The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Bauby opens this vignette by stating that his friends have jokingly asked him whether he has considered a pilgrimage to the catholic holy site at Lourdes, in order to ask for a miracle from the famous Madonna that is housed there. This chapter tells the story of the time that he went to see the Madonna, during a traveling vacation that he once took with a former lover named Joséphine.

It was a tense and quarrelsome journey, as he and Joséphine had many contentions between them, both possessed stubborn attitudes, and were also improvising the entire trip—without any solid plans for accommodations or destinations. Another sore spot in the relationship was Bauby’s absorption in a six or seven-hundred-page book called Trail of the Snake. According to Bauby, the book “told the tale of Charles Sobraj, a kind of wayfaring guru who charmed and robbed Western travelers between Bombay and Kathmandu”—although he confesses that he cannot remember the slightest detail of the book, and even that summary may be inaccurate (60). What he does remember is that he became so enraptured in the book that it took his attention away from his vacation, and that Joséphine claimed that his absorption in it signaled his disinterest in her.