Doctor Orient

by Frank Lauria

  There was no sound in the room except a faint ticking. Orient realized it was his wristwatch.

  VI

  Lieutenant Roland D’Te was a capable officer, but his elaborate vanity frequently clouded his judgment.

  However, since any military structure is essentially composed of aggressive men devoted to dominance, he was able to indulge his vice and, in fact, make it an asset. He was admired by his fellow officers, who named him “The Bishop” for the impeccably somber facade he had chosen.

  D’Te had married well enough for his station but after a single careless year the dowry was depleted.

  Marie D’Te bore her husband’s extravagance easily. She was a gentle creature, who dwelt in the fragile imaginations of girlhood. She loved her Roland and thought of him as being splendid and dashing. It was during the second year of their marriage that she began to change.

  At first, when Roland began to spend most of his time at the barracks, she was sad but understanding. Then, when the rumors of his philandering reached her, she became angry. Finally, her anger shook her from her illusions. She saw her husband as he really was, a pompous rabbit of no honor or consequence. She hated Roland for his weakness and she despised herself for having loved him. For months, while her husband pursued his social ambitions, Marie sat alone in her rooms submerged in a reverie of loathing.

  Lieutenant D’Te advanced to captain and he allowed himself the luxury of a moustache, which he preened and twirled incessantly. He also found it convenient to rent a flat near the barracks, so that he could be closer to his duties. It was a relief for him to be free of the still, mirror-less rooms of his wife. A man such as he needed a woman of flesh and blood and laughter. Even during his infrequent spasms of desire for Marie, all he felt in response was a chilling distance on her bony hips.

  The very same day that Captain D’Te received Marie’s letter advising him of her pregnancy, he was called in for an informal chat with the commandant.

  It was the reason for his summons and not his wife that preoccupied D’Te as he knocked on the door. When he entered he saw that the colonel was at the liquor cabinet.

  “Come in, D’Te, come in,” the colonel called, and waved him to a chair in front of the desk. “Relax, I’ll only be a moment. You’ll join me in a cognac, of course.”

  D’Te ignored the clumsy attempt at informality. He had learned that only the amateur forgot who he was. He sat at attention while the colonel set two glasses on the desk and filled them.

  “Well, well now, D’Te, we haven’t spoken since your commission have we?” the colonel said, pushing one of the glasses toward D’Te.

  D’Te took the glass in his hand. “A commandant rarely has the time to cultivate a junior captain, mon colonel,” he observed: He held the cognac up to the light.

  “Quite so,” The colonel hesitated for a moment. “Well, it pleases me to report, D’Te, that you’ve performed all of your duties well and we’re impressed with you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” D’Te said. “Shall we drink to duty then?”

  The colonel drained his glass. D’Te took a sip and put his glass down. “Well then, D’Te, I suppose we should attack this matter directly instead of flanking it, eh?” The colonel began.

  D’Te spun the tip of his moustache tight. “Excuse me, sir,” he said crisply. “To which matter is the colonel referring?”

  “Well damnitall, D’Te, it’s about Lieutenant Cartier,” the colonel blurted out.

  “Lieutenant Cartier?” D’Te maintained a cool exterior, but his heart had begun to pound.

  “Yes, it seems that he feels he has reason to demand satisfaction.”

  “A duel?” D’Te reached for his glass. “But why on earth?”

  “I daresay you might be able to answer that one, DTe.” The colonel frowned. “Your attentions to Madame Cartier have hardly been camouflaged.”

  “I see.” D’Te sipped his cognac.

  “Of course, any official answer is impossible,” the colonel continued. “Dueling is illegal and punishable by tribunal, as you well know. However, it’s my personal opinion that it is best to allow two men to settle their affairs as gentlemen. Provided they are discreet.”

  D’Te looked up to find the colonel smiling at him. He set his glass down.

  “Colonel, this affair catches me quite off guard,” he said slowly. “For one thing, my relationship with Madame Cartier has been perfectly platonic. And for another”—he reached into his tunic and produced Marie’s letter—“my wife has just discovered she is pregnant.” He passed the letter across the desk. “All things then considered, I’m afraid that I will be unable to indulge Cartier in his little game of satisfaction.”

  The colonel looked incredulous. “You mean you refuse his challenge?”

  “I do.”

  “And you are aware of the consequences of your decision?”

  “I’m aware that it will cause some unpleasant gossip, but I cannot risk the future of my wife and unborn child for the whim of a young officer.”

  The colonel rose. “All right, D’Te, that’s all.” He avoided the captain’s eyes as he passed the letter back to him unread.

  D’Te saluted stiffly, turned, and left the room.

  Behind him, the colonel swept D’Te’s glass from his desk and into the wastebasket.

  The next day Captain D’Te received orders transferring him from headquarters in France to a field garrison in Lebanon. Word of Roland’s disgrace reached Marie before he arrived. When he finally came home to tell her the news, she said nothing, but let him strut and brag about his new appointment. When he was finished with his charade she told him of her decision to go with him.

  D’Te blustered, cajoled and wheedled. He explained that life in the field was hard enough for a soldier without having to worry about a frail, pregnant woman. He refused firmly to entertain the idea. He even went so far as to threaten to divorce her. But in the end he agreed to let her accompany him.

  Marie was neither pleased nor apprehensive. She had remained adamant only because she refused to bear the stigma of Roland’s disgrace before her family. The matter settled to her satisfaction, she relapsed into the stony silence that enclosed her intense disgust.

  When the couple arrived in Beirut, Marie was in her third month. The crossing had been rough. Marie had not been able to keep any food down, and was so debilitated that she had to be carried to shore.

  D’Te’s post was located high in the mountains, near a small village that clung to the ancient Roman temple ruins of Balbek, three grueling days from Beirut.

  Roland suggested that Marie remain in Beirut, where she could recover her strength, while he found suitable quarters.

  She refused.

  As D’Te stared perplexed into the icy glow of Marie’s eyes, shining bleakly from deep inside the sockets, he began to understand the difference between dislike and malice.

  The journey to Balbek took four days instead of three, because Marie needed frequent rest.

  She chose their new home from a litter, moved in immediately, then went to sleep for seventy-two hours.

  Her first realization when she awoke was that she was hungry.

  Her second was that a tattooed woman was sitting next to the bed.

  Before Marie could manage to speak the tattooed woman got up and shuffled away.

  She reappeared with a bowl of soup and a wooden spoon. Marie ignored the spoon and drank the soup from the bowl, while the woman sat beside the bed carefully wiping her chin and chest.

  When Marie was finished she fell back on the straw pillow and slept.

  The tattooed woman eased the bowl from Marie’s fingers and placed it gently on the floor next to her chair.

  The Bedouin woman’s name was Petra, and from that day she tended to Marie’s smallest need in fierce silence.

  During the ensuing months Marie saw her husband more than she had in the past two years. His companionship did nothing to lessen the complete revulsion she felt for him. Sh
e knew that Roland’s reputation made it impossible for him to spend more time than necessary at the garrison and that the primitive surroundings offered him little diversion.

  She did, however, respond to Petra’s presence, sometimes chattering lightly to her for hours, even though Petra could not understand what she was saying.

  D’Te was in the field the day his son was born. In his absence, Marie named him August. A week later she was dead.

  D’Te returned to bury his wife, and made arrangements to leave August in the care of Petra. He left the next day to rejoin his regiment, which was already marching on Damascus.

  Petra was a primitive by choice. While still a young girl she made the decision to nourish the ways of her own people rather than beg at the tables of strangers. She was the favorite wife of a chieftain and served as an adviser to the Bedouin, who considered her a sage.

  She arranged marriages, settled quarrels and sometimes interceded with her husband for worthy petitioners. She also read the portents of the stars, blessed the newborn and healed certain illnesses.

  When it came to August, however, she was merely an adoring servant.

  She was cunning in her love for him, only allowing herself its expression if it best served him. She crooned to him for hours, murmuring roughly the legends and secrets of her people, the songs of the festivals and the chants of the holy dancers. Always she began with the same refrain.

  “Someday you will lead the way forward… ”

  But when he cried for no reason she would leave him alone to teach him self-reliance. When he was a year old he saw his father for the first time since his birth. Roland had won honors in the skirmishes in Syria and he was expansive with his son. August was speaking the dialect of Petra’s tribe, which boasted a king who had twice defeated the Roman invaders, and Roland stuffed and pampered him, bribing him to speak a few words of French.

  After a week, D’Te returned to his garrison, which was preparing to march on Jordan. He was away for two more years. During this time August was raised as the son of a Bedouin chieftain. A gifted child, he learned the history of their people and the science of the stars.

  His real father had arranged for a tutor and the prodigy also learned to converse in French. Captain D’Te came home to an unusual boy who treated him with serious respect and who spoke wisely of the affairs of men. D’Te was delighted. He showed August his medals and told him that his distinction in battle had won him a coveted post in the city of Beirut.

  “Will you be gone for a long time?” August asked.

  “But you shall come with me. We’ll have ourselves a good time, eh?” D’Te stroked the scar on his cheek.

  The boy thought it over before he replied. “I shall need Petra,” he said finally.

  “But of course.” D’Te lifted August in his arms. “Petra will take care of us both. It’s settled then.”

  August waited patiently until his father had finished kissing him and set him down again.

  To Captain D’Te, Beirut was a city of pleasure and wealth. To Petra, it was a crowded, noisy marketplace, where truth was the only commodity one could not buy. To August, it was the garden of Allah.

  Roland tired quickly of being a father. His passions, gambling and women, asserted their prior claim on him and took him away from home for months at a time.

  Petra confined herself to the flat, going outside only to do the shopping.

  August spent all his days in the bustling, twisting alleys, running wild with the other urchins of the city.

  With the discipline of the tribe gone, Petra was unable to control the child she loved. She could only scold him, scrub him and feed him when he came home. When his father was home, however, he acted the part of the model son, taking care to speak only in French, and never straying from the house unless his father took him on an outing. By the time he was four he had learned how to tell when his father had won at the tables and how much to steal from his winnings.

  Petra observed all this in her customary silence.

  One day while D’Te was escorting a lady through the gold market, he saw August playing with a trio of Arab boys. As he drew closer he realized that the boys weren’t playing. Two of them were expertly pinning the third against a wall, while August smoothly rifled his pockets.

  Roland waited a few days until his tryst with the lady had been competed before taking a course of action. He made arrangements for August to live with Marie’s parents in Paris while he attended school.

  If August was dismayed by the news he didn’t express it, but Petra was inconsolable. That night she left D’Te’s house and returned to her tribe in Balbek.

  At first August’s grandparents vented their hatred for his father on him. They kept August on a disciplined, unloving regimen, reminding him on every convenient occasion that he was there on their bounty because his father was a spendthrift, and worse, the criminal who was responsible for his mother’s death.

  August kept his own counsel and never complained. In his monthly letter to his father he wrote only of the progress he was making in school and the historic landmarks he had seen in Paris.

  He knew that his grandparents were correct in calling his father a spendthrift. Roland was an uncontrollable gambler.

  But he had been told of his mother’s death by Petra, and she had said that his mother had wished for death. And August knew that Petra saw the truth in all things.

  Besides, he had known murderers in Beirut and they were men to be respected—not at all like his father, who was merely a fool.

  In a short time his grandparents were won over by his diligent and respectful manner. They began to relax their discipline and to respond to their emotions. Soon they were as devoted to the boy as Petra had been.

  August excelled in school but had only contempt for his classmates. He found them profoundly ignorant of the obvious, and without wit. In Beirut they would be like so many vegetables ready to be devoured by lowly goats. He realized, however, that he had much to learn in the land of his mother, so he kept to himself and waited.

  For the next eight years August was the pride of his grandparents. He won honors for his brilliant scholarship and respect from his classmates. His grandfather made elaborate plans for the boy’s future, and his grandmother had already begun scheming a suitable marriage for him.

  But August had other plans.

  His formal education, combined with the broad knowledge of men he had acquired in the streets, gave him strong leverage in his dealings with people. He found himself able to dominate the personality of anyone with whom he came into contact. It was not that he was particularly charming. Directness was his power. His classmates numbly accepted him as their leader. His teachers sought his company. And his grandparents were almost awed by the presence of their daughter’s brilliant child.

  August had decided that there was one sure way to the goal he sought. The church.

  As a seminarian he would have the advantage of a fine education at no cost to himself. He had not forgotten his grandparents’ early admonitions. As a priest he could reach the most important men in the world. As a priest he would be able to indulge himself in the infinite ramifications of what had now become his favorite game, the manipulation of humans. And as a priest he would be beyond reproach.

  At twelve, all this seemed obvious, but at thirteen he saw that there were levels.

  Academically he performed with his customary genius. He had the knack of spotting equations between seemingly disparate elements. His scientific treatises were philosophic, and his philosophy extended from scientific fact. And always there was the absorbing puzzle of manipulation.

  The game had become more difficult for August because he found that, while everyone’s consciousness could be directed by simple pressures, not all of his subjects remained docile.

  During the early years in Paris there had been no resistance, so it surprised him at fourteen, when he discovered he had made enemies.

  He withdrew from contact, and w
aited. He attended to his studies and devotions. He spent all his free time in meditation and prayer. Above all, he conducted himself as a priest.

  He understood the church as a science, a method of government. He saw within the rituals of the church the structure of the art of rule.

  One evening, he was in the chapel doggedly praying, when he saw the answer on his finger. His enemies were people who did not have enough time to cultivate the usual deep and lasting affection for him. They had known him briefly. Like the scar tissue on his index finger. If contact was casual, some types developed a resentment toward him. It was the natural order of things.

  He remained faithful to his formal studies and the practices of his profession, but began to extend his sphere of acquaintances.

  When he received word that his father had died in a street brawl, leaving a mountain of debts, it amused August to make the game tangible.

  Drawing upon the sum his grandfather had given him when he entered the novitiate, he modestly began to make investments. He developed a passion for economics. He cultivated a system of men in the church who understood money. He spent long hours with the treasurer of his order, who was flattered by the attention of the prodigy.

  When he was sixteen, he erased his father’s debts.

  When he was eighteen, he was tired of the game.

  The sum of money he donated to the treasury of his order was large enough to be considered indiscreet, until he let it be known that the money was submitted as part of his thesis in economics. His paper was hailed as brilliant. Professors of philosophy praised it as a splendid example of pragmatic theology, while the scientists lauded its intricate methodology.

  August’s way to his next experiment was clear.

  He delved into pleasure and found that one could learn as much by excess as by denial. He used his newly acquired wealth to create environments that would attract the people in Paris who understood the games of the flesh. And even while he pursued these new diversions he perfected the art of his ritual.