The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Bauby tells us that the dreams that he had during his coma sometimes come back to him in vivid detail. In this chapter, he recalls one of them. In it, thick snow is falling. It covers an automobile graveyard that he and his best friend Bernard are walking through. For three days, he and Bernard have been trying to get back to a France immobilized by a general strike. They find themselves in the automobile graveyard as a result of traveling difficulties brought on by the strike. Their attire is ill-equipped to keep them warm. Piles of junk cars loom above them, stacked on an overpass that bisects the graveyard.

He and Bernard arrive at their appointment with an influential Italian businessman. At his headquarters, they knock on a yellow steel door with a sign that contains instructions for treating electric shock. The watchman who admits them is Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs. Bernard tells Karadzic that Bauby is having trouble breathing, and Karadzic performs a tracheotomy on him. He and Bernard then proceed to a study in the cellar, which has the look of a nightclub. The owner is a clone of Fiat’s former chairman Gianni Agnelli. A hostess seats him at the bar, where, instead of glasses, there are tubes that dangle downwards. At the behest of a barman, Bauby inserts a tube into his mouth, and fluid that utterly fills him with warmth begins to flow. It flows until he wants to stop drinking, and he tries to signal to the barman, who meets his request with an enigmatic smile. He soon finds himself drugged, and his vision distorted. Bernard speaks to him, but all he hears is Ravel’s Bolero.

Within the dream, he awakes later to the sound of an alarm. The hostess hoists him onto her back and tells him that they must get out because the police are on their way. Outside, night has fallen and the cold is bitter. They manage to evade the police, but his body remains leaden—petrified, mummified, vitrified. He fears that his friends will too become immobile. He longs to warn them. But, in the dream, as in reality, he cannot utter a single word.