Maylis de Kerangal - The Heart

He lets out a yell as he takes this first ride, and for a moment of time he is in a state of grace — a horizontal vertigo: he is level with the world and feels as if he is coming out of it, part of its flux — the space closing in on him, crushing as it liberates, saturating his muscle fibers, his bronchial tubes, oxygenating his blood. The wave unfolds in a vague temporality — slow or fast, impossible to tell — suspending each second until the surfer ends up pulverized, a senseless heap of flesh. And it’s incredible but, no sooner has Simon Limbres crashed into bruising rocks in the gush of the climax than he is turning around and heading back out, without even a glance at the land or the fleeting figures glimpsed in the foam when the sea hits the earth, surface against surface; he paddles back out to the open sea, his arms windmilling fast, plowing a way to that threshold where it all begins, where it all gets going. He has rejoined his two friends, who will soon yell out just like he did as they descend the sequence of waves that march toward them from the horizon, exhausting their bodies, giving them no respite.

* * *

No other surfer came to that spot. No one else approached the parapet to watch them surf. No one saw them leave the water an hour later, worn out, spent shells, legs like jelly, staggering as they crossed the beach back to the parking lot, and back to the van. No one saw their hands and feet, blue with cold and purple with bruises, nor the dry patches that cut their faces, the cracks in the skin at the corners of their lips as their teeth chattered, their jaws trembling continually, like their bodies, all three of them helpless to stop it. No one saw anything, and when they were dressed again — wool underwear beneath pants, layers of sweaters, leather gloves — no one saw them rubbing each other’s backs, unable to say anything but oh God, shit man that was awesome, when they would so have liked to talk about it, describe the rides, immortalize the legend of the session. Shivering, they got in the van and closed the doors. The engine started, and they drove away.

Chris drives. He always drives: the van belongs to his father, and anyway, neither Johan nor Simon have their licenses yet. It takes about an hour and a half to reach Le Havre from Les Petites Dalles if you take the old road from Étretat, which passes through Octeville-sur-Mer, the valley of Ignauval, and Sainte-Adresse before depositing you at the estuary.

The boys have stopped shivering now. The van’s heating is turned up as high as it will go; likewise the volume on the stereo. The heat pouring from the vents in the dashboard is, for them, probably another thermal shock. They are probably beginning to feel tired now too, mouths gaping in yawns, heads nodding gently, trying to find a comfortable position against the headrest of the seat, rocked by the vehicle’s vibrations, noses swaddled in their scarves, and probably too they are starting to feel numb, their eyelids closing intermittently. And so perhaps, after they had passed Étretat, Chris accelerated without even realizing, shoulders slumping, hands heavy on the steering wheel, the road straight. Yes, maybe he thought, all right, we’re on our way home now, and the desire to get there quickly, to knock back the aftereffects of the session, its violence, weighed down upon the gas pedal, and he let it happen, cutting through the dark fields, the empty fields where nothing moved, and maybe the sight of the long, straight highway — an arrow plunging through the windshield as on the screen of a video game — ended up hypnotizing him like a mirage. Maybe he felt like he was already home, practically there, and relaxed his vigilance, though everyone remembers that it had frozen the night before, winter leaving its traces on the landscape, turning it into wax paper. Everyone knows about the patches of black ice on the asphalt, invisible under this dull-gray sky, blacking out the edges of the road. Everyone can see the compact patches of fog that hover above the road at irregular intervals, the water evaporating from the mud as the sun rises, dangerous pockets of mist that blind you as you drive. Yes, everyone knows all that, but what else might there be? An animal running across the road? A lost cow? A dog that has scrambled under a wire fence? The sudden appearance of a fire-tailed fox or a ghostly human figure at the edge of the road that you must swerve to avoid at the very last moment? Or maybe a song? Yeah, maybe the girls in bikinis plastered across the van’s bodywork suddenly came to life and climbed up the hood, lasciviously smearing the windshield with their bodies, their green hair falling over their shoulders, and their inhuman — or too human — voices filling the air, and maybe Chris lost his head, fell into their trap, hearing that song not of this world, the song of the sirens, the song that kills? Or maybe Chris just made one false move? Yes, that’s it, a simple mistake, like a tennis player missing an easy shot, like a skier losing an edge, something dumb like that. Maybe he didn’t turn his steering wheel when the road curved? Or maybe — because the possibility has to be raised — maybe Chris fell asleep at the wheel, left the drab countryside and entered the tube of a wave, entered the glorious and suddenly perceptible spiral that flashed past under his board, siphoning the world away with it, the world and the sky of the world.

* * *

The emergency services arrived at about 9:20 a.m. — ambulance, police — and signs were placed on the road in front and behind, directing traffic to smaller collateral roads. The main task consisted of removing the bodies of the three boys, imprisoned in their vehicle, mixed up with the bodies of the sirens who smiled on the hood or grimaced, deformed, crushed into each other, thighs, butts, and breasts all shredded and crumpled.

It was easily established that the little van was traveling too fast, at an estimated speed of 57 mph (12 mph above the speed limit for this section of the road), and it was also established that, for reasons unknown, it had swerved to the left and had been unable to straighten out again, that the driver had not braked — no tire marks on the asphalt — and that the van had smashed head on into this post. The absence of airbags was noted (this model van being too old), as was the fact that of the three passengers sitting in the front seat, only two were wearing seat belts — those sitting next to the doors, in the driver’s seat and the passenger’s window seat. It was established that the third person, sitting between the two others, had been propelled forward upon impact, his head colliding with the windshield. It had taken twenty minutes to extricate him from the wreckage, and he had been unconscious, but his heart still beating, when the ambulance arrived. His student meal card having been found in his jacket pocket, it was lastly established that the third person’s name was Simon Limbres.

Pierre Révol went on duty that morning at eight. As the night sky lightened to a pale dove gray above him, far from the grandiloquent choreographies of clouds that had made the estuary’s picturesque reputation, he slid his magnetic card into the reader at the entrance of the parking lot and drove slowly across the hospital grounds, snaking between buildings that connected to each other according to a complex plan, and parked his car — a gunmetal-blue Laguna, quite old but still comfortable, leather interior and good sound system: the model preferred by taxi companies, he thinks, smiling — in his reserved spot, nose first. He entered the hospital, walking quickly across the vast glass-walled lobby toward the North Hall, where he reached the Intensive Care Unit.

He enters the department by pushing the door open with the flat of his hand, so hard that it beats back and forth several times after he has gone. The men and women in white and green scrubs who are coming to the end of the night shift, exhausted and disheveled — tense faces, rictus grins, drum-tight skin, laughing too loud or coughing like smokers, voiceless — these people see him in the corridor and brush past him, or they see him from afar and glance at their watches, bite their lips, think, all right, only ten minutes to go and I’m out of here, and instantly their faces relax, change color, turn pale, the dark rings under their eyes suddenly deepening, eyelids blinking heavily.