Other Lives But Mine

by Emmanuel Carrère

  Delphine screamed; Jérôme didn’t. He took Delphine in his arms and hugged her as tightly as he could while she screamed and screamed, and from then on he had only one objective: I can no longer do anything for my daughter, so I will save my wife. I wasn’t there to see what happened, I’m describing the scene according to what Philippe said, but I did witness what followed and I saw Jérôme’s program at work. He did not waste time hoping in vain. Philippe was not only his father-in-law but a friend in whom he had complete confidence, so he understood immediately that no matter what shock and disorientation Philippe had suffered, if he’d said those three words, they were true. Delphine, however, wanted to believe her father was mistaken. He was himself a survivor, so perhaps Juliette was as well. Philippe shook his head: impossible. Juliette and Osandi had been at the water’s very edge, they’d never had a chance. No chance at all. They found her at the hospital, among the dozens—no, already the hundreds of corpses the ocean had given back and that now lay, for lack of room, right on the floor. Osandi and her father lay there, too.

  As the afternoon wears on, the hotel becomes a kind of Raft of the Medusa. Tourists who’ve survived the tidal wave have been told that they will be safe here, and they stumble in almost naked, often injured, in total shock. Rumor has it that a second wave may be coming. The locals have sought refuge on the other side of the coastal road, as far from the ocean as they can get, while the foreigners seek safety in elevation, meaning with us. Philippe has made the first of a series of wrenching calls to Isabelle on his cell phone, and although telephone lines are down, as the day goes on cell phones begin ringing all around us, as terrified family and friends who have just heard the news start calling. Their loved ones reassure them quickly, succinctly, to save their phone batteries. That evening the hotel management runs a generator for a few hours so people can recharge them and follow developments on television. At one end of the bar is a giant screen that usually shows soccer matches, since the hotel proprietors are Italian, as are many of the guests. Everyone—guests, staff, survivors—gathers to watch CNN and we discover the scale of the catastrophe. Images come in from Sumatra, Thailand, the Maldives; all Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean have been affected. We begin to see short film loops shot by amateurs showing the wave approaching in the distance, the torrents of mud pouring into houses, sweeping everything away. Now we all talk about the tsunami as if we’d always known what that word meant.

  We have dinner with Delphine, Jérôme, and Philippe; we sit with them again at breakfast the next morning, then at lunch, then again at dinner, and until our return to Paris we are always together. They don’t behave like beaten people to whom nothing matters and who cannot cope. They want to go home with Juliette’s body, and from that first evening on, the terrifying void of her absence is kept at bay by practical problems. Jérôme tackles them with everything he’s got: it’s his way of remaining alive, of keeping Delphine alive, and Hélène helps him by trying to contact their insurance company on her cell phone to organize their departure and the shipment of the body. It isn’t easy, obviously, what with the distance, the time difference, and the overloaded circuits. She’s often put on hold, spending precious minutes of battery life listening to soothing music and recorded messages, then when she finally speaks to an actual person, she’s transferred to another line where the music starts up again—or she’s cut off. These ordinary annoyances, simply irritating in everyday life, become in this emergency both monstrous yet vital, because they define tasks to be accomplished, give form to the passage of time. There is something to do: Jérôme is doing it, Hélène is helping him, it’s as simple as that. While this is going on, Jérôme keeps an eye on Delphine. Delphine stares into space. She doesn’t cry, doesn’t scream. Although she eats very little, that’s better than nothing. Her hand shakes but she can bring a forkful of curried rice to her lips. Put it in her mouth. Chew it. Load more rice on the fork. Eat another mouthful. I look at Hélène and feel clumsy, helpless, useless. I almost resent her for being so caught up in the task at hand that she’s paying no attention to me. It’s as if I no longer exist.

  Later, we’re lying on the bed, side by side. My fingertips caress hers, which don’t respond. I’d like to take her in my arms but I know that isn’t possible. I know what she’s thinking; it’s impossible to think of anything else. A few dozen yards from us, in another bungalow, Jérôme and Delphine must be lying down as well, wide awake. Has he taken her in his arms, or is that impossible for them as well? It’s the first night. The night of the day their daughter died. This morning she was alive, she woke up, she came to play in their bed, she called them Mama and Papa, she was laughing, she was warm, she was the loveliest and warmest and sweetest thing on earth, and now she’s dead. She will always be dead.

  Since the beginning of our stay, I’d been saying that I didn’t like the Hotel Eva Lanka and suggesting that we move into one of the little beach guesthouses, which weren’t nearly as comfortable as our bungalows but reminded me of my backpacking trips twenty-five or thirty years ago. I wasn’t really serious; in my descriptions of those marvelous lodgings, I gleefully emphasized the lack of electricity, the mosquito nets full of holes, the poisonous spiders that dropped onto your head. Hélène and the children would shriek, making fun of my old hippie nostalgia, and the whole thing had become a comic routine. The beach guesthouses were swept away by the wave, along with most of their guests. I think, We might have been among them. Jean-Baptiste might have gone down to the beach with Rodrigue. We might have, as planned, gone out on a boat with the scuba diving instructor. And Delphine and Jérôme—they must be thinking, We could have taken Juliette to the market. If we had, she would have come bouncing into our bed tomorrow morning. The world around us would be in mourning but we would hug our little girl and say, Thank God, she’s here, that’s all that matters.

  2

  On the morning of the second day, Jérôme says, I’m going to check on Juliette. As if he wants to make sure she’s being well cared for. Go ahead, says Delphine. Jérôme leaves with Philippe. Hélène lends a bathing suit to Delphine, who does the breast-stroke in the hotel pool for a long time, slowly, staring straight ahead. There are now three or four families of tourist “survivors” around the pool, but they have lost only their belongings and don’t dare complain much in front of Delphine. The Swiss Germans calmly stick to their Ayurvedic schedule as if nothing has happened. Philippe and Jérôme return at noon, looking haggard: Juliette is no longer in the Tangalla hospital. She’s been moved—perhaps to Matara, or maybe Colombo. There are too many bodies; some are being burned, others have been transferred to hospitals less overwhelmed, and rumors of epidemics are starting to circulate. All Jérôme could obtain was a scrap of paper with a few scribbled words a hotel employee now translates for him with mortified sympathy. It’s a kind of receipt, stating simply, “Little white girl, blond, in a red dress.”

  Hélène and I now go to Tangalla. The tuk-tuk driver chatters away: Many people dead, but his wife and children, thank God, are safe. When we approach the hospital, we’re hit by the foul odor. Even if you’ve never breathed it before, you know what it is. Dead bodies, many dead bodies, says the driver, bringing a hand-kerchief to his nose while gesturing for us to do the same. In the courtyard, only a few men wear hospital uniforms; the rest must be volunteers in street clothes. They’re all carrying stretchers, piling bodies into the back of a covered truck, one on top of another. Once filled, the trucks leave; others arrive. We enter a large room that seems more like a fish market than a hospital lobby. The concrete floor is damp and slippery, hosed down occasionally to suggest a hint of coolness. Bodies lie in rows; I count about forty of them. They’ve been here since yesterday, many of them swollen from their time in the water. No foreigners; perhaps they were given priority evacuation, like Juliette. Their skin isn’t really dark, it’s gray. I’ve never seen a dead person before; it feels strange to have been spared this until the age of forty-seven. Pressing a bit of cl
oth to our noses, we check other rooms, go upstairs. It’s hard to tell visitors from staff. No one stops us, no doors are closed, and there are corpses everywhere, bloated and grayish. I remember the rumors about epidemics, and the Dutchman at the hotel declaring that if all the bodies weren’t burned right away, we’d have a health catastrophe for sure: the cadavers would poison the wells and rats would spread cholera through all the villages. I’m afraid even to breathe, as if the fearsome odor were infectious. I wonder what we’re doing here. Looking. Just looking. Hélène is the only journalist in this area. She already dictated an article yesterday evening and another one this morning, and she’s brought her camera but hasn’t the heart to take it out. She questions a visibly exhausted doctor in English, but we can’t really understand his replies. Back in the courtyard, the truck we’d seen being loaded with corpses has left. Outside the gate, beside the road, there is a patch of dry, sharp-edged grass shaded by an immense banyan tree, at the foot of which wait a dozen people: whites, in torn clothing and covered with small wounds they haven’t bothered to treat. When we go over to them, they gather around us. They’ve all lost someone—wife, husband, child, friend—but unlike Delphine and Jérôme, they haven’t seen their bodies and will not give up hope. Ruth, a redhead of about twenty-five from Scotland, is the first to speak. She was in a beach bungalow with Tom: they’d just gotten married and were on their honeymoon. When the wave struck they were within ten yards of each other, but Tom was swept away while she survived by clinging to a tree the same way Philippe did, and she’s been looking for Tom ever since. She’s searched everywhere—on the beach, among the ruins, in the village, at the police station—and having learned that all bodies eventually get sent to the hospital, she has come here, and here she stays. She’s looked all through the hospital several times; she watches every truck deliver its new corpses and load up those bound for cremation. She hasn’t eaten or slept. The hospital staff have told her to go rest, promising to let her know of any news, but she won’t leave, she wants to stay with her companions, who stay for the same reasons. They know that any news can only be bad. But they want to be here when their loved ones’ bodies come off the truck. She’s been waiting since yesterday evening, so Ruth knows how things work here: she confirms that any whites brought in are quickly moved about fifteen kilometers to the east along the southern coast, to Matara, where there is more space and, apparently, a refrigerated cold room. The villagers are supposed to claim their dead here, but many families, especially fishermen who lived near the water, were wiped out, leaving no one to come for those bodies, which are unceremoniously sent to be burned. All this happens in a chaotic, slapdash manner. Since the hospital has no electricity or phone service and the local roads are in bad shape, there’s little hope of receiving help from the outside anytime soon. And what would that even mean, “outside,” when the whole island has been affected? No one has escaped; all are dealing with their dead. That’s what Ruth says, yet she sees that Hélène and I have escaped. We are still together, our clothes are clean, and we aren’t searching for anyone in particular. After our visit to hell, we will return to our hotel, where lunch will be served to us. We will swim in the pool, we’ll kiss our children and think, We came so close … A guilty conscience is pointless, I know, but mine torments me anyway and I’m ready to move on, whereas Hélène completely ignores her feelings and devotes all her energy to doing what she can, because even if it’s something paltry, she must still do it. She’s attentive, careful, asks questions, thinks of everything that can be useful. She has brought all our cash with her and distributes it among Ruth and her companions. She writes down everyone’s name, along with the name and a brief description of each missing person. Tomorrow she will try to get to Matara and will look for them there. She notes the phone numbers of everyone’s families in Europe and America, so she can call them later to say, I saw Ruth, she’s alive; I saw Peter, he’s alive. She offers to take whoever wants to come with us back to the hotel, since only one or two people need to keep watch; the others could eat, wash, receive first aid, sleep a little, phone home, then return to relieve the others. But no one wants to come with us.

  Among those keeping vigil that day across from the hospital, Ruth is the one I remember best because we spoke chiefly to her and because we saw her again later, but there was also an overweight middle-aged Englishwoman with short hair who had lost her girlfriend. I imagined the two of them getting on in years, living in a lovingly tended house in an English town, taking part in its social life, going on a yearly trip to some distant country, putting together their photo albums … All that shattered. The survivor’s return; the empty house. Each woman’s mug with her name on it, one of them forever forlorn. And this heavy woman, sitting slumped at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, weeping, telling herself that she’s all alone now and will be until she dies. In the months that followed our return to France, Hélène was obsessed with the idea of contacting the people in the group to learn what had happened to them and to see if anyone had been graced by a miracle. But no matter how hard she looked through our luggage for her list of survivors, she couldn’t find it, and we resigned ourselves to never learning more about them. The image I have today of the half hour we spent under the banyan is something from a horror film. There we are, neat and clean, untouched, while around us cluster the lepers, poisoned by radiation, shipwrecked souls reduced to a savage state. Only yesterday evening they were like us and we like them, but something happened to them and not us, so now we belong to two separate branches of humanity.

  That evening, Philippe tells us how his love affair with Sri Lanka first began over twenty years ago. He was a computer specialist in a Parisian suburb dreaming of distant lands when he became friends with a Sri Lankan colleague, who later invited the whole family home to his island: Philippe, his then wife, and little Delphine. It was their first big trip together and they fell in love with everything about the island: the bustling cities, cool mountain retreats, languid seaside villages, terraced rice fields, chirping geckos, roofs of fluted tiles, forest temples, the dazzlingly bright smiles and sunrises, and eating curried rice with their fingers. Philippe had thought, This is real life, this is where I’d like to live one day. That day took some time to arrive, however. The Sri Lankan colleague moved to Australia, and after a few letters contact was lost, the connection to the enchanting island broken. But Philippe had had enough of being a suburban midlevel manager. He had a passionate interest in wine and decided to explore it. Back then a computer specialist could easily get well-paid work wherever he wanted, so he moved to a village near Saint-Émilion and quickly found clients—purchase centers, distributors, major wineries—for whom he modernized and supervised management systems. In a region where people had a reputation for being standoffish to newcomers, his wife opened a shop that did surprisingly well. The family lived in the country from then on, in a pretty house surrounded by grape-vines, earning a good living doing things they enjoyed. Their new lifestyle was a success. Later Philippe met Isabelle, and was amicably divorced from his wife. Delphine grew up, a smart and delightful girl who first saw Jérôme when she was just shy of fifteen and knew even then he would be the man of her life. He was twenty-one, strong and handsome, the heir to a long line of wealthy wine merchants. Differences in fortune are no small matter in that milieu, but in time a teenager’s dream became a serious engagement. Displaying quiet determination, Jérôme stood up to his family: he loved Delphine, he had chosen Delphine, and no one was going to make him change his mind. Since Philippe worshipped his daughter, there was reason to fear no suitor would please him, but once again it was love at first sight: a deep bond of affection united father- and son-in-law. Despite the twenty-year difference in their ages, they shared the same tastes: great Bordeaux, the Rolling Stones, fishing, and, to cap it all, Delphine. The two men were soon as thick as thieves. When the newlyweds found a house in a village about ten kilometers from the one where Philippe and Isabelle lived, the
two couples became inseparable. The four of them often had dinner at one house or the other, where Philippe and Jérôme would take turns producing bottles for blind tastings, and after talking legs, nose, body, mouthfeel, they’d light up an after-dinner joint of homegrown weed smoked to the strains of Angie or Satisfaction. They all loved one another and were happy. Out under his pergola, Philippe would ramble on about Sri Lanka, and although it had been a good eight years since their first trip, he and Delphine still remembered the island with pleasure. One autumn evening, right after the grape harvest, they were dining outside; they’d drunk a Château-Magdelaine 1967 (the year Jérôme was born) and were talking about vacationing there, all four of them, when Isabelle had an idea: How about if the boys went over first to do some reconnoitering?