Jean-dominique Bauby by Diving Bell, the Butterfly Read Free Book Online Page A

heard. A complete vegetable,” came the reply. The word “vegetable” must have tasted sweet on the know-it-all’s tongue, for it came up several times between mouthfuls of Welsh rarebit. The tone of voice left no doubt that henceforth I belonged on a vegetable stall and not to the human race. France was at peace; one couldn’t shoot the bearers of bad news. Instead I would have to rely on myself if I wanted to prove that my IQ was still higher than a turnip’s.
    Thus was born a collective correspondence that keeps me in touch with those I love. And my hubris has had gratifying results. Apart from an irrecoverable few who maintain a stubborn silence, everybody now understands that he can join me in my diving bell, even if sometimes the diving bell takes me into unexplored territory.
    I receive remarkable letters. They are opened for me, unfolded, and spread out before my eyes in a daily ritual that gives the arrival of the mail the character of a hushed and holy ceremony. I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, discussing the meaning of life, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence. And by a curious reversal, the people who focus most closely on these fundamental questions tend to be people I had known only superficially. Their small talk had masked hidden depths. Had I been blind and deaf, or does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person’s true nature?
    Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark…I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship.
    It will keep the vultures at bay.

Outing
    Stifling heat. But I would like to get out. It has been weeks, perhaps months, since I last left the hospital grounds for my wheelchair ride on the promenade along the shore. Last time it was still winter. Icy gusts whipped up clouds of sand, and the few thickly muffled strollers leaned purposefully into the wind. Today I would like to see Berck in summer attire, to see the beach—which was deserted all winter—packed with carefree July crowds. To reach the street from Sorrel, one has to cross three parking lots, whose rough, uneven surface sorely tries the buttocks. I had forgotten how grueling this route was, with its puddles and its potholes, its cars inconsiderately parked on the sidewalks.
    And then at last the sea. Beach umbrellas, sailboats, and a human rampart of swimmers complete the postcard effect. A vacation sea, gentle and unthreatening. Nothing like the steel reflection visible from the hospital terraces. And yet these are the same troughs, the same swells, the same misty horizon.
    We thread our way through a moving forest of ice-cream cones and crimson thighs. Easy to imagine licking a drop of vanilla from young, sun-reddened skin…No one pays me any real attention. Wheelchairs are as commonplace at Berck as Ferraris at Monte Carlo, and poor dislocated wheezing devils like me are everywhere. This afternoon, Claude (the young woman to whom I am dictating this book) and Brice are with me. I have known Claude for two weeks, Brice for twenty-five years. It is strange to hear my old partner in crime telling Claude about me. My quick temper, my love of books, my immoderate taste for good food, my red convertible—nothing is left out. Like a storyteller exhuming the legends of a lost civilization. “I didn’t realize you were like that,” says Claude. My present life is divided between those who knew me before and all the others. What kind of person will those who know me now think I was? I do not even