Doctor Death

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “Papa . . . what is wrong?”

  He exchanged a glance with the Commissioner.

  “I will have to do it again in the daylight,” he said. “But it does not look as if there are any.”

  Suspicion began to dawn. I felt slightly queasy.

  “Thank God,” exclaimed the Commissioner, and only now did I notice that his normally unshakable calm was also showing some cracks.

  “What has happened?” I asked.

  The Commissioner silently handed me my father’s notes from his examination of Father Abigore. They were even more hurried and illegible than usual, but I had, after all, had years of practice in deciphering my father’s handwriting.

  His conclusions regarding the cause of death remained the same, of course. Father Abigore had been killed by a powerful blow to the head, presumably with a shovel or a spade. But there was more. Abigore had not been in good health when he died.

  Punctiform hemorrhage around the eyes indicates advanced respiratory struggles; this is borne out by the examination of the lungs, which revealed six abscesses the size of a coin, as well as another half dozen in initial stages. In addition, in the throat and nasal cavity were found three dead parasites of a type similar to but not identical with the mite Pneumonyssus caninum.

  I looked up. “Mites?”

  “Yes,” said Papa. “The same as on Cecile Montaine.”

  “He must have been infected while he sat beside her bier.”

  “We must assume as much. And I am fairly confident that I would have found the same abscess formations in Cecile Montaine’s lungs if a proper autopsy had been permitted.” He ran his hand across his face, and his exhaustion was visible in the gesture. “That means that we are faced with what is probably a parasitically transmitted and potentially deadly lung disease, the type and vector of which we are now only beginning to investigate, after a delay of several weeks.”

  I looked across at the Commissioner, who had let himself subside into his favorite armchair.

  “Do we know if there have been other deaths?” I asked.

  “It is hard to say,” he answered. “Every year, and especially during a winter like this one, many people die due to lung infections, and few are autopsied. There have not been more than usual.”

  “Yet,” added my father grimly.

  “Tomorrow I will ask the préfecture for a decree that will make autopsies mandatory for every death from lung infections in Varbourg and its environs,” the Commissioner continued. “But it is far from certain that I will get it. The City Council prefers not to frighten the public.”

  Epidemic. That was the word that neither man was saying out loud. It hung in the air like a shadow. It was a cholera epidemic that had taken my mother’s life, and my father took such events extremely personally.

  Prevent the spread, I thought. Identify, isolate, treat; somewhere out there was the source. I suddenly remembered the three fresh droplets of blood in the snow at Cecile’s burial and understood that Father Abigore had been sick even then. The mites had wandered from her to him while he sat by her dead body and prayed for her soul.

  But how had she acquired them?

  II

  March 20–25, 1894

  I found it hard to keep my eyes off the wolf.

  It was so bizarre. The creature was sprawled on a hearthrug in front of the fireplace in the abbess’s office with its head resting on its front paws, its eyes half closed. Yet there was no way it could be mistaken for a large dog.

  “Does he bother you?” asked Mother Filippa. “We can sit in the front office instead.”

  “No, no,” I said quickly. “I was just . . . surprised.”

  She smiled. She was younger than I had expected, perhaps about forty-five, with smooth sun-freckled skin and olive-green eyes. The habit of the Bernardine sisters hung loose on a figure that I still somehow perceived as athletic. Perhaps it was the way she moved.

  “He is old now, and I do not have the heart to put him with the others,” she said, glancing at the wolf with a look that I could only interpret as loving. “The new pack leader will not tolerate his presence.”

  The Bernardine sisters kept wolves. I knew that, of course. The story of the Gray Miracle of 1524 was known to every child in Varbourg. It was said that as long as the wolves remained with the Bernardine sisters, no foreign tyrant could reign in Varonne. As a border province, we needed all the help we could get. We were like a shuttlecock constantly batted from one side of the net to the other, in a game played by nations much greater than our little state. Only a couple of decades ago, in 1870, Varonne could have been swept up into the German empire the way Alsace-Lorraine was, and that would have been the end of spoken and written French in schools and public life. As it was, we were still an independent province under the more or less protective wings of the Third Republic, and there were people who believed that this was due to the wolves, rather than to diplomats and politicians. All the same, I had not expected to find one of them lying comfortably in front of the fireplace.

  I cleared my throat and tried to concentrate on my errand.

  “As you can see from the Commissioner’s letter, it is of the greatest importance that we find the source of the infection and determine its extent. I know that there are some very competent nurses among the sisters here. Perhaps one or more of them could help examine all the students and teachers who were in contact with Cecile Montaine.”

  “It was considerate of the Commissioner to send a woman,” said Mother Filippa. “Some of the sisters prefer to remain in the cloistered part of our community. But—excuse me for saying so—you seem a bit young.”

  “Yes. But I am used to assisting my father, and besides, I am one of the four people in the world who can identify the mite with any certainty—if we find it.”

  She still looked at me with a challenging skepticism in her olive green gaze. Just then the wolf got up from its place by the fire. It stretched and yawned, allowing me to see a set of teeth that although yellowed and marked by its advanced age, still featured canine fangs that were about four centimeters long. The yawn became a small disarming sneeze, and it rubbed its nose with one paw. Then it came over to the desk where we were sitting, I on one side, the abbess on the other. It nudged her with its snout, a single powerful push, and she let her fingers slip through the thick gray-white fur of its neck for a moment. Then the wolf continued around the desk and approached me.

  Its eyes were almost white. The pupils were like shiny black buttons in the middle of irises pale as miniature moons, and it stared at me without blinking, without lowering its gaze. I was distantly aware that I had stopped breathing, just as most of my thought processes had ceased.

  It studied me in this way for an endless moment, and it was entirely impossible for me to look away. When the wolf finally blinked and lowered its head, its nose briefly touched my hand. It was not a peremptory poke like the one it had given Mother Filippa, just a fleeting and damp touch. A greeting, a marking of invisible lines. Yawning once more, it lumbered back to its hearthrug and lay down.

  “I think he likes you,” said Mother Filippa. “Very well. The Commissioner would presumably not have sent you unless he felt you were up to the task.”

  I was left with a clear impression that the wolf’s judgment was more important than that of the Commissioner.

  In 1524 the convent had been remote and secluded, surrounded by deep forests. This probably played a part when Black Pierre and his mercenaries had found themselves so harassed by the local wolf packs that they gave up their attempts to seize the convent and the citizens of Varonne who had sought refuge there. These days, the outskirts of Varbourg could be glimpsed between the hills; farming and human habitation had replaced much of the original wilderness, and apple orchards and wide sprouting fields smelling of spring and rain surrounded the convent walls. The forest was still there, a low dark shadow on the edge of the open landscape, but only as a distant reminder of another, less protected time. The co
nvent was no longer a fortress, crouched behind moats and buttresses, but was now reminiscent of a cross between a country estate and a village. The convent chapel and the cloister itself were still sequestered from the world by walls and iron gates, but the school and the old hospital, the cider barn, the stables, the orphanage, and the almshouse lay along tidy lanes bordered by budding chestnut trees, with some fifty cottages spread a little more haphazardly in the shadow of the solid institutional buildings. All in all, just over a thousand people lived here, and I sincerely hoped that it would not be necessary to examine everyone. It depended entirely on what we found among those who had been in close contact with Cecile.

  Two hospital sisters, who really should have been having a well-deserved rest after their night shift, had been woken up and agreed to help with the initial examinations. One, Sister Marie-Claire, was young and energetic and apparently found it easy to brush off her sleepiness; the other, Sister Agnes, showed the strain of her night’s work more clearly, and every other move was accompanied by a soft, unconscious, “Oh dear. Oh dear.”

  The examination was simple. With the aid of a bright light and a loupe, the nostrils and oral cavity were studied for signs of mites, and samples from the mucous membrane were collected with the aid of a pipette, to be examined later under the microscope. Fortunately, one wing of the school had a coal-powered generator that provided electricity to the entire first floor, and it was possible to find three lamps suitable to our purpose. I started by examining both Sister Marie-Claire and Sister Agnes, partly to demonstrate how it was done and partly to make sure that neither was carrying the infection.

  “As you can see, it is a simple procedure,” I said to Mother Filippa, who had accompanied us to observe events.

  She smiled. “Nothing is simple when you are dealing with three hundred girls,” she said. “What are you planning to tell the students?”

  “The truth, of course,” I said. “That we are here to investigate whether the mites we found on Cecile have infected anyone else.”

  “I would not recommend using the word ‘mites,’ ” said Mother Filippa.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I would like to keep the hysteria to a minimum. How do you think the average sixteen-year-old reacts if she is informed that she might have potentially deadly mites in her nose?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “We try to discourage tight corseting for health reasons, but not everyone follows our suggestions. In addition to shrieks and screams and hyperventilating, you should probably expect some fainting.”

  “But . . . This is hopefully only to determine that the mites are not there.”

  “Nonetheless . . .”

  “That is not rational!”

  Mother Filippa looked at me for a few seconds. “We do in fact try to encourage our young pupils to become thinking human beings,” she said. “But not all of them are as rationally inclined as you seem to be, Mademoiselle Karno.”

  “So you want me to lie?”

  “Not at all. But perhaps you could leave the explanations to me?”

  Fifteen minutes later I thus heard Mother Filippa explain to the first group of Cecile’s previous schoolmates that the hospital sisters and I were going to perform a preventative and painless Pneumonyssus examination that would be “over in a few minutes.” Eight girls in gray uniforms nodded seriously and sat down in turn on the three chairs we had arranged, allowed themselves to have their nose and throat illuminated, and accepted the pipette sampling with minimal objections. Cecile Montaine was not mentioned, and no one used the word “mite.”

  The rest of the morning passed with student examinations. Luckily, we did not find any signs of mites, a result that microscopic testing later confirmed. A few had irritations in the mucous membrane, but as far as I could determine, they were simply the result of a common cold. Then it was the turn of the adults who had been in contact with Cecile, which was more or less the school’s entire faculty and the sisters and novices and lay sisters who took care of the laundry, cleaning, cooking, and so on. There was no sign of a mite infection among them, either, though two of the kitchen maids were found to have lice.

  As the afternoon wore on, I was becoming thoroughly tired of staring into nostrils of varying sizes and degrees of hygiene and hairiness. When I closed my eyes briefly, a procession of noses flickered past my inner eye, and every time I was introduced to someone new, I initially saw nothing but this one organ.

  “Are we done?” I asked Mother Filippa, who had patiently remained with us.

  “Not quite,” she said. “But all that remains now is to see to the sisters who do not go out into the world.”

  “How many are there?”

  “About a dozen. We are not a cloistered order, but even so, for some the convent is a refuge and a retreat. Some of the older sisters in particular have withdrawn from the world to live out the rest of their lives behind the walls of the enclosure in prayer and contemplation of God. But there are a few younger ones among them, too. Until a month ago, one of them was Cecile’s teacher in physics, biology, and chemistry. Would you follow me?”

  I cleaned the magnifying glass, mirror, and pipette with carbolic solution—I had insisted that this be done after every examination; we were there to stop infections, not to spread them—and wrapped them in a clean cloth before I put them back into my bag.

  “So she has only recently . . . withdrawn from the world?”

  “Yes, she is still a postulant.”

  “Why?”

  “In the case of Imogene Leblanc, it was probably not only God who called to her but also the world that frightened her. It is too bad; she was a good teacher and worked tirelessly to develop her pupils’ abilities. She offered them individual tutorials, Cecile, too, I believe. And sadly it is not so easy to find female lecturers in the sciences. We can hope that she returns, but unfortunately I doubt it.”

  I expressed my surprise that the natural sciences were a part of the school’s curriculum at all. They certainly had not been at Madame Aubrey’s Academy for Young Ladies, where I had passed entirely too many years of my life.

  “It is the belief of the Bernardine sisters that the world cannot afford to waste the intelligence of young women,” said Mother Filippa with a small sniff. She had an unusually well-formed nose, I noticed. “The founder of our order, Saint Bernarda, wrote one of the most treasured works of her time, on fever illnesses and their treatment. We do not teach our girls only French poetry, hymns, and embroidery; history, geography, biology, chemistry, physics, and of course mathematics are all equally important to their education. We have a very good teaching laboratory. Would you like to see it? We can pass it on our way.”

  “Very much,” I said.

  When we left the school to walk back toward the convent, a feeling of unfairness burned in my veins. Why had I not been allowed to go to school here? My father had chosen Madame Aubrey because he preferred an education with less emphasis on religion and especially Catholicism, for which he harbored a deep mistrust. We did not go to church very often, and when we did, it was to the small Huguenot chapel in Rue Colombe. But I would have been prepared to swallow a substantial portion of holy water and saint worship if it had given me admission to the institution we had just left. Well-lit workbenches, Bunsen burners, microscopes, copper spools, magnets . . . and, first and foremost, knowledge. Knowledge instead of posture and good manners. I could not refrain from sighing.

  Mother Filippa glanced at me.

  “Are you tired? Would you like to rest a moment before we continue?”

  “No. No, I am just a bit envious of your pupils.”

  “In what regard?”

  “I am afraid Madame Aubrey’s Academy for Young Ladies found female intelligence much less indispensable than you do,” I said, and silently wished that we had used more time to discuss the subject matter of books and less time wandering around with them on our heads.

  “Imogene?” Mother Filippa pushed open the d
oor to the sisters’ refectory. “Imogene, we have a visitor . . .”

  “No!” The woman in the postulant habit looked up abruptly, and there was a terror in her gaze that stopped me short. “I do not want to see him! I . . .” Then she saw me, and she realized that she had misunderstood the situation. “Oh, pardon me. Good afternoon.” She had been in the process of scrubbing the long table with soapy water and was still clutching the brush in one hand. Her throat and face flushed unevenly with nerves or effort, and there was a worried furrow between her eyebrows that looked as if it was more or less permanent. Of whom was she so afraid?

  “Mademoiselle Karno is conducting a health examination of the school’s pupils and teachers. We think it best that you also participate, since you are still officially on the teaching staff.” Mother Filippa spoke with a calming authority that would have made any animal or child relax and lie down. It had no visible effect on Imogene Leblanc.

  “Health examination?” she said suspiciously. “How so?”

  “I would like your permission to examine your nostrils and throat,” I said. “It will only take a moment.”

  Her expression did not change. Her eyes were very pale, gray or perhaps a watery blue, it was hard to determine. What you could see of her hair was frizzy and auburn and as lusterless as the fur on a dead animal. She looked at me for so long that I began to wonder if she would refuse, and what I would do if she did.

  “If you really feel it is necessary,” she said at last. “But I have my work to do.”

  “Thank you, Imogene,” said Mother Filippa. “The value in these tests lies entirely in being thorough and complete.”

  There was no electricity in this part of the convent, and the refectory was so dim that it was impossible to perform the examination there. Mother Filippa led us out through a side door to a small enclosed courtyard where sunlight fell bright and sharp onto the old sandstone tiles. I asked Imogene to sit on one of the four benches and tilt her head back. She moved a bit stiffly, and her fingers were crooked with arthritis in spite of the fact that she was presumably still in her early twenties. The flush had not been just the result of nervousness, I could now see. She had patches of old eczema on her cheeks and neck. But her throat and nostrils were normal, and there was no sign of mite infection. I thanked her, and she returned to the refectory to resume her work.