Read Online Cemetery of Swallows by Mallock;, Steven Rendall - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mallock;, Steven Rendall
Ads: Link
halls, at the same time being careful not to slip on an old bandage or a puddle of bodily fluids. The odor and the heat combined to make breathing unbearable.
In front of a steel door, two soldiers asked Barride for his papers. Mallock noticed that no one could enter without an official document countersigned by Delmont and the islandâs authorities. So many precautions to guard a poor, wounded Frenchmen seemed excessive. Unless they were there to protect him? From whom? In the farthest reaches of the hospital, behind a final grille protected by another pair of mustaches with riot guns, Manuel was waiting for them. He was in a room one of whose sides was being invaded by a mountain of old crutches and recycled casts.
Mallock was shocked. Manu no longer resembled the young man he had known. He was an aged and emaciated phantom of himself. A hysterical mummy with red eyes and protuberant bones, the mummy of a pharaoh who had gone mad on the brink of death. Far from all humanity, his expression looked like that of a murderer. As for his smile when he recognized the superintendent, it also resembled a grimace: a monstrous mask stapled on for the occasion.
What had happened to him?
6.
Puerto Plata National Hospital, 1
P.M.
For a week, Julieâs brother had been bathed in a mixture of sweat, raw pain, and urine. With a constant desire to throw up. But overcoming this torture, making it almost bearable, he felt a marvelous happiness, a kind of satisfaction, a sweet euphoria that flowed through his veins like a river of morphine.
The old man, the monster who had haunted his nights and all the forests of the earth since he was a child, was dead. He didnât remember the exact moment when he attacked him, but he still felt on his lips the sugar of his blood, the strange humor of iron, and he saw perfectly the shiny dullness of the ogreâs brains sprawled shamelessly in the dust of the square.
And, if he was prepared to admit the facts alleged against him and to recognize his full culpability, it was not out of contrition, but pride. To be sure, he still didnât know why heâd been led to kill him, but he felt satisfied by the idea that heâd done it. He had the incredible certainty that in this way he had atoned for multiple offenses against God and the people he cherished in his heart of hearts, without really being able to give them names.
Kiko, Julie, and his little baby had also resurfaced in his consciousness. All their love, and the infinite love he had for them, was coming back to life. He let them approach him, but timidly, with great slowness. And even holding them back.
For he knew that Hell was still within him.
Â
Before opening the door, Amédée hesitated. He knew only too well the horror and the tears that openings could conceal. Behind them were hidden helplessness, bruised faces, agonies, murders, hearts burnt to ashes, incest, fears, odors . . . everything that constitutes man, and the rest as well. Mallock didnât like doors, heâd never liked them. Noble apartment doors for sordid crimes, hospital doors half-open on deathbeds, regrets, and bodies, under the same load of saltpeter and mold, secret doors hiding dirty eyes playing doctor with childrenâs hearts, soft doors wetted by tears, or steel doors with codes and padlocks barring access to the shameful riches of a greedy world. Vocation and damnation. Mallock knew that he was doomed to open these doors, all of them, one after another, without ever being warned of the horrors awaiting him, and that he would have to go on opening them for the rest of his life.
Â
When André entered the room before Mallock, he swore. The hospitalâs doctors, having removed the bullet Manu had received in his upper back, had put a full-body cast on him down to his stomach. His knee was traversed by a pin, and the bandages around it were saturated with pus.
André was furious, but he was able to restrain
In front of a steel door, two soldiers asked Barride for his papers. Mallock noticed that no one could enter without an official document countersigned by Delmont and the islandâs authorities. So many precautions to guard a poor, wounded Frenchmen seemed excessive. Unless they were there to protect him? From whom? In the farthest reaches of the hospital, behind a final grille protected by another pair of mustaches with riot guns, Manuel was waiting for them. He was in a room one of whose sides was being invaded by a mountain of old crutches and recycled casts.
Mallock was shocked. Manu no longer resembled the young man he had known. He was an aged and emaciated phantom of himself. A hysterical mummy with red eyes and protuberant bones, the mummy of a pharaoh who had gone mad on the brink of death. Far from all humanity, his expression looked like that of a murderer. As for his smile when he recognized the superintendent, it also resembled a grimace: a monstrous mask stapled on for the occasion.
What had happened to him?
6.
Puerto Plata National Hospital, 1
P.M.
For a week, Julieâs brother had been bathed in a mixture of sweat, raw pain, and urine. With a constant desire to throw up. But overcoming this torture, making it almost bearable, he felt a marvelous happiness, a kind of satisfaction, a sweet euphoria that flowed through his veins like a river of morphine.
The old man, the monster who had haunted his nights and all the forests of the earth since he was a child, was dead. He didnât remember the exact moment when he attacked him, but he still felt on his lips the sugar of his blood, the strange humor of iron, and he saw perfectly the shiny dullness of the ogreâs brains sprawled shamelessly in the dust of the square.
And, if he was prepared to admit the facts alleged against him and to recognize his full culpability, it was not out of contrition, but pride. To be sure, he still didnât know why heâd been led to kill him, but he felt satisfied by the idea that heâd done it. He had the incredible certainty that in this way he had atoned for multiple offenses against God and the people he cherished in his heart of hearts, without really being able to give them names.
Kiko, Julie, and his little baby had also resurfaced in his consciousness. All their love, and the infinite love he had for them, was coming back to life. He let them approach him, but timidly, with great slowness. And even holding them back.
For he knew that Hell was still within him.
Â
Before opening the door, Amédée hesitated. He knew only too well the horror and the tears that openings could conceal. Behind them were hidden helplessness, bruised faces, agonies, murders, hearts burnt to ashes, incest, fears, odors . . . everything that constitutes man, and the rest as well. Mallock didnât like doors, heâd never liked them. Noble apartment doors for sordid crimes, hospital doors half-open on deathbeds, regrets, and bodies, under the same load of saltpeter and mold, secret doors hiding dirty eyes playing doctor with childrenâs hearts, soft doors wetted by tears, or steel doors with codes and padlocks barring access to the shameful riches of a greedy world. Vocation and damnation. Mallock knew that he was doomed to open these doors, all of them, one after another, without ever being warned of the horrors awaiting him, and that he would have to go on opening them for the rest of his life.
Â
When André entered the room before Mallock, he swore. The hospitalâs doctors, having removed the bullet Manu had received in his upper back, had put a full-body cast on him down to his stomach. His knee was traversed by a pin, and the bandages around it were saturated with pus.
André was furious, but he was able to restrain
Similar Books
