There’s no one in the hospital corridors. It’s the hottest part of the day and the patients are quietly dying in the muggy heat, with the fans on. Manuel moves forward like a dead man walking, his breath bubbling up thick and raucous, an echo of his father’s, who is lying in the far room on the right. He can’t remember the number but it doesn’t matter, he knows where the room is, he could find it with his eyes shut, it’s been a month now, and not long to go, the doctors said. He walks past the break room, the girls are laughing together, tired, their uniforms off, wearing sleeveless tops, slumped on plastic chairs, fiddling with cigarettes they’ll smoke shortly when they drum up the courage to go downstairs. But it’s too hot and their shift started so early. They look up at him and greet him with a smile. There’s a bunch of photos pinned to the back wall: birth announcements, postcards with blondes embracing the camera lens on overexposed beaches. Right next to them are highlighted memos, roster lists, their individual timetables. One of the nurses fiddles with a packet of chocolate waffles, unbranded, mass-produced rubbish given out to the patients. The chocolate has melted inside the plastic, making them unappetizing. She stands up when she recognizes him.
“He’ll be happy to see you.”
Manuel grunts, nothing else. But he smiles at her anyway, because he’s been taught to be charming with girls. This one’s easily over fifty but as far as Manuel’s concerned, even past a certain age women are still girls. Especially those you can touch, those who grew up not far from here or who do a job that gets their hands dirty.
She gives him an encouraging look. Unable to tell if he dreads it or hopes for it, she hears him murmur, “Is he asleep?”
The palliative care girls seem livelier than the others; it’s something he’s noticed while hanging around the hospital on his own, whenever he goes downstairs for a smoke or escapes his father’s room to get a coffee from the machine. Something extra in their lipstick, bright, frequent laughter, a studied kindness when talking to close relatives. He sometimes wonders which of them will inform him. He can’t remember their first names. It’s the dark-haired one, the blonde, the one with the weird earrings, the fat one, the very young one. He can’t tell the difference between nurses and carers. They form a vaguely reassuring magma, they do what he’s incapable of doing: handle his father’s broken, sick body, change his drip, spoon-feed him, wipe his backside. He doesn’t want to think about it, but he looks at their hands, every time.
His soles stick to the linoleum, making a sucking sound with every step. A dirty sound. When he walks into the room he doesn’t immediately look at the man who’s lying there, but first follows the path of the drip. He knows this path and sees it even at night, especially at night, that and the pockmarked hand with thick veins, lying on the sheet like a dead animal, and the needle sticking into it. Then he goes up to the long face with its huge eyes and the head, almost smooth beneath the regrowth of fine hair – like the down of a duckling. The useless slippers at the foot of the bed, the air passing through his throat, his yellow fingers. Once again, Manuel makes an inventory, the route to the man who takes him back to his childhood by his mere presence. A few detours before daring to face his father and his end-of-the-world expression.
But today something is stirring beneath the sheet, the drip-free hand is moving up and down in the middle of the bed, lifting the sheet on and off. This breaks Manuel’s train of thought and freezes him in an icy unease despite the heat.
“I can’t any more,” his father whispers, his eyes lost.
“Papa…”
“It doesn’t come, even when the prettier ones wash me.”
Manuel turns to the door, desperate to escape the embarrassment. “You’ll see when it happens.”
The hand emerges from under the sheet and, fragile, comes to rest beside the lying body.
The son is trembling inside, unpleasantly tense. He digs in his head to try and find an escape route. He looks at his father’s hand. “You might lose it,” Manuel says, indicating his father’s wedding band.
The ring floats on his finger, now too thin, and sometimes slides to the joint.
“It won’t go far, you know. Besides, I’ve never taken it off. I still think about your mother. Every day since she died.”
“I know, Papa.”
An artificial kind of silence occupies the space, filled with phlegmy breathing and ghosts. For God’s sake, this window should be open wide in summer. Manuel leans on the bedpost, partly because he feels nauseous but mainly because he can’t think of what to say. At the same time it’s nothing new, things were actually worse before. But now that death is imminent there’s stuff coming up, said straight out without respecting boundaries, conventions forgotten, and he doesn’t like that. It hurts him to see the old man so diminished, even though he’s dreamed of confronting him a thousand times. Especially as he’s dreamed of confronting him a thousand times. It drives him crazy, this illness, the tubes, the end. When will it stop, for crying out loud? he thinks. And his shame at thinking that so intently eats away at him.
“How’s Séverine?”
“Fine.”
“She has a difficult job. All these kids, it’s good what she does.”
“She’s a lunchtime supervisor, Papa. She just serves them food, that’s all.”
“You think feeding kids is nothing?”
“Papa…”
The old man runs out of breath, and Manuel gets frightened. He’s sorry once again. “Did I tell you I’m working on a site in Bonnieux? We’re rebuilding a drystone wall, it was quite tricky, I wish you could have seen it.”
His father’s large eyes get lost on the window frame. “Tell the girls to come and see me.”
“… The boss said it looks good, so maybe next time round he’ll put me in charge of the team.”
“It’s not long now and they’re on holiday, so they can come.”
A new silence, worse than the previous one, marks the end of the visit.
There are magazines lying on the night table – La Marseillaise, La Provence – that are several days old. Manuel wonders who brings them to him. A nurse, perhaps. Or Séverine, who sometimes stops by to give his father a kiss on her way back from work. He forces a smile before leaving the room, and turns one more time to look at his father.
“I’ll tell them, Papa.”