The Party Wall

by Catherine Leroux

  “The house is a bit upside down these days. My son is ill.”

  “If you like, I may be able to help. I’m a nurse. Trained at the best school in the Netherlands.”

  “I don’t know. The situation is complicated.”

  “I work in refugee camps, in Africa. I’m used to complicated.”

  The lighthouse stands on the point like a reminder of humanity. It is often said that lighthouse keepers are solitary, sad, and reclusive. For Madeleine, this perception is too narrow; it obscures the lighthouse’s primary function: to serve as a bridge of light between land dwellers and seafarers. It is, in reality, the building of the multitudes.

  After the lighthouse watchman had detoured from his usual route to give Madeleine an awkward pat on the shoulder, she shut herself in her office to avoid visits. Like everyone else, he had heard the news of Édouard’s illness. Madeleine realizes she ought to be touched by the man’s solicitude, but she doesn’t know how to receive all this sympathy, how to come up with a response that isn’t a prolonged howl of despair. The compatibility tests were performed the day before and already she has the impression it’s taking forever for the results to arrive. She would like to sleep until next week, until the moment they announce that Édouard is saved.

  Sleep. Édouard does nothing else between his dialysis sessions, waking only to take a small sip of the herbal tea prepared by Joanna, before he sinks back to sleep. The Dutch woman has integrated into the household’s difficult ecology with astonishing ease, asks no questions, offers her help only when she can be useful, and withdraws at just the right moment. Her waking hours coincide exactly with the sun’s daily cycle. Most of her time is spent on her bicycle, and when she is in the house she seems to adapt to the moods and wishes of its inhabitants, cutting flowers when the atmosphere is too gloomy, opening a window when the weather is too hot, humming a Dutch song when the silence weighs too heavily. Joanna’s only annoying habit is a baffling proclivity for being right behind Madeleine when she starts to talk to herself. If Madeleine says, Now where in the world did I put the bread knife? she hears behind her: “It’s under the yellow cloth.” When she whispers, No point in watering the tomatoes—it’s going to rain tonight, a voice chimes in: “Yes, the oncoming clouds look very heavy indeed.” When she complains, It’s taking far too much time—how much longer? Joanna answers simply: “I don’t know.”

  Madeleine deals with insomnia by drinking herbal tea all night while perusing medical dictionaries, fussing with Shabby’s fur in the vain hope of removing the knots, and making lists. Lists of things to do, to clean, to throw out, but, especially, lists of close or distant relatives who might act as donors for her son should the test results disqualify her.

  When she shows Édouard the list, he balks.

  “Your sister Josette? Ma, we’re not going to ask a woman who’s been struggling her whole life with schizophrenia to donate a kidney! And Jan and Tomas? I don’t even know who they are!”

  “They’re your father’s brothers.”

  “I thought they all died during the war.”

  “Not all.”

  “So you’re suggesting we cross the ocean to explain to some perfect strangers why they have to give me a kidney? It’s out of the question!”

  Resigned, Madeleine puts away her list of donors and pockets her shopping list. The moment she sets foot in the village grocery store she is swamped with stories.

  “I have a diabetic uncle who never managed to find a donor, so he went to the Îles-de-la-Madeleine—the Magdalen Islands—to consult a healer. She prescribed edible seaweeds and ever since then it’s as if he’s got four kidneys!”

  “My neighbour’s sister-in-law found a donor in just a few weeks—a man who committed suicide by tying a plastic bag around his head. Now she’s the picture of health! But she’s stopped using plastic bags to wrap her orders at the supermarket.”

  Madeleine is left drained and exits the store without her groceries; she drives toward the lighthouse and parks her car on the side of the road to avoid going by the museum. Holding her arms open, she slowly makes her way to the old wooden tower painted white and, in the manner of those who hug trees, she embraces with all her might this misunderstood sentinel, this guide for lost souls.

  After several days of persistent insomnia, Madeleine throws in the towel. The night is clear, the wind is fair, and the salt air seeks her out even in the depths of the basement, where she is making a half-hearted effort to classify the seeds scattered by the cat a few days before. Moving about on tiptoes, she takes some virgin rolls of film from the cabinet, grabs her camera, pulls on her rubber boots, and goes out. She walks amid the friendly silence, and the night seems to want to speak to her.

  The spectacle at the seashore is arresting. The moon illuminates the pebble beach, which the spring tide has littered with debris. Madeleine realizes she has not been on the beach after nightfall since she was young. She and Micha would come to bathe here when the cool air made the water feel warm, like a kiss in the middle of winter. For a brief moment she inhales the rush of nostalgia, then she unpacks her equipment. Her camera starts to snap up all that’s visible and invisible like a large, greedy hand. Using her tripod, Madeleine sets long exposures, barely peeking through the lens. A shot in the dark, the prey felled by chance. The light is incomprehensible; it seems to emanate not from the sky but from the sand, from the salt shimmering on the water’s surface. As if the landscape were shown in negative.

  Back home she finds the Monte Carlo parked in front. In the first rays of dawn, Yun is busy smoothing out her long hair, windblown and tangled from the drive.

  “Well, it looks as though we’ve both spent a sleepless night,” she says on seeing Madeleine approaching.

  “Did you have a good trip?”

  “Yes! I ate clams and swam with the seals. But I didn’t come across a single Korean.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “How is Édouard?”

  “Okay. He told me everything after you’d left.”

  “Good. I warned him I wouldn’t come back until he’d talked to you.”

  “How did you know that he had?”

  “I didn’t know. But I figured the threat would have an effect.”

  Madeleine smiles and invites Yun to come along to the kitchen. Her head is strangely clear after a night on the shore and she sets about making pancakes. While she watches the batter turn into golden parchment, Édouard comes downstairs bleary-eyed. When he catches sight of Yun he simply spreads his arms in a gesture of relief and surrender. She rushes toward him. Madeleine flips the pancake, which lands in the skillet with a slap. Shabby leaps onto the counter to get a better look at the lovers and her mistress lets him. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Yun’s finger slide over the creases in her son’s brow.

  “Hey! This one is brand new.”

  The day before their appointment at the hospital, Madeleine arrives at dusk to find the house suffused with a peculiar halo. On coming closer she realizes there is steam dancing behind the window. Taken aback, she goes in to discover her son drowsing in the hammock that Yun set up in the living room a few days earlier so he might have “the feeling he was travelling while staying indoors.” Tongues of yellow mist emanating from the kitchen and bearing a briny aroma brush against his motionless body. Through the mist she hears bursts of laughter.

  “Watch out! There’s one missing!” Yun’s voice yells.

  “Easy now, little guy. Easy now,” Joanna’s voice says reassuringly.

  Madeleine treads cautiously and bumps into something hard. At her feet she discerns an armoured body moving unhurriedly and she lets out a scream.

  “Madeleine, is that you?” Yun’s voice asks.

  “I’ll open the windows. Make things easier,” Joanna says.

  Once the steam has lifted the scene is astonishing. A small inflatable wading poo
l placed in the centre of the kitchen is full of lobsters, seaweed, and, apparently, salt water. The creatures are piled on top of each other and move sluggishly as potfuls of boiling water continue to fog up the room. Yun bustles around the lobster while Joanna smiles serenely, as though watching over a well-behaved child at bath time.

  “Aha! There’s the runaway!” Yun shouts as she grabs the crustacean that was lurking near Madeleine’s feet. “Sorry for the mess. We wanted to surprise you. A seafood banquet to boost your morale!”

  “The scallops and mussels are almost ready, but there are no lobsters.”

  “Well, I wanted to give the poor things a last bath and now we’ve grown fond of them,” Yun explains.

  Studying the creatures, Madeleine is entranced by their sleepwalking slowness and their prehistoric appearance. Then she turns her eyes up toward the two red-faced, dishevelled women.

  “It’s true: lobsters are much more likeable than mussels.”

  They gently wake Édouard and tuck into a meal that to Madeleine’s amazement actually succeeds in warming her heart. “There’s something in seafood that makes one feel hopeful,” she muses. The next day she and Édouard will be learning the results of the compatibility tests. Each hour is an endless crossing that this almost family dinner has managed to shorten somewhat.

  Once the night has spread over the peninsula, Édouard goes upstairs to bed and Yun and Joanna clean up, singing softly as they work. Madeleine lingers quietly in front of her son’s bedroom to listen to him breathing, as she did when he was small and his breath kept the house in a state of weightlessness. Toward midnight the three women make their way down to the seashore to release six completely bewildered lobsters.

  Sitting side by side, Madeleine and Édouard wait in the over-lit but nonetheless grey hall of the Chaleur Hospital in Bathurst. This artificial lighting, Madeleine is thinking, obliterates any notion of seasons, of night and day, maybe to dilute the sensation of the passage of time. The endless waiting.

  Some old women go by with the patience of those who can’t ask much anymore of either their bodies or science. They slide with their walkers, hobble with their canes, or let themselves be pushed in a wheelchair. Others stoically shuffle along unaided. They’re on the edge of the precipice.

  As a rule, mother and son leave an empty seat between them, whether at the movies or the funeral parlour. This time, though, there’s no gap, as if they wanted to improve the odds of compatibility by sitting closer together. When they are finally called, Madeleine immediately senses the news is bad. She guesses it from the sound of the nurse’s voice; she perceives it in the stagnant air of the unadorned office they are ushered into. Without knowing what she is about to be told, from the moment the doctor sits down in front of them she understands that the verdict is far worse than the worst-case scenario she was prepared for. Édouard is oblivious; he did not hear the cannon’s detonation a few seconds ago and he does not see the shell approaching. Madeleine nervously wrings her hands and her fingers feel like stranded squid.

  She is not shocked when the doctor announces the test results, but Édouard’s shoulders collapse. The doctor tries to reassure them: since he is young and does not smoke his case ranks as top priority for an organ donation. From the doctor’s tone of voice, Madeleine can easily see he still has not told them everything, and a little voice inside her silently implores him to hurry up.

  “Édouard, I’d like to speak with your mother in private, if you don’t mind. You can wait outside and fill out the forms in the meantime.”

  Édouard does as he’s asked. The doctor turns to Madeleine and his expression grows solemn.

  “Madame Sicotte, the tests show something else I’d like to discuss with you. Frankly, I’ve never had to broach this sort of matter with a patient before.”

  Madeleine says nothing, does not tremble, stays dry-eyed. She waits for the blade to drop.

  “The test failed to establish a genetic kinship between you and your son.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Based on your DNA, you are not Édouard’s mother.”

  He continues. She hears him from a distance: “You see, my professional duty… social services… an investigation…” But a rumble within her muffles the words; it is overpowering, a cyclone, a landslide. She manages to stand up and go out without falling.

  The road back runs alongside the sea and its unseen clamour; inside the car, Madeleine says nothing. Édouard doesn’t ask her what the doctor had to say to her. He fidgets with his braid, probably imagining he’s just been dealt a devastating diagnosis—devastating for her too—and that both of them will have to fritter away their days around the damned hospital until life has trickled out of them like water from a leaking cistern. But Madeleine’s thoughts have taken her elsewhere. She finds herself twenty-seven years earlier, in a house on a cliff where a midwife has pulled out of her a small, viscous body. He was nestled in her arms even before he opened his eyes. She thinks of the placenta, the flood of fluids, the blood, the shit and the flesh, all that flesh, her flesh, battered and stretched, and the flesh that had come through her belly, the flesh she was holding in her hands, pressed against her breast so that it could live and grow. There ought to be nothing but the flesh, she tells herself. But no.

  The Fox

  (Monette and Angie)

  No one reads the lines in a sidewalk like Monette. She interprets them like an archaeologist studying a wall of rock paintings. This crack represents a camel, and the adjacent crack, a cup of coffee. She generally avoids stepping on living things, while she mercilessly treads on electrical devices and guns, which are far more common than one might believe.

  It takes her a few moments to realize that what is lying in front of her at the street corner where she is waiting for Angie does not belong to the concrete but to the earth and the beings moving over it. Once she has understood this, she stretches out her arm, automatically reaching for her older sister’s reassuring grip and brief answers.

  “What is it?”

  “A dead fox. Don’t touch.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s dirty.”

  “Why is it dead?”

  “It was hit by a car. Didn’t look before crossing the street.”

  Amid the dense swarm of scavenger insects Monette meditates on the recklessness of animals and the cruelty of motorists, while Angie, unable to move away as quickly as she’d like, prods her half-heartedly. Angie is aware that the mere proximity of animal carcasses is noxious; she knows, though cannot name, the diseases and infections they spawn and the spirits that linger around them. Yet she is incapable of taking her eyes off the creature, whose upper body has been smashed. The head, seething with flies and parasites, is unrecognizable, but the slender, nimble gloved paws, seemingly still alive, are flexed as if about to leap—one can almost see it jumping, its magnificent orange tail held aloft like a pennant, its exploded skull guiding it into the shrubs in spite of everything. Angie is overcome by a sense of revolt at the sight of this creature, which could have been deprived of its tail rather than its head, the vain instead of the essential. She feels like crying, like finding a stick to flog the carcass; she wishes it would disappear.

  Something stirs in the bushes along the road and the girls shudder. A hard beak emerges, followed by a dark, shiny, robust body. The crows had hidden when the two sisters arrived, some high up in the trees, others a few paces from the prey they were coveting. Having gotten used to the presence of these humans, they approach furtively; their breath is voracious, their appetite as sharp as an arrow. Without thinking, Angie charges at the scavengers, trying unsuccessfully to land a kick but still managing to chase them away. Then she raises her knotty arms skyward, waves them about wildly to scare off those circling from one branch to the next, and lets out raspy shrieks that shatter the calm of the vacant lots. At first Monette is taken aback by her sister
’s antics, but then she too bears down on the black birds, yelling, growling, laughing at the top of her small voice.

  Once the crows have scattered, Angie completes her intervention by haphazardly pulling up clumps of vegetation and throwing them on the animal’s body in the hope this seasoning will spoil the meal of scavengers, that the thin leaves will conceal the carcass from profiteers or any heartless creatures who feed on the misfortune of the foolhardy, and accompany the deceased to the far shore of the river that separates the living from the immortals. Trying unenthusiastically to imitate her older sister, Monette complains:

  “It smells bad.”

  While she pulls away the fingers her little sister was attempting to force up her own nostrils, Angie closes her eyes and concentrates. She is familiar with the stench of death. A shadowy, ancient part of her brain has learned it by heart, and at times she recognizes it drifting on the wind as it sweeps over the neighbourhood, around certain shuttered houses and under the nails of certain passersby. But today, on this street corner, the odour that has caught in their throats is not quite the same. She clasps Monette’s hand again to cross the deserted street.

  “It doesn’t smell bad. It smells of fox.”

  THE SAME WISH

  (ARIEL AND MARIE)

  The cameras are broadcasting real-time shots of the house, their house, with the blue paint that appears to be taking flight in the chilly air, the second-floor shutters, arms spread wide, the yellow bicycle with a flat tire chained to the balustrade, and the swing pushed by the August wind as if a ghost were seated on it. The reporters seem especially fond of this last object, and they take countless close-ups of it, hoping perhaps to raise a deceased ancestor bearing a secret, a message that would explode like a soon forgotten fireworks display.