The Thibaults

  It did not even surprise him to read so clearly other people’s minds… . The universe was a closed system, something apart, remote, in which he, the dying man, had no place. He stood outside it all. Facing the great mystery alone. Alone with his Creator. So utterly alone that even God’s nearness left him still alone.

  Unwittingly he had let his eyelids fall. He had ceased caring to distinguish vision from reality. A great peace, murmurous with music, had descended on him. He submitted to the doctor’s tedious examination without a murmur; inert, aloof, indifferent—in another world.

  III

  IN THE night train that was taking them back to Paris, the two brothers had long given up any idea of sleep; but each, lying back in his corner seat, half stupefied by the stuffy air in the dimly lit compartment, persisted in feigning slumber, so as to be left alone to his own devices as long as might be.

  Antoine’s anxiety was keeping him awake. Now that he had started on the return journey, the alarming state in which he had left his father had come back vividly to his mind and, through the long hours of semi-darkness loud with the roaring wheels, his imagination ran riot, picturing the worst. But steadily, as the train came nearer Paris, his fears diminished; once he was on the spot, he could attend to the situation, take charge again. Then another complication crossed his mind. How should he announce to M. Thibault the fugitive’s return? How let Gise know? The letter he proposed to send immediately to London was not an easy one to write; he would have to inform Gise not only that Jacques was safe and sound and had been traced, but that he had returned to Paris; nevertheless, somehow she must be prevented from rushing home at once.

  Someone uncovered the ceiling-light; the passengers in the car began to stretch their limbs. Jacques and Antoine opened their eyes, looked at each other. The expression on Jacques’s face, resigned yet hagridden, was so poignant that Antoine felt a swift compassion.

  He tapped his brother’s knee. “Slept badly, eh?”

  Jacques made no attempt to smile; with a vague gesture of indifference he turned towards the window and relapsed into a silent lethargy which, it seemed, he had neither the power nor the will to shake off. The train sped through the suburbs, still in darkness. A hasty cup of coffee in the dining-car—grinding brakes—the platform in the grey chill before dawn—a few steps in Antoine’s wake as he hunted for a taxi—there was a curious unreality about it all; each successive act seemed blurred in the dank, fogbound air, yet guided by some dark necessity that spared him conscious acquiescence.

  Antoine said little, just enough to tide over the difficult moment, making only casual remarks which Jacques did not have to answer. Indeed, he managed to give such a matter-of-fact air to the whole proceedings that Jacques’s homecoming took the aspect of a perfectly ordinary event. Jacques found himself alighting on the pavement, then standing in the entrance-hall, without having any clear idea of what was happening, even of his own supineness. And when Léon, hearing the door open, stepped out of the kitchen, it was with perfect self-possession, though without meeting his servant’s startled gaze, that Antoine bent above the pile of letters on his hall-table, and remarked in a completely casual tone:

  “Good morning, Léon. M. Jacques has come back with me. You’d better …”

  Léon cut him short.

  “Haven’t you heard, sir? Haven’t you been upstairs yet?”

  Antoine stiffened up; his face was white.

  “M. Thibault’s been taken worse, sir. Dr. Thérivier’s spent the night here. I hear from the maids that …”

  But Antoine had already rushed out of the flat. Jacques remained standing in the hall; the impression that he was living in a dream, a nightmare, grew stronger. After a brief hesitation, he darted forward, and followed his brother.

  The staircase was in darkness.

  “Quickly!” Antoine panted as he pushed Jacques into the elevator.

  The metallic clang as the outer door sprang to, the brittle click of the glazed doors closing, the drone of the motor as the cage began to rise—all those well-remembered sounds, following immutably in the same order and now, after what seemed like centuries, echoing in the past, one after another, carried Jacques back to his youth. And suddenly came a vivid, galling memory: that bygone day when he had been pent in this selfsame cage with Antoine, trapped and tamed, after being brought back from Marseille and his escapade with Daniel.

  “Wait on the landing,” Antoine whispered.

  Chance outwitted his precautions. Mademoiselle, who was fluttering distractedly to and fro about the flat, heard the elevator stop. Antoine —at last! She ran to the door as fast as her bent back permitted, saw four feet, stopped in amazement, and recognized Jacques only when he bent to kiss her.

  “Bless and save us!” she exclaimed, but without much real wonder. For the past twenty-four hours she had been living in a state of such immense bewilderment that no new surprise could take effect on her.

  All the lights were on in the flat, all the doors open. From the study a flabbergasted face peered out, M. Chasle’s; blinking, he launched his usual “Ah, so it’s you!”

  And suitably enough, for once, Antoine could not help thinking. Paying no attention to his brother, he hurried off to the bedroom.

  There all was darkness, silence. The door stood ajar; as he threw it open, he saw at first only the faint glow of a bedside lamp; then, on the pillow, his father’s face. Despite the shut eyes and the immobility, the old man was unmistakably alive.

  Antoine went in. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than he saw grouped round the bed, as if something had just happened, Sister Céline, Adrienne, and a second nun, an elderly woman whom he did not know.

  Thérivier emerged from the shadows, buttonholed Antoine, and led him into the dressing-room.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t get back in time,” he said hurriedly. “Look here, Antoine, his kidney is blocked up. No longer secreting. Not a drop. And I’m sorry to say the uraemia has reached the convulsive stage. I’ve spent the whole night here, so as not to leave the women by themselves; if you hadn’t come, I was going to send out for a male nurse. He’s had three acute attacks since midnight—the last of them a very bad one.”

  “When did the kidney stop working?”

  “Twenty-four hours ago, it seems, from what the sister tells me. Since yesterday morning. Naturally she’s stopped the injections.”

  “Naturally,” Antoine repeated, but with an air of hesitation.

  Their eyes met; Thérivier read Antoine’s thoughts easily enough. “When for two months on end we’ve been deliberately injecting poison into a sick man who has only one kidney working, it’s perhaps rather late in the day to develop scruples …”

  Thérivier craned forward, an arm extended in expostulation. “All the same, old man, we aren’t murderers. One can’t go on pumping morphine into him in the middle of an attack of uraemia.”

  Obviously. Antoine nodded, but said nothing.

  “Well, I’m off now,” Thérivier said. “I’ll ring you up some time before twelve.” Then suddenly he added: “By the way, how about your brother?”

  Antoine half closed his eyes, then, as he opened them again, a sudden gleam lit up the golden-yellow irises.

  “I’ve found him,” he said with a quick smile. “What’s more, I’ve brought him back. He’s here.”

  Thérivier thrust his plump hand into his beard, and his shrewd, merry eyes scanned Antoine’s face. But it was not the place or time for questions. Sister Céline had come in, bringing Antoine’s white coat. Thérivier glanced at the nun, then at his friend.

  “Well, then, I’m off!” And added bluntly: “You’ve a hard day before you.”

  Antoine frowned and turned to the sister. “He’s in terrible pain, isn’t he, without the morphine?”

  “I’m applying very hot fomentations. Mustard-plasters.” Seeing Antoine’s sceptical expression, she added: “It relieves the pain a bit, you know.”

  “Anyhow, I hope you put so
me laudanum on the fomentations. No?” He knew only too well that, without morphine … But never would he acknowledge he was beaten. “I’ve all that’s needed downstairs,” he said to the nurse. “I’ll be back right away.” Then he turned to Thérivier. “Come on, we’ll go down together.”

  Crossing the flat, he wondered what Jacques was up to; but he had no time to give to his brother now.

  The two doctors went down the stairs in silence. At the bottom step Thérivier held out his hand. As Antoine took it he asked abruptly:

  “Tell me, Thérivier—frankly, what’s your prognosis? Surely the end is bound to come pretty quickly, eh?”

  “Bound to, if we can’t stop the uraemia.”

  Antoine’s only answer was to grip his friend’s hand warmly. He felt confident in himself, he would see it through. It was only a matter of hours now. And Jacques had been found… .

  Upstairs, in the bedroom, Adrienne and the second nun, who were watching at the old man’s bedside, had failed to notice that another attack was coming on. When his gasps attracted their attention, his fists were already clenched and his neck stiffening, dragging the head back.

  Adrienne rushed out into the corridor.

  “Sister!”

  No one. She ran into the hall.

  “Sister Céline! M. Antoine! Come quick!”

  Jacques had stayed in the study with M. Chasle. Hearing the cries, he ran without thinking to the bedroom.

  The door stood open. He tripped over a chair. At first he could see nothing, only indistinct figures moving against the glow of the bedside lamp. At last he made out a dark mass sprawling across the bed, arms threshing the air. The old man had slipped sideways, over the edge of the mattress; Adrienne and the nurse were vainly trying to lift him back. Jacques ran up, grasped his father with both arms, and, propping a knee on the bed-frame, managed to shore up the old man’s shoulders, and thrust them back into the centre of the bed. As he crouched above the sheets, holding down the huge body racked by spasms, he felt a warm chest heaving violently against his; saw, under his gaze, a mask-like face, with only the whites of the eyes showing—a face that he could hardly recognize.

  Gradually the paroxysms began to lose their violence, and the blood to circulate. The pupils of the eyes came back, wavering at first, then growing fixed; it seemed as if the eyes had come to life again and were discovering the young face bent above him. Did the old man recognize his lost son? And, if so, was he still able in that flash of lucidity to distinguish between realities and the vague phantasms of his wandering mind? His lips moved, the pupils dilated. And suddenly those lustreless eyes brought back to Jacques a definite memory; it was just that expression of dim attention, that far-away look, that used to come into his father’s eyes whenever he was trying to recall a forgotten name or date.

  Jacques felt a tightening at his throat; propping himself on his fists, he stammered unthinkingly:

  “Well, Father? How are you feeling, Father?”

  Slowly M. Thibault’s eyelids closed; his underlip and the tip of his beard were faintly quivering. Then his chest and shoulders began to heave with increasing violence; his face became convulsed; he burst into sobs. Sounds came from the flaccid lips like the gurgles of an empty bottle plunged in water. The old nun reached forward to wipe his chin with a wad of cotton-wool. Blinded by tears, not daring to move, Jacques stood bending over the sob-racked body, repeating mechanically, idiotically:

  “Well, Father? Tell me, how are you feeling now?”

  Antoine, who was coming in followed by Sister Céline, stopped short when he saw his brother. He could not imagine what had happened; in any case, he did not pause to find out. He was carrying a half-filled graduate. The nun had a basin and towels.

  Jacques straightened up. The others thrust him aside, grasped the sick man, and began turning back the sheets.

  He retreated to the far end of the room. No one took any notice of him. What was the point of staying there, hearing his father’s groans, watching his agony? None. He moved to the door and crossed the threshold with a sense of deliverance.

  The passage was dark. Where was he to go? There was the study, but he had had his fill of the company of M. Chasle, who was self-installed there, riveted to his chair, his shoulders rounded, hands splayed on his knees, and smiling the angelic smile of a martyr in extremis. Mademoiselle was even more maddening; bent double, with her nose to the ground, she went sniffing her way from room to room like a lost dog, trailing after everyone who crossed her line of vision. Small as she was, and large as was the flat, she made it seem overcrowded.

  There was only one room unoccupied, Gise’s room. As she was away in England, why not take refuge there? Jacques tip-toed in, and locked the door.

  Immediately he felt a vast relief; at last he was alone after a day and a night of continuous strain. The room was cold and the lights would not come on. The shutters were closed and the belated half-light of a December morning was glimmering across the slats. For a while he could not associate this darkened room with any memory of Gise. He stumbled against a chair, sat down. Folding his arms for warmth, he stayed there, huddled up, his mind a blank.

  When he came out of his doze, daylight was filtering through the curtains, and suddenly he recognized their blue floral pattern. While he was asleep a whole forgotten world had come back to life around him. Paris … Gise … Each object he set eyes on had been touched at some time by his hands—in a former existence. What had become of the photograph of himself? There was a light patch on the wallpaper where it used to hang beside Antoine’s. So Gise had taken it down. Offended with him? No; of course, she had carried it off with her to England. And that meant—all the trouble would begin again. Savagely he lunged forward like an animal trapped in a net, whose every struggle makes it worse entangled. Anyhow, Gise was in England. Thank goodness! And suddenly he heard himself cursing her under his breath. Yes, it was always the same thing when he thought of her; he felt degraded, humiliated.

  Anything to lay those spectres of the past! He sprang up from the chair, to escape the memory-haunted room. But he had forgotten about his father, the deathbed. Here at least he had only a phantom to contend with: it was the nearest thing to solitude. He came back to the centre of the room and sat down at the table. On the blotting-pad were imprints in violet ink—her ink. With a faint stirring of emotion he tried for a moment to puzzle out the inverted writing. Then he pushed the pad aside. Again his eyes grew blurred with tears. Ah, if he could sleep, forget! He folded his arms on the table and let his head droop on them—thinking of Lausanne, his friends, his loneliness. Yes, at the first opportunity he must escape! Leave this place again, for ever! …

  He was roused from his half-sleep by someone trying to open the door. Antoine was hunting for him. It was long past twelve, and for the moment all was quiet in the sick-room; this opportunity for a hasty meal must not be missed.

  Two places were laid in the dining-room. Mademoiselle had packed M. Chasle off to his own place for lunch. As for her—bless and save us, no, she couldn’t dream of eating, what with all the things she had to attend to!

  Jacques had little appetite. Antoine gulped his food down, in silence. They shunned each other’s eyes. What an eternity since they last had sat at that table, facing each other! But events were moving too precipitately to allow them time for sentiment.

  “Did he recognize you?” Antoine asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  After another silence Jacques pushed back his plate and looked up.

  “Tell me, Antoine …just how do things stand? What do you expect to happen?”

  “Well, for the last thirty-six hours the kidneys have failed to secrete. You understand what that means?”

  “Yes. And in that case …?”

  “In that case, if something doesn’t stop the poisoning that has ensued … well, it’s hard to be definite, but I should say tomorrow, perhaps even tonight …”

  With an effort Jacques repressed a sigh of
relief.

  “And what about the pain?”

  “Ah … that’s the difficulty.” A look of gloom settled on Antoine’s face.

  He stopped, as Mademoiselle herself was coming in with the coffee. When she was beside Jacques and about to fill his cup, the coffee-pot began to tremble so violently that Jacques reached out his hand to take it. The sight of those ivory-yellow, skinny fingers, which were associated with so many of his childish memories, suddenly brought a lump to his throat. He wanted to smile towards the little old woman but, even when he stooped, could not manage to meet her eyes. She had accepted without demur her dear “Jacquot’s” return, but for three years she had been weeping over him as dead and, now he had come back, could not bring herself to look this phantom frankly in the face.

  “I’m afraid,” Antoine continued, when she had left them, “that the pain will probably become more and more acute. Usually uremia gives rise to an increasing amount of anaesthesia, so that the end is practically painless. But when it takes this convulsive form …”

  “In that case,” Jacques said, “why have the morphine injections been stopped?”

  “Because the kidneys have ceased secreting. A morphine injection would kill him as he is now.”

  The door was flung violently open. A terrified face, the maid’s, looked in, then vanished. She had tried to say something, but could not get out a word.

  Antoine ran out after her. An involuntary hope, of which he was frankly conscious, spurred him on.

  Jacques, too, had risen, moved by the same hope. After a moment’s hesitation he followed his brother out.

  No, it was not the end; only another attack, but a sudden and very acute one.

  The dying man’s jaws were clenched so tightly that, from the door, Jacques could hear the grinding teeth. The face had turned a purplish crimson and the whites of the eyes showed between the slotted lids. His breathing was uneven and occasionally ceased altogether; the stoppages seemed never ending and, while they lasted, Jacques felt his own heart stop and, himself unable to draw breath, turned desperately towards his brother. The bodily spasm was already such that only the back of the old man’s head and his heels touched the bed; yet every moment his body grew more steeply arched. Only when the muscular tension had reached its maximum intensity did it become stabilized in a vibrant equilibrium which, more than any movement, conveyed the tremendous strain to which the body was subjected.