An Ideal Presence by Eduardo Berti

Author:Eduardo Berti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fern Books

PATRICK TOMAS

PORTER

Since I was a kid, I’ve always loved bats. At seven or eight, I already had a passion for them. What I loved most of all is that they’re mammals, but everyone seems to have forgotten. Ask the first person you pass on the street and they’ll tell you they’re birds, or maybe rodents. This bizarreness still fascinates me.

Of course, I know the reputation you’re asking for when you love bats. It’s like we function a bit in reverse: we’re supposed to like the night more than the day, watch vampire movies, listen to goth-rock, and — I mean, why not? — sleep hanging upside down, that sort of gloomy and macabre stuff. But, as you see, I’m a nice guy, someone who wears his heart on his sleeve, as they say.

First, allow me to point out that I chose this job a bit at random, if randomness exists. I knew Olivier and Christophe and two or three other guys who work here as porters. No, I didn’t like the idea of working in a hospital. I’m not very good with dead people, sick people. Nobody likes that, even bat fanatics. I mean, deep down, vampires want to live forever …

The really funny thing, though, is that I discovered that my job maybe has a link to my fondness for bats. We porters are, of course, a bit of a species unto ourselves. But above all, and this is what I wanted to talk about, we see our patients upside down, lying on stretchers: just like bats, who fly with their heads down.

I know, you’re going to say I’m reading into it, that I’m jumping to far-fetched conclusions, that I’m oversimplifying. All the same, I encourage you to pick up the handles of a stretcher and meet the eyes of the patient. Sometimes you see them face up, sometimes the other way around.

At first, I was bewitched by this spectacle. Bewitched and disconcerted: I would have a hard time telling whether I was looking at a man of thirty, forty, fifty years old. With their heads upside down, the patients became like a puzzle that was impossible to put back together.

I had a friend in school who could read a book upside down. Here at the UHC, I’ve learned to tell whether a woman is pretty or not by looking at her from the opposite side. My coworkers know I prefer to take the handles from that end. I’ve gotten so good at looking at the world that way that they sometimes give me upside-down photos of celebrities or singers or actresses or soccer players to look at, and I can always recognize them at first glance.

I make them laugh when I say that here, at the UHC, is where I got my bat degree.

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