human wrecks. Jules always bristled when she said that being senile didn’t strike her as catastrophic at all. It seemed a carefree existence to her. No more bothering your head with keeping things running smoothly, but nurses patiently spooning the last driblets of life into you, your little girlfriends from kindergarten, and your first, secret boyfriends, who would turn up unannounced. With that final bit in particular, she was able to get his back up. He had been her first sweetheart. He had initiated her into life and love. Even fifty years later, he didn’t tolerate any jokes about so-called rivals.
“Think for a moment of those who are left behind, rather than of yourself,” he would say then. “Imagine you would no longer recognize me. Or Herman, or the grandchildren.”
Well, that would be the survivors’ problem, wouldn’t it? she thought. But she didn’t express this totally self-focused opinion. It seemed so peaceful to her to vanish on the threshold of death into a bank of fog, where memories slowly faded and sounds ebbed away. She even found the dying of life in this manner romantic. The end of a French film where the colours dissolved into a pastel-coloured vista. Fin!
There had been moments when she had fervently longed to not recognize Jules. But he was branded into her skin. He could never become invisible to her.
*
To die suddenly, painlessly, without fear — that’s what he would choose if he had a choice. A push in your back from a gigantic hand, no chance to brace yourself. The feeling a fly must have in the split second when the folded newspaper is raised above its doomed body. Now that was awful for those left behind. And rude, to disappear from life without any warning.
All right then, if Jules wouldn’t let her drift into dementia, she opted for a beautiful, contemplative deathbed. Not too long, not too short. Pain and degrading physical details such as diapers and bluish limbs were things she repressed. She would lie in a warm nightgown between freshly ironed sheets, with a silvery grey rinse in her hair and manicured nails. She would be able to tell Jules everything she had bottled up for fifty years. That she hated him and that she loved him. That there had been times when she wanted to walk out on him and that she was glad she had stayed. That she had wanted to be free and knew she was tied to him with every fibre of her being. Things you don’t say to each other in the setting of day-to-day worries. They would hold hands and forgive one another. For everything. His jaw joint would briefly move under his slackened skin, a sign for her to hold back. But in these ultimate circumstances he would control himself. He wouldn’t get angry and reproach her. He would let her die in peace. Already miss her before she mustered up the strength for her last breath.
*
Alice was so engrossed in her fantasy that she forgot for a moment that she herself was now left behind. When this inescapable truth struck her again, her eyes filled with tears. She wiped her cheek and, with her wet hand, patted the back of Jules’s hand. The chill of death was burrowing under his skin. She stood up, soaked up the white light that fell mercilessly into the room. Then she sat down on the oak coffee table, directly opposite her husband. Not sure what to do, she studied his face. His eyes were half closed, like those of a child overcome by sleep while playing. On his lips — was it her imagination, or did they have a blue tinge? — hovered the shadow of a smile. Had he felt the big hand in his back pushing him across the borderline between life and death? Only then did she notice his glasses lying on the floor. She picked them up, automatically wiped the lenses clean on a corner of her bathrobe, and slid them carefully onto Jules’s nose.
He hadn’t suffered, Alice knew. That reassured her. She wondered if she should close his eyes. In films, she had seen how surviving relatives pressed the eyelids shut with a delicate movement of their thumb. She got up, walked over to Jules’s right, took off his glasses, and laid her hand on his face. She trembled. Last summer, she had found a little sparrow that had fallen from its nest near the apartment building. She had carried it upstairs and held it in her hand, the only conceivable place to let it die. After one last shudder it was dead, but still wrapped in warm downiness. The touch of Jules’s eyelids and the nearly imperceptible caress of his lashes in the palm of her hand reawakened the little bird. She hastily withdrew her hand. She couldn’t do it. The amazement on his face would disappear if she did. She sat down on the low table again. Saw the surprised, almost shy look in his eyes that made him young and vulnerable. Better to leave it this way.
*
When her gaze wandered down again, she saw his stocking feet on the Persian carpet. She smiled. “Oh, Jules,” she said, shaking her head. “Where are your slippers? You’re going to have ice-cold feet in a minute and you’ll end up with a chill on your bladder.”
She went to the bedroom, where the peculiar white light had filtered in, too. The window should be opened, which was really Jules’s job. Now she did it herself. The effort resonated through her bones and set off a chain reaction of jumbled thoughts. How would she manage? How was she going to get through the day without Jules? How would she live without him? She forced herself to think only about his leather slippers and went in search of them through the small apartment. She looked in the bathroom and, although she knew better, lifted the lid of the wicker laundry basket. Her heart was in her mouth. The totally pointless search for her dead husband’s slippers prevented her from bursting out of her skin. From overflowing her banks.
They stood neatly in line under the set table, directly under his plate. This is where he must have felt the first, warning pressure from the hand in his back, Alice suspected. He must have hurried over to the sofa in his socks, before slipping over the edge of the abyss. She sat down in his chair, kicked off her own small mules, and stuck her feet into Jules’s leather boats. They received her in their warm interior just as she had received Jules in the past. The emotion surging through her legs and hips into her belly stopped her for a moment from getting up. But she recovered and shuffled to the living room, where she sat down opposite him again.
“I’ll put your slippers on right away, and then I’m going to have breakfast,” she said to his surprised face. “For the last time, I’ll drink your coffee. And I need to think, now that you don’t do that for me anymore.”
She leaned down and the muscles in her upper legs tightened painfully. But it had to be done.
“Come on, don’t let me do all the work,” she urged Jules. His left heel fitted snugly in the hollow of her right hand.
But his lifeless leg was heavy as lead. Neither his knee nor his foot would bend. Alice refused to accept defeat. She lowered herself onto her knees on the narrow strip of carpet between the table and his legs, and wrenched and wriggled until at last the two slippers were on Jules’s feet. On an impulse, she slid her hands into his pant legs and took hold of Jules’s legs. Her caress reached up to his bony knees. His calves breathed coolness, as if he had walked barelegged through the evening air. She lifted the hem of his pants and glanced at the bluish white shadows that gave his skin the colour of skim milk. The same colour as hers. She abruptly withdrew her hands from Jules’s legs and buried them in her pockets. In the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of coffee and spread a slice of bread with apricot jam. She ate, stirred, and swallowed. She looked at the patch of bleached world outside and once again heard a marching brass band growing louder in the distance. Alternating short and long scraping by someone clearing the snow from the sidewalk. At least she wouldn’t fall on her face when she went shopping later. Did she have to go shopping today? Would she ever have to go shopping again? She couldn’t imagine herself alone between the supermarket shelves, without Jules stage-managing things. A nervous little laugh rose in her throat.
*
What was she to do? Call a doctor? Herman? He must have gone to work already. Then she would get Aimée, his wife, on the line. Alice resolutely shook her head. Herman had to find out from her that his father had died. Not in a roundabout way. Or was Aimée not a roundabout way? She got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. It helped to keep down the panic that started fluttering again. Just below her stomach this time.
She opened the refrigerator door and remembered, rather than saw, the contents. They were going to have lamb chops today, with rosemary and garlic. Jules loved them. He had put them into the supermarket cart yesterday without consulting