She went straight up to the pool. The Belgian engineer was doing his laps. Alain greeted her cheerfully and lay down on the lounge chair next to her. She told him about her day, the long ships and the smoked elk. There was a restful serenity about Alain, they talked for a long time, like old friends. He told her about his life without painting too grim a picture of it nor dressing it up. Recently divorced, a son of nearly twenty, a job that took too much of his time, a sick father — cancer. The separation from his wife had been violent, painful, he had started drinking but stopped in time. Alain was straightforward, strong, he was like his crawl, powerful and regular. His frank gaze lingered on Louise’s legs, her stomach, her breasts. Louise did not dislike the fact that he liked her, even though she was not in the least attracted to him.
He was about to leave the pool, his face brightened: “Look, Louise, tomorrow morning I’m taking a couple of Norwegian friends to visit the factory in Holmestrand. Would you like to come with us and watch aluminum being melted in a furnace? It’s impressive, really it is. We’re leaving at nine-fifteen, it’s only an hour away, and you’ll be back by early afternoon, after lunch in the restaurant on the dam. It’s very pure aluminum, the kind they use for the Airbus.”
His enthusiasm was contagious. In the elevator, even though she did not find him attractive, she suddenly wanted this dumpy man to take her to his room, push her backward onto his bed, and undress her. She would have grasped his thick penis with her hand, her mouth, would probably have begged him to take her, crying out crude words as he drove deep into her. All things that were alien to her usual behavior, but miraculously authorized by the absence of love and the Norwegian night.
She went down to her floor, put herself to bed. She turned out the light and fondled herself in the dark to the point of pleasure. When Romain came in, she was asleep.
The following morning, she embarked on the Norwegian Air Oslo — Paris flight, an Airbus made of Alain’s aluminum. She had left a note for him at reception, apologizing for her hasty departure: Maud was not well. At the end of August, Alain left a message at her office, having found the address: he was in Paris, he wanted to see her again. He called her again twice in early September. She never got back in touch.
STAN AND SIMON
• •
“SO, DOCTOR, IS IT SERIOUS?”
Simon’s voice bears the lighthearted imprint of a long-standing friendship. Anna’s younger brother hopes he comes across to Stan as hard, impassive, but the way he rubs his thumb against his index finger betrays anxiety. Stan is scrutinizing the two angiographies on the screen: a dull, dark patch in the middle of the left retina leaves no room for doubt. The surgeon does not answer, enlarges the image, traces the scar line. He would like to find something reassuring to say. But nothing looks more like a Fuch’s spot than another Fuch’s spot.
Shit, Stan thinks, shit, Simon, how fucking stupid of you, how fucking stupid, you’re always trying to be the best, the alpha male, always waiting till the last minute, you should have called me earlier, should have come immediately, this left retina’s had it now, kaput, and microsurgery might have been a bit of a long shot, but I could have tried something, could have clawed back, I dunno, a couple of diopters for you, two diopters isn’t so bad, it’s better than blind, my poor brother, and what can I tell you about the right eye, because it’s not looking good, nope, not looking good at all, having that first localized hemorrhage on the left retina, and let’s have a closer look at the right retina, fuck, I can’t believe it, you’ve got slight vascular weakness on that one too, there, right next to the optic nerve, it’s a little bit too puffy, the bastard, you’ve got a one-in-four chance, let’s be generous here, let’s say one-in-eight that your other retina packs up in the next ten years, that gives us a one-in-three or — four chance you’ll be blind by the time you’re fifty, fuck, what do you want me to tell you, Simon, what do you want me to tell you, learn Braille, take up the piano again?
Stan sits down slowly on the corner of his desk, gives Anna’s brother a wide smile: “Right … Simon … No need to panic. Look at this discolored area on your left retina: that’s called a Fuch’s spot. It’s a pretty rare problem which occurs in the very nearsighted, like you or like me: I’m minus eight, you see, almost as bad. I’ll explain: in nearsighted people the eye is too large so it exerts constant mechanical pressure on the retina, if this gets to be too much then a blood vessel can burst. That’s what’s happened. Because it was a large blood vessel — a small artery, you can see it here — the hemorrhage has damaged the macula, that’s the part of the retina where the eye focuses.”
“A busted artery,” Simon says, adding sardonically, “alas, ’tis all in vein!”
Stan is still looking at the screen, does not hear the pun.
“It explains the gap in the middle of your field of vision. The good news is it won’t spread, it’s starting to cauterize. It never really spreads.”
“Can it get better, heal up on its own?”
“It’s healed, Simon. The eye has repaired itself. Well, as much as it can. It did it by scarring, and now the light-sensitive cells — you know, the rods and cones — that were starved of a blood supply have necrotized.”
“But … Stan … Can you do laser treatment? Anna says you’re the best surgeon in France, you work miracles, you have patients from all over the world, New York, Buenos Aires …”
“Oh, and why not Shanghai? Your sister really is unbelievable … Listen, it’s true, you can treat it by injecting verteporfin and then using lasers, but that only works in the first few hours, maybe the first few days. But this has been going on for at least three weeks, the scarring is permanent … Anyway, Simon, I wouldn’t have risked laser treatment, the cure would have been worse than the complaint. Here, can you see that little fluorescent green zigzag? The vascular tear occurred two millimeters from the optic nerve. It’s so close that I’d have risked touching it with the beam.”
“What about retinal grafts? Can’t you …”
“Stem cells? Listen, Simon, I don’t like being pessimistic, but in my lab we follow new advances really closely: we won’t be able to rely on that for another ten or twenty years. I’ll be the first surgeon in France to know how to do it, I swear to you. What we can actually graft right now are retinal cells … in mice. But the stupid cells can’t work out how to adapt themselves to connect to the optic nerve. You could say it’s like having a new retina but the brain has no idea it’s there. You’ll have to learn to live with this. You’ll still have peripheral vision in your left eye, and even though it will be tough at first, with your right eye correcting, you’ll end up getting used to it. But Simon, the most important thing now is if you notice the slightest alteration in your field of vision, wavering, blind spots, changes in color, flashes of light, you don’t fuck around, you don’t wait two weeks before coming to see me, you call me and come to whichever hospital I’m at. And if I’m not around, because you never know, you ask for Herzog and say I sent you, he’s very good. Actually, you know what? Go and see him. For a second opinion. I won’t be upset, I can just imagine what you’re going through right now.”
“No, Stan, I won’t disturb him, I have faith in you.”
“No, I want you to: go and see Herzog. I really don’t want you thinking I’m being all reassuring because you’re my wife’s brother and a friend.”