Reader for Hire Page 2

  Before I leave I can’t avoid being trapped in the kitchen again for quite a long time. Eric’s mother tells me everything, how and when the problem started, her hopes of a cure, Eric’s finer qualities and minor faults, as well as hers and her husband’s, the cruelty of fate. I can feel her gratitude about to boil over in her voice and in her now-glistening eyes. You’d think she was expecting salvation from me. I have to drink a tepid cup of coffee. And nibble on a biscuit. I promise to come back the day after tomorrow, for the first session.

  Two days later the temperature has changed. A spectacular Indian summer. People walking along the promenade seem to have reverted to a summery mood. The late season’s sun filters through the already sparse foliage, casting a pretty, powdery light that makes blouses and dresses transparent. I myself have put on a light crêpe dress with a full skirt, and the first thing I do once I’m sitting facing Eric with my book is lift it up above my knees. His mother has put us in his bedroom, sitting opposite each other, him in his wheelchair and me in a low armchair with cushions. It’s really very hot and, almost without realizing it, I fan the fabric to get some air to my legs. It seems this is the only thing in the room Eric can see, and this ordinary gesture has produced a peculiar concentration in him. I’m quick to show him the book I’ve brought, a new edition of Maupassant’s short stories, published by Garnier-Flammarion, with an image on the cover of a Normandy peasant woman in her distinctive headdress, against a background of huddled village houses. And I tell him that I’m going to read him several of these stories, that they’re all really exciting and full of surprises, just as incredible as anything he’ll find in the illustrated books and comics I can see piled up on a stool between his wheelchair and the table with his medication. But these stories have the advantage of being written in good, simple, substantial French. He seems to be convinced, and increases his mute nods of approval, as he did during my first visit, but without taking his eyes off the hem of my dress, or my knees even, although they’re not all that much on show. I then tell him we’re going to start with a particularly unusual, almost supernatural story called ‘The Hand’. I tell him that the title will soon be explained and that the story will keep him on the edge of his seat from start to finish.

  He looks a little feverish but enthusiastic, impatient. I decide he’s far better-natured than a good many boys his age. And he may be genuinely hungry to learn, to listen to something new deep in the loneliness of his handicap. What if this job I’ve just invented for myself could, after all, be of real help to one or two people… I start reading:

  They stood in a circle around Monsieur Bermutier, the investigating magistrate, who was voicing his opinion about the mysterious Saint-Cloud affair. This inexplicable crime had had Paris in the grip of panic for the last month. No one could make head or tail of it…

  I stop for a moment and look up from my book to tell Eric that if there are any words he has any sort of trouble with, he mustn’t hesitate to interrupt me and ask me their meaning. Investigating magistrate, for example. Does he know exactly what an investigating magistrate is? An instant, perhaps slightly peeved reply: Yes, Miss, I do. He obviously does not want me treating him like a child. And, worse still, like a retarded child. I’m vaguely aware that I need to make certain adjustments to my assessment of him. Is that why I pull up my dress, uncovering a little more of my knees? Besides, the heat in this room really is something. Through the window I can see a branch, its leaves so still you’d think the air had never been so utterly without a breath of wind. Perhaps I should open the window. But it’s no longer really the time of year for open windows. Eric’s face is a little red and he’s now keeping his eyes focused on my knees with the utmost determination. But he’s no less attentive to my reading. He seems to be genuinely interested. He registers precisely everything that my voice (which I hope he finds pleasantly melodious, although I’m quite incapable of gauging its inflexions at the moment) offers to his ears. All the details of this unusual story, which is now describing the career of our Monsieur Bermutier, who was appointed as a magistrate one day in Corsica, in Ajaccio, a small, white town, resting on the shores of a magnificent gulf, surrounded on every side by high mountains. It is here that cases of vendettas frequently come to his attention and land on his desk:

  … some are sensational, some dramatic in the extreme, some ferocious or heroic. Among them we may observe the most perfect subjects for revenge imaginable, age-old hatreds briefly appeased but never extinguished, abominable trickery, assassinations that evolve into massacres and actions that are almost glorious. For two years now all the talk I have heard has been of the price of a life, and of the dreadful predisposition in Corsicans driving them to avenge any insult on the person who made it, on his or her descendants, kith and kin. I had seen old men, children and cousins with their throats slit, my head was filled with these tales of vendettas…

  I stop, still concerned that Eric is following easily and has no problems understanding. Do you know the word vendetta? Quick-fire answer: Yes, Miss, I know it. I know what it is. I think I sense a hint of irritation this time. Odd boy. I feel he’s now genuinely gripped by the story and is really listening, although he hasn’t chosen to take his eyes off my legs. But at the same time there’s nothing passive about him, something about him is urging me to get on with it, to carry on. Right. The magistrate meets the Englishman. We’ve reached the passage about the hand:

  But in the middle of the widest panel something strange attracted my attention. A black object stood out against a square of red velvet…

  I hear something like a deep sigh, followed swiftly by a chesty wheeze. It’s as if the words black object and square of red velvet have provoked goodness knows what feeling of suffocation. What dread. Perhaps an amazed, admiring sort of dread. I look up at Eric. His eyes meet mine for a moment, as if begging me to keep reading, then they look away. So I carry on. The hand. The iron chain from which it hangs on the wall. The anxiety among neighbours and witnesses. Then one day, the dramatic event. The macabre discovery. The Englishman assassinated. As suspense goes, you have to say there’s plenty. Roland Sora was right. You couldn’t do better. Eric is fascinated. Or terrified. I feel caught up in it myself, led on by the lightly handled but razor-sharp violence of the sentences and their rhythm:

  A shudder ran down my back, and my eyes darted up to the wall, to the place where I had previously seen the horrible skinned hand. It was no longer there. The chain dangled, broken. So I heaved myself towards the dead man, and found inside his tensed jaw one of the fingers of that missing hand, cut or rather sawn off by his teeth right on the second joint…

  This time, it’s a scream. Short but shrill. Eric has thrown his head back and is clutching the armrests of his wheelchair with both hands as if clinging to them. His eyes are bulging out of his head and a string of saliva is oozing from his lips. I put the book down hurriedly, go over to him and take his wrist. It makes no difference. His whole body is shaking. Shivers are running down his back and the worst of it is that his poor paralysed legs are thrusting forward, as if propelled by convulsions. I run a handkerchief over his mouth and forehead. But the door to his bedroom has been thrown open and his mother has come in. My God, she cries, what’s going on? What is this?… She flashes me a look as sharp as a dagger and rushes over to her child, trying to hug him to her and knocking over a bottle of Mercurochrome, which breaks on the floor, forming a pool of red. She’s shaking almost as violently as he is. I tell her she’d do better to find some sort of tranquillizer, a few drops of something we could give him to swallow, or an injection we could administer. She grows all the more frantic, saying she doesn’t have anything like that, that he’s never had a fit like this, saying she’s going out of her mind, that we’ll have to call for help, and treading in the pool of red.

  In fact, Eric calms down, but it seems help is still needed. He’s now prostrate, his face perfectly white, his mouth still foaming, his head lolling on his shoulder and his eyes rolle
d almost right back. He’s stopped shaking but a spasm jolts the lower half of his body every ten seconds. I’m already at the telephone, calling for an ambulance. When she realizes this, Eric’s mother is furious. Anything but the hospital, not the hospital… she says several times. She looks for an address book to find the number of a male nurse who knows Eric, gets the pages all muddled and starts tearing them, panicking. But whatever happened? she cries… What did you do? What did you do to him? I feel idiotic, caught out. I stammer, meanwhile running my hand over the child’s forehead, slapping him gently to bring him round: I don’t know, I was reading him a story… quite an affecting one, perhaps… then suddenly, this seizure, this fainting fit… Oh, my God, my God, she sobs, and now you’re slapping him, you’re finishing him off, you’re killing him!

  Luckily the ambulance is here. Two nurses and a stretcher-bearer arrive and immediately take charge of Eric, asking for an explanation of the state he’s in. His mother supplies it. As soon as she’s finished I think it helpful to repeat my inane words: I was reading to him… quite an affecting story, perhaps… One of the three men looks at me as if I were raving mad, a halfwit at best. They examine Eric for a moment, then give him an injection. Next, they lift him out of his wheelchair and carry him, without using the stretcher: like a parcel, a lump. He’s slumped in the arms of the colossus carrying him. His mother wails, weeps, wrings her hands. A spectacular disaster.

  I go to the hospital the very next morning, sure of an icy reception. But, as luck would have it, things seem to have more or less gone back to normal. In the duty doctor’s office they tell me that at first they’d thought they should send Eric to intensive care, at least for the night. But it very soon became clear that, with the help of a few antispasmodics, he had recovered to a state of relative calm. In other words, his pulse and respiratory rate were normal, and he could spend the night in the room, despite his obviously feverish and delirious condition. He’s much better now. His mother is by his bedside. I may go and see him.

  When I go into the room – number 27, at the end of a long white corridor on the first floor of the children’s neurological unit – I’m expecting the worst. But I’m greeted with a smile. The same smile as on the day we first met. He has more than a bit of colour in his cheeks, his face is incontrovertibly pink, almost too flushed. It’s the fever, his mother says, getting to her feet and coming over to me. Nearly 104. Apparently it might stay like that for a few days, but there’s nothing to worry about now. They’ve run all sorts of tests… She is completely transformed too, no longer appearing to feel any animosity towards me. No memory of it even, you could be forgiven for thinking. How strange. Unexpected.

  Eric is still smiling. A raised area under the sheet towards the foot of the bed indicates that they must have put some sort of brace on his legs, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered, doesn’t give the impression of being in pain anyway. He looks at me intently. I can feel his gaze sidling towards my right hand, as if he thinks I’m holding something, or should be holding something, a book perhaps… the infamous, horrifying book. I’m suddenly struck by the ridiculous idea that he might want me to go on with the story… But my hand is empty. I haven’t even brought a bag of sweets, nothing, not the tiniest little treat or the most modest of flowers, convinced that I would find Eric in a dreadful state and was running the risk of being thrown out of his room. Take a chair, says his mother, and sit yourself there.

  I sit down near the bed and take Eric’s hand. It’s of course very warm. I say softly: Poor boy, I didn’t think I’d put you in such a state… You must forgive me… He squeezes my hand, says nothing. I should be giving you quite a talking-to, his mother says, because we came close to disaster, but I should probably give myself a talking-to first. I didn’t say enough about how sensitive he is, how vulnerable…

  A nurse comes in, wielding a thermometer in one hand and, in the other, a small tray with a glass of water and two capsules on it. She’s a tall, attractive, dark-haired woman, upright with high breasts and wide hips. She busies herself briefly with the temperature chart attached to the foot of the bed, then hands the thermometer to Eric. Turning to her, his mother says: This is the person in question! I feel I’ve been denounced, handed over to the vindictive hospital staff, and the nurse does actually change her expression, furrowing her brow severely. Ah, she says, it’s you! What on earth did you read to him to produce such a shock? It’s incredible, unbelievable!… I look away as she puts her hand under the covers to help Eric take his temperature. The child keeps his eyes unswervingly on me as if asking me not to say anything, to protect him, hoping for some complicity. He’s still holding my hand, squeezes it. I say a few evasive words: Oh, you know… a run-of-the-mill story… I had no idea… She eyes me really suspiciously. All through the night, she says, he kept pointing at the wall opposite him, as if he could see something terrifying there… There, there, he kept saying… He held his arm out straight, pointing with his index finger… and disabled though he is, he even managed to sit up in bed so he could reach his arm out properly… as if he was having some horrible nightmare… Then, more tartly, as she drew out the thermometer: You ought to take precautions in your job…

  I’m stunned, speechless. My job! What job? It’s only ten days since I ran the ad. All at once I wonder what on earth I’m doing here, in this hospital. I suddenly want to get out and leave them all there. But my problems aren’t over yet. The nurse is hardly out of the room before a doctor arrives, escorted by an assistant or an intern. Most likely some consultant doing his rounds. But no one introduces him to me, tells me what his name is. On the other hand, I’m introduced to him, and still in the same terms: the person in question, or something like that. I can tell straight away that he views me with a degree of aggressive curiosity (thinking to himself: Ah, it’s you!). After half-heartedly examining Eric, checking that his condition is improving and giving a few brief instructions, he asks me to come and see him for a minute in his office.

  The office is an utterly sinister white room with a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, an old hatstand and a desk laden with papers, pamphlets and tired-looking books. He asks me to sit facing him and stares at me for some time. Then comes straight to the point. You’re out of your mind, my dear! he says. Do you know what that child came close to? Encephalitis. You didn’t take into account how ill he is, how badly incapacitated, a particularly fragile case… Are you a responsible adult? Are you? I mumble a few vague words, trying to make it clear that, if there was any fault on my part, it was due to inexperience, and that, alas, I have neither qualifications nor experience… He coolly leaves me to dig myself deeper and deeper into a hole. He’s a stout, broad-shouldered man with a slightly chubby face, crew-cut hair and penetrating eyes. I feel as if he’s literally undressing me with those eyes. But, imagine my surprise, suddenly he’s the one getting undressed. He unbuttons and removes his white coat in a sequence of hurried gestures and, to my astonishment, is now standing in front of me in blue underpants and blue socks. He starts walking around me in his smalls and says: Do you mind if I change? I don’t answer. He carries on circling, taking his time, lighting a cigarette to prove he’s in no hurry. Then he hangs his white coat on the hatstand, heads towards a cupboard at the back of the room, opens it and takes out a shirt and jacket on a hanger, a pair of trousers and a tie. He talks to me as he puts on these various items of clothing: He had visions, hallucinations all night… He kept pointing at the wall… talking about a hand… What was this story you read to him? Just a short story of Maupassant’s, I reply. He’s put on his trousers now and is tying his tie in front of a small mirror on the inside of the cupboard door. Maupassant, he says, Maupassant… Do you know how Maupassant ended up?… AIDS!… Anyway, in his day they called it cerebral fever, the sort of thing you nearly inflicted on that poor boy. Don’t you think he’s suffering enough as it is? You don’t understand, his entire nervous system is wired… In future—

  Still in my chair and without
looking at him, I interrupt him: There won’t be a future. Professor Dague – because that’s his name – is now fully dressed, with his tie done up, a proper gentleman. He crushes his cigarette in the ashtray, lights another. You smoke too much, I say, getting to my feet. Caught off guard, he grants me a hint of a smile. He takes my arm: That boy’s waiting to see you. He actually really likes you, is very fond of you… You should be able to help him… His tone has suddenly become friendly, attentive. I can feel his warm tobacco-laden breath on my neck. Fond of me, I say, he doesn’t know me! I’m wondering which of us all is the maddest.

  But, oddly, I let him persuade me. I go back to room 27 and sit down beside the bed. Eric takes my hand with an eagerness that leaves no room for doubt. His feverish eyes stay trained on mine. He’s adamant that you should come back, his mother confirms. It was all just a misunderstanding, a mistake… We’re really relying on you… He does so love reading!

  I’m in the echo chamber. In my hand is a letter. The second letter, it’s just arrived from the go-between newspaper. I hardly dare open it, it looks so peculiar. Blue, like the walls of my room. Vaguely perfumed, it seems, but that may be an illusion on my part. The stamp stuck on upside down. The writing elongated, exhausted. On the back are the words: La Générale Dumesnil (or Dumézil, the letters are particularly shaky and overlapping), rue des Rives-Vertes. I’m perplexed, anxious. The smart part of town. A ‘générale’. I really will have to play the part of a reader from a bygone age. It was bound to happen. But so soon! Oh well, that’s my bad luck.