Melodie (2 page)

‘What are you doing? Why did you get up? You should have called me! Are you thirsty? Do you want some water? … Oh, you're ill. Yes, I know … Don't force yourself. Go on, lie down here. And rest … Yes, that's it. There you are. Is that better? You see, you'll feel better like that … What's the matter? You look so sad! … You don't want me to leave, is that it? But you know, I've only put my coat on to go out and get a few things. You don't want me to go away? Is that why you got up? To tell me not to go … Is that it? Oh yes, that's what it is …'

With a slightly hesitant movement as if she were lifting some thing heavy, the dog gave Michèle her swollen right
paw. Michèle clasped it and then shook it tenderly, as a sign of affection.

‘Yes, I understand now, I understand … Don't worry, I'm not leaving, I'm staying with you.'

It was exactly 5.37pm. It was raining. She seemed relieved, she relaxed and stretched out fully. Then she sighed. And after this long sigh there came faint death rattles.

The howling of the north wind could be heard more clearly now.

‘Oh no, you're not going like that! You can't do that! No, come on, be brave! I'm going to call Mr D. He'll come straight away. And then you'll feel better … But you're ill, you're very ill, I can see that. I haven't heard you crying out in pain like this before. I can't bear it … I don't want to see you like this! What can I do for you, tell me, what can I do?'

While she dialled the vet's number she went on talking to her dog, not stopping, to give herself courage.

The dog was in dreadful, crushing, pain. She couldn't take it any longer. The world was growing darker. Very softly, from the upper part of her visual field, a grey curtain was coming down. She gave the woman sitting beside her a last look of tenderness, which conveyed a silent word whose meaning seemed obvious to her. Her eyes were moister than usual. In the dark silence of that first month of winter, shot through with strangled rattles, an unspeakable fear took hold. A scarcely audible woman's voice, coming from the cell phone left lying on the floor, said to leave a message …

‘My God! No! No … no … NO!'

The telephone rang.

‘Hello?'

‘Hello, it's me, the meeting's just finished, I'm coming home straight away. How's it going?'

Then silence, for a couple of seconds.

‘No, it's … it's not good at all. She's getting weaker, you know … Get home quickly. But be careful on your bike. I don't know if it's still raining, but it's really windy tonight …'

‘Yes, I'm leaving in a few minutes. See you soon.'

I was in a teeming crowd heading towards Y station. It wasn't raining very heavily. With the break in the weather people began closing their umbrellas. I closed mine. I hurried. I could only think of getting back to Mélodie as quickly as I could. I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I thought of nothing; I walked and walked. I walked so mechanically that in the middle of a pedestrian crossing I trod on the heel of the young woman just in front of me. She tripped, falling on to her knees.

‘Oh, I'm sorry, forgive me.'

She got up straight away, while I picked up her upturned red shoe and gave it back to her. Embarrassed, she gave me a nice smile, which made me smile in return.

‘I'm sorry, I was miles away. You're OK? Can you walk? Are you going to the station?'

‘Yes.'

‘Me too.'

We caught the same overcrowded train. There were two or three people between us: we weren't brave enough to start up a conversation. In a quarter of an hour we got to Nakano. I broke the silence.

‘I'm getting out here.'

‘Me too', she answered softly.

‘Oh, so you live in Nakano too!'

We went down the stairs together. As soon as I'd gone through the ticket gate I said to her, ‘Goodbye, and, again, my apologies.'

‘No, don't apologise. It doesn't hurt anymore.' She smiled. She told me that she was going to take the bus. I replied that I was going to pick up my bike. We parted. She made me a little bow, and I bowed too, a little more deeply. She disappeared into a long queue that was waiting for the bus …

I made my way to the parking lot for bicycles and motorcycles. It started raining again. I didn't open my umbrella: it was too dangerous to ride with an open umbrella. The dark sky trapped between the highest buildings of the central part of the district whistled as the wind from the north blew through them. It was cold. I turned into the street where the town hall was, where there was never much traffic. I followed it down through the shopping district. I often stop there to buy books at the big bookshop. But that day I wanted to get home as fast as I could. I was driven by a growing sense of anxiety, an indefinable feeling of urgency. I arrived. I took the stairs four at a time. I slid the key into the lock and opened the door. I was soaked through. Michèle ran to me.

The house was dark. Baroque music was playing. The polyphony of the stringed instruments filled the air. Michèle kissed me, in tears.

‘Mélodie is gone. She waited for you … But in the end she couldn't take it any longer.'

I cross the dimly lit living room. The two sliding doors of the dining room are open. Mélodie's body is lying on a futon placed against the back wall. Her head is hidden by a big bunch of flowers in a round, brown vase. A little candle in the candle-holder in the shape of an old lamp creates a kind of yellow aura around her mortal remains. Covered over by a slightly faded orange towel, her body lies outstretched, the nerves and muscles peacefully letting go.

I come close and crouch down. I touch her head. It is warm. Fifteen years ago, when I touched the head of my father, who had been dead for six hours, it was freezing cold. I lift up the towel. An unfamiliar smell wafts up. I stroke Mélodie's inanimate body, which still looks like the one I took in my arms this morning. I am struck by a vague sensation of warmth. It is a body half alive, already in the realm of shadows, but still quivering with the vestiges of life, ebbing away like the sea at low tide. It is resisting the relentless invasion of the cold.

The rain gets heavier again. The wind rages more strongly.

The Baroque music, Albinoni or Tartini, is still playing. Her eyes are not like they were before. They were black, big, tender, overflowing with warmth and affection. Now they are grey, small. They no longer look at me. They are lost in the emptiness. Suddenly, an abyss has been carved out between us. My voice can no longer reach her ears. It is lost in the cold, pronounced grey of her pupils.

I lie down on the wooden floor next to the futon to be as close to her as possible. With my head against her head,
my nose against her nose, I look into her dull eyes, which bear the trace of utter exhaustion. I put my right hand on her neck, on her nose, then on her upper lip, breathing the last vestiges of her breath. My field of vision is entirely filled by her head. I plunge deeper into the well of her eyes. There is a huge grey circle lit by the candle. I am in a cypress forest at nightfall. Or am I at the entrance to a tunnel at sunset, a time tunnel, a corridor opening to take me far into time and space?

Diary Extract 1

Fragments that Have Slipped from the Notebook of a Dog's Companion

I wonder what images will appear on the screen of my dark inner cinema at the moment of my death. My father died some time during the night of 2 April 1994, alone, far from any familial or familiar presence, in a ward of several beds in a small private hospital of a town named Stork River. He had just been put into hospital. The coming of the Grim Reaper is always sudden. We had prepared ourselves, but we weren't ready.

In
Literature or Life
, Jorge Semprún devotes several pages of shattering beauty to the death agony of the great sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in the Buchenwald concentration camp. The Spanish writer notes that, ‘conscious of the need for a prayer', he recited aloud, for the one who ‘was slowly being emptied of his vital substance', some lines from Baudelaire: ‘“O death, old captain, it is time, let us weigh anchor! . . . Our hearts known to you are filled with beams of light!”' ‘A slight quiver' then appeared ‘on the lips' of his old teacher. I would have liked to do the same for my father, who lay snugly in a
hospital bed. I am not ashamed to say it. I am not Semprún; my father is not Halbwachs; our circumstances are not tragic like theirs. But the need—it is imperative—to say a prayer and to be with the one who is making this decisive leap is the same.

My father passed away in the nocturnal silence of a hospital ward. No one knew of his dying, apart perhaps from the person in the next bed, who would have noticed some irregularity in his breathing.

I imagine in vain the thoughts that would have crossed his mind; in vain I picture the familial scenes of times past which he might have replayed in his mind's eye like a kaleidoscope of images. I remain forever separated from the truth that was lost to silence and ink-black darkness. What do you see when death comes to you? What happens at the moment when consciousness falls into the abyss of nothingness? All the dead know it; the living remain ignorant.

Part I

TO BE SENSITIVE, TO BE COMPASSIONATE

3

A DOUBLE BIRTH

IT
'
S SUMMER
. During the day the heat is oppressive, and sometimes it goes on into the night. But on this particular morning we wake up and it is unexpectedly cool. How delightful! So I get up and go for a walk. I like to steal along the peaceful streets of the sleeping town. I do a big loop of the neighbourhood, often walking by the memorial garden of Hyakkannon (Hundred Statuettes of the Merciful Goddess). There are trees there, cherries and maples. I pass people walking dogs who meet in the middle of the street or beneath a maple still covered in greenery to stop and chat for a moment. I run, I stop. I run again. An hour later I return, dripping with sweat. A warm shower revives me.

A friend calls us around two in the afternoon to tell us that her golden retriever, oddly named Danna—oddly because it's a Japanese name meaning ‘Master, head of the house'—has just given birth to eight puppies. She knows that my daughter,
Julia-Madoka, who has just turned twelve, has been longing to have a puppy for ages. She tells me that she'll invite us to come and see them when the puppies have grown a little and are ready to leave their mother and the house where they were born.