Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal Read Free Book Online

head: Pierre Revol, I’m a doctor in the department, I’m the one who admitted your son this morning, come with me. She walks with her head instinctively down, eyes on the linoleum, without a glance to either side that might slip off to find her child at the back of some dark room, it’s twenty metres to the end of the pale-blue corridor and then an ordinary door with a label in the form of a visitor’s card, and written on it, a name she can’t make out.
    This Sunday Revol spurns the family room, which he doesn’t much like, and instead invites Marianne into his office. She stays standing, finally sits on the edge of a chair as he walks around the desk to slide into his seat, chest forward, elbows spread. The more Marianne observes him, the more the other faces she’s seen since her arrival disappear, the woman with the unibrow at the front desk, the young nurse intern in emergency, the doctor with the pink collar – as though they had only spelled each other off until they led her to this face, superimposed one on top of the other until they formed a single one, the face of the man sitting in front of her, ready to speak.
    Would you like a coffee? Marianne jumps, nods. Revol gets up, and turning his back to her picks up the coffee pot that she hadn’t seen, pours the coffee into white Styrofoam cups, it steams, his movements are wide and silent, sugar? He’s buying time, arranging his words, she knows this, and she goes along with the tempo, feels the paradoxical tension as time drips out like coffee from the coffee maker while everything else simultaneously screams the urgency of the situation, points to its radical nature, its imminence, and now Marianne has closed her eyes, she drinks, concentrating on the liquid burning her throat, this is how much she dreads the first word of the first sentence – the jaw moving, the lips that open and stretch, the teeth that show, sometimes the tip of the tongue – this sentence saturated with sorrow that she knows is about to be formed; everything in her recoils and defects, her spine presses against the back of the chair – wobbly – her head leans back, she wishes she could get out of here, run to the door and escape, or disappear through a trap door that might suddenly open beneath the legs of her chair, poof! a hole, an oubliette – wishes she could be forgotten herself, yes, and that no one would be able to find her and that she’d never know anything other than Simon’s beating heart – she wishes she could leave this cramped room, this dismal light, and run from the announcement; she’s not brave, no, she writhes inside and zigzags like a grass snake, she would give anything to have someone just reassure her, just lie to her, tell her a story with some suspense, sure, but with an acidulous happy end, she’s shamefully cowardly, but holds firm: every second that passes is another bit of war spoils, every second that goes by stops destiny in its tracks, and as he sees these agitated hands, these legs knotted beneath the chair, these closed and swollen lids smudged with yesterday’s makeup – a coal-grey eyeshadow that she applies with the tip of her finger in a single sweep – the blurred transparency of these irises is touching, a cloudy aquatic jade, and the trembling of her splayed lashes, Revol knows that she understands, knows that she knows, and it’s with infinite gentleness that he consents to stretch out the time that precedes his words, picking up the Venetian paperweight and rolling it in his palm: the ball of glass sparkles under the cold fluorescent light, venous, it rainbows the walls and ceiling, passes over Marianne’s face and she opens her eyes, and that is Revol’s sign that he can begin.
    – Your son’s condition is serious.
    At the first words uttered – clear timbre, calm cadence – Marianne presses her eyes – dry – into Revol’s own and he looks back at her, steady, even as his phrase sets to swaying, even as