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.