Mist
Translated by Paul Curtis Daw from Jean-Paul Didierlaurent
Twelve years. Already I’ve been here twelve years. Thanks to Maria, the older of my two daughters. Oh, that didn’t all happen overnight with a simple snap of the fingers. I struggled, I fought. In the early days, I managed to push back the deadline, despite my daughter’s ever more numerous arguments. Élisabeth, my younger daughter, was rather noncommittal on the subject. She has always known how to show a passive neutrality when it comes to making delicate decisions. She delegated full powers to her big sister, who didn’t have to be begged to take control of the operation. Yes, for a long time I balked. Dug in my heels like a stubborn old mule to repel Maria’s repeated onslaughts. “It would be simpler for everyone,” she’d say. “The facility is only a half-hour’s drive from our house. We’ll be able to come see you every week. Plus, I’ll be much more at ease knowing you’re in good hands.” I pointed out to her in vain that I’d never really expected to end my days in the outskirts of Châteauroux, that from my earliest years I’d always lived a few steps from the sea, and it had never released its hold on me. Though it’s scant consolation, in the end it wasn’t Maria who prevailed over my objections. No, it was that fall in the kitchen and the goddamned femur that cracked like an old deadwood branch. It was Rose, the caregiver, who found me stretched out full length at the foot of the sink. Totally unable to get up. I’d been lying there since the evening before and ultimately came to accept reality. The six weeks of convalescence had ended up gnawing away at the small amount of determination I still possessed.
The Wisteria! Its very name gave me goosebumps the first time Maria mentioned it in my hearing. I truly believe that France has as many nursing homes bearing the name “Wisteria” as there are hotels answering to the strange name of “White Horse.” To top it all off, there had never been the merest shadow of a wisteria vine growing anywhere around the building. Nor on the grounds, nor climbing the walls, like any self-respecting wisteria. Any more than you’ll find white horses in the vicinity of the hotels with that name. Even today, those identifiers remain a mystery to me. Besides, I see very well that everyone is blithely indifferent to the reason for them. Here, they quickly make us understand that asking “why” about anything is no longer suited to our age. Here, we’re treated to two hard-nosed security guards, plus two head nurses who uphold the rules unrelentingly and ensure that order reigns. One for the day shift, one for the night. They never let up!
I miss the sun. Both its warmth and its light. A luminosity that seems destined never to leave, but it’s eclipsed here by that filthy fog that comes in from who knows where and never stops drifting over the landscape. Again this morning, the mist spoiled everything. An enormous mass of dirty cotton that swallowed the grounds, the trees, and the immense wrought iron entry gate. In November, the mist is normal here, it seems. It’s insidious, like old age, which often takes advantage of the night to gain ground. It stealthily invades you, penetrates to the smallest crannies, numbs your thoughts, and wipes out your memories before you are even aware of its presence. In the morning, it’s there, omnipresent, and it won’t ever release you.
As usual, I was the last to arrive in the refectory. I’ve always clung to that strange mania of stationing myself at the tail of the cycling pack. It isn’t that I’m slower than the others; there are plenty of them here who advance at the jerky rhythm of their walkers. Nor that my appetite is less hearty, but there’s always my old puntillero’s reflex that has stayed with me. Arriving only at the end of it all, when everything has been done, or nearly so, and it’s up to me to conclude what must be. I sat down facing my mug. Gisèle Levasseur, the waitress, asked me if I preferred tea or coffee. For twelve years, every morning that God has made, I’ve taken coffee with a splash of milk, and every one of those mornings this good woman has asked me if I want tea or coffee! “Coffee, please, with a splash of milk, thank you, Mademoiselle Levasseur.” The woman seated on my right is fussing. The bread is too hard, the butter is too soft. The jam too sugary. I feel an urge to tell her that she’s too whiny, but I swallow my words with a sip from the water glass set in front of me, along with three little pills I must take each morning for fear of not seeing the next sunrise, if it deigns to make the effort of showing its face. A pink pill for blood pressure, a white for the thyroid, and a light blue for I forget which other curse old age has invented to brighten our existence. Some people here qualify for all the colors of the rainbow, and they spend more time ingesting the battery of pills ranged before them than they do eating the piece of toast smeared with a pale substitute containing zero percent fat that tries to pass for butter! Here, everything is at zero percent. The management wants us to die in good health. Last night, there was yet another departure. At The Wisteria, the word “death” is rigidly proscribed. Always this wretchedly timid insistence on not looking death in the face—even here, where it has taken up residence and where you can encounter it at any moment! So, you tiptoe around it, you kowtow abjectly to it, and you dress it up in pretty words like “departure.” I would have liked to tell you that the prevailing atmosphere this morning in the refectory was meditative, but it was nothing of the kind. The slurping and moist chewing noises made by my peers seemed just a little more discreet than usual. The mouths perhaps a little less avid. The glances more furtive, the clinking of the silverware a touch more muted. The only overt sign of absence was the empty place that attracted everyone’s gaze: The vacant chair of Marcel Garnier, which gaped like an intolerable chasm in the middle of the refectory.
*
They found him at daybreak, lying primly in his bed. His departure didn’t surprise anyone. Victim of an attack, we were told just now, by Madame Vergeler, director of the establishment. I used my napkin to stifle the chortle rising in my mouth. Ruptured aneurysm, heart failure, pulmonary embolism, whatever the cause, they always ended up calling it an attack! They never found any better expression to convey that the grim reaper had executed a final sword-thrust into one of us. I must be the only one here to have witnessed the mortal piercing of a bull in the ring. Still, that’s very much what this is about. An estocada, in due and proper form. And considering the host of old people who wander around The Wisteria, the reaper never has much trouble delivering the estocada: death. For a long time, Marcelle Garnier shuffled around bearing his share of embedded bullfighting darts. With his runaway cholesterol rate, his fluctuating diabetes, and his clogged arteries, he was one of those walking wounded who have not yet expired, of whom there are dozens more here, as elusive as ghosts, spending most of their days awaiting mealtime, not leaving their rooms except to go fill their stomachs in the refectory before returning to their armchairs, their backs bent by arthritis and by their subjection to decrepitude, already anticipating the next meal. Marcel Garnier was one of them, hanging on all day long, his gaze riveted on the alarm clock on his night table, while using the flat of his hand to smooth the napkin resting on his knees. Beings already on their way out, pacing to and fro on the dock in wait for the damned embarkation that has been so slow to materialize. I looked enviously at Marcel Garnier’s empty chair.
*
Sunday is visitors’ day. I spent the afternoon with several others in the lobby, sitting on the bench facing the front door, watching the life from the outside world come knocking on the plate glass window. I can stay there for hours at a stretch, half-dozing, while families in small, noisy groups surge in. Like every Sunday, I expected Maria, before my addled brain reminded me that she left last year, carried away by a vile, lethally situated tumor that sucked the life out of her in three months. No one should ever have to bury their children. The father before his daughter, that’s as logical as two and two make four! Élisabeth still comes to visit me sometimes. Rarely. Nîmes is a long way from Châteauroux. She calls every Sunday, after the evening meal. But I barely listen anymore. Even my own daughter’s voice, one that in the past I could have recognized among a thousand, even her voice resembles more and more an inaudible mush that I no longer have the strength to decipher. So, I put up a pretense, I divert and distract, mutter “yes,” “no,” and “oh, I see,” all meant to feign interest. And then we close by exchanging goodbyes, we’ll talk next week, stay well, Papa, love and kisses... I don’t like Sundays. They’re like calls to order, to remind us that real life is no longer here, within these walls, but instead outside, concealed by the thick fog that forecloses all exploration.
*
Moments ago, they carried off Marcel Garnier’s corpse. The music accompanying the arrastre, the removal of the dead bull from the ring, echoed in my head. More and more often, I have the feeling that death doesn’t want me. That it still needs its old puntillero down here, to help others accomplish the great passage. I know now that my place is here. As it was in the arena, almost seventy years ago. For even at The Wisteria, despite the blow of the estocada, death is sometimes slow to come. There remains that infinitesimal trickle of life that stubbornly refuses to run dry. So, in the depths of night, I must slip out of my bed, forget for a moment the sack of pain that my old carcass has become, and sneak down the corridor in the dense darkness. Go past the rooms one by one, my heart pounding, searching for the right door, praying not to bump into the security guard! Advance to the bedside. Then, just as I used to do on the bullring’s sandy surface, I cut the last thread and liberate them. Strangely, I’ve never felt as alive as in that instant when my hand is cutting the invisible cord. Old Man Garnier’s last breath was not all that difficult to intercept. As with all the others, the pillow pressed down on his face snuffed out the little bit of life that still remained in his lungs. When it’s all over, I always give them one last look. Notwithstanding the penumbra that veils their faces, it seems to me that I sometimes discern traces of relief in their lifeless expressions.
Tomorrow, I’ll turn 102. Tomorrow, I’m going to ask for tea, for no other reason than to see Gisèle Levasseur’s mouth gape open in surprise.
« Brume » was originally published by Éditions Au diable vauvert.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Photo by Carol Daw
Paul Curtis Daw is a former lawyer whose translations include Évelyne Trouillot’s Memory at Bay (University of Virginia Press) and Olivier Targowla’s Narcisse on a Tightrope (Dalkey Archive Press). Several of his translations appear in Paris Noir: The Suburbs (Akashic Books), and his renditions of stories and other texts from France, Haiti, Belgium, Quebec, Reunion, and Swiss Romandy appear in Words Without Borders, Subtropics, Asymptote Blog, carte blanche, Indiana Review, and Massachusetts Review, among other publications.
Photo by Claude Truong-Ngoc
Jean-Paul Didierlaurent began writing stories in 1997 and won, on average, one writing competition per year for the next 12 years. In 2010, « Brume » earned him the International Hemingway Award. His first novel, « Le liseur du 6h27 » (2015) was a major commercial and critical success. Translations have been published in 29 countries, including an English version, The Reader on the 6.27. A film adaptation is in progress. Didierlaurent’s second novel, « Le reste de leur vie » (2016) was also translated into English. His final novel was « Malamute » (2021), and he passed away the same year at age 59.