Jonathan Littell - The Fata Morgana Books

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Walking in the rain, my head and upper body well protected by the unfurled umbrella, I was overcome with a childlike happiness, albeit slightly tinged with anxiety: I looked around me, examining the trees and cars parked along the sidewalk, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. The rare passersby, also protected from the downpour by umbrellas or sometimes just a newspaper held over their heads, walked quickly, each had his own goal and no one paid me any mind. Having reached the house, I unlocked the gate, and, closing it carefully behind me, crossed the small garden to ring the doorbell. My shoes and pant cuffs were soaked, but that didn’t bother me; absentmindedly, ringing again, I noticed that I was already standing much more easily. A woman, no longer young, opened the door: “Oh, it’s you! We were wondering where you were. The little one is sick.” Closing the umbrella and placing it in the large stand meant for that purpose, I followed her down the hallway, decorated with reproductions, to the children’s room, leaving traces of wet footsteps on the wooden floor. The boy was lying under several dark covers, curled up, his whole body shaking in long spasms. I reached out and touched his forehead, which burned beneath my fingers, then stroked his hair soaked with sweat. “Has the doctor come?” I asked, without turning, the woman who stood a little back at the entrance to the room. — “Yes. He gave him an injection.”—“When?”—“It was this morning.” I noticed a bottle of pills at the bedside, picked it up, read the label, and put it back down. “Did the doctor leave this?”—“Yes. He said to give him one every four hours.”—“And that’s been done?”—“Yes, you can count on us.” Next to the medicine, on the low table, there was also a carafe of water and a glass; I carefully rolled the child onto his back and lifted his head, carrying the glass to his lips: “Drink,” I said to him, “you have to drink.” He didn’t open his eyes but parted his lips; I brought the glass to them, but his mouth was trembling too much, the glass clinked against his teeth, the water dribbled down his chin. I put his head back onto the sweat-soaked pillow and stroked his hair again. “Bring me a basin of water. With a sponge, or a washcloth.” The woman withdrew wordlessly, then returned with what I had asked for. I placed the basin on the floor, soaked the washcloth, squeezed it out, and, sitting on the edge of the bed, spread it over the child’s forehead. He raised his hand and placed it over my own, it was as light as a cat’s paw, dry and burning. I re-soaked the washcloth and repeated the gesture several times in a row; little by little, the long shivers began to calm down; finally, I managed to get him to drink a little. The woman, behind me, was watching me in silence. I got up and looked at her: “The sheets are soaking, his pajamas too. Change them. Can you do that?” She avoided my gaze and nodded. I went out and headed for the large living room. Several people were there, exchanging pleasantries without much conviction; at the table near the window, some children were listlessly playing cards, a few girls and another boy, younger than they; above their heads, the young lady in pink was still contemplating me with her calm, almost complicit gaze, as if she wanted to invite me to share her peach. I poured myself a glass of wine and took a seat on the sofa, crossing my legs and authoritatively grasping the hand of the woman seated next to me. Whenever a new subject was introduced, I gave my opinion in a firm, clear, decisive voice; the people gathered around me gravely nodded, without ever contradicting me. In the evening, the doctor came by; I had in the meantime washed and changed, and put on a clean suit with a vest and even a tie made of crocheted wool, brown like the suit. I accompanied the doctor to the boy’s room and stood next to him as he examined him, auscultated him, and took his temperature. Several others had followed us into the room, women and men and even a little girl, they couldn’t stand still but came and went aimlessly, without saying a word but fortunately keeping their distance. The doctor finally delivered his prognosis, which coincided exactly with my own: continue the pills and compresses, watch over the child, make him drink. “Did you hear that?” I called out to the people huddling around. “Make him drink, that’s important, that’s what I said.” I thanked the doctor and escorted him to the front door; we separated with a frank handshake, and he promised to return the next morning, early.

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During the meal, the banal, disjointed conversation continued; without arrogance but firmly, I discouraged useless discussions, put an end to pointless controversies with a fair opinion, warned off those who got too excited, supported those who spoke sensible words. It wasn’t that I took myself so seriously, on the contrary, I felt like a kid playing at being an adult, but playing seriously, so seriously that no one suspected, and when I commented in detail on the grave foreign policy crisis brewing, everyone listened to me attentively, drinking in my words without interrupting me. The children ate in silence, with just a slight clink of silverware, at times asking politely, in the interludes between subjects, for salt, or water, or some more food. A boy brought his hand to his lips: I looked at him, he blushed and grabbed his napkin to wipe his face. Their meal over, the children excused themselves and cleared their places; I poured more wine for the grownups and handed out cigarillos to those who wanted them. The woman seated to my left, who kept her beautiful clear eyes fixed on me as she listened to my words in silence, raised a lighter and lit it; I brought her hand to the tip of my cigar, thanking her with a smile, holding her fingers delicately so the flame wouldn’t tremble. She contemplated me with boundless gratitude, but at the same time a vague anxiety disturbed her gaze, making her indistinct and rarefying her features, just as was the case for all those gathered around this table. I heard a noise and raised my head: the blond child was standing in the doorway, his feet bare, pale as a sheet. I put my cigar down in the ashtray, got up, joined him and took him in my arms before heading for one of the empty rooms where I placed him on the embroidered bedspread. He murmured a few indistinct words, I brought my ear closer, the words took on strength and began to form phrases, I listened attentively, he spoke in a loud voice now, his eyes wide open and focused on a point that I couldn’t locate, his words had become clear but I was incapable of grasping their meaning, he was uttering sentences whose syntax was impeccable but whose key word, the one that would give meaning to all the others, remained incomprehensible, a group of syllables seemingly significant but tied to nothing, or else there came a word perfectly comprehensible, obvious, but inserted into a completely scrambled sentence, incapable of supporting its signification. I spoke too, calm and peaceful words, I answered his statements without thinking, trying to bring him back to a sense of reality, but each time his words only placed themselves in the wake of mine in order to overtake them and then race away again in the opposite direction, to a dizzying distance, at the depths of which they turned round and came back, following the opposite path with the same implacable logic. I had asked for the basin and applied cold compresses to him, stroking his back and speaking gently; in spite of that, terror was overcoming him, his features contorted, I repeated my reassuring words with a smile, his eyes remained open but I had no way of judging if he saw anything, I didn’t know if he had awakened or if he was still sleeping and dreaming out loud, incorporating my words into his dream, I didn’t want to startle him, I kept wetting his forehead and his head and trying to bring him back to reason, to the reality of the room where we were. Slowly, the flood of words slowed down, the phrases spaced out; finally, the child closed his eyes and his wet head fell against my chest, where I held it in my palm, which seemed immense next to his little face. With a towel someone gave me, I dried his hair, then lay him down in the bed, before lying next to him without even taking off my shoes. Pacified, he breathed with a whistling but regular noise, his eyelids, swollen and translucent, quivering over his eyes. I put my arm around him and stayed for a long time next to him. Much later, the child was deep in a regular sleep and I got up: “You, stay with him,” I said to the first person I met in the hallway. The others had scattered throughout the house, I glimpsed one or another of them through a half-opened door or at the end of a hallway; it was all the same to me, I returned to pick up my extinguished cigar and, relighting it, sat down beneath the portrait of the girl with the peach, opening the newspaper lying there to study the latest declarations of the foreign leader who was threatening us in such an incomprehensible manner.