Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal Read Free Book Online Page A

it’s being composed, crystal clear without being brutal – semantics of a direct precision, largo woven in with silences, a slowing that weds itself to the unfolding of meaning – slow enough that Marianne can repeat each of the syllables inwardly, inscribe them in herself: during the accident, your son suffered a head injury, the scan shows a serious lesion on the frontal lobe – he brings his hand to his head, at the top of his forehead, illustrating his words – and this trauma caused a cerebral hemorrhage – Simon was in a coma when he arrived at the hospital.
    The coffee cools in the cup, Revol drinks slowly and, before him, Marianne stays frozen, a stone statue. The telephone reverberates in the room, one, two, three rings but Revol doesn’t answer, Marianne stares at his face, absorbs every detail – silky white complexion, mauve circles below large transparent grey saucers, heavy eyelids creased like nutshells, a long and turbulent face – and the silence swells, until Revol begins again: I’m worried – his voice surprises her, inexplicably loud, as though its volume had malfunctioned – we’re doing tests at the moment, and the first results are not good – but even though his voice makes an unfamiliar sound in Marianne’s ear and immediately causes her breathing to accelerate, it’s not cloying, doesn’t sound like those disgusting voices that pretend to comfort while they’re pushing you into the charnel house – instead it marks out a place for Marianne, a place and a line.
    – He’s in a deep coma.
    The seconds that follow open up a space between them, a naked and silent space, and they stay at the edge for a long moment. Marianne Limbeau begins to slowly turn the word “coma” over in her mind while Revol returns to the bleak part of his work; the millefiori still rolls in his palm, smoky and solitary sun, and nothing has ever seemed more violent, more complex than coming to sit beside this woman so they can delve together into this fragile zone of language where death announces itself, so they can go forward into it, together. He says: Simon is not responding to painful stimuli anymore, he’s demonstrating abnormal ocular and vegetative symptoms, in particular an abnormal breathing pattern with early signs of pulmonary congestion, and the initial brain scans are not good – Revol’s sentence is slow, punctuated with pauses for breath, a way of situating his body in the moment, making it present in his speech, a way of turning a clinical statement into an instance of empathy; he speaks as though he were carving some coarse material, and now they hold each other’s gaze, face each other, that’s it, that’s exactly what this is, an absolute faceoff, unflinching, as though speaking and looking at each other were two sides of the same coin, as though it were a matter of facing each other as much as facing that which was happening in one of these hospital rooms.
    I want to see Simon – panicked, the voice, the eyes out of control, hands that scatter. I want to see Simon, that’s all she said, while her phone vibrated for the umpteenth time in the bottom of her coat pocket – the neighbour who’s taking care of Lou, Chris’s parents, Johan’s, but still no word from Sean, where is he? She types out a text: call me.
    Revol has lifted his head: now, you want to see him now? He casts a quick look at his watch – 12:30 – and answers, calmly, you can’t see him right now, it will be a short wait, he’s undergoing a procedure, but as soon as we’re finished, of course you can see your son. And placing a yellowed piece of paper in front of him, he continues: if you don’t mind, I need to talk to you a little bit about Simon. Talk about Simon. Marianne grows tense. What does that mean, “Talk about Simon?” Does it mean giving information about his body like you’d give information on an application? Marking out the operations he’s had – adenoids,