Charles Bovary, Country Doctor

by Jean Améry

  Emma, where are you? Are you lying in bed again and reading novels from the lending library in Rouen? Taking a stroll out to La Huchette? Riding horseback with the obliging Monsieur Rodolphe? Emma! I know, I shouted adieu, adieu, and blew kisses to you down in your grave. You are dead, a corpse, little different from the ones I dissected in my student days. And now I hear again the murmur of your pleated skirt rising to my ears, the hissing of the silk when you slipped out of your elegant dresses.

  “Give me your little hand, Berthe, let me mend your doll, too, Mama is never coming back. These past few months, she went to Rouen so often, sometimes stayed gone longer than we’d agreed, but in the end, the faithful Hirondelle always brought her back to us.”

  How often I ran out to meet the old, creaky carriage, because I was always anxious when you stayed away too long, for your piano lessons with Mademoiselle Lempereur or to buy things for the house. One time I couldn’t take it anymore, and I went there after you, terrified something had happened to you in the big city; and when I finally found you on Mademoiselle Lempereur’s street—Rue de la Renelles-des-Maroquiniers, I still remember the name—my heart skipped a beat.

  “What kept you yesterday?” I sputtered tearfully into your face. You know I cry easily.

  “I was sick.”

  “With what? Where . . .? How?”

  “At Mademoiselle Lempereur’s.”

  “Aha . . . I knew it. I was on my way there. . . .”

  “Bah, there’s no need, anyway she’s just stepped out. But in the future, please don’t get so worked up. You realize I can’t feel free when I know the slightest delay will send you into such a state.”

  I suffered through it all, and not a word of complaint. What else could I have done? The piano lessons were her greatest joy, and everyone said she was making progress. Her playing was a solace to me on those days when I came home exhausted. I barely listened, but I saw. Her fingers leapt nimble and gracious over the black and white keys, as though they were dancing. Smooth, supple fingers, I never tired of watching their dance; because day in, day out, all I saw on my patients were cracked, calloused hands, farmers’ hands that made a fist when I looked for a vein to take their blood. You were a farm girl, too, when I stole you away from your father’s house, but you had the hands of a lady, your waist was as elegant as your soft, swift step. A gifted woman, Homais said of you, she wouldn’t be out of place as the wife of a sub-prefect. And that was saying too little.

  Your mother, Berthe, was born for the highest reaches of society. She passed the test at the Marquis’s ball at Château de la Vaubyessard where gentlemen asked her to waltz. So go, my child, leave me alone with her. I will sit you on my knee and cuddle you later, your father has more than enough love left for you. Your mother couldn’t give you the time you needed. She set the table for dinner, stacked my nightcaps neatly in the wardrobe, prepared us meals so exquisite, you wouldn’t find their equal in Paris. It made her tired. She had migraines and slept poorly, and often she cried out in the night. It was her nerves, and if she never found the time to play with you or teach you things, it was all because of her afflictions, which I never understood, and which the valerian drops I prescribed did nothing to assuage. Go, my child, and remember, she was a good mother, whatever the village women tell you. Each and every one of them envied her graceful way of talking and her elegant tournure.

  Her voice, the poems by Monsieur Lamartine, the romances played on the piano, never a shrill word, even when she was upset. Her voice is in the house, her soft step. But I don’t see her face, though it is ever in my mind; her visage is so clouded, I can hardly say whether her inky eyes were dark brown or dark blue, I see nothing but the quivering wings of her nose. Are they quivers of joy? More likely rage. Or fear. But why? Why? Was it my fault? I did what I could, tirelessly. . . .

  “Entrez, entrez donc, Monsieur Lheureux, to what do I owe the honor?”

  “It’s no honor, Monsieur Bovary, my poor man, simply a matter of outstanding debts. Most indecorous, calling on someone in a mourning house over trifles of this kind, but I’m a poor tradesman, and believe you me, the knife is at my throat, I’m on the verge of ruin. Lamentably, your dearly departed purchased a scandalous quantity of goods and now I am forced to pay my purveyors.”

  “But you should have come for it before, Lheureux, it’s all been seized on your behalf, your colleague Vinçart took everything. You stand in an empty house.”

  “I can see that, and it pains me. Yet you yourself look finer than ever: astonishing, for a man who’s lost everything. I notice you’re wearing patent leather boots, a white cravat. You’ve waxed your moustache with scented pomade. I don’t understand, I beg your pardon, but I am only asking for what is my due.”

  “Fine, fine, I’ll sign again, whatever you wish. There’s a bit of silver left I can sell, I still have my horse, there are several patients in arrears. I’ll take out a loan in Rouen. My friend Léon, the young notary’s clerk, will vouch for it.”

  “Yes, that’s right, you wouldn’t want to blemish your reputation, being a doctor and all, a man of science, someone too good to be bothered with everyday hassles. So long as I don’t take a loss, it’s all the same. But let me tell you once more, Bovary, very softly, so no one else hears, just lean in a bit, I’ll whisper it in your ear. As you stand here before me, decked out as nobly as Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette himself, I know: even beyond the grave, she is corrupting you, la pauvre chère dame. . . .”

  “Out! Out with you, before something nasty happens, and don’t dare step over my threshold again! Anyone who libels her would do well to watch his step. When it comes to Emma, I’m capable of far worse than you all think.”

  “Why that awful anger in your voice, Monsieur Bovary? I hurried over from my laboratory where I was busy mixing a compound for a prescription. I had just grabbed my mortar and pestle a fraction of a second before when I heard you shouting, that’s hardly like you. Dignity, for heaven’s sake! Philosophy! What’s got you into such a state?”

  “Forgive me, Monsieur Homais, and please tell the neighbors to forgive me, too. It was Lheureux. I let myself go. He only wanted what’s due to him, and if he hadn’t mentioned my honored wife, who—”

  “What do you expect from the tradesmen in this miserable village, my good man! All they know is money, the unlettered brutes. We are wading in the swamp of barbarism and can only pray that the glow of enlightenment will one day shine over all those who cling to their superstitious customs with such wretched fanaticism. Philosophy, I say. Tend to your nervous system, go out in the fresh air, take an herb bath, read the great authors. . . .”

  Philosophy. A clever man, our apothecary. But what use is philosophy to me, when she is dead? Dead. The most peculiar ideas keep coming to me when I say this word, dead. I have heard of cases where a person’s death was only apparent. Not to speak of magnetism and resurrection. Homais would laugh in my face, I know, all that is contrary to the laws of nature. But there are times when I believe she has awakened in her wedding dress, brushed aside her dark hair, opened her eyes, and is pounding on the underside of the coffin lid. I must be going mad. Was Lheureux really there, and did he whisper improprieties about Emma into my ear? Or was it an addled hallucination, and did I scream the word out in the presence of no one? Fou, fou, because I can’t bear it, how the sun keeps shining, how the bells toll on—how the hours flee past just as they did during her days on this earth. She will stand now, stretch her limbs, burst forth from the three coffins I insisted on, despite the grumbling of those around me. Already she is opening the door, I can feel the burst of cold air. No, ma femme, do not say Laisse-moi, [4] as you did so many times before. I dressed up for you, I never did that before, my shabby clothes were always good enough for Yonville and the ailing farmers in their dingy houses. For you. Gleaming boots, white cravat. Like Rodolphe Boulanger himself, that’s the prattle you hear from the carpers and backstabbers who begrudged me the good fortune of having yo
u. Let them talk.

  Monsieur Rodolphe. The letter I found from him to you. Rest easy, Emma, I won’t say a word more. It was respectful, the kind of letter a gentleman would write to an admired lady, and who wouldn’t throw himself at your feet? You were beautiful, even as the poison consumed you from within. You asked for a mirror. You cried when you saw your face pale from death—and still you didn’t know how beautiful you were. Who did? Not Doctor Canivet, not His Excellency, Doctor Larivière, not Homais, and not Abbé Bournisien as he jabbered the Indulgentiam. I was the only one to see it, I, Charles Bovary, even if I could think of nothing better than mustard poultices to ease your distress. I, who speak to the emptiness now, as I did moments before, chastising that brazen usurer the way a man, a gentleman would—the same way Monsieur Rodolphe would have aimed his pistol at anyone who dared insult you. Believe me down there in your cold bed of earth, in your three coffins—I wanted them, and so it was done—I am as good and brave a man as he, and I didn’t let Homais dissuade me with his sensible words of advice, I was never shy when it came to affording you some harmless indulgence. And I bought you a fine mare, which you would take out riding, your knee hugged her mane beautifully. The women in the village gawked and gossiped, I didn’t pay them any mind. I let you take piano lessons with Mademoiselle Lempereur in Rouen, and I wouldn’t hear of it when Mother said bitterly there was no need for such costly curtains. Did I not always stand by you, like a man? Why then? Why did you swallow the white powder like sugar? That was what Homais wrote in the Fanal de Rouen, I have the clipping, it spells everything out in black and white, an accident, and not for a moment did the Abbé consider denying you a Christian burial.

  In the busy little market town of Yonville-l’Abbaye in our beloved Normandy, a housewife’s innocent error has led to consequences it would be no exaggeration to call tragic. The wife of the local doctor, while preparing a vanilla cream desert, sprinkled a heaping tablespoon of arsenic powder, a rat poison, instead of sugar into her whipped eggs. After tasting the dish, the unfortunate woman was struck with severe convulsions. Neither her husband nor the two specialists called to the scene, both leading lights of science, were able to hold death at bay. Throughout Yonville, the population has expressed its condolences for this tragedy, which once again shows the danger of letting dangerous toxins fall into the hands of the untrained. Only when entrusted to a qualified apothecary are such compounds secure from misuse.

  Good old Homais, the first person we met when we moved from Tostes to Yonville, performed this final act of love for her. Love followed her, wherever she went. For she was love, though I was the only one to know it deep in his soul, because it was my life she made heaven on earth. Even when her weak nerves had waylaid her, and she used to go up in the attic, because she had insomnia, and didn’t want to wake me when she struck a match at night to light the candle.

  “Someone’s knocking, Berthe, go, open the door, I’m too tired.”

  “Oui . . . non, I can’t at the moment. . . . I have terrible expenses, you know. The funeral of my beloved wife—but everything, down to the last sou—I am a man of my word. What? Swollen hands? It’s bound to be gout, bed rest and a strict diet, no cider. No, I can’t come to see your wife, the grief has taken a lot out of me, I feel ill myself, a doctor is no magician, nature has to run her course, as my teacher, the esteemed Doctor Larivière says, and if her wishes go against ours, then we doctors are useless, that’s how it was with my wife, God rest her soul. But the debt will be paid, don’t you worry, a man of honor knows what he must do.”

  Help. I, who didn’t know how to help myself, and couldn’t help her as she shrieked because the icy white powder slithered like a jellyfish through her body. God, I said then. But I loathe him, this God, who entombed her in the earth, and I loathe myself, because nothing occurred to me in time, I paged through my medical textbook with trembling hands, the letters swam before my eyes, but I saw nothing, nothing that might illuminate my muddled mind. La fatalité. But at that moment, fatalité was me, the bad doctor, only good enough to pull a rotten tooth, prescribe a hot foot bath, tell someone with inflamed lungs to boil salt water and inhale the vapor. A doctor? Barely: a country doctor, officier de santé, too dumb for the mortarboard and tassel. Homais is the only one who calls me docteur, from the goodness of his heart. Had I been a proper doctor, I could have cared for her when she fell sick with brain fever; in shame, I had to call Canivet and Larivière to her side. But she recovered, nature helped, God helped, I didn’t yet have to shout my loathing into his stony face. It was like a resurrection, and she was more beautiful and tender than before. She went to Rouen for her piano lessons and came back happy, with light in her eyes, and when I embraced her, she no longer said, as she had before: Laisse-moi. At times I have the feeling I could make her rise and walk again. It’s against the laws of nature, but to hell with them, with whatever parts of them I learned. Now, when a knock comes at the door, it won’t be another money-grubber badgering me, but her, in the orange gown she wore to the Marquis’s ball. Her hair, combed smooth, billows gracefully over her small ears, shimmering bluish in the candlelight, and a rose rises up from her chignon. Of all the dresses in her closet, that one clung to her tightest. I can smell her still, but it is the scent of her body and not her fragrant perfumes that intoxicates me. It is illicit, unnatural, but I will not be held back by prohibitions anymore, not yours, Mother, not yours, Monsieur l’Abbé, not those of the village women who hated her because she was more beautiful than all of them. Let them take me for a fool: Emma, I lust for you!

  Steady now! I didn’t shout down into the village. If I had, Homais’s sharp ears would have heard me, and he would have run up to me straightaway—

  “Necrophilia, mon cher, as it is known among the cultivated. A vile perversion and, let me warn you: a criminal offense. You must be on guard before the eyes of the law, which see all and will not hesitate to strike you dead. And prudence, prudence is of the essence. These trifles can lead to disaster. Look at me, a man of science, with an impeccable reputation, even I was just a hair away from disaster. They called me up to Rouen on account of a harmless bit of advice, given to my customers out of pure humanitarianism—for the sake of enlightenment, the cultivation of the human race you know. It was dreadful! I could hear the gendarme’s key clinking in the lock, believe you me! But necrophilia, that is an infraction of incomparably greater weight, and moreover, a violation of the precepts of natural morality. At times like this, a friend is obliged to raise his voice on behalf of reason. One cannot and should not lust after a cadaver. God forbid, I nearly said, following the benighted parlance of the untutored rustics, que la raison vous en préserve, mon pauvre ami. [5]

  So he would have spoken, our sensible neighbor, had my words echoed down to his dwelling. Fortunately they caught in my throat. But I can’t help it if these thoughts reverberate inside me, I am doomed to think them, and they crave to be spoken aloud. Can I help what I feel? Is it my fault that the blood no longer flows in her body, that body that was once so lovely? Can I keep my own frail body from yearning for that loveliness? There was a time when everything went according to custom. The wedding, with dancing and feasting. The honeymoon in Tostes, where they took me for an able doctor, and congratulations rained down on me when I showed up with my bride in her grave clothes, her wedding dress, as lovely on her then in the open air as it would be later, when she lay in her coffin. I was the happiest man in the realm. The white skin of my beloved, with its slight shading of cinnamon, smelled so intoxicating that I swooned as she lay next to me in our humble marriage bed. And now? I hear a song, one she sang often, later, full of feeling, with her nimbly skipping fingers gliding across the piano:

  This is the night, the first night in the grave;

  Oh, where has your splendor gone, I pray?

  How should I rest and shutter my eyes

  When there, my love, so frigid lies. . . .

  Three coffins, and inside them, that delectable body
, which will rot, as they taught me in medical school. That is why I cannot sleep. I wander upstairs and down through the night, hardly caring that the child is resting. I call for the dead: not too loud, but enough that I hear my own voice. I open my arms to catch her, I steal off to the alcove, where her scent still lingers. Perhaps I only imagine I can smell her, and were Homais to enter, he would detect nothing but the chlorine powder he brings from his laboratory to strew in lavish quantities in the name of hygiene and public health. It makes no difference: I smell what I smell, and it is my concern, like her death. They loved her, but still, they will forget her. Lheureux, the rogue, the poor rogue—poor I say because he smells, sees, and hears nothing, just like all the others.