The shock was considerable. I had now to contemplate two dreary months of enforced rest, of going without alcohol or coffee, of absolute continence. After some hesitation I confided my situation to Schooner, whose sympathy and encouragement raised my spirits greatly.
‘It is nothing serious,’ he said. ‘Everyone gets it some time or other. Casanova had it, by his own count, fourteen times, though some of them may have been recurrences due to faulty treatment. Here is my own doctor’s address; he is young, intelligent, and modest in his charges. His father, by the way, is permanent conductor of the orchestra of the Paris Opera and was a friend of Debussy’s. Go and see him right away. Say you don’t know where you picked the thing up—it’s always safest.’
Schooner had presumed the source of infection was a prostitute, and I did not disabuse him. But I had now to advise Mrs Quayle of her condition—of which, due to the less conspicuous symptoms the malady displays in women, she was obviously quite unaware. Before getting in touch with Schooner’s doctor, I telephoned her and broke the news. There was a long moment of silence.
‘This is simply fearful,’ she said. ‘Are you quite sure?’
‘I’m going for treatment tomorrow and I really think you should too.’
‘I don’t dare go to my own medical man for this. He is a nice old man but a Calvinist. Could you not have acquired this wretched thing from someone else?’
‘No.’
‘You mean you were chaste for several days before our last meeting?’
‘For at least two weeks, Mrs Quayle.’
‘Honour, please ... Then it seems I have done you a greevyous wrong. I even think I know the person responsible. A Hungharian—yes. But that is neither here nor there. Is your doctor a reliable man?’
‘I think so. His father was a friend of Debussy’s.’ I gave her his address.
‘I shall make an appointment with him tomorrow also. If we should meet in his waitingroom it might be advisable if we did not recognize each other.’
Dr Busser lived in a charming small house in a mews off the rue Louis-David in Passy. There was no waitingroom and a parlourmaid showed me into a drawingroom that held a magnificent grand piano. On top of the piano was a large framed photograph of Debussy, with a flowing, fulsome inscription that ran up transversely into the composer’s beard, while on the walls were other signed photographs of composers and singers. I was identifying Saint-Saëns, d’Indy, Jean de Reszke and Lucrezia Bori when a plump little old man in a velvet smoking-jacket ran in and seized my hand—then, adjusting a pair of thick pince-nez on a black ribbon, stared, started back, murmured some apologies, and ran out again. A few minutes later a young man in a white coat came in, greeted me with a reserved smile, and took me into the surgery. ‘My father,’ he exclaimed, ‘is as blind as a bat. He thought you were Madame Ponselle.’
My initial treatment was over at last.
‘And now for your régime,’ said Dr Busser, removing his gloves. ‘No alcohol, wine or beer; no strong coffee, tea or spices; no red-blooded meats; nothing fried; no salad dressing; no exercise; never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down. Eat mostly boiled things. Drink as much mineral water as you can hold. And above all, absolute chastity. If you do as I say, you will be cured in about ten weeks; if you don’t, it will take longer and cost you proportionately more. And now,’ he fixed me with a piercing look, ‘if you will tell me from whom you received this little gift, I would be grateful. If it is a prostitute, give me her address. I don’t ask this from curiosity, naturally, but because I am required to report all these cases to the Ministry of Health.’
‘This is a difficult question, sir. It was not a prostitute, I assure you, but an American. She may soon be consulting you herself.’
‘An American? Then she has already made her appointment. And now, if you will come back in two days we will continue your treatment. By the way, my fees are payable currently. You owe me one hundred francs.’
On my way out I saw a small figure, heavily veiled, seated in a taxi standing at the curb. As I passed, the whiff of musk assured me it was Mrs Quayle. My knees trembled. I was astonished to find I was still in love with her.
Mindful of Dr Busser’s instructions, I took a bus back to the rue Broca and lay down. I had never felt so depressed; everything seemed to be piling up. I had still to find a place to live, as well as some kind of work—and yet I had to rest ... After a while I tried to count my blessings. I had a few friends, a good doctor, and almost three hundred dollars; all was not lost. I dressed in my best clothes, brushed my hair and took the Métro back to Montparnasse where I had dinner and then sat in the Falstaff over a small bottle of Vichy. I had decided to feel as tragic as the absurdity of my plight allowed.
In any degrading situation one must refuse to admit the degradation: one is never more ridiculous than one feels. Casanova is the supreme example of a man always rising above his petty misfortunes. He brushed them aside in as lordly a manner as he did the insults of the great men who cut him, of the police chiefs who asked him to leave their cities, of the women who made a fool of him. Or at least that is what he tells us, and this is perhaps one of the few points on which he can be believed. For between the lines of his memoirs we see the pattern of the world’s mistrust and rejection of him gradually developing with a certain implacable force. Again and again we suddenly glimpse him not through his own eyes but through those of respectable people—bankers, politicians, diplomats, the police—as a swindler, confidenceman, pimp, card-sharp, bully, a disreputable adventurer with all the swagger and insolence of his kind; and just as often he reasserts himself in an instant, he regains our sympathy and admiration by some flash of insight, some burst of tenderness, some profound aphorism, and we accept him once again on his own terms. We end, in other words, by loving him as much for what he really was as for what he tells us he was, and discover that the two characters complement each other and make an intelligible whole. In this way we grasp the truth that man is not only a living creature but the person of his own creation.
I was consoling myself with these thoughts when Joe the Bum told me I was wanted on the telephone. It was Mrs Quayle; she spoke almost in a whisper. ‘It is as you said. I should like to see you.’
‘Please, I’m not very good company at the moment.’
‘Nor am I. But I thought we might mingle our tears. I am all alone here. Please, you must not be bitter. I could not endure that on top of everything.’
My love for her was almost stifling me. I knew she cared nothing for me, she was merely frightened and lonely. ‘Where would you like us to meet?’
‘Could you not come here?’
‘In fifteen minutes.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
As I hung up I realized I had made a terrible mistake and was getting still deeper into a hopeless situation. I went back to my Vichy, and for a minute considered not going to the rue Galilée at all. It would be the best way of putting an end to the affair. But even then I knew I could not bear not to see her again, to give her up, to be alone ...
Today, here in the hospital, I know it was a wrong step. I ought to have stayed on with my loneliness and my Vichy, and spent a night of dejection in the rue Broca. If I had, I mightn’t be here now. But I like to think I went because it was my destiny: this spares me a useless remorse.
The little elevator in the rue Galilée delivered me at Mrs Quayle’s door, which opened before I had time to ring. She was very pale but her handclasp was firm. ‘I am so glad you were able to come. I have been almost out of my mind with despair.’
We sat down in the livingroom.
‘My dear,’ she said simply, ‘I am so sorry.’
‘The important thing is to keep the matter quiet,’ I said. ‘And to keep our spirits up, of course. Everything should be all right in two or three months, Mrs Quayle.’
‘Why won’t you call me Honour? You never do.’
‘Honour.’
She smiled—as if she were smiling through a mist of unshed tears. I had noticed the effect before: it was a trick she had. Then I noticed that she was really crying. My love for her was suddenly overwhelming. She must have seen it, for we both got up at the same time, moved forward and fell into each other’s arms like the characters in a Victorian novel.
Even then I knew she had no love for me: we were only partners in misfortune, united by an absurd and sordid accident that was itself the result of promiscuity, boredom and caprice. For her, the embrace must have been both desperate and depressing, a kind of clinging to the only object in sight, towards which she must have even felt a certain resentment engendered by a sense of guilt. But for me, the very act of holding her in my arms was an experience of the wildest ecstasy. She raised her face, drenched with tears, to mine, and I kissed her with my whole heart.
It was not to be the last time. We were to kiss with passion, affection, and comradeship in the coming months, but never with the same rapture. The endless kiss we exchanged that evening in the rue Galilée was emotionally the highest point I was ever to reach with her. From then on everything declined.