Читать книгу The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby - Страница 13

NOT MANY PLACES in France still nurture the cult of Empress Eugénie. In the main hall of the Naval Hospital, a vast echoing space in which trolleys and wheelchairs can advance five abreast, a stained-glass window depicts the wife of Napoléon III, the hospital’s patroness. The two chief curiosities of this micromuseum are a white marble bust which restores to the glory of her youth this fallen highness who died at ninety-four; and the letter in which the deputy station-master of Berck’s railroad depot describes to the editor of the Correspondant Maritime the brief imperial visit of 4 May, 1864. Through his words I can see the special train pull in, the troupe of young ladies of Eugénie’s retinue, the joyful procession through the town, and the introduction of the hospital’s little patients (Berck began life as a children’s hospital) to their illustrious protectress. For a while I seized every chance I had to pay my respects to these relics.

A score of times I read the railwayman’s account. I mingled with the chattering flock of ladies-in-waiting, and whenever Eugénie progressed from one ward to another I followed her hat with its yellow ribbons, her silk parasol and the scent of her passage, imbued with the eau de Cologne of the court perfumer. On one particularly windy day I even dared draw near and bury my face in the folds of her white gauze dress with its broad satin stripes. It was as sweet as whipped cream, as cool as the morning dew. She did not send me away. She ran her fingers through my hair and said gently, ‘There there, my child, you must be very patient,’ in a Spanish accent very like the neurologist’s. She was no longer the empress of the French but a compassionate divinity in the manner of Saint Rita, patroness of lost causes.

And then, one afternoon as I confided my woes to her likeness, an unknown face interposed itself between us. Reflected in the glass I saw the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde. His mouth was twisted, his nose damaged, his hair tousled, his gaze full of fear. One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain. For a moment I stared at that dilated pupil before I realized it was only mine.

Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralysed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures and reduced to a jellyfish existence, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping-up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter – when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke. My jovial cackling at first disconcerted Eugénie, until she herself was infected by my mirth. We laughed until we cried. The municipal band then struck up a waltz, and I was so merry that I would willingly have risen and invited Eugénie to dance had such a move been fitting. We would have whirled around miles of floor. Ever since then, whenever I go through the main hall, I detect a hint of amusement in the Empress’s smile.