The Book of Wonders Read online

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, madame?’

  ‘Of course, everything’s fine, Mr Taxi-Driver.’

  The car moved off and I passed out in the double-door entrance before I could enter the code on the internal keypad.

  6

  30 Days

  Fight Back

  I woke up in my bed. My head felt as if it was about to explode and I wanted both to throw up and to crawl into a mouse hole, as the memories of the previous evening gradually flooded back. I was mortified. I hoped none of my neighbours had seen me, and I quickly realized that I didn’t have the faintest idea how I’d got up to my apartment. My adventure – as far as I knew, but everything was hazy, I had to admit – had ended in the entrance to my building. I got up slowly. I felt giddy. I managed to take a few steps to extricate myself from my bedroom and go into the sitting room.

  Whistle – a start, turn around. My mother.

  A cook’s apron around her waist, a vacuum-cleaner handle in her right hand, her left hand on her hip – her signature stance and sign of her impatience.

  ‘The state you’re in, my girl – you look a fright.’

  ‘Good morning, Mother. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m having great fun, as you can see. I’m doing a bit of tidying up in this pigsty. I reckoned that you must have let yourself go, but this goes beyond my worst fears. I was on the verge of calling those two girls on the TV who come and clean up the place, in desperate cases.’

  I glanced around the room. She was right. I couldn’t bring myself to say, You’re right, which would have choked me, so I said nothing and slumped on the sofa, grabbing a plaid blanket and wrapping it snugly around me.

  ‘Oh, and, by the way, don’t look for your plonk; I’ve chucked it all away.’

  ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘I’ve chucked it all away.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Mum, it’s not plonk. You’ve just thrown away several hundred euros’ worth of wine.’

  ‘Watch your language, my girl. Forget the price, look at you. You can’t carry on like this. I’m taking things in hand.’

  ‘No, you’re not taking things in hand. You’re going to leave me alone. If I want to have a little drink from time to time, that’s my business, and you’re not my cleaner either. Go away, please, Mother.’

  ‘No way. I’m staying.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘Do I look as if I’m joking? Do you know what could have happened to you yesterday? You were so drunk that anyone could have taken advantage of you. When that taxi driver dropped you and you passed out, you had your keys on you. If some pervert had come along, God knows what he could have done to you. I waited for you all evening on the steps. Like a beggar. Luckily, your neighbours recognized me and didn’t boot me out. I saw you slumped in the entrance and that was painful. It hurts me to see you like this, Thelma. I’ve been following you for several days. I’m afraid for you; I’m watching you go downhill, drinking wine by the litre and getting thinner in front of my eyes. I know you’re spending your days at the hospital. At first, I thought what you were doing for your son was wonderful, but you’re becoming a wreck for all to see. It’s not going to help if you slowly kill yourself. If you let yourself go, you won’t be able to fight for your son, and, if you can’t do it, how is Louis going to find the strength to fight?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Mum, don’t you understand that he’s never going to wake up! What do you expect me to fight against? I can fight all right when there’s an enemy. But, in this case, there’s no one! They’ve stopped the treatment and nothing’s fucking happened! Nothing! Do you know what that means? It means that, if there’s no activity in his brain within the next month, they’ll stop everything. Thirty days from now, they’ll switch off his life support. It’ll be over. There’ll be nothing. I’m up to my ears in nothingness. Look at me. What do you see? A poor girl who’s got nothing left. Who’s no longer anything.’

  My mother came over to me. She sat on the sofa very close to me and put her hand on my shoulder. That was the first physical contact between us for some ten years, I think. I recoiled, but I left her hand there.

  ‘That’s not true. You’re wrong. You are much more than you think, but you can’t see it any more. You have to get out of this negative spiral. I’m here. Louis is here and the doctors aren’t lying. If they’re keeping our little man, it’s because they’re hopeful. You’re strong, Thelma. I haven’t said so to you for a long time, but I’m proud of you. I’m proud of the woman you’ve become.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, stop telling me how I feel! You’re not inside my head, so let me speak, let me think. I’m moving in with you until further notice.’

  I sat up, stung to the quick by a sharp point.

  ‘That is absolutely out of the question.’

  ‘I’m not asking you. I had a set of keys cut while you were asleep.’

  I didn’t have the energy to fight back. Not right then. I let it go and lay back down on the sofa. My mother stood up and I dozed off, lulled by the hum of the vacuum cleaner. I was thirteen again, and my head hurt so badly . . .

  *

  That day, for the first time since the accident, I didn’t go and visit Louis. I slept all day. When I woke up, my mother was bustling around the kitchen and a familiar aroma was coming from it. A fragrance of the south.

  My mother was born in south-east France, and, even though we lived in Paris, we often used to go on holiday to the Riviera, to stay with my Aunt Odile, who died five years ago. Odette and Odile, disastrously named, but a real sisterly pair, those two. Twins. I adored my Aunt Odile, who always concocted tasty little dishes for us. On Bastille Day, in the evening, she always made our favourite, soupe au pistou, then we’d go down from the old town of Hyères into the centre to watch the fireworks, the rich flavours of the vegetables and basil still on our tongues. I think I was happy then. I knew very well what my mother was driving at, that evening. I’d recognize the aroma of soupe au pistou anywhere. It was a summer dish, and this was 19 January. Too bad. I was starving.

  Right away, I noticed how clean the apartment was. My mother had never been particularly fond of housework, and I suspected that she’d brought in Françoise, the woman I employ to do my cleaning, but I didn’t say anything. I sat down at the kitchen counter. Two plates, two glasses. I steeled myself for dinner with my mother, just the two of us. A nightmare that would have been unthinkable a few days earlier. Another absurdity in this decidedly topsy-turvy life. My mother smiled at me and asked if I’d slept well. Her turn of phrase, combined with the heady smell of basil, whisked me back thirty years. A sudden whiff of the past. I pictured myself back in the kitchen of our apartment in the Butte-aux-Cailles neighbourhood, a steaming hot chocolate on the table, my mother’s smile and her routine question: Did my little pussycat sleep well? My mother has always called me her little pussycat. She hadn’t uttered those words for ages.

  It was a day of firsts. A day of renewal, perhaps.

  I lowered my guard and merely replied, ‘Yes, thank you, Mum.’

  Breaking News

  OK, so I’m really sorry because I misled you. I think I’m alive. A bit of a mess, but alive. If we were on the news, a red ticker would say, Breaking news: he’s alive. Mind you, it wasn’t easy for me to realize it. It took a while. What do you mean, you knew I was alive? That’s crap, if you knew before I did.

  So, you’re wondering why I told you I was dead? Firstly, because you didn’t read it properly. I never said I was certain I was dead. I took ‘oratory precautions’, as they say when you bust a gut trying to speak like in a book on Greek mythology. I did say, I think. And that was true. Honestly, I don’t know where I was all that time. I told you, there were the lorry’s headlights, then a sort of black hole, and I could definitely tell that, afterwards, I wasn’t in real life any more. Even though I continued to think, to reflect. Like in a long dream, but without all the weird stuff.
No images of me flying through the air doing backstroke, no three-headed ghost pursuing me down the corridors of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, no sex with Jennifer Preston-Conwell – nothing, zilch, niente, nada – simply normal, everyday thoughts.

  You’re quite rightly asking how I know I’m not dead. I’d like to tell you that I saw the tunnel, a white light, that God called me to Him, that He was beautiful, that He was big, that He had the fragrance of warm clouds, and that He said to me, ‘Your time hasn’t come, young Louis; go back down to Earth and don’t come back for around a hundred years.’ Except that, in reality, it wasn’t at all like that. In reality, I was in my dreamworld-that-wasn’t, I could no longer feel my body, I was no more than a spirit, a thought. No, I’m not mad, I promise you – I mean, I don’t think I am – but you’ll have sussed by now that you have to be wary of my I thinks.

  So, I was in this other world, when, all of a sudden, I began to feel my body again. First of all, my fingers. My fingers became real again – I felt a horrible tingling. You know, like at night when you’ve slept too long on your arm, you feel as if you’ve got a piece of dead wood at the end of your body, your hand doesn’t respond any more and you just have to wait for the pins and needles to pass, for the blood to start flowing back. Sometimes it tickles a bit; sometimes it hurts so much that you feel as if your arm’s going to die. Well, I began to have this permanent sensation of fingers dying in a fire, being pricked by millions of pins and needles. Then I started feeling the same pain in different parts of my body, and I realized I was going to have to grin and bear it. Gradually, I got used to it. Or is it that it just became less intense? I’m not sure. What I was certain of, though, was that my body had woken up but couldn’t move. Even though I concentrated as hard as I could, even though I instructed my eyelids to open, my hand to move, my tongue to wag, nothing happened. It was driving me nuts. I started to cry. To yell. In my head, of course. I was in a prison and I was alone. After battling for hours and hours (days?), I went back to sleep, I think. Then I woke up, I think. Then fell asleep again, I think. I’ll spare you the details, but I think this little game went on for quite some time.

  Then something weird happened. I heard someone talking. At first it was a vague, distant sound. I seriously started wondering whether I’d arrived in a beyond that neither Mum nor I had ever believed in. Then I said to myself that it was strange to welcome newcomers with, ‘Have you done room 405 this morning, Brigitte?’

  Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. That’s how people react when something crazy happens in an American TV series. In text-speak, people say, OMG. So I think I can hear OMG OMG OMG OMG all around me.

  What conclusion should I draw from that?

  Conclusion number one: I’m in room 405, or not far from room 405.

  Conclusion number two: there are two people nearby, one of whom is a certain Brigitte. I don’t know any Brigittes, apart from the band that sings ‘Battez-vous’ – ‘Fight’. Was it a message, telling me to hang in there? Pretty complicated, if it is. Am I going to be entitled to a little private concert? I doubt it.

  Conclusion number three: seeing as Brigitte replied from a distance that no, she hadn’t done 405 yet, but there was no rush and it wasn’t dirty, I guess it’s about doing the cleaning in room 405.

  I decided to wait a bit – so to speak, since I had no option. In the meantime, I listened out for the slightest sound. I was like Ali Baba entering the cave of wonders, like Harry Potter discovering his magic powers, like Cinderella dazzled by her coach, like . . . OK, you get the idea. Every sound was a jewel; I was all excited, even though I knew that nothing showed. From the outside, I must look super-poker-faced – the famous expressionless, unfathomable look of the professional bluffer. Apparently, I wasn’t very expressive, that was the least that could be said. A quick analysis of the surrounding noises: regular beeps; breathing (mine, maybe); a vague din of voices and cutlery, like a far-off canteen; Brigitte’s friend, who was humming a tune I didn’t recognize, broke off and said, ‘Good morning, doctor.’ I’m in hospital. You knew that, too? Shit. So, if you know other things, tell me, because this is beginning to be a pain. Anyhow, I’m sure you didn’t know I’d begun to hear again, seeing as I’ve only just discovered it myself.

  Several people came into the room I’m in, and the sound level increased. A man’s voice, two women’s voices. New ones. I admit I didn’t catch everything, but I understood a lot, all the same, and not only good things. They were talking about me; I heard my name several times. I gathered that my condition was stable. Not better, not worse. Nothing particular to say. Stable, how? That’s when I heard the word. Coma. It was a shock. Coma means you’re in a bad way. When, in a film, people are told, He’s in a coma, they burst into tears, faint, scream or hit the doctor, who ends up seducing the grief-stricken mother. I immediately thought about Mum. Did she know I was in a coma? Of course she knew. Had she already punched the doctor in the face? That would be just like her, and the thought made me smile – inwardly, of course; externally, I was poker-faced.

  What stage of the coma drama were we at? I felt bad for Mum. Me, I hadn’t known I was in a coma, so it wasn’t so bad for me, after all. I wanted to know how long I’d been there, but, seeing as no one could hear me, there was no way of getting them to tell me. I concentrated very hard and, at one point, one of the ladies said, ‘What day is it?’ Tick-tock, tick-tock, I was going to find out. The other one replied, ‘It’s Thursday.’ That didn’t tell me much. Then she went on: ‘The nineteenth of January.’

  OMG. The last I knew, it was Saturday, 7 January. What had happened in the meantime? Now, I was beginning to seriously imagine what state Mum and Granny Odette must be in and I only wanted one thing: to tell them that I could hear again, that everything was going to be fine, that I would no doubt be able to speak to them soon.

  I waited all day. I slept a little, thought a lot, listened a lot. I waited for Mum, I waited for Granny Odette.

  When I heard someone say goodnight, in the corridor, I understood the day was over. No one had come to see me. I was on my own.

  I began to cry.

  Inwardly, of course; externally, I was poker-faced.

  7

  26 Days

  Willpower

  It was another few days before I could face up to going into Louis’s room. Not the one in the Robert Debré Hospital, the other one. His real room. Since 7 January, I hadn’t been able to cross the threshold. I’d closed the door and hadn’t opened it again. My mother had understood the importance of this room for my psychological healing, and hadn’t set foot inside either, letting me take things at my own pace – for once.

  One day, I felt ready. Ready to face the posters of his heroes, his drawings of his favourite idols, his unmade bed, his pyjamas scrunched into a ball and tossed on the desk, his homework book open at the page for Monday, 9 January. I stayed in his room for a long time. I tidied it slowly, carefully, and decided to wash his dirty bed linen. As I lifted the mattress to remove the sky-blue fitted sheet, I heard a thud. An object had just fallen out on to the wooden floor. I pulled the mattress towards me again, to see if there was anything else, but that was all. Then I knelt down and reached under the bed to pick up whatever it was that had dropped out.

  It was a paperback A5 notebook, the cover of which was plastered with stickers of football stars. I smiled and opened it. On the flyleaf was written:

  My Book of Wonders

  The author of those words was my son. I recognized his cramped script, still awkward despite his age. A common trait in some bright children, I’d been told: their thoughts run ahead of their hand; their writing is often careless and rushed. Holding my breath, I turned the page and began reading.

  My dearest Book of Wonders,

  I’m making a list of all the things I’d like to experience before I die: my wonders. It’s a sort of bucket list, except not really, because I’ve put things that I think are do-able.

  It’s an open-e
nded list. I’ll add to it gradually, whenever I think of something, or someone, cool stuff or more intense stuff. Seeing as I don’t plan to die straight away, I made sure you were nice and fat, my dearest, my precious Book of Wonders. It’s Isa who gave me the idea. She’s on the list. :-)

  Sleep well, my little wonders!

  Louis

  I hadn’t been expecting this. I closed the book and quickly put it on Louis’s desk, as if it might burn my hands. I sat down on the stool facing the desk and continued to stare at it from a distance. Top scorer Antoine Griezmann was giving me a broad, toothy, reassuring smile. After reading the title on the flyleaf, I’d said to myself that Louis was going a bit over the top in describing these guys in shorts who chased after a ball as ‘wonders’. I thought I was going to find the notebook full of pictures of footballers like the ones on the cover. Instead, I had just unearthed a little book of dreams, hidden under my son’s mattress and mentioning a name I’d never heard. Who was this Isa? I felt as if I was intruding. It made me uncomfortable, as if I was entering a secret garden whose gate I’d kicked in. I immediately felt an irrepressible urge to cry, but I knew that my mother was within earshot, and I didn’t want her bursting into Louis’s room. I managed to hold back my tears. I closed the door. I wanted to be on my own.

  I sat there for a long while. I was overwhelmed. What should I do? All I wanted to do was to read the rest. Turn the pages, explore Louis’s private world, find out about the things that he most wanted to experience. And, more than anything, to find out whether I was in his Book of Wonders . . . like this Isa, of whom I was instantly jealous. Had my son included me in his fantasy future?

  I didn’t give in to the temptation to open the notebook. I decided to put it back where I’d found it and to think carefully about the right thing to do. I was very subdued during dinner. My mother noticed, of course – she always notices everything. I was afraid she’d go rummaging around in Louis’s room the following night, so I pretended to be reading a book, of which I’ve never managed to get past page eight, and waited patiently for her to start snoring. Then I went and fetched the notebook and took it into my room. I spent several hours endlessly mulling over the problem, unable to make up my mind, then I fell asleep. I didn’t read the contents; I just flicked through to see if it was full, and it was – or several pages were, at any rate.