The students were dazed with indignation. A letter to the I.S.O., inquiring what progress had been made in respect of the food report had elicited the reply that no food report had been received. And when the matter was investigated, Dr. Vernet admitted good-humouredly that he had not submitted it. “For,” declared he, smiling broadly, “what good would the report have done? I have locked it away in my drawer—it is best there!”
The student committee assembled; the meeting was lively but inconclusive. In effect, what fresh action could be taken? Then, the same evening, the management of Les Alpes struck the next blow. For several days there had been rumours from the kitchens that fresh, sweeping economies were to be initiated; now, suddenly and drastically, they were implemented. The trays had been brought to the rooms of the bed patients (who ate one hour earlier than those who went down to the salle à manger). The meal consisted of the usual bowl of greasy, lukewarm soup; there were some tepid lengths of unflavoured macaroni; there was a portion of limp lettuce floating in salty water (the latter substance being intended, perhaps, as a dressing, a preservative or a token that the lettuce had been rinsed); the dessert was a bruised and turgid apple.
An impromptu meeting took place in the passages—doors opened up and down the corridors. A squat, bearded Italian student had brought his grisly tray with him; those who had not received trays crowded about the exhibits. Suddenly John Cotterell, whose genius it was to translate into action what everyone wished but no one dared, seized the tray and threw it over the lift shaft.
The whole complement of bowls, cutlery and quasi-comestibles described a leisurely trajectory, sank with an impressive hiss and detonated with finality. To M. Halfont, uneasily awaiting in his bureau any audible evidence of the reception of the new diet, it was a sign that actual violence had broken out. “Mais est-ce qu’il y a de la solidarité dans la maison?” he cried through the internal telephone system to a clerk discreetly stationed at an advance post overlooking the students’ corridor. Then, without waiting for the reply, he slammed the door, turned the key and lowered the steel shutters of his bureau.
But his fears were extravagant; the students had no intention of repeating their forceful but abortive demonstration of a few weeks earlier. Instead an immediate decision was taken to enter upon a token strike. At seven-thirty some seventy bowls of soup were exposed upon the long tables in the salle à manger. No one appeared.
M. Halfont, reassured by the silence and by favourable reports from his spies, had long since left the shelter of his bureau. And now, grasping the implications of the empty dining-hall, he went in search of Dr. Vernet.
The latter was in an unhelpful mood. “You see, you have gone too far, my good Halfont,” he commented. “If your policy is simply to poison all my patients, then why do you administer the poison in such miserably inadequate doses? My advice is give them one good-sized meal and kill the lot!”
But the matter could not remain as it was. At M. Halfont’s instigation Dr. Vernet telephoned to Dr. Hervet, and the latter’s reactions were as energetic as M. Halfont could have wished. Within a quarter of an hour both he and his secretary were seated in Dr. Vernet’s bureau.
Who was Dr. Hervet, and why should his reactions have been energetic? It is a question which probably could have been satisfactorily answered only by the doctor himself. For Dr. Hervet, although unquestionably Brisset’s leading citizen, sought to maintain the anonymity of one of its humblest members.
In Dr. Hervet’s house there were many mansions; he owned the five principal sanatoria in Brisset whilst maintaining a controlling interest in a number of others. But he paid rare visits to his establishments, preferring to direct their policies from his own headquarters. The tact with which he dispensed complete medical authority to his delegates, reserving his own talents for matters of administration, had led many who were associated with him to question whether his own doctorate had been awarded in medicine or in commerce.
What took place at the meeting in Dr. Vernet’s bureau? It is another question which would have been best answered by Dr. Hervet. But the outcome of the meeting was probably implicit in the fact that next day, just before lunch, the students were summoned by Dr. Vernet to assemble in the salle à manger.
“There is a moment in every relationship when leniency and forbearance are confounded with weakness,” commenced Dr. Vernet, and he went on to state emphatically that the next act of recalcitrance would dissipate this misconception for ever. If he was astonished that another demonstration should so soon follow upon that of a few weeks ago, he was a thousand times more astonished when he reflected on the flimsiness of its motives.
The meal the previous evening had been inadequate—that was obvious to anyone; but the fact that it was obvious presupposed no less obviously that there must have been a reason for it. But instead of waiting to find out the reasons, the students had jumped to conclusions, and passionate, reckless and wrongheaded conclusions they had been! The explanation was simple—supplies which had been ordered from the bottom of the mountain had not arrived. Voilà tout!
Another misunderstanding had arisen from the non-submission of the food report: was it possible that anyone was sufficiently crass as to assume that he had gratuitously suppressed it? The truth of the matter was that the whole question was at that very moment being debated at the highest levels; he himself had composed a detailed report which would have far greater authority than anything drawn up by the students.
As soon as the results of the conference were received, they would be communicated to the students. Till then he commended to everyone present the virtues of patience, good breeding and clear thinking.
Dr. Vernet spoke fluently and compellingly, but on this occasion did not appear completely at his ease. The end of his speech was the signal for the serving of lunch, and it proved to be a better meal than any which had preceded it. No one entertained any illusions; no one believed that such a standard would be maintained in the future; nevertheless the meal was really, solidly there, and could be, and was, attacked with gusto.
Paul could as easily have sunk his teeth into the living beast, or, for that matter, the palm of his own hand, as into a slice of animal flesh. The shifting quality of the meat, therefore, did not affect him. On this day, absorbed in thought about the future and the implications of his returning health, he had paid little attention to what he had been eating. And at the conclusion of the meal he walked quickly out of the salle à manger, taking care to avoid the little groups of self-felicitating students which had formed in the corridors and on the staircases.
Opening the door of his bedroom, he remembered that he had intended not to return there, for Kubahskoi had caught a cold and was lying in bed. Then, seeing that Kubahskoi was asleep, he crossed the floor quietly and went out on to the balcony.
It was a fine day in late April: the snow had already retreated far up the mountains, the valley, fragrant and wanton, exposed its nudity to the skies. But the thaw had not reached Brisset and the white meadows and terraces awaited their liberation with the impatience of prisoners-of-war in a compound who can do nothing to modify their condition though they sense the approach of relieving armies. It seemed impossible that the snow could withstand the sun’s intensity, that it was not liquidated, translated into burning, detrital torrents which, tumbling on to the villages of the valley, would turn them into cauldrons; but underneath the snow, and in frozen counterpoint, the earth of Brisset lay as rigid as the surface of a mortician’s slab.
Paul leant against the balcony rail, looking out across the great plains to the distant mountains; his secret hopes and desires without limit, his potentialities for implementing them non-existent.
Old appetites had been resurrected with his body; he fell to wondering whether beyond the mountains that encounter would take place which would give point and purpose to his life. But for his bitterness he would have laughed. Neurasthenic, consumptive, penniless, without birth or background, a half-century ago he would have lain in rags in the corner of an alley, coughing his lungs on to the cobblestones. What had he to offer? Patched up, cosseted, restored by newly-benevolent society, he would soon be fit; fit, that is, to flatten his nose once more against the shop window of life. Perhaps somewhere a drab, a slattern, another human casualty, might drift his way, become attracted to him as independent bits of refuse attract each other on the same dirty patch of ocean ….
He heard a sort of music. Looking down he saw making their way towards the front lawn of Les Alpes a most remarkable couple, a man playing an accordion, a woman playing a violin. The violin-player was short, agile, about fifty, her hair dyed the colour of copper, her body corseted into the firm outline of a cask. Her companion was older and taller, an ambulant skeleton whose bones were kept together by their covering of skin. On his head he wore a long, pointed cap edged with pendant bells; strapped to his back was a peeling and faded drum surmounted by a pair of cymbals and controlled by cords attached to each ankle. With each pace he took, first the drum then the cymbals made their mocking, psychotically irrelevant contribution to what he was playing.
The couple marched briskly across the snow-covered terrace of Les Alpes, stirring a mass of peripatetic choukas into a black, blaspheming cloud. Not a yard from where the body of the young woman had struck the ground on Christmas Eve, they came to a halt, suspended their music in the middle of a bar, stood to attention. Then—one, two, three: the woman raised her violin, the man his foot: a twinkling alternation of ribald side kicks and the couple launched into such an extraordinary and vivid burst of melody that heads protruded from balcony after balcony as patients sought visual explanation of the curious sounds.
“Bonne chance! Bonne chance tout le monde!” cried the man, twisting his head with a jingling of bells.
“Bonne chance!” chorused back from some of the balconies.
“Qu’il fait froid ici en bas! Oh la la!” he cried, kicking vigorously with the foot which worked the cymbals.
A few twists of paper containing small coins fell into the snow.
“Bonne chance les malades!”
“Bonne chance les musiciens!” It was the easy, mutual greeting of the luckless.
Paul wrapped a coin in a piece of paper and threw it to the ground. The violin-player, occupied in the search for other paper screws, failed to notice it; a score of shouted directions came from the balconies.
“Nous avons froid!” cried the man raising his red face to a jangle of bells.
“Allez! Rechauffez-vous ailleurs!” someone shouted in reply.
“On ne rigole pas, c’est pas joli. Bonne chance les malades!”
No more money coming from the balconies, the accordionist brought into play his last remaining faculty. Throwing back his head he started to sing. His voice was light and agreeable; his songs were in French, Italian and German. Though he tempered he did not suppress his own accompaniment, and his complexion grew progressively more vivid.
“J’ai de bons poumons, moi!” he cried, suddenly terminating his recital.
“Ça va, ça va. Vous avez la veine!”
“Et vous alors! Bonne chance et bonne santé à tout le monde!”
“Bonne chance et bonne santé!”
“Bonne chance les malades!”
“Bonne chance les musiciens!”
The accordionist swept off his jangling hat, bowed, curveted, touched his breast, his forehead, threw out his arms in acknowledgement towards his partner and then towards his audience. Another twist or two of paper. The accordionist replaced his hat. It started lightly to snow.
Turning slowly and playing the same air which had announced their arrival, the musicians started to move off across the terrace. On an impulse Paul threw another coin after them: neither musician noticed it and this time no directions were shouted, for, the recital at an end, the invalids had returned to their rooms. Paul stared after them, tried to call out but could not do so. He climbed up on to the rail of the balcony in order to catch a last glimpse, waving a desperate farewell to the musicians as they passed out of sight. His throat was sore, his eyes burning; because of the depth of emotion which it had provoked, he dared not analyse the strange nature of his reaction.