Stifling heat. But I would like to get out. It has been weeks, perhaps months, since I last left the hospital grounds for my wheelchair ride on the promenade along the shore. Last time it was still winter. Icy gusts whipped up clouds of sand, and the few thickly muffled strollers leaned purposefully into the wind. Today I would like to see Berck in summer attire, to see the beach—which was deserted all winter—packed with carefree July crowds. To reach the street from Sorrel, one has to cross three parking lots, whose rough, uneven surface sorely tries the buttocks. I had forgotten how grueling this route was, with its puddles and its potholes, its cars inconsiderately parked on the sidewalks.
And then at last the sea. Beach umbrellas, sailboats, and a human rampart of swimmers complete the postcard effect. A vacation sea, gentle and unthreatening. Nothing like the steel reflection visible from the hospital terraces. And yet these are the same troughs, the same swells, the same misty horizon.
We thread our way through a moving forest of ice-cream cones and crimson thighs. Easy to imagine licking a drop of vanilla from young, sun-reddened skin…No one pays me any real attention. Wheelchairs are as commonplace at Berck as Ferraris at Monte Carlo, and poor dislocated wheezing devils like me are everywhere. This afternoon, Claude (the young woman to whom I am dictating this book) and Brice are with me. I have known Claude for two weeks, Brice for twenty-five years. It is strange to hear my old partner in crime telling Claude about me. My quick temper, my love of books, my immoderate taste for good food, my red convertible—nothing is left out. Like a storyteller exhuming the legends of a lost civilization. "I didn't realize you were like that," says Claude. My present life is divided between those who knew me before and all the others. What kind of person will those who know me now think I was? I do not even have a photo to show them.
We stop at the top of a big stairway that goes down to the beach bar and to a long line of pastel-colored cabanas. The stairs remind me of the entrance to the Porte d'Auteuil metro station in Paris. I used to climb them as a child when returning from the old Molitor swimming pool, my eyes red with chlorine. The pool was demolished a few years ago. As for stairs, they are now just dead ends for me.
"Want to turn back?" asks Brice. I protest, shaking my head vigorously. No question of turning around until we have reached our real goal. We move quickly past an old-fashioned wooden carousel, whose shrieking calliope pierces my eardrums. We pass a well-known hospital character we call "Fangio." Tall, dark-haired, athletic-looking, Fangio is rigid as a poker. Unable to sit, he is permanently condemned to either a vertical or a horizontal position. He gets about at amazing speed, lying flat on his stomach on a vehicle he operates himself, parting the crowds with yells of "Look out—here comes Fangio!" I know who he is, but who is he really? I have no idea. Finally we reach the farthest point of our journey, the very end of the promenade. I have not insisted on coming all this way just to gaze at the flawless seascape. I have come to gorge on the aromas emanating from a modest shack by the path leading away from the beach. Claude and Brice bring me to a halt downwind. My nostrils quiver with pleasure as they inhale a robust odor—intoxicating to me but one that most mortals cannot abide. "Ooh!" says a disgusted voice behind me. "What a stench!"
But I never tire of the smell of french fries.