On January 4 your husband shows up. Julien Hermant, yes, that is his name, he’s out in the corridor and the nurse wants to know if she can allow him in, or if that might upset you (he’s the one asking, I’m just passing it along). You agree to see him and, without responding to his embarrassed greetings, immediately press for news about Pascal Planche.
Locked up, they’ve locked him up, exclaims the still-astonished Julien, who has brought along some magazines and asks timidly if he might hold the child. You know, he continues after she’s handed over, I thought it would be a good idea to relieve you somewhat of this responsibility, but I quickly realized that at this age, a child needs her mother, and I preferred to give her back to you, given that the doctors said things were looking up. Because they are looking up, right? he concludes hopefully.
The next visit is from Gabrielle. She considers you without any particular animosity, perched on the edge of her chair like a statue unable to find an acceptable plinth. You murmur something in the way of apologies but the widow waves them away. She has come to wrap things up. To continue the story of her life, since you find it so interesting.
Gabrielle discovered that she was rich. Not worth millions, of course, but enough to keep her going for a while. And suddenly she realized that she didn’t need anyone. She packed up, moved back to the Rue du Pot-de-Fer apartment, threw out the doctor’s crummy watercolors and settled in. Angèle’s baby was born without incident, and although the obstetrician had sworn the contrary, it was a boy. At the time the mother hadn’t come up with a given name, but we ended by agreeing on Achille, confides the widow. Oh yes, she adds, having almost forgotten, I also had dinner with your husband. He certainly is handsome. But lord, is that man uptight. Well, what time is it—twenty past noon, I have to go now. See you around sometime, Viviane.
No more visits after that. So, you take a few walks. You explore the hospital, the main courtyard framed by three stories of galleries, the top one of which offers a lofty view over the parvis of Notre Dame. Tourists enclosed behind a fence on the cathedral roof peer out at the panorama. Sometimes they wave and you wave back.
One morning, out of curiosity, you go to the chapel off the passage linking the upper galleries. A big disappointment, not at all worthy of the first-rate establishment where you’re staying. The chapel is a tiny plywood room slapped together in the 1970s with two rows of mismatched chairs and a no-frills altar beneath a run-of-the-mill stained glass window. Actually, it reminds you of the domed Central Committee Chamber at the Paris headquarters of the Communist Party—not that you have a revolutionary past, but Julien used to love dragging you off to that Oscar Niemeyer cupola on Place du Colonel-Fabien so that he could rave about its architectural beauty. You don’t linger in the chapel.
On January 10 the chief physician arrives with his entourage. He examines you for two minutes, says everything’s fine to no one in particular, you can take her to the nurse. Who tells you to hurry and gather up your belongings. You collect the things that have accumulated in the cell as the weeks have gone by and cram them into big plastic bags. Carrying the baby, you follow the nurse along the corridor, into the elevator, down to the ground floor gallery. The nurse escorts you to the exit: tripping the automatic doors, she delivers you and your bags to the sidewalk, where a dark gray taxi awaits. In the backseat, your mother is quietly smoking a cigarette.