Horse leather is the best leather for gloves, Dilenka, it resists the heat.
I climbed up eight metal ladders, each one as high as hay in a barn, nobody stopped me, to the manganese-oxide furnace. This is where he fell. The fumes hurt my throat and I breathed deeply, yet nothing happened. I came down the eight ladders. I crossed the office space that had been the Ram’s Ballroom. I found the locker where he kept his horse-leather gloves and his blue shield. It had an Italian name on it now. I laughed. I surprised myself laughing. Our love was imperishable.
Across the footbridge we lived IN EUROPA. The river was low, for the thaw had not begun. On many days it was minus ten and the mountains were still imprisoned. There was no time, I was thinking as I watched the water of the Giffre, to show Stepan where to take the trout, only time for Stepan and Odile to meet and for Christian to be conceived. Upstream, between the rocks, something attracted my attention. I waited. It seemed to me that it turned its head. A lorry clattered along the road and it flew up, long legs dangling, to perch in a pine tree. It was a heron. A water bird that nests in the top of a tree, said Stepan. I’ve seen three herons in my life so far. One with Father when I was small enough for him to carry me, one with Stepan on a June evening, and one that Sunday in March ’56.
Stepan said the name of the heron was tzaplia, a creature from far away with a message. Waiting for its fish, it becomes as still as a stick. Which is why I wasn’t sure when I first spotted it. From the pine tree the heron surveyed the road, the factory grounds, the tall chimneys with their heads like the open beaks of gigantic fledgelings looking up for food, the manganese-oxide furnace, Peter, Tito, the turbine house, the cliff-face and that sky where I’m flying with my son. Of its message I was ignorant.
She was in a good mood, Mother. She gave us a kilo of honey, she said your blue eyes were going to break girls’ hearts, she changed your nappies. For once I wasn’t in a hurry to leave and we missed the bus back to Cluses and had to hitchhike. You made hitchhiking easy. With you in my arms, the very first car stopped. The driver leant back and opened the rear door. As we were climbing in, he spoke my name. He was wearing a cap over his eyes and he had a black beard. Yet something in the way he said my name was familiar, was old. Our eyes met and suddenly I recognised him.
Michel!
He leant his head back awkwardly for me to kiss his cheek. I guessed he couldn’t turn round, couldn’t move his legs, so I kissed him like that.
I was so sorry, Odile, when I heard about what happened, he said. I offer you my sympathy and all my condolences.
His voice had changed. Changed more than his face on account of his beard. Before, he had spoken like most people do, his voice close-up to what he was saying. Now his voice was far away, like a priest’s voice at the altar.
This is our son, Christian, I told him.
He touched your woolen bonnet with his hand and it was then I noticed the scars on it: they were violet — the same colour as molybdenum bread goes when it’s cooling. Where they were violet, there was less flesh.
You’re going where? he asked.
Cluses.
You live there?
I nodded. And you, Michel?
Lyons’s finished with me. The surgeons say I’m a masterpiece. Do you know how many operations I had? Thirty-seven!
He laughed and slapped his thigh so the sound should remind me it was made of metal. He was wearing well-pressed trousers, light-coloured socks, polished shoes.
You started to cry.
Developing his lungs! said Michel. He can’t run at his age, poor little mite, all he can do is to howl if he wants to fill his lungs. Here! Christian! Look!
He dangled a key-ring before your eyes and you leant your head against my breast and stopped crying.
And you, Michel?
I’m going to take on the tobacconist’s and newspaper shop at Pouilly.
How will you manage to—
Everything, Odile, everything. I can even climb a ladder! The trade union lawyers forced them to give me a pension. I don’t have to work too much.
Stupidly, helplessly and for no good reason, I began to snivel. Michel turned round and started the engine. He could drive the car, for it had been adapted and fitted out with hand-controls. His two feet in their polished shoes just rested on the floor. Like flatirons.
When there’s no choice, Michel said over his shoulder, it’s extraordinary what you can adapt to.
I know.
At first I was too drugged to realise, he said, then bit by bit the truth came home to me. When I woke up in the morning and remembered what I was, I wanted to scream. For a week I was in despair. Why me? I kept on asking. Why me?
I know, I said. You’d gone to sleep. We were driving along by the river. He controlled the speed with his scarred right hand. His two feet lay on the floor like flatirons. I was still sniffling.
The great thing in hospital is you aren’t alone. There are other people in the same state as you, he said, some are worse off than you. You’ve only got one life, they say, so better make the most of it. It’s not true, Odile.
I know, I said between tears.
We were all bad cases. Third-degree burns, with fifty, sixty, seventy percent disability. We’d have all been dead twenty years ago. There were people — we heard it — there were people who said we’d be better off dead. We had to learn to live a second life. The first one was over forever and ever. He’s sleeping now?
He’s asleep, yes, I whispered.
I had to learn how to live — and it wasn’t like learning for the second time, that’s what’s so strange, Odile, it was like learning for the first time. Now I’m beginning my second life.
Do you have much pain? I asked.
Not much.
Never?
Not much. Sometimes when it’s hot in the summer I’m uncomfortable. He touched the top of his thigh. Otherwise, no. For a long while I dreamt of pain in my legs. They weren’t amputated in my dreams. I’ll tell you something else, Odile. I’ve become a fire-cutter.
I started to laugh. As with my tears, I didn’t know why.
There was an old man in the hospital. He wasn’t a patient and he wasn’t a member of the staff… he was there every day. He went out to buy whatever we asked him — papers, fruit, tobacco, eau de cologne — and in return we gave him the change. He was eighty-two. When he was younger he’d been a railwayman. He was a fire-cutter. I saw him take the pain away once. A nurse scalded her hands with boiling water, and the old man put a stop to her suffering in two minutes. According to him he was getting too old, said the effort of cutting the fire took too much out of him. So, one day he announced he’d been watching us all very carefully and now he’d decided, now he’d chosen his successor. And it was to be me. He gave me his gift.
How?
Like that.
What did he do?
He just gave me his gift.
We were in Cluses and Michel drove us to the front door. You were already asleep in my arms. Despite my protests he insisted on getting out of the car. He moved his legs with his arms. He pulled himself up with his arms. His neck and shoulders were much thicker than they had been. He extracted himself like a man climbing out of a trench he’s dug. There he stood on the pavement, swaying slightly from his hips.
If you ever need me, you know where to find me now. I was so sorry, he repeated again, to hear what had happened.