The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Vegetable

“On June 8 it will be six months since my new life began. Your letters are accumulating on the dresser, your drawings on my wall, and since I cannot hope to answer each one of you, I have decided to issue these samizdat bulletins to report on my life, my progress, and my hopes. At first I refused to believe that anything serious had happened. In my semiconscious state following the coma, I thought I would shortly be back in my Paris stamping grounds, with just a couple of canes to help me along.”

Those were the first words of the first mailing of my monthly letter from Berck, which I decided in late spring to send to my friends and associates. Addressed to some sixty people, that first bulletin caused a mild stir and repaired some of the damage caused by rumor. The city, that monster with a hundred mouths and a thousand ears, a monster that knows nothing but says everything, had written me off. At the Café de Flore, one of those base camps of Parisian snobbery that send up rumors like flights of carrier pigeons, some close friends of mine overheard a conversation at the next table. The gossipers were as greedy as vultures who have just discovered a disemboweled antelope. “Did you know that Bauby is now a total vegetable?” said one. “Yes, I heard. A complete vegetable,” came the reply. The word “vegetable” must have tasted sweet on the know-it-all's tongue, for it came up several times between mouthfuls of Welsh rarebit. The tone of voice left no doubt that henceforth I belonged on a vegetable stall and not to the human race. France was at peace; one couldn't shoot the bearers of bad news. Instead I would have to rely on myself if I wanted to prove that my IQ was still higher than a turnip's.

Thus was born a collective correspondence that keeps me in touch with those I love. And my hubris has had gratifying results. Apart from an irrecoverable few who maintain a stubborn silence, everybody now understands that he can join me in my diving bell, even if sometimes the diving bell takes me into unexplored territory.

I receive remarkable letters. They are opened for me, unfolded, and spread out before my eyes in a daily ritual that gives the arrival of the mail the character of a hushed and holy ceremony. I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, discussing the meaning of life, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence. And by a curious reversal, the people who focus most closely on these fundamental questions tend to be people I had known only superficially. Their small talk had masked hidden depths. Had I been blind and deaf, or does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person's true nature?

Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark…I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship.

It will keep the vultures at bay.