Bitter Almonds (19 page)

“Is next time I bringing,” says Fadila.

She copies out her new telephone number once, then gets up: “Give me paper, I studying at home.”

 

Édith called Fadila that morning to tell her that this afternoon she won't be alone. She'll be working at home with an English novelist, a close acquaintance. Her French is good and she wants to go over the translations of her books carefully. Édith has no objections; on the contrary.

Fadila keeps out of the way that afternoon. When she is ready to leave, Édith and Magdalena Wright are still at work. She sticks her head through the door and with a smile she says, “Well then, goodbye, girls!”

 

She wants to learn new words. Just as well, thinks Édith. No point in dwelling on what she has most probably forgotten.

“What are your granddaughters' names?” she asks. “Your son's two girls.”

Nabila and Zaina. “All letters you know,” says Édith, writing the two names in big letters.

She takes the opportunity to inquire about them. Fadila is delighted that the older girl, not yet three, is always asking to write. Her mother gives her paper and pencils and the little girl covers the paper with big circles.

“Is like that when you speaking a lot to the children they little,” says Fadila. She finds her daughter-in-law somewhat evasive, and she thinks she should stop breast-feeding the younger girl, who's ten months old, and go and look for work. Still, she cannot help but admire the educated woman in her, and she knows that, undeniably, she is a good mother.

 

Fadila opens the main door downstairs and comes upon Édith in the entrance with a mop and a bucket. There was a broken bottle, wine has spilled on the tiles. The building has no concierge, and the cleaning of the shared space is done only once a week by a cleaning company.

“Is you cleaning this?” scolds Fadila. “Why is no that lady she looking after the garbage cans?”

The woman in question, a young North African whom Fadila has already run into, takes the containers in and out, nothing more, explains Édith, she doesn't do any cleaning.

Fadila interrupts her: “She has head in the air. Is Algerian.”

And in answer to Édith's questioning look: “Is proud. Is Algerians they has head in the air. Is saying they French, no want to do cleaning.”

 

Édith writes
ZAINA
just below
AÏCHA
, and tries to make Fadila see what the two words have in common. Fadila sees the
A
's, but not the
I
's with their little dieresis on top.

Nor does she recognize the word
AÏCHA
anymore.

Then Édith writes
ZAINA
and under that,
ZORA
.

“And these two names, Zaina and Zora (she stresses the
Z
), what do they have that's the same?”

Fadila points to the
A
in
Zora
.

“You know the
A
really well,” Édith congratulates her.

She has brought back out the “treasure chest” of the words Fadila acquired so slowly the previous year. She copies it out for her—it takes her all of a minute—hands it to her, and says, “These are the words we spent a lot of time on, you know them. You can copy them out at home, we'll go back over them next week.”

 

But Édith needs something to take her to the next stage. At the rate they're working, one step forward, two steps back, they will lose heart. Fadila will soon be so discouraged she won't want to go on.

Édith calls her cousin Sara. She knows what she's looking for, now. Fadila needs a private teacher, a real one, someone like a retired professor, who will give her at least three classes a week.

Sara is not too optimistic. But she has some friends who know more than she does about the milieu of literacy learning, and she's willing to give them a ring.

 

She calls back two days later. Édith will be pleased: the parish of Saint-Séverin, in Paris, have founded an association that offers personalized literacy classes.

“Private lessons?” asks Édith, who can scarcely believe her ears.

“Precisely. The teachers meet with students one on one. It's made to measure.”

Édith calls the person in charge. Her cousin was right. They have to find a time slot but almost all the teachers are retirees, volunteers, and in general have a fair amount of free time. Also, Fadila must be willing to go to the premises of the association for her classes, opposite the church of Saint-Séverin—although there are a few volunteers who are willing to go elsewhere for the lesson, or who don't mind working from home.

There are all sorts of possibilities. All Fadila has to do is go by the association one day and sign up, they'll talk it over.

What's the matter?” asks Édith, who knows now that she has cause to be worried when Fadila walks in without saying a word, not even hello.

“Is crying, crying.”

It turns out that Nasser and his family have moved away from Pantin. It took all of three days. They'd been wanting to move for months. They had put their name down here and there. In the end Auchan, Nasser's employer, found him a place to live, a good-sized apartment, near his work.

Nasser and his wife couldn't stand their two hundred square feet anymore. They immediately said yes and on Saturday they moved. They're absolutely thrilled: they now have a real two-bedroom in a new building.

“Is it far from Pantin?”

“Is very far, way other side,” she said, with a wave, “at the end the RER A, at Maison de la Fête.”

Édith unfolds a map of the RER.

“You mean Maisons-Laffitte?”

“Yes, is Maison de la Fête.”

“Put yourself in their shoes: how could they say no? At last they have a proper place to live. Some day soon you can look for a place nearby. Your son will help you find something.”

No, she says. She just had her residence permit renewed, with her new address in Pantin. She can't keep moving all the time.

And anyway, she wants to go back to Morocco. She's been thinking about it more and more. “Is my brother he wants I coming. Is big house. Is people stay in France they no go nowhere.”

Look at her neighbors at the hostel. “They going market is the morning, is coming home, is watching television. They say they is staying because the health care. But is health care no stop you dying! Is in Morocco everything you need. If you getting sick, is hospital.”

 

Work on her letters? Today? She puts on a sorry face: “You thinking I manage learning with everything is happen now?”

Édith will wait for a more auspicious moment to tell her about the classes in Saint-Séverin.

 

Two days ago, April 22nd, the first round of the presidential elections was held. As was to be expected, the remaining candidates are Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy.

All the papers imply that the immigrants are dreading a Sarkozy victory.

“You know,” says Édith, “if Nicolas Sarkozy wins, it won't be what we call a disaster. It won't change much for you.”

Fadila reacts sharply: “'Course is no disaster! Is people saying Sarkozy is disaster, but I no saying. You know what is problem? Is Sarkozy he say the truth. What is French people they say? Truth hurts?”

 

“I go seeing Nasser there Maison de la Fête: is like Côte d'Azur! Is nice place! Is no Blacks, no Arabs. They got two bedrooms, one bedroom for daughter, one bedroom for parents. Is baby in the buggy very happy, they open window is trees. They on the ground floor and just outside is garden.

“Is very good place. Little girls going to has good upbringing, is nobody but French people there. Is no like in Pantin is children saying bad words in the street. Is nothing like that there.

“Little granddaughter her father he scare her, he say, ‘Is all over, we moving back to Pantin, let's go,' he pretending to take suitcase. She cry and cry. She no want.”

 

“Listen, I've heard about a new course that would be great for you: with a teacher just for you. You know, what they call private lessons.”

“Don't go bother this thing now,” she says. “I going back to Morocco soon.”

“It will take you a while to prepare your departure. The paperwork for retirement takes a long time. In the meanwhile you'll be able to take a few classes. You'll go much faster with a real teacher. It's free. You can start whenever you want, not only in September.”

“We'll see,” she says.

But her tone has changed.

“You right, I gotta. Is good thing I no forgetting is write my name.”

 

Nicolas Sarkozy has been elected President of the Republic. “I very happy,” says Fadila. “Everyone around me they very happy. Is people they doing trafficking they no happy. Sarkozy say he gonna clean up, is right. Is what he gotta do.”

 

On May 10th, at eight o'clock in the morning, Fadila is hit by a car, not far from her place in Pantin. Her children don't know what she was doing out so early: perhaps she wanted to use a public telephone to save on her cell phone minutes. All she had on her were her keys and her wallet. The driver who hit her says she didn't see her. It was raining.

There were witnesses. Fadila cried out and fell to the ground and lost consciousness. At the hospital where she has been taken they have diagnosed a brain trauma, along with a fractured pelvis and superficial injuries. She is in a coma, with artificial respiration.

Eleven days after the accident the doctor summons Fadila's children to the hospital. The cerebral hematoma has resorbed somewhat, and they were able to perform a brain scan. The prognosis is not good. There are multiple cerebral lesions. If Fadila comes out of the coma, she will be severely handicapped. She will not be able to see, or hear, or speak.

 

“Poor thing,” says her daughter Aïcha, “and here she was about to take her retirement any day now. Bad enough that she never had any luck in life: she never even got to have any rest. She was talking about going back to Morocco. She thought she might try to spend six months there and six months here.

“I was urging her to retire, but she wanted to go on working to continue helping her son.”

 

She is in reanimation, in a room where, apparently, the door is always left wide open.

Édith hesitates in the doorway. She does not recognize Fadila. The woman lying there in the reclining bed, in line with the door, has several tubes in her mouth and nostrils, and it is hard to see her face. Her arms are bared, like her shoulders, and are attached along the side of her body, over a tightly pulled sheet. Her hair on the pillow is uncombed, fanned out on either side of her head.

On seeing those round shoulders and arms, her smooth golden skin, her long curly black hair, Édith thinks she is in the presence of a much younger woman. She must have gotten the wrong room.

She walks in and reads the papers posted on the wall. On one of them she finds what she was looking for:
AMRANI FADILA
and, underneath,
severe brain trauma
.

 

After three weeks Fadila emerges from the coma. From time to time she moves, or opens her eyes. But she has not regained consciousness for all that. She still requires artificial respiration, she cannot do without.

Édith is in the room when a woman comes in and introduces herself: she is the neurologist. The woman is categorical: they must not have any false hopes. The patient is in a vegetative state. She cannot swallow, she has no feeding reflexes and will need a feeding tube. When they ask her to make a gesture, she does not react. She cannot see anymore. She cannot hear.

“And then there is everything we can see on the scan. Irre­versible lesions. But we can't know everything,” says the doctor on leaving. “To what degree is she conscious? That's the big question. Talk to her, above all. Touch her, take her hand.”

 

The room has fallen silent, save for the quiet purr of a machine and a few irregular clicking sounds. Fadila's eyes are closed, and she is as motionless as a recumbent statue; Édith cannot even see her breathing under the sheet. Without making a sound Édith sits down beside her, on her right, and places her hand on Fadila's. She cannot bring herself to talk to her out loud. The warmth of her skin reminds her of the rare times when she held that hand in hers, to write with her.

A cruel thought comes to her. If they were to try to communicate with Fadila by showing her one letter after the other, so that she could express herself by blinking her eyelids—one blink for
A
, two blinks for
B
, and so on, like the character in
The Count of Monte Cristo
or, more recently, two or three individuals who sustained severe head injuries yet managed to dictate entire books in this way—well, it would be impossible. In her palm Édith feels, achingly, the throb of the alpha and omega of her failure. She did not know how to teach Fadila the alphabet. She was not able to make her understand how to use writing to combine letters in order to make words that are legible; surely that would have given Fadila access to the language of the locked-in, a language that is neither oral nor written, a language born of the worst imaginable solitude, and the only way out of it.

Laurence Cossé worked as a journalist before devoting herself entirely to fiction. She is the author of
A Novel Bookstore
and
An Accident in August
. She lives in France.