Doctor Death

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  The heavy wagon swung into a lane bordered by chestnuts, and the Belgians’ replacements, two coal-black boulonnais horses, leaned forward to get up the last incline.

  “Are they expecting us?” asked the professor.

  “I promised Mother Filippa to return today with news of the fate of the wolves,” I said. “She does not know that I am not coming alone.”

  “How do they keep the wolves? In cages?”

  “No.” I pointed north to where, just beyond the almshouse, one could glimpse the tops of the elderberry bushes growing along the fence around the wolf pen. “They have a fairly large area to roam around in, five or six hectares, I believe, with boulders and trees and a variety of shrubbery.”

  “How are we going to get hold of them, then?”

  “They are used to being fed, and I even think it is possible to call them. They are not truly wild. But there have to be sufficient numbers of hunters because as soon as the first shot is fired, the rest will naturally run away,”

  “If I can be of help, I would be happy to,” he offered. “I am an excellent shot.”

  “I will tell Mother Filippa.”

  I was not looking forward to informing her that all her wolves were sentenced to death. But there was no way around it.

  Sister Marie-Claire let us in.

  “Mother Filippa is not here right now,” she said. “Can I help?”

  “We had better speak to the abbess herself,” I answered. “When will she be back? Unfortunately, it is of some importance.”

  Sister Marie-Claire looked from the Commissioner to the professor and then at me again.

  “The gentlemen will have to wait here,” she said. “If Mademoiselle will come with me . . .”

  The “gentlemen” had to sit nicely in the visitors’ room, while Sister Marie-Claire led me through the cloistered part of the convent and to the hospital wing.

  “She is attending a birth,” Marie-Claire confided in me. “It is one of our former pupils, and it is her first, so she is a bit anxious.”

  The woman giving birth was hardly older than I, and a bit anxious was clearly an understatement. She feared for her life. The terror could be read clearly in her sweaty face and in the jerking, panicked gaze. She waddled up and down the wide corridor, dressed only in a birthing smock, with Mother Filippa on one side and an unfamiliar nun on the other. They held her arms out, away from her body, so that it looked as if they were teaching her to fly.

  “Why are they doing that?” I whispered.

  “If we do not stop her, she will hit herself in the stomach,” said Sister Marie-Claire. “Some get like that, as if they are trying to punish the child for the pain it is causing them. Mother, Mademoiselle Karno has returned.”

  Mother Filippa looked up. There was a movement in her face, and it was clear that she understood at once what message I brought.

  “We are far from done here,” she said, “but I assume that this cannot be postponed?”

  “It must happen as quickly as possible,” I said. “To minimize the risk of further infection.”

  “All of them?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  The laboring woman looked mutely from one to the other and of course had no idea what we were talking about. But when Mother Filippa wanted to let her go and allow Sister Marie-Claire to take her place, she grabbed on to the abbess’s sleeve with a grip that made her knuckles shine white.

  “No,” she said. “No.”

  “My dear child. I will return soon. I promise.”

  Her promise did not make much of an impression. Mother Filippa had to loosen the white fingers from her sleeve one by one before it was possible for her to go. At that moment there was a contraction that made the woman bend over and moan, not unlike Monsieur Montaine’s cries:

  “Aaaaaaah . . . Aaaaaahhhh . . .”

  It could have been me. The same thought that had felt so urgent when I had stood by Cecile’s dead body reappeared with similar force. It could just as easily have been me, married, impregnated, conquered by biology. I looked at the distorted features, at the rigid back trembling under the birthing smock, at the claw-like fingers. I shuddered. And the girl, the woman, lifted her head for a brief moment. Her gaze was blank and empty, her personality erased, there was no room for anything except the pressure and the pain.

  “Nggahh. Nggahhh. Nggahhh.” Her breathing came in short gasps.

  “If it is just about time . . . ,” I said hesitantly.

  “Oh, no, my dear,” said Mother Filippa. “We have many hours to go. Time enough, unfortunately, to see to death before we take care of this new life.”

  The wolves were uneasy. Though they could smell the fresh goat meat, they nonetheless continued to crouch, half hidden by the shrubbery, while they observed the row of men waiting among the elderberry bushes by the fence.

  But they were tame animals, not wild. They were used to being fed here, and finally one of them ventured out onto the worn grass toward the dead goat that had been tied to a pole so that they would not drag it off into the shrubbery.

  “Wait,” said the professor quietly to the other hunters. “Wait until they are all eating.”

  The wolf in front reached the goat and closed its jaws around its throat with a growl. That was too much for the others. In a gray and white furry wave they tumbled from their hiding place and closed in on the dead animal.

  “On my count,” said the professor, and raised his borrowed rifle. “One. Two. Three. Fire.”

  The shots rang out. Most of the wolves fell at once. One managed to leap back for four or five meters before it, too, was hit and fell to the ground, and another was left wounded and howling for a few long seconds before the professor ended its suffering with a precise shot through the head. Then all was silent, and what had been a wolf pack a moment ago was now just a collection of bloody carcasses.

  Two of them were carried out to the hearse by men with cloths tied across their lower faces and gloves on their hands, to join the old wolf that already lay half buried in ice and sawdust, just as dead as his previous pack mates. A big bonfire of straw and wood was built and set on fire in the wolf pen, and the remaining corpses were slung onto the pyre with pitchforks, like tossing coal into the furnace of a locomotive. The singed smell of burned fur tore at my nose, and I turned away.

  Mother Filippa stood a few steps from me. She had hidden her hands in the sleeves of her habit, her eyes were closed, and her face was calm as usual. But in her eyelashes, a teardrop glittered, and it took a little while before she raised her head and opened her eyes again.

  “Are you sad?” asked the professor when he helped me up into the wagon. A sharp whiff of gunpowder still emanated from his hands, hair, and clothes. “You are so silent.”

  “I hate to see life wasted in that way,” I said. “Even if it is only animals.”

  “It was necessary.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  But I did not say much more on the trip home.

  We performed autopsies on the three wolves the next morning after they had lain on ice all night. Presumably, all the mites were dead by this point, but the three of us, the professor, my father, and I, nonetheless covered our mouths and wore gloves. If there were still living mites, the risk of infection would be greater now than when the wolves were alive, since they, as in Cecile’s case, would have left their host in search of a new one.

  Despite the refrigeration, the three bodies smelled rancid and decayed already. One of the hunters had offered to gut them for us and had seemed perplexed at our insistence that we most certainly did not want the innards removed. It had also been hard to make them understand that the remaining animals were not to be skinned but must be burned, pelts and all.

  However, the three unburned wolves now lay before us, complete with stomach contents and internal organs, and since my father still had only limited use of one arm, it was the professor and I who had to open the chest and crack the ribs apart so we could lift out the lungs a
nd the heart. It took real strength; one could not fiddle delicately with one bone at a time. I took a small secret pride in the fact that I was almost as fast as the professor.

  The lung tissue was darker now than it would have been if we had performed the autopsies immediately. But even though I studied both the bronchial tubes and the lung membrane carefully, I saw no sign of the abscesses we had found in Father Abigore. The cavities of the throat and the nostrils were irritated, and under the microscope one could see the tiny lesions and scars that the mites had left, as well, of course, as a number of dead mites. We now had plenty both for our own use and for the Forchhammer Institute’s parasite collection, I thought. But the lungs were healthy.

  “It doesn’t look as if the animals have any abscess formation,” said the professor. “It appears that they can host the parasites without suffering the same type of lung disease that the human hosts were afflicted with.”

  “Perhaps it is not the mites themselves that cause the abscess formation,” I said. “Might they merely act as vectors for the bacteria?”

  Once again there was a moment where the professor just looked at me. Perhaps I was getting used to it; at least it did not seem quite as paralyzing as before.

  “I have read everything I could get hold of on Pasteur’s work with pébrine in silkworms,” I said a bit defensively. “Bacteria can be transferred by a parasite!”

  “That is a very valid point,” said the professor. “But have we actually determined that the abscesses are caused by a bacterial infection?”

  My father rubbed his forehead with his healthy hand. He still looked a bit pained, although it was better than the day before.

  “If only the family had let me perform an autopsy on the girl,” he said. “And if only we had found Father Abigore while it was still possible to do a proper bacteriological examination.”

  “Do we have any tissue at all from the priest?”

  “Yes, a bit. But at this stage, we are unlikely to find much.”

  “So. Let us study the wolves first.”

  We took samples from all the wolves where the mucous cavities and throat were most attacked by the mites and placed the bloody tissue lumps in gelatin-filled petri dishes. I marked the dishes so that we would know from which cadaver they came and set them aside for cultivation. Unfortunately, we did not have a proper temperature-controlled cabinet for that purpose but had to make do with placing the petri dishes in a glass box on the windowsill and hoping for the best. I resisted an urge to apologize to the professor for the primitive conditions. He must be aware that this was not the Forchhammer Institute but simply a rebuilt kitchen with modest facilities.

  The professor removed his bloody gloves and dried a bit of sweat from his forehead.

  “It is quite hot in here,” he said. “We had better put the wolves on ice again as fast as possible.”

  The ice from the hearse had been poured into three big wooden crates that reminded me of the circumstances under which Father Abigore had been found. The professor and I hauled the cadavers off the laboratory bench and back into the boxes. Some of the ice had melted in the course of the night, but there was a significant cooling effect left.

  As we were closing up the boxes, I noticed that Professor Dreyfuss had touched the wolves with his bare hands.

  “Professor,” I said, “you did not put your gloves back on.”

  He held up his hands, wet from the melted ice and blood.

  “That was careless of me,” he said.

  “Don’t touch anything,” I said quickly. “I’ll get the carbolic solution.”

  I poured plenty of carbolic solution into a tin water basin. The professor was still standing with his hands held stiffly out in front of him. I held the basin while he washed and rinsed them carefully in the pungent liquid. There was an odd form of intimacy in that moment, which for some reason made me remember what it was like to be bathed together with my cousin Claude in my aunt’s kitchen, when my mother was still alive and we occasionally visited Aunt Desirée and Uncle Georges. I must have been about four, Claude a year younger.

  The water in the white basin was colored pink with wolf blood, and why that would remind me so much of two naked children in the same bathtub, lobster red from the hot water and with white soapsuds in their hair, I did not understand.

  The professor dried his hands and arms carefully in a clean towel I handed him. “Should we look at the priest’s abscesses now?” he asked.

  I brought out the glass jars with Father Abigore’s specimens. The pale growths floating in the alcohol looked more like some kind of marine polyps than something that had once been a part of a human being.

  “Alcohol or formaldehyde?” he asked.

  “Alcohol,” I said, again a bit apologetically. Formaldehyde preserved better because it killed the bacteria instead of just slowing their growth. But it was also more expensive.

  “All the better!” he said enthusiastically.

  He was right, of course, I suddenly realized. Precisely because it was not formaldehyde, the chance of finding some kind of bacterial remnant was significantly greater.

  The professor fished the infected tissue from the jar and with practiced, precise cuts sliced through one of the abscesses. I prepared a new set of petri dishes with gelatin and transferred what I hoped was sufficient bacterial material to begin a cultivation.

  After a fairly humble lunch—just a cold platter of pâté and Brie that Elise had fetched from Dreischer & Son—we returned to the laboratory to observe the results. Professor Dreyfuss seized the first petri dish, from one of the wolves, and without comment I handed him the solution of methylene-blue alcohol and caustic potash that we used for bacterial identification.

  The microscope was back in its usual place on one of the workbenches.

  “It is not from Zeiss, unfortunately,” I apologized.

  “Dear mademoiselle, it is a fine instrument and entirely sufficient,” said the professor somewhat distractedly, while he adjusted the lens. “Hmmm. Yes. Hmmm.” The last was apparently a running, unconscious commentary to what he was observing.

  “Have a look,” he said, and waved at my father with one hand while still crouched over the apparatus himself.

  “Yes,” said my father. “Clear chains . . . and quite a lot of them.”

  “Is it streptococcus?” I asked, and had to hold myself back from pushing both men aside so I could get a look. “May I . . . ?”

  The professor gallantly took a step away from the microscope. “Of course.”

  The methyl had taken effect and had colored the bacteria, and I could clearly see the drop-shaped microorganisms and the short S-chains they formed. When Pasteur described streptococcus for the first time, he had compared the bacteria chain to a rosary. However, these chains were shorter, in some cases only a single pair.

  “Some kind of micrococcus,” said my father. “I am not sure which. It is a bit like Fehleisen’s erysipelas-causing bacteria but . . .”

  “Micrococci can be frighteningly difficult to distinguish one from another,” said the professor. “We still know too little about their various forms. And even less about their effect.”

  “Rosenbach describes erysipelas bacteria as fern shaped, while pyogene cocci are supposed to look like acacia leaves,” I said.

  “Pyogene micrococci might cause pyaemic lung abscesses,” said the professor thoughtfully.

  “Apparently not in wolves,” said my father dryly.

  “No. You are right about that.”

  All the wolf samples showed traces of micrococci. It was time to turn to Father Abigore’s samples. I did not have the greatest expectations for the tissue samples that the professor now—somewhat disrespectfully—simply referred to as the “priestly abscesses.” Not after the freezing, and after that, the alcohol solution. However, the professor studied the culture even longer and even more intensely than he had done the wolf samples, all the while accompanying his efforts with his unconscious “Hmmm. Hmm
m.”

  “Well,” he said at last, “the material is of course not the best, but . . . well, have a look.” His gaze fell on me when he said it. My father and I almost bumped into each other because I followed his encouragement.

  “Maddie!” said my father, surprised and perhaps a touch annoyed. He was not used to my pushing ahead.

  “Pardon me,” I said. “I was too eager . . .”

  His smile was warm but also overbearing.

  “Do calm down,” he said. “I will let you have your turn in a minute . . .”

  While he bent over the sought-after microscope, I felt a certain unfamiliar irritation. It was not just my usual impatience; it was that I did not want his permission, I wanted the right. Laboratory work was more than just an odd and rather unsuitable hobby for me. It was a part of the profession I was planning to devote my life to, regardless of what my father thought.

  I realized that the professor was observing me again, and I wondered whether my rebellious thought was visible. I quickly pushed it back where it came from, as if it were a strap from a chemise that was not supposed to be visible to the general public.

  “There is something,” said my father. “But whether it is the same organism . . . is difficult to determine.”

  Finally it was my turn. And I could see why neither of them would speak categorically. The growth was poor, the pigmentation weak, and the morphology consequently difficult to determine. All the same, a conviction was born in me that was no doubt entirely unscientific.

  It was the same bacteria. It had inhabited the wolves without making them sick, but it had been deadly for Cecile Montaine—and would presumably have killed Father Abigore had not someone got to him first with a coal shovel.