Singular Amours

by Edmond Thiaudière

  “Unfortunately, no,” the captain replied, “but I’m authorized by the company to take one on, and we suffered a too much from not having one during or crossing from America for me to do without one on the return journey. I wrote to London yesterday asked them to send me one…no matter who…I’m waiting.”

  “Is it necessary, Captain,” I said, “for your surgeon to be English?”

  “Not at all, Monsieur, and I’d even prefer that he wasn’t,” he added, with a smile pierced by the old Yankee rancor against England. “All that I ask is that he knows a little of our language.”

  “When are you leaving, Captain?” I asked.

  “We’ll be setting sail in eight or ten days at the latest, if the wind continues to be favorable.”

  “What conditions would you make for your surgeon?”

  “Why are you asking all these questions of the Captain?” Melanski asked me, looking at me with astonishment. “What interest do you have in that? Can you offer him a surgeon?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What conditions?” repeated the American. “Pardon me, but I don’t understand exactly.”

  “I’m asking you, Captain, what salary you’d give a surgeon who has all his diplomas and proof that he is a doctor in medicine?”

  “Oh, right!” exclaimed the Captain. “He’d be engaged for two years to the service of the ship, with the faculty, while the ship is in port, of having an independent clientele, and he’d receive three hundred and fifty dollars a year, plus, of course, nourishment aboard. He’d eat with the first mate and me and have a cabin similar to ours.” He added: “If you have someone to propose to me, Monsieur, it’ll be necessary to hurry, for an English surgeon might arrive at any moment.”

  “But he doesn’t have anyone,” murmured Melanski.

  Without replying to my friend, I said to the American: “Tomorrow morning, perhaps I’ll have the honor of seeing you again, Captain, and proposing a candidate to you.”

  “Good,” said the Captain. “You can find me until midday at the Hôtel de Normandie. Ask for Mr. Betly.”

  With that we took our leave of the Captain, who was veritably a very commendable man, and we headed for the Place Louis XVI, where the omnibus from Le Havre to Montivilliers stopped.

  “Who have you in mind, then, to be a surgeon on the Love?” asked Melanski.

  “You haven’t guessed?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad, for it’s you, here present, and on whose arm I’m leaning, my old comrade.”

  “What an idea!”

  “I’m only astonished that it didn’t occur to you at the same time as it did to me.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “I’m wise, and furthermore, I have an affection for you that you can’t doubt, I hope. Well, since you don’t want to get married, I believe, as I said to you the other day, that you can only purge your mind of the dangerous chimeras that have been oppressing it for six months by making a long voyage. You’ve previously objected to me that long voyages cost more than your resources, but here’s the prospect of a two year voyage that you can make, all expenses defrayed, and even paid. The opportunity is unique; seized it by the hair.”

  “But I already have a clientele, which can only increase, that’s certain.”

  “Bah! Your clientele...have you even taken in a thousand francs in your six months of practice? I doubt it—and if you’ve taken them in, how many have you lost? Instead of which, you’ll earn as much in six months of the Love, without any possible losses and without any expenses.”

  “And my house, which I’ve rented for three years, and my furniture, my horse and my cabriolet?”

  “No problem! In a week you can sell your horse and cabriolet. As for your furniture, you leave it in your house, confide the key to the house to Pélagie, who seems to be a very honest woman, and promise her a nice fee is she manages to sublet the house during the three-year period to some temporary employee, such as a collector of indirect taxes, or a commercial agent. She’ll find someone, I assure you. In any case, if the house in Montivilliers remains on your hands, you can console yourself by thinking that you’re not paying rent on the Love. As for your papers and little things you want to keep, you can confide them to me until you return.”

  “And my skeleton?”

  “Oh, that! I’m separating you from that forever.”

  “And the money that’s owed to me? For I’m owed something like a thousand francs, as you said.”

  “I’ll have it collected and invest it for you; or, even better, you can take charge of that yourself in two years.”

  “And what will people say here, where everyone thinks that I’m definitively installed, about such an abrupt departure, which resembles a flight?”

  “Is it really you, Melanski, who’s worrying about what people might say? They’ll say, of course, that you had a yen to travel, and that you haven’t been stupid enough to let the excellent opportunity that was offered to you escape.”

  “It’s certain that a two-year voyage made in that fashion is very tempting.”

  “And its even greater advantage,” I proclaimed, “will be to exercise a fortunate influence on your mind, to give another direction to your ideas.”

  “Well, I’ll think about it. I’m not saying no…I’ll think about it tonight, and you’ll receive a response tomorrow morning.”

  We spent the entire evening discussing that new project. Melanski presented me with objections; I replied to them—and I saw with pleasure that he was only asking to be convinced. We separated very late and each retired to our own room.

  XII

  Very preoccupied with the embarkation I was meditating for Melanski—for it was, after all, a serious matter—half rejoicing and half troubled, balancing the good and bad possibilities that might result from it, I completely forgot that he had rebuilt the skeleton in its case. Under the impression of the conversation with the captain of the Love and with the aid of its future consequences, my anxiety of the morning had disappeared. So, I was asleep and dreaming about maritime episodes when poor Melanski arrived at one thirty, as was his habit.

  I woke up at the first sound, thank God. He had not taken two steps into the room when, suddenly remembering the re-edification of the skeleton, I thrust my legs out of bed and wanted to run to the case in order to remove the skeleton before he opened it, while he as placing the candle on the mantelpiece—but I judged that I did not have time to prevent him, and that I would also be running a great risk of waking him. I therefore remained there, inert and dejected, murmuring oh my gods that could not ward off the misfortune.

  He opened the case, really taking out the skeleton this time, and carrying out, in order to take it away, reclose the case and pick up his candle, all the rational movements that I have already described.

  What should I do? How could I prevent the accursed skeleton being face to face with Melanski the following morning, and driving him mad completely?

  Seized by a blind inspiration, I got up and stealthily, while the poor sleepwalker was picking up his candle, I enlarged the gap in the doorway of the study, slipped out and plastered myself against the wall of the corridor.

  Melanski came out slowly, his candle in one hand and his skeleton extended over both arms, taking the greatest precautions not to bump the head of the legs of his precious burden. He placed the candle on the floor, disengaged his left arm, which was supporting the skeleton’s legs, replacing that support with his raised left thigh, so that he was only standing on one foot, and closed the study door. Then he bent down, picked up his candle, which he held his right hand, carefully keeping it away from the skeleton, as if he were afraid of burning it. Finally, he went upstairs. I followed, barefoot like him, in a night-shirt, like him, with one hand in front of my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing, and the other dangling.

  He arrived in his bedroom, the door of which he had left wide open…I arrived on his heels. I went to put down his candle; then, by one of
those delicate attentions that one has for invalids, he set the feet of the skeleton on the floor beside the bed and put an arm around its waist in order to support it; then he pulled back the bedclothes, took his skeleton over his arm again, laid it down on the far side of the bed and pulled the covers back over it.

  I was in the middle of the room and I watched, full of anxiety, not knowing what to expect, hoping that he would soon fall asleep normally beside the skeleton, and that I could then, with the aid of skill, deliver him from his lugubrious companion.

  Horror! I see him kiss its forehead, exactly in the hollow formed by the excision of the portrait.

  Then he turns round; one might think that he’s looking at me. I’m afraid. He comes toward me—directly toward me. I move aside, frightened. He heads for the door. I divine what he wants to do; he wants to close it. With a promptitude equal to his methodical, somnambulistic slowness, I go to the bed, and snatch the skeleton out of it, holding all its limbs against one another in order that they don’t rub against one another and make a noise. Melanski returns to his bed in a straight line. I return toward the door, prowling along the wall opposite the bed. I’m at the door. Melanski climbs into his bed, and kisses the bolster at the place where the skeleton’s skull was placed a moment before; then he emerges partly from the bed.

  It seems to me that he is looking at me and is about to ask what I’ve done with his skeleton. Not at all—it’s to extinguish his candle, which is burning on the night-table.

  Now I’m in the dark.

  Fortunately, I’m holding the doorknob; I turn it very gently, very gently. The catch yields, and Melanski doesn’t wake up. I go out.

  Should I close the door again or not?

  A grave question. If I don’t close it again, tomorrow morning, he might notice that it’s open and be astonished. If I close it, the noise might wake him up.

  I close it again, awkwardly. The catch grates, and I hear Melanski call: “Who’s there?”

  I make no reply, as you can imagine. I refrain from moving; but I’m trembling that he might light his candle and come to see.

  Nothing.

  Groping my way, carrying the skeleton in one arm like a weapon and guiding myself with my right hand I reach the stairway. I go down. I got to the door of the study, I pen it, and I set the skeleton down on the floor. I reach the chair on which my candle and my matches are placed. I light up, and am finally delivered from what is fundamentally one of the most puerile of anguishes, but nevertheless the cruelest that I have ever experienced in my life.

  As I had just carried out the counterpart of Melanski’s maneuvers, I wondered whether I was really awake or whether I too might be under the influence of a fit of somnambulism. I had some difficult in collecting myself—after which I replaced the skeleton in its case and went to bed.

  As for going to sleep, I couldn’t. I repeated incessantly that it was imperative that Melanski embarked, and that if perchance he continued to hesitate, it would be necessary to put everything to work to convince him. Then too, the fantastic march that Melanski, the skeleton and I had made from the study to the bedroom, which had been as terrifying as it was ridiculous, occupied my mind strangely.

  Perhaps some impatient reader wants to tell me that I had a very simple means of stopping Melanski’s nocturnal visits…and what would that have been, reader?

  “It would have been, Monsieur, to bolt the study door from the inside—if, that is it had a bolt.”

  It did, in fact, have one, but I would never have dared to make use of it, for fear that Melanski, exasperated by the resistance of the door, might shake it, wake himself up thanks to his efforts, and discover himself in such a pitiful state.

  XIII

  At seven o’clock, Melanski came into my room with a smile on his lips, and waking me up, as he had done the day before, he said: “I’ve decided to embark on the Love, all the more so as the Captain is a man with whom I sense that I can sympathize a great deal. I’m going to depart for Le Havre in my cabriolet, which I’ll try to sell there, along with the horse, and I’ll sign an engagement with Mr. Betly this very morning. Do you want to accompany me?”

  There was nothing I would have liked better, and we soon set off, to the great astonishment of Pélagie, who was annoyed, the good woman, by not having to prepare lunch for us for two days running.

  Melanski took with him a few documents he had from his father, his birth certificate, his diplomas, certificates from his professors—in sum, everything required to demonstrate that he was an honest and capable man.

  With a perfect ease, he negotiated in English his admission to the Love. Mr. Betly declared himself more than satisfied. In any case, he was attracted to Melanski, as Melanski was to him, and I had the pleasure of glimpsing that the worthy American, so distinguished and so cordial, would substitute for me with my friend.

  “We’re almost compatriots…by marriage,” he said to Melanski, as he shook his hand, since my wife and you were born of Polish fathers.”

  As soon as their little treaty was concluded, the captain drafted a telegram to his correspondent in London to countermand the request for a surgeon that he had sent him. I wanted to take the telegram to the office, but Melanski insisted on taking it himself—I have no idea why, but I was glad deep down, for I took advantage of is absence.

  “Your new surgeon, Captain,” I said to Mr. Betly, “is a fellow full of heart and intelligence. I’ll be much mistaken if, when you’ve known him for a while, you don’t accord him your entire affection. As you don’t know me, any more than him, it’s not for me to offer you a caution in his regard, but you’ll verify the justice of my words. You must have noticed that yesterday, when, by virtue of an almost indifferent question from my friend, we learned that you had no surgeon on your crew and that you wanted one, it was me who spoke to you vaguely about being able to provide one, whereas the one that I intended for you was there, and didn’t say a word. It was, therefore, me who convinced him to embark. Why?

  “Just now, you had the discretion not to ask him what motives he had for quitting a residence where he had begun to practice medicine under the best auspices. He would have replied to you that he likes travel and the adventurous life. But that’s not all. It’s also a matter, Captain, of effacing the last persistent traces of an eccentric amour that nearly compromised my friend’s reason, and which it would take too long to recount to you. Perhaps, in the long hours that you spend on the ship together, he’ll take you into his confidence. In any case, I beg you, Captain, in the name of the amity I have for that excellent fellow, to treat him with a very particular care.”

  “I promise you, Monsieur,” Mr. Betly said, “That I’ll neglect nothing to make this period of two years agreeable, and perhaps also salutary, for your friend, who will certainly become mine if he doesn’t refuse to do so.”

  With that, Melanski returned. Mr. Betly invited us to lunch. After lunch we occupied ourselves with selling the horse and the cabriolet, which was done more rapidly than we had hoped, because there happened to be a buyer at the Hôtel d’Ingouville, where we had lunch. Melanski got away, I believe, with a loss of two hundred francs on the price he had paid two months earlier.

  We returned to Montivilliers by omnibus. How surprised Pélagie was on seeing us return with neither cabriolet nor horse! Everything was explained to her, since, according to my plan, adopted by Melanski, she had to play the important role of letting agent, and her surprise became amazement.

  A week passed in packing up everything that Melanski was to take aboard—which is to say, garments, underwear, books, instruments—and everything that I was to put in storage in Paris, including jewelry, private papers, duly tied up and sealed; and in making a list of the objects that were to remain in Pélagie’s custody, such as bedding and kitchen equipment.

  As for the skeleton and its case, I did not want to pack them until the morning when Melanski was taking to the sea and I was returning to Paris. I was careful, however, every even
ing before going to bed, to put the skeleton inside the divan that served as my bed. And although Melanski did not fail once to render his customary visit to the case, at least he always went away, thank God, with empty arms.

  There were also, during that week, a few adieux to make, notably to his landlord, who, with the calmness of a sage, was careful to have his three years’ rent paid in advance, on the pretext that Melanski might not come back, but he authorized the sub-letting as compensation.

  My friend’s departure excited, I believe, veritable regrets as well as astonishment. He had already put down roots in that pretty region. Pélagie, in taking way the keys of the house, shed large tears. She did not understand why Monsieur was quitting a place where he was living so peacefully, to confront the countless perils of a long-haul voyage. After that, I imagine, her emotion also reflected a few advantages that Melanski gave her, like the gift of a hogshead of wine—a precious thing, especially in Normandy—the faculty of picking the fruits in the garden and a commission of ten per cent if the house was let.

  XIV

  As you can imagine, our separation did not take place without a great constriction of the heart. Poor friend, the last words he addressed to me were the melancholy lines from Lord Byron: “If I see you again, adieu; if I never see you again, adieu, and adieu again.”

  I embraced him; then recommending that half of my soul one last time to Mr. Betly, I quit the deck of the Love, for they were casting off the moorings. I ran to the jetty, where there were many curious people gathered. I succeeded, not without using my shoulders, in reaching the front rank. The ship, with its sails furled, advanced slowly into the bay, towed by the tug Alcide. I waved my handkerchief, and a few other spectators, who apparently had friends aboard, did likewise.