Sing, Nightingale by Marie Hélène Poitras

Author:Marie Hélène Poitras
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coach House Books

While the doctor palpates and probes him, the father moans in his bed, complains that the air is blowing through his wounds, and calls for drugs much too powerful for his condition. When the harridan bends to place a damp cloth on his burning forehead, he can’t stop himself from breathing in her armpits.

The doctor asks her to leave them alone. He has the father lie on his stomach and starts disinfecting the area around the gashes. He has never had to care for this sort of wound. The father asks what they look like, and the doctor’s answer surprises him.

‘Like an open sex. With something inside. Were you whipped?’

‘I think I was ridden,’ the father confesses, a little ashamed.

The doctor’s eye lights up with a bawdy glint. The upturns of his moustache rise.

‘I see … Someone did things to you and it got out of hand. Did you end the evening in a brothel?’ he asks, in a hushed tone.

‘No, no … It happened in the forest.’

A first groove runs from the shoulder blade to the lower back. The second laceration is not as deep, but something that is not flesh is emerging from it and curls at the edge of the wound. The doctor fishes around in the gash with a small tweezer, grabs something in the shape of a ribbon and pulls, intrigued, as if it were a message in a fortune cookie.

‘Mr. Berthoumieux, there is something written in the flesh of your back!’

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