Paul woke as abruptly as a pane of glass is shattered; his hands flew to his face as though to protect it from flying fragments. Six o’clock. Michèle was still in Brisset. In a single movement he sat up, threw aside the bed-clothes, projected his legs to the floor.
Then he remembered that he had become positive again. A sudden access of horror parted his lips. He fell back on to the pillow.
Not merely positive, but very positive. Which lung? Another pneumothorax? Ribs out? Nothing? Nothing, no further treatment possible, just rest, good food, fresh air … what then? Permanent hospitalisation in a State clinic in England? He must see Dr. Vernet immediately. Paul made another automatic movement to get up.
This thought now checked him: he was never going to see Michèle again. And she was still in Brisset. He could get up, shave, dress, go to her …. Perhaps he could persuade her to catch a later train. Perhaps he could persuade her to stay a week, a month. ‘My head will burst,’ thought Paul.
He lay back and closed his eyes. But the intense morning light like twin incandescent bullets pierced the lids, hollowed the sockets and exposed the surface of his brain, which bubbled like a new coat of paint in the sun. And when he opened his eyes—the mockery of the stripped room and the piled baggage. Should he unpack? Unpack! Probably he had passed his last night in the châlet. Tomorrow he would wake in a sanatorium bedroom. How was he going to pay? A balance of a few hundred pounds and after that——
He stumbled from his bed and hurriedly washed his face and brushed his hair. Michèle might call on him before she left, perhaps at this moment she was nearly at the châlet. Seven o’clock—one hour until the departure of the train. How could she come? And if she did come, what then? No, better that she did not come.
Back in bed Paul listened for every sound. Up to half-past seven she might come. After that what would he do? What would he think of? What would he hope for? Twice he grew rigid and stopped breathing, mistaking a sound elsewhere in the châlet for the opening of the side door. Then, at twenty-five past seven, the side door did open. “Michèle,” Paul cried, throwing aside the bed-clothes. The door of his room opened and in came Mme. Anniette with the breakfast tray.
“I have been thinking about you all night,” she said. “Do not worry, cher monsieur. What does it mean, to be positive? Pouf!” And she shrugged her shoulders and turned her eyes to the ceiling. “In Brisset we are breathing bacilli night and day; take an analysis of anyone at a given moment and the result will be positive. Why, if you sent some melted snow to the municipal analyst that would come back positive!” She set down the tray on Paul’s bed. “As it is, you will now spend the winter in the châlet and in the spring you will go back to England completely consolidated. And six months from now you will realise that this whole little episode has been a blessing in disguise.”
One hour later Paul arrived at the Universel. He went straight to Michèle’s room. Until he had actually opened the door he had not lost the secret hope that by some miracle he might find her there. A femme-de-chambre had already made some attempt to prepare it for its next occupant, but the bed linen had not yet been changed (the impress of Michèle’s head was still visible on the pillow) and there was a pile of débris in the corner. Paul looked through the débris and found underneath a pair of Michèle’s bedroom slippers which she had discarded; he instantly took possession of them. There was nothing else.
Dr. Vernet was not in his bureau. Paul walked up and down the waiting-room. It was two years since he had been dressed and shaved at eight o’clock in the morning—he had the curious impression that his pending interview with Dr. Vernet was in respect of taking up some sort of employment in the sanatorium. He suddenly saw himself always dressed and shaved at this hour, helping the waiters with the breakfast trays, distributing library books and magazines to the patients, seeking Dr. Vernet’s advice concerning small matters of administration …. At half-past eight Dr. Vernet arrived.
“You!” he cried.
“Yes.”
“But you’re leaving today.”
“No. I mean I was.”
“Well?”
“Then you haven’t heard the result of my analysis?”
“Of course I have—it was positive.”
Paul stared at Dr. Vernet in amazement.
“It’s of absolutely no significance, just probably a part of the healing process. You’re not going to change your plans for that!”
“Then I’m not ill again?”
“How you love to torture yourself,” said Dr. Vernet, laughing. “Your X-ray is good, your sedimentation is good—what more do you want?”
“But——”
“Eighteen months and you have been consistently negative! And now just once you’re positive.”
Paul followed Dr. Vernet into his bureau. He felt too dazed by Dr. Vernet’s wholly unanticipated reaction to follow more than the drift of his argument. Already new plans were forming in his mind. He thought: ‘If I really am all right I will go straight on to Liège.’ Then an apparent fallacy presented itself. “But how do I know that I’ve been consistently negative? It’s over six months since I’ve had an analysis,” he objected.
“Well, that doesn’t mean that you’ve been positive for six months!” Dr. Vernet laughed again.
“No, but nevertheless …”
“Besides, it’s probably the consequence of a cold.”
“I haven’t had a cold.”
“Well then, of something else.” Dr. Vernet sat down at his desk. “Now are you going to return to England?”
“But if I’m positive ….”
“I’ll give you a slip explaining all that to your doctor in England.”
“I mean that it’s no use going back if I’m not cured.”
“Then you want to stay here!”
“I want nothing more than to be able to leave. But like this …”
“I see.” Dr. Vernet regarded Paul in silence. Then he said: “Very well, we shall make fresh tests and analyses, after which I hope to be able to convince you that you are perfectly all right to return to England.” He wrote some notes on a memorandum pad, then got up from his desk. “You are looking yellow, monsieur,” he said critically. “Is your liver troubling you again?” And before Paul could answer, he added: “I know a very good test which always produces interesting results—it takes a whole day to perform! You must have nothing to eat after dinner tonight and you must report to the laborantine at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. And you will need to swallow a special cachet before you go to bed.” He wrote a prescription and handed it to Paul. “Now good-bye, monsieur, and à bientôt.”
Paul returned to the châlet in a state of great confusion, new hitherto inconceivable hope jostling with the feeling that logically his hope could have no foundation.
Mme. Anniette was discouraging. “If he says you should go back to England he should have his head examined,” was her comment. And she added: “You may be very sure that it’s not for your benefit that he wants you out of the way!”
The absurdity of Mme. Anniette’s suggestion encouraged Paul to dismiss her point of view and he wrote at length to Michèle to tell her of the new development. “So if only Vernet is right we shall be together before the end of the week,” he concluded. When he had finished the letter he again became disturbed by doubt and to reassure himself he added a postscript: “You are still in the train as I write this and every second is taking you farther from me. Oh! I would be in complete and final despair if I were not sure that I would soon be with you. Vernet never sought to spare me in the past, so there can be no question that he is doing so now. He must believe what he has said or why should he have said it?”
On the way to the post, Paul encountered Kubahskoi. At the latter’s suggestion they went to have tea in a near-by café.
When they had sat down, Kubahskoi, in reply to Paul’s questions, related how, when Les Alpes had closed (just ten days before he had been due to undergo the operation which Dr. Vernet had arranged for him), he had found accommodation in a clinic which was supervised by Dr. Dubois, the head doctor of the Universel. The latter, after a preliminary examination, had cancelled the operation, substituting instead a course of streptomycin. At the end of three weeks his analysis had turned negative for the first time in several years. Then, observing that it had never been necessary, Dr. Dubois had abandoned the second pneumothorax which Dr. Vernet had induced the previous year. Now he had been negative for six months and was due to return to Poland in two weeks’ time.
As he finished speaking, two former patients of Les Alpes came over to the table—Delmuth and a Dutch doctor (who now that he was better was himself practising in one of the clinics). “Ah, Davenant!” cried Delmuth. “We have not encountered since last I had the honour of insulting you!”
The Dutch doctor shook hands with Paul. “I knew you at Les Alpes, monsieur, but at that time you were in no condition to know me. I left there some months before you had recovered.” Both men drew up chairs to the table. Delmuth turned his about, sat astride it and rested his chin on the back.
“And what has happened to you since?” demanded the Dutch doctor. Paul recounted the events of the past few days.
“And Vernet’s advice is that you pay no attention to the result of the analysis but just return to England?” said the doctor when Paul had finished. Paul nodded.
The Dutch doctor attracted the attention of the garçon and ordered tea for himself and Delmuth, then he said laughingly: “Vernet has become a faith healer—to each of his patients he now says: ‘Take up thy bed and walk!’ By the end of the month he won’t have any patients left at all. For Brisset it is a most commendable development!”
“What do you mean?” asked Paul uneasily.
“Well, strictly between ourselves (though it is already pretty widely known), the Société has decided that it doesn’t require two doctors at the head of the Universel and it’s dispensing with—Vernet! You can imagine how Vernet feels about that! But his contract has expired and there is nothing he can do about it, nothing that is beyond the limited revenge of ensuring that none of his patients remain to swell the coffers of the Société.” And the Dutch doctor laughed.
The garçon brought the tea and Delmuth poured it.
“And so I would advise you,” pursued the Dutch doctor, “to treat anything Vernet says in the light of what I have told you. And again, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think that you shouldn’t wait until he has left before you consult a new doctor. You look very toxic to me and I think you ought probably to be in bed. Tell me, have you a temperature?”
“No.”
“How do you feel?”
“All right.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I never do.” Paul only wanted to get away, to lock himself up in his room in the châlet.
“My friend Davenant,” said Delmuth, as Paul got up, “I am now one philistine converted—I give up being engineer and become artist. Tell me please where I find beautiful young girls to take off their clothes for me to paint them.”
“Think of what I have been telling you,” said the Dutch doctor.
Paul shook hands with each of the three men, but Delmuth, the last, would not release his grip. “Sorry. Is locked,” he explained.
“Let me go. I must catch my train.”
Delmuth pressed the tip of his nose, then the dimple in his chin. Then, as if suddenly remembering the right combination, he pulled and twisted the lobe of his left ear, and his great grocer’s hand shot forward and open like the till of a cash register.
Paul passed the whole of the next day in the laboratory undergoing tests which made him retch physically and mentally, and, the morning after, he went to the Universel to learn the results.
Dr. Vernet greeted him reassuringly. “Although there are still a number of results to come in, I can tell you, monsieur, that there is absolutely no reason for you to stay in Brisset.”
“Then I’m negative?” said Paul with sudden hope.
“No. Now don’t have that tortured look in your eyes—I’ve explained to you that it doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means everything,” said Paul. “I was going to get married … I was going to work …”
Dr. Vernet sat down at his desk, stared for several seconds at an inlaid paper knife. “Well, what do you want to do?”
“What should I do?”
“I’ve told you.”
“You mean I should go back?”
“Yes.”
“And work?”
“No, not at first.”
“When?”
“That will depend on your progress.”
“Then you agree that I am not well.”
“You are well enough to return to England. But that is not my only reason for wanting you to leave Brisset.” Dr. Vernet looked up and gave Paul an open and candid glance. “You see, my work here has come to an end and I would not wish to leave you in incapable hands.”
“So you are leaving!”
“You knew?”
“I had heard a rumour.”
“Well then, you will understand my feelings in the matter.”
“What about Dr. Dubois?”
“Dubois!”
“Yes.”
“Wholly unsuitable!” Dr. Vernet leaned back in his chair. “With your temperament you require someone who is experienced both in psychology and in general medicine. If you are determined to stay, there is only one doctor whom I could unreservedly recommend. Have you heard of Dr. Bertin?”
“No.”
“He is exceptionally gifted and I am happy to say that he has consented to look after such of my patients as will have to stay on after I have left. I will arrange for the three of us to meet some time next week.”
As Paul was leaving the Universel he encountered a nurse whom he knew and he asked her whether she had heard of Dr. Bertin. “Bertin!” she exclaimed. “Why do you want to know about him?” “Dr. Vernet has recommended him to me.” “You are joking,” she replied. Then, when Paul insisted that he was not joking, she said circumspectly: “You must speak to someone else. I’m afraid that I can’t tell you anything about him.”
“Bertin!” cried Mme. Anniette, when Paul had returned to the châlet. She led him by the arm into her kitchen, where a friend of hers, a nurse from one of the clinics, was sitting. “Monsieur has had a little relapse and Vernet has told him to become a patient of Bertin!” “Bertin!” exclaimed the nurse incredulously. “Why, he isn’t even a T.B. doctor!”
Together the two women enlightened Paul. Dr. Bertin, it appeared, had no connection with any clinic or sanatorium and his practice was of a notoriously dubious character. In addition, he was both a drunkard and a drug addict and a few months earlier his well-known habit of injecting himself by passing a needle through his clothing had all but led to his death from blood-poisoning. “Mon cher monsieur,” said the nurse, “rather than go to Bertin, I would counsel you to buy a home encyclopaedia of medicine and to learn to treat yourself.”
Mme. Anniette had often spoken to Paul of Dr. Dubois. A former invalid, he was the titular head of the Station. His generosity was legendary. For years he had looked after Mme. Anniette and Pierre without ever demanding a fee for his services. In cases of need he was known to subsidise his patients.
Outraged by Dr. Vernet’s recommendation, Mme. Anniette now got into touch with Dr. Dubois and arranged a consultation for Paul, only informing the latter of what she had done when the matter had been concluded.
The same day Paul received a letter from Dr. Vernet which informed him that an error in the analysis of his gastric juices would necessitate the repetition of the tests which had been carried out two days before and that accordingly he should report to the laborantine at eight o’clock the following morning. Paul, without periphrasis or explanation, replied that he would not be attending the test and that he wished all his documents, dossiers and X-rays to be sent to Dr. Dubois.
Dr. Dubois, a large man in his late fifties, received Paul courteously, but with a degree of coldness which indicated both that he possessed prior information concerning his new patient, and that what he knew he did not like.
“Eh bien, monsieur?” he demanded, his face expressionless, his demeanour uninviting.
Paul summarised dispassionately the salient details of his case history as though he were relating a series of events in the life of someone who was dead and whom he had never known. ‘What am I doing here?’ he asked himself. He looked with distaste at the chromium steriliser, the rack of pneumothorax needles, the surgical instruments display case, the X-ray cabinet and the couch on which patients lay down for their refills. (On entering the door he had registered the presence and position of these exhibits in the same way that when, summoned at school to the prefects’ room, he had used to register the location of the hard-soled gym slipper and the ominous disposition of the furniture.)
“Dr. Bertin!” ejaculated Dr. Dubois, interrupting Paul’s narrative.
“Yes.”
“Do you know Dr. Bertin?”
“No.”
“Go on,” requested Dr. Dubois, looking curiously at Paul.
When he had come to the end of his account, Paul looked at the floor and said: “I can’t think why I didn’t leave.” And he continued half to himself: “I was a fool, an absolute fool. If I had taken Vernet’s advice I would have been miles away ….”
Dr. Dubois made no comment, but picked up and started to read a letter which Paul saw had been signed by Dr. Vernet.
‘If Dubois shows the least tendency to agree with Vernet, I shall leave Brisset tonight,’ thought Paul.
Dr. Dubois looked up from the letter. “Dr. Vernet is of the opinion that the change in the analysis was brought about by a cold. Did you have the cold immediately before the analysis?”
“I have not had a cold for over a year.”
“Then why did you tell Dr. Vernet that you had had a cold?” demanded Dr. Dubois, raising his eyebrows.
“I didn’t. I told him that I had not had a cold.”
Dr. Dubois stared at Paul, then referred again to Dr. Vernet’s letter. “There is a lot which isn’t clear to me,” he commented. And he added: “In any case you have an enormous dossier and a lot of X-ray plates and I have not yet had an opportunity for studying them. Now tell me—you have a room in the Châlet Anniette?”
“Yes.”
“Are you comfortable there?”
“Very comfortable.”
“And Mme. Anniette looks after you well?”
“Very well.”
“Then for the time being you can stay on there.” Dr. Dubois reflected a moment. “There is nothing more,” he said. “Carry on quietly and come and see me again three—no, four—days from now, and I should be able to express an opinion on your condition. Bonjour, monsieur.”