An Ideal Presence Read online

  ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR AN IDEAL PRESENCE

  I loved Eduardo Berti’s beautifully and carefully constructed meditation on the notion of presence at death. This book left me gasping.

  AMY FUSSELMAN, AUTHOR OF IDIOPHONE & SAVAGE PARK

  Eduardo Berti’s resonant homage to caretakers offers us a rare glimpse at the small moments that fill out the days of hospitals, from the humorous and warming to the unsettling and devastating. Not a word is wasted in Berti’s book, nor in Daniel Levin Becker’s ideal translation.

  EMMA RAMADAN, TRANSLATOR & CO-OWNER OF RIFFRAFF

  A magnificent book. More than the strange anecdotes that the protagonists describe, not without feeling, the atmosphere surrounding them has a quiet voice that expresses the essential: love, fear, regret, memory, illusion. There is no official language, just an internal one. With restraint and intensity, Eduardo Berti shows it by way of these simple, admirable beings who let us hear, beyond life and death, the surprising voice of truth.

  SILVIA BARON-SUPERVIELLE, LES LETTRES FRAN×AISES

  It’s a tour de force to offer such emotion from such fleeting characters, and it’s the opposite of a tour de force the way Berti refrains from any visible virtuosity, the apparent simplicity with which he gives body and soul to all these lives, those departing and those remaining. It’s as if the reader is looked after by the hospital workers and the author at once, held in the arms of each and all.

  MATHIEU LINDON, LIBÈRATION

  Each of these deaths is an unspeakable drama in itself, a little complete world snuffed out. Eduardo Berti’s talent consists in making us feel the drama without adding any, by the simple multiplication of points of view.

  BERNARD QUIRINY, L’OPINION

  An Ideal Presence shows nothing but respect: for the sick at the end of life; for the medical personnel sharing their motivations, their doubts, their hesitations, satisfactions, and afflictions. How to avoid falling into pathos? What is the right distance to maintain? Eduardo Berti, who must have asked himself these questions as well, answers with a rare elegance.

  MARIANNE PAYOT, L’EXPRESS

  Curious at first, we become complicit, touched by the emotions that well up from such particular instants, from these moments that are the foundations of philosophies, beliefs, fears, religions. It’s often awful, but quite beautiful sometimes too. Powerful, always. It’s not macabre. It’s profound.

  PLM, LA VOIX DU NORD

  Also by Eduardo Berti in English

  The Imagined Land

  Agua

  AN IDEAL PRESENCE

  Fern Books

  Oakland, 94609

  Paris, 75020

  fernfernfern.com

  Copyright © Eduardo Berti

  c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria

  www.schavelzongraham.com

  Originally published in French as Une présence idéale

  by Editions Flammarion, 2017

  First English edition, 2020

  Translation copyright © Daniel Levin Becker

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-1-7352973-0-9 (paperback); 978-1-7352973-1-6 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944877

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art and design by James David Lee

  Interior design by Kit Schluter

  Logo by Helen Shewolfe Tseng

  Epigraph in Lydia Davis’s translation

  Set in Cycles and Scala Sans

  Printed in the United States

  AN IDEAL PRESENCE

  A NOVEL

  EDUARDO BERTI

  translated by Daniel Levin Becker

  FERN BOOKS

  OAKLAND · PARIS

  Between April and December 2015, I spent several weeks at the University Hospital Centre in the city of Rouen, France, as a guest of its palliative care department. The texts that follow were inspired, more or less freely, by what I encountered there. The names of the narrators are evidently false, as this is a work of fiction constructed out of real experience. That said, these texts are meant to pay homage to all caregivers in all palliative care units, and also to William March’s book Company K, which inspired the form of this collection. I wish to thank the whole unit, as well as the digestive oncology unit, but also the cultural services department of the Rouen UHC and the team of the Terre de Paroles festival, who first had the idea to offer me a “medico-literary” residency in the birthplace of Gustave Flaubert, whose father was once director of the Rouen School of Medicine.

  I dared to write these texts directly in French. This does not signal a change of my language of composition: I still write in Spanish and I will no doubt continue to do so, but French imposed itself here for a number of reasons, one in particular: it was in French that I discovered the universe that inspired these texts, that the earliest sentences and sketches were born.

  I do not think of An Ideal Presence as a book about death. My intention was to write a book about life: the professional and personal lives of a group of caregivers. I wanted to understand life’s place, so to speak, in a context where death is omnipresent. And, in a similar way, I wanted to understand the place of invention within a writing project such as this one, where reality and documentation are omnipresent as well. To that end, while some of the stories and characters in this book are fictional, I have remained faithful to what I saw, heard, and learned about the medical profession during my time in the UHC.

  E. B.

  For Jean-Marie Saint-Lu,

  who is always there.

  For Mariel and Ulises.

  The hope of being relieved

  gives him the courage to suffer.

  Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

  PAULINE JOURDAN

  NURSING AIDE

  No, I won’t be reading your book. You’ve come here, I’m told, to put our work, our reality, into words. I haven’t read anything of yours, I’m sorry. Perhaps I’m prejudiced. But each time I see doctors or nurses or nursing aides in a novel, in a film or on television, honestly, I want to laugh. Either it’s excessive, a catalog of cheap dramas, or it’s embellished, rose-colored. But it’s never true. No, never. Because when they exaggerate, when they use our work to present a spectacle of human suffering, even in those cases the images are so over-the-top you’d think they were special effects. So you’ll excuse me, but I’m not going to read your book. I’m afraid I won’t see anything I recognize in it. That I’ll discover a washed-out version of my testimony, or, worse, that I’ll feel betrayed. That said, if I’ve agreed to speak to you, it’s not only to tell you I won’t be reading your book; I agreed above all because I never refuse to speak about what I do. It must be quite different for you: when a writer, an architect, a chef, a lawyer, an actor is invited to a dinner party and starts talking about his or her work, maybe people say, “Oh, how interesting!” or maybe they think, “Oh, how boring!” — but nobody ever dares to say, “Stop talking about your work, you’re ruining dinner!” Nurses and nursing aides know that’s what everyone is thinking in their case. It happens to us so often that many of us have developed the prudent habit of just staying silent. At least outside our circle. How many of my colleagues have you spoken to? Have they told you about the funeral makeup, the vomit, the cleaning tasks of hospital workers? Are you going to describe all of that?
Are you going to ruin the reader’s dinner? Really? I’m asking because I won’t read you, no matter how you answer.

  MARIE MAHOUX

  NURSE

  That lady was somebody special. I’m not saying that because she was my first patient. I’m saying it because she really was special. A very sensitive woman. Serene. And extraordinarily kind — luckily for me, because I had just arrived in the palliative care unit straight out of nursing school. A very unusual career path, I know; in theory, you go through other services first. But that wasn’t the case for me. I came to the unit very young. I was barely twenty-two.

  It was my fifth day in palliative care. I was still finding my footing when a patient died. That’s part of the routine. We have about a hundred deaths here every year. I really mean a hundred — that’s not a metaphor, it’s one death every three days, roughly. But this was my first death. No, of course it wasn’t my fault. I say “my” death, which I feel I can say because he passed away right in front of me, just like that, like a leaf falling from a tree. He was in his sixties and his lungs were ruined, gone up in smoke along with his chances of survival.

  I didn’t want to cry, but I felt the need to close my eyes, to hold my breath and count: one, two, three, four … up to twenty. After that I called Clémence, Sylvie, and Pauline, who were on the afternoon rotation with me. When they saw my face, they suggested I go out for a minute to get some air, to think about something else. They’d take care of it. I was grateful, and at the same time a bit hurt. But I did what they said. I went down the stairs and drank a coffee, standing up, facing the coffee machine. The plastic cup trembling in my hands.

  Ten minutes later, Clémence sent me on my rounds to the eleven other rooms. They didn’t want me to see the body again, that was clear. I didn’t take the usual route. I left that special woman — my first patient — for last. I remember thinking as I was making my rounds that I was the only one in the whole unit to have my first patient still in the hospital. I remember thinking also, with a pang of sadness, that soon I would be like everyone else …

  I had kept my first patient for last because I thought she would calm me down. She always seemed so serene. Like she thought it was totally logical and ordinary to be there, in her bed. She had barely seen me come into the room when she opened her eyes wide.

  “Did something happen, my dear?”

  (That’s what she called me: “my dear.”)

  I barely managed to smile and answer:

  “No. Nothing at all.”

  “Come now … there’s been a death, hasn’t there?” she asked.

  I was dumbstruck for a moment.

  “How do you know?”

  “You can just feel it, my dear. You can feel it in the air.”

  CAMILLE ZIRNHELD

  NURSING AIDE

  Late one afternoon, a Friday, I was with my partner, Awa, and another pair was also on duty: Morgane and Solène, I think. That’s how we work here. You’ve already been told all that, I assume. A nurse and a nursing aide, in tandem. Anyway, it was Friday, as I was saying, and I knew I had the weekend off, that neither Awa nor I would be back at work until Monday, so I took the piece of paper where I usually note down — like a checklist for myself — the names of the twelve patients and each one’s room number, and then, all of a sudden, without quite knowing why, I underlined eight names and said, just like that, quickly, in front of my three coworkers: “The other four, they won’t be here on Monday.” I meant, obviously, the patients whose names I hadn’t underlined.

  I had forgotten all of this by Monday, when Solène saw me come in and told me an awful and strange thing: my prediction had come true.

  Everyone was looking at me, wondering how I could have known. Of course I hadn’t known anything. I’d just guessed. It’s crazy. I’d guessed. Now I was rattled. And mortified. Needless to say, I’ve never done anything like that again. Not even for myself, in secret. No, never.

  HÉLÈNE DAMPIERRE

  NURSE

  I’m in the middle of a conversation with him, talking freely. Since he arrived here two weeks ago, it’s already become a routine: we talk about this and that, about life in general. And then, without meaning to, just totally naturally, I use the informal toi with him. Right away I want to backpedal — but how? I know I’ve crossed the line. And yet he seems delighted: he wants to be informal with me too. And it becomes the custom between us. All the same, I mention it to Madame Terwilliger. “What’s done is done, Hélène,” she tells me. It’s too late now. These things happen. And after all why not? Still, in the days that follow, I can tell it’s created an imbalance with my coworkers. I’m the only one he uses toi with.

  A week later, during an ordinary conversation, he lets slip: “It’s nice to be informal with each other. But I advise you not to become my friend, because soon you’re going to lose me.” He says the words calmly. With a serene anger. With a mix of bitterness and resignation. And I stay there, speechless. If there’s one thing you learn quickly in this line of work, it’s to keep quiet when there’s really no way to answer.

  CATHERINE KOUTSOS

  RESIDENT

  There were six or seven of us around the bed when Patricia Long walked into the room.

  “Madame,” Patricia began, her voice trembling slightly because she knew the importance of what she was about to say. “Madame, it’s your oldest son. He’s here to see you.”

  Everyone in the unit knew the story. Mother and son hadn’t spoken in ten years. The old woman, a widow, regularly received visits from a sister, older than her, and also from a very shy niece who never said more than a word or two. The son’s absence was more powerful than the presence — overly discreet, almost invisible — of those two women.

  “Madame,” Patricia pressed. “Your son… in the family room.”

  We were in the middle of the woman’s physical exam. Two nurses, two nursing aides, two externs, and me, the only resident.

  The lady, who had her eyes closed while we were examining her, opened them with rage and responded simply:

  “No, no.”

  “You don’t want to see him?” asked Jacqueline Marro with a slight note of surprise.

  “No, no,” repeated the woman.

  And she added, with resentment:

  “Of course not! He has no business here. You tell him to leave, please.”

  I stared at the woman. Should we push the point, or just respect her wishes? When I looked away, I saw seven pairs of eyes fixed on me. By a sort of tacit accord, everyone had decided it was me who would go speak to the son.

  I’m used to delivering terrible news to people: “You have leukemia,” “I’m afraid you only have five or six months left to live”… Not that it doesn’t affect me. But humans have a way of getting used to astonishing things. And yet, for all my experience, my palms were all clammy, like the first time I had to tell a patient he had an incurable disease.

  The son was waiting, standing in the entrance to the family room. My body and my facial expression must have told him enough, because he extended his hand and asked me directly: “She doesn’t want to see me, right?” He made it easier for me. I answered, “No, no …” And while saying it, without wanting to, I imitated, just a bit, the way his mother had said it. He thanked me, smiled sadly. He was about to leave when he came back toward me.

  “Could I see another room, at least?”

  Surprised, I asked if he meant he wanted to see another patient. But no, he just wanted to visit another room. To get a sense of the place where his mother would no doubt die?

  There were no empty rooms. That’s quite rare here, you know. But there was a room whose patient had gone off for a chemo session.

  “Alright,” I said.

  A few seconds later we were both in the room across from his mother’s. I felt like a real estate agent waiting for the client to finish his walkthrough. Finally, he murmured:

  “Okay, I see. Yes, okay.”

  I walked the son out. He held o
ut his hand to me a second time. It was even sweatier than mine. He never came back to see his mother. I still remember his last look. It was the unhappy look of a child who has been unfairly punished.

  AWA MODOU

  NURSE

  It was Virginie, a coworker from the department where I worked before, who gave me the idea. “It’s perfect for you,” Virginie insisted. “You have a spiritual side, you know how to listen to patients, you’re not afraid of death.” I wasn’t convinced. Of course I’m afraid of death. At the same time, it’s true, I like testing limits. My limits. I worked in a retirement home for almost two years. And for more than a year in a psychiatric hospital. At the very beginning, when I was a visiting nurse, I accepted a job nobody in my cohort wanted: caring for a very sick man with no family who was going to die at home. The man was nice, but in a terrible state, plus he refused my help washing himself. It was a two-week exercise in patience. Eventually the man allowed me to bathe him. He died a few hours later.

  I had been sort of unsatisfied recently. I’d even thought about changing jobs when Virginie told me about the palliative care unit, where her sister Hélène had been working for a while. I’d heard, of course, that palliative care received patients with serious, chronic, terminal diseases. I knew the objective of the unit was not only to ease physical pain but also to attend to emotional suffering, to be there for the loved ones. I knew all of this — I had even written it out in blue ink, almost seven years prior, for an exam on which I did relatively well.

  I talked about it with Hélène, Virginie’s sister. Like me, she knew that in other sectors of the hospital, if a nurse takes care of twelve or fourteen beds, she can’t spend more than fifteen to twenty minutes a day with each patient. “We, on the other hand, manage to spend almost an hour with them,” Hélène explained, though she made it clear that you also had to be ready for extreme situations.