On Friday night my father’s breathing became deep and laboured. Then we heard a loud, continual bubbling sound which was distinct from his breathing. It was horrible because we couldn’t tell whether it was coming from his lungs or his stomach, as if the whole of his inner body was communicating. The doctor gave him a shot to sedate him. He settled down. In the afternoon I put some clean linen away in the cupboard. Out of curiosity I took a piece of pink ticking and held it against the edge of the bed. He propped himself up and watched me, telling me in his new voice: ‘It’s to put on your mattress. Your mother’s already done this one.’ He pulled on the blanket to show me his own mattress. It was the first time he had shown an interest in anything around him since he’d been struck down. At the time, I thought this meant there was still hope, but he spoke those words to prove that he wasn’t too ill, when it was precisely because he was drifting away from this world that he was making such a desperate effort to cling to it.

After that he didn’t speak to me again. He was perfectly lucid, turning over for his injection when he saw the nurse enter the room and answering my mother’s questions with a yes or no: was he in pain or did he want anything to drink? Every so often he would decide to protest, ‘If only I could have something to eat,’ as if merely eating would cure him, a cure denied by some unknown authority. He couldn’t remember how many 73days he had gone without food. My mother kept saying: ‘A bit of dieting’s never harmed anyone.’ The child was playing in the garden. I kept an eye on him while I tried to read Les Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir. It was a long book and I couldn’t get into it. I knew that when I reached a certain page, my father would no longer be alive. The customers were still asking after him. They wanted to know exactly what the problem was, sunstroke or a heart attack. My mother’s vague replies left them incredulous, they thought we were hiding something from them. For us, it no longer mattered what it was called.

On Sunday morning, I was woken by a melodious mumbling, interrupted by pauses. The last rites of the Catholic Church, the most obscene ceremony of all. I buried my head in the pillow. My mother must have got up at the crack of dawn to catch the archpriest when he came out of his first service.

Later that day I went upstairs to see him while my mother was serving the customers. I found him sitting on the edge of the bed, his head bent forward, staring desperately at the chair by his bed. He was holding an empty glass at the end of his outstretched arm. His hand was trembling violently. At first, I didn’t realize that he wanted to set the glass down on the chair. For several interminable seconds I watched his hand and the expression of despair on his face. Then I took the glass from him and put him back to bed, bringing his legs back onto the bed. I thought to myself: ‘I can do that,’ or ‘I must be a big girl now to be able to do that.’ Then I willed myself to look at him properly. His face bore only a faint resemblance to the one I had known in the past. Around his dentures, which he had insisted on keeping in, his lips had curled up, exposing his gums. He had become one of the ageing, bedridden men of the hospice where we 74were taken by the headmistress of our convent school to bawl out Christmas carols. And yet it seemed to me that, even in this condition, he could have continued to live for some time.