The Thibaults

by Roger Martin Du Gard

  Out in the street the tides of traffic and the passers-by, struggling against an autumn gale, restored his spirits, and he hastened forward in quest of a taxi.

  III

  “JUST twenty to,” Antoine observed as the taxi passed the Madeleine clock. “Pretty close. The chief’s so infernally punctual—I’ll bet he’s getting ready for me now!”

  As Antoine surmised, Dr. Philip was standing waiting for him at the door of his consulting-room.

  “Afternoon, Thibault,” he rapped out. He always spoke in a curious Punch-and-Judyish staccato, with what sounded like an undertone of irony. “Exactly quarter to. Let’s be off.”

  “Right, Chief,” Antoine cheerfully assented.

  Antoine welcomed every occasion that placed him once again in Dr. Philip’s tutelage. For two consecutive years he had worked as his resident assistant and lived in constant intimacy with his senior. Though, after that, he had been transferred to another branch, he had never lost contact with his former teacher, and, in the years that followed, Dr. Philip, to the exclusion of all others, had remained for him the “chief.” Antoine was known as “Thibault, Philip’s pupil,” but he was more than that; he was his senior’s right-hand man, his spiritual son. Yet, often enough, his adversary, too—in the clash of youth with riper age, of adventurousness and a proclivity for taking risks, with prudence. The bond that had grown up between them during their seven years’ friendship and professional co-operation was proof against all rupture. No sooner was Antoine in Philip’s company than, insensibly, his personality underwent a change, dwindled, as it were, in bulk; the self-contained world-in-himself that he had been a moment before lapsed automatically into a satellite. But this circumstance, far from displeasing him, flattered his self-esteem and deepened his affection for his chief; for the professor’s unquestioned eminence, coupled with his reputation for being hard to satisfy where colleagues were concerned, conferred a special value on his attachment for Antoine. Whenever master and pupil were together, good humour was the order of the day; both were convinced that the common run of mortals consisted of numskulls and incapables; they themselves were lofty exceptions to the general rule. The manner in which the chief, so reticent by habit, spoke to Antoine, his confident expansiveness, the meaning smiles and winks which accompanied certain remarks, even the terms he used—comprehensible only to a few initiates—all seemed to prove that Antoine was the only person with whom Philip could talk freely, by whom he was assured of being precisely understood. On the occasions when they disagreed, the subject of dispute was always of the same order: Antoine accused Philip of hoodwinking himself and taking the brilliant sallies of his skeptical mind for reasoned conclusions. Or, it might be, after threshing out a problem with his junior and finding their views concur, Philip would suddenly sheer off on the opposite tack and ridicule all they had just been saying: “Viewed from another angle, you know, those ideas of ours are buncombe”—which was tantamount to saying: “It’s a waste of time pondering over things; one ‘truth’ is as true as another!” Antoine’s blood boiled; he could not stomach such an attitude, and it galled him like a physical infirmity. On such occasions he would bid his chief a prompt but courteous farewell and, flinging himself into his work, redress his mental balance in a wholesome burst of energy.

  On the landing they met Thérivier who had come to seek urgent counsel from the chief. Thérivier, too, had worked under Philip; an older man than Antoine, he was now a general practitioner. M. Thibault was one of his patients.

  The professor halted. Slightly stooping, motionless, with dangling arms, his garments floating round his tall, slight form, he looked like a gaunt marionette dangling from its unpulled strings. The man who was addressing him, plump and stocky, fidgeting and smiling, struck a comical contrast with him. They stood in the full light of the landing window and Antoine, posted in the background, amused himself watching his chief; he always relished such sudden glimpses from an unwonted angle of people he knew well. Just now Philip was observing Thérivier with his keen, pale eyes, truculent as ever under the beetling eyebrows, which had kept their blackness despite the grey streaks in his beard—a goat’s beard, almost too unsightly to be natural, and looking like an absurd fringe of straggling hair tacked onto his chin. Everything, indeed, about the man was disconcerting, not to say repellent: his general untidiness, his off-hand manner, and certain personal idiosyncrasies—a red and over-prominent nose, the hissing intake of his breath, his caustic grin and pendulous, moist lips whence a nasal drawl seemed to trickle out laboriously, rising now and then to a shrill falsetto when he let fly a shaft of satire or a scathing comment. At such moments his simian eyes twinkled behind their bushy thickets with a glint of secret exultation that asked no reciprocity.

  But only novices and nonentities were estranged from Philip by their unfavourable first impression. As a matter of fact, as Antoine had observed, no other doctor was more popular with patients, no teacher more esteemed by his colleagues, more ardently sought after by the unruly youngsters training in the hospitals. His bitterest gibes were aimed at human folly, life’s absurdities; and only fools resented them. None could watch him at his professional task without admiring, not merely the bright activity of a master-mind devoid of pettiness or any real scorn, but, what was more, a sensitive, warm-hearted being who was genuinely distressed by his daily intercourse with suffering. It was obvious at such moments that that acid wit of his was only Philip’s way of fighting down depression, only another facet of his clear-visioned sympathy; obvious, too, that the cutting remarks which turned so many fools against him were, in the last analysis, part and parcel of his philosophy.

  Antoine paid little attention to what the two doctors were saying. They were talking about one of Thérivier’s patients whom the chief had visited on the previous day. A serious case, it seemed. Thérivier stuck to his guns.

  “No, my boy,” Philip declared, “one c.c. is the most I’d care to give. Better still, the half of that. And in two doses, if you please.” And, when the younger man grew restive, obviously hostile to such half-measures, Philip, laying a moderating hand upon his shoulder, continued in a nasal drawl: “Look here, Thérivier, when a patient’s come to that pass, there are just two forces fighting it out over his body: nature and disease. Up comes the doctor and deals a blow at a venture. Heads or tails. If his blow lands on the malady, it’s heads. But, should he knock nature out, it’s tails, and the patient’s moriturus. That’s how it works out, my lad. So, when a man has reached my age, he walks warily and takes care not to hit too hard.” For some seconds he stood motionless, swallowing his saliva with little hissing noises. With a twinkle in his eye he was studying Thérivier’s face. Then he dropped his hand and, with a humorous glance at Antoine, started to go down the stairs.

  Antoine and Thérivier followed behind.

  “How’s your father?” Thérivier inquired.

  “He’s been having vomiting attacks since yesterday.”

  “Is that so?” Thérivier frowned and pursed his lips. After a short silence he went on: “Have you examined his legs recently?”

  “No.”

  “They seemed a trifle more swollen the day before yesterday.”

  “Albumin?”

  “Phlebitis setting in, more likely. I’ll give him a visit between four and five. Will you be there?”

  Philip’s car was waiting at the door. Thérivier said goodbye and hopped briskly away. Considering what I spend in taxis nowadays, Antoine reflected, it would pay me to invest in a small car.

  “Where are we going, Thibault?”

  “Faubourg Saint-Honoré.”

  Philip, who seemed to feel the cold, crouched in a corner; before the driver slipped in the gear, he put a question to Antoine.

  “Give me an outline of the case, my boy. Really hopeless, is it?”

  “Quite hopeless, Chief. It’s a little girl, two years old, a premature child and malformed from birth, poor little thing; hare-lip and congenital cleft pala
te. Hequét himself operated last spring. Functional debility of the heart as well. Got it? Right. To make things worse, there was a sudden and acute attack of otitis; it developed when she was in the country. She’s their only child, by the way.”

  Philip, who was gazing into the distance along the transient vista of the streets, made sympathetic noises in his throat.

  “Unfortunately Mme. Hequét’s seven months pregnant, and it’s a hard pregnancy. She doesn’t take the least care of herself, I imagine; anyhow, to avoid another accident of the kind, Hequét had his wife leave Paris and stay at Maisons-Laffitte, where an aunt of hers lent them a house—as a matter of fact I know these people; they were friends of my brother. It was at Maisons that the otitis set in.”

  “What day?”

  “We can’t be sure. The nurse can’t say; most likely it escaped her notice. The child’s mother has to stay in bed; at first she didn’t notice anything, then she put it down to toothache. Not till Saturday evening …”

  “The day before yesterday?”

  “Yes. Hequét went to Maisons to spend Sunday there as usual; he saw at once that the child was in danger. He arranged for an ambulance and rushed his wife and child to Paris that night. He rang me up first thing when he arrived and I saw the child early Sunday morning. I’d arranged for Lanquetot, the ear specialist, to be present. We found every possible complication: mastoiditis, of course, infection of the lateral sinus, and so on. Since yesterday we’ve tried all sorts of treatments, but none of them helped. She’s going from bad to worse. This morning there were meningeal symptoms.”

  “Operation?”

  “Impossible, so it seems. Pechot, whom Hequét called in last night, was firm on the point; the heart condition rules out an operation. And we can’t do anything to allay the pain—it’s terrible—except applying ice.”

  Philip, his eyes still fixed on some far-off point, grunted again.

  “Well, that’s how things are,” Antoine concluded in an anxious voice. “Now it’s up to you, Chief.” After a pause he added: “Personally, I confess, my only hope is that we’ve come too late and—all is over.”

  “Hequét has no illusions about it, eh?”

  “None.”

  Philip was silent for a moment; then he laid his hand on Antoine’s arm.

  “Don’t you be so sure about it, Thibault. As a doctor, of course, poor Hequét must know there’s no hope left. But, as a father … The worse things are, the more a man’s inclined to throw dust in his own eyes.” A disillusioned smile flickered on his face as he added in a high-pitched drawl: “And it’s just as well, isn’t it? Just as well.”

  IV

  HÉUQUET’S flat was on the third floor. The front-door opened at the sound of the ascending elevator; they were expected. A fat man in a white coat, with a black beard that emphasized his Semitic cast of features, shook Antoine’s hand. Antoine introduced him.

  “Isaac Studler.”

  Studler had once been a medical student and, though he had given up medicine, was a familiar figure in medical circles. On Hequét, a former fellow-student, he lavished a blind affection, a dog-like devotion. A telephone-call had apprised him of his friend’s abrupt return and, cancelling all engagements, he had hastened to the sick child’s bedside.

  All the doors stood open and the flat had a lugubrious aspect; things had been left just as they were when it was vacated in the spring. There were no curtains up, the blinds were drawn and lamps lit everywhere, Under the garish light the pyramids of furniture stacked in the middle of each room and covered with white sheets looked like so many children’s catafalques. The floor of the study where Studler left the two doctors when he went to summon Hequét was strewn with a medley of objects, scattered round a partly unpacked trunk.

  A door was flung open and a half-dressed young woman burst in, her face convulsed with grief and her bright golden hair disordered. She hastened towards them as quickly as her cumbered gait permitted, one hand steadying her abdomen, the other holding up her dressing-gown so as not to trip over it. Her breath came in gasps and she could not speak; her lips were quivering. She went straight up to Philip and gazed at him with tear-dimmed eyes and a look of silent entreaty so heartrending that he did not think of greeting her but held out both hands towards her in an instinctive gesture of reassurance and profound sympathy.

  Hequét entered suddenly from the hall.

  “Nicole!”

  His voice shook with indignation. Pale, his features twitching, he sprang towards his wife and, paying no heed to Philip, caught her up and swung her off her feet into his arms with an access of energy that took the others by surprise. Sobbing, she offered no resistance.

  “Open the door!” he gasped, turning towards Antoine, who darted forward to his aid.

  Antoine went with them, supporting Nicole’s drooping head. A desolate lament broke from her lips and Antoine caught the broken phrases. “You’ll never forgive me. I’m to blame for everything, everything. It’s my fault she was born a cripple. You’ve been angry with me so long! Now it’s my fault again. If only I’d understood, if I’d looked after her at once …!” As they entered the bedroom Antoine caught sight of a large, gaping bed, and it struck him she had been listening for the doctors’ coming and risen in haste despite her husband’s orders.

  Seizing Antoine’s hand, she clung to it with the frenzy of despair.

  “I beg you, doctor … Felix would never forgive me. I’d lose all hope of being forgiven, if … Try everything you possibly can. Oh, I implore you, doctor, save her!”

  Her husband had gently laid her in the bed and was drawing back the quilt. She let go Antoine’s hand and ceased speaking.

  Hequét stooped over her and Antoine caught the expression in the eyes of each: in hers a look of forlorn hopelessness; in his, exasperation.

  “I forbid you to get up, do you hear?”

  She shut her eyes. Bending more closely over her, he touched her hair with his lips, then pressed a kiss on her closed eyelids that seemed to seal a pact between them, almost as if he promised her his pardon, come what might. Then he led Antoine from the room.

  Studler had taken the chief to the child’s bedside and when they joined him there Philip had already taken off his coat and put on a white apron. Calmly, impassively, as though he and the child inhabited a world apart, he was proceeding with a minute, methodical examination of his patient, though he had realized from the first that nothing could be done to save her.

  Hequét’s eyes were fixed on his face; his hands were trembling and he did not speak.

  The examination lasted ten minutes.

  When it was ended Philip raised his head and turned his eyes on Hequét. Hequét had changed out of recognition; his face was sombre, and between the eyelids, red and shrivelled as though a dusty wind had parched them up, his eyes were deathly still—a frozen calm that masked the inner tragedy. From the quick glance he cast at Hequét, Philip knew there was no need to beat about the bush and said nothing of the treatment which, out of pity, he had intended to prescribe. He took off the apron and quickly washed his hands. The nurse handed him his coat, he put it on, and, without another glance at the little bed, went out of the room. Hequét, then Antoine, followed him.

  Standing in the hall, the three men gazed at each other.

  “Anyhow, it was very kind of you to come,” Hequét murmured.

  Philip gave a slight shrug and his lips smacked with a little watery hiss. Focused on his across the glasses, Hequét’s eyes grew hard, then scornful, almost malevolent; but all at once their angry light died out and he stammered in an apologetic voice:

  “Somehow, one can’t help hoping for the impossible.”

  Philip made a vague, ambiguous gesture and placidly reached for his hat. But, instead of opening the door, he turned back to Hequét and, after a brief hesitation, laid his hand awkwardly on Hequét’s arm. There was another silence; then Philip seemed to collect himself, gave a slight cough, and at last went out.


  Antoine went up to Hequét.

  “It’s my consulting-day, but I’ll look in tonight, at about nine.”

  Hequét stood stock-still, staring blindly towards the open door through which, with Philip’s going, his last hope had vanished; he moved his head to show that he had understood.

  Followed by Antoine, Philip went quickly down the two flights of stairs without speaking. Suddenly he halted, sucked back his saliva with a little hissing sound, like the lisp of running water, and, when he spoke, his drawl seemed more pronounced than ever.

  “I suppose it was up to me to prescribe something, eh? Ut aliquid fieri videatur. But, upon my word, I didn’t dare.” He went down a few steps in silence, then muttered, without looking towards Antoine:

  “Personally I’m not so optimistic as you are. It may well drag on for another day or two.”

  When they came to the foot of the staircase, they met two ladies who were just entering.

  “M. Thibault!”

  Antoine recognized Mme. de Fontanin.

  “Well?” she asked in a level voice from which she studiously excluded any sound of apprehension. “We are just on our way to make inquiries.”

  Antoine’s only response was a slow movement of his head from side to side.

  “No, no! Can one ever be sure?” Mme. de Fontanin exclaimed with a shade of reprobation, as though Antoine’s demeanour constrained her to avert, as quickly as she could, an evil omen. “Let’s have confidence, doctor, confidence! No, that’s out of the question, it would be too horrible! Don’t you think so, Jenny?”

  Only then did Antoine notice the girl standing in the background. He made haste to apologize. She seemed ill at ease, irresolute; at last she held out her hand to him. Antoine saw her look of utter dejection, the nervous flutter of her eyelids, but, knowing Jenny’s affection for her cousin Nicole, was not surprised.

  Yet he could not help murmuring to himself, as he followed up the chief: “How changed she is!” And memory lit up a picture of the past, already so remote: a summer evening in a garden, a young girl in a light, bright dress. The chance encounter stirred the embers of a latent grief. “Poor old Jacques!” he thought. “He wouldn’t have recognized her, that’s sure.”