Various Miracles Read Online Free Page B

you should make an attempt to speak and read the language of that country. The last time she allowed herself to buy a
Herald Tribune
was in 1968, the week of Trudeau’s first election.
    The young man with the broken legs was moaning in his sleep. “I hope he doesn’t go on like this all night,” she said. “You won’t get any sleep at this rate.”
    “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
    “Do you think we should still plan to go over to Aigues Mortes?” she asked, naming the place we try to visit every summer. Aigues Mortes is, as many people have discovered, an extraordinary medieval port with a twelfth-century wall in near-perfect condition. It has become a habit with my wife and me to go there each year and walk around this wall briskly, a distance of two kilometers. After that we take a tour through the Tower of Constance with an ancient and eccentric guide, and then we finish off the afternoon with a glass of white wine in the town square.
    “It wouldn’t feel like a holiday if we didn’t do our usual run to Aigues Mortes,” my wife said in a rather loud cheerful voice, the sort of voice visitors often acquire when they come to cheer the sick.
    The man with the broken legs began to moan loudly and, after a minute, to sob. My wife went over to him and asked ifshe could do anything for him. His eyes were still closed, and she leaned over and spoke into his ear.
    “Am I dead?” he asked her in English. “Did you say I was dead?”
    “Of course you aren’t dead,” she said, and smiled over her shoulder at me. “You’re just coming out of the anesthetic and you’re not dead at all.”
    “You said I was dead,” he said to her in clear carrying British tones. “In French.”
    Then she understood. “No, we were talking about Aigues Mortes. It’s the name of a little town near here.”
    He seemed to need a moment to think about this.
    “It means
dead waters,”
my wife told him. “Though it’s far from dead.”
    This seemed to satisfy him, and he drifted off to sleep again.
    “Well,” my wife said, “I’d better be off. You’ll be wanting to get to sleep yourself.”
    “Yes,” I said, “that damned anesthetic, it’s really knocked me for a loop.”
    “Shall I leave you the
Herald Tribune}”
she asked, “or are you too tired to read tonight?”
    “You take it,” I told her, “unless there’s any Canadian news in it.”
    That’s another thing we don’t like about the
Herald Tribune
. There’s hardly ever any news from home, or if there is, it’s condensed and buried on a back page.
    She sat down again on the visitor’s chair and drew her cardigan close around her. In the last year she’s aged, and I’m grieved that I’m unable to help her fight against the puckering of her mouth and the withering away of the skin on her upper arms. She went through the paper page by page, scanning theheadlines with a brisk professional eye. “Hmmm,” she said to herself in her scornful voice.
    “Nothing?” I asked.
    “Well, here’s something.” She folded back the page and began to read. “Gilles Villeneuve is dead.”
    “Who?”
    “Gilles Villeneuve. You know, the racing driver.”
    “Oh?”
    “Let’s see. It says Canadian racing driver, killed in practice run. Et cetera. Always claimed racing was dangerous and so on, said a year ago that he’d die on the track.” She stopped. “Do you want to hear all this?”
    “No, that’s enough.” I felt the news about Gilles Villeneuve calmly, but I hope not callously. I’ve never really approved of violent sports, and it seems to me that people foolish enough to enter boxing rings or car races are asking for their own deaths.
    “It’s sad to die so young,” my wife said as if required to fill the silence I’d left.
    The young man in the next bed began to sputter and cough, and once again my wife went over to see if she could do anything.
    “You mustn’t cry,” she said to him. She reached in her bag