The contents of the bottle have diminished noticeably. Raynand, slightly tipsy, looks vaguely around at the crowd of attendees. A long-limbed gentleman walking across the salon toward the exit notices Paulin. He stops suddenly. Smilingly, he approaches the table:
— Good old Paulin, how the hell are you?
— Hanging in there. Raynand, meet my buddy Roger Drouillard, a friend from way back. He’s a good guy. An intern at the medical college.
They clasp hands. Raynand, somewhat distant, doesn’t catch the name of the young doctor, who makes no attempt to hide his pleasure at having run into Paulin at the reception.
— Well then, Roger, hang out with us for a bit. It’s only nine o’clock. We’ll get out of here around ten.
— Okay, Paulin, I was going to leave. But seeing you, I’ve changed my mind. An hour shooting the breeze with you sounds good to me. It’s been so long since we last saw each other.
— Yeah, it’s been a while.
— So what about that novel of yours? I’ve got to believe you’re going to finish it this year. What title did you come up with?
— Still no title. In the end, I think I’ll leave it up to Raynand to give it a title once I’ve finished it. This novel is a curse. It just won’t let me rest.
— That’s a good sign, an anxious creative process. Isn’t that true, Paulin?
— More or less … And you, Roger, what have you been up to? Anything good?
— Fully mired in work at the hospital. This month I’m working the toughest, most exhausting service: the dispensary. Almost no sleep. You’ve got to stay up all night, on call for the unexpected.
— Do you ever have the day shift?
— Of course. There’s plenty of turnover. We’re on rotation. But it’s still hard. For example, yesterday I worked from six in the morning to six at night. And I had a pretty tough day because of something of a strange case.
— What happened?
— It was about ten in the morning. A patient in his fifties shows up with a referral. Pale face. Glassy eyes. Shriveled-up shoes. Clothes full of patches, but well ironed. I was pretty sure those were his best clothes. I gave him my full attention, asking him methodically to give me all the information on the onset of an illness he claimed to be suffering from. Weakly, he explained to me that he’d been feeling a shooting pain in his back. He coughed at night. He barely ever slept. The thing is, he said, if this keeps up I could lose my job. Doctor, I can’t be unemployed again, he implored; I can’t afford to take to my bed; do something for me, and the good Lord will reward you a hundredfold. He explained to me that he’d worked as a road mender for the past twenty years. I had him lie down so as to check him out with my stethoscope. What I found horrified me. We’re not talking about a death rattle. It was an absolute pulmonary cyclone. A real thoracic storm. With every breath, veritable blasts traversed the poor man’s pulmonary alveoli, which had been largely replaced by innumerable caverns. In my ears, it was like violent gusts of wind in what was left of his lungs, irreparably eaten away by tuberculosis. He stayed lying down. I did my best to reassure him. I was going to hospitalize him. He thanked me with a limpid smile that moved me deeply. I left for a few minutes and came back with some hospitalization forms so that he might take advantage of a stay in a sanatorium. When I came back into the little room, I told him that it had worked, that we’d take care of him. He didn’t answer. I went closer to the exam table. Harrowing shock. In my brief absence, the poor road mender had already died.
Roger is quiet for a moment. He fills his glass and continues his story.
— I was upset for the rest of the day.
— I understand you, brother, says Paulin.
— I’d just become aware of the tragic reality of intolerable injustices. I discovered the deplorable absurdity of life. That of a man who’d spent twenty years cleaning. Scrubbing. Sweeping. Keeping the city clean. And he’d just passed away. Like the dirty water he’d pushed along with his broom. Sidewalks with smelly sewers. For twenty years, he’d done nothing else. His whole life, for that matter. And here it was that his breath had been snuffed out in the great void of his destroyed lungs. It was then that I understood the meaning of his limpid smile when he thanked me. For the first time in his existence as a brute laborer he’d found someone to take care of him. In a hospital room. Supreme, unique joy. I also understood his patched-up shoes. His worn but clean clothes. He wanted to treat himself to a final luxury. A poor man’s final elegance. Convinced that he was living the final scene of a comedy. Or a tragedy. Depending on which loge you’re sitting in. He had to die clean, despite his poverty. To leave cleanly from a world that had never taken the time to show compassion for the suffering of others, much less for that of some anonymous wretch. And, above all, I discovered, with a pang in my heart, that we all played a part in this. We’re all responsible for the shipwreck of our society.
And Raynand remembers his mother, dead from tuberculosis at the sanatorium. Completely drunk, he stands up. He fills his glass to the brim. Then, out loud, he starts shouting invectives at everyone in attendance.
— Yes, the doctor’s right. All of us, we’ve done wrong. Bunch of yuppies. Bunch of couch potatoes. You get your theoretical humanity from insipid books. But you know nothing of the real world. Bunch of demagogic intellectuals. Your indifference to the trampling of others, you’ll pay for it. Bunch of losers! Bunch of assassins! Band of ignoramuses! Bunch of impotent posers! You’re repulsive!
General astonishment. Scandal. Unexpected tumult. A scene at once comical and dramatic. Paulin and Roger try to calm Raynand in vain. Finally, they hold him firmly by the arms. And make their way to the exit. All the while, the drunken Raynand spews his invectives, cut short by a single hiccup of rage and anger.
— You get married … you celebrate … while others die … like dogs … You stuff your faces … you take women to bed … while others die of hunger … Bunch of assholes in a world of schemers and idiots. All of you, you’re guilty of having lived in shit. Of continuing to live in shit. You’re nothing but shit! You’ll soon pay. Heap of overstuffed, good-for-nothing bastards!
Rotten years filled with bad days, what more should I expect of you? My suffering heart counts nearly ten million tremblings in the lazy oil of hope.
I left behind me, far behind me, just short of my twelfth birthday, the little green boutique that sold happiness by the bushel. I submitted the innocence of my eyes to the harshness of the world. But ever since the veil of indifference has been torn, I’m threatened by schizophrenic rage. And all I do is haggle over the smallest measure of hope.
At daybreak, I will buy a comb to clean the mud out of my lice-filled hair, a stiff horsehair brush to scratch at the sores all over my parasite-covered body.
Solitary, I turn in circles in the streets, doors closing as I pass by. I walk against the wind, which awkwardly irrigates the heat of the sun, so as better to dry up the vomit on my chest and the rot on my back.
My face, a mad mirror. My veins become dull. I’m filthy to my very blood. What kindhearted washerwoman will bring my heart to the clear water of the stream?