Colour of Dawn by Yanick Lahens Page B

this ward, so many times in this city, on this island. And so many times the world has continued on its way, impassive.
    The young patient finally collapses, taking on the glassy-eyed, lost expression of the dying. At the first question of the doctor, the young patient nevertheless shows him his left side. When the doctor bends gently over him to examine it, feeling with his fingers, the young man moans like a suffering beast. The doctor then takes an ampoule from the tray held by the auxiliary and gives him an injection, to stop the pain and the cries. During the preceding days, as the injection wore off he began to suffer and cried out again.This afternoon he is numb from suffering. Above all, he is afraid of dying. Between two groans, incomprehensible words emerge from his mouth, distorted by pain. His forehead is damp. Cold. Death will not be long. It is a question of minutes, of seconds.
    It is hard to imagine the sun outside. Perhaps it is to reassure himself of its presence that the dying young man turns his head towards the only window of this ward from where you can see the sky. I look with him at this sky that he is without doubt seeing for the last time. It is desperately blue, pure as it often is in this season. The youth turns back to the other side of his bed. The side where his mother is. His eyelids gradually grow heavy and the gap between his moans increases until they die down, fading to a round of silence. I watch his sleep attentively, keeping a vigilant eye on him until his last breath. Until a death that comes without delay.
    I use a cloth to bind the jaw of the young man who has just died, and place his hands together on his stomach. ‘Until when will I still be driven by this undiminished desire to rub shoulders with death without batting an eyelid? Until when?’ Every day I come up against it. Every day it brings me to sit on the edge of my own tomb. And every day I wake up in the same ignorance. However often I face the death of others, my own remains alien to me. I tell myself simply that a normal being could not leave the vicinity of their own tomb every day like I do, with all these scars and blemishes inside their own soul, and believe themselves unscathed. Impossible!
    Passing close by the strong, silent man this afternoon, I would like him to reach out an arm and stop me. I would like him to squeeze my hand tightly, passing on all the warmth his words evade. I would like him to say something, anything. I would even be able to bear his words dying in his throat, if only his expression would tell me he finds me strong and feminine. And for the first time since that afternoon on the shore, I feel a great emptiness deep down inside.
    â€˜What am I supposed to do with this body that suddenly feels so heavy, too heavy for me to bear alone?’ I repeat to myself over and over again.
    I pass through the hospital barrier almost at a run, my head as full as a jug. I breathe in the air on the street; it has never seemed so soothing. I undo another button on my blouse the better to fill my lungs with it.

TWENTY
    O nce Madame Thomas has left, I call the mysterious phone number again. Still in vain. I wait for a sign, watch for an apparition. Perhaps I am thinking about Fignolé more than I should. The tears rise from my heart to my eyes. I grasp onto my grey stone. The more hours that pass, the further away I am from a happy ending. Images take me over. All the same – black and terrible.
    It is precisely half-past three. Time stands still, the hours fixed at mid-afternoon. Mother’s words over the phone are hardly reassuring. On her return from Aunt Sylvanie’s she kept the front door of the house ajar. Mother caught Wiston by surprise, obviously on guard as he slowed his pace to peer through the half-open door, and saved him some unnecessary contortions, as she put it: ‘Wiston, there’s no need to get a stiff neck; I’m here and Fignolé hasn’t come