Doctor Lerne

by Maurice Renard

  Why had the professor suddenly become anxious? What motive was causing him to accelerate his pace? That was what I was asking myself, when the large pipe dropped out of his mouth. Leaping forward to pick it up, I could not retain an exclamation of amazement; it had been cut clean through by an angry clench of the teeth, which ended in a German word, doubtless an oath.

  As we went back toward the château, we saw a corpulent woman running toward us, overflowing her blue apron. The gymnastic pace was visibly exceptional and contrary to her inclination, for it shook her dangerously, and while trotting she supported herself by means of her arms and hands, as if she were hugging some precious, awkward and enormous burden. On seeing us she stopped dead—which seemed impossible—then appeared to want to go back. She continued on her way, however, very sheepishly, with an expression on her kindly face like that of a schoolgirl caught misbehaving. She was anticipating her fate.

  “What are you doing here, Barbe!” said Lerne, angrily. “You’ve forgotten that I forbade you to go beyond the pasture. I’ll end up sending you away, Barbe—after punishing you, of course!”

  The fat woman was very frightened. She forced a simper, pursed her lips as if she were about to give birth, and made her excuses. She had seen the pigeon fall from her kitchen and thought she might add it to the menu. “We always eat the same dishes,” she said, and added, stupidly: “Anyway, I didn’t think you were in the garden, I thought you were in the lab…”

  A brutal slap in the face interrupted the last syllable, which I inferred to be the first of labyrinth.

  “Oh, uncle!” I cried, indignantly.

  “You can hold your tongue or hop it! It’s quite simple, eh?”

  The terrified Barbe was no longer weeping. Her repressed sobs made her hiccup. She was very pale, and the print of Lerne’s bony hand on her cheek was still red.

  “Go and get Monsieur’s bags from the coach-house and take it up to the Lion Room.”

  That was a room on the first floor of the west wing. “Won’t you let me have my old room, uncle?” I asked.

  “Which one?”

  “Which one? But you know very well…the one on the ground floor, the Yellow Room, in the east wing.”

  “No,” he said, sharply. “I’m using that one. Go on, Barbe!”

  The cook moved off ahead of us as quickly as she could, gathering up her forefront in both arms, while her backside, confided to versatile destiny, wobbled freely.

  To the right, the pond was stagnating. The reflection of our taciturn passage moved along it like a lethargic dream. I was prey to a gradually increasing amazement. Even so, I contrived not to seem overly surprised at the sight of a new and spacious grey stone building backing on to the cliff. It comprised two residential blocks separated by a courtyard. A high wall, pierced by a carriage gate—presently closed—hid the courtyard from view, but the clucking of poultry escaped therefrom, and a dog that had scented us started yapping.

  Boldly, I sent out a probe. “Will you take me to visit your farm?”

  Lerne shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps,” he said. Then, turning toward the house, he called: “Wilhelm! Wilhelm!”

  The German with the face like a sundial opened a small window and the professor spoke rudely to him in his native tongue, so violently that the poor fellow trembled from head to toe.

  Well, I said to myself, it’s evidently thanks to his inadvertence that there were things abroad last night that should not have been.

  When that job was done, we went alongside the pasture. It contained a black bull and four variously-colored cows. The herd escorted us, for no particular reason. My terrible relative became jocular. “Nicolas, may I introduce Jupiter. This is the white Europa, Io the russet, Athor the blonde and Pasiphae, comfortably clad in a milk-white dress stained with ink—or of charcoal stained with chalk, if you prefer, my friend.”

  This memorial to libertine mythology made me smile. In truth, I would have latched on to any pretext to cheer myself up a little; I had a physical need to do so. I was also feeling so hungry that assuaging my appetite would soon become the only matter of interest. The château became uniquely attractive—it was where I would get something to eat!

  That attraction almost prevented me from examining the château’s neighbor, the greenhouse. That would have been a pity. The old flower-house had been augmented by two new compartments whose bulbous forms flanked the original rotunda. Beneath its caparison of lowered blinds, the construction appeared to me to be “state of the art”. It was like a cross between an exhibition hall and a bell-jar, and was possessed, if I dare say it, of a certain highly-unexpected grandiosity.

  A greenhouse of that sort in this jungle! I would have been less astonished to find a love-potion in the depths of a monastery!

  In my aunt’s day, regrettably long past, the Lion Room had been a guest-room. It had—and still has—three windows with bays as deep as alcoves. One overlooks the greenhouse and has a balcony. A second opens on to the garden; I could see the pasture from it, and, more distantly, the pond—and between the two, the summer-house that had been Briareus. The third casement faced the east wing; from there, I could see the window of my old room—which was closed—and the entire façade of the château, sideways on, blocking the view to the left.

  In that room I might as well have been in a hotel. Nothing there had any memories attached to it. Jouy wallpaper, marbled with damp and hanging loose in one corner, covered the walls with a host of red lions, each stopping a cannonball with its paw. The curtains on the bed and the windows deformed the same images within their pleats. Two engravings hung on the wall: The Education of Achilles and The Ravishment of Deïanera, in which damp had stained the faces of the four subjects red and dappled the hindquarters of the centaurs Chiron and Nessus.17 There was also a rather fine Norman clock, like a coffin stood on end, both an emblem and a measure of time. It was all commonplace and out of date.

  I washed my face in cold water and gladly put on clean underwear. Without knocking, Barbe brought me a bowl of rustic soup. She made no response to my condolences regarding her swollen cheek, and slipped away awkwardly, like some enormous sylph.

  There was no one in the drawing-room, unless shades count. Little black velvet armchair with two yellow tassels, shapeless crouching puffiness, so aptly called a toad, could I remember you as you were without evoking the storytelling shade of my aunt upon your batrachian form? And my mother’s chair—more austere, about which I cannot joke—will she not always be leaning on your back in my memory, for as long as you’re an armchair, if ever you really were one?

  Not a single detail had changed. From the ineffable white wall-paper, on which garlands of flowers trussed up in wreaths hung down, to the lambrequins of sulfur-yellow damask draping their fringed basques in a row, the work of a former owner—a contemporary of crinolines—had proved admirably resistant. Exaggerated padding still puffed up the sofas and settees, and nothing had succeeded in deflating the swollen chairs or the emphysemic poufs.

  All along the wood-paneling, my dear family smiled at me: my ancestors from pastels; my grandparents from miniatures; my father as a schoolboy from a daguerreotype. On the mantelpiece, appropriately decked out with frayed bouffant frames, a few photographs were propped up in front of the mirror. One group, in a large format, solicited my attention. I picked it up in order to examine it more easily. It depicted my uncle surrounded by five gentlemen, next to a huge St. Bernard dog. The picture had been taken at Fonval; the wall of the château formed a background, which included a laurier-rose in a tub. It was an amateur print, unsigned. There, Lerne was radiant with generosity, strength and intelligence, similar in all respects to the scientist I had expected to find. Of the five gentlemen, three were known to me: the Germans; I had never seen the other two.

  At that point, the door opened, so suddenly that I did not have time to put the group back in its place. Lerne ushered in a young woman.

  “My nephew, Nicolas Vermont, Mademoiselle Emm
a Bourdichet.”

  Mademoiselle Emma, according to all appearances, had just endured one of those sharp reprimands that Lerne distributed so prodigally. Her fearful expression testified to it. She did not even have the courage to make the conventional grimace customary in circumstances of forced amiability, awkwardly sketching a nod of the head.

  As for me, having bowed, I dared not raised my eyes, for fear that my uncle might read my soul therein.

  My soul? If one means by that, as one usually does, the assembly of faculties from which it results that man is the only animal slightly superior to others, it might be better, I think, not to involve my soul in this affair. Oh, I’m not unaware of the fact that, although all love—even the purest—originates in the bestial rut of the sexes, esteem and amity are often added into it to ennoble the unions of human beings. Alas, my passion for Emma still remained in its primordial state.

  If Fragonard were to set out to commemorate our first encounter and wished, in the manner of the eighteenth century, to paint the love that presided over it, I would advise him to symbolize it as a little Eros with a goat’s feet and legs, a faun-like Cupid, devoid of wings and a smile; his arrows would be made of wood, set in a quiver of bark, and bloody; he might, without impropriety, be named Pan. He is the universal love, the unintentionally fecund pleasure, the insidious instigating vice of childbirth and paternity, the sensual master of life, who preoccupies himself with equal solicitude with pigsties and eyries, burrows and middle-class beds…and who impelled us toward one another—Mademoiselle Bourdichet and me—like crazed rabbits.

  Are there degrees in femininity? If there are, I have never seen a more womanly woman than Emma. I shall not describe her, having seen her more as a state of being than an object. Beautiful? Undoubtedly. Desirable? Most certainly. I remember her hair, though—it was the color of fire; dark red, perhaps dyed—and the image of her body has just reappeared to my moribund desire. Having blossomed with rare perfection and reached its culmination, it had those seductive contours for which wise nature, careful of selection, has put a taste in masculine brains, to the detriment of flat-chested women. Emma’s clothing did not flatten those curves at all, and, animated by a meritorious scruple, left transparent what certain clothes would have covered up, just as sculptors and painters lay them bare and show them off in spite of couturiers.

  Now, the charm of this adorable creature had just reached the height of its perfection. My pulse beat strongly in my skull and an enraged jealousy suddenly took hold of me. In truth, I would willingly have renounced that young woman, provided that no one else would ever touch her. Already displeasing, Lerne now became odious to me. I was now determined to stay, at any cost.

  Meanwhile, we did not know what to say. Disturbed by the suddenness of the incident, and wanting to hide my confusion, I stammered in desperation: “I was just looking at this photograph, uncle…”

  “Ah, yes! My assistants—Wilhelm, Karl and Johann—and me. And here’s MacBell, my pupil!18 It’s a good resemblance, wouldn’t you say, Emma?” He stuck the print under his ward’s nose, pointing out a short and slender young man, clean-shaven in the American style, with a distinguished bearing, who was leaning on the St. Bernard. “A handsome and witty fellow, eh?” said the professor, teasingly. “The cream of Scotland!”

  Emma, still fearful, did not flinch. She merely articulated, with difficulty: “His Nelly was very amusing, with her circus-dog tricks.”

  “And MacBell?” sneered my uncle. “Was he amusing too?”

  I saw Emma’s chin quiver, a symptom of imminent tears. “Poor MacBell,” she murmured.

  “Yes,” Lerne said to me, in response to my puzzled expression. “Donovan MacBell had to give up his position in the wake of some unfortunate incidents. May Fate spare you such unpleasantness, Nicolas!”

  “And the other man?” I asked, in order to change the subject. “The gentleman with the moustache and dark sideburns—who’s he?”

  “He’s gone too.”

  “Doctor Klotz,” said Emma, who had drawn nearer and collected herself. “Otto Klotz. Oh! There’s…”

  Lerne silenced her with a terrible stare. I don’t know what punishment it promised, but the young woman suffered a spasm that rendered her rigid.

  At this point, Barbe introduced her opulent form sideways, and muttered that dinner was served. She had only set three places in the dining-room. The Germans, I imagined, must live in the grey building.

  The meal was a morose affair. Mademoiselle Bourdichet did not venture another word, nor did she eat anything, but I could not work out the reason for it, terror equalizing all creatures with the same appearance.

  In any case, I was overcome by drowsiness. As soon as we had finished dessert, I sought permission to go to bed, asking that I be allowed to sleep until the following morning.

  In my room, I began to get undressed without delay. Quite frankly, the journey, the previous night and that morning had worn me out. All those puzzles irritated me still, first because they were enigmatic, and then because they presented themselves so confusedly. It was as if I were within a cloud in which uncertain sphinxes were turning their vague faces toward me.

  My braces were just about to come off…but they did not.

  In the garden, Lerne was heading for the grey buildings, accompanied by his three assistants.

  They’re doubtless going to work in there, I told myself. No one’s watching me; they haven’t had time to take many precautions; my uncle thinks I’m going to sleep. Now’s the time to act, Nicolas, or never! Where should I start? With Emma? Or the secret? Hmm…the girl was utterly petrified today…and as for the secret….

  Having put my jacket back on, I went from window to window, mechanically.

  Then, between the wrought-iron bars of the balcony, the greenhouse exposed its mysterious extensions. It was closed, forbidden, attractive….

  I went out stealthily.

  III. The Greenhouse

  Once outside, and exposed, it seemed to me that everything was spying on me, and I threw myself precipitately into a little wood next to the greenhouse. Then, fighting my way through a tangle of brambles and creepers, I headed for my objective.

  It was very warm. I went forward with great difficulty, with a thousand precautions, in order to avoid revelatory scrapings and stumbles. Finally, the central dome of the greenhouse and one of its lateral bulges loomed up in front of me. It presented itself side-on. Discretion demanded that I make some initial observations without emerging from the wood.

  What struck my immediately was its tidy appearance, its state of perfect maintenance; there was not a single displaced flagstone in the surrounding pavement, not a single broken brick in the foundation. The carefully-fitted blinds had all their slats, and in the narrow gaps between them, the windows glistened in the sunlight.

  I listened. No sound reached me from the château or the grey buildings. In the greenhouse, there was silence. Nothing could be heard but the immense chatter of a hot afternoon. I plucked up my courage. Having approached furtively, I lifted up one of the wooden blinds and tried to look through the window-panes—but I couldn’t see anything; they had been coated on the inner surface with a whitish substance. It was becoming increasingly probable that Lerne had diverted the greenhouse from its original purpose and was now using it for a very different cultivation than that of flowers. The idea of vats of microbes, simmering beneath the warm lights, seemed quite plausible to me.

  I went around the greenhouse. Everywhere, the same coating—of varying thickness, it seemed—intercepted my sight. The partly-open ventilation panels were high up, out of reach. The wings had no door; one could only get into them from the central part, at the back. As I continued going round, scrutinizing the brickwork and glass that was no less opaque, I soon found myself on the château side, facing my balcony.

  That location, being too exposed, was perilous. Being war-weary, I thought it best to go back to my room, abandoning the ostensible exhibition-hal
l of bacilli without visiting its façade. I limited my investigation, therefore, to a dejected glance, which unexpectedly informed me that the mystery was open to me. The door had only been pushed to, but the fully-extended bolt testified that some stupid person had imagined that he had locked it. Oh Wilhelm, you priceless scatterbrain!

  As soon as I went in, my bacteriological hypothesis was obliterated. A gust of floral scents greeted me—a warm and humid gust, with a hint of nicotine.

  I stopped on the threshold, wonderstruck. No greenhouse—not even a royal one—had ever given me the impression of unbridled luxury that I felt immediately. In that rotunda, surrounded by all those sumptuous plants, the first sensation was that of being dazzled. The entire gamut of greens was played as a chromatic scale on keys of foliage, amid the multicolored tints of flowers and fruits, and those splendors were magnificently stages on the steps ascending toward the cupola.

  My eyes nevertheless became accustomed to it, and my admiration gradually faded. Certainly, in order for the winter garden to have made such an immediate impact, it had to be composed of plants that were quite remarkable in themselves, for, in reality, no harmonic artistry had been put into their arrangement. They were grouped according to their classification, not under the dictation of a spirit of elegance, like some Eldorado confided to the care of a policeman. Their groups were brutally separated from one another, into so many categories; the pots were lined up in military ranks, each one bearing a label that was more suggestive of botany than gardening, exhibiting less art than science. That circumstance provided food for thought. After all, could I admit for a single instant that Lerne was still a gardener for his own pleasure?

  In pursuit of information, I paraded my hypnotized gaze over all the marvels, incapable in my ignorance of putting a name to any of them. I tried, nevertheless, mechanically—and then that luxury, which a collective examination had shown me in the capacity of rarity, perhaps exoticism, began to appear as it really was….