Death will obliterate everything soon.
It frightens me.
I am afraid of dying, but I will not go to the hospital.
I spent most of my childhood in a hospital. My memories of that time are very vivid. I can see my bed among some twenty other beds, my closet in the corridor, my wheelchair, my crutches, the torture room with its swimming pool and devices. The treadmills on which you were forced to trudge endlessly, supported by a harness; the rings from which you had to dangle, the exercise cycles you had to keep pedaling even though you were screaming with pain.
I remember the suffering and also the smells, medicines mixed with blood, sweat, piss, and shit.
I also remember the injections, the nurses' white blouses, the questions without answers, and most of all the waiting. Waiting for what? Healing, probably, but also perhaps for something else.
I was told later that I came to the hospital in a coma, the result of a serious illness. I was four years old, and the war started.
I no longer know what there had been before the hospital.
The white house with green shutters on a quiet street, the kitchen in which my mother sang, the yard in which my father chopped wood-was it once a reality, the perfect happiness in the white house, or had I merely hallucinated it or dreamed it up during the long nights of five years spent in a hospital?
And he who lay in the other bed in the little room, who breathed at the same rhythm as me, the brother whose name I still believe I know, was he dead or had he never existed?
One day we changed hospitals. The new one was called " Rehabilitation Center," but it was still a hospital. The rooms, beds, closets, and nurses were the same, and the agonizing exercises continued.
A huge park surrounded the center. We were allowed to leave the building to splash around in a pool of mud-the more mud you got on yourself, the happier the nurses were. We were also allowed to ride the longhair ponies that bore us gently on their backs all over the park.
At six I began school in a little room in the hospital. Eight to twelve of us, depending on the state of our health, took the lessons provided by a teacher.
The teacher did not wear a white blouse, but short, narrow skirts with lively colored blouses and high-heeled shoes. Nor did she have her hair up in a bun; it flowed freely over her shoulders, and its color was like that of the chestnuts that fell from the trees in the park in the month of September.
My pockets were filled with those shiny fruits. I used them to bombard the nurses and supervisors. At night I threw them at the beds of anyone who whined or cried, to make them shut up. I also lobbed them at the panes of a greenhouse where an old gardener grew the salads we were forced to eat. Very early one morning I left a few dozen of these chestnuts in front of the director's door so that she would tumble down the staircase, but she just fell on her fat buttocks and didn't even break a bone.
At this point I no longer used a wheelchair but walked on crutches, and I was told that I was making a lot of progress.
I went to class from eight in the morning until noon. After lunch I had to nap, but instead of sleeping I read books the teacher lent me or that I borrowed from the director when she wasn't in her office. In the afternoon I did my exercises like everyone else; in the evening I had to do homework.
I finished my homework quickly and then I wrote letters. To the teacher. I never gave them to her. To my parents, to my brother. I never sent them. I didn't know their address.
Almost three years passed this way. I no longer needed crutches; I could walk with a cane. I knew how to read, write, and do arithmetic. We weren't given grades, but I often got the gold star that was stuck up beside our names on the wall. I was especially strong at mental arithmetic.
The teacher had a room at the hospital, but she didn't always sleep there. She went into town in the evening and didn't come back until morning. I asked her if she wanted to take me with her, and she answered that it was impossible, that I wasn't allowed to leave the center, but she promised to bring me chocolate. She gave me the chocolate secretly because there wasn't enough for everybody.
One evening I said to her, "I've had enough sleeping with the other boys. I'd like to sleep with a woman."
She laughed. "You'd like to sleep in the girls' room?"
"No. Not with girls. With a woman."
"Which woman?"
"Well, with you. I'd like to sleep in your room, in your bed."
She kissed me on the eyelids. "Little boys your age should sleep alone."
"Do you sleep alone too?"
"Yes, me too."
One afternoon she appeared under my hiding place, which was high up in a walnut tree whose branches formed a comfortable sort of seat where I could read and from which the town was visible.
The teacher said to me, "Tonight, when everyone's asleep, you can come to my room."
I didn't wait until everyone was asleep. I might well have waited until morning. They were never all asleep at the same time. There were those who cried, those who went to the bathroom ten times a night, those who climbed into each other's beds to do things, those who talked until dawn.
I gave my usual whacks to the crybabies, then I went to see the little blond paralytic who doesn't move and doesn't speak. All he does is look at the ceiling, or the sky if he is brought outside, and smile. I took his hand, held it to my face, and then placed my hands against his face. He looked at the ceiling and smiled.
I left the dormitory and went into the teacher's room. She wasn't there. I lay down in her bed. It smelled nice. I fell asleep. When I woke up in the middle of the night she was lying beside me, her arms crossed over her face. I uncrossed her arms, put them around me, pressed myself against her, and stayed that way, awake, until morning.
Some of us received letters, which the nurses handed out or read to the recipients if they were unable to do so themselves. Afterward, when they asked me, I read their letters to them again. Generally I read the exact opposite of what the letters actually said. The results were, for instance: "Our dear child, whatever you do, don't get well. We're getting along just fine without you. We don't miss you at all. We hope that you'll remain where you are, because the last thing we want is a cripple in the house. Still, we send you a couple of kisses, and be good, because the people taking care of you are very good. We couldn't do as much for you. We're lucky that someone else is doing the job for us, since there is no place for you in this family, where everyone else is healthy. Your parents, sisters, and brothers."
The person I read the letter to said, 'That's not how the nurse read my letter."
I said, "She read it differently because she didn't want to hurt your feelings. I read what the letter really says. I think you have a right to know the truth."
He said, "I have the right, yes, but I don't like the truth. The nurse was right to read it differently."
He cried.
Many of us also got packages. Cakes, cookies, ham, sausages, jam, honey. The director said that these packages had to be shared among everyone. Still, some of the children hid food in their beds or closets.
I went up to one of these children and asked, "You're not afraid that it might be poisoned?"
"Poisoned? Why?"
"Parents prefer a dead child to a crippled one. Haven't you ever thought about that?"
"No, never. You're a liar. Get lost."
Later I saw the child throwing his package out with the center's garbage.