Suzanne is dead.

At B's request, we watched over Suzanne's body with D, in the cold and darkness of the room in the "reanimation" department of the Toulouse oncopole where she died.

I'm glad I arrived in time from Paris and was lucky enough to see a few minutes of her shallow breathing still lifting her chest an hour before it finally stopped.

I was able to briefly touch the skin of his hand and forehead still warm with the breath of life.

I touched the top of her wrist again with my fingertips when she was no longer there. The contact was icy this time, of course, as they say in films and literature.

Grief is not always only sadness. Is it also sometimes said in literature or films? Sometimes grief is in its place. You have to experience it to know. To know how fair grief can be, how it can take its rightful place to balance with death, which is so sad, so unfair.

Throughout the hours I spent with D next to his inert body, on the train, then alone in the hotel, and still now back home, I had in mind a song sung by a woman and sung in chorus by men, soldiers. It is the song that the not yet future Mrs. Kubrick sings timidly in front of the troops at the end of "Paths of Glory".

The song is called « Der treue Husar » (Le Hussard fidèle).You can hear it at 4:28 of this extract as it is still running through my head as I write, thinking of Suzanne:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ifRA0Kj-8

Before becoming Christiane Kubrick, the young German actress worked under the name of Susanne Christian. It is probably in this middle name, SuzanneIt's because of the fact that the name of the band, put forward to create a stage name for itself, is the reason why this refrain has been in the back of my mind for the past few days.

The Suzanne I knew was a German teacher. She would have translated the words of this Faithful Hussar that I cannot understand without his help.

Here they are: