Going mad

The world seems to swell and then shrink around Alex.

Just after the attack, there’s an outpouring of sympathy. His hospital room is never empty. His mother managed to secure unpaid leave from work, followed by shorter hours. She sleeps right next to him and manages all comings and goings: family, friends, healthcare professionals from outside the hospital, police, the lawyer, the social worker, the head teacher, his maths teacher, and other people she’s never heard of before, but who seem to be sincerely concerned about her son’s health. His distant father—generally occupied with his new family and unsure how to proceed with his brilliant yet secretive son—also returns to the scene. He sits for hours with Alex in silence, powerless.

The young man has no memories of the assault. The space-time continuum ruptured that day, gobbling up a part of his story. He’s a road cut in half by a bottomless ravine, with no bridge to cross from one side to the other—from his old life to the life that lies ahead. He remembers the long days he spent kicking a ball about in the dealership car park. He remembers the taste of peaches freshly picked with his mother at dusk, when they were still warm from the summer sun. He remembers Lune Descaux, her apathy, strange outfits and shaved head, who let him believe in love, then introduced him to heartbreak. They were only fifteen, and the young woman had suspected he was leading her on since she believed she was ugly and uninteresting. They both worked hard at making the other suffer, retaliating every time, unable to express how they really felt—the type of teenage misunderstanding that scars you for life. He remembers starting school last year, how he couldn’t sleep, how he was always thinking about the final even way before his exams, how it felt like a year-long sprint. Would he reach the finish line? He remembers studying with his friends: Hugo, Baptiste, Leila and May. Despite the school’s recommendation that they eat balanced meals, they stuffed themselves with kebabs, pizzas, burgers and chips. It was their only real break, their outlet to relieve the pressure of responsibility and sacrifice. For just an hour, they went back to being who they really were—a gang of teenagers hungry for life and freedom. He remembers his plan to become a pilot. That dream was born the day his grandmother sat him down in front of her on her CB750 and revved the engine. He must have been seven. He remembers how excited he was when the motorbike lurched forward, air filling his throat as his stomach rose up into his chest. When he felt the intoxicating euphoria, he immediately knew he wanted more. He wanted to take off, to fly, to break the sound barrier, to toy with the boundaries between earth and sky—and that feeling never left him. It guided him through every turn in his schooling, driving him as he memorized pages of chemical formulas (he loved physics, but hated chemistry). He remembers the ordered, even benevolent world he used to live in, where his efforts were always rewarded. He was one of the best students in his class, but he remained modest and relaxed. He was often funny, and always happy to help others, despite the bitter competitiveness all around him. He was well liked by everyone. He was happy and fulfilled, even after his parents’ divorce. Luckily, they’d been mostly honest with one another, and always with him.

He remembers his past as if it were a play or a choreographed dance. He remembers everyone’s parts, including his own, but watches from the audience, removed from the show upon which the theatre will soon collapse. 23 September 2017, between 4 and 5 p.m.

When he wakes up, his parents, doctors and visitors awkwardly tell him what happened. The brutality of the attack could be measured by his resulting injuries and disability. He had lost 90 per cent of his vision in his right eye. Their words plunge him into a suffocating, opaque, frozen sea. His now dark iris leaves him with mismatched eyes, which he gouges out in his nightmares. He understands that he lives on the other side of the ravine now—a scorched continent where the horizon is just a trembling line moving further and further away. He’s dead, but he seems to be the only one who knows it. Everyone around him shoulders their share of the lie and does their best to convince him that “everything will be okay”, and that “it’ll just take some time”. Technology is evolving so quickly! Pretty soon, AI will replace his eye and he’ll go back to living “a normal life”!

Shedding the skin of the whole and happy boy he once was, a new Alex wriggles free, terrified, angry, and full of despair. He’s constantly looking for clues, for any sort of explanation. He’s obsessed with a single question that turns round and round in his head like an unbearable refrain: why me, why me, why me? Did he do something—a look, a word—to provoke his tragedy? He has a flash and suddenly remembers going out to buy something. But what? Where? What time? The rest is a black hole. Empty. No images, no sounds, no feelings, no witnesses. The only thing the police know for sure is that the attacker used brass knuckles. There was no blood or hair under his nails or on his clothes, no unidentified DNA in the flat. Maybe they’d find something if they looked harder, but Alex is alive, and the forensic teams have been summoned to handle more dramatic cases.

He feels like he’s going mad. Whenever he’s alone in his room, he bangs his head against the wall to make sure he’s not dreaming, adding new bruises to his black-and-blue body. The facts defy all reasoning. He considers even the most extreme possibilities—he was drugged, he’s the subject of a secret experiment, he’s living in an alternate reality—but finally has to admit he’s probably just a random victim of senseless violence. He’s gobsmacked by the realization that he was wrong about everything. The world is primitive, uncivilized, hostile, unfair and unpredictable. A person’s efforts and good character offer no protection—or perhaps he’s been wrong about his own merits, and he deserved what happened. His world begins to crack, then it falls to pieces. Rage fills him, overwhelms him, and a torrent of toxic lava scorches his beliefs and convictions along with the joy and trust he used to feel, leaving behind nothing but a blackened heart, aged before its time. He refuses the gifts that are supposed to ease his suffering (chocolates, books and CDs), handing them out to the healthcare assistants instead. He throws the Brazilian amulet from his father’s new wife in the bin. He stops opening the new letters and emails he receives daily (his mother used to read some of them, but the same trite expressions kept appearing: “I can’t begin to imagine what you’re feeling”, “we’re with you in thought”, “what a terrible crime”, etc.). He doubts his friends’ sincerity, begins to suspect they’re motivated by morbid curiosity or some sort of selfish superstition, as if hurrying to his bedside might ward off any danger on their own paths. He’s not entirely wrong: everyone suddenly felt very vulnerable when they learned that Alex—the good friend and perfect son—had been assaulted. Seeing him lying there with IVs in his arm reassures them—lightning never strikes twice in one place. One person’s misfortune guarantees the safety of those around him. They lean over his bed, studying their friend, troubled by his changed appearance: his dishevelled hair, his pale skin, his vacant gaze. They can tell he’s not there, but they can’t find the words to describe his absence. Alex is in orbit around a planet he no longer recognizes and wants no part of.

As soon as he’s regained some of his strength, he asks for the visits to stop. His mother complies, keeping people away. Emi Shimizu knows what the imperious need for solitude looks like. She makes her child’s pain her own and accepts his darkness, hoping it will be temporary. When she kisses his forehead and strokes his hand, he doesn’t pull away, and that’s enough for her. The flow of people quickly slows, then disappears altogether. His loved ones have gone back to their simple lives. They’ve done their duty, shown their support. What else can they do? It’s autumn now, and the news, with the seasonal rise in violence and several terrorist attacks, gives them perspective on Alex’s misfortune and helps them overcome their guilt. The show must go on. Hugo, Baptiste, Leila and May return to the library, bury themselves in their work. Alex’s father also stops visiting so frequently—since it’s what Alex wants. He hoped to strengthen his bond with his son, reclaim the place in Alex’s life that he’d left empty for so many years, but it didn’t work. After weeks of silence, he tried to have a conversation with his son, but he was clumsy. He talked about his upcoming holidays, his wife’s pregnancy, the house they were looking to buy in the country, the tennis court they would build there. “I’ll teach you. I won tons of tournaments at your age.” Alex simply turned away to highlight the absurdity of his father’s comments and put an end to the exchange.

Christophe takes offence at this. He refuses to let his own son push him away, even though he was entirely responsible for their distant relationship. Insulted, he goes after Emi, criticizing her for turning their son into an “academic machine”and implicitly blaming her for the assault. After all, he hadn’t wanted to rent that studio. He’d told her that with a workload like Alex’s, it was better to have someone else handle quotidian things like food and laundry. Of course, the real reason was because it was inconvenient for him—he had other projects to fund, like the birth of his second child and the beautiful country house he’d been eyeing since the spring (he was playing the long game to get the best price). But now he claims he knew, that he could feel it, that Emi should have listened to him because he had the sixth sense she lacked. It wounds her deeply. But Emi doesn’t need her ex-husband’s insinuations to deem herself an unfit mother. When she found Alex on the floor that day, she knew she would never forgive herself. She doesn’t defend herself to Christophe. In an empty voice, she tells him he’s right—it’s all her fault. He realizes he’s gone too far, that he’s kicked her when she was already down, but it’s too late. Now this terrible accusation will always fill the space between them.

After that, Emi and Christophe only communicate via brief text messages. They’re careful never to bump into one another at their son’s bedside. Six months after the assault, Alex is transferred to a rehabilitation centre. He’s the youngest patient there, and the nurses, doctors and physiotherapists make his recovery their personal mission. The boy has to get better—if he doesn’t, their whole world might collapse, too. Their investment pays off. Alex makes great progress. He begins walking down the corridors, his limp slowly improving until it becomes almost imperceptible. His mismatched eyes, fragile frame and shoulder-length brown hair (he refuses to cut it) give him a fascinating, unreal appearance—as if he’s just stepped out of a manga. But whenever he finds himself in front of a mirror, all he sees is a ruin. He clenches his fists and waits for the lights to go out and the noise to quiet before giving in to the sobs. He feels tiny beside a wall that reaches up to the sky. I’m nineteen years old and my life is over, he thinks. I’m fucking blind in one eye, he thinks as he cries. He imagines his friends concentrating on their work or having fun playing video games, and he thinks: why me, why me, why me? He overturns the table, kicks the wall. He’s a child lost in a crowd of adults. Then he suddenly thinks: why not me? His mind wanders, weakens; he wants it to end, wants to be dead for real.

Emi felt it before anyone else. She was unable to prevent the assault, but in this hospital, she can predict a rise in his temperature or that he’ll regain feeling in a limb. She can interpret a tremor, fluttering eyelids, slowed breathing. She convinces the psychiatrist to prescribe something for Alex and is allowed to extend her visiting hours. At night, she massages her son with a homemade blend of hemlock and sweet almond oil until he falls asleep. She nods off next to him, exhausted, but wakes ten times a night to whisper, “Please hold on. Please fight, sweetheart.” If he dies, she has sworn—without a hint of melodrama—that she’ll die with him. “Hold on, Alex.” His condition stabilizes, and the medication begins to improve his mood. His bones heal. His face has changed, but it’s still beautiful—his skin has smoothed out, erasing almost all traces of the attack. The concussion hasn’t affected his reasoning abilities or sensory processing. His joints and muscles sometimes cause him unbearable pain, but the vertigo, migraines and difficulties speaking are gone. He still has a hard time judging distances and size, so he bumps into things and stumbles often, but he get around well enough for daily life. The team of healthcare professionals all agree that he can finish his rehabilitation at home with his mother. It’s a November morning, and Alex is reminded of a Baudelaire poem: When the cold heavy sky weighs like a lid / On spirits whom eternal boredom grips / And the wide ring of the horizon’s hid / In daytime darker than the night’s eclipse. He slowly dresses in the clothes his mother has brought, stops, starts again, his chest tight. Does he really have to leave this limbo and return to a world that is no longer his? When the world seems a dungeon, damp and small, / Where hope flies like a bat, in circles reeling, / Beating his timid wings against the wall / And dashing out his brains against the ceiling. “Come on,” urges Emi. “The taxi’s waiting. I’m right here; I’ll always be here for you. You know that, right?”

Before going to pick him up from the rehabilitation centre, she made sure to fill the kitchen cupboards and the fridge with his favourite foods: honey Cheerios, chocolate bars, yogurts, freshly squeezed orange juice. Sonia and Izuru called to tell her how happy they were that “the worst is behind him now, right?”

The naive joy in their voices was comforting, but now that she’s watching her son as he hesitates to step outside, as he climbs into the taxi like a man on his way to his execution, she knows it’s far from over. Alex glues his face to the car window, silently watching the road, struggling to process the swirling images. When trawling rains have made their steel-grey fibres / Look like the grilles of some tremendous jail, / And a whole nation of disgusting spiders / Over our brains their dusty cobwebs trail. He tries in vain to thwart the growing terror as the car nears its destination. As the door to the back seat opens, fear pounces like a voracious animal who’s been lying in wait. It tackles him, overtakes him, devours him. Pure, uncontrol-lable fear which whispers in his ear that the psycho will come back. Maybe he’s already here, hiding in the lift, ready to finish the job. Alex rips the keys from his mother’s hand, then runs with his limp up the stairs and into the flat. “Jesus, hurry up, Mum. What the hell are you waiting for!” he shouts at her. Suddenly bells are fiercely clanged about / And hurl a fearsome howl into the sky / Like spirits from their country hunted out / Who’ve nothing else to do but shriek and cry. He slams the door shut behind her and locks it. He’s drenched in sweat, and his stomach and head hurt. The nauseating smell of blood comes back to him, the blow before the coma. He clings to the details around him though he knows them by heart, hoping to calm his thoughts. The chest of eight drawers in the hallway, the decorative ceramic dish on top shaped like a maple leaf, the understated light fittings, the laminate flooring, the bouquet of dried flowers, the incense burner. Emi is flustered. She didn’t expect this. She thought he would be okay here, a place associated with happy memories from his years at secondary school. She saw it as a peaceful retreat where he would feel safe. Now she realizes that nothing can reassure Alex, because no one knows who attacked him, or why, or even how it happened. When something happens for no reason, it can happen again, at any time. Her son now looks like an emaciated stray cat, his one good eye feverishly scanning the room, constantly on the lookout for imminent danger. She would like to take him in her arms and envelop him with love, but she can’t reach him—he’s not really there. She swears that nothing bad will ever happen to him again. The ironic laugh her promise elicits feels like a knife to the heart. And the next day, as she’s about to leave for work, he won’t let her go. He clutches desperately at her coat until she gives in and collapses onto the floor with him. Then long processions without fifes or drums / Wind slowly through my soul. Hope, weeping, bows / To conquest. And atrocious Anguish comes / To plant his black flag on my drooping brows.

 

For Alex, Emi agrees to have their front door reinforced and to purchase a new mobile phone for which he alone will have the number, to ensure he can always reach her. She buys a taser, which emits a 5,000-volt jolt (she read the description three times, horrified by its destructive power), for him to keep on his belt, as well as five canisters of pepper spray, which he places in the kitchen, the bathroom, the loo, the hallway, and the lounge. He spends the first few days holed up in his room, carefully studying the sounds coming from outside. Then he moves on to the opposite strategy, placing headphones over his ears and turning them all the way up with his eyes closed, as if daring death to take him by surprise. He refuses to leave the flat, except for his therapy appointments (he has no choice), but even then, it’s a carefully planned ritual. Emi turns on the alarm, places one of the pepper sprays in her handbag, and leads the way to the lift as Alex follows close behind. They walk together to the train station (the psychiatrist’s office is in Paris), wait for the train with their backs against a billboard, then sit in the seats next to the conductor’s car. When they reach the city, Alex stands to the left of his mother, carefully placing her in his blind spot, but he still demands constant reassurance, afraid he’s seen suspicious movements on her side. People turn and stare when they feel the tangible tension coming off the strange pair. Unbeknownst to them, their judgemental glances are like darts in the back of Alex’s neck and spears in Emi’s stomach.

Alex never says anything about his sessions. Emi hopes the psychiatrist will manage to repair the damage that’s been done. She told him that her son has turned their flat into a fortress and has a growing number of OCD tendencies, but she was unable to find the right words to say what she really feels: that her son exists outside what people commonly accept as reality. He rejects the past, the present and the future as he floats in his room as though in an isolation chamber, using music (he spends hours composing songs on his computer) as his only refuge. He cycles through alternate phases of anger and despondency with his mother, blaming her for everything—she talks too loudly or not enough, she was supposed to get AA not AAA batteries, she didn’t choose the right time for physiotherapy, the coffee’s bitter, she comes home late—then apologizing as he holds back tears and goes to run her a bath or boil water for her tea. Emi never complains. She’s holding on, though God knows how. She confides in Langlois, who recommends she should avoid expecting anything from Alex any time soon. She shouldn’t push him—the academic year is down the drain, and he doesn’t know what comes next. His one-eyed vision has slowed him down considerably. Langlois encourages her to break their routine and try to cultivate a wide range of sensory experiences, so she manages to make new dinners each night from colourful ingredients she hurriedly purchases during her lunch break. In the evening, she talks to her son about the beech trees losing their leaves in the breeze, the sound of the wind gusting through the apartment buildings, the white frost on the ferns, the first snow melting in the winter sun. She also passes on messages from his friends, but she doesn’t urge him to call them back.

One day in mid-December, she leaves the apartment for an entire Sunday, so Christophe can spend some time with Alex. It’s also the first break she’s allowed herself in three months. She spends five hours walking in the forest in her hiking boots and a comfortable fleece, filling her lungs with oxygen, enjoying the presence of the trees and the thick carpet of rotting leaves beneath which life continues to teem. When she returns home, worn out but restored, she learns that Christophe left after twenty minutes, annoyed by his son’s insolent silence, but she doesn’t utter a single criticism.

On Christmas Day, she organizes a small dinner with Sonia and Izuru—no tree or decorations. As he steps into the flat, her father is holding a beige canvas bag, from which he pulls a shogi board. Emi’s heart jumps as she recognizes the varnished wood polished by her grandfather’s fingers in the garden in Takeno. She can see his spider-like hands with their prominent veins and soft skin, which led her to the top of the hill when she was eight years old, to the place where she built her invisible defences. Alex sits down at the game, slides the pieces around one by one, listens as Izuru explains what each one represents—the king, the gold general, the silver general, the lance, and the knight—and his unexpected curiosity fills his mother with hope.

Langlois warns Emi. Though he’s never met Alex, he knows it will take much longer than a few months for him to recover and begin to enjoy life again. Though it’s difficult to accept, time moves at a different pace for Alex. Those who have never had a near-death experience know nothing of the fear it sparks, so they tend to set deadlines. When people talk about Alex, they say things like: “he’s young”, “at that age it’s easy to get back on your feet again”, “he needs to turn the page”, “it’s just a question of willpower”. Alex doesn’t have any willpower any more. Fear and disillusionment have destroyed everything. Nevertheless, he occasionally thinks he would like to cross the abyss and return to the world he used to live in. But how? His attacker ripped him away and relegated him to this parallel universe, where he wanders aimlessly, an empty shell with nowhere to go. He tries every now and again to be truly present. He takes off his headphones, opens his window and listens to the children playing in the nearby park, but it always leaves him feeling breathless, like a fish out of its bowl. Sometimes he goes into his mother’s room, to use the only mirror in the flat (at his request, Emi removed the one in the bathroom so he wouldn’t have to see himself—his gaunt features and dead eye), but his reflection sends him into a panic every time. Everything around him reminds him of what happened: new operations in February; the exam period, which runs through to July; matriculation dates for flight academies; application dates for government jobs (he has no intention of applying, but he couldn’t even if he wanted to—he’s been off the grid for too long); the World Cup, which he had planned to watch and celebrate with his friends, certain that France would win the year he turned twenty. He was right: France earns its second star, but he doesn’t celebrate anything at all—neither the victory nor his birthday. The holiday home they’ve rented for the summer has a tennis court, which he can see from the bedroom where he’s locked himself away. It reminds him of the list of “strongly discouraged” activities his ophthalmologist gave him, to preserve his remaining eye, which includes anything involving balls and—to rub salt in the wound—martial arts. He can’t even learn to defend himself. And even if he were allowed, would he be able to? Sometimes his chronic pain flares up terribly, turning him into an old man in a twenty-year-old body that’s addicted to morphine and constantly mumbling: why me, why me, why me?

September rolling round again is the worst part. A whole year already! Anniversaries always seem to push people to evaluate the past and assess their chances for the future, and reality smacks Alex in the face. He contemplates what he is and what he could have been, and he has a revelation: he’s empty, absent, hollow. As far back as he can remember, he followed a path designed to take him somewhere he can never go now. What’s left without his plans? He worked hard to get the best grades. He was a good student, a good son, a good friend; a good soldier, as the saying goes. He did what was expected of him, upheld his end of the bargain, but he should have read the small print: there’s nothing to replace the rug that’s been pulled out from under him.

On 23 September 2018, as Hugo, Baptiste, Leila and May head to the cinema together, and as Christophe and Pauline order a new cot, and the world keeps spinning as if nothing has changed, Alex Winckler hides under his desk, his knees pulled tight to his chest, chanting Radiohead lyrics he feels were written just for him: This isn’t happening, I’m not here, I’m not here, in a little while, I’ll be gone. But when he wakes up at dawn the next morning, his limbs still asleep, he finds his mother sitting motionless in the corridor with her chin resting on her shoulder, her eyes darting frantically to and fro beneath her lids, and her hands clutched together so tightly that the tips of her fingers have gone white. He remembers why he has to keep living. He picks her up, wrapping his arms around her waist and struggling to keep her from falling. He drags her as best he can to her room and puts her down on the bed, then unbuttons her shirt, which seems to be constricting her breathing. Emi’s hair is loose and wild, and a strand falls into her open mouth. Alex gently removes it, then hurries to the bathroom for a damp flannel for her forehead. He leans down and whispers, Mum, Mum, Mum.

This isn’t the first time he’s found his mother in such a state. They don’t talk about it, don’t even allude to it. It’s a mystery that has recently come to fill the space between them. Is she ill? Exhausted? Sleepwalking? After each incident, Emi comes out in the morning as if nothing has happened. Her face is glowing and she’s dressed and coiffed to perfection as usual. She kisses her son’s forehead and smiles. “See you tonight!” she says cheerily. He watches as she walks to the station, her thin, graceful frame slowing as she nears a cluster of laurel trees. She removes a leaf and slips it into her pocket. Who would ever guess that a shadow is slowly growing inside her?

Filled with love, he vows to protect her, whatever the cost. So when his mother mentions that man again, and suggests inviting him over—to the flat where no one but his grandparents, his father, and a handful of healthcare professionals have been for the past fourteen months—Alex accepts, hoping Pax will be part of the solution.