A Season in Hell by Marilyn French
Some things were hard for me on this trip (for example, my bedroom was a flight of stairs up from the sitting room in my hotel, the bathroom on the floor below). I was a little slow; it was not easy for me to walk around the town. But my only serious problem arose from my vanity—I felt humiliated by the shakiness visible in my gait when I walked to the podium. In the end, I shrugged it off, telling myself it would disappear as I got stronger, that my difficulty was a result of muscle weakness from the coma.
Later in August, Gloria Beckerman and Perry Birnbaum, my old Hofstra friends, came to the Berkshire house for a couple of days. Candace made wonderful meals and was such a warm hostess that they both fell in love with her. The day they left, the kids appeared, and the next morning we took off for Maine.
This was Barbara and Rob’s idea. They love the beauty of the state and often camp out among the pine trees and hike along the coast. This year, they invited Jamie and me along. They knew I could not camp out, and consulting us all along, they planned our ten days, making reservations at bed-and-breakfasts. We went first to Freeport, where Jamie and Barbara indulged their love of shopping while Rob sighed and I expostulated about the boring sameness of the merchandise. We stopped to see Esther and Bob Broner at Deer Isle, where they go every August; they were having a big party that day, which we briefly joined. I was thrilled to see the coastline from their house: Bob had given me a sketch of it when I was ill, and I sometimes used it to visualize the ideal spot. Indeed, it was that.
Then we drove to Bar Harbor and did the usual tourist things—the whale watch, the boat trip around the coast, visits to the fishing villages, Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, a drive over Mount Cadillac, and dinner at the Jordan Pond Restaurant, where three of us ate lobster. Rob has never gotten over the time I cooked lobster at home, when he was eight or so. I put the lobsters in salt water in the sink, to keep them alive until dinner, and one crawled out. Rob saw it moving across the kitchen floor and understood that it was to be cooked alive. He has never eaten lobster since, and every time we did, he would cry out in a tiny falsetto, “I want to live! I want to live!”
From Bar Harbor we went to Moosehead Lake, which Jamie found barbaric. It was cold there, and our cabin was a bit primitive but faced the gorgeous lake. Jamie and Barbara had fun in a pedal boat, we took a trip on a small motorboat to study wildlife and on a large one to survey the extent of the lake. We ate one night at the Road Kill Café, whose menu inspired us for the next few days to compete in inventing disgusting names for roadkill dishes. Our competition, totally juvenile, amused us greatly.
During our return, we stayed overnight at a bed-and-breakfast in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a town that enchanted us. It had an old section, dating back only to the turn of the century but charming nevertheless; Strawberry Banke was a wonderful museum of houses from the original settlement saved from demolition, restored or made into architectural displays. Some of them are old dwellings and shops, some are almost mansions. In one two-family house, the house on the right was restored to its condition in the eighteenth century, as a shop and dwelling; the house on the left, equally old, had last been inhabited in the 1930s and was left with furniture and household items of that time. The general store also dated to the 1930s. These two buildings seized me, carried me almost into tears. I am rooted in the 1930s, and its artifacts carried me back to a childhood that, unhappy as it was, tugged at me.
Our idyll ended, alas: I had been transported—literally and figuratively—by the trip and hated to come home. But within a few days, I had guests: Michele and Ellen from Toronto. It was September now, no swimming, but the days were still soft and golden. When my guests left, I got to work reading page proofs for Our Father; then I returned to the history book. Over the weekend, my sweet nephew Ricky Smith and his wife, Julia, came up to take me out to dinner at a local restaurant, and we had a bubbly evening.
It was time to go back to New York. Candace drove me down, and we parted: she went back to her old life, and I was going to try to take care of myself. Of course, I still had Isabelle to do marketing and errands, but the rest I would have to undertake. Over the summer, I had progressed to the point where I could nervously take a shower alone (but not a bath), could lift items that were not heavy (not, for instance, a pot of cooked pasta), and could drive for half an hour—not more. I could work at my computer if I piled pillows behind me and leaned back as I worked.
I cannot say I ever felt triumphant—I was too damaged for that—but there was a satisfaction in being able to get in a cab by myself and attend a PEN board meeting, the first in almost a year; and to get to Gloria’s house the next night, for a coven meeting, and be able to swallow, to eat.
Wanting to make amends for my teary blame of them at our previous formal meeting, I wrote a poem for the event. To compliment them, I drew on Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer, a title that I felt described my experience as well. Rimbaud, in an experiment, had set out to “derange” all his senses, wishing to become a voyant, a seer, to transcend ordinary life, to arrive at the “Unknown.” He believes that the Poet / voyant can realize an ideal “harmonious Life” such as existed in ancient times. The poet will then liberate men, animals, language, and even women, whose “endless servitude will be overthrown.” (Rimbaud dedicated Une Saison en Enfer to his mother: “my first teacher of poetry / in literature and in life.”) Using alcohol, hashish, and other intoxicants, he writes as a “soul condemned to hell,” in delirium, in torment, hallucinating. In the poem, the poet is also condemned to aloneness, sometimes perceiving himself as a great artist in process of transcending life, and at other times seeing himself as a mere peasant. Throughout the poem, love is banished as inadequate to the poet’s need.
I wanted to compare my experience with his, and incidentally, a female with a male approach. My ingestion of poisons was not by choice but by necessity, and I sought, not revelation, but recovery. I, too, discovered hell, but along the way I discovered a harmonious life—my own. The difference was that I was so surrounded with love that, resistant to love as I am, I felt loved for the first time in my life. My friends and my children had renewed my life by transforming hell into a kind of heaven.
In my poem, I spoke of this and of my gratitude to be alive despite everything; I told my friends that they and my children had made me feel more loved than I had ever felt as a child.
During that week of September—the first week in which I could move on my own since the Christmas before, the first time since the previous October that I was strong enough to walk around the city by myself, and sit through a movie and eat popcorn, and go home and write an article—my spirits flew. I was going to get better, I was already much better, I was going to get my old life back and be my old self again. I would.
I was elated the day after the coven meeting, when Jamie drove us up to the Berkshire house for the weekend. Eager to see Innisfree, a “cup garden” in Millbrook, New York, we went on Sunday. It is composed of only natural features of the landscape, somewhat manipulated, and surrounds a lake; a path leads from one almost contained environment to another—thus, a cup garden, based on Japanese models. I made an error and forgot to take drinking water; nor did I realize at the outset that once on the path, one could only turn back or finish the walk. There were no shortcuts, and the walk was way over a mile long, perhaps two miles—a bit of a strain for me. This was not a problem until we were about two-thirds along. I was tired, but there was no respite. I had to finish. I did. And a kind woman at the end shared her bottled water with me. I was tired, but no harm done, I thought.
The next day, my back ached. Luckily, I had an appointment for a laying on of hands by my physical therapist that day. Myofascial therapy eased the pain slightly, but by the time Jamie and I got back to New York, I was in severe pain. I called a masseuse who had been recommended to me, explained how much pain I was in, and she came over and gave me a treatment that eased it somewhat. Then, at the very end, she said, “I’m going to give you a
She had broken my back.
*Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The New Assault on Humanity (1958), trans. Stuart Woolf (New York: Collier, 1961), 106–7.
FALL 1993–SPRING 1994
THE MASSEUSE WAS SO frightened by my terrible scream that she would not leave until a doctor examined me. I called Edie Langner, my internist, whom I had not seen for a year, and she persuaded her then partner, Lucy Painter, to come to my apartment. But back problems are invisible. By the time Dr. Painter arrived, I was merely in pain. She believed I was in spasm and told me to rest for a few days.
The next day, the pain was unendurable; in my experience, the pain does not become severe until the day after a break. All my friends agreed that back pain was “the worst.” I could not move without weeping—getting out of or into bed was truly awful—but I assumed this was what back spasms felt like. I remained in bed for three days; on the fourth day, I pulled myself out. I went downstairs, piled my desk chair with pillows, and returned to work.
Reviewing my calendar for this period, I am startled to see how I drove myself despite my broken back. I sat at my computer, revising the history book. That I lost only three days of work seems inconceivable to me now, remembering the agony I was in. My calendar claims I went to the theater, took my father to an ophthalmologist, made dinner for him, accompanied him to the hospital for a cataract operation, made dinner a second night because he had to see the doctor again the next morning, having developed a minor problem in surgery. I remember doing these things. I do not remember how I felt. I also saw real estate agents, because I planned to sell my apartment.
My call to Dr. Langner aroused her concern, and she called and asked to see me. I went in on October 12, almost two weeks after my back was broken, and told her how much pain I was in. Edie asked for details about my illness: I had not seen her since the cancer was first diagnosed. There was no easy way to do so; I was being treated elsewhere and had no reason to consult her. It never occurred to me to keep her aware of my situation, for her to oversee it. The specialists would not defer to her, I knew. And I did not want to present myself to her during my cancer treatments: her husband—who was treated at least partly at Sloan-Kettering—had died shortly before my diagnosis, and I did not want to be a reminder. I knew she was heartbroken.
But now I laid my problems out before her with huge relief. Eager to know all the details, she never once made me feel rushed, never once acted inattentive. This was the answer! She wanted to oversee my whole self, medically, something I had longed for. She sent me to a back specialist, who told me to wear a brace and prescribed Dilaudid. The pain pills helped if I took them continually, but that I did only for a while.
Meantime, my throat had closed up again, and I made an appointment for another endoscopy. I knew, though, that there was someone looking out for me, someone I could call without embarrassment or anxiety that my call would not be returned, as sometimes happened with my oncologist.
Over the weekend, I went to the movies and lunch with Herb Weiss and had lunch the next day with Carol and Esther. Monday morning, I entered S-K for the operation. Rob accompanied me; then we went back to my house and ordered dinner (probably from Rainbow Chicken). Charlotte had invited me to visit the following weekend, and since her country house was closer than mine, I thought I could manage the drive. But I was only about three-quarters of the way when I doubled over with pain. I don’t know how I made it; I drove in a twisted position, then lay in agony on Charlotte’s couch for the rest of the weekend. Charlotte and her friend Miranda took me home, one of them driving my car, the other, her own.
Edie Langner had suggested physiotherapy for my back and sent me to a dance therapist in the Ansonia building. When I saw her Monday morning, she gave me a treatment and told me to obtain a back brace. I finally bought one, wearing it that evening to the Met. Earlier that season, I had ordered various opera tickets, trying to make up for the wonders I had missed during the past two years. Two productions were scheduled for that week—Stiffelio at the Met and Madama Butterfly (the original version, which I had never seen) at the City Opera.
The next day, I went to my oncologist. He took my back pain seriously, because after being eliminated elsewhere, cancers frequently invade the bones, especially the spine. I had a bone scan that afternoon. When he called to tell me the results, he said, “I’m sorry to tell you … ,” and my heart stopped. But he continued, “… that you do have a compression fracture.” He had sandbagged me again. So it was not until the end of October that I finally realized my back had broken, that the pain was not from spasm, and that there had been good reason for me to weep. He told me that the radiation had probably harmed my spine (although of course I had not had enough to make this happen). It was sawdust; I had severe osteoporosis and could have another compression fracture easily. I had to be careful.
Wearing the brace, and down to two pain pills a day—in the morning and at night—I had dinner with my publisher, Jim, attended a reading of a brilliant new play by Janet Neipris, and went to the movies and dinner with Gloria. But my next session of physiotherapy put me into agony again. I stopped treatments. But I continued my social life. The calendar for the following weeks reads as if I gritted my teeth, determined to have my old life back no matter what: there were parties or dinners almost every night, an evening at a cabaret starring Donna McKechnie, and a long afternoon spent participating in a conversation about pornography and censorship that would be printed in Ms. magazine. During the day, I worked on the history book revision, had back X-rays and an MRI, met real estate agents.
By November, the pain had moderated a bit, but it was always present, its dull ache reminding me not to move too quickly or in certain ways. I wore the brace every day, although I questioned whether it helped. I now took the Dilaudid only once a day. I could not stand up straight long enough to prepare a meal, so I hired some young men to come and cook for me on the evenings when I was home. Charlotte recommended an osteopath with a tremendous reputation and self-esteem to match. But his superexpensive treatments did not help at all.
On November 20, my dear friend Beatrix Campbell traveled from England to spend my birthday with me. Unable to come while I was sick, she made a surprise visit now. We talked for hours, our conversations always among the most brilliant and lively of any I have. Our subject is usually politics, her specialty, but we go far afield. The kids had arranged a dinner party at the Café des Artistes, one of my favorite restaurants (it serves pot-au-feu, a rarity in America). Then I dragged Bea shopping: I had to get birthday gifts for Rob and Jamie. If she did not enjoy that, she made the best of it. Bea and I went to the Met to hear Russalka, and one of the cooks prepared a lovely dinner at my house for Bea, Ann Jones, and me.
Bea was soon gone, but my social calendar was filled in to the end of the year. I had tickets for Les Troyens, Angels in America, and All in the Timing; there were parties at Lisa Alther’s and at Alix Kates Shulman’s, a coven meeting, a Christmas Eve party, a dinner with Gloria and Carol. But first was a dinner with Charlotte, at an old French restaurant on the West Side. We had finished eating, when I almost doubled over with a pain in my side. Perhaps it was gas—had I let myself go too long without eating? That always caused problems for me. Perhaps it was the brace, which was extremely tight, confining my lower back and waist. I told Charlotte I had to go home. On arriving, I removed the brace, but the pain persisted. I put myself to bed and lay there, feeling awful. During the night, I began to shiver; my teeth chattered, and I could not get warm.
This continued into the morning, when it occurred to me I might have a fever and that it might be wise to call Edie—I might be coming down with flu. When Edie heard my symptoms, her voice rose; she told me to get to the emergency room at St. Luke’s–Roosevelt immediately, that she and Lucy would meet me there, that I had an infection, probably in my kidney. Worried about my reaction to the hospital’s e
Dazed, I dressed and tried to pack for the hospital, but I was befuddled. Isabelle helped me. I called the kids and told them what was happening, and they said they would meet me as soon as they could. By the time I reached the ER, I was pretty sick: I have little memory of what occurred. I know the children were there; I don’t recall seeing Edie or Lucy until much later, long after I was admitted. A new doctor, a urologist recommended by Edie, Frank Lowe, examined me and said I had a kidney infection and needed what sounded to me like an operation. No operation, I said. I would not be invaded.
But I was in no condition to be making such a judgment. I was in and out of delirium, in terrible pain, my whole body shaking. The next day, or perhaps it was two days later, Frank and Edie approached me together, almost formally. They told me I would die if I did not have the procedure they recommended. It was not actually an operation, they said, but the insertion of a tube that would allow the pus to drain from my kidney, which was impeded because I had so many kidney stones. Believing I was on the verge of death, I agreed.
They rushed me into the operating room. I was given anesthesia and remember little about it except that as they were wheeling me out, Dr. Lowe turned to the doctor who had assisted him and said, “We got her just in time. Another hour and she was dead.” The second doctor concurred.
Six months later, I was a patient in the same operating room (I would be in that room often over the next years) and met one of the nurses who assisted the first time. She cried out when she saw me. Embracing me, she said she was so happy to see me, so happy I was better. She remembered me very well: “It was just before Christmas, and I had a plane reservation—I was going home for the holidays—but Dr. Lowe said I had to stay, that you were dying and needed this procedure, so I stayed, and oh, God, you were so sick, I’ll never forget it. He said afterward that we’d saved your life. I felt so proud.” Then she kissed me.