Maylis de Kerangal - The Heart

Hocine kept his expensive birds behind the Place des Trois-Horloges — real Algerian goldfinches. He always kept at least ten of them and had never had any other profession, being recognized as an expert throughout Bab El Oued and beyond. He knew every species, its characteristics and metabolism, could tell from the way it sang the provenance of each bird, even the name of the forest where it was born; people came from afar to solicit his services, authenticating, assessing, spotting fakes — Morocccan specimens sold as Algerian ones, which were often ten times more expensive; females sold as males. Hocine did not work with the networks, but did the hunting himself, alone, with birdlime, going off for several days to “his places” in the Béjaïa and Collo valleys, and when he got home he would spend most of his time treasuring his captures. As goldfinches were judged by the beauty of their songs, he worked hard to teach them melodies — the birds from Souk Ahras had a reputation for being able to memorize the highest number of songs — using an old tape player that played the music in a loop as soon as the sun rose (he did not subscribe to the methods of the younger breeders: covering the cage with a blanket, making two slits in it, and running MP3 earbuds through the holes so the birds would hear the song all night). But the appeal of the goldfinch went beyond the musicality of its song and was linked, above all, to geography: its song was the manifestation of a territory. Valley, city, mountain, forest, hill, stream. It brought a landscape to life, evoked a topography, gave the feeling of a soil and a climate. A piece of the planetary puzzle took form in its beak, and just as the witch in the fairy tale would spit out toads and diamonds, just as the crow in the fable released the morsel of cheese from its beak, so the goldfinch expectorated something solid, scented, tactile, and colored. So it was that Hocine’s eleven birds sang the cartography of a vast territory.

His customers — businessmen in ties, wearing beige or pale-gray suits and round, gold-colored metal-framed sunglasses — would turn up at his house in the middle of the afternoon like junkies in need of a fix. The birds sang, and the buyers remembered walking in sandals over pine needles, bunches of cyclamens and pink milk-cap mushrooms; they loosened their ties, drank lemonade, and — with the bird’s song determining its value — prices were discussed. Hocine made a good living. One day, the young heir to an oil company swapped his car, a Peugeot 205, for the last Bainem goldfinch Hocine ever possessed, a deal that gave rise to the legend of this otherwise stoic breeder: the bird was easily worth that, more fabulous than the genie of the magic lamp, it was not only a bird, but a whole threatened forest, and the sea that bordered it, and everything that lived inside it, the part for the whole, it was Creation itself, it was childhood.

When the concert ended, the debate began. Which one do you like? Hocine asked, speaking with his mouth close to Thomas’s face. Ousmane watched his friend with amusement, enjoying the situation. Which one do you like? Tell him! Don’t be afraid! I like them all! Thomas pointed to a cage — inside it, the bird ceased swinging on its perch. Hocine glanced at Ousmane and nodded. They exchanged a few words in Arabic. Ousmane started to laugh. Thinking he was being taken for a ride, Thomas took a step back, behind the cages. Silence spread through the room. Thomas’s hand slipped inside his pocket and his fingers fiddled with the handkerchief. He stamped his feet pointedly, not daring to say let’s go. Hocine announced the price of the bird he had chosen. In a soft voice, Ousmane explained: It’s a bird from Collo, ash, elm, eucalyptus, it’s young, you’ll be able to raise it yourself, teach it, this bird is from my village. Thomas, suddenly filled with wonder, stroked the bird’s back through the bars of the cage; he thought for a long time, and then unfolded the roll of bills. I hope you took your commission, he told Ousmane as they walked downstairs.

Sean and Marianne leave the room. Thomas is waiting for them in the doorway. They open their mouths but remain silent, it looks as if they have something to say — something they’ve agreed — so Thomas tells them: You can ask me anything, that’s why I’m here. Sean, articulating with difficulty, makes their request: Simon’s heart, at the moment it, tell Simon, when you stop his heart, I, you, I want you to say to him, we’re there, with him, that we’re thinking of him, our love, and Marianne interjects: And Lou, and Juliette too, and Grandma. Then Sean takes over again: The sound of the sea, so you can let him hear it, and he hands Thomas an iPod with earphones, it’s track 7, just press play, we want him to be able to hear the sea — strange loops in their brains — and Thomas agrees to carry out these rites, in their name, it will be done.

They start to walk away, but Marianne turns one last time toward the bed and what paralyzes her in that moment is the solitude that emanates from Simon, now as alone as an object, as if he had jettisoned his human essence, as if he were no longer linked to a community, connected to a network of intentions and emotions, but was wandering, lost, metamorphosed into an absolute thing. Simon is dead — she pronounces these words for the first time, suddenly horrified — then looks for Sean, doesn’t see him, rushes into the corridor and finds him crouching motionless against the wall, irradiated, just like her, by Simon’s solitude, crushed just like her by the certainty of his death. She squats next to him, cups his jaw and tries to lift his head, come on, let’s go, let’s get away from this place, when what she would like to tell him is: Come on, it’s over, Simon no longer exists.

* * *

His cell phone rings: Thomas unlocks the screen and hurries toward his office, suddenly wanting to plow ahead without delay, and Sean and Marianne, who are walking beside him, sense this acceleration, understanding instinctively that they must yield to it, and suddenly they feel cold: these same overheated corridors that dried their skin and their mouths before have become icy hallways where they button up their coats, lift their collars. Simon’s body is going to be spirited away; it will disappear to a secret place with limited access — the operating room — where it will be opened, stripped of its organs, sewed back together, and for a period of time — one night — the course of events will be out of their hands completely.

Suddenly the situation tilts toward a different sense of urgency; the pressure in their movements and gestures falls, it ceases throbbing in their consciences and flees elsewhere — to Thomas Rémige’s office, where he is already talking to the doctor from the Biomedical Agency; to the movements of the attendants who are transferring their son’s body; to the eyes that analyze the images appearing on screens; and also far off, to other hospitals and other departments, to other white-sheeted beds in other understaffed buildings — and now they no longer know what to do, they feel lost. Of course, they could stay in the department, sit next to a table covered with old newspapers and dog-eared magazines, wait until 6:05 p.m., when the second EEG will be completed, marking the legal time of Simon’s death, or they could go downstairs to get a coffee from the vending machine, they are free to do what they want, but they should keep in mind that a multiple-organ removal takes several hours, they must understand that it’s a long and complex operation, so they might well be advised to go home, perhaps you should get some rest, you’ll need all your strength, we’ll take care of him — and when they pass through the automatic doors at the hospital’s main entrance, they are alone in the world, and exhaustion breaks over them like a tidal wave.