The doctor, who was called in in the morning, examined him, and thought the matter over, but did not at first attach much importance to the attack. The old man described the adventure of the previous evening, including the food and the champagne, and the doctor thought that the trouble was due to these excesses. He said he was sure the trouble would not return, provided the old man lived quietly, taking regularly every two hours a certain powder, and refrained from seeing the object of his passion or even from thinking of her.
The doctor, who was a contemporary and an old friend, treated him without any ceremony: “My dear fellow, you must not go to your lover until I allow you.”
The old man, however, who attached more importance to his health than the doctor, thought: “Even if you gave me permission, I would not go to her. I was so much better before I knew her.”
As soon as he was alone, he began to think of the girl, with the idea of freeing himself from her altogether. But he remembered that the girl loved him, and he therefore thought her capable of coming to see him after a time, even without being invited. The strength of love is well known. Then what sort of a figure would he cut, he who had determined not to see her even with the doctor’s permission? He wrote to her that he should have to leave town unexpectedly for a long time. He would let her know when he returned. He enclosed a sum of money which was meant to settle accounts with his own conscience. The letter also ended with a kiss, written after a moment’s hesitation. No. The kiss had not set his pulse beating.
The next day he felt reassured by a quiet, though almost sleepless night. The terrible pain had not returned, whereas, in spite of the doctor’s assurances, he had dreaded being attacked by it every night in the dark. Next time he went to bed more calmly and recovered confidence, but not sleep. The rumbling of the guns reached him and the nice old man asked: “Why have they not managed to discover a way of killing each other without making so much noise about it?” It was not very long since the day when the sound of the fighting had awakened generous impulses in him. But illness had taken from him the remnants of a feeling for his fellows which old age had failed to destroy in him.
During the next few days the doctor added some drops in the intervals between the powders. Then, to insure his sleeping at night, he came in the evening to give him injections. There was also special medicine for the appetite which he had to take at stated hours. There was plenty to do in the old man’s day. And the housekeeper, unnoticed in happier days, became very important. The old man, who could be grateful, might perhaps have grown fond of her, for sometimes she had even to get up in the night to give him his medicines. But she had a bad fault. She did not forgive him his transgressions and made frequent references to them. The first time she had to give him a small dose of champagne by way of medicine, she accompanied it with the remark: “It is some of that which was bought for a very different purpose.”
For a time the old man protested, trying to make her think that between him and the girl there had been nothing more than an affection of the utmost purity. Then, seeing that nothing could shake her conviction, he began to believe that she had long known it and had spied upon him. How could he tell when? He puzzled his brains for a long while to find out. He blushed especially for what the woman knew, because the rest did not exist, but with that damned woman everything ended by existing, given those very vague allusions of hers, with the help of which it was possible to remember the whole adventure. The result was that he could no longer endure the woman and allowed her near him only when he needed her. It is true that he needed her also to gossip with, so that even this hatred, which might have been really vital, was ineffectual. It confined itself to his whispering to the doctor: “She is as ugly as sin.”
In the course of his struggle with this woman he remembered the girl, but without regretting her. All he regretted was his health, or rather what he regarded as his own youth. Youth had fled with the girl’s last visit, and regret for this persisted in his regret for her. Now, in all seriousness, he would find a job for the girl … if he recovered his health. Then he would return to his important and profitable work and not to sin. It was sin that injured health.
Summer passed. He was allowed to go for a drive on one of the last calm days. The doctor went with him. The result was far from unfavourable, for he enjoyed the change and his condition was no worse, but it was impossible to repeat the experiment in the bad weather that followed.
Thus his empty life went on. There was no change, except in the medicines. Each medicine was good for a time. Then the doses had to be increased to produce the same effect till it had to be replaced by another drug. After a month or two, it is true, they began all over again.
However, a certain equilibrium was established in his system. If he was going to his death, the progress was imperceptible. It was no longer a question of the pain, heroic in its violence, on the night when death had uplifted its arm to give him the decisive blow. Far from it. Perhaps, as he was then, he was no longer worth striking. He thought he was getting better every day. He even believed that his appetite had returned. He took time to swallow his tasteless broths and really thought he was eating. There were still some tins of stimulating food in the house. The old man took one in his trembling hands: he read the name of the famous maker and put it down again. He meant to keep it for the day when he should be even better. For that day were also kept some bottles of champagne. It had been found that the wine was useless for his malady.
The most important part of the day was that which he spent by a window during the warmest hours. That window was a chink through which he looked out on life as it went on its way in the streets, even now that he had been exiled from it. If the woman of sin, as he called her, was at hand, he criticized to her the luxury that still appeared in the poor streets of Trieste or pitied in rather emphatic tones the poverty that went by in a stream. Opposite his house was a baker’s and there was often a queue of people drawn up at his door, waiting for their crust of bread. The old man expressed pity for these people waiting so anxiously for a badly cooked loaf that filled him with disgust, but here his pity was pure hypocrisy. He envied those who moved freely about the streets. It was childish of him. On the whole he was comfortable in the shelter of his well-warmed room, but he would have liked to look even beyond that road. The passers-by who awakened his curiosity, because they were dressed either too well or too badly, turned round the corner and were lost to him.
One night when he could not sleep he began to walk about the room and, in his desire to move and to find some distraction, he went to the window. The queue by the baker’s door was already there, so long that even at night it stained the pavement with black. Even then he did not really pity these people who were sleepy and could not go and sleep. He had a bed and could not sleep. Those waiting in the queue were certainly better off.
These were the days of Caporetto. His doctor gave him the first news of the disaster. He had come to weep in the company of his old friend, whom he (poor doctor!) believed to be capable of feeling as he did. Instead the old man could see nothing but good in what had happened: the war was moving away from Trieste and therefore from him. The doctor wailed: “We shan’t see even their aeroplanes any longer.” The old man muttered: “True, probably we shan’t see them any more.” In his heart he rejoiced at the prospect of quiet nights, but he tried to copy the pain he saw in the doctor’s face in his own expression.
In the afternoon, when he felt up to it, he interviewed his confidential manager, an old clerk who enjoyed his complete confidence. In business the old man was still sufficiently energetic and clear-headed, and the clerk came to the conclusion that the old man’s illness was not very serious and that he would come back to work sooner or later. But his energy in business was of the same kind as that which he displayed in looking after his health. The slightest indisposition was sufficient to make him put off business to the next day. And for the sake of his health he managed to forget business the moment his clerk was gone. He sat down by the stove into which he liked to throw bits of coal and watch them burn. Then he shut his dazzled eyes and opened them to go on with the same game. This is how he passed the evenings of days which had been quite as empty.
But his life was not to end in this way. Some organisms are fated to leave nothing behind them for death, which merely succeeds in seizing an empty shell. All that he could burn, he burnt, and his last flame was the finest.