The Ninth Life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen

this woman had presence. A certain aloof aura, an hauteur that one might think was simply class, if one did not have the suspicion – as I did, for I felt I was beginning to know her a little – that it was actually just pure, agonising loneliness that set her apart from the others. That she needed to tie up her hair and apply that blood-dark lipstick to stop herself from falling to pieces, losing her sanity. She was not ready for the world yet.
         —The message is, never give up, I told her an hour later in my office, where I had persuaded her to join me for a cup of coffee before I launched myself once more into writing the talk I was about to give in Lyon. I’d been recounting the story of l’Hôpital des Incurables. —Believe me, we’ve come a long way from talking about incurability, I reassured her. —We simply don’t even accept it as a notion at the Clinique de l’Horizon. However desperate Louis’ situation looks, Madame Drax – can I call you Natalie? – we will try to get through to him. Track him down. Coax him out.
         Speech over, I smiled and let my eyes wander up to the phrenological map which hangs on the wall adjacent to us. Memory, moral faculties, reasoning, mental energy, language, love   ...
         —You think he’s hiding? she asked softly, her eyes drifting to my bonsai trees. —I didn’t think you saw it like that.
         —Some of them are hiding, I said. —Others are just ... lost. You have to prune the taproots as well as the branches, I told her. —It’s very delicate.
         —They’re beautiful, she said. —In a macabre sort of way.
         —It’s not macabre. It’s art more than horticulture. My wife calls them my geriatric babies. But they’re much easier than children.
         —And more rewarding? she smiled.
         —Sometimes.
         —You have children?
         —Two girls. Grown up.
         —Is a brain the same as a soul, Dr Dannachet? she asked suddenly. —I mean, if Louis’ brain is damaged, is he still Louis?
         —He’s still Louis, I said. —In some shape or form. You know, in some cannibal societies, they consumed the brains of their enemies. Literally swallowing the organ that – they thought – housed the soul. Our culture doesn’t believe in the soul. We talk about the mind as a social construct. Or as meat that thinks and tells stories, and invents things like the idea of ‘soul’, to comfort itself. We’ve ruled out magic.
         —I haven’t, she said, firmly. She took out an envelope from her handbag. —You asked me about what sort of boy Louis is. And then she spilled dozens of photographs across my desk. —Now you can see. I’ve got hundreds. I just brought a few.
         As I leafed through the pictures, she talked more about her son. His passions, his unusual mind, his interest in animal life, aeroplanes, various heroes. I was touched. You could see an alertness in the boy’s eyes, a hunger to know things. Most of the pictures showed Louis on his own; they must have been taken by her. But one in particular struck me, because it showed them together. He was just a baby, held swaddled in her arms. Her eyes looked sad and exhausted, and a little watchful, as though even then, she was having to protect her child from something no one else could see. So different, I thought, from the pictures of Sophie in our old albums: drained, too, but dizzy, euphoric, ecstatic, smouldering with pride. There was another one of Louis as a bigger boy, aged three, with his leg in plaster after a fall from a tree and a big smile for the camera.
         She left the most recent one until last. —I nearly didn’t have these developed, she said. —It was too painful. Pierre took them, on the day – She stopped. —In the Auvergne.
         And there was Louis sitting on a picnic rug with his mother. She sat behind him, her arms circling him. A birthday cake in the foreground. Nine candles.