At last, Parisian grayness is shoved away; Linden can now see Dolores Park on a Sunday, Sacha playing Frisbee with a bunch of kids. Whenever the sun came out, Dolores Park was the place to be; he could hold Sacha’s hand there, even kiss him, and no one cared. There was much to see: people sunbathing or napping on towels stretched out over the hilly grass, others playing soccer or tennis, dancers rehearsing their moves, Hula-hoops gyrating. Linden never tired of the continuous picnics, the diverse and deafening types of music, the dogs gamboling, and the mixed smell of weed and hot dogs weaving its way through the palm trees. He has never missed home, missed Sacha, this much. If only a magic button existed, the kind he dreamed of when he was a kid, the kind that sent you somewhere else, just where you wanted to be, in a flash. Yet, he knows he can’t escape; he can’t run away from where he is, from his role here. He is the one in charge. He is the one holding the family together, along with his niece, but no one or nothing can stop him from imagining he’s somewhere else, back on Elizabeth Street.
A chime from his phone halts his reverie. It is a text message from Sacha: Can’t imagine what you must be going through. That photo of you on Twitter is unreal! How is your dad? Love you.
Bewildered, Linden checks his Twitter feed, which he hadn’t done for a while. Sure enough, there he is on the city hall boat, surrounded by water, scarf pulled up against the stink, hair drenched, Leica in his hands. It looks like a war photograph, conveying despair and tragedy. That young woman took it from the press boat. It has been retweeted hundreds of times: Franco-American photographer #lindenmalegarde captures disaster #flood #Paris #Javel.
Before he has time to answer Sacha, there is a knock on his door. When he opens it, he discovers his mother, pale but upright, in the hallway. Her face is thinner, more lined than usual, but she is smiling at him, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She wants to hear everything about Paul now that her brain has started to function normally again. Linden must divulge all he knows, not keep anything from her. They go into his bedroom; she sits on a chair, he on the bed, and he speaks gently. He doesn’t tell her how harrowing his father’s face is; he mentions only the triumphant incandescence of Paul’s eyes, their communication by hand squeezing. He describes the hospital transfer, realizing as he speaks that his mother knows nothing about the river, or barely, as she has been bedridden since Sunday, and she listens to him, petrified, as he describes the flooded streets. He does his best to reassure her, depicting Professor Magerant’s trustworthiness, insisting on the fact that Paul’s situation is unchanging, but that they must wait in order to know more, and it’s the delay that makes it difficult. Lauren asks questions; her voice is almost back to normal, but more subdued. She no longer smiles. She gazes back at him, arms crossed. This trip was her idea, and look what’s happened. She shakes her head mournfully; she feels it is her fault. All Linden can do is tell her firmly that it certainly isn’t, and he pats her arm. His mother seems like the ghost of her former self. He wishes Mistral and Tilia were here to cheer her up. How has she been feeling? he asks. Has the nurse been to see her? How much longer does she need to take her medicine? Lauren sees through his diversion tactic, ironically nodding her head at him. Yes, she feels much better. She appears to be on the brink of telling him something else, but then she hesitates, as if changing her mind. She places both her palms on the sides of her face and sighs. When she does that, she reminds him of Candy. He doesn’t want to tell her about today, about the visit to Candy’s building, the painful memories resurfacing. One day, he would like to be able to mention Candy, to talk about her freely, without his mother’s expression clouding over. Lauren gets up, runs a hand through his hair, like she used to when he was a boy. Oh, and by the way, there is a situation. Colin is downstairs. With a swift gesture, she mimes inebriation. Tilia won’t go down to talk to him.
When Linden arrives in the lobby, Colin lolls alone on a sofa, his face brick red. His jaw protrudes, Neanderthal-like; his suit is rumpled and stained, his hair uncombed. He sees Linden and raises a shaky hand. Linden can smell the liquor even though he’s standing a few feet away. Colin’s voice booms across the room. Does Linden know his silly sister isn’t even coming down? She won’t have dinner with her husband; isn’t that preposterous? She’s moping in her room with her daughter, two silly cows. He couldn’t give a crap. He’s had it with them. Colin’s voice rises even higher. He’s fed up with the Malegarde lot anyway. Fed up with their attitude, their contempt, their intolerable superiority. They think he’s not good enough for them, right? It’s been like that since the beginning, ever since he married Tilia, for God’s sake. They’ve always given him the cold shoulder, always made him feel crummy. Embarrassed, the receptionist, Agathe, glances over at them. There are a few other guests, a little farther away, taking in the scene. Linden has little patience left. An ominous burn simmers in his gut. He says tersely that Colin should leave. Just leave, now. Tilia doesn’t want to see him in this state, and neither does Lauren. He should go back to his friends’ house and sober up. There are taxis outside; he’ll find one. Just go. Colin glares back at him, his lower lip bulging out. Go? Linden can shut up and stop looking at him like that. Why should he take orders from Linden? Why should he leave? He’ll do what he likes; he’ll wait here for as long as he wishes, until that foolish, fat wife of his comes down at last, and then he’ll give her a piece of his mind. He’ll tell her exactly what he thinks of the insufferable Malegarde family. For Christ’s sake, he’s come all the way here, from London, for her, for her dad, for them, and what does he get in return? This? Sod off, the lot of them. He’s not afraid of Linden. Ha! Why should he be frightened of a fag? No one’s frightened of fags.
Wordlessly, Linden strides over to Colin, grabs him by the collar of his coat; he jerks him up pitilessly, forcing him to stand. Colin snorts with glee. Oh, so Linden is playing at being the man, is that it? Is this how he gets going with his boyfriend? Do they get rough? He cackles. Must be quite something. Not his style, however. Will Linden get his filthy paws off him? Linden drags him to the door, not an easy exploit, as Colin is nearly as tall as he is, and probably heavier, but his rage spurs him on.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tilia’s voice booms into his ear.
Isn’t it obvious what he’s doing? Chucking her husband out of the door, that’s what he’s doing, shoving him back into the gutter, where he belongs, out in the rain. That should clear his head; that should do the trick. He feels Tilia’s ineffectual fingers on his arm as he hauls Colin outside into the wet darkness, the spatter of raindrops bursting around them. Colin groans and mutters something unintelligible, while Linden yells, telling him to shut up. Tilia looks on, amazed; never has she seen her brother so angry. Linden’s face is transformed, sharpened, his eyes black with fury. He rams Colin against the wall, bumping his head back so that Colin can see him through the rain. He clamps him by the chin. Linden talks slowly and clearly, as if Colin were an obtuse five-year-old. It’s simple, and it’s going to go like this: Colin is going to go back to his friends at Ternes, right now, and he’s going to stay there, and he’s not coming back. If he does come back, and if he is drunk again, then he’ll be very sorry. A free taxi is slowly coming up rue Delambre, a miraculous and unexpected sight. Linden whistles and halts it. As he opens the door, tries to thrust his brother-in-law into the car, Colin slips on the wet sidewalk and falls flat on his bottom, feet flipping up in an uncoordinated and comical collapse, like a stunt from a Charlie Chaplin movie. It takes a full five minutes to hoist him up to his feet and to shove him into the backseat with Tilia’s help, both of them ignoring the honking of cars behind them. The taxi driver tersely says he won’t take this guy anywhere in that state. Exasperated, Tilia reaches for money in her back pocket, hands him fifty euros, far over the normal fare. The man takes the banknote and shuts up. Colin can’t remember his friends’ address, so Tilia asks the driver to take him to the Ternes Métro station, hoping her husband will work it out once he’s arri
ved. They watch the car draw away under the drizzle, then look at each other, soaked, Linden still heaving with ire. Clearly, Colin had been at it all day, Tilia explains. She hadn’t wanted to see Colin, not at all. He took it badly. Yes, she had been hard on him, but what else could she do? Was she really expected to turn a blind eye every time he got pissed? How dare he turn up in such a state? Thank God their mother had not seen him. And that fall! It was miraculous he hadn’t hurt himself. She imitates him, staggering backward. Linden catches her by the sleeve.
And then it starts. It takes over, like when they were kids: the laughter; helpless, delightful, uncontrollable laughter. They hang on to each other, mouths gaping open, bent double, bellies aching, heedless of the rain, of the cold. Poor Colin, how could he ever know? That tumble! It was spectacular! It should have been filmed. They whoop so loudly that passersby join in, chuckling. Hilarity chases belligerence away. An easy sense of well-being flows through Linden. He hasn’t felt this serene for days. Brother and sister end up locked in each other’s arms, hugging each other close.
“I love you, dude,” whispers Tilia, leaning against his chest.
“I love you, too, doll.”
It is the first time, ever, that they have said those words to each other.
SIX
Quand je suis parmi vous, arbres de ces grands bois,
Dans tout ce qui m’entoure et me cache à la fois,
Dans votre solitude où j’entre en moi-même,
Je sens quelqu’un de grand qui m’écoute et qui m’aime!
—VICTOR HUGO, “AUX ARBRES”
There I was, hiding behind the biggest tree. I thought Suzanne would find me right away. But she didn’t. She seemed to be taking her time.
I became impatient. I couldn’t hear her voice any longer. She wasn’t calling my name like she usually did. Slowly, I peeped around the trunk, carefully, in case she caught a glimpse of me. I couldn’t understand what I saw. It didn’t make sense to me. Suzanne was lying down. All I could see was her hair, spread out against the grass, and her bare white legs.
There was something on top of her. It looked like a gigantic bag. Dark, grainy, and dirty, covering her top half. But the bag was moving, and as I watched, I understood that it was hurting her. I could hear her stifled breath, and it sounded as if she was being burned or beaten. The bag had enormous reddish hands and they were wrapped around her neck.
Never had I felt so afraid. This, I was sure, was a monster, the kind that comes in nightmares. The kind all children are frightened of. This was no nightmare; this was real life. This was broad daylight, not nighttime. She was fighting it; I could see that. She fought it with all her might. She twisted and she bucked, but it was so much stronger and bigger than she was.
I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with fear. The monster shoved on top of her, faster and faster, with a sickening frenzy. She was making choking noises, while the monster grunted, horribly.
I felt I was going to dissolve with fear. I wet my pants. I began to cry. I wanted to scream and yell. I had no idea how to get help, where and whom to run to. The house was too far away. And if I moved, the monster would see me. It would come for me.
“WHY DID YOU BECOME a photographer?” was a question Linden often got asked. He never tired of answering the question, just as his father never tired of telling the story of the first tree he had saved. Linden enjoyed mentioning working with old Monsieur Fonsauvage, who had offered him his first camera, the Praktica, and how the Leica came into his life. There were some aspects of his job, however, that he couldn’t put words to. How could he possibly describe accurately that to him, photographing was like acquiring experience? He had no wish to sound pedantic. He had no lessons to give. He never wanted to preach through his work, just as he didn’t like his subjects to pose stiffly. It was too intimate and knotty a conviction for him to share out loud. Once, he had tried to explain to a French journalist writing a portrait of him for a magazine that the act of photographing was using a language understood all over the world, and it seemed deceptively easy, describing it as such. The woman had smiled at his choice of words. How could he tell her there was nothing simple about it; that each photographer possessed his or her own version of that language? It was easier to say that even when he did not have a camera in his hands, he was still mentally photographing everything he saw; that every time he had seen beauty or tragedy, he had wanted to immortalize it, in his own way, with his own vision.
This Wednesday morning, at the hospital, it is his father he is photographing, both with his phone and the Leica. There is not much light in the small room. Paul is awake and gazes back at him with his wide eyes. The nasal cannula for oxygen is still in his nose. Because of his twisted mouth, Linden cannot tell if he is smiling, but he likes to think his father is content. As usual, whenever he holds the camera, he doesn’t need to speak. He concentrates on photographing his father’s hands, knobby and strangely pale against the yellow blanket. There haven’t been any doctors yet. Perhaps they came earlier? Nurses tend to his father with practiced gestures. Some of them are more outgoing then others. High above the bed is a complicated array of screens, with red, green, and yellow stripes and numbers flashing across them rhythmically. Linden observes his father’s body, shrunken and emaciated beneath the blue hospital johnny. This will be a shock for his mother, and for Tilia, he knows. In a mere four days, Paul has aged, seeming far older than his seventy years.
A woman enters the room quietly. She is middle-aged, plump, dressed in a tweed skirt and a brown cardigan, with short gray hair. She greets Linden. He has no idea who she is. He acknowledges her, puzzled. She introduces herself as Dominique. Her voice is soft and pleasant. He wonders if she is in the right room, but then she asks how his father is this morning. Is she an unknown friend of Paul’s? One of those tree lovers? As if she had foreseen his questions, she explains she is a hospital volunteer. She has been working in Professor Magerant’s ward for a long time. She usually comes in only on Tuesdays, but with the flooding, and new patients being transferred here, she is on tap all week. The hospital can do with all the help it can get. At first, Linden doesn’t feel comfortable with her being there. Dominique is now sitting down, opposite him, placing her bag on the floor, and it looks like she is settling down to spend quite some time here. He feels a twinge of annoyance. How can he ask her to leave? It wouldn’t be very polite; she seems a nice lady. She takes her knitting out of her bag and gets to work, needles clicking steadily. He watches the long trail of blue wool. A scarf? A sleeve? He can’t tell. Has Linden seen the news this morning? It’s quite something, isn’t it? Luckily, she lives in the fourteenth, not far from the hospital. Apparently, the Seine has reached eight meters, and it will go even higher. Only a bit to go before it gets to the historical level of 1910! Has Linden seen the extraordinary images of the Eiffel Tower? The river has encroached upon the entire Champ de Mars. The tower looks like it’s been planted bang in the middle of a giant lake. Isn’t it rather unbelievable, what’s going on in the city right now? She heard that the best way to get around Paris, apart from a boat, of course, is on horseback. She saw it on the news: the incredible coverage of police horses with water up to their chests trudging down avenue Bosquet. And of course one mustn’t forget the suburbs, where people are suffering just as much, but not getting half of the attention Paris is getting. The suburbs have always been a sensitive area, and the flood isn’t making it any better; there is mounting unrest there. Dominique heard nocturnal lootings began in some of the swamped neighborhoods—apparently, gangs of youths from the northern suburbs—and the police and the military were having a hard time protecting the deserted buildings. The president was going to visit Javel later on today by boat. Did Linden know that? The president had been criticized by many for not doing this beforehand. She hopes he will make it to the suburbs, as well; the people there feel neglected. She has a cousin in Alfortville, whose home is inundated. Her tone is soothing, pleasant to
listen to. After a while, Linden finds he quite likes listening to her. She goes on with her conversation, placidly, her hands moving swiftly. He is tempted to photograph her; there is an interesting halo of light around her silver hair. Dominique read in the paper (Was it Le Parisien, or Le Figaro? She can’t remember) that the recent nonstop rain was the direct result of global warming. The weather was bad in all of France, as well as in other European countries. Wasn’t that worrying? Didn’t that mean more rain to come in the future, and more floods? Linden nods, agreeing with her. The article she read also mentioned that deforestation upstream from Paris, which had never ceased in the past decades, could also have contributed to the swift water heave. Getting rid of trees is never a good idea, is it? Linden notices his father is taking in every word. Paul’s bright eyes dart from Dominique to him, like those of a spectator watching a tennis match.
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