Winter woods and fields. The ground is a cold soup that slops and sucks at their shoes, the grass crunches, and the cow pies, hardened by frost, are like scattered slabs of black rock. The branches of the poplar trees scratch the sky like talons, and the copses are full of crows as big as chickens. This is all a bit much, Marianne thinks, we’re going to freeze to death out here.
* * *
Finally, they reach a place where they can see the river, the vastness of the sky coming as a shock. They are out of breath, their feet soaked, but they move toward the riverbank, drawn close to the water as if magnetized, stopping only when the field begins to slide slowly into the water, which is black here, tangled with wet branches and decomposing stumps, with the corpses of insects that winter has killed and rotted, a brackish mire, completely still, a fairy-tale pond beyond which the estuary is slow, dull-colored, pale like sage, the fold of a shroud. Crossing it seems possible but dangerous: there are no wooden pontoons here, no boats moored nearby, no kids with pocketfuls of flat rocks come to skim them on the water’s surface, tracing a trajectory of low, graceful bounces, making the aquatic spirits dance in their wake; they are trapped here by these hostile waters, hands sunk deep in their pockets and feet sunk deep in mud, facing the river, chins buried in their collars. What are we doing here? Marianne thinks, wanting to scream, but her mouth, wide open, makes no sound at all, like in a nightmare. But then, far off to their left, they spy a dark ship, the sole means of embarkation visible in either direction, a solitary craft that, by its presence, points out the absence of all the others.
* * *
I don’t want them to cut him open, I don’t want them to skin and gut his body. The chromatic purity of Sean’s voice, toneless, sharpened by cold like a blade in ashes. Marianne slips her left hand into the right pocket of Sean’s parka, her index and middle fingers burrowing into the black hollow of his fist, opening it up, carving out enough space for her other two fingers to join them in there — all this without Sean turning his head. To their left, the rumble of the freighter grows closer, and the color of its hull comes into focus: an oily red, the exact color of dried blood. A bulk carrier with a cargo of grain, it goes down the river toward the sea, holding to its channel while here everything widens — a confluence of rivers and consciences — toward the formless and the infinite, toward disappearance. And suddenly it looms huge, so close that they imagine they could reach out a finger and touch its hull; it passes, casting a cold shadow over them, the water frothing, folding, turning turbid in its wake, and Marianne and Sean watch its long body—260 feet, at least three thousand tons — as it files past, a red curtain sliding gradually over reality, and I don’t know what they are thinking about at that second: probably about Simon — where he was before he was born, where he is now — or maybe they’re not thinking about anything, their minds entirely captured by this vision of the world slowly vanishing and then reappearing, tangible, utterly mysterious, and the ship’s prow cleaving through the water affirms the searing pain of the present moment.
The wake bubbles and then grows calm, smooth. The freighter moves away, taking its noise and its movement with it, and the river regains its original texture, the estuary setting everything ablaze, a radiance. Marianne and Sean turn toward each other, holding hands, their arms stretched out to the sides, and caress each other with their faces — what could be more tender than this gentle brushing of skin on skin, the edges of cheekbones sliding beneath flesh? — and end up leaning into each other, forehead to forehead, and Marianne’s words imprint the static air.
* * *
They won’t hurt him. They won’t hurt him at all. Marianne’s voice is muffled, and Sean lets go of her hands and takes her in his arms, his sobs melt into the breathing of nature, and he nods, okay, we should go back there now.
16
He’s a donor.
Sean is the one who makes this declaration, and Thomas Rémige jumps up from his chair, shaky and red-faced, his chest expanding with an influx of heat, as if his blood had sped up. He moves toward them, suddenly stops. Thank you. Marianne and Sean look down, the two of them rooted to the spot in the doorway of the office, speechless, their shoes soiling the floor with mud and black grass, barely able to comprehend what they have just done, just said — their son is a donor, they are giving him away, abandoning him, the thoughts and words echoing inside their eardrums. The telephone rings — it’s Révol. Thomas quickly tells him that it’s okay, three quickly spoken words in an encrypted language that Sean and Marianne do not understand, the acronyms and hurried speech intended to scramble meaning, and soon they leave Rémige’s office and are taken back to the interview room. Révol is there waiting for them. There are four of them in the room now, and the dialogue begins again immediately, with Marianne asking: What happens now?
* * *
It is 5:30 p.m. The window is open, as if the room had needed airing, a cool blankness replacing the stale, ruined dialogue that had filled the space before — the exhaled breaths, the spilled tears, the odor of sweat. Outside, a strip of lawn running perpendicular to the wall, an asphalt driveway, and, between the two, a hedge the height of a man. Thomas Rémige and Pierre Révol sit on the vermilion chairs while Marianne and Sean return to the apple-green couch, their anguish palpable — still their eyes are so wide open that their brows are creased, the area of white around the pupil enlarged, still their mouths are half open, ready to scream, their bodies tense with waiting, with fear. They are not cold, though, not yet.
We will make a comprehensive evaluation of the organs and we will transmit that evaluation to the doctor from the Biomedical Agency. Based on that information, he will be able to suggest one or several removals, after which we will organize the operation itself. Your son’s body will be returned to you tomorrow morning. As Révol speaks, he accompanies each phrase with a hand gesture, tracing in the air the steps of the next sequence. His words contain a great deal of information, even if they also suggest ellipses, things left unsaid, an opaque area that catalyzes their fear: the operation itself.
Suddenly Sean breaks his silence: What will be done to him exactly? He asks his question clearly, not in a strangled stammer, showing the courage of a soldier going over the top, exposing himself to machine-gun fire, while Marianne bites her coat sleeve. What will happen that night in the operating theater, the image they have of it — this carving up of Simon’s body, its dispersal — all of this horrifies them, but they want to know. Rémige takes a deep breath before answering: Incisions will be made in the body, the organs will be removed, the body will be closed up again. Simple verbs, atonal information, intended to counteract the emotional drama linked to the sacredness of the body, to the transgression suggested by its opening.
Are you going to perform the operation? Sean lifts his forehead — still the impression that he might charge from below, like a boxer. Simultaneously Révol and Rémige discern in this interrogation the visible tip of an iceberg of ancient terror: being declared dead, by doctors, when you are still alive. Let us not forget that Révol has a copy of Mary Higgins Clark’s thriller Moonlight Becomes You in his office, a book that involves a funerary practice once common in England: a ring is placed on the finger of the person to be buried, a ring attached to a cord that will ring a bell on the surface if the dead person wakes up underground. The definitions of the various criteria for death, developed in order to allow organ removals, contribute to this age-old fear. The nurse turns to Sean and, with his thumb and index finger, draws a solemn sign in the air: The doctors who declare a patient’s death never take part in the process of organ removal — never. In addition — his voice deepens, his tone grows firmer — there is always a dual procedure: two doctors observe the same protocol and two distinct signatures are required for the official report of the patient’s death. This demolishes the scenario of the criminal doctor who knowingly decrees his patient’s death in order to dispossess him afterward, destroys the rumors linking the medical mafia to international organ trafficking, invisible dispensaries located in the chaotic suburbs of Pristina, Dhaka, or Mumbai, and discreet clinics protected by security cameras, shaded by palm trees, installed in the upper-class areas of western cities. Gently, Rémige concludes: The surgeons who remove the organs will come from the hospitals where there are patients waiting for transplants.