Schrödinger's Dog

by Martin Dumont

  He wouldn’t look at me. I felt the tears welling up and left the room. In the corridor, I leaned my head against the wall. Blood was rushing to my temples; I had to let my emotions calm down. I felt like vomiting and headed for the restroom. No one was in there. I went into a stall and took the time to latch the door before kneeling. Nothing came up. I stuck a finger down my throat. Once, twice. The third time, I felt my stomach turn. I vomited coffee. It was black, I was surprised to see I’d drunk so much. I tried again but brought up only bile, which burned my throat.

  Someone came in. I wiped my mouth and flushed the toilet. I was afraid of being too red, afraid of being conspicuous. I took a deep breath. The guy went into the stall next to mine.

  Standing in front of the mirror, I saw a white, exhausted face.

  Back in the corridor, I spotted the oncologist. When she saw me, she interrupted her discussion and came to speak to me. The stairway was between us. I wanted to walk faster and flee up the stairs. My legs refused.

  “Mr. Marès?”

  I took her hand. She smiled politely. She’d looked in on Pierre, but I’d been out of the room. She wanted to talk to me. “Can I offer you some coffee in my office?” I thought back on the puke in the toilet. An opaque black. I said yes, and she smiled again.

  Her office was located in the other wing. The place was a cubbyhole, practically at the dead end of a corridor. Impressed as I had been by her, she lost her loftiness by receiving me there. There was a table with a computer on it and barely enough room left over for a notebook. Two chairs faced each other.

  The walls were entirely bare. No painting, no photograph. I inspected the table: not the smallest picture of her children. When I made that observation, she blinked. “I don’t have any.” She explained that she shared the space with another specialist. I thought back to a TV report I’d seen on the hospital. I’d changed the channel, because I found it ridiculous to feel sorry for physicians.

  She asked me how I liked my coffee. I didn’t react right away. “You don’t want coffee anymore?”

  Then I refocused and said, “Yes, yes. Black, no sugar.”

  I didn’t know where to look. There was a glass wall behind her, with a pivot window in its upper part. The window was fixed to a metal rod, but even opened as far as it would go, there was barely enough space to admit a breath of fresh air. I found that depressing, and I wondered why people installed such systems. Below the window, a gray filing cabinet blocked a significant portion of the light.

  She put a plastic cup in front of me and sat down. She tapped on her computer and furrowed her brow as she read her notes—a real doctorly trick. Finally, she looked up at me. She had green, magnificent eyes. They gazed deeply into mine.

  “Pierre’s condition has worsened.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  She went into detail. The cancer was spreading. “It’s extremely painful. The disease is attacking his liver and lungs as well. The cells have metastasized. He’s on morphine at the moment—we’ll see if his condition stabilizes.”

  I had a headache. It was hot, the office was too small. You can’t talk cancer in a closet. I took a sip of coffee. My blurred gaze wandered over her shoulders. The window was still behind her. I closed my eyes.

  Fathers are the reason hospitals hire security.

  She took a long, deep breath. I stiffened. I saw that she regretted her unguarded reaction at once. I’d understood, and it was too late: now I was on my guard.

  “Mr. Marès.”

  Her voice was a murmur, soft and somehow comforting.

  “There’s something you really must understand.”

  I agreed, as if to say I was ready to hear it.

  “Your son is now in palliative care. We’ve stopped his treatments; it’s time to keep him comfortable and free from pain.”

  I said, repeating her, “You’ve stopped his treatments.”

  Still her green eyes, wedged between mine.

  “It’s so we can support him along the way, you understand? So we can maintain his quality of life, as much as possible.”

  I said yes, I understood. I wasn’t lying. I understood. I could tell from the pain in my chest. I understood.

  A cold anger rose up in me; I hadn’t seen it coming. I got worked up. Maintain his quality of life. What did that mean? My son’s quality of life was what, exactly? I didn’t get it. What was it that had to be maintained? Did he still have a life? With that monster in his innards, that thing devouring him from inside? Every day, I watched him fade away a little more. My son, helplessly bedridden, dopey from his medications. And doomed to boot?

  What were they going to maintain the quality of if he was already dead?

  She lowered her eyes. “I’m very sorry.”

  Me, I’d had it with all these sorry people. I didn’t want them to be sorry. I didn’t want them to maintain his quality of life. I wanted them to maintain his life. Quality could come later. And besides, that part was my responsibility. I’d be able to take care of his quality. But first they had to give him back to me, they had to do their damn job. Anyway, it was nuts, the whole thing was nuts. And besides, who’d made the decision to stop his treatments?

  She told me to calm down. I would have liked her to bawl me out, but she spoke very kindly to me. That was worse, and it made me ashamed. I got up. I heard her say, “Come back and see me when you’re feeling better.” I walked to the elevator. Hot blood rose to my head and stung my cheeks.

  His quality of life.

  And me? What had I done for his quality of life? I recalled Pierre’s unsmiling face. His eyes, shouting at me to help him. The look of a son abandoned by his father. His quality of life.

  The elevator doors opened, but I didn’t move. Behind me, a nurse asked, “Aren’t you getting in?” I turned around.

  I retraced my steps down the corridor. I had no more control of what I was doing. I reached the door of Pierre’s room and went in without knocking. He was dozing. I sat down beside the bed and took his hand.

  “Pierre?”

  He opened his eyes. With an effort. I don’t know whether he recognized me. All the same, he sat up a little after a few seconds.

  “It’s Dad. Can you hear me, Pierre?”

  He nodded. I leaned over him and murmured, “An editor called.”

  6

  I didn’t go to see him today. Didn’t have the nerve. Then again, it may have been something else: didn’t feel like it. Maybe I was mad at him too.

  I got on the road and drove to the coast. I was thinking about my son, and it was like an ache in my guts. Was it possible to forget him? Or even better, should I have never had him? Yes, I liked that idea. Alone, I would have had a chance. When I loved people, they wrecked me. First Lucille, and now Pierre. In the long run, if you never love anybody, you spare yourself.

  All that thinking distracted me, and meanwhile the accelerator pedal was crushed against the floor. I was drifting, slipping away, far from the world. I was so sick and tired of being that guy, that half of a man, devastated with fear and grief. And then there was the guilt I felt, a never-ending thing. It had to stop. Sure, I’d told a lie, but it wasn’t my fault. I’d been forced, I had no choice. Pierre, his eyes, his suffering, plastered all over like a poster. No one had given me anything, not the least bit of hope. Futures taken and ruined, right before my eyes. Whole lives, suddenly gone. Not just Pierre’s, but mine too. And Lucille’s.

  I drove on, and the pain spread out. Like a wave, all the way to my fingertips, but still less violent somehow. I wanted everything to stop. Suppose I closed my eyes. It would be simple, all I’d have to do was wait. The slow deviation from a straight trajectory. To break out at last, to leave the goddamned road laid out for me. There would be an impact: violent, muffled, immediate. And, with a little luck, irreparable.

  I gave it some thought and sa
w it was cowardly, and I was already such a coward. After all, dying was clearly the easiest way out.

  I didn’t close my eyes. I felt like diving. Holding my breath and plunging underwater—I missed doing that. The tranquillity of it was something I’d never found anywhere else. I gripped the steering wheel tight and told myself that if I concentrated, I could make the weight inside my chest disappear.

  When I parked at the beach, my heartbeat slowed down. After putting on my gear, I did some stretching. Then I stared out at the sea, and it was self-evident.

  In fact, I don’t remember ever dreaming about anything else. I mean, when I was a kid, I already had the itch. All I had to do was fix my eyes on the surface. Just to imagine its depths, nothing but that, was intoxicating. And then farther off, of course, beyond the horizon. Often, when the sea was calm, I would wait, standing up, arms at my sides, my ears pricked. That was how I learned to see it coming. A little wind, and everything would start moving. It always began the same way: a wrinkle on the surface, a flag twitching at the entrance to the harbor. I’ve always loved that slow movement of great masses, the old motor coughing before turning over. The waves would surge toward me, and it fascinated me to know that they came from the other side of the world.

  Lucille loved that too. We’d sit on the rocks, the two of us, just to look. Like you do in front of a fire, without saying a word. With your eyes pointed at the dancing flames. Sometimes she’d press herself against me and I could hear her breathing. Her heart would be beating too fast. That would worry me, but I didn’t say anything. My Lucille—I don’t think she would have been able to dive with us.

  I slipped into the water and felt the cold run underneath my wetsuit. Soon I’d get warm, but first there’s a period of transition. I looked down and swam a few flat-palm strokes to get away from the shallows. The waves near the shore stirred up too much sand.

  When I reached the rocks, the water was seven meters deep. I pushed out a little farther. I swam for almost half an hour; I couldn’t see the bottom anymore. I dived three or four times, holding my breath for two minutes or so, nothing spectacular. It was pleasant to stop breathing. I loved the void around me; the silence, when the heart fades out.

  As I rose to the surface, I felt a current pushing me out to sea. It wasn’t very strong, and I amused myself by letting it have its way with me. In the end, I reached the surface. I blew into my snorkel to free it of water; I didn’t want to thrust my head out into the air just yet. Because it’s only when I’m submerged that I can relax. I mean, there’s always something I have to think about. Problems, worries, there’s no end to them. Sometimes they’re just little things, it’s true, and at other times they’re a bit bigger. But I always think a person has to fight. And then I get tired. Besides, when is it, exactly, that you can pause to breathe? On Lucille’s grave, they wrote REST IN PEACE.

  I’ve never known. Was she happy? I don’t mean just with me, but happy, period, happy in her life? How can you know that? Because it was always the same. Ultimately, it depends on your point of view. Sometimes she looked radiant to me. I’d tell myself that she’d finally found happiness, in spite of everything. Today I don’t know anymore. It was just my impression, and that’s not worth anything. Only reality counts. So why hadn’t I ever bothered to ask her?

  In the end, I let my head break the surface and saw that I was far from shore. I’d drifted several hundred meters away. Once again, it was tempting. I kicked out and realized I wasn’t making any progress. The current was dragging me down. I had a sudden vision of my body lost offshore—and what I saw had an effect like a whiplash. Everything in me woke up. Adrenaline flooded every muscle. I made some broad, sweeping strokes, and things improved. I was advancing, and the sea was throwing me out. Then the effort became too much, too hard. I wondered if I’d be able to make it.

  It was strange, and everything was turning in front of my eyes. Blurry visions of those I’d be leaving behind. There was François, and then Lucille’s parents. I was surprised, because they didn’t seem pleased. I saw some things I would never have imagined. On the sea floor, there was my black cab.

  I went under, I couldn’t even see the beach anymore. I was giving it all I had. Suddenly Pierre appeared. Someone explained to him that I had died in the sea. He didn’t cry, he just shook his head. “Drowned?” he asked. “Impossible.” I was the one who had taught him how to swim. “That makes no sense,” he kept repeating.

  I struggled harder and harder. I struck out with my arms, with my legs. Because I was bound and determined to see him again. I’ve never believed in a higher power, but I made my supplication all the same. It wasn’t easy, what with all that water in my mouth. “Please, let me see him just one more time.” I was ashamed, it was like being pounded in the stomach. Ashamed of running away, of my morbid thoughts. And I didn’t want to pay too dearly for them, so I swam hard; my entire body was thrashing around in the foam. I felt myself getting wearier and wearier, and it made me feel like crying. I pushed harder, and I had the impression that I was dragging up everything I had left. One last stroke, so I would have no regrets. And then I felt a shock against my shoulder. My hand slammed into sand, and I raised my head. I was face down, flat on my stomach in eight inches of water.

  7

  “Excuse me?”

  Her voice unnerved me a little. It also scared me. First I heard the surprise in it, and then the touch of indignation. I disregarded her tone. She shouldn’t see the flaws. My fright, for example, and my inner doubts. If she noticed those, there was no chance.

  I explained again, as clearly as possible. I wanted her to play an editor. Employed by a publishing house, and in charge of the manuscript submitted by one Pierre Marès. It wasn’t so complicated. She had to meet with my son once or twice. Make him understand that things were moving along. The same thing she usually did, in other words. After all, that was her profession, wasn’t it? Nothing to it. Everything the same, except make-believe.

  She made a face. I said I understood the difficulty, but I didn’t know anyone else. And besides, she’d be paid well. Yes, that wouldn’t be a problem. I was ready to cough up whatever it took.

  She adjusted her glasses. She was shaking all over. Mute anger. Understandable enough—I was backing her into a corner.

  “I…I can’t.”

  I calmly asked her why not. She said she couldn’t condone my plan. I sensed that she wanted to say more, but she held back. I said that wasn’t a problem. She said yes it was. I said no it wasn’t, leaning in. It was kind of ridiculous.

  A heavy silence set in. We were playing this game at her place, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was worried, but not without resources. I hadn’t tried actors yet. I could always find one who was out of work and ready to take on the role.

  “What you’re asking…it doesn’t make any sense. The book doesn’t exist…and besides, I’m only an editorial assistant. How do you expect me to—”

  “Do you really think that’s important?”

  She didn’t take me up on that. I could see the fear in her eyes, so I pressed harder.

  “Who gives a damn about that? You know this profession, you’re in the best position to play the part. I’m not asking you to agree with me. I’m asking you to help me.”

  “You’re asking me to lie.”

  I shook my head. “I’m asking you to tell him what he wants to hear.”

  My skull ached. I didn’t like the turn things were taking. There was no need for me to justify myself, not to her. I didn’t give a damn about what she might think. I felt like getting up, telling her to go fuck herself, heading for the government employment center, and hiring a temporary worker. But I didn’t dare. I decided I couldn’t trust actors, they’d take too many liberties with the role. And besides, if an actor was out of work, that meant he or she wasn’t any good.

  I murmured, “Don’t worry. In any case, it won’t
last very long. He’s in the terminal stage.”

  That time it was horror that I saw pass over her face. She averted her eyes and capitulated.

  She made it clear that she didn’t want anything. No instructions, no explanations, and especially no money. She told me she’d visit him only once, and even that was going too far. She would be alone, she said, on a day of her choosing. And I must never call her again.

  I replied that one time wasn’t much.

  “Take it or leave it.”

  I agreed.

  It took her four days to decide to visit Pierre. I went to see him at the hospital every morning. When I told him an editor was going to drop in, he thanked me. That struck me as odd. Thanks. For what? I nearly asked him the question.

  The four days were long. Pierre wanted her telephone number; he said he didn’t have very much time. He repeated that, and I felt something like a fire in my chest. In the end, I got upset. I told him he had to chill out. I said he had enough time, she was going to come, I hadn’t raised a capricious son. I yelled, and that calmed him down.

  All the while, I acted like a guy sure of himself. I tried to soothe him, but deep down inside, I was scared to death. I hesitated to call her. I was starting to really get worried, but she finally kept her word.

  * * *

  —

  It was the fifth day. When I stepped into the room, Pierre greeted me with a smile I didn’t think possible anymore. He was so beautiful, there on the bed, with joy splitting his face. It came down on me like a ton of bricks and almost made me lose my balance. The bright white of the walls turned dull. Or rather, he had become so luminous that he outshone everything else. My son. He wouldn’t stop talking. He was like an insane person. “A book.” He kept repeating those two words. “Can you imagine, Dad? They’re going to make it into a book! I’ll have my name on it. Like this, under the title: Pierre Marès. Unless I use a pseudonym…But no. Pierre Marès, that’ll be perfect. And that’s not all: I’m going to dedicate it to you! For my father. Or To my father. What do you think? Which do you prefer? It’s up to you!”