Thirty Hours with a Corpse

by Maurice Level

  “Thank you once again, Monsieur. Will you tell me your name so that I can pray for you?”

  “It’s not worthwhile. Hurry out of the cold. It is I who am very happy. Goodbye . . .”

  He went a little way back, stopped, looked fixedly at the dark expanse of water below him, and once again in a louder voice said:

  “Goodbye . . .”

  Then suddenly he leaped up on the parapet . . .

  There was a great splash . . . then cries of “Help!” . . . “Run to the bank of the river!”

  Pushed roughly about by the people who rushed up, the blind man cried:

  “What is it? What has happened?”

  A street urchin who had almost knocked him over shouted without stopping:

  “A beggar has made a hole in the water.”

  With a weary gesture he shrugged his shoulders, murmuring:

  “He at least had the courage, he had! . . .”

  Then, touching his dog with the toe of his boot, he drudged on, tapping the ground with his stick, his face turned up to the sky, his back bent . . . without knowing . . .

  In the Light of the Red Lamp

  SEATED IN a large armchair near the fire, his elbows on his knees, his hands held out to the warmth, he was talking slowly, interrupting himself abruptly now and again with a murmured: “Yes . . . yes . . .” as if he were trying to gather up, to make sure of his memories: then he would continue his sentence.

  The table beside him was littered with papers, books, odds and ends of various kinds. The lamp was turned low: I could see nothing of him except his pallid face and his hands, long and thin in the firelight.

  The purring of a cat that lay on the hearth-rug and the crackling of the logs that sent up strangely shaped flames were the only sounds that broke the silence. He was speaking in a faraway voice as a man might in his dream.

  “Yes . . . yes . . . It was the great, the greatest misfortune of my life. I could have borne the loss of every penny I possess, of my health . . . anything . . . everything . . . but not that! To have lived for ten years with the woman you adore, and then to watch her die and be left to face life alone . . . quite alone . . . it was almost more than I could bear! . . . It is six months since I lost her . . . How long ago it seems! And how short the days used to be . . . If only she had been ill for some time, if only there had been some warning . . . It seems a horrible thing to say, but when you know beforehand the mind gets prepared, doesn’t it? . . . Little by little the heart readjusts its outlook . . . you grow used to the idea . . . but as it was . . .”

  “But I thought she had been ill for some time?” I said.

  He shook his head. “Not at all, not at all . . . It was quite sudden . . . The doctors were never even able to find out what was the matter with her . . . It all happened and was over in two days. Since then I don’t know how or why I have gone on living. All day long I wander round the house looking for some reminder of her that I never find, imagining that she will appear to me from behind the hangings, that a breath of her scent will come to me in the empty rooms . . .”

  He stretched out his hand toward the table. “Look, yesterday I found that . . . this veil, in one of my pockets. She gave it to me to carry one evening when we were at the theatre, and I try to believe it still smells of her perfume, is still warm from its contact with her face . . . But no! Nothing remains . . . except sorrow . . . though there is something, only it . . . it . . . In the first shock of grief you sometimes have extraordinary ideas . . . Can you believe that I photographed her lying on her deathbed? I took my camera into the white, silent room, and lit the magnesium wire: yes, overwhelmed as I was with grief, I did with the most scrupulous precaution and care things from which I should shrink today, revolting things . . . Yet it is a great consolation to know she is there, that I shall be able to see her again as she looked that last day.”

  “Where is this photograph?” I asked.

  Leaning forward, he replied in a low voice: “I haven’t got it, or rather, I have it . . . I have the plate, but I have never had the courage to touch it . . . Yet how I have longed to see it!”

  He laid his hand on my arm: “Listen . . . tonight . . . your visit . . . the way I have been able to talk about her . . . it makes me feel better, almost strong again . . . would you, will you come with me to the dark room? Will you help me develop the plate?”

  He looked into my face with the anxious, questioning expression of a child who fears he may be refused something he longs to have. “Of course I will,” I answered.

  He rose quickly. “Yes . . . with you it will be different. With you I shall keep calm . . . and it will do me good . . . I shall be much happier . . . you’ll see . . .”

  We went to the dark room, a closet with bottles ranged round on shelves. A trestle-table littered with dishes, glasses, and books ran along one side of the wall.

  By the light of a candle that threw flickering shadows round him, he silently examined the labels on the bottles and rubbed some dishes.

  Presently he lit a lamp with red glass, blew out the candle, and said to me:

  “Shut the door.”

  There was something dramatic about the darkness relieved only by the blood-red light. Unexpected reflections touched the sides of the bottles, played on his wrinkled cheeks, on his hollow temples.

  He said: “Is the door closely shut? Then I will begin.”

  He opened a dark slide and took out the plate. Holding it carefully at the corners between his thumb and first fingers, he looked at it intently for a long time as if trying to see the invisible picture which was so soon to appear.

  With great care he let it glide into the bath and began to rock the dish.

  I cannot say why, but it seemed to me that the tapping of the porcelain on the boards at regular intervals made a curiously mournful sound: the monotonous lapping of the liquid suggested a vague sobbing, and I could not lift my eyes from the milk-colored piece of glass which was slowly taking on a darker line round its edges.

  I looked at my friend. His lips were trembling as he murmured words and sentences which I failed to catch.

  He drew out the plate, held it up to the level of his eyes, and said as I leaned over his shoulder:

  “It’s coming up . . . slowly . . . My developer is rather weak . . . But that’s nothing . . . Look, the high lights are coming . . . Wait! . . . you’ll see . . .”

  He put the plate back, and it sank into the developer with a soft, sucking sound.

  The gray color had spread uniformly over the whole plate. His head bent over it, he explained:

  “That dark rectangle is the bed . . . up above, that square”— he pointed it out with a motion of his chin—“is the pillow: and in the middle, that lighter part with the pale streak outlined on the background . . . that is . . . Look, there is the crucifix I put between her fingers. My poor little one . . . my darling!”

  His voice was hoarse with emotion: the tears were running down his cheeks as his chest rose and fell.

  “The details are coming up,” he said presently, trying to control himself. “I can see the lighted candles and the flowers . . . her hair, which was so beautiful . . . the hands she was so proud of . . . and the little white rosary that I found in her Book of Hours . . . My God, how it hurts to see it all again, yet somehow it makes me happy . . . very happy . . . I am looking at her again, my poor darling . . .”

  Feeling that emotion was overcoming him and wishing to soothe, I said:

  “Don’t you think the plate is ready now?”

  He held it up near the lamp, examined it closely, and put it back in the bath. After a short interval he drew it out afresh, re-examined it, and again put it back, murmuring:

  “No . . . no . . .”

  Something in the tone of his voice and the abruptness of his gesture struck me, but I had no time to think, for he at once began to speak again.

  “There are still some details to come up . . . It’s rather long, but as I told you my developer
is weak . . . so they only come up one by one.”

  He counted: “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . This time it will do. If I force it, I shall spoil it . . .”

  He took out the plate, waved it vertically up and down, dipped it in clean water, and held it toward me:

  “Look!”

  But as I was stretching out my hand he started and bent forward, holding the plate up to the lamp, and his face, lit up by the light, had suddenly become so ghastly that I cried:

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  His eyes were fixed in a wide terrified stare, his lips were drawn back and showed teeth that were chattering: I could hear his heart beating in a way that made his whole body rock backwards and forwards.

  I put my hand on his shoulder, and unable to imagine what could possibly cause such terrible anguish, I cried for the second time:

  “But what is it! Tell me. What’s the matter?”

  He turned his face to me, so drawn it no longer seemed human, and as his bloodshot eyes looked into mine he seized me by the wrist with a grip that sent his nails into my flesh.

  Thrice he opened his mouth trying to speak; then brandishing the plate above his head, he shrieked into the crimson-lit darkness:

  “The matter? . . . the matter? . . . I have murdered her! . . . She wasn’t dead! . . . the eyes have moved! . . .”

  A Mistake

  DOCTOR,” SAID the man, “I want you to examine me and tell me whether I am suffering from tuberculosis. I want to know the truth. I have enough courage to hear the worst without flinching. I consider, too, that it is your duty to speak with perfect frankness, and that it is my right to know my exact condition. Will you promise to do as I ask?”

  The doctor hesitated, pushed back his armchair, leaned against the chimney-piece beneath which burned a large fire of logs, and replied:

  “I give you my word. Will you undress yourself ?”

  While the patient took off his clothes, the doctor questioned him:

  “You feel weak! You have night-sweats! . . . You have had them, but don’t know. Do you cough much? Little fits of coughing early in the morning? . . . Are your parents still alive? Do you know what they died of ? . . .”

  The man, his chest bare, said:

  “I am ready.”

  The doctor began to sound him. The sick man followed the examination carefully, listening attentively as he stood with his heels together, his arms drooping, his chin raised. In the silent room the taps of the finger sounded like a hollow scale. Afterwards came the auscultation, long and careful. When he had finished; the doctor gave him a little slap on the shoulder and smiled:

  “Dress yourself. You are very highly strung, essentially nervous, but I can assure you there is nothing wrong, absolutely nothing . . . You don’t seem particularly glad to hear it?”

  The man, who was dressing himself, stopped, his arms in the air, his head half out of the front of his shirt: there was a piercing expression in his eyes, and it was with a mocking laugh that he replied:

  “Oh, yes, I am . . . Very glad . . .”

  He put on the rest of his clothes in complete silence. The doctor was at his desk, writing a prescription. He stopped him with a gesture: “Useless . . .”

  He took a louis from his pocket, put it on the corner of the table, sat down, and in a voice that trembled slightly began to talk:

  “Now for a little conversation. Eighteen months ago, a patient came here asking you, just as I did a few minutes ago, to tell him the truth. You examined him, quickly, it is true, then told him that he was tubercular, that his state was very grave—Oh! don’t protest, don’t defend yourself, I am certain of all I say—and that he must never marry, much less have children.”

  “I don’t remember,” murmured the doctor, “but it is possible . . . I have so many consultants . . . But I can’t quite see what you are leading up to . . .”

  “To this: that I was that consultant. I lied to you when I said I was unmarried. I was married and the father of children. When the door shut behind me, you never gave me another thought. I was only a negligible unit among the thousands of unhappy creatures who die every year of consumption. But for me your diagnosis had awful consequences.”

  He passed his hand over his eyes and went on:

  “When I got home my wife and little girls were waiting for me. It was winter, but indoors it was the essence of comfort. A big fire blazed on the hearth. Warmth, sweetness, happiness . . . all were there. Till that day I had loved the hour of return, the rest with my dear ones grouped round me: I loved my wife’s embraces, the kisses of my children, and all day long I looked forward to the moment when I should be free to forget with them the worries of business and all my troubles. When my wife held her lips up to me that evening I drew back, and I pushed away my little girls when they ran to me.

  “The seed you had sown in my mind was beginning to grow.

  “We sat down to dinner. During the meal I tried to hide my preoccupation. But I was sad; heartbroken, thinking of the beloved beings I should soon have to leave, of my home deprived of its support, of the children who would grow up fatherless.

  “To others who know themselves condemned there remains the consolation of being able to press to their hearts those they must leave behind: they face the Hereafter filled with the happiness such compensation means. But I! . . . A permanent danger to everyone I went near, I carried Death in me. Still alive, I was cut off from the number of the living: I had no longer any right to the joys of other men.

  “When bedtime came my children clustered round me as they did every evening.

  “I pushed them away. My mouth, my horrible mouth, must never go near theirs again. Presently I went to bed. Slowly all became quiet in the house and the streets. I put out my lamp and lay awake near my wife, whose quiet breathing I could hear.

  “The interminable hours of a sleepless night dragged by. I pressed my hands on my chest, trying to discover with my fingers the weak spots in my lungs. I had no pain, hardly enough discomfort to make me believe in the truth of your verdict. Such unreasonable revolts are natural. The wish father to the thought, I ended by believing that you had made an error of judgment. I said to myself: ‘It’s impossible: I will consult another doctor . . .’

  “Suddenly I heard coughing in the next room. I started. The cough, which came from my children’s room, sounded again, dry, sharp and ending in a sort of rattle. Terrified, I stretched out my hand to my wife, but I was afraid to wake her, and I waited. The coughing began again. I got up quietly and went into the room where the children slept. In the glimmer of the night-light, I could see them lying in their beds. It seemed to me that the older one was flushed. I touched her hand. It seemed hot. I bent over her. She coughed several times and turned restlessly on her pillow. I stayed beside her a long time: she kept coughing. I went back to bed, but hardly had I lain down when a terrible thought took possession of me: ‘Like me, she is tubercular!’

  “I had no doubt about it. I accepted it as a fact.”

  He leaned forward, and his hands grasping his knees, asked:

  “At that moment you had no idea of what you had done, had you?

  “The next day was unbearable. I dared not tell my wife that our child was ill. I had not the courage to call in a doctor. I was afraid of what he would say, of what I knew he was going to say: I was ashamed of myself, and cowardice kept me silent.

  “But my mind did not stand still. It was no longer only a question of contagion. A still more terrifying specter confronted me: that of Heredity. My children had inherited my physical condition, just as they had my eyes, my hair. Even if they had escaped that awful law, the mere fact of my being near them had contaminated them.

  “Imagination, you say! Nonsense. You and the whole fraternity, haven’t you taken pains to educate the ignorant public through the newspapers and magazines, by conferences! . . .

  “All that I had read and heard surged up in my memory.

  �
��One after another my wife and little daughters would gradually fade, dragging out martyred lives till the fatal end came . . . And I, I should watch it all: in their faces, in their wasting bodies, I should follow the progress of the disease. No science could alter the inevitable.”

  He lifted his finger and spoke in a deep, low voice.

  “Then—follow me carefully—living haunted by this thought, I grew to believe that there are cases when it is a man’s duty to stop suffering which he knows to be inevitable: that he has the right to undo what he has done, to suppress, make an end of beings condemned to physical torture, the right to be the Destiny that saves them from such a fate.

  “You shudder, you are afraid of understanding, . . . Yes, with my own hands I killed my children and my wife, killed, you hear me, killed them. I poisoned them, and did it so quickly and cleverly no one ever suspected me.

  “At first I meant to put an end to myself as well, but I deserved punishment, not for having killed them, for I believed my action a legitimate one, but for having brought them into the world. And what greater expiation could I have imposed on myself, than that of bearing alone, full of misery, the burden of the existence from which I had saved them, the sufferings from which I had set them free?

  “And now, see what happened. Some weeks after they were gone strength began to come back to me. The pain in the side went, the blood-spitting ceased. I ate with appetite. I began to put on flesh. Yes, I began to grow fat!

  “At first I believed that in some mysterious way the progress of the disease had momentarily stopped so that it might reassert itself later with greater violence. But after some months I was obliged to recognize facts: I was growing better, I was cured. I say ‘cured.’ Had I ever been tubercular?

  “This thought, vague at first, took shape. Do you understand what it meant? If I were tubercular, what I had done was necessary. If I were not, I had murdered without excuse, for no reason.

  “I gave myself a year to make sure, hoping that the arrested disease would reappear, trying by every kind of imprudence to set it working again. Useless. Then came the conviction, the certainty, that you had been wrong, had been guilty of a shameful error of judgment. An overwhelming sadness took possession of me. I had deliberately ruined my life, killed innocent creatures, plunged myself in the years of mourning through which I was dragging my way—and why? Because of your mistake. And I have come here today to hear you yourself confess it, that mistake!”