by Jean Améry
How should I rest and shutter my eyes
When there, my love, so frigid lies. . . .
How gently you used to stroke the keys, how it soothed me when those same fingers that had made the piano echo caressed me on the head. Yes, I was good. Me. You said as much. And that is what I will take with me into the night.
RIDICULUS SUM
WHAT’S that, Berthe, my child? She pushed you away when you tried to crawl into her lap for her to kiss you, to stroke your unkempt hair, which no one bothered tending to? Mère Rollet, the wet nurse we sent you out to because your mother was always ill with something, was not the cleanest of people. Pushed? You fell from your mother’s hands and started bleeding? But when I rushed over with the tincture, she told me you had hurt yourself playing. Children get worked up, that happens sometimes, it can be so absorbing, playing all alone, it was the same for me when I was a boy. Talk, Berthe, but softly, so no one outside can hear, and tell me what you wanted to say through to the end. Now you’re crying, and the tears well in my eyes, too. Pushed—I don’t believe you. Children’s memories are filled with delusions, and you’re hoping I’ll be doubly affectionate with you now. It’s not right to hold it against her, she was so restive: probably she made a sudden move, on account of her nerves, and you stumbled, my dear, here, bury your face in my coat, let me hold you in my arms, your mother’s fingers are stiff and blue and perhaps her narrow nails are growing long, I don’t know how far along the process of decomposition is, I’d have to ask Doctor Canivet or that other estimable gentleman, le docteur Larivière. Nimble fingers they were, skilled with piano and pen, adept at sewing and stirring dessert creams and spooning up sugar, oh Lord, spooning up the sugar that led to her death. But why, why, was it my fault? I did what I could. How could I help it that my own fingers were fat and bumbling, barely good enough to apply a poultice. She must have looked at those fingers, which have shriveled amid my torments, when we pressed together the slats to brace the broken leg of her father, bon Père Rouault, who gave her, his dear daughter, to me. She saw too little. Her eyes were always wandering, except when she gazed sternly, darkly inward. She was already that way when she entrusted her graceful fingers to my chubby, deplorable ones. I knew it, even then, but I thought it could be, should be, and so I too was shoved away by those slender, gifted hands, just like our little girl’s head: ridiculus sum. [10]
Charbovari, charbovari, they growled in wicked mirth when I pronounced my name to the teacher with my boorish tongue. My cap, fondly knitted by my doting mother, fell to the floor, and I was afraid someone would take it. Laughter, grousing, and shouting, and then for punishment, writing in Latin, even for me, though I was the victim.
“And you, new boy, will copy out for me twenty times the verb ridiculus sum.”
I wrote it, turned in the clean copy, and went on thinking it; the phrase has never left me.—What did I ever have, before Père Rouault brought our hands together in that sacred, eternal bond that was shattered when the earth covered her? Walks to the riverbank to cut switches of willow, Mother’s sweets, and a stern word from my father now and again; that was all. The drudgery of school. No close companions, only Homais later on, who would call me “docteur,” to indulge me, and because he liked pronouncing learned titles. What else? Tribulations and setbacks. The others walked home from school, many arm in arm, and exchanged clever banter. About the theater, where their parents had taken them, about some lady singer, about the ball held for the sons of the better families in Rouen. None of them paid me any mind. Gustave Flaubert, gangly, blond, gimlet-eyed, like the Norman heroes in our schoolbooks. Bonjour, Flaubert, could you lend me your penknife for a few minutes, I forgot—and: mais oui, friendly but terse, and: merci, but nothing about his father, the highly esteemed doctor, not a word about the stories he made up and scribbled in his Latin notebook under the school desk. Gustave Flaubert, I was nothing to you. What could I have said to you, anyway? I never read the solemn dramas you were acquainted with, I wrote no sweet verses, if the time came to talk in the park about girls and walks under the arbor, I had no choice but to make it all up. The way was not lit for me. When I finished my homework, I would wipe the sweat from my forehead, rest my hands on the table, and think back to my village. We are not born for joy here below, as the Abbé used to say in my lessons. My mother used to tell me how hard life was whenever I came back home for the holidays. Dear Mother, wicked Mother, you showed Emma nothing but disapproval and meanness. Listen to me, Mother! We’ve got a score to settle, and things will turn out even worse for you than for me when Lheureux comes knocking with his invoices. Your Sunday eggnog, which Father used to snicker at, chasing it down with crystal-clear fruit brandies, wasn’t enough to make up for your saddling me with the widow, the woman with the cold feet and gaunt limbs, the good match who meant more to you than the joy my fingers felt as they touched Emma’s thick brown hair, or the bliss in my eyes when they paused to feast on the lovely swish of her pleated skirt and that plush décolleté, without a hint of bone below it. Héloïse, la Veuve Dubuc, her ducats. I obeyed you, Mother, I was a stupid devil, an oaf amid the world’s derisive howls. Ridiculus sum. The trouser straps would disturb me during the dance, I said, as we were dressing up for the evening’s festivities at the home of the Marquis.
“During the dance?”
“Yes . . .”
“You’ve lost your mind. People will make fun of you. . . .”
So you spoke, jarring if not shrill. Pushed away, I know, I suspected it even then. But she didn’t shove the girl roughly, knocking her down and hurting her, so I had to rush over with the tincture—no, Berthe, it wasn’t like that. And you are not ridiculous like your father, even if you bear a certain likeness to him, and no one will ever be able to call you lowborn. I was the oaf. Not always, certainly, she could have seen that if only her eyes weren’t always fleeing elsewhere, and if not, turned inward, transfixed. I was no fool when it came to Héloïse, the widow with the cold extremities and bony chest: rather a man to keep a close eye on when he had a lady in his sights; a man to fret over when he rode off to Les Bertaux to the home of the ill Père Rouault, where a certain woman could be found with glimmering teeth, dressed like a demoiselle, a woman who inspired such jealousy, it was best to just give up and die. A weak-witted villager with unpolished manners? Not to my patients, who awaited my arrival as if I were Docteur Achille-Cléophas Flaubert himself, fresh from the big city of Rouen. My breathing’s shallow, Monsieur Bovary, I’ve got the tooth worm, my good doctor, and I can’t bear it any more, the child has spasms and cries, and my wife and I can’t catch a wink, I can hear the roar of my blood, O God, the palsy will leave me cold and dead, help, Monsieur Bovary, Monsieur Bovary! Old wives crossed themselves when I stepped over the threshold, a harbinger of Abbé Bournisien and his bells. The Marquis himself, most gracious in his hour of need, begged me to relieve the pain from an abscess in his mouth, and with a game jab of the lancet, I made the thing right, and that was how we got our invitation to the ball. This she could have seen as well. But instead, she saw much else, things I was blind to, even if I now and then paged hastily through her books. Castles on sheer cliffs. Marble columns in the sunlight. Deep blue seas. Gondolas, what do I know. I know nothing. I can only recite the words to myself as memory preserves them. If you know nothing, be silent. How can I argue with her in her grave? Only I can console myself, and I must, in my misery, which no herb bath nor the reading of good writers can bring an end to. He who does his work is not ridiculous. The farrier’s pounding on the nails is not a joke, the whetting of the sickle is a solemn sound in the evening, the apothecary’s caution as he measures out a dose leaves mockery mute. My patients used to send for me at night. Out of the warm bed, into the snow where the good horse struggled ahead, and when it got to be too much for him, I’d step down and lead him by the reins into the neighboring village, where someone was writhing in pain. I was always prudent with my recommendations, I was afraid my patients might die
on me. I gave soothing tinctures and drops, valerian in particular; that was judicious, and no cause for disdain. The farmers were grateful. Even the poorest of them always had a little glass of apple brandy at the ready for me. On the homesteads, we’d dine together when I’d healed someone with compresses or an application of leeches. Omelets with cured ham, farmer’s fare, nothing for pampered palates, but to me, it was tasty and fortifying before I got back in the saddle. There was no sniping, no need for me to dawdle at the whist table as I did at the home of the Marquis while you waltzed arm in arm with some gentleman, twirling as though your feet didn’t touch the floor, and the heavy, snow-white candles in the sturdy candelabra did not burn brighter than your eyes as you turned them on your fellow dancer. I was ridiculous at the castle. I was not when it came to work and suffering. It was laughable when I tried to fall in with the young Flaubert. But no one snickered when I came home from Rouen with my satchel on my back, a village boy made good, and people welcomed me warmly from the windows. Charles Bovary numquam ridiculus erat. [11] It pleases me. I think of work, and of duties fulfilled. But it doesn’t last, her grave is my homeland—and there this numquam no longer matters.
“I would say it was your duty, mon cher Bovary, and it would be ridiculous to recoil before an utterly harmless surgical intervention. . . .”
Charbovari, charbovari, charbovari, numquam ridiculus erat, Emma urged me on as well, her ambitions warmed my heart, she longed for my name to ring out past Yonville, to Rouen, all the way to Paris, who knows, I had to take the risk, I didn’t want to disappoint her, I didn’t want to stand there before Homais like a failure—
“The fact is, I don’t have the right, mon ami, you know that, an officier de santé is only allowed to perform minor surgery. Whereas in the case of poor Hippolyte, it is a true operation, strephopodia, as you yourself say: the Achilles tendon has to be severed, I’ll need to think it over, I should sleep on it, la nuit porte conseil—the legal regulations are strict here.”
“Laws, ordinances, paper shuffling. . . . But in the service of progress, my dear friend, you have to jump in feet-first. Where would we be, if great Galileo hadn’t—”
“Do it, Monsieur Bovary, I, Tuvache, mayor by the grace of the people and the King, give you my sanction. You’re a citizen of Yonville now, and the reputation of our village is at stake. Are we to go on herding cows and sheep, forced to grovel when the prefect comes around, mounts an agricultural exhibition, and passes out a few medals which not even a junk dealer will buy off of us once a few years have passed?”
“The mayor’s hit the nail on the head. You’re risking nothing, and you’ll show you’re a good Samaritan, because you’ve deigned to operate on the dumb clodhopper gratis, as I will stress in my column for the Fanal de Rouen. When word gets round, well-to-do patients will come from near and far. By Zeus! I wouldn’t be surprised if, a few months from now, people in Neufchâtel, in Beauvais, in Senlis, not to mention the smaller villages, were talking about the miracle of Yonville.”
My heart pounded as I watched Hippolyte’s imbecilic eyes roll back in his head, but he couldn’t have been more frightened than I was, he and his clubfoot stamped all over and he did his work like all the rest, I pitied him, because I could see his fear and how he tried to gather his courage, downing glass after glass of brandy. The firm hand people praised when I pulled a rotten tooth went limp on me, just thinking about it . . .
“Our duty to humanity, to enlightenment, overrides our duty to the law, the immortal Condorcet would have agreed with me on that. And here is the volume by Docteur Duval from Paris, everything is described down to the last detail, all you have to do is follow the text. Raise the flag! And tomorrow it shall be said that thanks to Docteur Duval and the distinguished practitioner Charles Bovary, strephopodia is a thing of the past. We men of standing and culture know we are the lords of nature; where she malforms, our enlightened minds and practiced hands correct her. Orthos was the word in the august language of the ancients: straight, upright. Orthopedia is what you’ll be practicing, nothing else, no reasonable man would think otherwise. . . .”
“The hour is nigh, my dear. Shall we remain a little country doctor our whole life long? Shall your talents wither away here? At home, we lack even the bare necessities, I never mention it, because I wish to spare you. My wardrobe needs sprucing up, you should get some better clothes yourself, you’d be a different man if you wore a pair of soft riding boots instead of those burly, hobnailed work shoes. And why shouldn’t you have a star on your jacket one of these days, an award from the prefect, perhaps? And why not your name, our name, in those learned books and in the monthly medical bulletin?”
Her hand lay on mine, soft as a dove. Admiration glimmered in her eyes. She didn’t say Laisse-moi when I embraced her and snuffed out the candle in my fingertips wet with spittle. Tender flesh, play of the fingers, I tried not to fall asleep after, because I snore, it can’t be helped, but it must be a great strain on the nerves of the person sleeping next to you. I woke, and I decided: Charles Bovary will perform the operation on the clubfoot servant Hippolyte. Orthos. And my duty. Rubbish, Homais, what’s the use of enlightenment when I can have her utmost respect? What do I care about progress! What’s the difference to me if Docteur Larivière and his colleague Achille-Cléophas Flaubert sing the praises of my stupid name? She was my duty, because she was my love. I owed it to her, she was so alone with her embroidering, her books and drawing paper, which yellowed, because it no longer amused her to scribble and rub things out, the countryside was desolate, she said, what she wanted to capture was wilderness, mountaintops jutting through clouds. She had not a single diversion. Young Léon, who read out verses to her in his sonorous voice, had run off to Paris, to study and banter with grisettes. Monsieur Rodolphe, her courteous companion for her forays on horseback, for which I bought her the pretty, tranquil mare, was around less often than before, he was rich, independent, a skylarker, and every door was open to him. I had to do it. I couldn’t let her wither from boredom, or seek shelter in the Abbé’s confessional: I had to be her refuge, her pride, and I knew she would repay me for it, with the shimmering riches of her love.
Something went wrong. A professional miscalculation. So Homais put it in his article for the Fanal. Prejudices to the contrary. . . . Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners . . . at the next village fair, our dear Hippolyte will be shaking a leg. . . . It broke my heart, the way he howled. The leg I’d operated on grew hideously swollen and discolored, the Abbé came gravely into the innkeeper’s billiard room and alluded to the mercy of God. Colors on human flesh: red, blue, violet, black, black like death. Gangrene.
“Au feu!”
“Where’s there a fire, tell us, we’ll have to go through the house and call the fire brigade right away—”
“Au feu!”
“You must have some idea of where the smoke’s coming from, man. I can’t smell a thing. . . .”
“It’s nothing, there’s nothing in the air. I was babbling, thinking of the burning in Hippolyte’s gangrenous leg and the disgrace of having to send for Doctor Canivet.” [12]
“Water under the bridge, my dear Monsieur Bovary. Over and done with. The man’s long since taken splendidly to that wooden leg of his, which your eternal beloved bought and paid for, and in the village everything is back to normal. We’re not in the least to blame. Not you, and certainly not I. We were serving progress, and you can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs.”
“And when you crack those eggs, someone loses a leg. It was dreadful for me, just dreadful when Canivet arrived, all spry and competent. Parisian shenanigans is the term he used for our contemptible proceedings, and he set to work, snipping away unperturbed at that Christian soul, no different than if he were butchering a chicken. That was how he showed us his art, our spirited, distinguished colleague. But as far as the powder Emma swallowed, the arsenic, God knows how she got hold of it, there was no herb he could recommend,
and his knives could do nothing.”
“Enough! Why grumble over trifling mistakes even the leading lights of science might fall prey to? Don’t you have other things to worry about? Is it not more important to mourn the loss of your wife properly than to weep for some stupid devil who’s long gotten used to limping around and pounding the pebbles with his peg leg? As for me, I’ve put the thing behind me. You can’t make an omelet—yes, without cracking eggs, that’s right. We men of medicine and chemistry are constantly tussling with life and death. The world goes on, the planets follow their course, matter—which the mind has yet to fully penetrate—plays a trick on us now and then, such is the way of the world. Someone’s ringing at my shop door. I’m afraid I have to go. But chin up! The gangrene may have burned the poor man then, but there are no sparks now, your house won’t burn down after all. I can’t smell a thing.”
And off he goes. Work calls, in any case, he won’t make a cent comforting me, he’s done enough. Sta viator! Amabilem conjugem calcas. He’s stuck in his skin, I in mine, though I would like to escape it, just as I’d like to be rid of my head, which never donned a doctor’s mortarboard, and of my hands, which performed their duty so shabbily. Because it all would have turned out differently, had my hands and head only been true to me—soothing her legs or mending that peasant’s reeking clubfoot. A star on my jacket, my name in the scientific firmament, rich patients bowing and scraping before the renowned doctor’s wife. What good it would have done her fragile nerves. But it wasn’t to be—c’était la faute de la fatalité, ma faute: la fatalité, c’était moi! [13] My pain, as I skulked through the house, humiliated, the shrill shrieking of the amputee in my ears, Canivet’s scornful gaze into my eyes. She took it hard: how could I disappoint her too, with my clumsiness? In a sudden burst of dejected tenderness, the boor asked for a kiss. Ridiculus erat. Laisse-moi!—scarlet with rage.