The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

We were inseparable. We lived, ate, drank, slept, and dreamed only of and for the paper. Whose idea was that afternoon at the racetrack? It was a fine winter Sunday, blue, cold, and dry, and the horses were running at Vincennes. Neither of us was a racing fan, but the track correspondent valued us highly enough to treat us to lunch at the Vincennes restaurant and to give us the password to the Aladdin's cave of racing: a tip. Mithra-Grandchamp was a sure thing, he told us, a guaranteed winner, and since the odds on him were twenty to one, a fat little profit—much better than municipal bonds—seemed likely.

Now Vincent is on the outskirts of Berck and—like all my visitors—is wondering what the hell he is doing here.

We had eaten an enjoyable lunch that day in the restaurant overlooking the racetrack. The large dining room was frequented by gangsters in their Sunday suits, pimps, parolees, and other shady characters who gravitate naturally to horse racing. Sated, we puffed greedily on long cigars and awaited the fourth race. In that hothouse atmosphere, criminal records bloomed like orchids all around us.

Reaching the seafront, Vincent turns and drives along the promenade. The throng of summer visitors eclipses his winter memories of a frigid, deserted Berck.

At Vincennes, we lingered so long in the dining room that the race came and went without us. The betting counter slammed shut under our noses before I had time to pull out the roll of banknotes the people back at the paper had entrusted to me. Despite our attempts at discretion, Mithra-Grandchamp's name had made the rounds of the newspaper. Rumor had turned him into a mythic beast, and everyone was determined to bet on him. All we could do was watch the race and hope…At the last turn, Mithra-Grandchamp began to pull away. Entering the final stretch, he had a lead of five lengths, and we watched in a dream as he crossed the finish line a good forty yards ahead of his closest pursuer. Back at the paper, they must have been going wild around the TV screen.

Vincent's car slips into the hospital parking lot. Brilliant sunshine. This is where my visitors, hearts in mouths, need fortitude to brave the few yards that separate me from the world: the automatic glass doors, elevator number 7, and the horrible little corridor leading to Room 119. All you can see through the half-open doors are bedridden wretches whom fate has cast to the far edge of life. Some visitors probably stand for a moment outside my room so that they can greet me with firmer voices and drier eyes. When they finally come in, they are gasping for air like divers whose oxygen has failed them. I even know of some who turned tail and fled back to Paris, their resolve abandoning them on my very threshold.

Vincent knocks and enters soundlessly. I have become so inured to the look on people's faces that I scarcely notice the transient gleam of fear. Or in any case, it no longer shakes me quite so much. I try to compose features atrophied by paralysis into what I hope is a welcoming smile. Vincent answers this grimace with a kiss on my forehead. He hasn't changed. His crest of red hair, his sullen expression, his stocky physique, his habit of shifting from one foot to the other, give him the look of a Welsh shop steward visiting a mate injured in a mine explosion. Vincent bobs forward like a prizefighter in the tough lightweight division. On Mithra-Grandchamp day, after that disastrous win, he had simply muttered: "Idiots! We're complete idiots! When we get back to the office we'll be history!" His favorite expression.

Frankly, I had forgotten Mithra-Grandchamp. The memory of that event has only just come back to me, now doubly painful: regret for a vanished past and, above all, remorse for lost opportunities. Mithra-Grandchamp is the women we were unable to love, the chances we failed to seize, the moments of happiness we allowed to drift away. Today it seems to me that my whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses: a race whose result we know beforehand but in which we fail to bet on the winner. By the way, we managed to pay back all our colleagues.

The Duck Hunt