Desirable Body by Hubert Haddad

Author:Hubert Haddad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2018-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

18.

Situated on a cliff overhanging the Adriatic Sea, in the middle of a wood in the province of Trieste, Dr. Emil Schoeler’s establishment was a refuge for patients looking for peace and quiet. It was both a hospital and a convalescent center, where celebrities in need of anonymity and people under various threats were treated in a discreet and extremely secure environment. Following the televised conference at the Rult-Milleur château that had exposed Cédric to the public in order to gratify the egos of his surgeons, the only way for him to escape the permanent siege of busybodies and journalists was to get away from there as quickly as possible. As his guardian, Dr. Servil had tended to every detail. The mission of that mediator from Geneva was to never have direct contact with the patient and to oversee the quality of care at each of his visits. The facilities offered to the son of a magnate of the pharmaceutical industry should be a matter of course, without ostentation but with all the efficiency of constant and complete aid of all kinds.

Within the best care system imaginable, Cédric very naturally became accustomed to this level of comfort. Once you lose any hope of recognizing yourself in space, the world around you resembles time wasted. With the Adriatic in front of him, in his scenic solitude surrounded by craggy forests and dark mountains, the grounds, with their huge oaks, were the ideal space for a kind of episodic, and sometimes spasmodic, resurrection that caused him as much painful fear as instinctive surprise in the midst of birdsong and branches swaying in the sea breeze. Every morning an intact sun followed without the slightest veil of mist the most resplendent night sky. Trailed from a distance by a nurse, he was allowed to wander at his own pace along the shaded alleys. Cédric had the impression he was walking on a carpet of cicadas and bees, so much did his eyes respond by flashes and flickers to the sounds all around him. He had trouble delineating the boundaries of his five senses; summer colors tasted of sap and sounds warmed his skin; scents even invaded his ears and eyes. During a recent consultation, Dr. Schoeler, a distinguished neurologist, thought he was reassuring Cédric in describing to him a probable disorder in the connections of millions of spinal cord fibers—some of which were still being reconstituted—and the delayed impulses linked to the distortions of organ memories.

Cédric indeed was no longer sure of his memories and from time to time came up against an obtuse will that entered him from outside his consciousness. How can you believe in your own past, and even your emotions, when your body is haunted by another’s history? Ever since he had come out of the cycle of anesthesia and medically induced comas, his brain seemed detached from reality, as if he were simply experiencing unreliable representations from REM sleep: a sort of crystalline, luminous, almost abstract dream.

Cédric had just glimpsed his guardian angel through a looped alleyway that wound between the tulip beds.

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