Get Well Soon - Softcover

Born in Bordeaux in 1957, Marie-Sabine Roger has been writing books for both adults and children since 1989. Soft in the Head was made into a 2010 film, My Afternoons with Margueritte, directed by Jean Becker, starring Gerard Depardieu. Get Well Soon won the Prix des lecteurs de l'Express in 2012 and will be published by Pushkin Press in 2017.

Frank Wynne is an award-winning translator from French and Spanish. He has won the IMPAC Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Scott Moncrieff Prize. He translated Marie-Sabine Roger's Soft in the Head. He has also translated a number of Spanish and Latin American authors, including Tomás Eloy Martínez, Isabel Allende, Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Tomás Gonzalez, whose In the Beginning Was the Sea is published by Pushkin Press.

I don’t like to big myself up, but by the time I was,
maybe, six or seven, I’d already had a crack at a bunch
of things in terms of committing crimes and stuff that’s illegal
by law. Aggravated robbery, sexual assault and battery,
blackmail and extortion...
The sexual assault and battery involved snogging Marie-
José Blanc. She kept her teeth clenched so I didn’t exactly
get very far. But it’s the thought that counts.
I’d commit aggravated robbery every Saturday after
rugby: I’d blag sweets and stuff from the littler kids. I’d smack
them about a bit in the changing rooms. Sometimes I’d show
mercy to one of them. I’ve got a bit of Robin Hood in me.
If you want to know about the extortion, just ask my
brother. He used me as a bad example with his kids when
they were young. Don’t grow up like your uncle, or you’ll
have me to deal with. In my defence, I have to say that if he
had nothing to be ashamed of, he wouldn’t have emptied his
piggy bank and handed me the cash. To guilt-trip someone,
they have to be guilty.
People called me “The Terror.” I thought that was pretty cool!
I felt like I was destined for greatness.

Back then, there were five and a bit of us living at
home: my parents, my kid brother and me, pépé Jean
and my dead mémé Ginou.
My paternal grandparents had died in a dumb accident
when my father was only eight, refusing to give way, it
was my grandmother’s fault, she never saw the point of
stop signs.
My father was brought up by his grandparents, his mother’s
parents: pépé Jean, still very much alive and kicking at the
time I’m talking about, and mémé Ginou in her cremation
urn out in the garage.
I found it difficult to imagine how he must have felt,
heading back to school the day of the accident, when he
realized his folks were never coming home again. At the time,
he could have thought he was finally free to live his life: no
more bare-arse whipping for every little slip-up. Freedom.
Total freedom.
But listening to him talk about his childhood, I could
tell that there are some kinds of freedom which fuck up
your life more surely than a whole bunch of restrictions.
Based on that, it didn’t seem all that tempting, getting to
be an orphan. I was quite fond of my parents, despite the
fact that they were parents, with all the shortcomings that
implies authority-wise. I was particularly fond of my father. I
thought he was well cool, and not just because he had biceps
thicker than most people’s thighs. He was a strong guy, in
every sense. Feet firmly planted in his size elevens. He had
no shortage of opinions, though he didn’t have much else.
He was a bigmouth, a bruiser, but the kind of guy who had
to get out the hankies at weddings and christenings and
called my mother “my little love bundle” and didn’t give a
toss if people laughed, and was never afraid to say to her
“I love you”.
The man I most probably wanted to be.
Even as a little kid, I could tell the power he had over people
from the way they would always say to me:
“Oh, your father! Your father... He’s really somebody!”
He was so good at being somebody that, next to him, I
felt like nobody.
Personally, I would have preferred a father who was a bit
more ordinary. It would have made it easier to leave the nest.
The worst thing about it was that I was the eldest, I was
the standard-bearer. My brother brought himself up without
bothering anyone, he was blessed. He was the youngest, the
second child. The perpetual runner-up in the human race.
I was the one they were pinning their hopes on.
I still remember the way they looked at us, our neighbours,
our cousins, and every man jack. The sliding glance
from my-father-the-hero to his snot-nosed-shit-stirring brat.
The sad, incredulous faces that silently said:
“How is it even possible? How can a guy like this father
a kid like that?”
I probably worked out pretty early that I could never fill my
father’s boots and in order to survive I’d have to find some
different footwear.
I made every effort to be as much of a pain in the arse
as possible and the most creative arsehole. Unfortunately, I
had no real vices: for all my pretence at being a hoodlum,
underneath I was a sweet kid.
I wished I could be a Mafioso, a bad guy, a bastard.
Actually, I was an arse-wipe. A two-bit moron with no
ambition.
And to top it all, my father would always lay a hand on
my shoulder and say:
“He’s a complete dunce, but he’s a good kid. I’m sure
he’ll go far anyway...”
That was probably his way of showing he believed in me.
But to my ears anyway sounded a lot like a despairing in
spite of everything.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since
then. And if I didn’t drown, I’d have to say I came
pretty close. A few days ago, I was fished out of the Seine
just in the nick of time.
Two feet from the bank, to be precise, but that’s more
than far enough to sink into the mud and float to the surface
a couple of weeks later, limp and soggy as the hunks
of bread people throw to the ducks.
They cleared out my bronchial tubes, put various bits of
me in plaster. I had clearly ricocheted off the bridge. Botched
suicide, drunken binge, mugging? Everyone had a theory.
I was in a coma, so I could hardly voice an opinion.
I woke up in intensive care with multiple trauma, which
sounds pretty impressive, watched over by a concernedlooking
cop. The sort of kid my father might have spared,
even on a day of political unrest. He was a young guy, a
decent sort, with huge, sad antelope eyes and a three-day
beard he’d probably been growing for three months.
He seemed completely overawed. My charisma, obviously.
But maybe the chest drain, the oxygen mask and all
the huge tangle of wires to keep me monitored had something
to do with it too.
This junior cop was a young thirty-five, he had a black
leather jacket and a black leather notebook with the face of
Chewbacca printed on the spine. He could have been my
son, if I’d ever procreated.
When I opened my eyes, I did it like a drowning man
desperately trying to catch his breath. Then again, I had
drowned, or as good as, so that probably explains it.
I wondered what I was doing here, feeling a vague
uneasiness over the general anaesthesia and the unpleasant
sensation of not knowing where I began and ended. Part
of my mind was panicked, racing in every direction, trying
to get the lie of the land, where the fuck am I? Am I still in
one piece? Can I move?
The other part could not tear itself from the face of this
strange guy leaning over me, too close, who was whispering
so low that I could hardly hear a thing. The words seemed
to come from far away, his voice sounded weird, much
too slow.
Eventually, I managed to catch the phrase:
“... any idea what might have happened to you? Because,
right now, we’ve made no progress in our investigation...”
Then, studying the oxygen mask, he added:
“Just a yes or no will do. Do you remember what
happened?”
I dimly shook my head, just enough to set the ceiling
spinning and the mattress lurching. Sorry. I had no idea
how I’d got there.
He asked me another question, one that took some time
to percolate. Before I closed my eyes, I shook my head again.
No: I had not tried to put an end to my life.
I’ve no wish to kill myself.
Time will take care of that bit of business.