Night

by Bernard Minier

Servaz saw him lean forward to look under the carriages, then between the two. He reached out towards the moving train, grabbed the rungs of a carriage, and climbed up towards the roof.

  Don’t do that!

  Not here, it’s crazy!

  ‘Jensen!’ he called.

  The man turned, saw him, and began climbing even faster. The rails were slick with rain. Servaz reached the top of the ballast and in turn seized the metal rungs on the side of the carriage.

  ‘Martin! What the hell are you doing?’

  5

  In a Region Close to Death

  Espérandieu’s voice, below him. Servaz puts his foot on a rung, pulls himself up with his hand closed around a slippery bar, puts down the other foot. He can hear the buzzing of electricity in the lines above his head, like the sound of a thousand wasps.

  He has come out level with the roof. Jensen is still there. He hesitates, his form standing out in the gleam of lightning, only a few metres away from the catenaries and the lines. For a moment there is a sizzling of overvoltage from one end of the lines to the other: fff-chhhhhhhh. Servaz can feel every hair on his body standing on end. He wipes his streaming face. Climbs onto the roof and finds his footing. The rain is pounding onto the carriage. Jensen turns his head, left then right, as if paralysed by uncertainty; he has his back to Servaz, his legs spread.

  ‘Jensen,’ says Servaz. ‘We’ll both fry if we stay here.’

  No reaction.

  ‘Jensen!’

  The din is so loud that it’s a waste of time.

  ‘JENSEN!’

  And then …

  … and then it comes in a sort of fog of sensations mingling and contradicting one another; a brutal acceleration of time; a sudden, unexpected and inexplicable swerve: just as Jensen pivots towards him, gun in hand (and a flame bursts from the black mouth of the barrel), an electric arc of such luminous white that it dazzles him flashes from the catenary and sweeps towards Jensen, striking him, oddly, not at the top of his head but on the left side of his face, then finds a path through his body, connecting through his legs and feet with the flooded roof of the carriage, transforming the fugitive into a toaster and instantly projecting him several metres further along. Servaz feels the residual electric charge as it follows the roof of the wet carriage right under the soles of his shoes, and his hair stands on end – but an event that will have far greater significance for his future occurs in the same instant: in the tenth of a second that follows, the projectile that left the gun enters into contact with his rain-soaked mohair wool jacket, goes through it at the speed of 350 metres a second – in other words ten times faster than the speed of sound – then passes through the fabric of his polo-neck jumper (42 per cent polyamide, 30 per cent wool and 28 per cent alpaca), the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis of his wet skin, a few centimetres from his left nipple, through the external oblique muscle and the intercostal muscles, narrowly missing the thoracic artery and the breastbone, and then pierces the front edge of his left lung, with its spongy, elastic texture, then the pericardium, and finally penetrates his heart right next to the left ventricle – his heart pumping and expelling blood at a speed accelerated by fear – before coming out the other side.

  The shock projects him backwards.

  And the last thing Martin Servaz notices is the static electricity under his feet, the drops of cold rain on his cheeks, the smell of ozone in the air and the screams of his assistant from the bottom of the embankment, just as a fatal metal wasp pierces his heart.

  ‘We’ve got a TMGSW,’ says the woman’s voice next to him. ‘I repeat: transmediastinal gunshot wound. Strong indication of a penetrating wound to the heart. Bullet entry in the precordial region; dorsal exit. CRT: over three seconds. Tachycardia over 120 bpm. No response to pain and no reaction of pupils to light. Cyanosis of the lips, extremities cold. Very unstable situation. Prepare for surgery as quickly as possible.’

  The voice reaches him through several layers of gauze. It is calm, but he can sense the urgency; it is not talking to him but to someone else, but he can only hear this voice.

  ‘We have a second casualty,’ adds the voice. ‘Third-degree burns from electrocution, a high-voltage wire. Stabilised. We need a spot in the burn unit. Hurry up. We’ve got a mess, here.’

  ‘Where’s the other cop?’ bellows a second voice, a bit further away. ‘I want to know what calibre the weapon was and the type of ammunition.’

  As the lightning draws bright intermittent streaks across the sky, he can sense through his eyelashes the glow of other, more colourful, rhythmic pulsations, on his right. He hears sounds, too: voices, further away, many of them; the echo of sirens; a train rattling and squealing over the points …

  It was really stupid to run after that guy without your gun.

  All at once he feels completely bewildered. It’s his father. His father is looking at him, standing next to where he is lying on the gurney. What the hell are you doing here? he thinks. You committed suicide when I was twenty; I’m the one who found you. You committed suicide like Socrates, like Seneca. In your study where you always went to correct your students’ homework. With Mahler on full blast. I had just got home from uni that day. So, tell me how, for Christ’s sake, you can possibly be here?

  It was stupid, really stupid.

  Papa? Papa? Shit, where did he go? There is a great deal of agitation around him. The mask on his face bothers him – it feels like a big paw – but he’s pretty sure this is how life is reaching his lungs. He hears another familiar voice, a terribly anxious voice. Is he alive? Is he alive? Will he make it? Vincent, it’s Vincent. Why is Vincent panicking? He feels fine. It’s true: he feels astonishingly well. Everything is fine, is what he’d like to tell him. But he can neither speak nor move.

  ‘Number one priority, maintain the blood volume: fill it up!’ shouts a new voice right next to him.

  That voice, too, is close to panic. He would like to say to them everything is fine, I assure you. I even think I’ve never felt this good in my entire life. All at once he gets the feeling he’s not facing the right way, that he’s floating above his own body. He’s resting on air, suspended in the void. He can see them, busy all around him, methodical, precise, disciplined. He has another self lying there below. He sees himself the way he sees the others. Good Lord, you don’t look very well! You look like a corpse! He can feel no pain. Nothing but an inner peace of a sort he has never known. He watches them rushing around. He likes all these people. Every one of them.

  That too, he would like to tell them. How much he loves them. How much they matter to him – all of them, even the people he doesn’t know. Why has he never managed to tell the people he loves that he loves them? Now it’s too late. Too late. He wishes Margot were here. And Alexandra. And Charlène, too. And Marianne … It is as if someone has poked him with a cattle prod. Marianne … where is she? What has become of her? Is she alive or dead? Is he going to leave without getting an answer?

  ‘Right, here we go!’ says the voice. ‘On the count of three: one … two …’

  Sometimes – like now – he disconnects completely. There can be no doubt: he’s on his way towards death. I feel fine. I feel splendid. I’m ready, lads, don’t you worry. The ambulance doors open wide.

  Hospital.

  OR3!

  Haemostasis!

  We’ve got to maintain haemostasis!

  Clicking. Voices. The parade of neon lights past his eyelashes. Corridors. He can hear the gurney’s little wheels squeaking on the floor. Doors banging. The smell of ethanol. His eyes are half closed, he’s not supposed to be able to see: ‘Coma stage two,’ said someone at some point. He’s not supposed to be able to hear, either. Maybe he’s dreaming? But who can dream up words like ‘haemostasis’. He’ll have to get to the bottom of this, when the time comes.

  He’s so conditioned by his job, he thinks with a smile – an inner smile, of course.

  He is constantly alternating between erratic lucidity and total
fog. All of a sudden he sees several people bending over him, with their caps and their blue scrubs. Gazes. All focused on him.

  ‘I want a full list of lesions. Where are the red blood cell concentrates, the platelets, the plasma?’

  They pick him up and put him down again, cautiously. He vanishes into the fog once more.

  ‘Prepare all instruments for a left anterolateral thoracotomy.’

  He emerges one last time. A little light passes before his pupils, from one eye to the other.

  ‘His pupils aren’t reacting. No reaction to pain, either.’

  ‘Is the anaesthesia ready?’

  Once again, the mask over his face is like a grizzly’s paw. He can hear one voice, louder than the others:

  ‘Let’s go!’

  Suddenly he sees a long tunnel leading endlessly upwards. Like in that bloody painting by Hieronymus Bosch – what was it called again? He is climbing up the tunnel. What is this thing? He is … flying. There is light at the end. Shit, where am I going? The closer he gets, the brighter the light. Brighter than any light he has ever seen.

  Where am I?

  He is lying on the operating table, and yet he is walking through a remarkable landscape full of light. How is this possible? The landscape is breathtaking (‘breathtaking’: haven’t lost your sense of humour, mate! he muses, thinking about the oxygen mask). He sees blue mountains in the distance, a sky that is absolutely pure, hills, and light. A great deal of light. A brilliant, sparkling, magnificent, tangible light. He knows where he is: in a region close to death, perhaps even already on the other side, but he is not afraid.

  Everything is beautiful, luminous, fantastic. Welcoming.

  He is standing on a ridge overlooking the hills, with shimmering streams winding their way through the terrain, embracing its contours. Below him, a river is slowly approaching. He follows a path down to the river and the further he goes, the more unusual the river seems. It is an unimaginable marvel, this river! And suddenly, as he draws closer, he begins to understand: the river is made of human beings walking side by side, and what he sees is the river of humanity: past, present and future.

  Hundreds of thousands, millions, billions of human beings …

  He walks the last hundred metres and when he joins the huge crowd he feels submerged, surrounded by a palpable love. Immersed in the middle of this enormous river of people, he begins sobbing with joy. He realises that never – not for one minute in his entire life – has he been this happy. Never has he felt so at peace with himself, and with others. Never has the perfume of life been so sweet.

  (Life? says a dissonant voice inside him. Can’t you see that this light, this love, is death?)

  He wonders where this dissonance has come from, these sudden, harsh chords – as powerful as the ones that resonate at the end of the adagio in Mahler’s 10th Symphony.

  Through his eyelashes he sees someone at his bedside, at the edge of his field of vision. He does not know her name, this beautiful young woman with the tragic face. She must be twenty-two or twenty-three years old. Then the fog lifts and his lucidity returns. Margot. His daughter. When did she get here? She is supposed to be in Quebec.

  Margot is weeping. He can feel his daughter’s thoughts, can feel how unhappy she is – and suddenly he is ashamed.

  He realises he is no longer in the operating theatre but in a hospital room.

  Recovery, he thinks. The recovery room.

  Then the door opens and a man in a white coat comes in with a nurse. For a moment he is filled with panic when the man turns to Margot. He is going to tell her that her father is dead.

  No, no, I’m not dead! Don’t listen to him!

  ‘He’s in a coma,’ says the man.

  He can hear Margot asking questions. She is standing outside of his field of vision and he cannot move. He cannot hear everything they are saying. Hey, you lot, I’m here! he would like to shout. It’s me you’re talking about! But he cannot make a single sound – and, in any case, he’s got this thing stuck in his mouth.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  He cannot remember very well where he went nor for how long. He has the vague sensation that there was light, and a human river, but he’s not sure about that either. In any case, he is back in the hospital room. He recognises the ceiling, with its brown spot that vaguely resembles the African continent.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  Yes, yes, I can hear you.

  ‘Can you hear me, Dad?’

  Yes, yes, I can hear you!

  ‘Dad. Can. You. Hear. Me?’

  He would like to take her hand, give her a sign, any sign – flicker an eyelash, wiggle a finger, make a sound – so that she will understand, but he is a prisoner of this sarcophagus that is his lifeless body.

  You are so beautiful, my little girl, he thinks as she leans towards him.

  He is beginning to feel at home. There are other rooms, other patients in recovery: sometimes he hears them calling the nurses or pressing their call buttons, triggering a strident ringing.

  During his moments of lucidity, however, he has become aware of one important thing: he is in the middle of a spider’s web of tubes, bandages, electric wires, electrodes and pumps; and the sound of the machine on his right – which he will soon begin to call the ‘spider machine’ – is like a sign of some modern sorcery, an evil spell that is holding him captive, its greatest perversion the silicone tube entering his mouth. He has no autonomy, no movement, no defence; he is at the mercy of the machine, as inert as a corpse.

  But perhaps he is … dead?

  Because in the evening, when there is no one left in his room, the dead take the place of the living.

  Silence reigns at night, in the ward and in his room, and suddenly they are there. His father, for example, saying, Do you remember your uncle Ferenc?

  Ferenc was his mother’s brother. He was a poet. Papa said that if Maman and Uncle Ferenc were so fond of the French language, it was because they were born in Hungary.

  You are going to die, said his father gently. You are going to join us. It’s not so bad, you’ll see. You’ll be fine here with us.

  He looks at them. Because at night, in his visions, he can turn his head. They are everywhere in the room. He knows them all. Like Aunt Cezarina, a beautiful brown-haired woman with a magnificent bosom, whom he was in love with when he was fifteen.

  Come, says Aunt Cezarina in turn.

  And Matthias, his cousin, who died from leukaemia at the age of twelve. Madame Garson, his French teacher when he was thirteen, who read his essays to the rest of the class. And Eric Lombard, the billionaire who was killed in an avalanche – the man who loved horses; and Mila, the astronaut, who slit her wrists in the bathtub – no doubt someone was there next to her that night, but Servaz gave up trying to prove it. And Mahler himself, the great Mahler, the genius with tired features, wearing his pince-nez and a strange hat, speaking of the curse of the number 9: Beethoven, Bruckner, Schubert … they all died after their ninth symphony … so I went directly from the eighth to the tenth … I wanted to trick God – such arrogance! – but it was not enough.

  Every time they appear, he is enveloped in the same love. And yes, he is beginning to find it suspicious. He knows what they want from him: to go with them. But he’s not ready. His time has not come. He tries to explain, but they don’t want to know. To be sure, the grass is greener where they have come from; the sky is bluer, the light is a thousand times more intense, and yet, he cannot possibly stay there, now that he has seen Margot next to his bed.

  One day Samira shows up, dressed as usual in one of her weird get-ups.

  When she leans over him, he briefly glimpses a huge skull on her sweatshirt, and a face in the shadow of a hood. Then she removes the hood and it takes him half a second to identify the unbelievably ugly face – although the ugliness is fairly difficult to pinpoint, in fact, because it’s the overall effect of individually minor details: a too-short nose and protuberant eyes; a too-big
mouth, a certain dissymmetry in her features … Samira Cheung: the finest member of his investigation team, along with Vincent.

  ‘Fuck, boss, if you could see your face.’

  He wishes he could smile. And he does, internally. This is pure Samira … she insists on calling him ‘boss’, even though he has frequently pointed out that he finds the title ridiculous. She walks around his bed and out of sight, to open the blinds, and he notes in passing that she still has the nicest arse of anyone in the brigade.

  That is the Samira paradox: a perfect body and one of the ugliest faces he has ever seen. Is this sexist? Could be. Samira herself does not refrain from passing judgement on the anatomical particularities of the men she encounters.

  ‘… How are the nurses? … The fantasy of the nurse, naked under her uniform, do you like that … boss? … I’ll be back tomorrow … boss … I promise …’

  The days go by. And the nights. How many, he hasn’t a clue.

  Because time does not exist here. His only point of reference is the nurses. They are the ones who give rhythm to time, conducting a relay by his bedside.

  He is perfectly aware of their unlimited power over his person, and although on the whole they are competent, devoted, meticulous, swamped, they never fail to make him aware of this, through their gestures, the tone of their voices, and their words, all of which signify the same thing: ‘You are gravely ill, and you depend entirely and exclusively on us.’

  Another morning, another visit. Two blurry faces by the bed. One of them is Margot, the other … Alexandra, her mother. His ex-wife has gone to the trouble to come. Her eyes are red. Is she upset? He remembers their disagreements after the divorce; then their complicity returned, to a degree, no doubt thanks to common memories of happy days, the time when Margot was growing up. .

  ‘… say that you can’t hear anything,’ says Vincent from his chair.

  They are alone in the room, the door open onto the corridor, as always.

  And … oh, Lord! That music! That theme – the most beautiful ever written! Oh, the tumult, the bleeding, the words of love! Mahler … his beloved Mahler … Why didn’t anyone think of it before now? He thinks that tears must be welling in his eyes, flowing down his cheeks. But then he sees the face of his assistant – who is clearly watching out for the least little sign – and he can read nothing in his eyes but disappointment, when Vincent removes the headphones and sits back down.