died and another man in his turn enter the wheel. Almost as though Luc were already unimportant to him; at night his insomnia mapped it out even beyond that other Luc, to others whose names would be Robert or Claude or Michael, a theory of infinite extension, an infinity of poor devils repeating the pattern without knowing it, convinced of their freedom of will and choice. The man was crying in his beer, only it was wine in this case, what could you do about it, nothing.
“They laugh at me now when I tell them that Luc died a few months later, they’re too stupid to realize … Yeah, now don’t you start looking at me like that. He died a few months later, it started as a kind of bronchitis, like at the same age I’d come down with a hepatitis infection. Me, they put in the hospital, but Luc’s mother persisted in keeping him at home to take care of him, and I went almost every day, sometimes I brought my nephew along to play with Luc. There was so much misery in that house that my visits were a consolation in every sense, company for Luc, a package of dried herrings or Damascus tarts. After I mentioned a drugstore where they gave me a special discount, it was taken for granted when I took charge of buying the medicines. It wound up by their letting me be Luc’s nurse, and you can imagine how, in a case like that, where the doctor comes in and leaves without any special concern, no one pays much attention if the final symptoms have anything at all to do with the first diagnosis … Why are you looking at me like that? Did I say anything wrong?”
No, no, he hadn’t said anything wrong, especially as he was crocked on the wine. On the contrary, unless you imagine something particularly horrible, poor Luc’s death seemed to prove that anyone given enough imagination can begin a fantasy on the number 95 bus and finish it beside a bed where a kid is dying quietly. I told him no to calm him down. He stayed staring into space for a spell before resuming the story.
“All right, however you like. The truth is that in those weeks following the funeral, for the first time I felt something that might pass for happiness. I still went every once in a while to visit Luc’s mother, I’d bring a package of cookies, but neither she nor the house meant anything to me now, it was as though I were waterlogged by the marvelous certainty of being the first mortal, of feeling that my life was continuing to wear away, day after day, wine after wine, and that finally it would end some place or another, some time or another, reiterating until the very end the destiny of some unknown dead man, nobody knows who or when, but me, I was going to be really dead, no Luc to step into the wheel to stupidly reiterate a stupid life. Understand the fullness of that, old man, envy me for all that happiness while it lasted.”
Because apparently it had not lasted. The bistro and the cheap wine proved it, and those eyes shining with a fever that was not of the body. Nonetheless he had lived some months savoring each moment of the daily mediocrity of his life, the breakup of his marriage, the ruin of his fifty years, sure of his inalienable mortality. One afternoon, crossing the Luxembourg gardens, he saw a flower.
“It was on the side of a bed, just a plain yellow flower. I’d stopped to light a cigarette and I was distracted, looking at it. It was a little as though the flower were looking at me too, you know, those communications, once in a while … You know what I’m talking about, everyonefeels that, what they call beauty. It was just that, the flower was beautiful, it was a very lovely flower. And I was damned, one day I was going to die and forever. The flower was handsome, there would always be flowers for men in the future. All at once I understood nothing, I mean nothingness, nothing, I’d thought it was peace, it was the end of the chain. I was going to die, Luc was already dead, there would never again be a flower for anyone like
“They laugh at me now when I tell them that Luc died a few months later, they’re too stupid to realize … Yeah, now don’t you start looking at me like that. He died a few months later, it started as a kind of bronchitis, like at the same age I’d come down with a hepatitis infection. Me, they put in the hospital, but Luc’s mother persisted in keeping him at home to take care of him, and I went almost every day, sometimes I brought my nephew along to play with Luc. There was so much misery in that house that my visits were a consolation in every sense, company for Luc, a package of dried herrings or Damascus tarts. After I mentioned a drugstore where they gave me a special discount, it was taken for granted when I took charge of buying the medicines. It wound up by their letting me be Luc’s nurse, and you can imagine how, in a case like that, where the doctor comes in and leaves without any special concern, no one pays much attention if the final symptoms have anything at all to do with the first diagnosis … Why are you looking at me like that? Did I say anything wrong?”
No, no, he hadn’t said anything wrong, especially as he was crocked on the wine. On the contrary, unless you imagine something particularly horrible, poor Luc’s death seemed to prove that anyone given enough imagination can begin a fantasy on the number 95 bus and finish it beside a bed where a kid is dying quietly. I told him no to calm him down. He stayed staring into space for a spell before resuming the story.
“All right, however you like. The truth is that in those weeks following the funeral, for the first time I felt something that might pass for happiness. I still went every once in a while to visit Luc’s mother, I’d bring a package of cookies, but neither she nor the house meant anything to me now, it was as though I were waterlogged by the marvelous certainty of being the first mortal, of feeling that my life was continuing to wear away, day after day, wine after wine, and that finally it would end some place or another, some time or another, reiterating until the very end the destiny of some unknown dead man, nobody knows who or when, but me, I was going to be really dead, no Luc to step into the wheel to stupidly reiterate a stupid life. Understand the fullness of that, old man, envy me for all that happiness while it lasted.”
Because apparently it had not lasted. The bistro and the cheap wine proved it, and those eyes shining with a fever that was not of the body. Nonetheless he had lived some months savoring each moment of the daily mediocrity of his life, the breakup of his marriage, the ruin of his fifty years, sure of his inalienable mortality. One afternoon, crossing the Luxembourg gardens, he saw a flower.
“It was on the side of a bed, just a plain yellow flower. I’d stopped to light a cigarette and I was distracted, looking at it. It was a little as though the flower were looking at me too, you know, those communications, once in a while … You know what I’m talking about, everyonefeels that, what they call beauty. It was just that, the flower was beautiful, it was a very lovely flower. And I was damned, one day I was going to die and forever. The flower was handsome, there would always be flowers for men in the future. All at once I understood nothing, I mean nothingness, nothing, I’d thought it was peace, it was the end of the chain. I was going to die, Luc was already dead, there would never again be a flower for anyone like
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