Six Months to Kill

by Enzo Bartoli

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Enzo Bartoli

  Translation copyright © 2019 by Alexandra Maldwyn-Davies

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Six Mois à Tuer by Thomas & Mercer in France in 2017. Translated from French by Alexandra Maldwyn-Davies. First published in English by Thomas & Mercer in collaboration with Amazon Crossing in 2019.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, in collaboration with Amazon Crossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Thomas & Mercer and Amazon Crossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542093767

  ISBN-10: 1542093767

  Cover design by kid-ethic

  First edition

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  PROLOGUE

  ‘Monsieur Gaudin, you’re going to have to be brave about this,’ declares Professor Lazreg, unable to hide a hint of sadness in his voice.

  This eminent oncologist, who has been treating me for a good few months now, explains with calm deliberation that the cancer cells are growing at a much faster rate than anticipated and that the various treatments I’ve been subjected to haven’t yielded the desired results. He avoids sentimentality, which is fine by me, and adds that any other therapies would only serve to make my final days increasingly distressing, and that there’d be no guarantee in terms of delaying the inevitable.

  And so, at this stage, he can only offer me palliative care: something to help reduce the pain and give me the energy I need to make the most of the time I have left – which he estimates to be around six months. It’s May now, so that means I probably won’t have to endure another Christmas. I’ve always hated it anyway.

  Before I head back, albeit temporarily, into the land of the living, he assures me that he’s done his utmost, and that in my case no decision was ever taken without his first consulting several of his esteemed colleagues; but that unfortunately there are still a few years to go before modern medicine can successfully treat every cancer.

  I think that we’ve said everything there is to be said. Lazreg pushes his chair away from his desk and slides a lightly trembling hand through his thick grey hair. Finally, he throws his glasses down on to his notepad and stands to show me to the door.

  We both pause before I leave, and he clasps my hand in his for what feels like too long. Far too long. What does he want now? He must have something else to tell me. I can see he’s struggling to find the words. I try to pull free of his grip, but he continues to hold on.

  Eventually, he spits it out. ‘When it comes to palliative care . . .’ he says, his voice full of empathy, yet hesitant.

  ‘Yes?’ I interrupt.

  ‘Actually, it might just go beyond palliative. It’s a new treatment. I thought I might make the trip to your house every week, so I can administer it myself.’

  I have trouble hiding my surprise. This sort of undertaking must be almost unheard of.

  I’m about to question his reasoning, but he anticipates me and explains, ‘The drug I’m suggesting we give you hasn’t yet been granted full medical approval – at least, not in Europe.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I can get hold of it from a fellow specialist in the States, but to be quite clear, it is considered illegal.’

  I detect that it’s a question rather than a statement. Lazreg seems to be seeking my approval; I’m aware that bonds of mutual respect have been created between us over time, and that this is about him doing me a favour. I show him that I agree to this with a nod of the head, and ask when he’s thinking of getting started.

  ‘I’ll come and see you in three days at around seven in the evening,’ he replies.

  At last . . . he lets go of my hand and I go home to play the waiting game.

  CHAPTER 1

  I won’t be disrupting my routine in any way tonight. Some might see this as a kind of defiance: the knee-jerk reaction of a man who, knowing he is doomed, faces reality with a courage born of despair; confronts Death’s imminent arrival head-on, refusing him the satisfaction of seeing him crumble . . . but that’s not my style. Actually, my behaviour is down to sheer laziness.

  Every night for years now I’ve slumped on to my sofa, beer in one hand and packet of crisps in the other, at exactly 6.50 p.m., to get my fix of my game show. I love it. For starters, it gives me a chance to take the mickey out of those morons who have the gall to show up to a TV studio with a knowledge of culture that, at best, comes from flipping through Reader’s Digest. Plus, this is the programme where there’s the most money to be won, and to be honest I find ‘winning’ between €100,000 and €1 million every night rather entertaining.

  It’s a piece of cake for me. With an IQ of 162, on top of a visual memory that astounded the droves of paediatric psychologists who examined me as a child, I am unbeatable on practically every subject you could mention. At the age of seven, for example, I’d memorised the list of prime numbers up to 100; by eleven, I knew them all the way to 1,000. I gave up when I got to 10,000 at around fourteen, as I was starting to get bored with it. Incidentally, I then went on to the Lychrel numbers, starting with the smallest candidate – 196. After 2,415,836 iterations, I’d reached a million digits without obtaining a palindrome. If I had, I think you’d have heard about it. I also learned Latin in just a few months, but that was more for fun. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, I’m not autistic and I’ve never been diagnosed as such; I’m simply able to answer 95 per cent of the presenters’ questions correctly.

  The missing 5 per cent is because I’m totally incapable of recognising a tune. If asked, I’d more than likely get the Beatles mixed up with the Rolling Stones or Bowie confused with Bob Dylan. But I’m quite confident that when it comes to literature, science or history, there’s no tripping me up.

  So why is it that I’m fine with sprawling out on my sofa and answering questions rather than going for some easy cash and actually taking part in one of these programmes? There are two reasons for this.

  The first is that, from a very young age, this exceptionally high IQ of mine has somewhat negatively affected my social life, and the awkward gaffes I tend to make when conversing with my peers end up making me look, at best, cripplingly shy and, at worst, the village idiot – which is incredible, really, for someone with my brains. To make matters worse, and even though I’ve tried for many years to do something about it, I often speak using outmoded language, including expressions that have long sin
ce seen their day. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever sworn properly . . . not even when I’m behind the wheel. All this leads me to keep any relationships with fellow members of the human race to an absolute minimum, with only very rare exceptions, which I invariably tend to loathe.

  The second reason is a lot more mundane. I no longer have any need for money. I received my BSc at fourteen and went on to obtain an MSc in applied geophysics at nineteen, before finishing up my doctoral thesis and joining the National Scientific Research Centre three years later. My salary as a researcher – alongside the courses I teach at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, further supplemented by my various missions at CERN in Geneva – has given me a very comfortable standard of living, and has even led to my developing some additional whims that I didn’t have before.

  I live at a very ‘desirable’ address, to quote the estate agent I dealt with at the time: thirty-three square metres in Paris’s sixth arrondissement, with views overlooking the Jardin du Luxembourg. On the floor below me, there’s a couple, one of whom is a TV presenter who’s been on air since the invention of colour, and the other a former health minister. Upstairs there’s a singer, who by all accounts is pretty famous too, but I’ve never heard of him. In the flat opposite, the guy’s an author. Actually, he’s all right – at least as all right as someone can be to my mind. There was this one time when we had what might have passed for a conversation in the entrance hall.

  I felt obliged to let him know that I’d never once read one of his novels. He told me to consider myself lucky, but then gave me a copy of his bestseller. It had won some sort of prize voted for by high school students – the Goncourt, I think. He assured me that he wouldn’t blame me in the least if I happened to misplace it. I did start it, though, and I even went online to read what the critics were saying so I could get a better idea as to why people liked it so much. I never dared speak to him of it again. He became a little less friendly after that episode.

  I’m well aware that this neighbourhood isn’t for me. Those who live here like to go out a lot – to the theatre, to official opening nights at art galleries or to film premieres. Not me. I tuck myself away in my living room, convinced of the mediocrity of the world that surrounds me and to which I believe I perhaps should never have belonged. There you have it.

  Who would have thought there’d be a genius in my family? I am Régis Gaudin – the only child of Lucien Gaudin and Marie Gaudin, née Payot, who died within six months of each other fifteen years ago; Régis Gaudin, who married Corinne Lafarge just after his parents’ deaths (12 June 2003, to be precise), and divorced her less than three years later without ever seeing the point in procreating, and who now lives alone and indifferent in a stunning apartment in the sixth arrondissement with his sole entertainment being to watch televised game shows. Add to this a so-so physique, softened by both a lack of exercise and deplorable eating habits – including a massive intake of crisps, beer, frozen pizzas and other junk food – plus underwhelming eyes, the charisma of a photo-booth curtain and a tendency to stammer when under emotional stress . . . and there you have the archetypal anti-hero. An anti-hero with six months of his wishy-washy life left to live.

  Today’s contestant is a scarily skinny sociology student. He’s just gone home with €1,500 after getting stuck on a worryingly easy question: list these four Napoleonic battles in chronological order – Friedland, Trafalgar, Wagram, Marengo. It’s just appalling. Surely everyone in the country knows the answer! Really, really appalling. Up next is a woman, a retired postal worker from Villeneuve-sur-Lot who tells everyone that when she plays at home in front of her TV she never gets less than €48,000. Talk about tempting fate. But before we witness her public televisual humiliation, it’s the ad break. I take this opportunity to grab my tablet, which is never far from my sofa, so I can read my emails. I consider this a chore and have to force myself to do it once a day.

  There’s nothing exciting. A few messages from students waiting to hear what I have to say about their theses, a German colleague inviting me to the umpteenth conference on the adherence properties of gecko setæ, plus the inevitable phishing scams from a range of commercial enterprises, including a well-known insurance company offering me some sort of amazing pension scheme. Clearly, their files aren’t up to date.

  I postpone replying to them and turn my focus back to the programme, which is about to resume. I’m not mistaken about the fate awaiting our retired postal worker. She gets through the first two questions, which are designed solely to entertain the masses, and then starts getting the cold sweats.

  ‘How many countries make up Great Britain?’

  I just know she’ll include Ireland and answer four. She starts using her fingers, a habit no doubt left over from her years counting and adding up behind her little window.

  ‘England, Wales and Scotland and Ireland . . . four!’

  What did I tell you? Back to Villeneuve-sur-Lot with you, Madame Post-Office-Woman.

  One last fastest-fingers-first round – but not before an advert telling us all about the virtues of a new building material – and the programme draws to an end with the deadpan smile of the presenter.

  It’s the news now, so I head to the kitchen to stick a frozen lasagne in the microwave. As I watch what from a distance might just pass as real Parmesan bubble and melt, I’m surprised to find myself thinking about cremation. I will ask to be burned – of that I’m sure. There’s no way I want to needlessly take up room under the earth. Then again, who would have the foolish notion to collect my ashes? What would be the point? And who should I leave these instructions with? Should I contact an undertaker now? If in doubt, do it. It’s for the best. It must be part of that process traditionally referred to as ‘putting your affairs in order’. I’ll make sure I deal with it this week. One less thing and all that.

  I stand at the edge of the work surface and shovel the lasagne into my mouth. Then I return to the sofa. There’s a film on next. I try my hardest to engage with it, but it’s difficult. It’s about this billionaire quadriplegic who hires a black lad from the suburbs of Paris to be a home help. You couldn’t get more improbable and it’s deadly dull to boot. I give up, asking myself how so much money can be spent filming such rubbish.

  When I switch off the TV, my living room is plunged into darkness, yet I don’t feel the need to turn the set back on. I sit there feeling confused. Have I actually taken in the consequences of what I’ve learned today? I think so. And yet it seems impossible to me that everything can come to an end so quickly. It’s too soon. There’s a sense of unfinished business, although I’ve never really sought to accomplish anything, or if I have it’s been bits of research – work of little interest to anyone apart from a couple of fossilised scientists and other lab rats like me. It’s all a bit futile, really.

  I resign myself to mooching towards the room I use as my office, to see where I’m at with some of the online chess games I play with people across the globe. I only have eleven of them on the go at the moment, including one against a particularly brilliant young man called Letton, the junior world vice-champion. I think it’ll end up in a draw, which is a pity. I shut down my computer just after midnight. This is when I take the sleeping pill prescribed by Professor Lazreg. For the last few weeks it’s been impossible to sleep without it. There’s only one tablet left in the packet. I mustn’t forget to go to the chemist’s tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 2

  Upon waking, I have a little difficulty getting my thoughts together. Yes, of course: the first thing to cross my mind is my imminent demise. For several days, perhaps even several weeks, I’ve been under no illusion. I know I’m doomed, but I did think that getting the confirmation from my doctor would provoke a greater fear – a violent reaction, or a panic attack at the very least. There’s nothing of the sort. I obey the autopilot that forces me to get out of bed, take a shower and eat two croissants out of the packet, dipping them into a mug of instant coffee while watching a rolling news cha
nnel.

  The weatherman announces that it’s the first real day of spring. Today is 24 May, so it’s about time. As I spend hours and hours in front of a screen – whether my television or my computer – I have no real reason to rejoice in this information, but it does all feel slightly different this morning. If nothing had changed, I’d be hunched over one of the awaiting theses on my desk or immersed in the latest recorded data from the accelerator at Stanford. But not today. In a break from all usual patterns, I grab a jacket from my wardrobe, something lighter than I’d normally wear, and head outside. As soon as I step out on to the pavement, however, I perform an about-turn and run back upstairs to change my slippers for a pair of moccasins.

  I walk the length of the pavement outside the Jardin du Luxembourg, but I’m hesitant to enter. I’ve been living with this park beneath my windows for twelve years and I haven’t yet set foot in it, not even when it would make sense to walk through it as a shortcut. I observe it from my flat sometimes. The trees let me in on what season it is, but that’s about it. The thought occurs to me that it might not be that unpleasant to amble along its pathways before they’re invaded by screaming kids.

  Through the wrought-iron fencing I see a young woman on her morning jog. She’s approaching me. Her tread is light and graceful. Unlike most of the health-and-fitness types who partake in this sport, she actually looks to be enjoying herself; she’s smiling under her baseball cap. As she passes, she gives me a little wave. By the time I realise what has just happened and turn to see who she might have been greeting, she has disappeared behind a bush. I don’t need to look in a mirror to know that there must have been some sort of misunderstanding. I’m not the kind of person people wave at unless they’re obliged to. Could she be one of my students? Given how many of them there are, I can’t commit all their faces to memory, and anyway, it’s been some time since I was last in an auditorium. On reflection, it’s not possible. She was young – a lot younger than me – but not quite young enough to still be attending lectures at the Institute of Astrophysics. There must be some rational explanation. Of course! She confused me for an acquaintance. That must have been it.