You notice that you’re wearing some very uncomfortable pajamas, of an indeterminate material between cloth and paper. And the sheets on your bed — very strange, these sheets. They seem like plastic. At any rate, they’re impossible to rip up. You’re also beginning to hear noise out in the corridor, brief exchanges between the hospital personnel and the police, the examining magistrates and the lawyers, interspersed with loony ululations followed by long silences. That’s it, you get the picture.
Then one morning, suddenly, you see things quite clearly. You are also quite scared. When the nurse brings breakfast — four pieces of melba toast with a bowl of brown liquid supposed to be tea — you sit on the edge of your bed and say calmly that this cannot continue, I do not want to stay here, and you have to give me back my child. The nurse studies you inscrutably and goes to inform the chief physician.
A large square person with a reddish-brown mustache, the latter questions you without listening to the answers, observing your reactions. When you say that you are scared, he says that isn’t important. You say yes it is, I’m really very scared, you have to do something, prescribe me some other pills, I can give you their names, I have to have them or I’ll go crazy. He replies you’re not in a supermarket and leaves.
Left alone with your fear, you sweat profusely. The pajamas stick to your limbs. Soon your breathing goes awry the way it did the other day on the Saint-Michel bridge; thousands of flies take off inside your skull, hammering your ears, and your strength abruptly returns. You raise a fist against the reinforced door, on which you pound, hitting until your arm turns blue with bruising, until the pain moves from your head into your body and they come and give you your pills.
That lasts another three days; then they must have set up something with the inspector because as soon as the antipsychotics wear off, he turns up with his subordinate, the one whose face you can never remember. You demand a lawyer. The inspector says listen, Madame Hermant, we’re not in a movie, this isn’t how it works in real life, you have to answer some questions first. He then lets you stew until the cows come home, asking easy questions to keep from being bored, along the lines of tell me what happened back there on the Saint-Michel bridge. But it’s easy to see he doesn’t care, he’s just waiting for you to go off your nut while he watches and the subordinate picks his teeth with his nails.
After an hour you’re ready for anything and it all comes out, but the story is so confused that he asks you to slow down, try to be more specific with the chronology, Madame Hermant, because all this isn’t really very clear. Gradually your narrative builds up, and you recount in detail your day on November 15. How you got the knives from your husband’s apartment, made an appointment with the doctor and left the child to the care of no one while you went to Rue de la Clef. How the doctor provoked that inexplicable explosive reaction in you. How you committed that act you ought never to have carried out — just look at how your mother brought you up, a model of perfection.
After which the inspector requires more details. The circumstances must be solidly established, it’s important, he says, for the dossier. The subordinate is taking notes at quite a clip, you provide all the details the inspector wants but he keeps asking for more and gets on your nerves in the end. You have admitted your crime, what else does he want, it’s as if he doesn’t believe you. Finally the subordinate’s wrist gives out, so they call it a day. You say okay, can I have my pills now? And the inspector says I’ll see what I can do.
Then the specialists parade through to examine you, putting you through certain tests that seem simple enough at first, where you must solve problems to demonstrate the logic of your thinking, the depth of your reasoning. They don’t reveal their conclusions but you can guess from their faces that they’ve seen better, they’ve seen worse.
Next they send you the chief evaluator, and this woman wants to see how you think, how your recent ordeals have affected your belief system and psychological defenses. She seems particularly interested in your mother. Yes, tell her about your mother. No problem. You talk about the apartment and everything else: the furniture, the knickknacks on the mantelpiece, the ivy in the living room, the floral design in the carpet. She observes you thoughtfully.
The days go by; you have no idea whether the court-ordered appraisal is really moving forward but you no longer think about the future. In any case you will not be staying on at the Hôtel-Dieu, which is not a place for long-term care. The feeling is something like traveling on a train or cruising in the Mediterranean: time seems suspended. Satisfied with your recent composure, the chief physician reduces your medications. And it appears that this hospitalization has in fact calmed you down.
On the other hand, you’re now becoming seriously bored. You complain to the nurse, the one who does not include empathy among her main attributes. Still, she hasn’t the heart to refuse you a little distraction and hands you a tabloid magazine full of divorces and eating disorders. You sympathize. Seeing you touched by these troubles that doubtless move her as well, she allows you a pencil to play the games. You fill in the blanks, erase the answers with the end of the pencil, then start over again the next morning. After a few days, you have more or less memorized the solutions and erased lots of holes through the pages.
The inspector comes to see you at the end of the week. He requires two or three more details regarding November 15, which you wearily supply. No, you do not have a chronometer, you would really like to help him out but there are things that escape even their supposed author. Fine, we’ll leave it at that, he says and presents some papers for signature. You sign without knowing what you’re signing and you couldn’t care less.
After another week, you are so well behaved that they give you back your daughter. She arrives with her baby gear, the cradle, the mobile, extra outfits, and pulls the usual stunt: carried in screaming, she shuts up as soon as you take her from the nurse’s arms. The reunion is heartwarming. So much so that it distracts you a bit more from your problems with the law. On that count, they’re still not telling you anything. The specialists visit you now and again but interest in your case seems on the wane. Soon they stop giving you any meds during the day, only a tablet at night to help you sleep.
18
Pascal Planche.
Pascal Planche owns three dust-colored suits. The first of flannel for summer wear, the second in a wool mixture for winter, the last of synthetic material for other eventualities (stains, delayed dry cleaning, torrents of rain). His shirts feature stripes in a matching color, or sometimes a small check. His shoes belong to no identifiable species: moccasins, Oxfords, bucks, sneakers, loafers, or flip-flops. He loves them, though, spends his Sundays taking care of them. After lining the pairs up in front of him, he gets out the shoeshine box where he keeps his supplies. On one side, rags and sponges; on the other, polishes and creams. Pascal spreads out a piece of newspaper on the floor and gets to work. He proceeds by stages rather than by pairs, judging that this method is more relaxing. One shoe after the other, he buffs off dirt with a soft, long-bristled brush, then massages the leather with an enriching liquid, brushes again, shines, waxes, polishes, rubs, until the process is complete and he enjoys an invariable and well-earned satisfaction.