Back Up

by Paul Colize

  The man’s eyes moved, and rested on the physio.

  Dominique’s smile broadened. He winked at X Midi.

  ‘She’s right. I’m sure we’ll get along fine.’

  The chief consultant stepped back into view.

  ‘Thanks to Dominique, you’ll be able to visit our pool. We’ve allowed for two or three sessions a week. It will do you a great deal of good.’

  Dominique winked again.

  ‘You’ll see. Pool sessions with Dominique – the best thing!’

  Now it was Marie-Anne Perard’s turn to smile.

  ‘I hope Dominique’s enthusiasm proves infectious. I hear you can move your fingers – is that right?’

  No reaction.

  ‘Are you hot? Would you like us to take off your gown for a few minutes?’

  The man shifted his eyes to the television screen. An American soap was playing with the sound turned down.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you in peace. Keep up the good progress.’

  She left the room. Dominique stayed behind, alone with X Midi.

  He moved close to the bed, smiling broadly.

  ‘So, it’s just the two of us now. I suggest we both get along on first-name terms – what do you say?’

  X Midi continued staring at the television.

  ‘If you’re in agreement, blink once.’

  No reaction.

  The physio laughed heartily.

  ‘You are some joker! You understand what I’m saying, but you don’t want to answer, is that it?’

  X Midi ignored the question.

  ‘OK, you don’t want to talk. You’d rather watch rubbish on TV?’

  He had an idea.

  ‘Know what, if we do some good work together, you and me, I can help you get some more movement in your fingers. Once they’re agile, we’ll teach you to use the remote. You can choose what you want to watch. What do you think?’

  The man detached his gaze from the TV and stared into the physio’s eyes.

  Dominique wagged his head, his eyes open wide in triumph.

  ‘Aha! That’s got you interested!’

  The man stared at him intently.

  ‘You’d like me to work with you so you can stop watching this crap and choose whichever programme you want?’

  The man shifted his gaze back to the images on the screen.

  31: FIRST TRAIN TO CALAIS

  They lay me out on a plastic mat. On top, they lay a square of blue, synthetic material. The heat prickles my backside. They wrap me in a gown that makes me sweat.

  They know what they are doing. It’s a stratagem to get me to talk.

  They’ve sent me Snow White, but I’m not fooled. Snow White was younger, though they are alike in other ways – the same enthusiasm, the same laugh. He’s been trying to blackmail me, almost from the first moment I saw him.

  He has them take me to the pool. It’s an ordeal, I hate it. The men in white burst into my room unannounced and take me to a white-tiled room. A sort of spider’s web is lowered from the ceiling. They truss me up in the net and dip me into a pool filled with warm water. For a moment, I feel like one of the kids learning to swim at La Perche.

  When the night is over, they take my temperature and blood pressure. They administer their drugs through the gastric tube. They hook up a plastic bag filled with brownish liquid. When the bag’s empty, they take me out of the room, down a labyrinth of corridors. One day, a few notes of music floated from one of the rooms. ‘A Day in the Life’. The nightmare came back to haunt me.

  In the corridors, I cross paths with the others. Crips. Nutters. Death-cheaters. Poor sods with no legs, no arms, twisted faces, mouths stuck in a hideous leer.

  When they see me, they stare. I can read their eyes.

  A kid so thin it’s frightening stations himself near the entrance, huddled in his chair. He reads comic books out loud. In the lift, I met a young woman in a wheelchair. She was beautiful. She smiled at me. Her chest was strapped into a corset. She had only one leg.

  After the TV weather report, they take me to a big room. They hoist me up in the middle like Christ on the summit of Golgotha. They exhibit me for all to see. At my feet, the crips gesticulate, and pedal, and sigh, and groan, and lift their eyes to me.

  And then – sacrificed, powerless, entirely at their mercy – I think of Floriane. I see her smile, her misty gaze, the open gift of her body. I hear her voice breathing my name in the half-light.

  I never understood it was a call for help.

  Winter came, and 1965 was almost upon us.

  I was drinking more and more. My daily intake of hash or grass had become a vital need, and money was short.

  Jimbo, the dealer who supplied my dope, suggested I work for him. He hung around Rue de la Huchette, plying his trade from group to group.

  He boasted of living in the same building as Chester Himes, on Rue Bourbon-le-Chateau. He must have been five or six years older than me. A port-wine stain slashed his forehead. He was incapable of standing still, always fidgeting and glancing around, as if afraid someone might appear out of nowhere.

  It was my job to hang around the bistros near private schools attended by the offspring of the wealthy bourgeoisie, and pass on his merchandise.

  In France, back then, plenty of stuff was produced and trafficked, but it wasn’t widely used. In Paris, there were still a few opium dens, and a handful of night clubs in Montparnasse where you could sniff or inject heroin. In Pigalle, the blacks smoked ‘Marie-Jeanne’ in the basements of certain bars, but this was nothing to what I found later, in London.

  I hesitated, but Jimbo set me straight. I would be doing the kids a service, expanding their consciousness, opening the doors of perception to another place, far from the materialist consumer society that rotted their souls in the here and now.

  For the others, grass was just another component of their philosophy of anti-institutionalism, freedom from constraint and intellectual enquiry far off the beaten track. Jimbo’s words reflected their thinking. They made sense. I agreed to work for him.

  Next day, I began prospecting. After a few fruitless attempts, I found a good spot, a bistro on Rue de Londres, not far from a well-known private school. At lunch break, and after class, the bistro filled with hordes of pretentious, reckless kids.

  For the first few days, I made a show of ignoring them, absorbed in a book I took along for the purpose. I chose titles likely to attract their attention – On the Road, The Catcher in the Rye, or The Naked Lunch, but also texts by Sartre, or Cocteau. I bought a book by Françoise Sagan, too. I heard she had been a student at their school for a time.

  With my nose in my book, I listened to their talk. Mostly platitudes and chit-chat, but they would discuss current affairs, too, or philosophy, or politics. They took themselves tremendously seriously, and seemed convinced they were part of some sort of élite.

  One day, I insinuated my way into the conversation. They were surprised at first. My appearance and way of talking were disconcerting, but they had got used to seeing me around, and let me have my say.

  I did the same over the days that followed. They found my ideas attractive, even seductive, and finally, fascinating.

  All I did was rehearse the broad lines of the arguments put forward by other members of our group. I repeated what I heard every day, with conviction. I talked about the counter-culture, about ignoring tomorrow, about freedom, peace and love. I told them about writers I had met. I told them about myself. I invented a past life with my philosopher parents, in some mysterious country on the other side of the world.

  Day by day, my aura blossomed. I grew in their estimation, from marginal, to original, until finally I acquired the status of guru. When I walked into the bistro, a group would form around me. They would wait for me to arrive, and press me with questions.

  I would look inspired, talking quietly, with great serenity, just as I had seen Alex do. They seemed unbothered by my persistent stumbling, over certain words. Sometimes
I would answer with a stream of nonsense. They drank it in. I was astonished by the influence I exerted over them.

  Meanwhile, Jimbo was becoming impatient.

  I told him I was making progress, but that it was important to take things step by step.

  One thing led to another, and the question was broached: what could help them attain the level of consciousness and lucidity they so envied in me?

  I told them to meet me one Thursday afternoon in the Saint-Lazare train station, nearby. We found a quiet corner. I rolled a joint in front of them and told them to pass it around, explaining how to inhale the smoke.

  The effects were soon felt. One by one, they got high as kites.

  Next day, they placed their first order.

  Floriane was one of them. She was my age. She was beautiful, with long blonde hair, freckles that devoured her face and big, blue eyes that called out in distress. She was an only child. Her father was a high-powered businessman, and her mother had taken a lover.

  She became one of my best clients. Her personal consumption increased steadily, and she brought new recruits, demanding greater and greater quantities.

  After a few weeks, she wanted to take things to the next level. I was reluctant, but she insisted, so I spoke to Jimbo.

  He told me she was quite right. Puffing a joint was a joke, compared to shooting up. Intravenous was best, he said. He talked about ‘the flash’. He could get what she wanted.

  I had no idea what he was talking about. He said he would administer her first shoot, and show her how to do it herself.

  I spoke to Floriane.

  A few days later, she told me to come to her place that night. The timing was right; her father was away on business, and her mother was sleeping elsewhere.

  That evening, I went to her place with Jimbo. He brought two friends along, Fuzzi, a guitarist I saw from time to time at Chez Popov, and Roman, an angular type with a beaked nose, who I had never seen before, and who was introduced as a childhood friend.

  Floriane was waiting with a friend, Pascale, a brown-haired girl with generous breasts and a wild look. Floriane lived next to the Parc Monceau, in a big apartment painted entirely in white. The carpet was white, too. Colourful pictures hung on the walls. A huge, gleaming, black grand piano took pride of place in the sitting room.

  She put on some music. We sank into deep, raw leather sofas. We got to know one another, smoked and drank. Jimbo prepared a pipe crammed with a dark, thick, viscous substance. He called it dross and said we could tell him what we thought of it, later.

  Things soon hotted up. I was very drunk, and half stoned. Floriane took me by the hand and led me to her parents’ bedroom. As soon as she had closed the door, she pressed herself against me and kissed me on the mouth.

  I had no idea what Jimbo had put in the pipe, but we were both very turned on. I hadn’t slept with anyone since leaving Brussels. She knelt. I climaxed almost immediately, and again when we made love, responding to Floriane’s small cries of pleasure.

  Then she got up, opened the door and called to Jimbo. He entered the room, looked at me and smiled.

  He held a bath towel, which he spread over the bed. He assembled the syringe and filled it. Floriane looked anxious. He told her he was used to this, everything would be all right.

  He strapped her biceps, tapped on her forearm, found a vein, inserted the needle and pressed down on the syringe. Floraine shuddered, her eyes rolled back and her whole body jerked.

  Jimbo told me to leave the room and fetch Roman.

  In the sitting room, Fuzzi was flirting with Pascale. They were half-lying on the divan, licking one another’s lips. He had one hand under her sweater, caressing her breasts. Their cheeks were on fire.

  I poured myself a whisky. I wandered into the library. I staggered along the corridor. My perspective was distorted. I lost all notion of time and distance.

  When I came back to the sitting room, Pascale was kneeling at the foot of the sofa, one hand moving under her skirt, while Fuzzi hunched over her mouth.

  I heard sounds from the bedroom. I hesitated at first, but thought I heard a cry. I pushed the door. Floriane lay sandwiched between Jimbo and Roman. She looked absent, inert, her body jerking with the movements of the other two. She turned to look at me and stretched out a hand. The scene was blurred, unreal, distant.

  I didn’t understand that it was a call for help.

  I left and closed the door. I was close to passing out. I had a vague sense that what was happening in the bedroom was not right, that rules had been broken. I was aware of it, but unable to summon the energy to feel outraged or do anything about it. I stood for a long time in front of the closed door.

  A long cry rang out. Jimbo and Roman emerged from the bedroom. They were shouting at one another. In the sitting room, they came to blows. Fuzzi and Pascale had disappeared into one of the bedrooms. Jimbo and Roman were trading blows, making no effort to shield themselves from each other’s swipes. The punches made a dull, thudding noise. Jimbo was bleeding from the nose. Blood spurted, staining the white walls and carpet. Roman carried on hitting him. Jimbo swayed. His face was covered with blood.

  I took fright and left. I ran. People stared at me in the street. I must have looked like a madman. I managed to get home. Candy and I were sharing a fourth-floor room in a building on Rue de la Harpe. I hid under the covers and sank into unconsciousness.

  Candy shook me awake at dawn.

  Jimbo was outside on the street.

  I had a headache. Images from the night before came to me in waves. I felt as if I had woken from a nightmare. I put my head out of the window. Jimbo looked half-crazed. I went downstairs. He was covered in bruises. Something had gone badly wrong. My girlfriend had thrown herself out of a window. The police were looking for witnesses. He was leaving for Marseille.

  I packed and locked my case in two minutes flat. I took the metro to the Gare du Nord and boarded the first train to Calais.

  32: SOMETHING QUITE EXTRAORDINARY

  Dominique quickly became a valued member of the clinical team.

  In a short space of time, he established himself as something of an attraction with the nurses. His unshakeable good humour, infectious enthusiasm and jokes delighted the carers and patients alike.

  Shortly after arriving early each morning, his catchphrase would ring out along the corridors.

  ‘…the best thing!’

  Some of the patients liked to take up the refrain, imitating his sing-song tones.

  A few of the doctors thought his bonhomie went a little too far: he would do better to adopt a more discreet approach, especially in an establishment like the Derscheid Clinic.

  Dominique was unbothered. Out of earshot, he mimicked their stuffy attitude and referred to them as the Grouches.

  His professional skill was universally praised, on the other hand. He never had to look for the sites of pain in a patient’s body: he said he could sense them. They presented themselves to him, he could feel them in his fingers, as if the pain was his own. He did more than ease the muscular aches and contractions, he drew them out, made them his own and relieved the sufferer of them completely.

  Several patients had adopted him as a valued confidant, in recognition of his expert treatment, and his ability to boost their morale.

  He never questioned the concerns people confided to him, any more than he would belittle the suffering his patients told him they endured. He never patronised, never claimed to ‘know what they were feeling’, but would listen, eyes wide, a smile on his lips. For some, the mere sight of his face was therapeutic. He convinced his patients they were strong and tenacious, with the energy they needed to battle on and overcome their pain.

  In many cases, his methods proved beneficial.

  Since joining the clinic on the thirtieth of June, Dominique had spent at least two hours a day with X Midi.

  He tracked the latter’s progress, and administered the sequence of treatments prescribed by the doctors. T
he initial efforts to get X Midi out of bed and into a wheelchair had been a success. Now he had to work on the patient’s balance and autonomy when seated.

  After that, they would tackle the wheelchair controls, if the man chose to cooperate. Dominique worked on X Midi’s breathing, too, helping to him to recover maximal movement in his thoracic cage.

  Their close contact, day by day, led to the development of an unusual strategy.

  Before entering X Midi’s room, Dominique would announce his arrival with a simulated quick-fire dialogue, out in the corridor. His voice carried all around, and the tragi-comic exchanges delighted the occupants of the neighbouring rooms.

  ‘Good morning, my friend! Good to see you, did you sleep well? Sweet dreams?’

  ‘Morning Dominique! Well, I dreamed I was swimming with you!’

  ‘Aha! In the pool?’

  ‘No, the Caribbean.’

  ‘In the Caribbean, with me? My-oh-my! No sharks, I hope?’

  ‘Plenty! Great White Sharks.’

  ‘Uh-oh! The ones with stethoscopes around their necks? The worst thing!’

  He would burst out laughing, then poke his head through the door, often catching X Midi by surprise. Alerted by the sound of Dominique’s voice, his patient would be looking out for him, from the corner of his eye. Entering the room, he would glance at the TV and pass comment.

  ‘Seen this episode, the gardener did it.’

  Standing at X Midi’s bedside, he would slip the remote control into the patient’s hand.

  ‘Let’s try another channel, just press one of the buttons.’

  The occupational therapist reckoned X Midi was capable of using the remote now, and the controls on the electric wheelchair. But still he refused to make the effort, and seemed uninterested in the possibility of greater autonomy.

  Dominique would wait a few moments, then take back the remote.

  ‘Fine, well in that case I’m putting on MTV. Music while we work!’