Melodie (6 page)

One day I learnt of the death of one of Danna's offspring from the same litter. It had been taken by an illness of a violent nature that the vet had been unable to explain. It had vomited to the point of exhaustion and nothing had been able to stop this hellish reflex from taking hold of its body. I realised that dogs do not live as long as humans; my daughter was therefore aging six or seven times faster than I was. It was a scandalous situation. Of course the gap between the canine species and our own as to life expectancy constituted a basic fact dictated by the laws of nature, but I couldn't come to accept it.

So the idea came to me to perpetuate her life by asking her to leave descendants. We had a lot of trouble finding her a good match. But, finally, a suitor presented himself; the union took place at his house. And, one December day, she brought nine puppies into the world, one of which was stillborn.

To whelp—I cannot get used to this expression which seems to be inelegant, even ugly: why does French make a strict distinction between the act of giving birth to an offspring in the case of animals and the act of bringing a child
into the world in the case of humans? The whelping, then, began towards midnight. We had asked for the assistance of Mrs A, who was the person closest to Mélodie outside my little family. She is a masseuse by profession, and quite familiar with what to do in this situation. She had already worked as a midwife, if I can put it like that, when Danna had given birth to her puppies four years earlier. As for me, an excruciating herniated disc condemning me to immobility, I was as useless as a folding umbrella in a raging typhoon.

An area equivalent to two tatamis fenced with sturdy cardboard had been prepared to serve as a delivery room. The mother-to-be was lying on old newspaper that had been spread out in readiness for the first contractions. Mrs A, seated facing Mélodie, placed her hands on her round belly. Each time that she stroked them right along her body from the neck to the rump Mélodie closed her eyes and, a few seconds later, stared at the masseuse with a gentle, pleading expression in her eyes.

The first one, dark brown, showed no delay in arriving. It was wrapped in a kind of gelatinous, translucent membrane, which the young mother tore and removed by licking it vigorously. This gesture was essential. The puppy would other wise have been unable to breathe as it changed from one mode of existence to another. The schoolgirl took it upon herself to put around the neck of each new arrival a little collar of coloured wool so that we could tell one from another. She also had to write on the cardboard wall the name of each puppy and the time of its birth. We agreed to call the first one Malek, after a dear friend of the same name. Once the birthing process was underway the other puppies
followed at fairly regular intervals. After four or five births there was a pause. We wondered if that mightn't be it. Mrs A stopped her massaging. She needed to rest. But Mélodie lifted her head, which was resting between her two front paws, and looked at the masseuse with a disconcerted expression. Her look was perfectly eloquent. Our friend from Akiruno quickly resumed her role as a midwife.

The second one was called Gatsby because the teenager was at the time reading
The Great Gatsby
with much enjoyment; the third, Jazz, the fifth, Tosca, the sixth, Amati, the seventh, Amélie, the eighth, Lulu, and, lastly, the ninth, Bartók. Mrs A continued to practise her skills in shiatsu on the belly of the birthing mother. The two hands stroked slowly in the direction of the growth of her fur. Eight little bundles of flesh of a darker or lighter sandy colour stirred as if attracted by an invisible force. When the two magical hands, pressing firmly, moved again towards the new mother's rump, she suddenly got up and gave her coach a complicit look.

‘It's finished, I think.'

There was a long silence, accompanied by sighs of relief. Then some timid applause …

‘
Gokurosan!
(may all your pain be blessed)', I said automatically.

I was stretched out, paralysed by pain in my lower back, not far from the space defined by the cardboard. I heard it all through the chaos of bodily sensations.

‘Are you saying that to me? Or to the young mother?' asked the masseuse in an amused voice.

‘To the mother of course, but to you too …'

‘Is it truthful, this lie?'

There were peals of laughter. Barely had the start of a laugh taken hold of me than I felt a stab of pain splitting my back. I forced myself to keep my mouth shut.

But the puppies needed to be watched. Were they attaching well to their mother? Night was gradually fading. The teenage girl, who'd gone to bed long ago, had noted, in her careful handwriting, the names of the puppies until the arrival of the third, Jazz. Her mother had taken over from there.

‘For the fifth one, what shall we choose?'

We didn't really know. We decided by default on whatever sounded more or less like a dog name among the music and cinema references that came to mind. Why Amati, for example? Because Mrs Suzuki, the violin teacher whom my brother had just met up with again after thirty-five years in which neither had made any contact with the other, played on a wonderful Amati. And Bartók? Julia-Madoka was working on several pieces from
Mikrokosmos
.
Amélie
obviously came from the film of that name, which she adored. Tosca from Puccini's opera, Lulu from that by Alban Berg, but also after a happy and cheerful aunt of Michèle's.

The fourth one, not named, was stillborn. Mrs A saw straight away that it wasn't alive. Hastily, she took it and wrapped it in newspaper to put it out of the mother's sight.

When the task was completed and all the little ones had begun to suckle peacefully, the mother licked them one after the other. She did the rounds of the whole litter several times, determinedly. Mrs A, exhausted after the night she'd spent tirelessly massaging the dog, finally got up and told us that she was going to take the first train home. Michèle thanked her cheerfully for her dedication and darted a furtive glance
at the mother surrounded by her eight newborns. She was astounded to see her baring her fangs for a brief couple of seconds, looking up at the face of the masseuse from below. Mrs A hadn't noticed it.

Day was breaking. The intermittent sound of the newspaper deliverer's motorbike could be heard as he moved further and further away, stopping and starting. The jug boiled, the toaster's timer made a tic-tac sound as it went off. Breakfast was being prepared in the kitchen. I'd passed the rest of the night in the same place, that is to say on the floor of the living room next to the sofa. I noticed that I was covered with a big blanket that wasn't there two hours before. So I must have slept a little. I called out a pained hello to Michèle, who came over to see how I was. It was then, throwing a quick glance at the little cardboard house, that she realised that the puppies, in the absence of their mother, were snoozing on their own. ‘Where is she? Where's she gone? What's happening?'

I sat down in some pain. I rested back against the sofa. Suddenly Michèle's voice came from the other end of the apartment.

‘What are you doing? Aren't you looking after your little ones?'

Scarcely had Michèle's voice reached me than I saw Mélodie appear through the open glass doors of the living room. She was holding in her mouth a little toy made of yellow rubber in the shape of a crocodile. She came towards me, making little moans. She lifted her right front paw to give it to me. ‘So, what have you got there, my little one?' I asked her. She let go of the toy while looking me straight in the eye.
Then she began to lick my face as if she were telling me something, as if she wanted to wipe from my face the signs of a night of pain that had been endured.

‘Thank you, thank you, my friend.'

She picked up her crocodile again and went slowly towards the cardboard house. She stepped over the little low wall of about thirty centimetres we'd made as an entrance for her. She lay down near her offspring and gently placed the yellow plaything among them. Finally she put her muzzle between her dazzling white front paws and gave a deep sigh.

From that day, until the departure of the puppies and the complete demolition of the cardboard house, the yellow crocodile never again left the maternal fold.

12

PITY

ONE DAY
, at the end of a period of intensifying lower back pain, I was crippled by ghastly shooting pains through my loins.

I was conducting oral exams at the university. It was a Saturday afternoon. When the last candidate had left I marked his performance and jumped up from an acute pain in my lower back. Too late. In a flash I was literally floored by what seemed like an electric shock of maximum voltage. I was lying on my back, as if paralysed. What to do? First I had to get back to my office and call my wife or an ambulance. I gathered all my remaining strength in order to get up. To start with I couldn't even turn over. Finally, with the help of a chair on which I'd sat during the orals, I managed to stand up … I don't know how long I took to perform this simplest of movements that normally only takes a fraction of a second. Drops of sweat beaded on my brow. A sensitive ear
would have picked up the sound of my teeth chattering in pain. I started to walk … But I wasn't able to … Still I walked … I walked … or, rather, I attempted something resembling human steps. I leaned against the wall of the dark corridor to put my legs one in front of the other. I sensed their proud and painful presence so strongly that it was as if they no longer belonged to me. After thirty never-ending minutes, experiencing a level of torture like nothing I'd ever known in my life, I nonetheless reached my office and succeeded in opening the door. With my left hand I reached for the telephone … Suddenly a kind of black curtain dropped in front of my eyes.

An MRI scan revealed a severely herniated disc. After a large anaesthetic injection, which only gave me a few hours' relief, the doctor explained that I would need the patience of a player of Go and that I'd have to wait until the gelatinous core of the intervertebral disc was back in place and no longer pressed on the roots of the sciatic nerve. There was only one thing to do: stay in bed and not move. I left the hospital. It was the first time that I'd walked with a stick. An old lady stood up for me on the bus. I accepted without shame and sat down.

I returned home a little before midday. I took the prescribed analgesic medications, but they didn't take effect for some time. The pain put a complete stop to anything I felt like doing. Sitting on a chair I hated the chair; lying on my back or my side I loathed the mattress and the tatamis. Whatever position I found for myself, the aching discomfort pursued me, assailing and tormenting me without respite.
Indescribable radiating pains made me writhe in my bed. I no longer knew where to put my feet. Then I heard the sharp little sound made by Mélodie's claws when she walked on the wooden floor. The distinctive click-clack came nearer. Then, suddenly, I heard nothing more. I was lost in the dormant rage of my bruised nerves …

… I was slowly coming out of a state of blessed torpor when she gave a deep sigh. I felt her warm breath. She had lain down beside me; she had rested her muzzle on the edge of the mattress that was placed level with the tatamis. Clearly, she was waiting until I woke up. I was in darkness. I switched on my bedside lamp. It was almost seven o'clock. The happiness of having forgotten the existence of my own body was already behind me. I patted her head.

‘Thank you, Mélodie, thank you.'

You could see how pregnant she was. A week later, when I was still not recovered, she would bring into the world a litter of puppies brimming with vitality.

I got up and started to walk painfully in the direction of the kitchen from which came the sound of the meal being prepared. She got up in turn and followed me.

Michèle told me that Mélodie had passed the whole afternoon next to my sick and suffering body, motionless, like a stone statue guarding the entrance to a temple. During dinner, interrupted several times by sharp pains that made me feel quite crazed and forced me to sprawl over or try desperately to find a position that, if not soothing, at least didn't produce this stabbing sensation, she remained right next to my chair, being careful not to touch my feet, which didn't really know whether they wanted to be placed on the
wooden floor or to remain dangling in the air. Every time I left the table to stretch out on my back or stomach, those big round black eyes of hers stared at me from a sideways angle, without her head moving even the slightest. Then she stood up at once, her ears pricked, when I let a cry of pain escape from my mouth.

I stayed prostrate for more than two weeks, wracked with pain. I only got up to eat and to go to the bathroom. I couldn't do anything else. I did read in bed to stop myself from getting bored when I was in a little less pain thanks to the medication, but I found the continual inactivity difficult to bear. What diverted me and even succeeded in lifting my spirits a little was Mélodie's constant presence and empathetic gaze: she was there at my side night and day except at the time of her two daily walks, which Michèle and Julia-Madoka took on throughout this period. While it was still daylight she remained lying at the foot of the big marital bed, staring at the sick man each time he stirred or muttered a few ill-tempered, incomprehensible words. When night came she placed herself just next to me, the position she only took up again on the last two nights of her existence.