Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

the job. We are going to drink cocktails on the Champs-Élysées and—

“The professor will see you now.”

A secretary leads me into an office with a view of the Seine. Behind his desk—an unusual piece of furniture made from the wing of an airplane, as smooth and shiny as a mirror—Evariste Clouseau is typing something on his laptop. At first glance, the neurologist doesn’t seem especially impressive: wild hair, pale complexion, tired eyes, badly trimmed beard. He looks like he has stayed up all night playing poker and downing glasses of single-malt whiskey. Under his white coat, he wears a checkered shirt that’s buttoned wrong and a burgundy sweater that looks as if it were knitted by a drunken grandmother.

In spite of his unkempt appearance, however, Clouseau inspires confidence, and he is highly regarded in the field—in recent years, he has helped implement new diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer’s, and the National Institute of Memory—the organization he runs—is one of the leading establishments in research and patient care. Whenever there are reports about Alzheimer’s on television or in the papers, he is the first person journalists call on for an opinion.

“Good evening, Mademoiselle Schafer. Please sit down.”

A few minutes later, the sun sets and the room becomes dim. Clouseau takes off his glasses and gives me an owl-like glance before turning on an old brass library lamp. He presses a key on his computer keyboard, which is connected to a flat-screen monitor on the wall. I guess the display shows the results of my tests.

“I’m going to be straight with you, Alice. The analysis of your scans is disturbing.”

I say nothing.

He gets to his feet and explains. “These are images of your brain taken during the MRI. To be more precise, they are images of your hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays an essential role in memory and spatial location.”

He uses a stylus to mark out an area on the screen.

“This part here shows a slight atrophy. At your age, that isn’t normal.”

Clouseau allows me time to digest this news before showing me another image.

“You had another scan last week, a PET scan. We injected you with a radioactive tracer to determine if there was any reduction in carbohydrate metabolism in certain brain structures.”

Seeing that I don’t understand a word of this, he tries to articulate the problem in layman’s terms. “The PET scan enables us to visualize the activity in different areas of your brain and—”

I cut him off. “Just tell me what it shows.”

He sighs. “Well, there are signs of damage in certain areas.”

He walks closer to the large screen and points with his stylus at a segment of the image.

“You see these red patches? They represent amyloid plaques that form in the areas between your neurons.”

“Amyloid plaques?”

“Also known as senile plaques. Protein deposits responsible for certain neurodegenerative diseases.”

These words hammer into my mind, but I don’t want to hear them.

Clouseau clicks to a document—a page full of numbers.

“This problematic concentration of amyloid proteins is confirmed by analysis of the cerebrospinal fluid taken during your spinal tap. That, too, showed the presence of pathogenic Tau proteins, which proves that you are suffering from an early-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Silence in the office. I am dumbstruck, on the defensive, incapable of thinking clearly.

“But that’s impossible. I…I’m not even forty!”

“It’s very rare, admittedly, but it does happen.”

“No. You’re wrong.” I refuse to accept this diagnosis. I know there is no effective treatment for this disease—no miracle drug, no vaccine.

“I understand your emotion, Alice. For now, I would advise you not to do anything rash. Take your time to think this through. At the moment, there is no reason for you to change the way you live your life—”

“I’m not sick!”

“It’s a very difficult thing to accept, Alice, I know that,” Clouseau says in a gentle voice. “But you are young and the disease is still in the early stages. There are currently new medicines being tested. Up to now, lacking effective ways of diagnosing the disease, we have always identified its sufferers too late. But that is changing, and—”

I don’t want to hear another word. I jump to my feet and leave his office without a backward glance.

Lobby. Row of elevators. Central atrium. Concrete maze. Parking lot. Engine thrum.

I lower all the windows and drive with the wind blowing in my hair, the radio on full blast. Johnny Winter’s guitar on “Further On Up the Road.”

I feel good. Alive. I am not going to die. I have my whole life ahead of me.

I accelerate, pass other cars, honk my horn. Quai de Grenelle. Quai Branly, Quai d’Orsay…I am not sick. My memory is good. Everyone has always told me that—in school, in college, in the police. I never forget a face and notice every detail; I am capable of memorizing and reciting dozens of pages of evidence from the police file. I remember everything. Everything!

My brain is churning, seething, thinking at top speed. To convince myself of this, I begin saying out loud every fact that flashes through my head:

Six times seven is forty-two / Eight times nine is seventy-two / The capital of Pakistan is Islamabad / The capital of Madagascar is Antananarivo / Stalin died on March 5, 1953 / The Berlin Wall was erected on the night of August 12, 1961.

I remember everything.

The name of my grandmother’s perfume was Soir de Paris, and it smelled of bergamot and jasmine / Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969 / The name of Tom Sawyer’s girlfriend was Becky Thatcher / I ate lunch at Dessirier today—I had sea bream tartare, Seymour had fish and chips, we both had coffee, and the check came to 79 euros and 83 centimes.

I remember everything.

Although uncredited, the guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” from the Beatles’ White Album is played by Eric Clapton / The correct expression is toeing the line, not towing the line, and it refers to runners standing in the correct place at the beginning of