THE DIRECTOR SMILES. Though his eyes are sunken, and his eyebrows overgrown, he has all the eagerness and bloom of a young man. It is he who oversaw the installation of the windows. Besotted with everything that is novel and newfangled, he sees, in the little wagon, the possibility of further innovation.
What do I spend my days in pursuit of? he suddenly asks. I seem to lead a sedentary existence—he flaps his hands at the desk, the matron, the shelves of books—but mine is a life devoted to the chase. Other doctors deal with sickness in all of its physical manifestations: a swollen abdomen, a blistered tongue, a scaly patch of skin. But illness does not always write itself upon the body; the sickness I search for is hidden deep within the brain. Sometimes it rises to the surface. Sometimes the face betrays what the body conceals. But these moments, these betrayals, last no longer than an instant. They come, they go, they pass over the patient, darkening and brightening his face like clouds gusting over a meadow. How is it possible, then, to tell what he is suffering when the visible signs of his inner disorder appear so fleetingly upon his face?
I don't know, says Adrien.
Neither do I, says Madeleine.
Removing himself from behind his desk, the director crouches down beside the wagon. He strokes the black box that sits among the canisters and bellows and bulbs, and his touch is reverent, as if the box might abruptly snatch off the first joints of his fingers.
One science, he says, in aid of another.
You, he says to Adrien, can capture that which I so hotly pursue.
Adrien fails to understand.
You will take pictures! the director says. You will photograph my patients. Their symptoms will show themselves in your photographs.
Adrien nods, mystified.
But who, the director asks, and stares at Madeleine, is she?
My valuable assistant, the photographer answers, as Madeleine slips her hands beneath her thighs.