“They operated on her for eight hours. They’d told me that it would be at least four, likely six, and that I shouldn’t just sit in the waiting room. Too hard, they said, distract yourself. So I walked. There’s the little park there, and miles of corridors. You know the name of the park?”
“I’ve walked through it many times, but I don’t.”
“Parc de la Hauteur.
“A psychologist must have told them that yellow, creme, and beige promote health and equanimity. Yellow like sunshine. It’s everywhere there. The awnings, shades, and panels of Oncologie Médicale, Division Jacquart are yellow. I went to the Seine. Every time I heard a train whistle in the rail yards of the Gare d’Austerlitz between the hospital and the river, I took it as a sign and a prayer.
“And in quiet, hidden places, I did pray. My style of prayer is my own. The Mignons were Catholics, so I sink to my knees, bow my head, and hold my hands like Jeanne d’Arc – like someone, it occurs to me now, about to be executed. And because I’m a Jew I daven. That’s how I prayed. I prayed for my wife, whom I loved like no one else. Against a wall of the rail yards I prayed so hard I trembled. A garbage-truck driver saw me. An African. He stopped the truck because he thought I needed help. Then he saw that I was crying, and he put his arms around me and said, ‘No no, everything will come right, everything will come right.’ I wouldn’t have done that to a stranger near a rail yard. Who’s the better man?
“I returned to the hospital, in the dark. The operation was to have started in the morning but there had been emergencies and it was delayed. At nine they came to me. There wasn’t much left of me by then. Two of them burst through the doors, their operating gowns open and trailing in the breeze of their forward momentum, their masks dangling.
“They were smiling. A miracle. ‘We made the most thorough exploration we could,’ one of them said, ‘and did quite a few biopsies on the spot. We’ll have to wait a few days for absolute confirmation, but we’ve found nothing. It seems that Madame Lacour has pancreatitis, from which there is no reason that she will not recover.’
“Everything changed as I imagined her recovery. I would do the cooking. It would still be warm enough in September to eat on the terrace. By Christmas we would be swimming in a tropical sea. I thought of Polynesia and determined to spend the money. You know, in that hospital city there are banana trees flanking some of the streets on the eastern side. Right out of Africa or South America, what do they do in the snow? Perhaps the point is that they survive when everyone would think that they would not. Probably that’s too subtle, but I got it anyway, and all I could think of was bringing Jacqueline to some warm, breezy, sweet-smelling place with blue-green water. I’m not good at vacations. It’s hard to pry me away from Paris, my work, and my routine. I had deprived her of a lifetime of vacations because I was always worried about money and the things I had to do. I’m one of those people, you see, who have perfect attendance records and precise schedules. I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten an appointment or not completed an assignment. What good is that now?
“For two weeks, she recovered in the hospital, but she was never herself. The operation had caused major trauma and damage, and she couldn’t eat. Then she began taking liquid meals, and strengthened. I set up everything at home so as to care for her. My prayers had been answered. I would keep her close from then on. We would go to the South Seas, we would sit on the terrace, and she would wear her straw hat, because she didn’t like the sun on her face – an aversion that made her skin seem like that of a much younger woman. I, on the other hand, well, look at me.
“The evening before she was to be discharged I ate the dinner she couldn’t eat, while she had her dinner through a straw. The doctor had said that when home she could start on rice cereal and gradually proceed back to normal. Having been in the hospital for so long, she was weak but no longer confused. In the days after the operation she had imagined that a wall of her room was a vertical front of agitated green seawater with whitecaps and swells, and that dolphins were leaping from it and falling back – horizontally, as if gravity went sideways rather than up and down. This pleased her. I tried to disabuse her of it, hoping to bring her back and keep her. I didn’t want her floating away from me again even if on an exquisite vision. That was a mistake. I should have let her go to the ocean, and I should have been pleased to go with her as far as I was able.
“I had rowed that day. It was my only break. I wanted to keep up my strength, because I felt that we were as much under attack as if we were soldiers in a besieged outpost or sailors in a storm. So I worked hard to keep things going at home and stay healthy. What if I had gotten sick as well? In early September the temperature was perfect, and the water, although not still, had been smooth. When the water is smooth and dark and the current is fast you feel as if you’re floating through the air. Especially if the breeze is right and things are quiet, with at best only distant traffic sounds, it’s as if you’re in another world. I was elated that she was coming home.
“At about eight-thirty in the evening I got up from the chair by her bed in the hospital and began to gather my things. I wanted to get home to finish preparations for her return. Our bedroom had always been austere. We only slept there, rather than, as some do, using it as a retreat. But Jacqueline would be spending a lot of time in it, so to surprise her and make it comfortable I bought a Persian carpet (because she had always disliked the coldness of the parquet), a comfortable chair with an ottoman, an adjustable reading lamp, and one of those big flat televisions. I hadn’t yet mounted the television and was somewhat anxious about it because it weighed about forty kilos, so I would have to make sure the bracket was screwed to the studs, and I’ve never been good at locating them in the wall.
“I was going to pick her up and drive her home the next day, but she was seeing the ocean again, and was distant, which I attributed to exhaustion. I kissed her lightly, straightened, and said almost triumphantly that I would be back in the morning to take her home.
“‘I’m going to die,’ she said. I heard it, but it was as if she hadn’t said it. I was very well aware of what had happened, but I continued on as if it had not.
“‘It’ll be wonderful at home,’ I told her. ‘I fixed it up. You’ll see. The fall will be beautiful, and in late December we’ll go to the Pacific.’
“‘Jules,’ she said, in a whisper, looking straight ahead, ‘I’m going to die.’