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Joy
better understand this man.
“It is not by commenting
on the step of the man in a
hospital corridor that you
will understand him better,”
shoots my lawyer and I’m not
sure if he is right.
Seated beside the young
woman in the red glasses
is another juror, older,
and whose face intrigues
me. She fixes on me yet
I don’t see her eyes. You
could say she is constantly
chewing something, looking
at her cheeks. I think of a
grasshopper. Yes, that’s it,
that absence of expression,
those muscles under her
cheeks like legs searching to
unfold—a grasshopper.
The judge apologizes to the
doctor and urges him to
continue.
- You know, during a long
hospitalization
like
that
of Mr. Solaro’s mother,
moments are not always so
difficult, happy either. Finally,
it is an everyday life that is
established, with its highs
and its lows…
- We understand… But
it would be possible to
interpret this walk that you
have described as airy and
cheerful as revealing a form
of insensibility… What do you
think?
From where I am, I can’t
see the doctor’s face, that’s
probably intentional. To me,
he seems larger and more
hunched over than ever, with
his shoulders in the shape of
a circumflex.
- That is not at all what I
wish to say, the doctor cut in
with authority. My lengthy
experience as a doctor
permits me to affirm that
it is impossible to establish
a correlation between an
interior state and its exterior
manifestation. I am simply
saying that he had a particular