jurisprudent
08-27-2010, 10:41 AM
To K. C.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD3-5Yr-YHY&feature=related
Part 1
It was their first trip back to France. Claire had placed the child on the back seat, while she was driving cautiously under the bright summer sky, in the newly bought car; the temperature was rising, she had turned the radio on and laughed at the funny uncoordinated movements of the kid, which was trying to catch the rhythm of the song. It was a one-year-old boy, Patrice, with blondish hairs and big blue eyes. His skin was so pale that she could see the veins beneath it, blue and full of life. A very beautiful child.
The car went on. Wheat and corn fields at the both sides of the motorway - she was crossing Northern France. The time was near noon; they had passed under the Channel and approached Paris, where Claire had to see her parents. The day was so hot, one of the hottest in the year. The tarmac on the road as if trembled. She wiped her forehead, feeling the sweat on her fingertips.
Her phone rang, she reached for it and heard Jerome’s voice; he had already booked a holiday - he was going to join her and the child after two weeks, on their way to Cote d’Azure. “Love you”, she said and finished the conversation, throwing the phone in her bag. Then everything ended.
The car shook to the right and fell off the motorway into a ditch. The windscreen was broken, falling to little pieces, as the car bumped into a big tree. The back side was smashed by a truck, the boot was entirely disintegrated into tin scrapes. Claire was blocked on her seat, she could not breathe for a moment. When she managed to turn her head, despite the killing pain in her neck, she saw that the boy’s body was twisted, his eyes were closed. She felt her forehead was sticky and wet, blood was running down her face. Then the images blurred, merged and faded away.
In the hospital the mother and the child were separated. When she woke up, she saw the doctors hurrying around, but her voice was too weak to utter a word. A nurse saw her eyes, begging for attention, and approached her.
“Hush”, she said, “You will be alright”
But nothing about the boy; the nurse simply disappeared. Claire felt pain in her chest and legs, her throat was as if sore. A doctor came by and explained that her right leg was broken and she had a concussion and some bruises. And a shock, of course. She managed to mumble about the boy.
“The child is critical”, the doctor said, “the truck hit the car exactly at the side it was seated. The spine had been broken, now it is in coma. Your husband is contacted.”
The heat. The fiery day. Almost forty degrees, the driver of the big truck fainted, lost control and crashed into Claire’s car. Jerome was sitting by the phone; the earth beneath him trembled. His voice was weak, he could not form a meaningful sentence, no. When he hung up, it was a hot London afternoon, people were hurrying to and fro, crowds marched the street, and he went out and roamed, without direction, until he was so tired he sat on a bench and closed his eyes; the whole world had collapsed now.
Jerome took the first plane to Paris and rushed across the emptied summer streets of the big city, through the tide of heat, to see his wife and child. Claire was sad, speechless. Her long auburn hair was resting on the white pillow like a wing of a dead bird. Her blue eyes were hollow, full of hidden tears. He kissed her but she seemed not bothered at all. Although moving, to Jerome she seemed paralyzed. She was a very energetic and passionate woman - that was what he loved her for. But now she had instantly died.
Jerome went to the room where his son was lying, on a small bed, his body pierced by so many needles; a machine was supporting his breathing. He stood, staring at the kid, the blue network of veins on the boy’s forehead was so visible. There lurked the bits of existence this small body was trying to grasp and keep. If he could take up the battle, Jerome would throw away everything he had and jump into it; but he could only stand and watch the fight between his little child and the almighty injury.
The doctor took him aside. They were on the wide terrace, with a view to the Paris skyline embroidered by the domes and towers of churches and monuments; the doctor, a grey-haired man with a masculine look, lit a cigarette.
“We cannot do much here. Your wife will be okay, she will recover soon.” The doctor fixed his eyes on Jerome. “Your son is a bad case.”
“How long will be the coma?”
“Nobody knows. He is between life and death…Where do you live?”
“Currently in London.”
“Do you have a good earning?”
“You can say that.”
“Fine. Take the boy to England, find him an expensive treatment. We cannot do anything here and I cannot predict the outcome. He needs special care.”
Jerome left the doctor and went down to the room where Patrice was lying. Claire was up, supported by her stilts, watching the boy through the glass wall. They stood in silence, side by side, as if they were strangers. Her face, blue and bruised, was emotionless. The only sound there was the machine that was ticking away the boy’s minutes to life or death. A big screen was showing the line of his pulse, this green digital curve, rising and falling, as if Patrice’s existence was slaloming. Jerome tried to hold her hand but she made no move; her skin had the color of wax.
Jerome quickly returned to their spacious East London flat, where he established his research centre – calling hospitals, talking with doctors, drawing plans of Patrice’s recovery. The options were not so many; the boy’s condition was still bad and nobody could tell what was going to happen. He found a private clinic and spoke to Claire. Her voice had changed, it got lower, huskier. “Fine”, she said. She was ready to move.
Their London life was a good one. She had abandoned her studies after the boy was born, so she dedicated all her care and attention to Patrice. Jerome was earning quite well. He started from a financial analyst and moved to the investment banking branch of an international bank. He was offered job in the London City and the family had to move. At that time, Claire was not pregnant yet. They had met at the university, when Jerome was studying for a master’s degree in finance, while she decided to write a thesis and won funding. She was not so much willing to live in a new country, but that was a great opportunity for Jerome. In London, after Patrice was born, she did not have enough time to read and write, so she interrupted the thesis and dedicated herself to the little kid. Jerome was busy all the time, he had been promoted and now the big money started to flow, especially after he had started travelling to different foreign markets where he struck fabulous deals.
They rented this vast flat with a terrace overlooking Thames, and Claire chose some highly expensive paintings for their new home. They could afford it. They could afford everything.
Patrice had a bed at a small private hospital, with a 24-hour care. But Claire demanded another bed in the same room so that she could live there too. Now her leg was better, and the bruises were gone, but her facial expression, her rigid, unstirred countenance, remained; she decorated the room, put toys and little images all around the paralyzed body of the child. She was standing next to the bed, mumbling in a low voice, as if trying to wake him up from the coma. She was slimmer, her skin turned from white to unhealthy yellow. Claire did not want to return home.
Jerome could understand her. This home, their home, was full of scattered bits of their life before the crash. Her beautiful dresses. Patrice’s sketches (they would give him a pencil and he would make lions and elephants in a childish fashion). The photos- the two of them in Paris, years ago, under the Eiffel tower; the couple, this perfect pair, on a holiday in Spain, on the castle walls of Alhambra; the three of them - Jerome, Claire and Patrice as a new-born baby - under the vines in the countryside villa of Jerome’s parents. They were laughing, kissing, hugging, happy. Jerome collected the photos in a cardboard box and hid it under the bed.
He stopped going to the office where he worked; he could not concentrate, he could not manage to think about deals, transactions, investments. His face, a masculine and handsome one, was marred by the deep brooding of a man without a ground beneath his feet. At home, he was alone; in the hospital, he was depressed by Claire’s silent sorrowful look. They did not talk. When he tried to speak to her, she would turn away. The time was passing by so slowly, intersected by the green digital line of Patrice’s life. Once he saw how Claire was sitting next to the little body, singing a childish song, touching the pulsating forehead of the baby. He cried.
Jerome wanted to reconstruct their life; the desolation could bring everything to an end. He managed to talk her into returning home. She went back, but kept being silent. She was wandering in the spacious flat, from one to another room, in a big luxurious prison. The most difficult time was in the evening when they were dining. The quiet air. The clutter of plates and utensils. They were sitting like two robots programmed to fulfill the task of eating. On the third evening Jerome simply left the table and disappeared. Roving down the warm London streets full of excited people going to the clubs, he was drifting, losing himself. He found a bar, just a few blocks away from home, and went in, alone, drinking one, then one more whiskey. Chatted with a man who said he was going through a divorce. Jerome could not explain what was going on with him, he simply shrugged his shoulders. Nothing mattered at all. He got home, very drunk, and fell on the bed, next to Claire, who opened her eyes, looked to him and said: “You stink of alcohol”. He said nothing. Nothing mattered at all.
The London city streets at night were a phenomenon he did not notice before. They were full of marching people, clad in all kinds of clothes, stimulated by all kinds of drugs, and Jerome felt they were the masses he could hide into. He joined one or another group, searching for a bar where the loud music would deafen him and the alcohol would sedate him. For several hours he would entered another world, a strange place of unknown people he did not even need to know, where everything was always alright. There he had no name, no problems, no other life. Often he would go home on the morning and sleep all day. When he was absorbed by the atmosphere of the clubs, he would go straight into a casino and gamble; the sense of a risk, the feeling of racing on the edge could fill his veins with life again, making him wild, driven to the end. On the morning, with the dawn, he felt the tide of loneliness stifling him anew.
Claire did not care. Her senses were dumb, she watched the reality go by, pass her by, as if it was a movie she was watching. Before the crash, she was aware she was a beautiful woman - she bought expensive clothes and lingerie, jewels; she kept herself fit, her body was very charming and proportionate, which she achieved through a mix of exercises and diets. Now she took the mirror off the wall and threw it away. She did not eat, she used no makeup or lipstick. The doors of her wardrobe were locked; she put some basic stuff in her case and returned to the child’s room in the hospital, leaving Jerome on his own, again. There she sat by the small bed, staring at the blondish hairs on the head of the boy, caressing the warm forehead. She could feel the low beat of blood beneath. She was hoping.
One afternoon Jerome came to the clinic. He saw Claire - who had lost weight, her eyes were even more hollow and transparent - standing by the bed of the child; Patrice was lying motionless, as usual, and only the machine, linked to the body, was capable of indicating if he was alive or not. Jerome’s clothes were plain, old; always elegant and handsome, vainly buying ordering tailored suits, now he had began to neglect his look. And he was drunk. Claire released a shout, a sudden change in her withdrawn attitude, and pushed him outside the room. “Don’t come her drunk!” She was fierce, he was ready to slap her, but was too tired, too exhausted. “Patrice should not see you like this!”, she went on. Jerome looked to the boy on the bed, and saw a small crucifix next to it. “Jesus is watching over him”, Claire added.
A few days ago, while wandering outside the hospital, she met a man who was giving flyers. She took the card and read about the “Church of true belief”. The man talked to her for a minute or so, but Claire was fascinated. True belief. If you have nothing, if you are desperate, if you feel the tears in your eyes, then all you have to do is believe. That’s what the man said. In the same afternoon, she went to the church, placed in a dilapidated hall, where white light bulbs formed a crucifix on the wall. The preacher told the story of the sick and crippled people, whom Jesus visited and cured. The cure, he said, was not in the magic of Jesus’ hands, but in the magic of belief. They believed in the might of God, they wanted to believe in salvation, and they were cured. In the end of the sermon, Claire was enchanted, fascinated; she went to the preacher and, without understanding why, as if driven by a force within, kissed his hands, just like kissing a saint.
Patrice’s room was filled with small crucifixes, images of Mother Mary, Saint John Baptist, Saint Paul and a legion of other saints. Claire recorded the sermons in the church and played them to the child, or sat next to him and muttered prayers. She was going, also, to a church nearby, where she would kneel down and talk with the image of ascending Christ surrounded by beams of light. She even spoke to the preacher about her case and he came to the hospital and saw Patrice, then blessed him with the hand that Claire kissed every time. Kneeling down next to the bed, she was whispering again and again, “yours is the power and the glory, and I believe in you, I believe in the cure”.
Jerome found some new friends. He met them in a bar, where he used to spend the nights, while in the day he was sleeping. He was not answering the calls of his colleagues from the bank and he threw away his mobile. One of his new friends was a former small business manager, who got fired for a scam, and now he had gathered a flock of comrades raiding bars and casinos. And only those. Jerome had known Claire for six years and he had had only a few girlfriends before that. He was introduced to the wild world of casual sex. One night stands. Apartment orgies. Prostitutes, Drunk, drugged to an insensitive condition, Jerome was gulped by the new whirlwind that was, at first, exciting him, and afterwards simply boring him. This bore spread its wings and encapsulated his days and nights. Mechanically, he was having some drinks; mechanically, he was ****ing a woman he did not know; mechanically, he was wandering to and fro in the city night streets. Once he got mugged; a black man hit him twice, took his wallet and ran down the empty street. Jerome remained lying, blood was filling his mouth, but he did not want to rise and chase the man, he did not have the strength to do so. He was just lying, on the tarmac, in the heat, and the black night sky was blurred above him. He could remain there for ages. When he got home on the morning, a message on the answering machine was waiting for him.
The coffin was small and brown. The autumn had begun and it was raining, making the earth wet, muddy, dirty, even blacker. A final bed. Jerome was standing by the pit, watching as Patrice’s body was being lowered, further and further from his father. Claire was crying, her face was red, now she was even thinner than before. She brought a man, near forty, with greysh hair and dark eyes; he was badly dressed and uttered no word. She explained that was a friend whom she met in the church; he had lost a child, too. Jerome glanced at him, without any feeling or emotion, and then stared back to the coffin that was being buried.
Patrice had died suddenly, unexpectedly, without any previous signs of deterioration. The doctors said it was normal for that condition. It was a miracle he had even survived the crash. Jerome came to the hospital to find Claire hugging the dead body. He had a hangover, his eyes were red, he was disoriented. Jerome shouted at her, slapped her face, but she did not want to release the baby. When he touched the body, it was so cold, like a stone. Had it been alive, at all? Had that piece of meat been a living creature, at all? Now it seemed so strange, different, as if his son had vanished to be replaced by a simple dead body, a toy of deceased flesh. The funeral was quickly arranged, Jerome and Claire exchanged only a few words. Afterwards, when going back to the vast and quiet flat, each closed in a room. She was weeping, he was smashing things. Then he ran out and drank in the bar; he got so drunk he stumbled and fell when returning home, remaining to lie on the doorstep, half-awake. She found him there, coming home after the evening sermon at the church.
Claire looked to him, to his unwashed clothes, the dirty coat, the bearded face, and said she was moving out. He did not even ask where she was going – there was no need to. She put a few plain dresses and trousers in a case, leaving all the luxurious clothing in the wardrobes. Glancing for a second at the mirror in the hall, she noticed her look now resembled the face of Mother Mary who was mourning for her child. The same wax color of her skin, the same eyes, as if deformed by tears and crying. She crossed the room and left the flat. Jerome watched how she stood on the sidewalk and stopped a cab. It was raining, again. He opened a new bottle, looked to the last photo he was keeping – from their wedding, she was clad in white, he was in a dark blue suit, their eyes were luminous, - and he threw it in the bin. On the next morning he booked a flight to Paris.
The rest of the photos were packed, remaining in their tomb under the couple’s bed, covered by the dust of time.
To Part 2 - http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55593
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD3-5Yr-YHY&feature=related
Part 1
It was their first trip back to France. Claire had placed the child on the back seat, while she was driving cautiously under the bright summer sky, in the newly bought car; the temperature was rising, she had turned the radio on and laughed at the funny uncoordinated movements of the kid, which was trying to catch the rhythm of the song. It was a one-year-old boy, Patrice, with blondish hairs and big blue eyes. His skin was so pale that she could see the veins beneath it, blue and full of life. A very beautiful child.
The car went on. Wheat and corn fields at the both sides of the motorway - she was crossing Northern France. The time was near noon; they had passed under the Channel and approached Paris, where Claire had to see her parents. The day was so hot, one of the hottest in the year. The tarmac on the road as if trembled. She wiped her forehead, feeling the sweat on her fingertips.
Her phone rang, she reached for it and heard Jerome’s voice; he had already booked a holiday - he was going to join her and the child after two weeks, on their way to Cote d’Azure. “Love you”, she said and finished the conversation, throwing the phone in her bag. Then everything ended.
The car shook to the right and fell off the motorway into a ditch. The windscreen was broken, falling to little pieces, as the car bumped into a big tree. The back side was smashed by a truck, the boot was entirely disintegrated into tin scrapes. Claire was blocked on her seat, she could not breathe for a moment. When she managed to turn her head, despite the killing pain in her neck, she saw that the boy’s body was twisted, his eyes were closed. She felt her forehead was sticky and wet, blood was running down her face. Then the images blurred, merged and faded away.
In the hospital the mother and the child were separated. When she woke up, she saw the doctors hurrying around, but her voice was too weak to utter a word. A nurse saw her eyes, begging for attention, and approached her.
“Hush”, she said, “You will be alright”
But nothing about the boy; the nurse simply disappeared. Claire felt pain in her chest and legs, her throat was as if sore. A doctor came by and explained that her right leg was broken and she had a concussion and some bruises. And a shock, of course. She managed to mumble about the boy.
“The child is critical”, the doctor said, “the truck hit the car exactly at the side it was seated. The spine had been broken, now it is in coma. Your husband is contacted.”
The heat. The fiery day. Almost forty degrees, the driver of the big truck fainted, lost control and crashed into Claire’s car. Jerome was sitting by the phone; the earth beneath him trembled. His voice was weak, he could not form a meaningful sentence, no. When he hung up, it was a hot London afternoon, people were hurrying to and fro, crowds marched the street, and he went out and roamed, without direction, until he was so tired he sat on a bench and closed his eyes; the whole world had collapsed now.
Jerome took the first plane to Paris and rushed across the emptied summer streets of the big city, through the tide of heat, to see his wife and child. Claire was sad, speechless. Her long auburn hair was resting on the white pillow like a wing of a dead bird. Her blue eyes were hollow, full of hidden tears. He kissed her but she seemed not bothered at all. Although moving, to Jerome she seemed paralyzed. She was a very energetic and passionate woman - that was what he loved her for. But now she had instantly died.
Jerome went to the room where his son was lying, on a small bed, his body pierced by so many needles; a machine was supporting his breathing. He stood, staring at the kid, the blue network of veins on the boy’s forehead was so visible. There lurked the bits of existence this small body was trying to grasp and keep. If he could take up the battle, Jerome would throw away everything he had and jump into it; but he could only stand and watch the fight between his little child and the almighty injury.
The doctor took him aside. They were on the wide terrace, with a view to the Paris skyline embroidered by the domes and towers of churches and monuments; the doctor, a grey-haired man with a masculine look, lit a cigarette.
“We cannot do much here. Your wife will be okay, she will recover soon.” The doctor fixed his eyes on Jerome. “Your son is a bad case.”
“How long will be the coma?”
“Nobody knows. He is between life and death…Where do you live?”
“Currently in London.”
“Do you have a good earning?”
“You can say that.”
“Fine. Take the boy to England, find him an expensive treatment. We cannot do anything here and I cannot predict the outcome. He needs special care.”
Jerome left the doctor and went down to the room where Patrice was lying. Claire was up, supported by her stilts, watching the boy through the glass wall. They stood in silence, side by side, as if they were strangers. Her face, blue and bruised, was emotionless. The only sound there was the machine that was ticking away the boy’s minutes to life or death. A big screen was showing the line of his pulse, this green digital curve, rising and falling, as if Patrice’s existence was slaloming. Jerome tried to hold her hand but she made no move; her skin had the color of wax.
Jerome quickly returned to their spacious East London flat, where he established his research centre – calling hospitals, talking with doctors, drawing plans of Patrice’s recovery. The options were not so many; the boy’s condition was still bad and nobody could tell what was going to happen. He found a private clinic and spoke to Claire. Her voice had changed, it got lower, huskier. “Fine”, she said. She was ready to move.
Their London life was a good one. She had abandoned her studies after the boy was born, so she dedicated all her care and attention to Patrice. Jerome was earning quite well. He started from a financial analyst and moved to the investment banking branch of an international bank. He was offered job in the London City and the family had to move. At that time, Claire was not pregnant yet. They had met at the university, when Jerome was studying for a master’s degree in finance, while she decided to write a thesis and won funding. She was not so much willing to live in a new country, but that was a great opportunity for Jerome. In London, after Patrice was born, she did not have enough time to read and write, so she interrupted the thesis and dedicated herself to the little kid. Jerome was busy all the time, he had been promoted and now the big money started to flow, especially after he had started travelling to different foreign markets where he struck fabulous deals.
They rented this vast flat with a terrace overlooking Thames, and Claire chose some highly expensive paintings for their new home. They could afford it. They could afford everything.
Patrice had a bed at a small private hospital, with a 24-hour care. But Claire demanded another bed in the same room so that she could live there too. Now her leg was better, and the bruises were gone, but her facial expression, her rigid, unstirred countenance, remained; she decorated the room, put toys and little images all around the paralyzed body of the child. She was standing next to the bed, mumbling in a low voice, as if trying to wake him up from the coma. She was slimmer, her skin turned from white to unhealthy yellow. Claire did not want to return home.
Jerome could understand her. This home, their home, was full of scattered bits of their life before the crash. Her beautiful dresses. Patrice’s sketches (they would give him a pencil and he would make lions and elephants in a childish fashion). The photos- the two of them in Paris, years ago, under the Eiffel tower; the couple, this perfect pair, on a holiday in Spain, on the castle walls of Alhambra; the three of them - Jerome, Claire and Patrice as a new-born baby - under the vines in the countryside villa of Jerome’s parents. They were laughing, kissing, hugging, happy. Jerome collected the photos in a cardboard box and hid it under the bed.
He stopped going to the office where he worked; he could not concentrate, he could not manage to think about deals, transactions, investments. His face, a masculine and handsome one, was marred by the deep brooding of a man without a ground beneath his feet. At home, he was alone; in the hospital, he was depressed by Claire’s silent sorrowful look. They did not talk. When he tried to speak to her, she would turn away. The time was passing by so slowly, intersected by the green digital line of Patrice’s life. Once he saw how Claire was sitting next to the little body, singing a childish song, touching the pulsating forehead of the baby. He cried.
Jerome wanted to reconstruct their life; the desolation could bring everything to an end. He managed to talk her into returning home. She went back, but kept being silent. She was wandering in the spacious flat, from one to another room, in a big luxurious prison. The most difficult time was in the evening when they were dining. The quiet air. The clutter of plates and utensils. They were sitting like two robots programmed to fulfill the task of eating. On the third evening Jerome simply left the table and disappeared. Roving down the warm London streets full of excited people going to the clubs, he was drifting, losing himself. He found a bar, just a few blocks away from home, and went in, alone, drinking one, then one more whiskey. Chatted with a man who said he was going through a divorce. Jerome could not explain what was going on with him, he simply shrugged his shoulders. Nothing mattered at all. He got home, very drunk, and fell on the bed, next to Claire, who opened her eyes, looked to him and said: “You stink of alcohol”. He said nothing. Nothing mattered at all.
The London city streets at night were a phenomenon he did not notice before. They were full of marching people, clad in all kinds of clothes, stimulated by all kinds of drugs, and Jerome felt they were the masses he could hide into. He joined one or another group, searching for a bar where the loud music would deafen him and the alcohol would sedate him. For several hours he would entered another world, a strange place of unknown people he did not even need to know, where everything was always alright. There he had no name, no problems, no other life. Often he would go home on the morning and sleep all day. When he was absorbed by the atmosphere of the clubs, he would go straight into a casino and gamble; the sense of a risk, the feeling of racing on the edge could fill his veins with life again, making him wild, driven to the end. On the morning, with the dawn, he felt the tide of loneliness stifling him anew.
Claire did not care. Her senses were dumb, she watched the reality go by, pass her by, as if it was a movie she was watching. Before the crash, she was aware she was a beautiful woman - she bought expensive clothes and lingerie, jewels; she kept herself fit, her body was very charming and proportionate, which she achieved through a mix of exercises and diets. Now she took the mirror off the wall and threw it away. She did not eat, she used no makeup or lipstick. The doors of her wardrobe were locked; she put some basic stuff in her case and returned to the child’s room in the hospital, leaving Jerome on his own, again. There she sat by the small bed, staring at the blondish hairs on the head of the boy, caressing the warm forehead. She could feel the low beat of blood beneath. She was hoping.
One afternoon Jerome came to the clinic. He saw Claire - who had lost weight, her eyes were even more hollow and transparent - standing by the bed of the child; Patrice was lying motionless, as usual, and only the machine, linked to the body, was capable of indicating if he was alive or not. Jerome’s clothes were plain, old; always elegant and handsome, vainly buying ordering tailored suits, now he had began to neglect his look. And he was drunk. Claire released a shout, a sudden change in her withdrawn attitude, and pushed him outside the room. “Don’t come her drunk!” She was fierce, he was ready to slap her, but was too tired, too exhausted. “Patrice should not see you like this!”, she went on. Jerome looked to the boy on the bed, and saw a small crucifix next to it. “Jesus is watching over him”, Claire added.
A few days ago, while wandering outside the hospital, she met a man who was giving flyers. She took the card and read about the “Church of true belief”. The man talked to her for a minute or so, but Claire was fascinated. True belief. If you have nothing, if you are desperate, if you feel the tears in your eyes, then all you have to do is believe. That’s what the man said. In the same afternoon, she went to the church, placed in a dilapidated hall, where white light bulbs formed a crucifix on the wall. The preacher told the story of the sick and crippled people, whom Jesus visited and cured. The cure, he said, was not in the magic of Jesus’ hands, but in the magic of belief. They believed in the might of God, they wanted to believe in salvation, and they were cured. In the end of the sermon, Claire was enchanted, fascinated; she went to the preacher and, without understanding why, as if driven by a force within, kissed his hands, just like kissing a saint.
Patrice’s room was filled with small crucifixes, images of Mother Mary, Saint John Baptist, Saint Paul and a legion of other saints. Claire recorded the sermons in the church and played them to the child, or sat next to him and muttered prayers. She was going, also, to a church nearby, where she would kneel down and talk with the image of ascending Christ surrounded by beams of light. She even spoke to the preacher about her case and he came to the hospital and saw Patrice, then blessed him with the hand that Claire kissed every time. Kneeling down next to the bed, she was whispering again and again, “yours is the power and the glory, and I believe in you, I believe in the cure”.
Jerome found some new friends. He met them in a bar, where he used to spend the nights, while in the day he was sleeping. He was not answering the calls of his colleagues from the bank and he threw away his mobile. One of his new friends was a former small business manager, who got fired for a scam, and now he had gathered a flock of comrades raiding bars and casinos. And only those. Jerome had known Claire for six years and he had had only a few girlfriends before that. He was introduced to the wild world of casual sex. One night stands. Apartment orgies. Prostitutes, Drunk, drugged to an insensitive condition, Jerome was gulped by the new whirlwind that was, at first, exciting him, and afterwards simply boring him. This bore spread its wings and encapsulated his days and nights. Mechanically, he was having some drinks; mechanically, he was ****ing a woman he did not know; mechanically, he was wandering to and fro in the city night streets. Once he got mugged; a black man hit him twice, took his wallet and ran down the empty street. Jerome remained lying, blood was filling his mouth, but he did not want to rise and chase the man, he did not have the strength to do so. He was just lying, on the tarmac, in the heat, and the black night sky was blurred above him. He could remain there for ages. When he got home on the morning, a message on the answering machine was waiting for him.
The coffin was small and brown. The autumn had begun and it was raining, making the earth wet, muddy, dirty, even blacker. A final bed. Jerome was standing by the pit, watching as Patrice’s body was being lowered, further and further from his father. Claire was crying, her face was red, now she was even thinner than before. She brought a man, near forty, with greysh hair and dark eyes; he was badly dressed and uttered no word. She explained that was a friend whom she met in the church; he had lost a child, too. Jerome glanced at him, without any feeling or emotion, and then stared back to the coffin that was being buried.
Patrice had died suddenly, unexpectedly, without any previous signs of deterioration. The doctors said it was normal for that condition. It was a miracle he had even survived the crash. Jerome came to the hospital to find Claire hugging the dead body. He had a hangover, his eyes were red, he was disoriented. Jerome shouted at her, slapped her face, but she did not want to release the baby. When he touched the body, it was so cold, like a stone. Had it been alive, at all? Had that piece of meat been a living creature, at all? Now it seemed so strange, different, as if his son had vanished to be replaced by a simple dead body, a toy of deceased flesh. The funeral was quickly arranged, Jerome and Claire exchanged only a few words. Afterwards, when going back to the vast and quiet flat, each closed in a room. She was weeping, he was smashing things. Then he ran out and drank in the bar; he got so drunk he stumbled and fell when returning home, remaining to lie on the doorstep, half-awake. She found him there, coming home after the evening sermon at the church.
Claire looked to him, to his unwashed clothes, the dirty coat, the bearded face, and said she was moving out. He did not even ask where she was going – there was no need to. She put a few plain dresses and trousers in a case, leaving all the luxurious clothing in the wardrobes. Glancing for a second at the mirror in the hall, she noticed her look now resembled the face of Mother Mary who was mourning for her child. The same wax color of her skin, the same eyes, as if deformed by tears and crying. She crossed the room and left the flat. Jerome watched how she stood on the sidewalk and stopped a cab. It was raining, again. He opened a new bottle, looked to the last photo he was keeping – from their wedding, she was clad in white, he was in a dark blue suit, their eyes were luminous, - and he threw it in the bin. On the next morning he booked a flight to Paris.
The rest of the photos were packed, remaining in their tomb under the couple’s bed, covered by the dust of time.
To Part 2 - http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55593