* * *
A drift of silence, and then Marianne’s voice again, muffled as if she were speaking through a cauclass="underline" But who will be with Simon then? — that “who” emphasized, naked. Me, Thomas replies, I will be there. I will be there for the entire operation. Marianne slowly moves her gaze toward his — the transparency of crushed glass — so you will tell them about the eyes, that we don’t want them to, you’ll tell them. Thomas nods, I’ll tell them, yes. He stands up, but Sean and Marianne continue to sit still, some force weighing down on their shoulders and holding them to the ground. This lasts for a while, and then Marianne says: So we don’t know who will get Simon’s heart, is that it? I mean, it’s anonymous, we’ll never know, right? Thomas goes along with these questioning declarations, these declaratory questions, but clarifies: You will be able to find out the sex and age of the people who will receive the organs, but you will never learn their identity; if you wish, however, you can be given news about the transplant. He goes on: The heart, if it is transplanted, will be given to a patient according to established medical criteria — and gender is irrelevant to compatibility. Bearing in mind Simon’s age, however, his organs should be offered first to children. Sean and Marianne listen, then confer in low voices. It is Sean who next speaks to the doctor: We would like to be with Simon again now.
Révol is needed elsewhere, so he leaves them while Thomas accompanies Marianne and Sean to the door of the room. They walk in silence, and then: I’m going to leave you with Simon now, I’ll be back later.
* * *
The room has darkened as evening falls, and the silence seems to have thickened. They approach the bed with its motionless folds. They probably imagined the announcement of Simon’s death would be followed by an alteration in his appearance, or at least that some aspect of the way he looks would have changed since the last time they saw him — skin color, texture, glow, temperature. But no, nothing has changed at all. Simon lies there, and the infinitesimal movements of his body still make the sheets rise and fall weakly; what they have been through finds no correspondence here, no echo or reflection, and this is a blow so violent that their thoughts are unhinged, they fidget and stutter, talk to Simon as if he could hear them, talk about him as if he couldn’t hear them, seem to struggle to remain within the realms of language while their phrases become dislocated, their words bang together, fragment, and short-circuit, while their caresses become collisions and then breaths, sounds and signs soon tapering off into a continual buzz inside their chests, an imperceptible vibration, as if they had now been expelled from all language and their acts now had no time or place in which to occur, and so, lost in the cracks in reality, they themselves cracked and broken and fragmented, Sean and Marianne find the strength to lift themselves onto the bed so that they can be as close as possible to their child’s body. Marianne ends up lying on the edge of the bed, her hair falling over the side, while Sean half-sits on the mattress, resting his head on Simon’s torso, his mouth at the exact location of the tattoo, and the parents close their eyes together and are silent, as if they too were sleeping. Night has fallen now, and they are in darkness.
* * *
Two floors above, Thomas Rémige is glad to be alone so he can concentrate, take stock, and call the Biomedical Agency: the next step is an in-depth evaluation of the organs. The woman who answers the phone is one of the founders of the organization; Thomas recognizes her deep, husky voice, visualizes her at the center of a classroom, the tables arranged in a U, the large plastic amber-colored chain attached to her glasses, which hide her face. Then, sitting at his computer, following a complex process that involves entering a series of identification numbers and encrypted passwords, he opens a software application in the database and creates a new document into which he carefully copies all the information regarding Simon Limbres’s body: this is the Cristal file, an archive and dialogue tool that is now connected with the Biomedical Agency, guaranteeing the traceability of the organ and the anonymity of the donor. He looks up: a bird is hopping about on the window ledge — the same bird as before, with a round, staring eye.
17
The day Thomas acquired the goldfinch, Algiers was sweltering under a cloud of vapor. Inside his indigo-shuttered apartment, Hocine lay on the couch, legs bare beneath a striped djellaba, fanning himself.
The stairwell was painted blue; it smelled of cardamom and cement. Ousmane and Thomas climbed three flights in the dimness: a yellow, trembling light filtered through the panes of frosted glass in the roof, barely penetrating down to the first floor. Thomas sits quietly while the cousins greet each other, embracing warmly, then a rapid conversation in Arabic that sounds like pistachio shells being bitten apart. He doesn’t recognize Ousmane’s face when he speaks his native language; it takes on new shapes — his jaw retracting, gums exposed, eyes rolling and sounds emerging from the back of his throat, from a complicated area far behind the tonsils, new vowels held then clicked under the palate — so that he almost looks like someone else, like a stranger, and Thomas feels flustered. The tone of the exchange alters when Ousmane announces in French the reason for their visit: my friend would like to hear the goldfinches. Ah, Hocine turns toward Thomas, and maybe adopt one? he asks craftily, with a wink. Maybe. Thomas smiles.
Arriving the day before, after crossing the Mediterranean for the first time, the young man was bewitched by the perfectly curved bay of Algiers and by the city ranged beyond it, the blues and the whites, the crowds of young people, the smell of the water-sprayed sidewalks, the dragon trees in the Jardin d’Essai, their interlacing branches creating a sort of fantastical vault. A beauty that was not voluptuous but stripped bare. He felt intoxicated. New sensations called to him and turned his world upside down in a mixture of sensory excitement and a supercharged awareness of what surrounded him: life was unfiltered here, and so was he. He tapped euphorically at the bulge in his pocket formed by the cash rolled up inside a little handkerchief.
Hocine walks to his balcony, pushes open the shutters, and leans out into the street, clapping his hands, shouting orders. Ousmane shouts back at him in Arabic, apparently begging, please, no, don’t go to any trouble, but here they are, being brought up to the room, soups and skewered meats, bowls of cereal as light as foam, orange salads with mint leaves, and honey cakes. After the meal, Hocine places the cages on the ceramic tiles that cover the floor, using the patterns on the cages to align them properly. The birds are tiny — four or five inches high — with disproportionately large throats and abdomens. Their plumage is unspectacular, their claws matchstick-thin, their eyes staring. They stand on gently swinging little wooden trapezes. Thomas and Ousmane crouch a few feet away from the cages while Hocine collapses onto a pouffe at the back of the room. He makes a sound a little like a yodel and the recital begins: the birds sing, each in turn and then all together — a canon. The two young men dare not look at each other or touch each other.