Sœur Valérie had appointed herself guardian of the sanatorium’s morals, and her first foray on their behalf was with Mayevski the Pole. At no time had their relationship been easy. Mayevski, who had become the friend and table companion of Manniez, had a poor grasp of English (the language in which each linguistically corrupted the other) and absolutely no grasp of French.
Sœur Valérie disposed of one word of English—‘yes’. For imponderable reasons she substituted this word for ‘oui’ in her ordinary conversation, quite irrespective of the language group of the person to whom she was speaking.
This concession apart, she worked on the assumption that the French language, if spoken slowly and with sufficient distinctness, was intelligible to anyone. She would call on Mayevski and, in a tone of voice which penetrated the double doors, would repeat: “Vous - devez - être - chez - vous - à - partir - de - dix - heures. Si - vous - êtes - encore - une - fois - absent - de - votre - chambre - je - parlerai - à - votre - sujet - aux - médecins.” Mayevski would be heard to laugh heartily and to reply: “You silly old bitch. I do not understand one word of what you say.”
One evening Sœur Valérie went to Mayevski’s room at ten o’clock and remained there until he returned four hours later. He said: “Now I see what you want. But you are too late. I just done one, and I’m too tired to do another.”
The next morning Sœur Valérie demanded Mayevski’s summary expulsion from the sanatorium. If she had had wider experience of private sanatoria (she had previously worked in a State sanatorium) she would have acted less precipitately.
At Les Alpes—as in most private sanatoria—sexual licence was discouraged, but not prohibited. (Prohibitions were the prerogative of State institutions. Managements of commercial sanatoria were well aware that the most significant attraction which they had to offer was a relative absence of restrictions.) Love, and its course, were facilitated by the provision of intercommunicating doors between the bedrooms. Sometimes chance provided an auspicious neighbour; more often it was the consequence of a discreet change of apartment.
At the sisters’ table, discussion of the patients’ morals was the theme of every meal; bitterness and tension were engendered by the fact that liaisons between sisters and patients, and even between doctors and patients, were not infrequent. The elderly and preternaturally ill-favoured were unshakable; they formed a tight-lipped alliance for the suppression of vice. Where no doctor was involved, they harried the offenders in their charge, visited their rooms at the times they considered least propitious, submitted endless reports and protestations to Dr. Vernet—with the probable outcome that a patient thus victimised would eventually move to the floor of a morally less exigent sister.
Dr. Vernet’s reactions depended upon his private feelings towards the offender, and upon the degree of authority he was able to exercise. The irregularities of certain patients, whatever their circumstances, would be passed over; towards others he would behave ruthlessly. Where a patient was sponsored by an organisation, where a wife was financed by her husband, his power was often considerable, and he did not scruple to use it. Initial warnings, if disregarded, were implemented; organisations, scandalised parents, husbands would receive graphic reports of the behaviour of their protégés. On Dr. Vernet’s advice, pocket money would be withheld, visits suspended, divorce actions threatened; every variety of punishment would be advocated but that of the removal of the offender.
Patients who financed themselves—and these constituted the majority—were less pregnable. And Mayevski not merely financed himself, he occupied the most expensive corner suite in the sanatorium.
Dr. Vernet being engaged in the operating theatre, Sœur Valérie took her plaint to Dr. Bruneau, who, before she had made much progress, regarded her sourly and said: “Sœur Valérie, fichez-moi la paix avec vos histoires.” Spitting with indignation, she trapped Dr. Florent, and harangued him in the corridor. Dr. Florent, who for a long time had been shocked by Mayevski’s behaviour, reacted uncharacteristically. Believing that later he would be able to justify his action to Dr. Vernet, he went straight off to Mayevski and informed him that his conduct had rendered his continued presence undesirable. “Ho! Ho!” laughed Mayevski, “then I depose myself in a magnifico, nothing-barred sana in the Swiss Alps!”
The news reached M. Halfont. M. Halfont, horrified at the prospect of the further depletion of his half-empty sanatorium, hurried off to Dr. Vernet. Dr. Vernet, who had just finished operating, listened to his story unemotionally. He had absolutely no interest in Mayevski, either as a person or as a case. He knew the extent of his activities. Mayevski slept in rotation with three sex-hungry women—an excessively corpulent sister, a sub-normal Italian femme-de-chambre, and a smooth-skinned Maltese patient whose fear of conception was so great that the precautions she imposed upon her lovers constituted sufficient punishment for the offence. If Mayevski left, the Maltese would find another lover. As for the fat nurse and the half-witted chamber-maid, if they found no one else, they would, for all Dr. Vernet knew or cared, go to bed with each other. It all just didn’t matter. The only moral of the story was that Florent must be censured; he must be informed that his initiative was no more to be exercised in respect of the organisation of the sanatorium than it was in the consulting-room.
M. Halfont, reassured, hastened to tell Mayevski that he had been accorded another chance. Mayevski, who was feeling indignant and humiliated, replied that he did not want another chance. He explained that he had come to the sanatorium for the surveillance not of his morals, but of his health. M. Halfont warned him of the dangers of interrupting his cure, of the intensive discipline enforced in Swiss sanatoria, of the climatic advantages of the location of Les Alpes. He urged on him discretion and a change of floor. Little by little, persuasion reinforcing tact, tact reinforcing persuasion, the consequences of Dr. Florent’s rash intervention were avoided.
It was Paul and Michèle who now provided the topic of conversation at the sisters’ table. The situation, they all agreed, was made worse in view of Michèle’s youth; they speculated grimly on the actual clinical limits of the affair. They were unanimous that the time had come for Dr. Vernet to intervene.
Sœur Juliette, the elderly nurse in charge of post-operational cases, called on Paul and asked whether she might speak to him frankly. The frequency of his visits to Michèle, she explained, was attracting malicious attention. She wished neither to encourage nor to discourage the affair; she only wished to protect from unnecessary pain and disillusion a young girl for whom she felt deep affection and whose courage she admired. What, in a word, were his intentions? If they were not serious, if he regarded all that had passed as no more than a flirtation, then she begged him to leave the sanatorium, or at least to discontinue his visits.
It was then the turn of Dr. Vernet. He sent for Paul and told him bluntly that the time had come for him to leave the sanatorium. His pneumothorax was working satisfactorily; the condition of his liver required no more than the maintenance of his present régime. There should be no delay. Adjustment to an English winter necessitated progressive acclimatisation throughout its initial stages. It was now the end of October. Another fortnight, and he would have no option but to remain in France till the spring.
At almost any earlier period of his stay, this curt dismissal would have represented the summit of Paul’s hopes. Now it could scarcely have been less welcome.
It was not that it was unexpected; the question of his departure had preoccupied Paul since the day that he had been declared non-contagious. He knew that he should leave Brisset at the first opportunity. A recent bank statement showed that he had spent more than half his uncle’s legacy; it was obvious that he should conserve as much as possible of what remained to aid him through the long period of re-adaptation and convalescence ahead. But offsetting this, offsetting every other consideration, was the knowledge, progressively more certain each day, that his love for Michèle was all that counted in his life.
Michèle clapped her hand over Paul’s mouth. He pulled it away, looked at it in the palm of his own hand. White and beautifully shaped, it seemed at that moment the most precious thing that he was renouncing.
“Don’t reply—nod your head,” she said. “If you speak I’ll cover your mouth again with my hand.”
“I——”
Up came the hand. The nod which Michèle required was to signify agreement that the topic would be dropped. (She had discovered that it was the only way of avoiding lengthy and abortive discussions about the future which wasted entire evenings and left them both in a state of nervous exhaustion and despair.)
“You’ve got to listen,” said Paul, pulling the hand away and securing it to the other which he was already holding. “We always knew it would have to end like this, we never pretended otherwise. I’ve got to go, there’s absolutely no alternative. And anyway, Vernet’s throwing me out …”
“End like this? What will be ending? You don’t think that just because you go that we will stop loving each other?”
“No.” Paul released her hands.
She leant forward in her bed, grasped the tip of Paul’s tie and pulled at it (as was her custom) until he leant over and their lips met. “Then if you must go, take me with you,” she said. She was now kneeling. Her hair had fallen about her shoulders, her white shirt was unbuttoned where, some minutes before, Paul had pressed his lips against her chest.
Paul cupped her face in his hands, looked intently into her eyes. “Take me with you,” she repeated. “I could work. I wouldn’t be a burden to you. Only let us stay together.”
“We’re ill,” he replied bitterly. And he thought: ‘If I could dig ditches or cut down trees I’d take you with me, steal you by force if you didn’t want to come. But, as things are, what hope have we? How shall I ever be able to earn a living when I’ve got no connections, no experience, no talents and no health?’
“If you go, I shall die,” said Michèle.
“Of course you won’t die.”
“I shall have a relapse—it will be the same thing.”
Paul got up from the bed and in great agitation paced up and down the room. “But what other decision is there to make?” he demanded. And when Michèle did not reply, he went on: “Of course it should never have happened. We’re both to blame.”
“For falling in love?”
“Yes.”
“How can you say that? How can you speak in such terms of our love?”
“They’re the only terms I know.”
“Terms of defeat?”
“Of course.”
Michèle turned away. “I can’t answer you,” she said. “I didn’t know that it had all meant so little.”
Paul stared out of the window, his shoulders drooping, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his dressing-gown. What was to be done? Even his own immediate, single future posed difficulties which had in no way been resolved. Physically he felt little better than when he had arrived at the sanatorium nine months previously. He did not know to what he was returning, where he would go for his six months of convalescence and acclimatisation, or whether in the spring he would qualify for the resumption of his university grant. Nor had he occupied himself with these matters, for, once separated from Michèle, he cared little what became of him.
He turned. Michèle held out her arms and he ran to her bed, kissed her face, her lips, her shoulders, explained himself in tortuous, stilted phrases, affirmed and reaffirmed that nothing had significance beyond his love for her. Then he lay beside her, his eyes closed but his legs on the edge of the bed, his whole body ready, at the first sound from outside, to resume an upright position.
Michèle passed her fingers through his hair. “You remember how before your jaundice you said that you were going to leave in a month?”
“Yes.”
She was silent a moment, then continued: “The afternoon that Vernet told me he couldn’t operate I came to your room and wept. Did you ever realise why?”
Paul opened his eyes but did not answer.
“It wasn’t because I was afraid to die but because I knew that long before I would be dead you would have left me.”
“Michèle!”
“And if you went now I really would be ill again. Vernet says I can get up at Christmas. Wait till then, wait just two months and I promise I won’t try to make you stay any longer. Everything’s easier to bear if one can get up …”
Paul held her in his arms. It was the sort of indeterminate, negative decision to which his nature was the most prone—he acknowledged it and at the same time felt only relief. And he wondered, even as he kissed her, to what extent, a quarter of an hour ago, he would have insisted on leaving if he had not been secretly sure that whatever his arguments Michèle would successfully circumvent them.