My Heart Hemmed In by Marie NDiaye

Author:Marie NDiaye
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781931883634
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Published: 2017-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

19. We’ll probably never see each other again

I spend the last night with Ange, in our bed. Although his wound seems to have stopped oozing, it’s badly infected, and the infection is beginning to spread all around. Not one inch of Ange’s flesh seems untouched. His body is deep red, his face pale, faintly gray. A painful bedsore was forming, so I helped him onto his side, and he now stays that way at all times, which complicates his eating and drinking. He doesn’t care. As a bedpan, Noget brings him a little bowl from his apartment downstairs, but Ange rarely urinates or defecates.

“He’s only had one bowel movement this week,” Noget told me.

Nonetheless, Ange feels obliged to eat everything Noget puts before him, and the portions are huge for someone who never gets out of bed. But he’s still as thin as ever, if not thinner. He almost never speaks anymore. The air in the room is unbreathable. Noget comes and goes, ever cheerier, youthfully carefree. He’s shaved that old beard of his, and he now seems so different, so renewed, that my feelings toward him have little by little gone from hostile mistrust to a sort of reluctant affection. He really is a different man. I have no parting instructions for him. Whatever has to be done he will do, and he’ll do it better than me.

It’s true, he’ll liquidate Ange better than I ever could.

I only tell him how to go about sending Ange to come join me as soon as he’s fit to travel. After extensive calculations, I leave him three thousand euros in cash.

“Keep trying to convince Ange to let Doctor Charre have a look at him,” I say.

“Ange is exactly right not to want that dangerous old cretin anywhere near him,” he answers, with an inappropriate twinkle in his eye.

I immediately ask, “What do you know about Doctor Charre?”

“Only what I have to know,” says Noget. “That he hates people like you.”

With a sort of puzzled curiosity, he adds: “Do you even try to keep up with things?”

“No,” I say. “Ange and I don’t read the paper. We do listen to the radio, but only the music stations, jazz and classical.”

“Which is why you don’t know anything about anything or anyone,” says Noget reproachfully.

“Our society is too well informed as it is,” I say.

Noget reaches out and pats my belly.

“So, is there a baby in there?”

“I told you, it’s menopause! You’re such an idiot.”

Noget bursts into a loud, heartfelt laugh.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” he says.

Suddenly he turns serious.

“In any case, don’t go see your Doctor Charre, he’d get rid of the fetus and never even tell you.”

When I wake up by Ange’s side early the next morning, he’s still asleep. Noget is already there, standing at the foot of the bed in the dark. He tells me my breakfast is waiting.

I kiss Ange’s hollow cheeks, his hot, dry lips. I dissolve into tears, to my great embarrassment, since Noget’s still in the room.

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