Strike Your Heart

by Amélie Nothomb

  “I don’t see the connection.”

  “You always seem so bored at this lycée. If your life expectancy has been reduced, it’s a pity to waste the time you have. With me you won’t be bored anymore.”

  Élisabeth burst out laughing. They became inseparable. Diane dared to share her secret. Élisabeth listened in silence and sighed. Finally she said, “Is that why you live with your grandparents?”

  “Yes.”

  As there was no longer any imposition of silence, Diane accepted Élisabeth’s invitation to visit. As their daughter was an only child, Monsieur and Madame Second adopted her new best friend: “You will be her sister,” they said. The adolescents talked all night long. Diane was tactful, and refrained from asking about Vera; they never saw her again.

  Mamie was very glad to learn of this brand-new friendship.

  “At last you’re behaving like a girl your age! I can die with my mind at ease, now.”

  “That’s not funny, not one bit,” said Diane, furious.

  And indeed, it wasn’t funny: it was prophetic. The next day, the grandparents’ car was hit by a truck: the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. They died instantly. Diane was at the lycée when she heard the news. She lost consciousness.

  When she came to, she was at the hospital. The doctor, whom she hadn’t seen since she was eleven, was at her side.

  “You’ve been here for a week. You had a temperature of nearly 106 and convulsions. I’ve never seen someone react so violently to a death.”

  “My grandparents meant everything to me.”

  “For the funeral, we couldn’t wait for you to regain consciousness. It’s better that way: it would have been unbearable for you.”

  Diane wept, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye!”

  “You’ll go and commune with them on their grave. There’s something else, young lady. I remember you. I had a chance to speak about you with your family and your best friend. You won’t be going back to your parents’ to live. Your friend’s parents are prepared to take you in.”

  “How did my mother and father take it?”

  “Your father seemed a bit hurt. Your mother simply said that she wasn’t surprised and that it would be better if you didn’t visit on weekends anymore. Rest assured, your friend has told me everything.”

  Diane opened her eyes wide.

  “Do you think my mother hates me?”

  “No. Your mother was surely jealous of the bond you had with her parents. She loved them very much. It would be better, both for you and for her, not to have anything more to do with her for a while.”

  “So I’m losing not only my grandparents but also my parents, my brother, and my sister, all at the same time.”

  “You’ll see your brother at the lycée. And you’ll see your parents. Someday, your relationship with your mother will no longer be toxic. I think that for the time being it would be dangerous for you to spend too much time in her company.”

  “And my sister?”

  “I am aware of the overinvestment she is receiving. There are no laws against pampering a child to such a degree, but in a way she is more deserving of pity than you are.”

  Monsieur and Madame Second welcomed Diane with affection: she was their daughter’s sister, and thus their child. Diane had her own room, next to Élisabeth’s.

  A new life began. At least three nights a week the girls went to the Opéra to attend concerts.

  “Why did you never go before you met me?” asked Diane.

  “It felt like an obligation. Now that I’ve met you it’s a pleasure.”

  The lycée was rife with gossip. Their classmates called them dykes. The interested parties shrugged it off. Diane lost some of her prestige, Élisabeth found hers greatly enhanced.

  Monsieur Second persuaded his new daughter to take up the violin. While he was an excellent artist, he proved a poor professor; as for Diane, she displayed more zeal than talent. The rare occasions when she managed to make her instrument produce a sound that contained some emotion, she burst into convulsive sobs. The experiment came to a sudden end.

  Now and then she could see the beauty of her present life, the harmony of her time with the Second family, and she could appreciate the distance she had taken from her former travails, only to relapse all the more grievously when she ran into her brother at the lycée, or when her father, who clearly failed to grasp the situation, came to wait for her after class and gave her a long hug that seemed filled with pain.

  The years went by and she continued to mourn her grandparents. One day when she wanted to go and meditate on their grave, she was shocked to find her mother there, in tears. She slipped away again without her mother noticing her, but the pain of seeing her was so sharp that she could measure the extent of the damage in her soul.

  Only study was free of danger. She immersed herself in it. She passed her baccalauréat exams with flying colors and enrolled in the city’s highly reputable medical school. As she did not want to be beholden to anyone, she found a temporary job over the summer.

  Élisabeth bemoaned the fact she would not be going on vacation with her and her parents the way she had the previous summers. She herself had enrolled in law school, with the aim of becoming an attorney.

  The start of classes meant the pace of Diane’s life became frenetic. Medical school provided access to better paid student jobs, but it all required massive amounts of energy.

  Élisabeth complained that her friend never had any time to spend with her, so she turned to more ordinary affairs of the heart, consistent with her age. She managed to drag Diane along to the odd party, but Diane was bored stiff.

  “Your friend is so pretty, but she always looks so pissed off,” people told Élisabeth.

  “She likes to put on airs,” she replied.

  Others liked those airs. Admirers came in droves: the game was to see who could get her to smile. No one could.

  Élisabeth got more seriously involved with a certain Hugues. She neglected Diane, who was filled with sorrow; out of pique, Diane took up with someone by the name of Hubert, but she was not in love with him. As for Hubert, he was madly in love with this aloof, mysterious girl. When they made love it was as if she were not there. This was painful to him, and made him yearn for her all the more.

  “I’m not in love with you,” she told him one morning as she left for class.

  “It will come,” he replied, darkly.

  It didn’t come. After three years, she found the courage to leave him.

  “How could you stay for so long with a man you didn’t love?” asked Élisabeth.

  “It was either him or someone else . . . ” was all Diane said.

  “You’re such a strange bird. Then why did you break up?”

  “Because I cannot help but hope for something better.”

  Élisabeth found her answer reassuring, even though she did not see how her friend, who was working twelve hours a day, would ever find the time to meet the man of her dreams.

  In her seventh year of medical school, as she was about to become an intern, Diane decided to specialize in cardiology. One of the assistant professors, a Madame Aubusson, made a great impression on her.

  Extraordinarily eloquent, Madame Aubusson was the epitome of rigor and intelligence. Whereas other professors irritated Diane with the vagueness or boastfulness of their lectures, Madame Aubusson was precise and serious, like no one else.

  The young woman soon realized that she was attending Madame Aubusson’s lectures with more than just mere interest: what she felt as she listened to her brilliant presentations was of the nature of passion.

  Madame Aubusson was an assistant professor most likely in her early forties, a little red-headed woman with a handsome, imposing face. She dressed her small body in austere pants suits, which enhanced the brilliance of her hair. When she spoke, her eyes sparkled, and she became the most attractive person imaginable.

  Diane got in
to the habit of waiting for her at the end of the lecture to share her enthusiasm. Flattered by the compliments of this exceptionally lovely young person, the instructor behaved toward her in a friendly manner, and one evening she suggested they go for a drink.

  “Call me Olivia,” she said, after they had spoken for a few minutes.

  “I don’t know if I can call a professor by her first name.”

  “Maybe not in class. But here, you can. Besides, I’m not a full professor.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a long and rather boring story. In the end, perhaps it’s better that way. Look at Michaud, Salmon, Pouchard: they’re all full professors. Do you think I want to look like them?”

  Diane laughed.

  “They’re useless!” she said.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to call them useless,” said Olivia. “Let’s just say that their elevated status has gone to their heads, and it hasn’t improved them.”

  She then began imitating the solemn, hollow delivery of Yves Pouchard, professor of vascular surgery, and Diane wept with laughter.

  “Yes, indeed, that is what happens when you become obsessed with status,” concluded Olivia. “The thing that I’m obsessed with, is training good practitioners and teaching them rigor. I am dismayed by the vague approach of some of those who teach our specialty. If we educated our nuclear physicists the way we educate our cardiologists, we would have Chernobyl every day. After all, it seems to me that the heart deserves as much serious attention as radioactivity, if not more, don’t you think?”

  Diane wasn’t listening anymore. She hadn’t thought about Chernobyl since the day she’d said the name with the intention of winning Élisabeth’s friendship. Wasn’t it strange that at the dawn of a new, important friendship in her life, there had once again been mention of the disaster?

  “You’re not very interested in what I’m saying,” said Olivia. “And you, why did you chose cardiology?”

  “It happened in two stages. At the age of eleven I decided I would study medicine, because I met an extraordinary doctor. As for cardiology, I warn you: my motives might seem completely idiotic.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I was impressed by a quote from the work of Alfred de Musset: Strike your heart, that is where genius lies.”

  Madame Aubusson was transfixed.

  “I did warn you,” said Diane, very embarrassed.

  “Not at all. I think that’s wonderful. I had never heard that quote, or come across such an astonishing reason to study cardiology. Strike your heart, that is where genius lies. Alfred de Musset, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “What a guy! What a revelation! Do you know, he was right? It’s an organ like no other. I understand why the ancients believed that was where thoughts were located, and the soul, and all that sort of thing. I’ve been observing the heart for over twenty years, and it seems more mysterious and inspired than ever.”

  “I was afraid you would make fun of me.”

  “You must be joking! For once one of my students has some culture! I wish I had some.”

  “I don’t have that much culture, you know. But I’ve always liked reading.”

  “You’ll show me. How wonderful: I’ve only just met you and you’ve already enriched my life.”

  The evening continued in this vein. When Diane got home, she was in an altered state: she had never felt so enthusiastic about someone. The fact that this superior woman was interested in her, and even went so far as to let her believe she might enrich her life, was extraordinary. How generous she must be, to suggest such a thing!

  The next day, the assistant professor rang her.

  “Are you having lunch at the hospital cafeteria?”

  “Like you are, I believe.”

  “What would you say to having lunch with me at the local brasserie?”

  Diane joyfully accepted. At the brasserie, Olivia ordered a salad which she hardly touched. Diane did not dare order anything more substantial and she was not sorry: she was in such an emotional state she found it hard to swallow.

  Madame Aubusson confided in her quite openly. She told her how difficult it was to be a woman in this milieu. “I don’t know which are more macho: the male students or the male faculty.”

  “Do you think that has anything to do with the fact you’re not a full professor?”

  “It’s bound to. Particularly as I had a child, ten years ago. They never forgave me for it. But if I hadn’t had a child, I’d have been judged even more harshly. Even when you teach at university you still can’t get away from their provincial mentality.”

  “Have you always lived here?”

  “Yes. I confess I’m very attached to our city. Yves Pouchard, now, dreams of only one thing: moving to Paris. Can you see him at the Descartes campus, reading those notes of his he always seems to have just discovered, so that he makes one blunder after another? One day during a lecture instead of blood tests he said bloody tests!”

  “Seriously!”

  Olivia had dozens of similar anecdotes to tell. Their lunches became a routine. When the two women arrived at the brasserie they did not even need to order: they were immediately served their two salads and a big bottle of mineral water. It was a bit light for a lunch, in Diane’s opinion, but for nothing on earth would she have done things differently.

  Her bond with the assistant professor gave meaning to her life. She wanted both to be like her, and to be on her team. Everything she had been reproached with since childhood—her seriousness, her rigor, what her mother called her coldness—was, at last, appreciated. Diane was jubilant whenever Olivia displayed these same virtues.

  There were times when she heard students in the auditorium murmuring “Aubusson doesn’t seem very friendly,” or “I’ll bet she gives you a hard time.” Diane forced herself to keep quiet. If she had dared speak out, she would have said, “Olivia Aubusson is a major heart specialist. She isn’t here to be friendly. When you reach that level, you don’t need to be friendly. And anyway, you’d be surprised to find out how funny she can be.”

  Their complicity had not gone unnoticed, and it was cause for a few predictably sarcastic remarks, among both students and interns.

  “It’s because you’re very beautiful,” said Olivia with a laugh.

  “You’re not bad yourself.”

  “Finally someone who’s noticed!”

  “I can’t be the only one.”

  “Who else?”

  “I don’t know. Your husband?”

  “Stanislas is a mathematician. He doesn’t say things like that.”

  Diane was dying to ask her more about her life. But the feeling that it would be indiscreet prevented her. Everything about Olivia seemed phenomenal to her.

  One day as she was leaving the university she saw a woman waiting for her. Initially she did not recognize her.

  “Diane, is that you? You’ve become so beautiful!” said the woman.

  “Maman!” said Diane, petrified.

  She had not seen her mother for ten years. She’d had neither the time nor the inclination. Sometimes she would meet up with her father, always at his request, and he merely lamented their estrangement, without ever calling his wife’s behavior into question. What had happened to her? She seemed broken, ageless, her features ravaged.

  “May I speak to you?” asked her mother.

  They went to a café.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Célia has left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Marie burst into tears and took a letter from her bag.

  “Your sister has had a child. Did you know that?”

  “I think I heard something,” Diane replied, with a shrug.

  “It was last year. She wouldn’t tell me who the father was. I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t even know. Since turning eighteen Célia has done nothing but go out, and she drinks a lot. Rumor has it that she has had a lot of affairs, with older men.”

&n
bsp; “Spare me the gossip, okay?”

  “In short, she had a daughter, Suzanne. She left a week ago without telling me where she was going, and she left her little girl behind, with me.”

  Still crying, Marie handed Diane the letter she was holding tremulously in her hands.

  Maman,

  I can sense I am beginning to make the same mistakes with Suzanne that you made with me. I love her too much, I can’t help holding her in my arms all the time and covering her with kisses. I don’t want my daughter to become a spineless wreck like me, who’s only good for sleeping with any man who comes along. Besides, I’m twenty years old and I want my life to begin.

  So I’m going far away, and I won’t tell you where. I’m leaving Suzanne with you. I can see that you love her, without going stark raving mad over her the way you did with me. Maybe with my daughter, at last you’ll be the person you never were with your own children: a good mother.

  Célia

  Diane sat there flabbergasted for a long moment, not knowing what to say, her head bent over the letter.

  “It’s terrific, what she’s done,” she finally managed to say.

  “You think so?” said Marie through her tears. “And here I was wanting to ask you to go and look for her.”

  “Are you crazy? I would never do such a thing. For a start, because I approve of what she’s done. And then because even if I didn’t approve, she is an adult.”

  “How can you approve of this?”

  “She doesn’t want to repeat your mistakes. And that’s a damn good reason to leave. She doesn’t want to smother Suzanne beneath the mountain of kisses and cuddles you inflicted on her all through her childhood and adolescence.”

  “It was because I loved her, where’s the harm in that?”

  “You’ll have to accept that it is harmful, because she has complained about it. She complained to me when she was little. I told her to talk to you about it. She tried, but you manipulated her to convince her that it all came from me.”