by Abdel Sellou
I don’t look at them, I’m afraid of cracking up. I lean toward the cop who’s approaching carefully. I play the dumb guy who’s completely freaking out.
“He’s having an attack! It’s my boss. He’s a tetraplegic. He’s having a heart attack, I’m taking him to Garches, we don’t have time to stop, he’s gonna die!”
“Turn off the engine, sir.”
I obey, with difficulty. I punch the steering wheel.
“I’m telling you, we don’t have time!”
The other policeman comes up. He walks around the car, suspicious, and addresses my passenger.
“Sir, lower your window, please. Sir, sir!”
“How’s he supposed to lower the window? You know what tetraplegic means? Te-tra-ple-gic!”
“He’s paralyzed?”
“Hooray, he gets it!”
They both look at me: they’re angry because of the tone I’m using, worried not to be in control of the situation, and annoyed. I risk glancing at Monsieur Pozzo. He’s fantastic. He’s let his head droop to his shoulder, his forehead stuck to the door, his eyes are rolling and on top of it he’s moooaanning . . . He doesn’t look at all like he does on bad days, but I’m the only one to know it.
“Listen,” says the first one, nervous, “where are you going in such a hurry?”
“To the Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Garches, I told you! It’s urgent!”
“I’ll call an ambulance right now.”
“Oh, no, it’ll take too long, he won’t make it! This is what we’re going to do: you know the way to Garches? Yes? Great! So get in front of us and your colleague can get behind us. Let’s go!”
I start the engine and step on the gas to show my determination. After a second’s hesitation—because policeman often hesitate by nature—the guys put on their helmets and arrange themselves like I told them. We head to the hospital, at a moderate speed; the cops hold their bikes with one hand and gesture for cars to move aside with the other.
Monsieur Pozzo lifts his head a little and asks me, “And what’s your plan when we get there, Abdel?”
“Well, we do what we said! Aren’t you supposed to host a conference for the handicapped?”
“Yes, yes . . .”
In the hospital parking lot, I quickly unload Monsieur Pozzo’s folding wheelchair, open the passenger side door, carry the favorite for the Oscar for Best Actor and bluntly cut off one of the motorcycle cops who offered help.
“Absolutely not, my friend. This man is as fragile as an egg!”
“Ahhhh,” said the dying man.
I pushed him toward the ER entrance at a jog while yelling back to the cops: “It’s okay now, you can go! If he doesn’t die, I won’t file a complaint against you!”
We waited for them to leave before walking back out: we weren’t in the right place for the conference. The boss was laughing harder than he’d laughed in weeks.
“So, who’s the best?”
“You, Abdel, it’s still you!”
“Hey, hey . . . you, on the other hand, you didn’t look like you were having an attack at all! What was that face?”
“Abdel, have you ever seen La Traviata?”
“Haven’t seen it, no. But thanks to you, I know the story, thank you very much.”
“I was doing Violetta, at the end . . .”
And he sings.
“Gran Dio! Morir si giovine . . . ”
29
You count time for tetraplegics like you do for dogs: one year of life is actually equal to seven. Philippe Pozzo di Borgo had his accident three years earlier at the age of forty-two. Three times seven equals twenty-one added on: so in 1996, you could say that he was sixty-three years old. Still, he didn’t look like Agécanonix, the really old guy in the Astérix comic, all small, all shriveled, his heart as dry as his hair . . . The count had the look of a lord and the spirit of a twenty-year-old.
“Monsieur Pozzo, you need a woman.”
“A woman, Abdel? Mine is dead, remember?”
“We’re going to find another. Okay, it won’t be the same, but it’ll be better than nothing.”
“But what would I do to the poor thing?”
“You’ll talk to her sweetly, like Cyrano de Bergerac to Roxanne.”
“Bravo Abdel! I see my literature lessons are bearing fruit!”
“You’ll teach me to read, I’ll teach you to live.”
I invite friends to come over. Aïcha, a small brunette with a large bust, both beautiful and a nurse at the same time, understood the situation. During her first visit, we all had a drink together. The next day, I left early. The day after that, she lay down on the bed. For a while, Monsieur Pozzo and she slept in the bed together. Aïcha didn’t want money or presents. She was interested in this man who could speak so well, but she wasn’t a gold digger . . . He had no illusions: he wasn’t going to fall in love with her, nor she with him, but they had some nice times together. Aïcha breathed calmly, he felt her breath, the warmth of her body, she calmed him. There were a few others afterward, professional companions, happy to work and have a rest at the same time.
I warned them: “You have to be gentle with my boss, and talk politely. Spit out your chewing gum before you come here and watch your language—no talking like a truck driver!”
Monsieur Pozzo slowly got over the death of his wife. Very slowly . . . Sometimes I caught him staring into space, a disembodied soul, the spectator entirely disconnected from the joys of life, and hopeless to someday share in them. Despite Aïcha and the heady scents of his temporary companions, he wasn’t really any better. Béatrice had been gone for several months, Laurence was on vacation, the kids were withering in Paris. I suggested a little trip.
“Monsieur Pozzo, don’t you have a little place in the South?”
“A little place . . . no, I don’t know what you . . . Oh, yes, there’s La Punta in Corsica. Our family sold it to the departmental council a few years ago but the tower is still ours to use, next to the family vault.”
“In a cemetery, that sounds like fun . . . Is that all you’ve got to offer?”
“That’s all, yes.”
“Well, let’s do it! I’ll pack the bags.”
There are eight of us packed into the cattle wagon (it had to be done: we couldn’t all fit into the Jaguar). Céline and the kids are coming along, of course, but there’s also Victor, Monsieur Pozzo’s nephew; his sister Sandra; and her son, Théo. It’s hot, but not hot enough yet. We only turn on the AC from time to time and nobody complains. A tetraplegic is always cold. We cover him with blankets, hats, wool, it’s never enough. I saw a lot of them in Kerpape, at Morbihan, the physical rehabilitation center where Monsieur Pozzo normally goes for his annual checkup. At first light, the wheelchairs line up in front of the south-facing window and stay there. In the wagon, Philippe Pozzo di Borgo puts on a brave face for his kids. I know he’s still mourning his wife, that he hates all of us all a little for being there when she isn’t. We sweat, our odors mix, but at least he isn’t cold.
We cover the miles without speeding. Each of us takes a turn sighing, except for me. Céline just opens an eye and stretches.
“Look, we’re at Montélimar . . . can we stop and get some nougat?”
I grumble that if we start pulling over every time a culinary specialty becomes available, we’ll never get there . . .
She doesn’t say anything, I think she’s pouting a little. And then:
“Abdel, is that smoke normal?”
I look on either side of the highway, I don’t see anything.
“Did you see a forest fire or something?”
“No, I’m talking about the smoke pouring out of the hood. That’s strange, right?”
It’s bad even. The engine’s dead. I had wanted to get rid of the cattle wagon once and for all—well, now it’s done. It sits immobilized in the emergency lane. I’m alone with four children, two women and a tetraplegic in August. It’s now 104 degrees in the shade, and there are stil
l 120 miles to Marseille, where we’re supposed to set sail for Corsica in less than four hours, everything’s fine . . . They’re all laughing at me, lighthearted, grinning. I forgot to check the oil. Or the water. Or both—what do I know? I keep cool.
“There’s got to be car insurance papers somewhere in the doors, right? Yes, here it is! Ha, you’re going to love this: it’s only valid for another week. Lucky we didn’t break down on the way back, huh?”
The boss is cracking up.
I take out my mobile phone, an accessory already available to the greater population at that time, and start by calling a tow truck. Then I try rental car companies. In vain. The summer’s in full swing, there are tourists in Montélimar like there are everywhere else, we’re not going to find anything. I contact the carmaker’s customer service. I scream into the telephone saying it’s inadmissible to leave a tetraplegic on the side of the road. I use my famous line, still the same, regarding my very special passenger:
“He’s a tetraplegic, you know what that means? Te-tra-ple-gic!”
Everyone’s laughing back in the car, which is still exhaling a stream of black smoke.
“Abdel, why are you getting angry? Aren’t we lucky to be here on the road in the land of nougat?”
Customer service offers us a refund for the cost of the trip from Montélimar to Marseille by taxi. But we’re on our own for getting to Montélimar. Just then, the tow truck arrives. Everybody on board! The mechanic, a guy in his sixties who seems to have had way too much of the local specialty given the size of his waist, expresses his displeasure with a chipper tone.
“Oh no, I can only take two or three people in the truck. And anyway, you just can’t do that.”
“We’re going to stay in the cattle wagon.”
“Oh, no, that’s against the rules, sir. You can’t do that.”
I drag him by the collar all the way to the sliding door on the wagon and show him the wheelchair.
“You want me to push him for fifteen miles in the emergency lane?”
“Oh, no, you’re right sir. You can’t do that, either.”
“Okay, I can’t do that . . . so let’s load up!”
Alexandra, Victor, and Théo climb into the driver’s side of the tow truck while he takes care of getting the cattle wagon onto the platform. We haven’t gotten Monsieur Pozzo out. Laetitia, Robert-Jean, Céline, and I try to hold his chair upright during the maneuver. We pitch hard . . . the kids are splitting their sides. They imitate the mechanic’s accent: “You can’t do that, you can’t do that!” That will be the theme for this vacation. I think I catch Philippe Pozzo di Borgo laughing, too, and genuinely.
We get to the port of Marseille. Just in time: the boat’s leaving in twenty minutes. Theoretically . . . I’ve paid for the two cabs and, just when they leave, Céline starts to worry.
“For a huge vacation departure day, there don’t seem to be many people, right? Did everyone board already? The boat looks empty . . .”
It’s true—the white and yellow cruise ship looks completely abandoned. There’s no one on the dock besides us and the vehicle ramp is raised . . . I run to go ask the port authority. I get back to our little group that’s found a shady spot in the also deserted port.
“You’re gonna laugh—the port authority’s closed.”
“Really? There’s nothing written anywhere?”
“Oh yes, there is . . . it says the shipping company’s on strike, indefinitely.”
Nobody says a word for several seconds. Until Victor’s little voice justly pipes up: “You can’t do that!”
I got more information on the telephone from the company that sold us the tickets for the boat. They were suggesting we go to Toulon, where we’d be able to make the crossing. Toulon, more than forty miles away . . . I tried calling a taxi. Nothing doing. So I took off on foot, alone, to the Marseille train station, to get not one, but two taxis. The train travelers were trying to get cabs, too. No taxis. I headed back toward the center of town, went down the smaller streets leading to the Casbah d’Alger. I spoke in Arabic to the old men chewing tobacco on the doorsteps and ended up finding one ready to help us out in exchange for a small bill.
The look on the others’ faces when they saw us drive up to the port . . . Our chauffeur was the lucky owner of a Peugeot 305 wagon so run-down that he wasn’t allowed to leave the country that summer.
“Abdel, we’re not really going to get in that thing, are we?”
“But of course we are, dear Laetitia! Unless you prefer to stay here?”
“You’re seriously crazy! I’m not getting in, I’m not getting in!”
The teen, spoiled to the tips of her toes—manicured of course, she’s fifteen!—has a giant tantrum. She’s absolutely horrified. Her father reacts, incredulous: “Abdel, comfort aside, how do you expect eight of us to get in that?”
“Nine, of us, Monsieur Pozzo, nine! You’re forgetting the driver . . .”
But we did it. Even Laetitia survived.
30
This kind of scene always gets laughs in the movies . . . Well . . . the audience laughs, not the characters. When things get tough, old accounts are settled, little minor wrongdoings come back up, people’s true natures are revealed. They could have turned on me, all of them, and judged me as responsible for the breakdown since I was the driver, come down on me hard because I let the two taxis leave too soon, because there weren’t enough bottles of water in the wagon, because it was me, after all, who had the idea for this vacation! But not one of them made the slightest negative remark. Just like in the cattle wagon when they all put up with the heat without complaining, they decided to see the humor in the situation. For their father, their brother, their uncle, who didn’t complain. For Monsieur Pozzo, the first one to laugh at the absurdity of our bad luck. The trip from Paris to Marseille had exhausted him, much more so than us; he had even endured being shaken and been subjected to the noise of the cattle wagon and our chatter. He blamed sheer fatigue, but he had put his already fragile health in danger. Still, he didn’t complain. He looked at us, one after the other, as if he were rediscovering new joy in being alive and one of us. I don’t just mean one of the members of his family; I mean one of us.
I ended up at his side by accident less than a year before and stayed there almost without even deciding to. Against all odds, I acted like a real assistant: I had turned the pages of his newspaper, put in the disc he wanted to listen to, took him to the café when he wanted, mixed the sugar into his beverage and held the cup to his lips. Through my body, everything I could do, by my strength and my joy for living, I made up for his handicap. During the weeks before Béatrice’s death, and the few weeks after, I didn’t leave him for an instant. The word job didn’t mean the same thing to me as it does to a guy who’s afraid of losing his and not being able to pay his bills. I didn’t care about job security and I was still insolent enough to leave at the drop of a hat if I felt like it. There were no hours; I had no more private life. I didn’t even see my friends and I didn’t care. Why did I stay? I wasn’t a hero or a nun. I stayed because we aren’t just animals . . .
I got through those difficult hours by respecting the same logic as I did at Fleury-Mérogis: the situation was bad, I wasn’t in control of it, but I knew it wasn’t permanent. I just had to wait it out. Weeks later, in the Marseille harbor, facing a cruise ship with no one waiting for us, I realized I was free again because Monsieur Pozzo, stuck in an absurd situation once again, was choosing life.
So, looking at this man who had the gift of laughter, I understood that something other than the job connected us. It had nothing to do with a contract or a moral obligation. I was hiding something from my friends and even from my parents that I wasn’t even aware of: I assured them I was staying with my boss to take advantage of his generous gifts, to travel with him, to enjoy the comforts of plush furniture and drive around in a sports car. There was a little of that, for sure, but so little. I really believe I loved this man, as sim
ple as that, and that he returned the affection just as naturally.
But I’d rather die in a paragliding accident than admit it.
31
I go everywhere with Monsieur Pozzo. Absolutely everywhere. Now that he’s—sort of—gotten over his wife’s death, we manage again without the help of nurses and nurse’s aids. I’ve learned what needs to be done, treating the bedsores, trimming away the pieces of dead flesh, putting in the catheter. I’m not disgusted. We’re all made the same way. It’s understanding the pain that took me a long time. I never got a laugh from emptying a hot teapot onto his legs like my character does in the film Intouchables: Monsieur Pozzo doesn’t feel anything, sure, I get it. So why does he scream like that? He’s sensitive to what doesn’t work normally inside his body. Something to do with nerve endings, apparently. The only thing linking his soul to its envelope comes from this pain, never from pleasure. What luck . . .
We finally got to Corsica. I was expecting to stay in one of those rich people’s homes that see you around there, like with old stone and an infinity pool, and here I am in the ruins of a chateau in the mountains just near Ajaccio. The history of the place is fascinating. The chateau was built with the remains of a palace that had stood in the Tuileries and was burned by the Communards—a new generation of revolutionaries, if I understood correctly—in 1871. A dozen years later, when it was about to be completely demolished, Pozzo’s grandfather bought the stones, had them transported to Corsica, and had them used to build an identical structure. When I see the way things work today . . . They’ve started restoring the roof. There don’t seem to be too many workers and they’re going to be at it for at least ten years.
We stay in a nearby tower that we have to cross a suspension bridge to get to—it’s the Middle Ages. I joke with Monsieur Pozzo, calling him Godefroy de Montmirail. He didn’t see Les Visiteurs; I don’t think French comedies are his thing.