The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Author:Jean-Dominique Bauby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

The Turnip

‘ON 8 JUNE it will be six months since my new life began. Your letters are piling up on the dresser, your drawings on my wall, and since I cannot hope to answer each one of you I have decided to issue these samizdat bulletins to report on my life, my progress and my hopes. At first I refused to believe that anything serious had happened. In my semi-conscious state following the coma, I thought I would shortly be back in my Paris stamping-grounds, with just a couple of canes to help me along.’

Those were the first words of the first mailing of my monthly letter from Berck, which I decided in late spring to send to my friends and associates. Addressed to some sixty people, that first bulletin created a mild stir and repaired some of the damage caused by rumour. The city, that monster with a hundred mouths and a thousand ears, which knows nothing but says everything, had written me off. At the Café de Flore, one of those base camps of Parisian snobbery which send up rumours like flights of carrier pigeons, some close friends of mine overheard a conversation at the next table. The gossipers were as greedy as vultures who have just discovered a disembowelled antelope. ‘Did you know that Bauby is now a total vegetable?’ said one. ‘Yes, I heard. A complete vegetable,’ came the reply. The word ‘vegetable’ must have tasted sweet on the know-it-all’s tongue, for it came up several times between mouthfuls of Welsh rarebit. The tone of voice left no doubt that henceforth I belonged on a vegetable stall and not to the human race. France was at peace. One couldn’t shoot the bearers of bad news. Instead I would have to rely on myself if I wanted to prove that my IQ was still higher than a turnip’s.

Thus was born a collective correspondence which keeps me in touch with those I love. And my hubris has had gratifying results. Apart from an irrecoverable few who maintain a stubborn silence, everybody now understands that he can join me in my cocoon, even if sometimes the cocoon takes me into unexplored territory.

I receive remarkable letters. They are opened for me, unfolded and spread out before my eyes, in a daily ritual that gives the arrival of the post the character of a hushed and holy ceremony. I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, discussing the meaning of life, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence. And by a curious reversal, the people who focus most closely on these fundamental questions tend to be people I had known only superficially. Their small talk had masked hidden depths. Had I been blind and deaf, or does it take the glare of disaster to show a person’s true nature?

Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep.

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