Читать книгу The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby - Страница 10

ODDLY ENOUGH, THE shock of the wheelchair was helpful. Things became clearer. I gave up my grandiose plans, and the friends who had built a barrier of affection around me since my catastrophe were able to talk freely. With the subject no longer taboo, we began to discuss locked-in syndrome. First of all, it is very rare. It is small consolation, but the chances of being caught in this hellish trap are about as likely as those of winning the lottery. At Berck, only two of us were locked in, and my own case was not classic. I am perverse enough to be able to swivel my head, which is not supposed to be part of the clinical picture. Since most victims are abandoned to a vegetable existence, the evolution of the disease is not well understood. All that is known is that if the nervous system makes up its mind to start working again, it does so at the speed of a hair growing from the base of the brain. So it is likely that several years will go by before I can expect to wiggle my toes.

In fact it is in my respiratory passages that I can hope for improvement. In the long term, I can hope to eat more normally: that is, without the help of a gastric tube. Eventually, perhaps I could breathe naturally, without a respirator, and muster enough breath to make my vocal cords vibrate.

But for now, I would be the happiest of men if I could just swallow the overflow of saliva endlessly flooding my mouth. Even before first light I am already practising sliding my tongue towards the rear of my palate in order to provoke a swallowing reaction. What is more, I have dedicated to my larynx the little packets of incense hanging on the wall, amulets brought back from Japan by pious globetrotting friends. Just one of the stones in the thanksgiving monument erected by my circle of friends during their wanderings. In every corner of the world the most diverse deities have been solicited in my name. I try to organize all this spiritual energy. If they tell me that candles have been burned for my sake in a Breton chapel, or a mantra chanted in a Nepalese temple, I at once give each of the spirits invoked a precise task. A woman I know enlisted a Cameroon holy man to procure me the good will of Africa’s gods: I have assigned him my right eye. For my hearing problems I rely on the warm relationship that my devout mother-in-law enjoys with the monks of a Bordeaux brotherhood. They regularly dedicate their prayers to me, and I occasionally steal into their abbey to hear their chants fly heavenward. So far the results have been unremarkable. But when seven brothers of the same order had their throats cut by Islamic fanatics my ears hurt for several days. Yet all these lofty protections are merely clay ramparts, walls of sand, Maginot Lines, compared to the small prayer my daughter Céleste sends up to her Lord every evening before closing her eyes. Since we fall asleep at roughly the same hour, I set out for the kingdom of slumber with this wonderful talisman which shields me from all harm.