My cabbage by Pier Marton
Say No To Say Yes
I may have written about this earlier: this was a key moment in my “survival.”
I had tubes in my head, my nose, my throat, my stomach, where else I am not sure anymore… I had been more dead than alive. I could not speak… I could not write… my eyes seemed my only way to connect to the visitors. After being in the I.C.U. for what seemed like an eternity [beware of the myth of that neutral taste of eternity on the Jewish Shabbat -nobody had considered what eternity in hell could be like?!], as another tube was being inserted into me, this time into my throat, I came back to life by shouting a loud and clear: “NO!” – As if this were a form of re-incarnation (re-entering my body), I came back to a certain sense of self by refusing that tube.
The nurse was shocked, I had been absolutely compliant before… I had surprised myself too.
Was this the same life force that Marceline Loridan-Ivens – who survived the concentrations camps – often speaks of?
Biology of the cells uniting? Life must be?
My refusal corresponded to some re-investment of my body, and my need to control its boundaries.