They bypass the city by the north and take the Fontaine-la-Mallet road, passing the compact, indeterminate shapes of suburban buildings, tower blocks planted in fields behind the city, swarms of apartment towers around an asphalt loop; they drive through a forest, still not a star in the sky, no flashing airplane lights or flying saucers, nothing at all. The driver speeds along this secondary road, well above the limit; he’s an experienced driver, accustomed to this type of mission; he stares straight ahead, forearms rigid and immobile, muttering into a tiny microphone attached to a high-tech earpiece, I’m on my way, don’t fall asleep, I’ll be there soon. The box is wedged in the compartment behind them, and Alice visualizes the several hermetic walls surrounding the heart, those membranes that protect it; she imagines that it is a rocket engine propelling them through space. Turning around and lifting herself up on one side, she is able to see past the headrest; squinting through the dimness, she deciphers the words on the label affixed to the side of the box and notices, among the information necessary for the traceability of the organ, a strange phrase: “element or product of human body for therapeutic use.” And, just below this, the donor’s Cristal number.
Virgilio leans back in his seat and breathes out. His eyes linger on Alice’s profile, a shadow puppet against the window, and, suddenly stirred by her presence, asks in a soft voice: Are you okay? The question is unexpected — this guy has been so unpleasant up to now — and Macy Gray’s voice on the radio sings shake your booty, boys and girls, there is beauty in the world, and out of nowhere Alice feels like crying — an emotion that grabs her from within and lifts her up, quivering — but she holds back her tears, grits her teeth as she turns her face away: Yup, I’m fine. So he takes his cell phone out of his pocket for the thousandth time, but instead of checking the time he taps at it, gradually becoming annoyed: It’s not loading, he hisses, fuck it, fuck it. Feeling bolder, Alice asks, something wrong? Virgilio answers her without looking up, it’s the game, I wanted to see the result of the game, and without turning around the driver announces coldly that Italy won, 1–0. Virgilio lets out a yell, raises a fist, then demands: Who scored? The driver signals and brakes: the whitish space of an illuminated intersection looms ahead. It was Pirlo. Alice, stupefied, watches as Virgilio rapidly types a couple of victory texts, muttering to himself yes, yes, yes, then he looks over at her, one eyebrow raised: Pirlo, eh? What a player! His smile overwhelms his face, and then they are at the airport, hearing the roar of the sea close by, at the foot of the cliffs, and rolling the box across the runway and up the gangway, hauling it into the plane, this Russian doll of a box which contains the transparent plastic safety bag which contains the receptacle which contains the special jar which contains Simon Limbres’s heart, which contains nothing less than life itself, the possibility of life, and which five minutes later is airborne.
25
As you can imagine, Marianne cannot sleep. Torn up with pain, she has not taken sleeping pills or any other drug, but has sunk into a kind of trance; her way of coping. At 11:50 p.m., she jumps up suddenly from the couch. Is it possible she has sensed the moment when the blood ceased flowing in the aorta? Is it possible she had an intuition of that moment? In spite of all the miles stretching out across the estuary, between her apartment and the hospital, an impalpable closeness gives the night a fantastical mental depth, vaguely frightening, as if magnetic lines were hardening in a space-time fault line, and connecting her to that forbidden place where her child lay, allowing her to watch over him.
* * *
A polar night: the opaque sky seems to dissolve, the fleecy layer of cloud being torn away to reveal Ursa Major. Simon’s heart is migrating now, traveling on rails, on roads, inside that box with slightly bumpy plastic walls that glow in the beams of electric light, conveyed with incredible care, like the heart of a prince in times past, like his entrails and his skeleton, the body divided for distribution, interred in a basilica, a cathedral, an abbey, in order to guarantee rights to his lineage, prayers for his salvation, a future for his memory — the sound of hooves heard on sunken paths, on the dirt roads of villages and the cobblestone streets of cities, their rhythm slow and majestic, then the flames of torches were seen, making liquid shadows in the branches of trees, on the façades of houses, on the wild-eyed faces; people massed on doorsteps, towels around their necks, seeing each other and signaling silently to watch this extraordinary cortege move past, the black carriage drawn by six horses in full mourning attire, caparisoned in sheets and precious surplices, the escort of twelve knights bearing torches, long black coats and crepe hangings, and sometimes even pages and valets on foot, holding white wax altar candles, sometimes companies of guards too, and the knight in tears at the head of the procession, accompanying the heart in its tomb, advancing toward the back of the crypt, toward the chapel of a chosen monastery or the castle of his birth, toward a niche carved out in black marble and decorated with twisted columns, a shrine surmounted with a radiant crown, ornamented with escutcheons and coats of arms, Latin mottos carved into stone banners, and often people tried to look through a gap in the curtains to the inside of the carriage, where the officer of the transaction sat — the man who would hand-deliver the heart to those who would, from now on, take care of it, and who would pray for the deceased; most often this man is a confessor, a friend, a brother, but it was always too dark to see this man, or the reliquary placed on a black taffeta cushion, and certainly not the heart inside it, the membrum principalissimum, the king of the body, placed at the center of the chest like the sovereign in his kingdom, like the sun in its cosmos, this heart nested in gold-stitched gauze, this heart for which everyone wept.
* * *
Simon’s heart was migrating to one part of the country, his kidneys, liver, and lungs entering other regions, rushing toward other bodies. What would remain, in this fragmentation, of the unity of her son? How could she attach her singular memory to that diffracted body? What will become of his presence, of his reflection on earth, of his ghost? These questions circle her like fiery hoops, and then Simon’s face forms before her eyes, intact and unique. He is irreducible; he is Simon. She feels a deep sense of calm. Outside, the night burns like a gypsum desert.
26
At the Pitié, Claire finds herself surrounded. She is led into a room in the Cardiac Surgery Department where every inch has been scrubbed and disinfected: a transparent glaze covers every surface, and the air is thick with detergent fumes. A too-high mobile bed, a blue leatherette armchair, an empty table, and, standing ajar in a corner of the room, the door of a bathroom. She puts her bag on the floor and sits on the bed. She is dressed completely in black — an old sweater with sleeves slit to the shoulder — and she stands out perfectly in this pale room, like a shadow. Texts begin appearing on her phone — her sons, her mother, a female friend, they are all on their way, fast as they can — but no message from the foxglove man, who is squatting on his heels next to a bamboo hedge, amid stray dogs and wild pigs, in a village in the Gulf of Siam.
* * *
The nurse who enters plants her fists on her hips and declares in a cheery voice: So, tonight’s the big night! She has a helmet of salt-and-pepper hair, and wears square-framed glasses; her cheeks are colored by a slight rosacea. Claire shrugs her shoulders, her palms raised to the sky, and smiles: Yep, tonight everything is possible. The nurse hands her several flat transparent packets that shimmer under the ceiling light like sheets of gelatin, then leans over her and a pendant swings forward from her skin, a brief sparkle in the void — it’s a little silver heart engraved with a pledge, Today more than yesterday but tomorrow even more, the kind of jewelry you can buy in mail-order catalogs; Claire, mesmerized, watches it swing in irregular circles — and then the nurse stands up again, points to the packets: These are your clothes for the OR, you’ll have to put them on before you go in. Claire looks at them with a mixture of impatience and reticence — the same feeling that has gripped her for the past year; another name for waiting. Feigning composure, she replies: We are going to wait for the heart to get here, though, aren’t we? The woman shakes her head; with a glance at her watch, she says no, you’ll leave for the OR in two hours, as soon as we’ve received your results; the organ will arrive around twelve-thirty, and you have to be ready then, the transplant will take place immediately afterward. And she leaves.