Melodie by Akira Mizubayashi Read Free Book Online

the night in the same place, that is to say on the floor of the living room next to the sofa. I noticed that I was covered with a big blanket that wasn’t there two hours before. So I must have slept a little. I called out a pained hello to Michèle, who came over to see how I was. It was then, throwing a quick glance at the little cardboard house, that she realised that the puppies, in the absence of their mother, were snoozing on their own. ‘Where is she? Where’s she gone? What’s happening?’
    I sat down in some pain. I rested back against the sofa. Suddenly Michèle’s voice came from the other end of the apartment.
    â€˜What are you doing? Aren’t you looking after your little ones?’
    Scarcely had Michèle’s voice reached me than I saw Mélodie appear through the open glass doors of the living room. She was holding in her mouth a little toy made of yellow rubber in the shape of a crocodile. She came towards me, making little moans. She lifted her right front paw to give it to me. ‘So, what have you got there, my little one?’ I asked her. She let go of the toy while looking me straight in the eye.Then she began to lick my face as if she were telling me something, as if she wanted to wipe from my face the signs of a night of pain that had been endured.
    â€˜Thank you, thank you, my friend.’
    She picked up her crocodile again and went slowly towards the cardboard house. She stepped over the little low wall of about thirty centimetres we’d made as an entrance for her. She lay down near her offspring and gently placed the yellow plaything among them. Finally she put her muzzle between her dazzling white front paws and gave a deep sigh.
    From that day, until the departure of the puppies and the complete demolition of the cardboard house, the yellow crocodile never again left the maternal fold.

12
    PITY
    ONE DAY , at the end of a period of intensifying lower back pain, I was crippled by ghastly shooting pains through my loins.
    I was conducting oral exams at the university. It was a Saturday afternoon. When the last candidate had left I marked his performance and jumped up from an acute pain in my lower back. Too late. In a flash I was literally floored by what seemed like an electric shock of maximum voltage. I was lying on my back, as if paralysed. What to do? First I had to get back to my office and call my wife or an ambulance. I gathered all my remaining strength in order to get up. To start with I couldn’t even turn over. Finally, with the help of a chair on which I’d sat during the orals, I managed to stand up … I don’t know how long I took to perform this simplest of movements that normally only takes a fraction of a second. Drops of sweat beaded on my brow. A sensitive earwould have picked up the sound of my teeth chattering in pain. I started to walk … But I wasn’t able to … Still I walked … I walked … or, rather, I attempted something resembling human steps. I leaned against the wall of the dark corridor to put my legs one in front of the other. I sensed their proud and painful presence so strongly that it was as if they no longer belonged to me. After thirty never-ending minutes, experiencing a level of torture like nothing I’d ever known in my life, I nonetheless reached my office and succeeded in opening the door. With my left hand I reached for the telephone … Suddenly a kind of black curtain dropped in front of my eyes.

    An MRI scan revealed a severely herniated disc. After a large anaesthetic injection, which only gave me a few hours’ relief, the doctor explained that I would need the patience of a player of Go and that I’d have to wait until the gelatinous core of the intervertebral disc was back in place and no longer pressed on the roots of the sciatic nerve. There was only one thing to do: stay in bed and not move. I left the hospital. It was the first time that I’d