The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Her elbows on the small mobile Formica table that serves as her desk, Claude is reading out these pages we have patiently extracted from the void every afternoon for the last two months. Some pages I am pleased to see again. Others are disappointing. Do they add up to a book? As I listen to Claude, I study her dark hair, her very pale cheeks, which sun and wind have scarcely touched with pink, the long bluish veins on her hands, and the articles scattered about the room. I will put them in my mind's scrapbook as reminders of a summer of hard work. The big blue notebook whose pages she fills with her neat, formal handwriting; the pencil case like the ones schoolchildren use, full of spare ballpoints; the heap of paper napkins ready for my worst coughing-and-spitting fits; and the red raffia purse in which she periodically rummages for coins for the coffee machine. Her purse is half open, and I see a hotel room key, a metro ticket, and a hundred-franc note folded in four, like objects brought back by a space probe sent to earth to study how earthlings live, travel, and trade with one another. The sight leaves me pensive and confused. Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I'll be off now.

Berck-Plage, July—August 1996