though he was in such good health and went off to the countryside every weekend, even though he flew over mountains. He'd had that terrible paragliding accident on June 23, 1993, and, for two years, his wife's illness had taken a backseat. Everyone thought it was a remission—that the treatments were finally working, that she'd live longer, why not? She'd found the strength to organize a new life for the whole family, built around her husband's handicap. They'd left their house in Champagne to come to Paris and its hospitals. They'd created a comfortable place to live for everyone—obviously, it's easier with money—and the kids seemed to adjust as much as possible to their new life in the capital, with a father in a wheelchair and a sick mother . . . And just when everything seemed to be in place, when all the obstacles to having an almost normal life had been removed, Béatrice Pozzo di Borgo had relapsed.

I'd been living with them for about a year when it happened. Madame Pozzo hadn't been consulted on the choice of life auxiliary, who wasn't really one. She didn't veto the choice when
she saw this young, undereducated, and unpredictable Arab show up at her house. She observed me without judgment and accepted me right away. She laughed at my jokes without joining in, from a certain distance, but always with kindness. I know she was a little afraid sometimes when she saw me take off with her husband without telling her before and without saying where we were going. I know that she didn't approve of us buying a luxury car. It was her Protestant side: she never liked ostentatious signs of wealth. She was a simple woman, and I respected her. For the first time, I didn't judge a rich lady for being just that.

In one year, what had the Pozzo and I done? Just gotten to know each other. He'd tried to question me about my parents. I think he even wanted to meet them. I avoided the problem.

“You know, Abdel, it's important to be at peace with your family. Do you know your country, Algeria?”

“My country is right here and I'm at peace with myself.”

“I'm not sure about that, Abdel.”

“Okay, that's enough.”

“That's enough, Abdel. We won't talk about it anymore . . .”

The cattle wagon wasn't cut out for rodeos on the beltway, but the Jaguar was. I was the one who stepped on the gas, but it was both of us who went over the limit. Just one word from him would have been enough to make me slow down. The Pozzo was watching his wife disappear, he didn't express his pain, he was watching the movie of his life as a spectator. I
pushed a little harder on the pedal. He turned his head slightly toward me, the motor rumbled, I burst out laughing, hard, as hard as possible, he turned his head the other way. He was giving up. We were racing ahead, together, come what may.

One year was long enough for both of us to know, without saying it out loud, that I was going to stay. If I'd had to leave, I would have done it sooner. I wouldn't have said yes to the trip to Martinique, a few weeks before the transplant.

“This will be Béatrice's last vacation for a long while; let's all three go!” said the Pozzo to try to convince me.

I'd never been farther than Marseille, so there was no need to convince me of anything. The “last vacation for long while” argument was baloney; we all knew it. The last vacation, period . . . We knew the risk involved in Béatrice's bone marrow transplant. But it was her husband who got sick in Martinique. Pulmonary congestion: secretions accumulated in his bronchial tubes and he had a difficult time breathing. He was taken into intensive care and stayed there for the whole trip. I had one-on-one lunches with Béatrice at the beach. We didn't say much to each other. It wasn't necessary, but it wasn't uncomfortable, either. I wasn't the man she loved. I also wasn't the one she'd have liked to see sitting there, with two working arms, one bringing a fork to his mouth and the other crossing the table to take her hand. That man didn't exist anymore anyway; she had to give him up at the time of the paragliding accident, so she might as well be happy with this slightly heavy and poorly behaved, but not really dangerous guy.

I like to think she thought me capable of taking care of her husband through the challenges to come. I like to think that she trusted me. But maybe she didn't think any of that. Maybe she
had also simply given up. When you're no longer controlling anything, that's got to be the only thing to do, right? Let go, at one hundred fifty miles an hour on the banks of the Seine or sitting comfortably in a paradisiacal setting, under the sun, facing the turquoise sea.