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A Memoir of Life in Death
by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Hunched in the red-upholstered armchair where he sifts through the day's newspapers, my
dad bravely endures the rasp of the razor attacking his loose skin. I wrap a big towel
around his shriveled neck, daub thick lather over his face, and do my best not to irritate
his skin, dotted here and there with small dilated capillaries. From age and fatigue, his
eyes have sunk deep into their sockets, and his nose looks too prominent for his emaciated
features. But, still flaunting the plume of hair --- now snow white --- that has always
crowned his tall frame, he has lost none of his splendor.
All around us, a lifetime's clutter has accumulated; his room calls to mind one of those
old persons' attics whose secrets only they can know --- a confusion of old magazines,
records no longer played, miscellaneous objects. Photos from all the ages of man have been
stuck into the frame of a large mirror. There is dad, wearing a sailor suit and playing
with a hoop before the Great War; my eight-year-old daughter in riding gear; and a
black-and-white photo of myself on a miniature-golf course. I was eleven, my ears
protruded, and I looked like a somewhat simpleminded schoolboy. Mortifying to realize that
at that age I was already a confirmed dunce.
I complete my barber's duties by splashing my father with his favorite aftershave lotion.
Then we say goodbye; this time, for once, he neglects to mention the letter in his writing
desk where his last wishes are set out.
We have not seen each other since. I cannot quit my seaside confinement. And he can no
longer descend the magnificent staircase of his apartment building on his
ninety-two-year-old legs. We are both locked-in cases, each in his own way: myself in my
carcass, my father in his fourth-floor apartment. Now I am the one they shave every
morning, and I often think of him as a nurse's aide laboriously scrapes my cheeks with a
week-old blade. I hope that I was a more attentive Figaro.
Every now and then he calls, and I listen to his affectionate voice, which quivers a
little in the receiver they hold to my ear. It cannot be easy for him to speak to a son
who, as he well knows, will never reply. He also sent me the photo of me at the
miniature-golf course. At first I did not understand why. It would have remained a mystery
if someone had not thought to look at the back of the print. Suddenly, in my own personal
movie theater, the forgotten footage of a spring weekend began to unroll, when my parents
and I had gone to take the air in a windy and not very sparkling seaside town. In his
strong, angular handwriting, dad had simply noted: Berck-sur-Mer, April 1963.
Use of this excerpt from Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby may be made only for purposes of promoting the book, with no changes, editing, or additions whatsoever, and must be accompanied by the following copyright notice: Copyright© 1997 by Jean-Dominique Bauby. All rights reserved.
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