Melodie Read Free

of the great sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in the Buchenwald concentration camp. The Spanish writer notes that, ‘conscious of the need for a prayer’, he recited aloud, for the one who ‘was slowly being emptied of his vital substance’, some lines from Baudelaire: ‘“O death, old captain, it is time, let us weigh anchor! . . . Our hearts known to you are filled with beams of light!”’ ‘A slight quiver’ then appeared ‘on the lips’ of his old teacher. I would have liked to do the same for my father, who lay snugly in ahospital bed. I am not ashamed to say it. I am not Semprún; my father is not Halbwachs; our circumstances are not tragic like theirs. But the need—it is imperative—to say a prayer and to be with the one who is making this decisive leap is the same.
    My father passed away in the nocturnal silence of a hospital ward. No one knew of his dying, apart perhaps from the person in the next bed, who would have noticed some irregularity in his breathing.
    I imagine in vain the thoughts that would have crossed his mind; in vain I picture the familial scenes of times past which he might have replayed in his mind’s eye like a kaleidoscope of images. I remain forever separated from the truth that was lost to silence and ink-black darkness. What do you see when death comes to you? What happens at the moment when consciousness falls into the abyss of nothingness? All the dead know it; the living remain ignorant.

Part I
    TO BE SENSITIVE, TO BE COMPASSIONATE

3
    A DOUBLE BIRTH
    IT ’ S SUMMER . During the day the heat is oppressive, and sometimes it goes on into the night. But on this particular morning we wake up and it is unexpectedly cool. How delightful! So I get up and go for a walk. I like to steal along the peaceful streets of the sleeping town. I do a big loop of the neighbourhood, often walking by the memorial garden of Hyakkannon (Hundred Statuettes of the Merciful Goddess). There are trees there, cherries and maples. I pass people walking dogs who meet in the middle of the street or beneath a maple still covered in greenery to stop and chat for a moment. I run, I stop. I run again. An hour later I return, dripping with sweat. A warm shower revives me.
    A friend calls us around two in the afternoon to tell us that her golden retriever, oddly named Danna—oddly because it’s a Japanese name meaning ‘Master, head of the house’—has just given birth to eight puppies. She knows that my daughter,Julia-Madoka, who has just turned twelve, has been longing to have a puppy for ages. She tells me that she’ll invite us to come and see them when the puppies have grown a little and are ready to leave their mother and the house where they were born.

    Two months later we are in the apartment of Mr and Mrs G, where Danna and her puppies are entertaining a large gathering. A square space, the equivalent of two tatami mats, fenced with flattened cardboard boxes, serves as the puppies’ house, and it’s there that, night and day, the mother feeds them and raises them with unflagging devotion. Two or three puppies are having fun biting and fighting while the others nap. Among those who are awake, the most active one turns its head and notices that three heads have appeared above the very high cardboard wall. It looks at the marvelling face of the schoolgirl who looks back at it. A meeting has taken place. Someone catches the puppy and takes it up out of the house as if they were carrying it by helicopter. Now it is placed on the lap of the schoolgirl who a few minutes before had gazed at it in rapt attention.
    The puppy has fallen asleep. It has been on her little lap for a good hour, without moving a muscle.
    Night is softly falling.

    Our apartment isn’t far from Mr and Mrs G’s. Ten minutes’ walk at the most. But the puppy is too heavy for the twelve-year-old schoolgirl to carry.
    â€˜Dad will carry