It was in vain; the bazaars of Biskra possess many of the knick-knacks typical of Oriental countries—copper vases, carpets, embroidered gauzes and so on—which come directly from Lyon, but to procure tennis equipment, it is necessary to order it from Constantine, or even Algiers.
“That’s annoying,” said Roger. “Hélène would have been glad to play this afternoon.”
“Bah!” I said. “Game postponed for forty-eight hours.”
“At least I want to inform her. No disappointment, however slight, ought to be caused to her by me.”
“Perfect!” I joked. “You’ll be a model husband.”
For want of tennis, he ravaged the greenhouses of a horticulturalist to put together a marvelous bouquet of camellias. Then, after having scribbled a few words on a card, shortly before lunch, he charge Étienne with taking the flowers and the note to the White Villa.
A quarter of an hour later, the boy came back. Roger had the impatience common to all those in love.
“Well, did Madame Hélène give you a good welcome? What did she say?”
“I didn’t see her. She hasn’t come down this morning. She’s slightly indisposed.”
As was appropriate, I calmed the keen annoyance experienced by my friend. “A little emotion and fatigue. After a day like yesterday, it’s necessary to be expect that.”
“Yes,” Roger conceded. “It’s a lesson.”
Without allowing anything to show, I was anxious—and Tourte took advantage of a moment when I was alone to whisper some brief news into my ear that turned my anxiety to anguish.
“Oh, Monsieur Paul, it’s not good at the Villa. At the end of the night Madame Hélène had a coughing fit. The doctor no longer leaves her...”
During lunch, Livery sought to mask the worry that was devouring him. I perceived it in the volubility of his conversation. He passed from one subject to another without transition, carried away by a flood of words, absent-mindedly, for he made no response to the few questions I asked him. When we left the table we went to the White Villa.
Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy came down to receive us. His head was shaky, his eyes haggard and his voice tremulous.
“Oh, my friends, my friends... She’s not well…fever…coughing blood. The doctor doesn’t understand it. All day yesterday she seemed so normal! I’ve telegraphed Algiers and Chanel for a specialist...and also Tunis, where Professor Maggio, the King of Italy’s physician, is passing through, it seems. I’ve begged them to come. Let’s hope that it’s an alarm without consequence…let’s hope!”
The old man held out his arms, with a tormented physiognomy that belied his appeal to hope.
Devastated, we left the Villa.
Until five o’clock Roger wanders around the town, with me by his side. That aimless course procures us the moral interval after which we can, without indecent insistence, return for news.
It is not good. The poor child has fallen unconscious; she has only emerged to fall into an ardent fever.
Roger says nothing, but his mute dolor is grim. Forgetting dinner time, we resume our aimless wandering through the streets that open before our feet. It would be impossible for us to wait at the hotel; walking is a means of expending our nervous energy.
Roger has violent impulses, fits of tension that recall the bad days of the last year. Sometimes, large tears emerge from beneath his eyelids. By the exasperation of his self-regard, however, he masters the despair that is gripping him.
Several times, I hear him murmur: “No, it’s impossible…it can’t be…I don’t want it.”
Twice more in the evening, at nine o’clock and midnight, we return to the Villa. Each time, on crossing the threshold, an indescribable anguish grips me, so keenly do I sense disaster suspended overhead.
If it were to fall…!
It does not. Madame Berjac is torpid, the fever having retreated before injections of quinine. That prostration, following the crisis, does not tell me anything worthwhile.
Roger has refused to go back to the hotel. He wants to sit on the edge of a ditch close to the White Villa.
With his head in his hands, he stays there.
He dreams and he weeps; sometimes, too—and that is more frightful—he laughs.
My God! What am I going to do with the poor fellow if fatality takes its course?
At dawn, he consents to follow me, on the assurance that nothing has changed in the young woman’s condition.
Nothing has changed, except that she is growing weaker hour by hour, according to what Étienne reports, having remained in the servants’ parlor at the Villa. But I don’t add that detail.
The two practitioners summoned by Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy arrive that afternoon by the four o’clock train. Immediately, we run to the Villa.
In the drawing room, where the presence of the woman he loves floats everywhere, Roger awaits the result of the ultimate consultation.
Arms folded and head bowed, he marches back and forth like a beast in a cage.
He approaches the piano where the first oath was exchanged, and recoils, as if stuck in the heart. On the music-stand he has recognized the Chopin nocturne that she played two nights before.
He goes back to the door, which stands ajar; he recoils again, seized in the throat by the odor, insipid and bitter at the same time, of ether, camphorated alcohol and creosote: the odor of houses in which someone is dying.
Finally, a noise of footfalls is heard on the stairway.
In silence, the physicians descend, followed by Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy, who accompanies them to the door.
From where we are we witness a terrible mime, far more expressive than words. The doctors shake the father’s hand effusively; they keep their eyes lowered, inclining their science before that heart-rending dolor.
They have gone, and the astronomer is still there, collapsed on the bench. He is sobbing convulsively. It is frightful to contemplate the affliction of that old man, weeping like a child.
It is necessary for us to approach, however. I take Roger by the arm and push him toward the vestibule.
Our presence stems the excess of tears. Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy shakes his head, and in a distant voice, murmurs as if speaking aside: “My dear child…a few more hours and it will be all over…a rapidly progressing pneumonia…she’s just entered her death-throes.”
And addressing Roger, he raises his voice, enclosing in his cry a rage, a blasphemy and a reproach: “And to think that nothing…no one can save her…not even God…not even you!”
Then, exhausted by that effort of violence, in a tone suddenly softened: “She loved you. Before losing consciousness, she wanted your flowers by her bed, close at hand. Do you want to see her?”
“No!”
Roger’s exclamation emerges hoarse and brutal, and also heart-rending.
And without saluting the desolate father, without a word of condolence, he flees outside.
I addressed to the astronomer a gesture and a gaze that implored forgiveness and pity in favor of the distraught, and, quitting the lugubrious villa in my turn, I threw myself on Livry’s trail.
I caught up with him at the hotel.
He had locked himself in his room, next to mine. Through the door, I heard the whistle of his labored respiration, and also the scratching of his pen running over the paper. Feverishly, he was writing letters.
I had the fearful thought that he was drawing up his last will, that he had formed the project this time of ending his existence. One fact reassured me: he did not have any weapon to hand, no razor, nothing that could procure him an immediate means of attempting to kill himself.
Close to the partition, I therefore remained on watch, prostrate in an armchair.
It was seven o’clock when there was a light tapping at my door.
I went to open it.
Little Tourte appeared before me, his eyes full of tears.
For a long moment, the child stood there without articulating a word, the sobs stuck in his throat. Fin
ally, he stammered: “She’s dead!”
I put a finger over my lips, designating Roger’s room with a glance.
“Yes, Monsieur Paul, but…it’s still necessary that he knows. Then, what will he do?”
Ah! I put off until later the examination of that terrible question. In my head, too, the ideas were clouded.
I threw myself back into my armchair and wept recklessly, all the tears I had. I wept for the poor little flower, scythed down, I wept for Livry and I wept for myself...
My chagrin was interrupted by the abrupt opening of the communicating door.
My friend was before me. His icy calm and his livid pallor seemed terrible to me. I thought my eyes were deceiving me…but no...he had put on his dinner-jacket!
He looked at me with an indefinable expression in which I read anger and scorn, and then said, in a curt voice: “You’re weeping? What are you waiting for to get dressed? The dinner bell has rung.”
Was I hearing correctly? Roger intended to go to dinner, in the glare of lights and flowers, to the music of violins, when nearby, his beloved, rigid on a white bed...
In spite of all the self-control that I had promised myself to maintain, I could not master a revolt.
“You’re talking about dinner downstairs with everyone…but you don’t know…”
He interrupted me with a furious snigger.
“Yes, I know…I knew before you. She died at exactly five-forty. At that precise moment, my heart burst, my terrestrial life stopped there. Imbeciles will tell you that it’s telepathy—the donkeys! They know nothing but words... But if I no longer have a heart, I still have a stomach. For a little while, at least, I shall be obliged to satisfy it... This evening, I’m hungry!”
Those clashing words caused me to shudder. They opened my eyes to the verity that I had been simple enough, culpable enough, to cover up. Roger had never ceased to be mad.
For a few months the dementia had simply been dormant, manifest in another form. It still existed, and today, by virtue of a frightful shock, it had awoken again, more violently, like a volcano returning to activity after a long repose.
I knew what Roger, insane, was capable of doing. Fortunately, I had taken my precautions. His reign of terror was over.
Now, the Man of the Apocalypse gave way to a poor lunatic, neither more nor less dangerous than all the others, and worthy of an immense pity.
Unfortunate Roger, my pity would not fail him! But for the moment, my head and my heart were reeling. I did not feel strong enough to follow him to the restaurant.
“Excuse me this evening,” I said to him, in a plaintive tone. “I have an atrocious headache.”
“As you wish!”
With that brief remark, Roger left.
For some time afterwards, I remained slumped in my armchair.
Then, suddenly, the sentiment of a duty to fulfill brought me to my feet. It seemed to me to be appropriate to take my condolences to the old man who was weeping out there all alone. Similarly, it was a charity to put myself at his disposition in the cruel circumstances. Roger had the excuse of his madness. I had none.
I went downstairs in order to go to the White Villa. As I went past the restaurant I cast a glance through the windows. It was to collect a painful impression. Roger was finishing dinner at Barnett’s table. The two men were exchanging words with an animation full of enthusiasm.
I fled.
At the sad house I fund Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy in conference with a man clad in black, who bore on his face the stereotyped conventional grief of undertakers.
Once, through tears, I had seen those faces gliding around me when my poor mother died.
As soon as he is free the astronomer comes toward me, his hands extended.
“Thank you, thank you! It’s good of you…and Monsieur Livry?”
I represent my comrade devastated by such grief that he is under the threat of going mad, in no condition to accompany me. A pious lie!
“Poor fellow!” murmurs the old man, his shoulders drooping, crushed by his immense unhappiness. An in a soft, almost tender voice, he murmurs: “Would you like to see her?”
There are cruelties that one cannot avoid.
I see her again, the poor and charming creature. A further metamorphosis; the rose has become a lily again, a lily so white, so pure, that I fall to my knees. In smiling expression fixed by death, she seems to be asleep. Between her knotted hands, Roger Livry’s bouquet of camellias has been disposed. Oh, those smiling lips, which will be veiled by a shroud tomorrow!
I withdrew, my head empty of sensation, my body exhausted as if in the wake of an immense effort. Like the dim-witted oxen that, abandoned to themselves, return to their stable, I found myself back on the threshold of the Imperial Hotel.
As I penetrated into the hall, though, I was offended by an unexpected, terrible and odious spectacle: Roger, his face illuminated and his voice loud, swilling champagne in the company of Barnett.
He perceived me, ran toward me, and, shoving me by the shoulders with a violence and a force that only hysterics, in their crises, possess, he said: “You’re just in time…we’re having a good laugh!”
And the other, the frightful Barnett, takes up the theme in his transatlantic jargon: “All right! No more perfectly joyful fellow than Master Livry! He’s just bet me a million of your money that within a week, there’ll be frost in Biskra!”
“A million!” I exclaimed, almost in spite of myself.
“Yes!” And with the insolent pride of those Americans parvenus, he added: “Oh, I could get more.”
Imagine! Barnett of Cleveland, “worth” fifty million dollars!
The horrible individual uttered a demonic snigger, with which Roger mingled his strident laughter.
Between the two men I remained inert, enervated, impotent.
Then, Roger questions me in his turn: “You’re not drinking?” And, as if traversed by a glimmer of light: “Oh…I get it...the dead woman. Do as I do, damn it—I’m not weeping!” His voice became muted, menacing and prophetic: “We’ll give her, I swear to you, a beautiful funeral!”
XV. The Wind of Madness
For a long time, a very long time, I stand on the platform of Biskra railway station, watching the train draw away that is carrying Hélène Berjac’s coffin.
Without any pomp and without any fuss, the young victim of pitiless destiny departs northwards, in accordance with her father’s wishes. He has refused to display the spectacle of a cortege of mourning to the indifferent curiosity of strangers. How well I understand that! Alone, with a retired general, a comrade and Polytechnique classmate of Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy, I accompanied the old man on the first stage of his calvary.
Livry has not come!
And, my soul drowned in bitterness and sadness, I continue to follow with my eyes the black caterpillar of carriages crawling toward the darker confines of the sunlit plain.
The train has disappeared into the mist blurring the limit of the northern horizon.
I go away. I feel terribly alone and abandoned. This country, which had conquered and charmed me, now appears grim and hostile. How and when will I get out of it? What resolution is stopping Roger?
When I return to the hotel I find him hard at work.
“I’m busy setting up my batteries to win Barnett’s million,” he murmurs in my ear, in a confidential tone.
No allusion at all to the frightful drama that has just traversed his life: a complete indifference with regard to the last sad chapter that has closed the idyll of the White Villa. I can’t hold it against him, any more than his scandalous attitude on the evening of Madame Berjac’s death. He is irresponsible, alas, and if a respondent exists in this horrible adventure, it’s me
Without appearing to perceive my presence, Roger is pursuing on the terrace manipulations analogous to those I witnessed in the building in Mourmelon. Fortunately, he only has a small quantity of radium at his disposal, too weak, in my opinion, to produce an appreciable
result.
The first experiments, however, have proved to me that I ought to be ready for any eventuality. If necessary, I shall remove and hide the photographic baths in which he is mixing his terrible compound.
But in themselves, those suspicions and anxieties dictate my duty. The time has come to make it absolutely impossible for Roger to harm himself and others. Depriving him of the usage of his capital is only a palliative; complete assurance is necessary, and that assurance can only be obtained by the frightful but necessary extremity of his internment.
Is it not, in any case, the sole fashion of giving him the care that he needs?
At that moment, I make the dolorous decision.
Alas, Roger’s attitude in the days that follow oblige me to hurry things.
He has lost his discretion as a man of good society. Now, he comes down to dinner in a flannel jacket spotted with acid-stains. Every evening, the poor fellow stays up late in the company of Barnett. The overstimulation of alcohol adding to that of madness might produce a furious crisis at any moment.
I could sense it rumbling, that crisis, in the rare words that my comrade addressed to me, for he now showed himself, with regard to me, suspicious, acerbic and almost coarse. In vain I tried to get him to tell me to whom he had addressed the numerous letters and no less numerous dispatches that he sent every day. With equal futility, I tried to discover the purpose of his frequent excursions. Several times, he instructed me brutally not to accompany him outside, arguing his desire to be alone.
In brief, I felt that he was barely tolerating my presence.
Almost in the same fashion, he began to keep Étienne at a distance. For that reason, the boy could only procure me very obscure information—for example, for several days Roger had a bunch of keys, which were certainly not those of his apartment at the hotel or his luggage. Also, in the course of his mysterious excursions, Roger often met an Arab in rags, who looked like a beggar, with whom he had long conversations.
“Poor Monsieur Roger,” the child said, in reporting these incidents to me. “It’s time to think of taking him away, or he’s going to do something bad.”
On the Brink of the World's End Page 30