She had to be up to speed with his business affairs. And yet, to listen to their candid chats through my headphones in the evenings, you could truly wonder if anybody in that family knew that drug trafficking was an illegal activity in France, attracting severe penalties.
Though I’d never paid much attention to her, I recognized the woman as one of the nurses who would from time to time offer me a tray of Middle-Eastern sweets as I wept on my couch. Since she worked the day shift and I came mostly in the evenings, I had never spoken to her properly — just the usual hello and goodbye. It must be said that when you find yourself in that sort of place, face to face with your own mortality, you don’t really feel like making conversation. Anyway, what is there to talk about? Apart from wee and poo and death . . . Unless you’re completely deranged, you enter a nursing home with the single thought of getting out again as quickly as possible.
She was a little older than me, Moroccan background, always smiling, and she wore a headscarf — which, by the way, is perfectly acceptable and tolerated when the activities of the Muslim in question are confined to cleaning and wiping up after the elderly.
Out of curiosity I brought my visiting hours forward a little, and began to observe her more closely.
Khadija — that was her name — came to speak to me of her own accord as I was trying to make my mother swallow some substance the colour of jellyfish. I’d hardly been there five minutes and I already felt like squashing the container into her face.
Gently, she took the spoon out of my hands.
“If your mum doesn’t want to eat, it’s because she can feel you’re all tense. You’re going to break your teeth, you’re clenching them so tightly when you bring the spoon towards her. Old people are like animals, they pick up on everything.”
Just then my mother seemed to confirm this analysis by looking me up and down like a hostile, old tortoise from deep within her capsule-carapace.
“Look at her, she’s refusing to open her mouth out of sheer stubbornness!”
“Stroke her as you offer her something to eat . . . you’ll see, she’ll relax.”
And she did exactly that, stroking her hand over my mother’s sun-spotted, shrivelled arm.
“I can’t do that!” I said, petrified with disgust.
“It’s OK — that’s what we’re here for!”
“Nobody should have to live like this . . . Not her and not me. It’s horrible to end up like this!”
“But you know, when you’re not here, your mum’s not as annoying as all that. In fact, she’s quite cheerful. What do you say, my princess?”
And she kissed my mother who had already completely forgotten I was there and was crooning in Yiddish, her face half-paralyzed: