Adam dials Albert's number.
“I'm in Sceaux.” “In Sceaux?” “After that I'm going to Viry-Ch^tillon.” “Very nice.” “So what are you doing?” “I'm on the stairs. I'm taking out Martine's King Charles spaniel.” “She has a King Charles spaniel?” “These dogs are the ugliest things in the world. This guy's a four-legged thyroid deficiency.” “You're going out walking on your own with the King Charles spaniel?” “Seventy-five percent of the time I carry it in my arms, it doesn't like walking. I put it down when it wants to shit.” “Why does she have a King Charles spaniel?” “She likes King Charles spaniels.” “You can't stick with a woman who works in Lognes at Eldorauto and has a King Charles spaniel.” “You're right.” “Dump her. I've got someone for you.” “Who?” “Marie-Thérèse Lyoc.” “Big boobs?” “Not bad.” “Introduce me.” Adam puts the cell phone back in his pocket. By the tentative evening light shadowy figures are emerging from the park. Adam puts his hand over his eye. He thinks, I'll need to explain this evening's happening to the optometrist. I'll need to find the exact word, I'll need to direct him with precise care toward a fresh appreciation of the situation, I'll need to find the exact word and then, for want of being able to select one that comes just below it in the scale of impact, for the calibration of words is crude, I'll need to tone it down with an adjective, for it's essential, Adam considers, essential not to put the optometrist in a panic. Doctor, what I suddenly experienced was a disturbance … no … a spasm of pain … no, not a pain … a dislocation, yes, a type of dislocation, as if, Doctor, my blood vessels were parting company with the artery and dispersing aimlessly into aberrant places. Now could this be that famous extravasation process you told me about, the very name of which haunts me? My vision hasn't been affected by it, that's a good sign, isn't it, Doctor, as if my eye wanted to know nothing about what was being plotted behind its back, as if my eye were following a kind of metaphysical false trail that arose above the organs, declaring, you'll go on seeing to the very end, even if you're no longer irrigated, even if nothing binds you to the roots of life you'll see, until your last blink, the world will be clear. Note, Doctor, that I should like the same thing to happen to the whole of me. For I experience this feeling of dislocation in the depths of my being, as if its component elements were no longer connected either to one another or to a unique self, as if at any moment and anywhere at all, a fragment of myself could go floating off toward the outer margins where I'm lost. Doctor, do you believe the world can remain clear if you're traveling toward the future with no prospect of joy, because you're no longer whole enough to grasp it? The other day we set off, my children, my wife, and I, to spend a weekend at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue. As I was heaving the suitcase and bags out of the elevator various tales of exile and headlong flight came into my mind and it occurred to me, Doctor, that these must have been less painful than this departure for the Cotentin, I reflected that ineluctable fate is easier to bear than the duty to be happy. As I pick up the vacation suitcase at the foot of the stairs I'm picking up the burden of life. My first publisher was a gentle man, not very tall. He was bald and had hair implants that were an utter failure. Yesterday I passed the hospital where he died. I hope you don't have a problem with this little digression, Doctor. After all, who is to say that the thrombosis that concerns us today has no connection with my beginnings as a writer? My first publisher had faith in my future. That's no small thing in life, someone who has faith in your future. It gives you spirit and courage. His diary, written in the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, which his wife photocopied, contained these words, “At the end I bear helpless witness to the frenzy of self-destruction that is overwhelming my heart. … It is the body, our body, that is the ultimate and principal foundation of our being…. Adam Haberberg brought me a radio, one of those actions of great thoughtfulness that makes the night bearable.” So, maybe he swallowed up my future with him? My future crumbled to dust in the pit, along with one of those handfuls of earth cast onto the wood. You prescribed Veinamitol for me, Doctor, when I told Professor Guen of this he made a little gesture with his hand, one of those gestures that signify blithe indifference, and said, you can always go on taking it if you like. I'm naive enough, Doctor, to think a patient needs to have faith in the virtues of his medicine for it to be effective. I'd read the label on the Veinamitol, I'm a great reader of labels, and I'd felt encouraged by the clarity of what it indicated. Professor Guen blew Veinamitol sky-high for me. I go on drinking it superstitiously and also because I couldn't confront the prospect of this malfunction without some kind of support, however absurd. And let me remark in passing that his Spécialfoldine, a medicine for pregnant women, is not going to motivate me. To abandon the Veinamitol, Doctor, would be to admit
officially that nothing can be done, either for this eye or for the other one, which might well be attacked in its turn, or for any other part of my body where a blood vessel might choose to become obstructed. On the label it said, “increases the resistance of blood vessels, reduces their permeability.” I liked increases and reduces, two honest, dynamic verbs and, above all, I liked resistance. This label gave me authority for a semblance of optimism, Doctor, it acted like the resolutions we make at the start of the new year when we tell ourselves this year you'll do this and you'll no longer do that, when we declare what lies within our own willpower, faced with the chaos of life. Indeed, Doctor, do we not owe to Veinamitol the fact of having overcome the phenomenon of dislocation? That's right! That's what I told myself yesterday during the crisis, I even stopped off at a pharmacy, as I was a long way from home and didn't have my evening dose with me. What does this Guen know about general medicine? What do these highfliers know when it comes to prevention? You're on familiar territory, Doctor, when you say Veinamitol you know what you're talking about, and I find it unacceptable that this Guen, whom you were so keen to send me to, already fortified by your prescription, should denigrate it with such frivolity. I have the feeling you like me, Doctor. Or maybe I should attribute your solicitude to the fact that when a man has a vascular problem at my age, the prognosis is not good. But even so I sense in you, when I come, a certain pleasure in seeing me. I'm presumptuous enough to believe it's not every five minutes you see a patient with whom you can joke and even laugh at the worst, with whom you can talk literature and music, and I appreciate this desire for culture in you, something that normally exasperates me about people in the circles I move in. For you to like me, Doctor, is as essential to my recovery as the Veinamitol, for the man who arrives on your landing and rings your bell is a man trembling with fear. He'll make jokes, he'll discuss books and music, he'll hold forth about fishing if need be, or football, or do-it-yourself, anything, Doctor, which might enthrall you and render untimely some announcement of the darkness that awaits me. To remain what he is, that is to say invulnerable, the Prince of Mea-Hor mustn't be liked by anyone. I wrote The Black Prince of Mea-Hor in two and a half weeks, an anonymous book that can be found only at train stations and some newsstands. By portraying myself, how shall I put it, a contrario, through this character, who needs to remain free of the affection of others, Doctor, I've put more of myself into this work, written to order, than into any of my other books. I've constructed the anti-Adam Haberberg, an anti-Adam Haberberg created by my own pen, who gives me the courage today to reveal my weakness to you, to say to you, like me, Doctor, protect me, Doctor, save me.