The Eye of Purgatory

by Jacques Spitz

  I could only operate by day, of course. From time to time, the doctor had himself driven to the coast, and I was fortunate enough to have a signal of his absence when the Mercedes was not in the garage. Even better, the noise of the heavy vehicle on the gravel of the driveway carried as far as my retreat, alerting me to his departure while I was at home. It only remained for me to wait for a favorable opportunity.

  On May 24—that date was to acquire a terrible importance—I was mulling over my plan, lying in a hammock at the entrance to the summer-house, when the characteristic sound of the Mercedes warned me that the doctor was just leaving. I knew that Yvane had gone to Nice to take Narda to see the dentist. The way was entirely clear. I decided to take my chance.

  I went rapidly down through the olive grove, in the clothes that I happened to be wearing—a royal blue flannel suit and espadrilles—and then climbed up to the terrace of the château, going around to the right. A passing glance at the open door of the garage confirmed that the Mercedes was gone. I reached the steps of the main façade and tried the door-handle. The door opened. I was inside.

  Affecting a casual air, in case I were to run into a servant, I took the large staircase that led me to the first floor. Thus far, all had gone well. I paused momentarily in front of a reproduction of The Anatomy Lesson,5 which decorated the landing. Then, not hearing any noise, I set foot on the stairway leading to the second floor. I began to feel that my state of mind was that of a burglar. The stairway, narrower than the other, was displaced three meters to the left, which modified my calculations. On the second floor, I found myself confronted by a rather narrow corridor, where a surprise awaited me. All the doors opening on to that corridor were on the same side, facing me—corresponding, in consequence, to rooms whose windows were on the principal façade. All my calculations fell into the water.

  Somewhat disorientated, I retraced my steps and knocked on the door of the doctor’s study on the first floor. There was no response. I tried the handle, but the door was locked. Two analogous attempts on the neighboring doors were no more successful. The doctor had taken his precautions.

  Gradually, the anxiety that has accompanied my initial steps gave way to a sentiment of irritation, which gave my actions more audacity. After sitting down in a rattan armchair on the first floor landing, in order to resume my deductions at leisure, facing The Anatomy Lesson, I went back up to the second floor, counted out 14 meters—11 meters plus the three meters of the stairway’s displacement—along the corridor extending from the landing, then, facing a partition wall in which there was no door, I knocked twice with my fist. There was no response. The wall sounded solid. I was about to repeat the action when I was surprised to hear a muffled sneeze, and then a second. The noise seemed to be coming from the floor. There was no doubt that someone was there, who could not be anyone but Dirk—but it was necessary for me to be able to enter into communication with him.

  I was going back down to make a further attempt on the first floor when I noticed, half-way down the stairway, a door hidden in the wooden paneling. It opened without difficulty to a mildly forceful push, revealing a narrow corridor illuminated at floor level by the tops of the first floor windows. The story had been divided at mid-height over a certain extent, which I had not anticipated, and it was in one of the rooms thus constituted that the prisoner had to be lodged. The corridor ended in a spiral stairway, which, after a few ascendant steps, was blocked by a vault of recent construction. I was able, however, to distinguish in the gloom of the stairway—which was not directly lit—some sort of panel opening in the wall. I opened its battens to reveal a rather narrow opening, like those used to transmit plates from a kitchen to a parlor. I extended my arm, and by groping around found a shutter at the back, which I pushed. A little room, ill-lit, appeared at a lower level. On a corner divan, I made out an elongated form.

  “Dirk!” I called.

  The form stood up. I recognized Dirk by his silhouette rather than his face, so dark was the room. He came toward the opening and raised his arms, as if to receive something that I had held out to him. It was by this route that his nourishment must be brought to him, and he was repeating a familiar gesture.

  “Dirk,” I said to him, “it’s me, Pierre Delambre. I’ve been looking for you; I wanted to see you in the doctor’s absence. Isn’t there some means by which I might get to you comfortable?”

  His lips moved, but no sound came out. Evidence confuses you by virtue of its evidential character, all the more so when one has not anticipated it. There, I encountered the capital obstacle to which, in spite of all my reflections, I had not given a moment’s thought in the planning of the expedition. How could I enter into communication with Dirk, given that the poor fellow’s thoughts were no longer occupying the present moment?

  I persisted, though. “Make an effort, Dirk, I beg you. Can’t I have a conversation with you? I didn’t know that you were being held prisoner like this. Whatever wrong you did, the treatment to which you are being subjected is inhuman—worse, of a deliberate cruelty that I find repulsive. I’m your friend, Dirk, ready to do everything I can to help you. Answer me—tell me that you can hear me.”

  My voice took on a plaintive tone. I could not extend my head very far through the hole, but I could pass my arms through. Dirk, standing on tiptoe, had seized the hand that I held out to him and shook it with an energy in which I thought I could see the mark of his despair at not being able to express himself. The blue sleeve of my jacket seemed black in the gloom. I had the appearance of leaning out of the window in a carriage door, saying goodbye to a friend who was remaining on the platform at a railway station.

  The grip of Dirk’s hand was sustained for some time, and suddenly, I heard: “My dear friend, you have my every sympathy! Poor Yvane—that strange, atrocious death! Drowned! Drowned in such circumstances…”

  At first, I didn’t understand. Then, suddenly, I was struck in the heart. I uttered a bestial cry and withdrew my hand brutally.

  “Dirk!” I cried into the opening. “Repeat what you said, Dirk. What are you saying? Yvane…Dirk, what did you say? Repeat it?”

  I howled, threatened. He did not breathe another word, and even retreated to his divan before my insults.

  I fell silent. I was inundated with sweat. Mechanically, I took a few steps along the corridor. No, it wasn’t possible; I was mistaken. And yet, with an intensity and a precision that the memory of a sound had never assumed in me before, I heard his words echoing once more: “Poor Yvane—that strange, atrocious death! Drowned! Drowned in such circumstances…”

  Half way along the corridor, I made a half-turn to come back toward the opening, to try to repair the thread that my cry had broken. I begged again, imploringly, but nothing came of it. Dirk did not even move.

  “That atrocious death! Drowned! Drowned in such circumstances…” The words were buzzing in my head. My mind still refused to accept their full significance. I collapsed into an armchair in the hallway, resolved to watch out for the doctor’s return, waiting for him with an impatience compared with which, the impatience I had put into watching him leave was derisory. What was he doing? I had to see him immediately…

  I don’t know how much time went by like that. Finally, I heard the car drawing up before the steps. I ran out.

  “Doctor! Doctor!”

  “What’s wrong?” he said, confronted by my haggard appearance.

  “Oh, doctor…”

  He drew me rapidly into the study, some distance away from the chauffeur, who was unloading the vehicle.

  “Dirk,” I said, “Dirk…tell me, first…how much time is here? How long is his advancement?

  “29 days and six hours,” he replied. “Why?”

  “29 days and six hours,” I repeated. “29 days and six hours…” I cried, in protest: “No, that’s not possible!”

  “Come on, explain yourself!” he demanded, with understandable irritation.

  I told him everything, without omitting
anything: the suspicions I had conceived, the manner in which I had spied on him. I told him every detail of my afternoon expedition, hiding nothing.

  When I pronounced the words that Dirk had let escape, I saw him grow pale. Without him saying a word, tears began to run from his eyes.

  “No, no!” I exclaimed. “Tell me that I’m mistaken, that it’s not true! You don’t believe it; you can’t think it. I have no other hope but you; it can’t be true. Dirk is making a mistake; he sometimes speaks at random.”

  The doctor shook his head. Softly, he demanded: “Repeat the words you heard.”

  I repeated them.

  The doctor bowed his head silently, and hid his eyes behind his hand.

  “But after all,” I cried, again, “we shall fight, now that we’ve been warned. Now that we know, we can take our precautions in consequence… The boat, the boat that we were going to buy, I know now what I have to do. I have to keep her away from the coast, night and day. Since we know, thanks to you, thanks to your experiments, we must be able to get out of it.”

  He shook his head and replied, sadly: “We also know that the world rotates, but we can’t stop it, for all that. What you hope to do is as impossible as immobilizing the Sun.”

  That resignation made me indignant. I got up, and thumped the desk hard.

  “Well, as for me,” I said, “I don’t accept it. I accept the challenge. I shall save her; I have to save her…don’t you understand that I love her.” I was shouting in the doctor’s face, which had become impassive again. “I’ve loved her since I first saw her. I’ve never said so, admitted it, either to her or myself, but I love her. I won’t allow the woman I love to be snatched away. Yvane, Yvane…”

  I no longer knew what I was saying.

  The doctor watched me in silence. “Calm down,” he said. “You’re not telling me anything I didn’t already know. But we men ought to be strong. If a physician had told you that a fatal illness would carry you away, wouldn’t you be able to control yourself?”

  “But an accident can be avoided. Drowned, drowned—her! When I think that, only the other day, leaning over the edge of the boat, she said, with regard to the sea-bed…oh, it’s frightful! But I shall fight, I shall fight, I shall get the better of you, of your experiments, of everything…I don’t believe it, anyway. I tell you this to your face—I don’t believe in what you’ve done.”

  He came toward me and took me by the shoulders. “Yes, my poor friend, don’t believe it—I might have been mistaken.”

  It was obvious that he as only saying that to allow me some hope. I let myself fall into an armchair, repeating: “But I love her…I shall fight, shall fight…help me…”

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ll help you. But don’t warn her—that would be too atrocious. Speak vaguely about a presentment, if you wish, and then, with her sensitive nature…be on the alert, watch over her. Let’s see, this is the May 24. Twenty-nine days—that gives us until…let’s see, does the month of May have 30 days or 31?”

  With these words, the memory returned to me of her pronouncement: “You’ve kissed me in September.” I couldn’t hold out, and let myself dissolve in tears. Eventually collecting myself, a little calmer, I murmured: “Perhaps I’m mistaken; perhaps I was misled by similar sounds. What if you were to try to bring me together with Dirk again?”

  The doctor seemed to be reflecting.

  “The scene that you’ve described, during which a connection was formed between the décor and Dirk’s mind, in an entirely fortuitous fashion, obviously reproduces a farewell scene on a railway platform. At this moment—which is to say, in 29 days’ time—you’re in the train; you have left Dirk, and are far away from him. It’s therefore impossible for a new connection to be forged between you and him, for the time being.”

  The calmness and lucidity with which I could see that he was reasoning made me indignant, and restored all my feverishness. “But we have to do something, even so! Don’t accept, search!”

  “You see me as crushed as you are, my friend. Yvane is the sole affection that remains to me on Earth, the last link that still connects me to my poor Gabrielle. When I look at her, I think I’m seeing her mother alive again…you love her, you couldn’t find a more delicate and more precious individual….I’ll think about it—but I confide her to you, Pierre…” And he added, pushing me gently toward the door: “Who knows what love can do?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  I didn’t want to lose a moment. I went to take up a position next to the gate to watch out for Yvane’s return. Anxiety was gnawing at me. Who could tell? Perhaps, already…

  When I saw the little car appear on the road, I hurried out in front of it.

  “Yvane! Yvane!” I shouted.

  I leapt on to the running-board, took hold of Yvane and threw myself upon her cheeks, covering them with kisses. I had got her back—she was alive, really alive! My behavior contrasted so strongly with my habitual reserve that she was utterly nonplussed.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice as calm as ever, but nuanced with surprise.

  “What’s wrong?” I said, collecting myself. “Nothing, nothing—it’s just that I’m so glad to see you again!” Turning toward Narda, I added: “You too.” And, to put Yvane off the scent, I tried to take her in my arms and kiss her too.

  “No, not on the cheek,” she said. “My tooth’s still hurting.” She turned her head to get away, and my lips brushed hers.

  “Come on, Pierre, why these sudden manifestations?” Yvane demanded.

  “It’s such a long time since you left—I’ve had a frightful dream. Yvane, come with me immediately—Narda can put the car away.”

  As soon as the car had gone, I put my arms around Yvane again. I didn’t let go, in order to assure myself of her presence, to touch her body, her muscles, to feel her next to me, robust and full of life. There really was no affection in the gestures.

  “One might think you were a puppy greeting its master,” she said, in an amused tone.

  “Yes,” I said, “that’s it. That’s it, exactly.”

  I didn’t want to waste another minute before putting her on her guard, but I hadn’t prepared any lie.

  “Yvane, promise me…or, rather, I beg you to promise me…It’s a favor that I’m imploring of you…listen, it’s very serious: you must promise me on everything you hold most dear…so much the worse if it seems bizarre…”

  “What a preamble! What’s up with you this evening?”

  “I want you to promise not to leave La Colle for a month, not to go near the coast, and not to take a boat out for any reason whatsoever.”

  “How bizarre! Why?”

  “You mustn’t ask me for explanations. It’s very serious, I assure you…very serious for me.”

  We were walking along a side-path; gradually, I recovered my composure. The little smile that she had had on her lips during my demonstrations was frozen into a slight grimace that seemed to have been forgotten on her face by her preoccupied mind. I didn’t want her to reflect—it seemed to me to be so easy to deduce. I wanted her to accept my conditions as a bizarrerie of my character.

  “It’s a trial that I have decided to impose upon you—but I beg you to grant me what I ask of you, stupid as it might seem.”

  At the tone of my voice, which must have seemed quite anguished, her beautiful face became grave.

  “Yvane,” I continued, “all that I’m shutting up in my heart, all that I cannot bring myself to say, but which is as plainly visible as the sun in the sky…Yvane, since you know that you are the only thing on earth that counts for me…”

  She put a finger on my lips. She was right; it was better for me to shut up. I stammered another: “My love”—or, rather, my lips articulated the syllables on her lips. We were standing in the midst of impassive cypresses. My two hands were sustaining her shoulders. From head to toe our two bodies were touching. For the first time, I held her against me, no longer like a large flower found by the roadside,
but as the only creature in the world. I hugged her to my breast, like the other half of my heart—the heart that I could feel beating through the light fabric, the heart which, perhaps, was already counting the beats that separated it from silence…

  Then began the most agonizing and the most marvelous days that I had ever known.

  While I was with Yvane, touching her with my hands, never taking my eyes off her, discovering in her adorable face a thousand hidden retreats into which I went to lose myself in dreams, wandering amid all the secrets of her nape and her hair, testing with my lips the caress of her lashes, the cool corners of her eyelids, rediscovering on her cheeks the perfumes that allowed all the flowers of May to escape into the air, I forgot…I forgot everything.

  Having spoken, having put an end to my stupid hesitation, to my internal reticence, I had opened the way to a tide of affection, which escaped me in torrents of joy, causing me to shiver with happiness, giving me an infinite confidence in the forces of love.

  But when night came, and I found myself alone with myself, the atrocious anguish gripped me again. I saw her under the atrocious threat. Thinking that the greatest regret of the living is not to have loved enough, not to have told those who have departed that they loved them often enough, I wanted, at least, to escape that remorse, to tell the living Yvane over and over again of a love so great, so immense, that it could overwhelm her eternally.

  Then, insomnia developing, I forged insensate grievances against myself. “Coward,” I said myself, “you didn’t speak, you only committed yourself because you found out that she’s going to die. That love isn’t the kind that can vanquish death. It was before you knew that you should have declared yourself. Don’t hope to snatch her away from the destiny that awaits her.”