Pedaling alongside Harfang, riding on his wheel for a few hours, was worth all the fury it provoked in their wives at being left alone with the kids on a Sunday until the middle of the afternoon, it was worth all the sarcastic comments — don’t worry, darling, I know you’re sacrificing yourself for the family — worth their more direct reproaches — you only ever think about yourself — worth the cutting remarks as they scornfully watched their husbands sucking in their paunches — careful you don’t have a heart attack! — worth coming home crimson-faced, exhausted, legs barely holding up their body and their backsides so sore that they dreamed of taking a sitz bath but collapsed onto the first couch they spotted, or onto their bed for a well-earned siesta — and, of course, this quickly grabbed nap would trigger their spouses’ ire once again, would fuel endless diatribes about men’s selfishness, their idiotic ambitions, their submissiveness, their fear of aging, would make the wives lift up their arms and yell loudly or put their hands on their hips, elbows out, stomach thrust forward, teasing them theatrically — and, once they had recovered from their efforts, it was worth wasting away the afternoon on their computers, buying a chamois on a specialized site, a matching bib, and all the other appropriate gear, finally screaming shut up! at the wife nagging from the other end of the apartment, making her cry, because — curiously — not a single wife ever supported this masculine obsession, not one, out of careerism or simple docility, ever encouraged her husband to straddle a bike and follow Harfang on the roads of the Chevreuse valley, to show off his speed, lightness, endurance, no, not one woman was ever fooled by this nonsense, and when they talked among themselves, the wives, deploring the insidious dragooning of their husbands, they would sometimes cite Lysistrata, plan a mass sex strike to make the men give up their extravagant toadying, or they would fall about laughing as they took turns describing how haggard their husbands looked after finishing a race, and in the end it was just funny, so let them go if they really wanted to, let them go and exhaust themselves, allies and adversaries, favorites and competitors, because soon not one woman would wake up at six in the morning to make coffee and hand the cup lovingly to her husband: instead, they would stay in bed, curled up under the comforter, hair tangled, skin warm, purring with pleasure.
* * *
The last time Marthe Carrare heard Harfang speak, he had delivered a sparkling lecture about the uses of cyclosporin in antirejection treatments that had revolutionized transplant operations in the early 1980s, setting out in just twelve minutes the history of this immunosuppressant — a product that weakened the immune system of the recipient’s body, thereby reducing the risk of the transplanted organ being rejected — after which he ran a hand through his hair, sweeping that famous white cowlick off his forehead, that distinctive shock of hair which allowed him to dispense with introductions, and barked out questions?, counted one, two, three in his head, and concluded his speech by foreshadowing the end of cardiac transplants, suggesting they would soon become obsolete because the time had come to consider the virtues of artificial hearts, technological wonders invented and developed in a French laboratory, with initial tests having already been authorized in Poland, Slovenia, Saudi Arabia, and Belgium. The nine-hundred-gram bioprosthesis, developed over twenty years by an internationally renowned French surgeon, will be implanted into patients with serious heart failure whose lives are considered to be in danger. A murmur ran through the auditorium, waking up the drowsier students. Harfang’s audience was disconcerted by this conclusion, by the idea that a prosthetic heart could rob the organ of its symbolic power, and while most of the heads obediently bowed down toward the spiral notebooks held below them, concentrating as the hands took notes of Harfang’s words, a few shook from side to side, signaling sadness, or even vague dissent, while some slid hands inside jackets, behind ties, under shirts, touching bare skin so they could feel their hearts beating.
* * *
The game has kicked off and the rumble rising from the stadium has become a ceaseless roar, growing even louder at certain moments — a shot on target, a suddenly threatening counterattack, a piece of sublime skill, a violent clash, a goal. Marthe Carrare leans back in her chair: the donor’s organs have been allocated, the trajectories calculated, the teams organized. Everything is on track. And Rémige is in control. As long as there are no unexpected problems during the removal operation, she thinks, as long as the physiognomy of the organs does not reveal something not spotted or even suspected by the scans and the ultrasounds and the analyses, it should all be fine, and she will smoke a cigarette, drink a beer, eat a cheeseburger with barbecue sauce. She chews a little harder in order to squeeze out the last atom of nicotine from the gum, even if it’s just the faintest memory of a taste, a smell, and she thinks about the security guard who by now must be bent over his tablet, following the soccer game, his pack of Marlboro Lights within reach.
20
Cordélia Owl is shaking a pack of cigarettes at Révol as the elevator doors close — I’m going downstairs for a break, five minutes — she gestures to him through the rapidly narrowing gap, and then her own face appears in front of her, a blur. The metal surface does not offer a clear reflection, only a vague mask, erasing her supple skin and shining eyes, the banding effect of her sleepless night, that still excited beauty: her face has turned like milk turns, features subsiding, complexion muddied, the rings under her eyes an olive gray verging on khaki, the marks on her neck almost black. Once she is alone in the elevator, she shoves the pack of cigarettes back in one pocket, takes her cell phone from the other, glances at it — still nothing — checks the bars at the top of the screen, squints, ah, no service, not even the hint of a signal. Immediately she feels hopeful again — he might have tried to call, without success — and when the elevator arrives at the first floor, she runs to a side exit reserved for hospital staff, pushes the panic bar on the door, and she’s outside. There are three or four of them there, smoking while they stamp their feet in the whitish zone that the luminous sign traces in the cold — nurse’s aids and a nurse she doesn’t know — and the air is so icy that it’s impossible to tell the cigarette smoke apart from the carbon dioxide they are exhaling at the same time. She switches off her cell phone, then switches it on again, just to make sure. Her bare arms are turning visibly bluish, and soon her whole body is shivering. Do any of you have a signal? She turns toward the group, their voices responding, merging into one another, yeah, it’s fine, I’ve got service, me too, and when her phone is on again, she checks it for messages. She does all this without hope, certain now that there is nothing on her voicemail, certain that she must stop thinking about it before anything can happen.
* * *
Strong signal, no messages. She lights a cigarette. One of the guys in the group says you’re in the ICU, aren’t you? He’s a tall redheaded guy with a crew cut, an earring in his left lobe, and long hands with bright-red fingers and neatly trimmed fingernails. Yeah, Cordélia replies, her little chin trembling. She feels weak, numb, goose bumps on her arms, stomach muscles aching from shivering under her thin blouse; she clings to her cigarette, sucks hard at the filter, and suddenly her eyes are burning, tears forming. The guy looks at her, smiling, hey, are you okay? what’s up? Nothing, she replies, nothing, I’m just cold, but the guy has moved closer to her: The ICU’s tough, isn’t it? Some of the things you see … Cordélia sniffs and takes another drag: No, it’s not that, I’m okay, just the cold, and tiredness. The tears roll down her cheeks, slowly, mascara-dyed, the eyes of a kid who’s sobering up.