Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal Page B

keeps his record collection – all of Bob Dylan and Neil Young – piles of paper, and long trays where psychotropic plants grow, his botanical experiments – it’s a professional interest, he says to the few who drop by, surprised to see cannabis plants growing right out in the open, as well as opium and common poppies, lavender, and Salvia divinorum , the “sage of the seers,” a hallucinogenic herb whose curative virtues he has described in articles published in pharmacology journals.
    The night before, alone in his apartment, he watched Paul Newman’s film The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds for the first time – the title indeed suggested a botanical fantasy, but it was powerful in a totally different way, a film that traced a path between hallucination and science, and it had captivated Revol right from the start. Stirred, taken in, he had the bud of an idea – why not – to reproduce the young heroine’s experiment in his own living room. Matilda had subjected marigolds to different doses of radium in order to observe their growth, their shapes differentiating after several days under the influence of the rays, some of them becoming enormous, others scrawny and wrinkled, still others simply beautiful, and bit by bit this solitary girl began to understand something of the infinite variety of the living, at the same time that she was coming to take her place in the world, proclaiming aloud, on the theatre stage after the school festival, the possibility that a marvellous mutation could one day transform and improve the whole human race. After which, deep in thought, Revol fried some eggs sunny side up, their yellows as brilliant as the marigolds’ hearts, uncapped a light beer pulled from the door of the fridge, slowly swallowed all of it, then rolled himself up in a goose-down duvet, eyes wide open.
    Revol sleeps. A notebook lies within arm’s reach so that he can jot things down when he wakes, describe the images glimpsed, the actions, sequences, and faces, and maybe Simon’s face will be among them – the black locks stiff with coagulated blood, the olive, tumid skin, the domes of the eyelids, the forehead and right temple swallowed up by a beet-red ring, the mortal macula – or maybe it will be Joanne Woodward’s, alias Beatrice Hunsdorfer, Matilda’s borderline mother, who suddenly surfaces in the theatre once the festival is over, emerges from the shadow in fine evening dress, sequins and black feathers, staggering, drunk, eyes glassy, and declares in a slurred voice, hand on her sternum: my heart is full, my heart is full.

T hey hold hands as they follow Thomas Remige and, in the end, if they go with him, if they comply with this other perambulation in the latticework of corridors and airlocks, if they agree to pass through all those tide gates, to open all those doors and hold them with their shoulders, despite the black meteor that has just hit them full force, and despite their obvious exhaustion, it’s probably because Thomas Remige looks upon them justly – holds them in a gaze that keeps them on the side of the living, a gaze that is already infinitely precious. And so, along the way, these two interlace fingers, touch chewed finger pads, bitten nails edged with dead skin, brush dry palms together, rings and stones, and they do it without even thinking.
    This is yet another area of the hospital, a hideout decorated like the living room of a model apartment: the room is bright, the furniture smart but ordinary – an apple-green couch in synthetic fabric that feels like velvet and two vermilion chairs with poofy cushions – the walls bare except for a colour poster from a Kandinsky exhibit – Beaubourg, 1985 – and, placed on the surface of the low table, a green plant with long thin leaves, four clean glasses, a bottle of mineral water, and a small dish of potpourri scented with orange and cinnamon. The window is half open, the curtains sway lightly, you