Fever
Page 7
As for us we are neither enemies of our country nor woolly-minded idealists, we are Frenchmen who consider that realism consists in working for peace with the weapons of peace, which are truth, unselfishness, and friendship for everyone.
We should feel compelled to make the same protest on behalf of any prisoners, whatever their party, class, nation, creed or race, for our action is prompted by conscience.
THIRTY VOLUNTEERS
When he had finished he perceived that it was high time, for it had already become impossible for him to read any more. In his head, buried under the red membranes of the meninges, the fat, restless worm had writhed over the last line on the yellow sheet of paper, and was spending its time counting the dots, feeling them one by one with its opaque suckers and its soft antennae. It was counting them over and over, tirelessly, as though nothing in the world mattered any longer except this row of dots, or rather dashes, and as though it were seeking for a mysterious number, getting closer to it every second—a number which would at last give meaning to the whole sheet of paper, to all papers with writing or drawing on them, to all the confessions, all the novels and all the letters in the world, a pure, majestic number which would at last paralyse the indefatigable, hate-impelled movement of appearances. Beaumont, vacant-eyed, a fixed, stupid expression on his face, sat with his head bent forward and the cigarette dying between two fingers of his left hand, looking like the man in the mirror, and faltered out the figure in question, speaking aloud:
‘Forty-three.’
And the toothache stopped.
It was, I think, a quite mysterious transition, and very nearly a fatal one. What had so far been only a fog, a swaying, a queasiness like that of a rough sea when we are not certain whether it is the sea that is suffering or we ourselves, rolling and pitching, the visual nausea that turns square miles of waves and sky into something bitter and unhealthy—all this cleared away, and a kind of sharp-pointed sun, a definite discomfort, began to break through. In Beaumont’s face as a whole, this had a precise location; it was in the jaw, at the back of the mouth, probably under the wisdom tooth or the molar where the nerve had been killed, on the left. Nothing very serious, for the moment. Just a slight pain, sharp and well-defined, perhaps a spot on the gum or a touch of neuralgia, which could be dispelled by the mere feel of an aspirin on the tongue. Beaumont straightened his shoulders and crushed out the dead cigarette-end in an iron ashtray. Again he picked up the broken mirror in his right hand. He opened his mouth and looked inside. It wasn’t very easy, because of the mist; he took a dirty handkerchief which was lying on the table and wiped the scrap of mirror; then, holding his breath, his bursting lungs compressing the sides of his nose until just a thread of air trickled out through the nostrils, he turned the reflection of the electric light so that it shone into his mouth. But he couldn’t see anything unusual. Most of his teeth had fillings, of course, but the gums looked healthy. Beaumont transferred the mirror to his other hand and began tapping all the molars on the left of his mouth with a ball-point pen, in order to discover exactly where the pain came from. No use. All the teeth proved to be equally sensitive to the slight shock, but none more than the rest. So it couldn’t be decay, in the strict sense. Using the same ball-point, Beaumont began rubbing his gum round the molar and the wisdom tooth. That was no good either. True, the area round those two teeth was more sensitive, but one couldn’t call it painful. It was more like the natural reaction of a set of teeth already affected by alveolar pyorrhea, gingivitis and various bouts of neuralgia. In any case, no sign of an abscess. Beaumont put down the looking-glass, feeling almost reassured. For a moment he even felt better. He went back to bed and put the light out. But when he laid his head on the pillow the pain suddenly woke up, with an intensity that made him grunt. Beaumont didn’t hesitate; he turned on the light again, jumped out of bed and groped in the drawer of his table till he found a tube of aspirin and two sleeping tablets. He returned to the kitchen and swallowed the tablets, followed by a big glass of ice-cold water, urinated again, and came back. He stood for a moment waiting till the drugs had had time to slide down his oesophagus, and got into bed again. He waited like that, hidden in the bedclothes, for the miraculous transition, the fusion of his whole being in a liquid space, the diluvian chaos in the shape of a fanfare, the treachery which would roll his eyes upward in their orbits and show him far, far away, as though seen through rain, the happy hunting-grounds of dreamland. But the pain, for now it was really pain, had grown appreciably worse. And Beaumont, his features motionless, a light sweat moistening the palms of his hands and the sides of his feet, could already feel that the gates of an unknown, tragic world were opening to admit him, the gates of a world where disquiet is a form of beauty, an exasperated landscape haunted by memories of the other land, the peaceful, prosperous land where the animals are clear-eyed and the nerves repose in watery silence. Already he could feel the monotonous sadness of the journey, the sensation of being torn from his former dwelling-place, the forthcoming gallop into a small, cramped hell; memories of well-rounded nights, of the sweet forgetfulness of time past, were murmuring nostalgic plaints within him, like long, willow-fringed streams where the mallards fly low between tatters of smoke. Out of doors the sound of the sheets of water was still approaching, along the streets that met at the cross-roads. A car went past now and then, tracing echoing furrows on the tarmac. Or a man’s footsteps pounding onwards, calmly, born of nothing and advancing towards nothing.
Beaumont fell back on to the bed and rolled into a ball; hoping all the same for something, I don’t know what exactly, an osmosis of acids, the assimilation of glutethimides, sleep, peace, no doubt. And indeed the pain withdrew, the sequence of images on his retina diminished; an artificial torpor with a slightly bitter taste came over Beaumont. A very long building began going past him, displaying all its windows; the fall seemed eternal, or almost. But after something like the three thousand six hundred and fortieth floor, Beaumont hit the pavement. His left leg took the first shock, and snapped. Then the rest of his body keeled over, revolving on an invisible axis. The ground struck his right side, his shoulder, his head. Another two or three tenths of a second went by, like spasms, and it was all over. Dead blood came out through the eyes, nostrils and ears and ran gently down the street, obedient to the slope of the gutter.
Beaumont had got back to his pain. The aspirin had had little or no effect. In half an hour the pain had increased fivefold. It was no longer confined to a definite spot on the jaw, round the wisdom tooth and the devitalized molar; it covered a whole area, extending from the left ear to the point of the chin. Everything in this area was vibrating; incomprehensible waves kept traversing it like waves of the sea, and breaking at their points of interference. It seemed as though this half of his jaw had suddenly become larger, in the darkness, pushing away everything around it. A fantastical structure of concrete and iron bars now formed an extension to Beaumont’s cheek. It was a real weight, which oscillated in the atmosphere of the room with every movement of his head, and threatened to carry away all the rest of his body in an endless fall, down through the mattress, the floors, the storeys of the house, the drain-pipes, the crust of the earth, etc. So one must hang on to one’s balance all the time and clench one’s teeth together, tighter and tighter. Beaumont opened his eyes. In spite of the darkness and the pain the room was as distinct as ever, its smallest detail clearly outlined. But now every object, every piece of furniture, every plastic or wooden surface somehow looked new; the corners were sharper, the whites and shadows in stronger contrast; yes, that was it, everything stood out more clearly. Everything now displayed an obsessive attention, a determination to be itself up to the hilt; the books were almost caricatures of books, with their new covers and the crude glossiness of the binder’s glue. The table was an idiotic table, four squat legs holding up the wooden top with far more strength than was needed. The bottle of liqueur was containing as it had never contained before; in fact it was doing n
othing else, just containing, containing. The ceiling was displaying ridiculous, pachydermic airs and graces, posing its greenish mass lightly on the four walls, just like a DC-8 in the act of taking off. The shutters were closed outside the windows, but with what precaution, what meticulous care! And the window panes were as transparent as a banker is honest. And the air was air, oxygen + ozone + carbon dioxide + nitrogen. And the room was the room and nothing else, grave, serious, bent upon its task. The laws of gravity were perfect, nothing, absolutely nothing, was lacking, neither the fall of dust from the plaster cornice nor the compression of the semi-circular ducts near the Eustachian tubes, to give the impression of an A-level essay on Newton’s theories. Beaumont, lying on his cheek, was looking at everything and savouring it all; he was carefully maintaining the balance, on his left jaw, of that concrete building, that sumptuous edifice of standard design, as though the future of an entire city depended on it. Now it was his body that lived in this house, he had made his smarting jaw into a shell, an immense, well-proportioned habitation. He was going to live there for as long as was necessary, a day, two days, perhaps a week, while he waited for the dentist. But owing to an excessive perfectionism, one storey too many, a costly elegance in the construction of the foundations, the building collapsed. It began by swaying gently to left and right; then, with a sudden cry of rage and pain, it fell down on the bed, crushing the bedclothes, cutting like a whiplash through the white mound of the pillow. Beaumont sprang to his feet, with tears in his eyes. He turned the light on again, the big one this time. Feverishly he opened the table drawer, found a tube of pyramidon, took out a tablet, laid it on his tongue, uncorked the bottle of liqueur —probably plum brandy or something of that kind—and swallowed a mouthful straight from the bottle. Then he sat down on the bed and waited. Behind the house a church clock struck four, with long, thin chimes that spread all over the district. Beaumont stood up, walked round the room, lit another cigarette. He put a record on the player, Enrico Albicastro, Jean Chrysostome Ariaga, Thelonius Monk, or something in that line. He heard the notes coming out into the room; but they weren’t clear any longer, and the melody they made was a jumble of fog and sadness, a dull tumult that trailed slowly round among the furniture, a tissue of haloes and smoke-rings. Beaumont listened to the record right through, unblinking, prostrate in his confusion, his left cheek in the palm of his hand. When it was finished he got up, switched off the record-player, and went out of the room. He wandered about the empty flat for a few minutes, turning on all the lights as he went by. A sinuous fear had taken possession of his brain; a fear he had believed himself to have got rid of more than twenty years ago; a secret terror which came over him whenever he walked past a curtain, a door-hanging, a dark, dirty recess. He would have liked to change himself suddenly into a ping-pong ball and bounce wildly from end to end of the flat, in white flashes, uncatchable, unkillable, light, light, very light. He moved more and more quickly from room to room, driven by his pain, his eyes staring, his mind a blank, conscious of nothing, but with this revolting fear that made him quake from head to foot when an awakened fly brushed him lightly with its wing, when a death-watch beetle made a faint sound as it pushed its way through the dead wood in a piece of moulding.
Images filed past his eyes—the door bolted, the closed, hermetically closed shutters, the empty rooms, the cupboards in their natural condition, the placid armchairs, the beds with nobody hiding under them, the silent corridors where everything could be seen. At last he could stand it no longer; he took down the ornamental Hindu dagger from the dining-room wall and hooked it on to the belt of his pyjamas. Then, feeling cold, he put on a sort of raincoat over his striped pyjamas. It was after that, as he was crossing the end of the passage, that he noticed the telephone. Without one superfluous gesture he took off the receiver, dialled the number, and began saying over and over again, in an imbecile voice:
‘Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?’ for minutes on end, while the bell went on ringing at the other end of the line. Finally a woman’s nasal voice broke in.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello?’
‘Hello? Who do you want to speak to?’
‘Hello? Is that you, Paule?’
‘Yes, it’s me. Who’s that?’
‘It’s you, Paule?’
‘Oh … it’s you? But what’s possessed you? Are you out of your mind? Ringing up at this hour of the night!’
‘Paule, Paule, if you knew what pain I’m in. I can’t stand it, really I can’t. I can’t hold out any longer. That’s why I rang you up’
‘But what’s happened? Where is the pain?’
‘I … I don’t know, really I don’t. In the jaw, it’s hurting badly the whole time.’
‘You’ve got toothache?’
‘No, no … That’s not it. It’s not really my teeth, no. It’s worse than that. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t really toothache. It’s a shooting pain, you can’t imagine what it’s like. It’s simply frightful, I can’t bear it any longer.’
‘Well, I don’t know, personally I …’
‘I’m sorry I woke you, Paule, but I couldn’t get back to sleep, and it was hurting so badly I simply had to talk to you, you understand?’