White is Black could be read as a memoir or an autobiography in disguise. It is a bit of that, and a true novel at the same time. If you regard it as another medical memoir, in the vein of âThis is Going to Hurtâ, it hurts much more.
It talks about life support withdrawal in the snake pit of an Intensive Care unit, Respiratory Medicine as a noble specialty and an infamous trade, trysts, crooks, assassins, a dog who enjoyed ice skating, Rory Gallagher, Alessandro Scarlatti, scorching hatred, and a life of an indecent doctor.
White is Black could be read as a memoir or an autobiography in disguise. It is a bit of that, and a true novel at the same time. If you regard it as another medical memoir, in the vein of âThis is Going to Hurtâ, it hurts much more.
It talks about life support withdrawal in the snake pit of an Intensive Care unit, Respiratory Medicine as a noble specialty and an infamous trade, trysts, crooks, assassins, a dog who enjoyed ice skating, Rory Gallagher, Alessandro Scarlatti, scorching hatred, and a life of an indecent doctor.
âI did not know other things.â He often repeated this sentence. I had been his patient for a long time. Fortunately, he did not kill me. Our meetings quickly drifted away from my respiratory condition. He confided in me, lavishly. Nobody else seemed to be deeply interested in him. âAll is true.â He repeated that as well, but he was certainly exaggerating. He liked to make up a story, to blow it up, to embellish; that was his childish side. He did not try to hide his mediocrity. He coated it a little, out of self-consciousness and out of shame. I am not sure he ever played on the piano any of the pieces he sprinkled over his memories. He led the life of an ordinary physician who dreamt of being better than he was. Was it proper and useful to pay attention to this rambling chronicle and, according to his wish, to translate it (my mother was French)? As a construction engineer by trade, I could not add any literary dimension, which he would probably have appreciated. Amiens Hospital informed me of his passing and sent his exercise books and a green notebook to my address in N, the city where he practised. What follows is a debt of trust, a blend of friendship, compassion andâan endangered feelingâpity. Barry
People of the profession who might recognise themselves in this account, rest assured that you are beyond words.
1 Memory Jumble
I would have preferred to avoid all that, the scandal, the hatred, the stigma, but it was stronger than me. I was born a coward and a warrior, inoffensive and venomous. Arenât we all? I had pondered this story for a long time, perhaps too long. Should it have been forgotten? It was a Sunday in autumn, a day of respite, a blank in my diary, no goal, no dream, nearly extinct. I came to a decision. The sky was clear after three days and three nights of drizzle. I was sitting in front of a steaming cup of black coffee in a bar overlooking the market place. The tarpaulins were down. I was ending my career in a cold city in the east of England. I had already spent fifteen years in this hole. Long enough to judge the place. The general hospital, the girls, the London train and the Theatre Royal: everything was antiquated, like me. My cup was almost empty. My memories were as clear as the blue of the sky. Had it been raining; I would not have started writing.
I was taught the arts of respiratory support in a venerable hospital in Paris, in the 20th arrondissement. After my training, I spent fifteen years roaming the wastelands of the living dead, sporting my white coat like a would-be Don Quixote in his tin can armour. During most of that time, I used to sleep well. I always managed to get back on my feet the next day until that early morning, I lost my last fight. I understood. I limped back to the locker-room, battered. I stopped all that. I accepted.
A forty-year-old woman who slogged away in a kitchen foil factory had been transferred to our unit. Within a couple of weeks, she had become more and more breathless because of a rare condition; a viscous, pearly-grey matter was flooding her lungs. In an attempt to cure her, we washed the lungs via the bronchi with a tepid saline solution. The daily procedure, under general anaesthetic, lasted about forty minutes, until we could bring back a clear, transparent liquid. Well, at the time we knew of no other treatment. One or two weeks of this management would decide the matter-it was 50/50.
Before being sedated for the first session, she whispered to me with an apprehensive smile: âI hope Iâll see you again when I wake up.â Except for her first name, Henriette, I cannot remember anything physically specific about her. A self-effacing woman whose passing never stopped haunting me. She died of septic shock at the end of the fifth session, at 6 am on the last day of winter. It had dropped to freezing during the night. Outside the sky was made of ice, indifferent. I was sitting on the lino opposite the bed, facing our useless machines. Her small feet were sticking out of the rumpled sheets. The pipes and wires of our devices looked like the arms of a resting octopus, sated. Our team had worked flawlessly. Alveolar Proteinosis (the medical term for this condition) is not easily vanquished.
The nurse and the care assistant tidied the room. They prepared the dead. They combed her hair. Their sadness and their compassion imbued each gesture. I had a coffee in the nursing staff office. I phoned her husband around nine. He arrived quickly with their seven-year-old son, the same age as mine. Father and son merged into a single person. They wept silently. Would another team have succeeded? I had heard of a centre in OregonâŠI lost confidence in myself, in everything, profoundly. It was becoming much too personal.
During my training at the hĂŽpital de MĂ©nilmontant, as the old residents of this populous area called it, we used to work Saturdays: market day along the pavement opposite the administrative block and A&E. Rue de la Chine was almost always sunny on those days. I would often buy a slice of custard tart before going up to the department. I had three mistresses: a sister, a nurse, and an assistant nurse, a balanced representation of the Health Service.
The first one brought me her exotic perfection. She carried me off to the West Indies without leaving Paris, until the day when a certain Roland, a Belgian jeweller she had met on a train, diverted her with a pair of emerald earrings. The second one, a slightly plump nurse with frog-green eyes, carried me over the roofs of the 11th arrondissement hanging from her breasts that were like two hot-air balloons. Her blonde hair was a shower of gold. The third, MichĂšle, was more ordinary in appearance but I was crazy about her cherry-juice. She had passed forty. I had to climb over dustbins to visit her in her tiny one-room attic flat on the corner of Rue dâAboukir and Rue RĂ©aumur. Her skin was sweet and sticky like the icing on a coffee profiterole. Her hair was short, black, and coarse, and she had a pointed nose. On a humid spring evening, I complained about the dinner. âIf you were Mickey Rourke, Iâd have prepared quail with grapes for you,â was her cutting reply. On Bastille Day, it was her turn to complain about my lack of enthusiasm in bed. Saved by the growing rumbling of the fighter jets that crowned the military parade, I ripped off the sheet that was covering us, ran to the window, opened it wide and hollered in the pilotsâ direction: âFly to my rescue, lads! This woman needs you!â She chucked me out, but that was not the last word. She still wanted me to take her to a particular restaurant in the Stock Exchange district to eat carp. We never set foot there because I am stingy, I do not like carp and I did not like her enough. MichĂšleâor Mimi, after her Bohemian lodgingâwas addicted to a creamy cake called âThe Well of Loveâ that you could only get in a certain pĂątisserie on a seedy street. The whole of the quartier was seedy.
I have forgotten the first names of the two other mistresses. My memory has not respected the Parisian Health Service hierarchy.
When I was not on call, I would leave the department where I was learning so much around 9 pm. I used to walk from Place Gambetta to Place de la Nation (a couple of miles), just for the pleasure of it. I never dreamed of restaurants or of life as a couple. I was discovering my life as a man. My selfishness was limitless.
_____
At nine years old, I saw myself dying soon in the Algerian war, or from TB or polio. My first encounter with the science of medicine happened during that alarming time by virtue of an illustrated family encyclopaedia in two volumes with a dark green embossed leather binding. My mother had purchased it. She did not trust our local doctors. Two pages of the chapter on mental illness regularly commanded my attention. In a Spanish asylum, a hirsute dwarf repeatedly made drawings in pen of elaborate hearses drawn by four plumed horses. A reproduction of one fascinated me in its disturbing beauty. On the next page, a black-and-white photo of the unfortunate inmate showed a panic-stricken buffoon who inspired more pity than fright. Why was he locked up? Was he not an artist? Was medicine a conspiracy? Did mental illness exist? Finally, I only felt comfortable barricaded in my bed, underneath a fortress of blankets, with my pocket-torch, my music-hall, my imaginary audience, and my one and only lead soldier, Henri IV. We won all our nightly duels. Sometimes, I dreamt of the dwarf. He had escaped from his monstrous doctors. We were riding one of his hearses. The horses were strawberry roans. We were roving desolate plains, at dawn. He was smiling. We were the same size. It was difficult to say who was who.
_____
My past is coming back in such a mess, like an unmade jigsaw. The rain sneaks in between the roof tiles of the bungalow. My joints groan. I must not let the season wash away my memories.
_____
A long time ago, between Christmas and New Year, I left the bosom of my old Parisian hospital with some little glory. I had been entitled to my âburialâ. I submitted to this ritual with a mixture of joy and sadness. I had completed my training and I was proud of having won the recognition of my peers, for this ceremony was only granted to the most distinctive of the trainees. After a shaming speech, an edifying parody of my pitiful techniques of flirtation, my quirks, and my failures, by the colleague who knew me best, a drinker but a bright doctor, deceptively distant and as observant as hell, I had to strip naked in the middle of our refectory. I felt less embarrassed at displaying myself naked than I did during the catalogue that had preceded it. A pine coffin adorned with four lighted candles awaited me, mounted on chocks. Getting stretched out in it without rocking the whole thing was another tricky and ridiculous moment awaited impatiently by the audience. The box wobbled, the chocks trembled, the candles flickered, the audience hooted louder and louder, but I installed myself without damage and was rewarded with a round of applause. Lots of colleagues came to piss down on me, including on my face, before the procession to the âCourt of Dishonourâ and across the wards where I had worked. A girl placed a kiss on my forehead, but I did not recognise her in the confusion.
The pharmacistsâ orchestra struck up and played the Danse Macabre very competently on three violins, a trumpet, a clarinet, a drum, and a pair of cymbals accompanied by a choir of the senior registrars. I was soaking in the cooling piss. I looked at the stars and was transported towards my new life. I was king. My pallbearers in white coats threw the coffin up in the air to the clash of cymbals. The mingled piss spattered me like little pieces of gold, all sorts of coins, coins of all sorts of currencies.
I was on duty the Christmas Eve preceding my wonderful âburialâ. We had hung garlands all over the intensive care unit, even above the patients, between the drip-stands and the ventilators. Our ten beds were occupied by HIV-positive patients. The epidemic was raging. In 1986, they were all condemned. We had reduced the sedation, raised the heads of the beds. A Polish nurse, Tomasz, had brought a Paderewski record and we played it in the background. The MĂ©nilmontant Hospital was a very musical place in my time. We circulated among the beds sketching out dance steps, we entertained our hosts with party-horns, confetti and pulling funny faces under our false moustaches and garishly coloured pointed hats. Those who were least unconscious smiled. We danced; we shared a bottle of RosĂ© de Provence. Tomasz turned the music down at the end of the Andante of the piano concerto. A gentle atmosphere reigned. Nobody died that Christmas Eve. At midnight, we presented each other with trinkets. At two oâclock, everything was cleared away. The intensive care unit looked like the intensive care unit again, paradoxically, because none of our hosts would pull through.
_____
And why do so many of us cling desperately to our dogâs life if the hereafter is the land of everlasting wonders, as our religions suggest? Because nobody really believes it. The arts of forced life support still have many days to go.
_____
My memories are dancing in my head. I am recalling a bit of everything at once. Which route shall I follow?
_____
Five years later, I had set up my own unit. I was living my heroic times. First of May, end of the morning: we had admitted a fellow of seventy, cachectic, his skin greenishgrey, his eyes white, he seemed dead already. I could feel a faint irregular pulse. Retired electrician, active smoker of thirty roll-ups a day, indefatigable drinker of plonk, a widower. A large left-sided pleurisy darkened half of the chest X-Ray. I insert a drain into the thorax, no sedation, minimal local anaesthesia, beneath the armpit. A stinking pus gushes out. The pasty brown fluid keeps flowing, spills over the kidney dish on the bed before I have time to connect the drain to the container on the floor. The nurse is on the verge of passing out. The stench of that fluid is hardly bearable. We try not to breathe. We tighten our stomachs. The assistant nurse opens the window as wide as possible. Her name is Juliette; a short middle-aged steely blonde with a nice figure, the strength of an elephant, the softness of a woman and the readiness always to make the right move. View over the bungalows, a few treetops and the housing estates, the sky is white and blue, the spring is glorious. Somewhere, some normal people are selling and buying lilies of the valley on street corners. Itâs mid-day.
The dying pensioner recovered. He returned two months later to give us a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers. I did not immediately recognise Amédée in his suit. He had put on six kilos. Sometimes, respiratory medicine is beautiful.
During August, in the same side-room, we treated a cor anglais player from the National Orchestra. A handsome man, with sparkling eyes: forget-me-not blue with silvery glints. He had consulted surgeon after surgeon in an effort to find a cure for his laryngeal cancer. Too much tobacco, alcohol and bad genes had destroyed this forty-four-year-old musician, one of the rare male blonds on the Plateau, the dilapidated Moorish suburb of the City of Light. Tracheostomised, the dressing of his cannula bloodstained, the skin of his neck, burnt and hardened by radiotherapy, changed into three flaps of cardboard, his clear bright eyes simply asked: why me?
On the last Sunday of the month, now in respiratory failure, he made a firm gesture with his hand, meaning he did not want to be connected to the ventilator for the night. His eyes of silver and his always charming smile told the nurse on duty that he wanted to stop the journey, his way. Towards midnight, he stretched out his neck. Both carotid arteries cracked simultaneously. The blood spurted for a moment in the silence and the darkness of his room. He neither could, nor would, have cried out. I think he chose a Sunday night because he wanted to start afresh playing at an outdoor venue on the following week.
_____
Again, I see myself on this human river that carries along the hopelessness of the sick, a sprig of lily of the valley floating on sickening streaks of black and red blood. In my life-raft, I am so often grotesque in my attitudes, my decisions, my reflections-yes, grotesque, hardly human.
_____
I began my medical studies in Lille. My parents had thrown me out of the house as soon as school was finished, before the âbacâ results came out. They had regarded me as an evil-minded rat since a deplorable incident when I was eight years old. We were living in Calais, in a narrow street near the port. We had a housemaid, Judithâthe feminine form of Judas. She was a dozen years older than me; I think she was a brunette; I found her very attractive. I imagined that her breasts were as firm as elbows, and I wanted her to kiss my hair. I promised her that we would go on a round-the-world trip when my parents were dead. I would soon be in possession of my inheritance because I was going to pour poison in their soup from a powdered lethal mushroom. Judith told them of my plan, word for word. My mother, her face twisted in a sardonic expression, informed me that the girl had a moustache, bandy, hairy legs like an old horse, and that I would be the first to die. Then my father beat me hard with a whip and with his fists, which strengthened my hatred for them. That is the price you pay for not having read the Book of Judith in the Bible. A new housemaid appeared, Elise, an old hag who stank of pee, wore a grey overall and round, metal-framed glasses. Endless hairs grew on her chin. She kept losing grey hairs from her skull into the soup tureen. My father got rid of her after choking on a tuft that had dropped from her loose bun into the potato soup. Shortly after Elise, my parentsâ shoeselling business went bankrupt. The firing of Elise coincided with the last flight of the storks over Calais and the end of the era of housemaids.
Like all poverty-stricken couples, my parents argued in the evenings, more violently at the end of the month. My mother would leave the flat holding her golden cigarette-case. She would go walking round the deserted streets of our shabby district, swaying her bottom Italian-fashion, to frighten my father. He would stay at home, impassive, sullen, like a block of lead. I would run after Mum, crying, and persuade her to come back. At nine years old, no words sounded more terrifying to my ears than divorce, boardingschool or being taken into care. They ruined my dreams, those bastards. Judith was no accident. My mother loved the singer Gilbert BĂ©caud, his stupid songs and his ghastly polka-dot ties. My father used to read the headlines in La Voix du Nord. We fitted into the neighbourhood.
I am not sure our shoe shop, âThe Fashionable Footâ, held out for more than three years. We used to wear some of the cheap shoes we sold. Mine were light brown, fur-lined, with a zip in front and a rubber sole that would outlive any other part of the shoe. They kept my feet warm and moist. Each year, in April, the Chamber of Commerce organised a âCommercial Fortnightâ. Council labourers hung up loudspeakers and banners across the shopping streets in an attempt to lend a festive atmosphere to that depressing city. With every purchase over five thousand old francs (ÂŁ3.50), the shopkeepers would give the customer a light blue sealed envelope. One in a thousand contained a voucher for a nice prize. The first year of the âFortnightâ, you could win a Radiola transistor radio.
We received a pack of envelopes from the Chamber of Commerce. My mother immediately went up to the kitchen of the wretched flat we occupied above the shop. She boiled water in a stockpot and as we swam in a cloud of steam, she carefully unsealed each envelope. She garnered two winning blue vouchers. We waited three days before retrieving our transistor radios from an annexe at the town hall like a couple of lucky devils. My mother, looking ten years younger, carried a big red Radiola under each arm. We savoured the exquisite pleasure of triumphing by cheating. Our hatred of the whole world tasted like two coffee Ă©clairs. My father entirely approved of the opening of the envelopes: âWe are already dealing with their dirty feet; we are not going to give them a radio as well!â
The two radio sets stood out in the kitchen, on the sideboard, like trophies. Now, we could sing along with Gilbert BĂ©caud. With Julien Besançon, the voice of the final stages of the Algerian War on the Europe 1 radio channel, we were squatting down, huddled together against a wall riddled with bullet-holes, under a hail of machine-gun fire at Bizerte. The following year, we âwonâ vases and fruit bowls in blue and gold enamelled porcelain, not in the best taste. Mum would have stolen a bus, the Mona Lisa, to escape her mediocrity, to buy a house with a swimming pool, to be able to sit on the balcony of the theatre of existence. And what would she have gained? Apathetic, swollen, disillusioned, like one of the two courtesans, the one with a golden robe, by Carpaccio, gazing into the void; she would have attained the happiness of boredom.
After âThe Fashionable Footâ liquidation, we moved to another narrow street near the port, into a disused shop with its display window whitewashed. Big rats ran noisily around under the floor. I saw them everywhere. They were no worse than us. I imagined them as avatars of a herd of royalists who had not been able to embark for England at the time of the French Revolution. The rodents were the landlords of the cellar and the gutter, indifferent to rat-poison and contemptuous of traps. Each to his own territory. Neither my father nor the rats declared war on each other. We washed ourselves at the sink in the backyard. Franc by franc, my parents got back on their feet.
Saturday mornings during the cold season, they would sell fake sheepskin-lined leather jackets, Canadian style, under a tarpaulin in a sloping street near an old passage through the ramparts of Boulogne-Sur-Mer: The Gate of the Dunes. During the school holidays, they took me with them. On the journey there, I travelled in the back of the van, stretched out on the pile of jackets which had a nice leathery smell. On the way back, the pile had often been reduced by half and I would fall asleep during the journey. In the car, my parents smoked American cigarettes like the almost-wealthy. Whilst they were selling their wares, I was allowed to run free as far as the Tintelleries train station. I climbed up on the rusty footbridge that spanned the tracks, standing right in the middle, I waited for the Paris train, the âGolden Arrowâ, to pass through. At that moment, if I was lucky, the locomotive would blow its formidable whistle and I would disappear in a cloud of steam and coal smoke. That was magic.
According to the season, the Canadian-style leather jackets were followed by ruffled blouses, tartan skirts, striped shirts, and funny flecked jackets. A bigger van with three seats in the front, a flat on the second floor with a balcony, near the belfry, a black and white TV, a weekâs holiday in FrĂ©jus, not too far from the beach: we were becoming bourgeois. The memory of Judith was not erased from their memory. I was marked. In order to give me a better education (as they saidâ and, as they meant, to punish me), I was sent to boardingschool at the religious institution of Saint-Victor at Boulogne, on the âHill of the Last Farthingâ district, which I re-baptised âthe last of the last fartâ.
From the vast classroom on the third floor, which was shaped like an overturned barge, I had an unobstructed view over the docks, the dike and the Outreau steelworks.
_____
My life has passed so quickly, like the steam trains. I have become an old man. Respiratory medicine has aged me from the outside, but intensive care gave me muscles, concealed beneath the parchment.
_____
Three years after MĂ©nilmontant, in the heroic phase of my first campaigns on the Plateau, our young team was unbeatable. We had the best nurses and assistant nurses in the country. I had recruited the matron, an obese but incredibly active woman originally from Abbasanta in central Sardinia. A spinster of thirty who battled against her moustache, always dressed in black off-duty, with a fierce gaze and an easy smile, a devout Christian, determined, organised and morally straight, until the betrayal. I diverted her from the AverroĂšs Hospital, where the burden of the administrative role suffocated her caring spirit. A substantial salary increase helped as well. Not a single dying person dared expire here without permitting us to snatch them back from their fate. We could have resuscitated corpses after their autopsy. Of course, sometimes we had to resign ourselves, some had to stop living. Inside, everything had gone haywire: their death had gained possession of their vital circuits and severed them here and there. The irreparable corruption of the body, that mysterious ocean at dawn, opalescent, unnavigable. Were our battles beyond measure? Were we as competent as we thought? Had I not lost my senses by installing myself in that township of Fellaghas? What did I want to prove? Wasnât I looking like my mother? Seating myself on the balcony of the theatre of existence? No, not sitting, standing up, visible. I could no longer bear to work in the shadow of a department head. It was my pride that was at the heart of my decision. When the opportunity to set up my own unit presented itself, to put to the test what I had been taught, I did not lack courage. To create, to lead, to fight wearing a generalâs uniform, such was my ambition, my dream, my pride! Victim of my own nature, the bunker of Saint-Thomas Didymus on the corner of Rue des trois soeurs Dargesic and Avenue Najem Oulni, martyrs of the âResistanceâ, was my choice. I regret nothing.
I never found out who first named this private hospital Saint-Thomas Didymus. According to The Golden Legend, the Saint, with the help of God, gained the reputation of a great healer during his tribulations in India. On one dramatic occasion, he happened to be instrumental in the resurrection of a kingâs brother. The reference to Didymus, twin in Greek, could be due to some physical resemblance with Jesus Christ, the miracle maker. Had I not come to the right place? In those days, I believed in my hallucinations. I believed in myself. I grew fat, I still had my curly auburn hair with golden lights, all my teethâa detail that does not deceiveâand I let my beard grow to hide a receding chin. I believed myself to be on top of the world, in the most godforsaken suburb of Paris, the Plateau dâIgrale, from where, if I strained my eyes, two hundred kilometres to the north, I could see the âHill of the Last Farthingâ and its overturned barge, Saint-Victor. What a progression!
The beginning of a proper resuscitation is a silent ballet. Everyone knows their role. No bloodshed, no talk. We have a clock in our head. The second-hand ticks adagio, like our tamed heartbeat. On the wall-clock, only the minute-hand counts. Ali, fifty-nine, auto-mechanic in Bagnolet, about to retire, lifelong smoker, pneumonia. He is grey, loses consciousness, switches off. The paramedics slide him into his bed of last resort. We strip him quickly, with scissors, no mercy for his clothes. His sixteen-year-old daughter stands by the frosted glass door. One dying man in the middle of a bed. He smells of oil and cigarettes. I introduce a central line on the right side of the neck which goes down to the heart in order to deliver the lifesaving drugs; It takes less than two minutes. Barely ten more to intubate, start the mechanical breathing support, set up our electric syringes, fit the catheter, check the monitor for blood pressure, oxygen level. The hesitant heart. Ali looks a hundred years old. Each of our steps is imbued with grace. We are Kabuki theatre actors. We walk about like cranes on our high, wooden, felt-soled shoes. The senior nurse is wearing a turquoise silk moirĂ© kimono, her assistant, Juliette, in orangey-pink. The colours gleam like a kingfisherâs slowmotion flight. They have poked the traditional long needles through their chignons. The pings of the suturing needle and the blade hitting a stainless-steel kidney dish signal mission accomplished, at least at the start. Our scrubs undulate to the rhythm of âWholy Holyâ by Marvin Gaye. On âInner City Bluesâ, we move faster, our costumes dance with us. On the monitor, the electrocardiogram awakens, the oxygen level displays a winning number: 99. The room brightens up. Ali opens an astonished eye, his nicotine-stained index finger wavers: âGive me a cigarette.â As Pina Bausch says, âWe all dance, otherwise we are done for.â The departing life makes way for artificial life; life becomes living again. Checkmate to death.
I speak to Aliâs daughter in the corridor. I look at her admiringly. She is beautiful. I imagine them reunited. At Saint-Thomas Didymus, it was our joy, our goal, our raison dâĂȘtre: resuscitation. Yes, resuscitation. Profession: demiurge. The son of Blida went home, this time. During the battle, we lost his upper denture. Le Plateau is a thievesâ kitchen.
_____
In one of his apocalyptic novellas, Jack London describes how a certain Emil Gluck, as a result of abusive treatment during an unhappy childhood, became the enemy of the whole world. Saint-Victor was a factory for the production of Emil Glucks by the dozen. The Father Superior, who was called Bernard after that Cistercian bastard, had been engendered by his own evil institution. I am not joking. These diabolical priests, unable to reproduce normally, hatch out there through a biological phenomenon limited to few other animal species, like worms, scorpions, snakes, and rats of the cloth: parthenogenesis. How had Jews dared to send their son, circumcised by virtue of his name, to a Gluck factory? My deportation to Saint-Victor did not turn me into a good lad.
I was expelled at the end of the second year for having surreptitiously thrown my crap, wrapped in toilet paper, into a kitchen cauldron. I had also been peeing regularly into the beer bottles in the priestsâ refectory but they had not noticed anything. Those cassocks hid a hideous gang of rats, a completely different breed from the ones under our floor in Calais. Our teachers were divided in two sub-species: the spherical short baldies, more mannish, and the taller ones, shaped like isosceles triangles, more effeminate. I do not remember any inappropriate touching, but for brutality, insensitivity, and indifference, they showed us the way. Morning mass dragged on and on. Catechism, twice a week, did not operate on me. I vividly remember the painful sight of Saint Sebastianâs martyrdom, of which a large Renaissance painting reproduction had been taped on the wall, between the
Zann Karle Schmitt's White is Black is a mesmerizing blend of storytelling. The book delves into the realms of love, medicine, and ethical dilemmas. Meticulously untangling the complex tapestry of our past, it unveils the intricacies that mold our present.
This novel elaborately weaves the protagonistâs story, emphasizing his dedication to medicine. The author guides readers through his triumphs, obstacles, and moral principles. The story explores the laborious path the main character traverses while establishing his professional identity and the influence his vocation has on his life. The tale uncovers layers of deception, adorned with a sense of foreboding.
The narrative chronicles the characterâs development in a respiratory department, where patients face declining health. He dedicates himself to the chronically ill, who constantly confront death. The narrator struggles professionally as well as experiencing the emotional burden of loss. He acquires a profound understanding of the significance of nurturing relationships and cultivating a supportive environment.
The protagonist rationalizes his methodologies by offering comprehensive explanations of each of his cases. Despite occasionally utilizing euthanasia, his primary objective was to provide exceptional care to patients.
The protagonist finds solace within the realm of music, accompanying him through the fluctuations of his experience. His bond with his beloved piano enriches the narrative with emotive resonance.
The narrator has emotionless romantic encounters, intricately intertwined with his afflictions. He displays a cavalier attitude as he engages in extramarital affairs. Yet, his improper conduct toward patients leads to ethical violations. The ambiguity surrounding these transgressions accentuates his nonchalant demeanor.
The writer immerses the reader in an imaginative storyline and vivid surroundings. The ethical exploration of the plot adds depth, going beyond a mere story of personal triumph. The protagonistâs successes are illuminated, ultimately saving lives notwithstanding seemingly insurmountable obstacles. These glimpses of positivity stand out in contrast to bleak stories. His unpredictable mental condition captivates readers, enticing them to contemplate unresolved circumstances. While the novel's conclusion is compelling, the underlying thesis is obscured throughout its entirety.
This book is an exquisite option for those embarking on a voyage of self-reflection. It highlights the complexities of relationships and moral conflicts encountered by individuals and medical professionals. The author encourages readers to think critically about societal norms and analyze their actions. The characters' arduous choices unveil life's hues, where black and white blur into a kaleidoscope of gray.