Still With Me (23 page)

“To be alone is to refuse to go toward others. To be desperate is to refuse to imagine hope. By deciding to die, you
made a decision that affected other people, other lives that counted on yours as a foundational element. You destroyed the meaning of your life and of those who were meant to build theirs around you, with you. Do you regret it, Jeremy? How much?”

The light seemed to come toward him. Or maybe he was moving toward the light.

Simon appeared and approached Jeremy. Jeremy thought he seemed to slide along the ground in slow motion. Simon leaned over his father and kissed his forehead. Jeremy’s vision was blurry. He heard his son speak to him in a muffled voice without seeing his lips move.

“I missed you, Father. Your absence took over my life as I foolishly tried to forget you. The truth is, you were the monster hidden in the shadows of my nightmares. We never said your name, afraid you might appear. Even so, at times I needed to imagine you as someone loving, the one you seemed to be for a day, just long enough to leave an obscure warmth in my heart. But reality snuffed it out, and the cruel storms threw my dreams onto the sharp edges of my wounded mind.

“When I found you, it was too late to start over. It was just enough to end the last sentence of a paragraph that would make sense of all these years of waiting. I only knew you for a few hours. But they were so rich. Rich enough to make me regret all the years I spent hating you and hoping for you. I missed you so much.”

Simon disappeared, and Thomas took his place. He stood a few feet from Jeremy.

“How ironic. Only on your deathbed does your face finally show some humanity. You’re a trickster, a thief of meaning. You forbade me from ever being careless and stole my childhood, drying up the source of my dreams. Only nightmares lit my nights with their putrid colors. I was afraid to go anywhere and find you there, ready to destroy my mother and ruin our hopes for a better future—a future without you.

“Where you’re going, a man is only worth what he left behind: love, hate, virtue, vice, loftiness, lowness. At the moment of judgment, punishment and prayer become his only measure. I accept my inheritance, and I’ll put it in your file. A witness for the prosecution.”

Jeremy wanted to escape these visions, shut out these voices. They were torture. His soul sought an exit, yearning
for rest. Escape this body? Move toward the light? Find comfort in its warmth?

But then his parents appeared. His father held a little girl in his arms whose face Jeremy couldn’t see. He looked at Jeremy with cold eyes. “I don’t forgive you.”

Then his mother came forward. “What have you done to us, Jeremy?” she whispered. Then she stepped back.

Suddenly, his heart seized. The light called to him.

But then Victoria came. She leaned over and smiled. Her eyes were full of love. “I love you,” she told him.

She was so beautiful. Her presence alone was gentle enough to calm him. Then Jeremy’s soul floated up to her, trying to absorb her sweet energy.

But a prayer, spoken in many voices, suddenly broke out. His father, Simon, and Abraham Chrikovitch reappeared around his bed. The three men rocked back and forth around his body, slack and inert. They recited the prayer for the dead. Jeremy was fully aware of his end. All the pain that fed on him in his short life came back to attack his soul.

He looked for the old man who prayed for him every time he was about to die. This person, who’d become so
familiar, would ease his raging fear. But the man wasn’t there. And yet Jeremy felt his presence, so close. Now was the moment he should be crying, begging, and praying. Jeremy’s soul rose up and went looking for him. It floated through the room, passing close to the men who sang their prayers without touching them. Then it lifted higher and looked down on the scene. And Jeremy saw the old man.

He was lying down, eyes closed, with three men praying around him.

Hoping to escape the horrific vision of his own face, Jeremy’s soul let itself be carried toward the light, bearer of promises, which seemed somehow, at the far end of an abyss, to be eternally beyond reach. The strange light had a strength of its own and calmed Jeremy. It was the sum of all his joys and sorrows. Potential balance, a corridor of serenity between opposing forces.

But the cries, the cries interfered with his movement. Sounds that rent his exalted soul as easily as a blade cuts the skin of a child. Jeremy’s soul stopped to listen to these noises and the words that expressed only pain. He hung there, suspended, hesitating.

The cries grew louder. Each one was a blow that struck him, pushed him back, forcing him to re-inhabit his body. Once again, Jeremy felt the contours of his cadaver, still there, as an extension of his soul.

Immediately, a cold breath invaded him. And a new fear. The cries became more numerous, the cold more piercing, the darkness more opaque.

He heard his mother’s voice. “What did we do?” she asked, sobbing.

The other sounds came to him from farther away. Then another voice lifted above the haunting tumult. It was Victoria’s. “I love you,” she told him.

And the two voices met and rebounded in a single echo. His mother and his wife, together, called to him. The words, now so close, struck his spirit with an unspeakable violence. He wanted to scream.

His soul tried again to leave his cold, dying body and move in the direction of light and warmth. At that moment, he was aware of his suicide and realized his horror. He relived each of his awakenings. All those moments, all the words, all the feelings of those few days were there. And each one was a sharp sliver of life that pierced his soul.

Then he realized the warmth that attracted him was nothing but an illusion. Nothing waited for him out there. Just an echo of his cries. A tumult that would never cease, becoming his hell.

Panicked, Jeremy tried to cling to the walls of the abyss that surrounded him. But the effort seemed impossible. He flew into a rage. He hadn’t had his second chance. He didn’t deserve this much suffering.

He understood now. But what good was it to realize his mistake if he couldn’t undo it? Was that his hell, like Abraham Chrikovitch said? No, impossible. He was about to die. What was the meaning of this nightmare? Could he wake up from it? He hadn’t had his second chance.

Then Jeremy spoke to the light, to God. He begged forgiveness. Yes, he had offended God! Yes, he had hurt his parents, his wife, his children. But now he understood the value of life. What could he do to earn God’s forgiveness? How could he express his suffering? How could he put words to his deep desire to live, to build a life, to make his loved ones happy?

They would forgive him, he knew it. They would forgive the person he was before his suicide. But God?

The words from a torn page rose up to assail his mind. The disordered sentences torn from memory. And he screamed.
I call to you, Adonai; to Adonai I plead for mercy: “What advantage is there in my death, in my going down to the pit? Can the dust praise you? Can it proclaim your truth? Hear me, Adonai, and show me your favor! Adonai, be my helper!
”

Suddenly Jeremy regained feeling in his body. The taste of alcohol and prescription pills reappeared on his tongue, and he felt nauseous.

Feeling his throat open to eject the poison, he called her name: “Victoria!”

And a hand squeezed his.

To write is to be alone, inhabited by many people. But as soon as the text is finished, the future opens up to other people—the ones in real life. Those who prove willing to support you, advise you, encourage you, and help you live a few moments of life worthy of the most beautiful novel.

To thank the ones who first inspired me with their stories, I gave them a role in my texts. To thank my loved ones for surrounding me, I have only this page.

In order of appearance in my adventure:

No amount of water can quench love, torrents cannot drown it
.

—Song of Solomon

Gyslène, my wife, and my first reader.

My children, Solal, Jonas, Yalone, and Amiel, my first fans.

My sister Sabrina Sebban, my first editor, passionate and attentive.

My brother Bruno. An enthusiastic reader, he relieved me of my work so that I could write.

Charm is the true gift of the fairies. Without it you’ve nothing; with it, all
.

—Charles Perrault

Jessica Nelson. To her I owe the first magic call of a publishing house. She then encouraged me, advised me, and made the dream possible.

Poets are called by neighborly love to give the shirt off their backs
.

—Albert Cohen

My friends Michel Bensoussan, Franky Chriqui, Bruno Merle, and Samy Dreyfuss, for…so many things.

You’re part of my family, one rank, one breath
.

—Jean-Jacques Goldman

Their enthusiasm, assistance, and advice helped me move forward: Corinne Cohen, Laurette Cohen, Liliane and Ahava Cohen, Remy Atlan, Isabelle Bayle, Charles Chemla, Arnaud Cholley, Sylvie Cochet, Didier Dahan, Boris Gonzales, Olivier Gormand, Moïse and Yvonne Hadjadj, Amandine, Vanessa and Fabien Hazot, Catherine Paris, Jean-François Piscione, Virgonie Siksik, Cristiana Spataru.

Born in Casablanca, Morocco, Thierry Cohen moved to France at the age of two, as part of a family with five children. After a dramatic childhood, he found comfort in reading books—particularly the works of Americans such as John Fante, Ernest Hemingway, and Philip Roth—and eventually became a writer himself. He penned
Still with Me
following the suicide of his best friend, in hopes of healing his own pain and helping others who may be considering suicide. In 2007, the book won France’s Grand Prix Jean d’Ormesson. Today, Cohen lives in Lyon with his wife and four children.