In the Metro, at the counter, he looked at the old women, their deep wrinkles, their drooping eyelids, and he said to me: “I will never be old.” It wasn’t a sad thought, just surprising. I had never had that thought before.
The thing that struck me the most is the simplicity of it all.
•
Passing the threshold of the Curie Institute for the first time, Dante’s phrase came back to me: “Leave all hope, you who enter.” But once inside I felt, on the contrary, as if I was in a kind of ideal environment, without comparison in our times, where smiling and attentive people give care and kindness to other humans who were destitute Very quickly, without thinking about it, I took the marked route from the Luxembourg RER station, in the heart of the Latin Quarter, where, in the middle of all the intersecting paths, which led to classes, shops, places to meet lovers, tourist attractions, there was even one for cancer patients.
Saying “I have chemo tomorrow” has become as natural as saying “I have a hair appointment” had been the year before.
•
The morning kitchen, Sunday, March 16: On the right in the photo, pale wood cabinets, a white dishwasher. On the counter, on either side of the gleaming sink, behind which the trays are leaning against the wall, are a cutting board, various electrical appliances, a bottle of bleach with a green cap, another of fertilizer for green plants, a pack of Whiskas. , a black handle, in the shape of a change, on a pot-bellied saucepan, a cast-iron saucepan, a plate with food in it, an open Tupperware container with a red lid next to it, as if waiting to receive leftovers from the plate, a parrot. The ceramic tile floor a sort of fifties blue and beige checkerboard. Next to the cabinet from which it was taken, a trash can filled with orange peel pressed on top. Touching the trash, the dark puddle of a thick garment lay on the checkerboard tiles like a bearskin. Next to it, a white slipper with something written on it. At the foot of the dishwasher, a small pile of crumpled, red-purple cloth and the other slipper, the tip of which rests on a kind of blue and white cloth. Behind the dark pile is a chair in a strange position, perpendicular to a table on which a large microwave oven is located, as if listening to it, with its ear pressed against it, as a radio The sun coming in through the window in the back projects jagged bands of light across the bearskin.
In another vertical shot of the same scene, the light, more intense, illuminates the dishwasher and the counter to the left of the sink with the fertilizer and bleach, and projects an image of the window, long and white, on the tiles plain
Nothing was put there, neither the remains of the meal nor those of love. Two types of disorder.
It took me a long time to identify our bathrobes, his dark green terrycloth, mine plum synthetic silk, and to distinguish what was written on the slippers: “Hôtel Amigo”. I don’t know what we ate the night before, the remains of which can be seen on the plate. Nor do I remember anything of our caresses or our pleasure.
There is nothing in the photo of the smells of the kitchen in the morning, a mixture of coffee and toast, cat food and March air. None of the noises, even, the regular sound of the fridge starting up, the neighbor’s lawnmower, maybe a plane from Roissy. Only the light that falls forever on the tiles, the orange peels in the trash, the green cap on the bleach bottle. All photos are muted, especially those taken in the morning sun.
•
I can put a date on the photo with my diary: the last Sunday before the US attacks Iraq. Everyone was looking forward to the war, which had been planned for months. Millions of people around the world marched to prevent it from happening, but it continues to advance, like a giant shadow on the sun-burnt earth. I feel guilty for not taking a strong stand against the war like in 1991, just hanging a white flag on my balcony as a sign of pacifist opposition, a gesture that was not so widespread in France, and that the only effect could. they were to make me look crazy in the eyes of my neighbors.
One morning, I listened to the radio, and there it was: a distant horror that I could only hear through my love story with M. It was a very hot day, the sun unperturbed, and I thought: Another beautiful spring . I have been released from all obligations, including writing. All I had to do was live this story with Mr. Waste time. The great party of a lifetime. The big party of cancer.
Finally, I was allowed to avoid the duties of education, and not respond to letters or e-mails. People’s insistence, when I refused an invitation to a debate or a reading, seemed scandalous to me, a form of persecution. Of course, my reaction had to do with the fact that I was sick, which they didn’t know about. If I had told them, they would have apologized profusely. But to hear them attribute my rejection to a whim, taking it as a personal affront (that is, thinking only of themselves), made me intractable. I have done with the vanity of others. I was unreachable.
