CORFU OR THE DEATH APPROCHE
June - August 1954 - 29 years old -
MEMORIES OF CORFU
By Poucette
Club Méditerranée I was going to work there as a hostess in June 54.
I fled as always, towards the unknown, the new, this desire to travel around the world that inhabited me. Nebula, exhausted from the trip where I was responsible for the group that accompanied me.
I landed on this island very early in the morning. The sea was milky, opaline; a haze of heat surrounded us. I remember the silence, the lapping of the water and the anguish I experienced, rising from the depths of my subconscious. I thought: “this island is very beautiful”, but I had an uncontrolled desire to turn around, the events of our life, the future is already in us.
Poucette recovering from typhoid fever
" A month and a half later, carried away at night on a stretcher, lying in a boat shivering with fever, frightened, I arrived at the hospital where I was to stay for more than three months suffering from a very bad typhoid where I had fought with all my gathered strength, against death.
My stay in the hospital felt like a struggle between hell and heaven. Suffering, physical decline, frightening hallucinations, lull, the return to life; the wonderful little things, the fresh gardenia every morning on my nightstand, its sweet smell, its snowy whiteness was the object of all my attention, the violinist who played two such sad tunes at six in the evening every day, of these old Greek songs with sometimes Arabic, sometimes Slavic intonations, which made me want to scream when I was in pain and which became a rapture and which I impatiently awaited in my period of convalescence. "
"I rubbed shoulders with her. Death is Knowledge and she is beautiful, sublime."
" My universe was narrow and so vast at the same time; everything took on a sublime importance, within the four walls of my room. The correspondence I received, the horror of humiliating care, the visits, an ice pack on my forehead , an ice pack on the burnt belly, the torture of the serum, the torture of the water that I tried to swallow by teaspoons so much I feared the ceremony of the serum, the ice bath to bring down the fever, the wonderful tender green praying mantis, entered my room, lost. The cleaning lady who was on her knees praying for me, and Costa - your presence helped me! You never left my room, we were making plans for the future, I read the worry on your face when the fever rose again. The moments when the suffering disappeared were sublime. A serious illness is an enrichment (the loss of smell, the loss of taste), the first broth, the grape juice.
My doctor, nervous little man so devoted: How I had faith in you!
When one day of weakness, of suffering, I wanted to let myself die, refused medicine, thermometer, prick, and you forcibly, angry, you brushed my teeth, I broke the thermometers, I threw the blankets and for a week, I refused to speak.
When I spoke again, I heard myself say “no”, while my whole being tried to say “yes”; this frightful lucidity in the madness that one keeps, I was no longer master of my brain. At night, I woke up the nurse who was sleeping in my room, I saw her in a fog filled with opaque smoke; No matter how much she reassured me, the smoke surrounded me. One morning, I found myself glued to the ceiling. I saw the room in this perspective and watched myself lying in my bed. I fell into a coma from which I emerged, with the certainty of having understood the mystery of Life in its entirety; but the memory was dissolving, I could not catch up with the truth, only the traces remained to me.
A simplicity, a wonder, this absolute Truth.
I rubbed shoulders with her. Death is Knowledge and it is beautiful, sublime.
When I was fighting death, my whole life was going at breakneck speed, backwards, backwards. By a rope, I felt myself pulled back towards the start and I struggled with all my strength to start again. No more control of thought. I suffered with horror and anguish a little character, a dwarf drawn in Indian ink, grimacing, insulting the Evil in me which had taken this form. He insulted my mother: - she's a whore, he said. I screamed: - this is not true! He was sneering. It was the Devil, the Evil, the Dirty. I was struggling.
Louda, devoted nurse, a strong woman without beauty except her eyes which were admirable. - “I was watching you that day, I had transformed into a cat. I looked at your eyes, the hand lying under my blanket, two fingers spread, I threw them towards your eyes to put them out. It was Evil naked coming out of me. You pulled my hand away, you had treated so much typhoid during the war, you knew the hallucinations, the violence it creates, you were careful, amused, interested.
In addition to this, you need to know more about it.
Frightening and sublime disease at the same time, which made me advance in life, with a big leap, my two wonderful nurses with whom I could only speak by gestures, speaking Greek and I French: That you helped me ! That you were badly paid! Costa gave you gold coins to heal me, however your conscience and dedication would have been just as great if he hadn't.
My heart has always told me.
What a life lesson I received in the hospital: I was contagious and there was fear. They came or did not come to see me. I had work friends. The beings who came to my room were the ones who seemed the lightest, the most artificial.
Youpi, so young, twenty years old, who shared my tent: selfish, venal, very beautiful, waiting for life, for man, for a situation, for money, little hummingbird that I liked very much; it is you who came to see me so often and who wanted to kiss me to reassure me, to take away my worry. My close work friends have never visited me. They were scared. We do not know the others, we are always wrong. I have had such unexpected visits, and others that I expected that never came.
The fear."
In addition to this, you will need to know more about it.
Poucette recovering from typhoid fever
Letter from Costa to Poucette
Athens 12-10-1954
“I will always remember the very last scene which was none other than the“ Cadenza ”of the two months of the clinic: I see the slowness and the fatigue of your step; and your hand, which then was the only help to overcome the long ramp; and once arrived at the door of the plane, your recovery seemed to me like “The Sign” that your health was returning… “