Sodome et Gomorrhe, de Marcel Proust

I reread it again, now in French, and was so overwhelmed as the other times. Proust writes so perfectly, he has such an incredible grasp of people's feelings and such a mastery of words and language that one is always wondering how can someone convey these things so accurately. It's interesting how what he says about emotions, or homosexuality, can be so actual, it shows how human nature has changed so little in 100 years - but then, isn't the extraordinary insight of men like Montaigne or Marcus Aurelius a proof that it hasn't changed for many centuries? Anyway, it's always an immense pleasure to read Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu is definitely the book I would take to that desert island.

Clear Light of Day, by Anita Desai

This is a good book about family relationships, childhood and growing old, set in the fascinating period of the Partition of India and Pakistan. It's really well written, and it conveys a very impressive atmosphere, which is something I always appreciate in a novel. I discovered this book through a list made by Salman Rushdie in some newspaper, and the recommendations of a favourite author are always worthwhile.

Goodbye to a sweet cat

On Christmas Eve, as calmly and sweetly as she always lived, she died - just stopped breathing while she was cuddling on my chest, like a candle that burns out. She was named Morgana, but coulnd't be more different from her namesake, that scheming and evil sorceress. Ever since she was brought into the house, she was the most nice and easy going cat one can imagine. I remember the day when my 10 year-old son came in with a couple of kittens and a school friend (for protection, I used to do the same, to bring along a friend when I wanted to ask something from my parents, hoping they would be more lenient in front of a third party...), saying triumphantly: "They are abandoned! We must rescue them!" - because recently he had asked me for another cat and I had told him we already had Cassandra, and we shouldn't be bringing more pets into the house unless we rescued some by chance... I tried: "So why won't your friend here take them home?", to which the said friend answered promptly: "My mother wouldn't allow!", and I said: "See? If his mother doesn't allow it, why should I?", to which my son immediately said: "Because you're sooo good!" Yep. he always knew how to trick me...

On the next morning, I got a phone call from an angry teacher - apparently, the kittens were not exactly "abandoned" or "rescued". They were the last ones from a litter a stray cat had had at the school, and that teacher had encouraged the kids to adopt them, but with previous parental permission. My son wanted them, and since I hadn't given the said permission, he decided to take matters in his hands. And then there was a little girl, who had honestly asked for her parents permission, and finally got it, and there were no kittens left because they had been stolen by my little lamb... But there were still no candidates for the last kitten, the female, if I allowed it, he could keep it. So, we gave the little male back and kept the female - Morgana - after a due scolding to the little brat - "I had to do something!".

So, she became her pet, and astonishingly they got along fine - I never would have thought a cat would bond with such a hyperactive and annoying kid, but she did, she loved him, he even taught her to give a high five and she eventually became a little like him: nice, easy going, fat, even using her smelly farts as a kind of secret weapon when she was annoyed... She was always the most sociable of all our cats, only in her old age would she sometimes hiss at a younger cat when he wanted to play and she wasn't in the mood.

For a time, she used to alternate the heat with the other female cat, so we used to have always a meowing and langorous cat about the house. Then she had a pyo-uterus and had to undergo surgery, after that she got fatter and quieter. She was pretty healthy until a couple of years ago, when she started to become incontinent and developed a weakness of her hind limbs. She probably had a myelospondiloarthropathy, but she had no pains, so I just let her be. By that time the little lamb had moved out, and she became increasingly attached to me, making my own cat very jealous, but she couldn't care less - she also reminded me of my son with that attitude. And then in the last few months she got thinner and weaker, until she stopped eating, and finally died, quietly and sweetly as she had lived. I miss her, but I think she had a good life and was a always a happy cat - what more can one wish?

Learning to live, every day

I don't remember where I read it, I think it was in the correspondence between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren when, moruning the end of their love affair, she wrote something like: "Like van Gogh, who had to learn how to live without one ear, so will I have to learn to live without your love, without a part of me." It must have been better stated than this; anyway, even if it is not a particularly well chosen example - after all, van Gogh killed himself later, even if it probably wasn't because of lacking an ear - but somehow this image struck me and stuck in my mind ever since. Because at the time I felt it described exactly how I had felt after my wife's death - I had lost a part of myself, namely my future, the future I had planned / envisioned. Of course one can question why I wouldn't be able to plan another future later, nothing concrete stopped me, but I just couldn't, since then I have been living in the present; having children didn't change that, because their future was (is) theirs, not mine.

Lately, I've been thinking about this, although in another, more selfless, context. Every day I deal with old and sick people, who have to learn how to live without a part of themselves - or several, literally speaking, when they lose limbs for instance. But the part I have been thinking of is mostly their autonomy, their independence. That kind of problem happens more and more as people age - whether they get kidney disease and have to be on dialysis or they have a stroke and become physically or mentally impaired. Very often I'm confronted with people who suffer from those losses, and who ask "how shall I go on living? Is it worth it? Shouldn't I just die?". Well, eventually I think it's each person's choice. As a physician, I try to preserve life and alleviate suffering, as an - in spite of all - optimist, I try to make people value what remains, what they have left. And most of the times, apart from the most terrible and desperate cases where suffering is indeed unbearable and there's no hope of alleviating, when I agree the best is to let Nature have its due, there really is something worthwhile left. Be it family, or friends, or a hobby, or anything one enjoys. Because usually one can learn how to live without an ear, or a wife, or a limb, or one's former autonomy. It's mostly a question of adaptation, and most people are extremely resilient, much more than they would imagine, even in very dire circumstances.

Which brings me to another literary reminiscence, the poem by Susan Coolidge I always think of in my moments of optimism, as I said before, when I think that, whatever hardships one must endure, this life is the only one gets, so one may as well try to make the better of it while it lasts:

New Every Morning

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.

So, let's begin again.

The Lover, by A. B. Yehoshua

This is the third book by Yehoshua I've read - bought one each time I went to Israel - and I liked it again very much. Yehoshua's writing is always excellent, it creates a characteristic rhythm, slow and enchanting. The story deals with love and family relationships, and if it has some weakness, I think it's when it tries to "explain" the lover's character, which I think that, as a catalyst for the action and the other character's feelings, should remain more undefined. But it's a very good book, even if not as good as the other two I've read by him - Mr. Mani and A Journey to the End of the Millenium.

Les Perroquets de la Place d'Arezzo, de Eric Emmanuel-Schmitt

I noticed this book in a bookshop in Quebec, and having read Monsieur Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran, and liked it very much, I was interested, so later I bought it and read it. It is a good book, about love and relationships, very readable, some times very sweet and sometimes funny, even if sometimes also a little annoying due to most of its many characters being somewhat stereotyped - there is also one that is clearly based on Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Sometimes you feel there are a little too many characters, and some of the scenes are not very believable, but it's a good read and most of the time you feel entertained in a good way, and it has an optimistic tone that leaves you glad.