In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge

Author:Eugen Ruge [Ruge, Eugen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781555976439
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

2001

He has slept well. He would like to tell Marion—she was right again, he thinks, without being quite sure what she was right about, but she’s probably still asleep, he doesn’t want to wake her. He turns over on his side again to face Marion, glad that she’s there. Except that when he opens his eyes, the other side of the huge double bed is empty.

He pulls the pristine pillow toward him, crumples it.

At least he didn’t sweat in the night, he’s not running a temperature, he isn’t suffering from pain or nausea; he has now studied the symptoms in an Internet café, all of them rather vague, nonspecific, as they call it, but one thing can’t be denied: the lymph nodes, when his right hand feels for them, are still swollen.

He takes the plugs out of his ears. Following a stupid impulse, puts them under the pristine but now crumpled pillow. Stands up.

Checks to see whether the dogs are really still there (answer in the affirmative).

Brushes his teeth—using mineral water these days, since he read on the Internet that there is a link between Hodgkin’s nonspecific lymphoma and greater susceptibility to infections. And then, like a morning prayer, the passage about a sufferer’s expectation of life that he also found on the Internet runs almost word for word past his drowsy consciousness:

In all cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the average survival rate of five years applies to 62 percent of men and 66 percent of women. These figures represent average values. They include very many patients who have survived for ten years or longer. There is no point, therefore, in trying to draw conclusions about individual survival rates from the average values. The chances of survival for as long as possible rise if patients take care to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

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