The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 30

which the whole team at Annaba was quartered, with its dilapidated rooms opening out onto empty corridors, it seemed to her almost engaging. She complained about nothing, her assent was total, for every world is like a man, it constitutes a whole from which it is impossible to pick and choose, and it is as a whole that you must reject or accept it, the leaves with the fruit, the straw with the grain, the vileness with the grace. What lay there, within a casket of dust and filth, were the broad sky of the bay, Augustine’s basilica and the jewel of a boundless generosity, whose brilliance outshone the filth and dust. Yet once a fortnight she went back to Paris to spend the weekend with her father. When she had told them he was ill all her colleagues showed her many kindnesses. They gave her quantities of pastries for her father and prayers for his recovery. Massinissa Guermat insisted on going with her to the airport and was waiting for her on her return. At the beginning of April she was sitting with her mother beside the hospital bed in which her father was trying to regain his strength after his treatment. He had shaved his head so as not to see his hair falling out. He asked for a glass of water which Aurélie handed to him. As he was raising it to his lips he dropped it, his eyes rolled upward and he fainted. Claudie flung herself at him, crying out,

“Jacques,”

and he seemed to recover himself, he looked at his wife and daughter and uttered incoherent words, he grasped Aurélie’s wrist and drew her to him, his eyes were those of a dying animal, filled with fear and darkness, and he was trying to speak without managing to do so, despite putting all his energy into it, coming out with a farrago of syllables, sometimes whole words, wrested from the sentences that his sick body cruelly held prisoner, words that were a parody of language and reflected only the desolation of a monstrous silence, much older than the world, and he fell back onto his pillow, his hand still clutching his daughter’s wrist. A doctor and some nurses appeared and asked Claudie and Aurélie to leave. They waited in the corridor and the doctor came out to see them, he mentioned kidney failure and uremia and when they questioned him about what was likely to happen he told them he had no idea and they would have to wait and he left them. Claudie closed her eyes.

“I think you should call your brother. I can’t.”

Aurélie went out and when Matthieu picked up the phone she heard laughter and music. At first he seemed unable to understand what she was saying. The treatment was going well, his mother assured him of this every time she called him, there was no need to worry. She closed her eyes.

“Matthieu, listen to me. He’s unrecognizable. He’s no longer himself. Can you hear what I’m saying?”

Matthieu said nothing. She could hear the music, voices calling out to one another, more laughter. In the end he muttered,

“I’ll go and pack. I’m coming.”

The next day, against all expectation, Jacques Antonetti was much better. He had no memory of what had happened the previous day. He tried to joke. He apologized to Aurélie and Claudie for the fright he had given them. The doctor thought it wiser to keep him in the hospital. At the hospital they could respond as swiftly as necessary in the event of another incident. If Claudie wished they could install a camp bed for her in her husband’s room and she said that would be perfect. Again Aurélie called Matthieu who was relieved and came close to accusing her of painting an apocalyptic picture when the situation was perfectly under control. She did not trouble to respond.

“So, when are you coming?”

Matthieu pointed out that there was no longer any urgency and he was very busy preparing for the summer season and, besides, if he arrived out of the blue like that there was a risk of alarming his father for nothing, he might well think he’d come to say goodbye, they had to keep up his morale, and Aurélie was unable to control herself any longer, she told him he was a disgustingly selfish little prick, a blind little prick who deep inside him hoped that in the end this blindness would win him absolution, but he would never be absolved for what he was doing now, and if he were to be, it wouldn’t be by her, she was not their mother who still saw him as a little cherub who must be shielded at all costs from any painful confrontation with the horrors of existence, as if, deep down, he were the one who deserved all the pity, as if his delicate sensitivity, his exquisite sensitivity, which was apparently his exclusive privilege, excused him from fulfilling his most basic, his most sacred obligations, she was not going to waste her breath speaking of love and compassion to him, these were words he was incapable of understanding, but did he, at least, understand where his obligations lay, did he understand that if he persisted in seeking to avoid them, then he would forever remain the little shit he’d turned himself into in record time, with a skill, she was willing to concede, that took your breath away, and no one would be able to help him anymore for it would be too late, it would be too late for lamentations or the comfort of regrets, she would be watching out for this, unless he’d become so rotten to the core that he no longer even experienced the reassuring temptation of regrets, but if anything of the brother she loved remained within him, he would force himself to extract his head from his navel and open his eyes, and she wanted to hear no more talk of his being unaware,