Maylis de Kerangal - The Heart

As you can imagine, Marianne cannot sleep. Torn up with pain, she has not taken sleeping pills or any other drug, but has sunk into a kind of trance; her way of coping. At 11:50 p.m., she jumps up suddenly from the couch. Is it possible she has sensed the moment when the blood ceased flowing in the aorta? Is it possible she had an intuition of that moment? In spite of all the miles stretching out across the estuary, between her apartment and the hospital, an impalpable closeness gives the night a fantastical mental depth, vaguely frightening, as if magnetic lines were hardening in a space-time fault line, and connecting her to that forbidden place where her child lay, allowing her to watch over him.

* * *

A polar night: the opaque sky seems to dissolve, the fleecy layer of cloud being torn away to reveal Ursa Major. Simon’s heart is migrating now, traveling on rails, on roads, inside that box with slightly bumpy plastic walls that glow in the beams of electric light, conveyed with incredible care, like the heart of a prince in times past, like his entrails and his skeleton, the body divided for distribution, interred in a basilica, a cathedral, an abbey, in order to guarantee rights to his lineage, prayers for his salvation, a future for his memory — the sound of hooves heard on sunken paths, on the dirt roads of villages and the cobblestone streets of cities, their rhythm slow and majestic, then the flames of torches were seen, making liquid shadows in the branches of trees, on the façades of houses, on the wild-eyed faces; people massed on doorsteps, towels around their necks, seeing each other and signaling silently to watch this extraordinary cortege move past, the black carriage drawn by six horses in full mourning attire, caparisoned in sheets and precious surplices, the escort of twelve knights bearing torches, long black coats and crepe hangings, and sometimes even pages and valets on foot, holding white wax altar candles, sometimes companies of guards too, and the knight in tears at the head of the procession, accompanying the heart in its tomb, advancing toward the back of the crypt, toward the chapel of a chosen monastery or the castle of his birth, toward a niche carved out in black marble and decorated with twisted columns, a shrine surmounted with a radiant crown, ornamented with escutcheons and coats of arms, Latin mottos carved into stone banners, and often people tried to look through a gap in the curtains to the inside of the carriage, where the officer of the transaction sat — the man who would hand-deliver the heart to those who would, from now on, take care of it, and who would pray for the deceased; most often this man is a confessor, a friend, a brother, but it was always too dark to see this man, or the reliquary placed on a black taffeta cushion, and certainly not the heart inside it, the membrum principalissimum , the king of the body, placed at the center of the chest like the sovereign in his kingdom, like the sun in its cosmos, this heart nested in gold-stitched gauze, this heart for which everyone wept.

* * *

Simon’s heart was migrating to one part of the country, his kidneys, liver, and lungs entering other regions, rushing toward other bodies. What would remain, in this fragmentation, of the unity of her son? How could she attach her singular memory to that diffracted body? What will become of his presence, of his reflection on earth, of his ghost? These questions circle her like fiery hoops, and then Simon’s face forms before her eyes, intact and unique. He is irreducible; he is Simon. She feels a deep sense of calm. Outside, the night burns like a gypsum desert.

At the Pitié, Claire finds herself surrounded. She is led into a room in the Cardiac Surgery Department where every inch has been scrubbed and disinfected: a transparent glaze covers every surface, and the air is thick with detergent fumes. A too-high mobile bed, a blue leatherette armchair, an empty table, and, standing ajar in a corner of the room, the door of a bathroom. She puts her bag on the floor and sits on the bed. She is dressed completely in black — an old sweater with sleeves slit to the shoulder — and she stands out perfectly in this pale room, like a shadow. Texts begin appearing on her phone — her sons, her mother, a female friend, they are all on their way, fast as they can — but no message from the foxglove man, who is squatting on his heels next to a bamboo hedge, amid stray dogs and wild pigs, in a village in the Gulf of Siam.

* * *

The nurse who enters plants her fists on her hips and declares in a cheery voice: So, tonight’s the big night! She has a helmet of salt-and-pepper hair, and wears square-framed glasses; her cheeks are colored by a slight rosacea. Claire shrugs her shoulders, her palms raised to the sky, and smiles: Yep, tonight everything is possible. The nurse hands her several flat transparent packets that shimmer under the ceiling light like sheets of gelatin, then leans over her and a pendant swings forward from her skin, a brief sparkle in the void — it’s a little silver heart engraved with a pledge, Today more than yesterday but tomorrow even more , the kind of jewelry you can buy in mail-order catalogs; Claire, mesmerized, watches it swing in irregular circles — and then the nurse stands up again, points to the packets: These are your clothes for the OR, you’ll have to put them on before you go in. Claire looks at them with a mixture of impatience and reticence — the same feeling that has gripped her for the past year; another name for waiting. Feigning composure, she replies: We are going to wait for the heart to get here, though, aren’t we? The woman shakes her head; with a glance at her watch, she says no, you’ll leave for the OR in two hours, as soon as we’ve received your results; the organ will arrive around twelve-thirty, and you have to be ready then, the transplant will take place immediately afterward. And she leaves.

* * *

Claire unpacks her things, puts her toiletries in the bathroom, plugs in her phone charger, and puts her phone on the bed; she makes herself at home. She calls her sons — they are running down a long corridor of the metro: she hears the echoes of their footsteps, we’re here, we’re coming, panting with anxiety. They want to reassure her, support her. They don’t understand: she’s not afraid of the operation. That’s not it. What torments her is the idea of this new heart, and that someone has died today so all this can happen; the idea that it will invade and transform her, convert her — she thinks of grafts, cuttings, fauna and flora.

She paces the room. If this is a donation, it’s a pretty unusual one, she thinks. There is no donor in this operation — no one intended to make a donation — and likewise there is no donee, because she is not in a position to refuse the organ: she has to accept it if she wants to survive. So what is it exactly? The recycling of an organ that can still be used, can still fulfill its function as a pump? She begins to undress, sitting on the bed: she removes her boots, her socks. The meaning of this transfer, for which she was selected by an incredible alignment of coincidences — the almost perfect compatibility of her blood and her genetic code with those of someone who died today — all of this becomes hazy. She does not like this feeling of unearned privilege; this lottery, it’s like winning a little stuffed animal snagged by the metal claw from a jumble of toys piled behind glass in one of those arcade games. Worst of all is that she will never be able to say thank you; that is the crux of the matter. It’s simply impossible. Thank you — that radiant phrase — will fall into the void. She will never be able to express any kind of gratitude to the donor or the donor’s family, never mind offer a gift in return in order to free herself from this infinite debt, and the idea that she will be permanently trapped crosses her mind. The floor is ice-cold under her feet. She is afraid. Her whole being flinches.