The Eye of Purgatory

by Jacques Spitz

  In spite of myself, I let the impact show.

  “What’s wrong, Pierre? You’re very pale.”

  Immediately, I felt myself blushing and tried to turn away to avoid Narda’s gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m too stupid. I didn’t intend to remind you of the past—but the harm’s done now; don’t hold it against me. And since I’m so awkward, I’ll leave you…”

  It was obvious that she attributed my distress purely to the memory of Yvane. As for me, my emotion did not derive so much from Dirk’s new prediction—which I felt capable of falsifying, now that I was strong from top to toe, no longer paralyzed by any sentiment—as from the idea that the experiment, whose interference with my life had already had such consequences, was still going on, and that it was threatening to draw me in again.

  The decision that I had hesitated to take was immediately set aside. Utterly resolved to draw a line under the entire story and not to set foot again in the doctor’s home, who could think what he liked of me, I would leave for Paris the following day.

  The next day, with my bags packed, I was about to have them transported to the station when a note was handed to me. It was from Narda.

  Things are happening here that are making me anxious. I need someone to help me, but I don’t know who to turn to. Could you possibly ask one of the doctors who has cared for you, and in whom I can have confidence, to come here on some pretext or other? He must ask for me first. Sorry to inconvenience you by asking you to do me this favor. It’s rather urgent.

  I had ten minutes to think about it before the car left for the station. My first impulse was not to modify my plans at all. Then it seemed to me that I had time to telephone the chief physician of the clinic in which I had been looked after, to pass on Narda’s request. However, I did nothing. Was it not cowardly on my part to abandon a young woman of 18 to difficulties that I sensed to be rather acute, since I was fleeing them myself? Not to mention that I owed her my life, since she was the one that had directed the search for me toward the mountain…

  On the other hand, it was also too stupid to start playing the St. Bernard dog again, and I had had it up to the ears with this whole story, and that entire family. I had decided to leave, and I had only to do it…

  I re-read the letter. It was not a call for help; at any rate, it was indirect and very discreet. In spite of its brevity, it contained several spelling mistakes, which touched me.6 It was those spelling mistakes that made me put off my departure to the evening train…

  A little later, that same morning, I rang Dr. Mops’ doorbell.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Bonjour, Delambre—glad to see you again.”

  The doctor had come into the room while my back was turned. He came forward. I scarcely recognized him, so much older did he seem to have grown. His voice, harsher still, broke on the final syllables. His tone was still trying to be patronizing, but it was forced, and missed its effect.

  As Narda, to whom I had asked my arrival to be announced, opened the door in her turn, he said dryly: “Give us a moment, my child—I’d like to talk privately to Monsieur Delambre.”

  Narda obeyed without any response, but before disappearing she shot me a glance whose meaning I could not quite decipher. She seemed to be begging me to be circumspect.

  The doctor’s abrupt manners were perhaps intended to get the upper hand on me, but no longer having any need to be wary of him, I felt myself ready to respond tit for tat.

  “Would you care to follow me?” he asked. “Here, I mistrust the walls.”

  We found ourselves back in the eternal study, where the right hemisphere of the brain was hanging in its accustomed place. The old décor no longer impressed me, but it had an unexpected effect on me: for the first time since consciousness had returned to me, I started thinking about Yvane again. Not that I had forgotten her, but her remembrance occupied a region of my memory that I had forbidden myself to revisit until that day. But now, solely as an effect of the disposition of the furniture, that entire voluntarily-obscure zone of my memory lit up, became animated—not, as before, as a life that was bound intimately to mine, but as an image lit from behind, whose outline revealed a familiar face. It was no longer the living Yvane, but a portrait of Yvane, awakening more curiosity than profound distress. A portrait that made me think, all the same…

  “My dear chap,” the doctor began, having given me a long time to install myself, “you see before you a man who is finished, empty, clapped out. The mainspring has broken, a few days ago.”

  In truth, his voice had become miserable; the mask of authority with which he had greeted me had fallen away, leaving a flaccid face with distressed features, and a dull, weary gaze. Far from feeling pity, however, I experienced a slight repulsion instead.

  “I’m not exaggerating,” he continued. “Dirk is dead.”

  “Ah!” I said, slightly disconcerted by this news. Aside, I thought: So that’s what has troubled Narda. Aloud, I continued: “And you probably fear annoying inquiries—but I imagine that you can easily find explanations.”

  “I’ve killed the goose that laid the golden eggs,” he continued, ignoring me.

  I should certainly have anticipated that he was not a man to be moved to it by the death of an experimental subject, and that he was only deploring the loss to his interests.

  “Anyway,” he said, getting to his feet, “you’ll see.”

  “No, no,” I protested. “I don’t want to.” I preferred not to get mixed up in the affair, which might become awkward—but as he did not seem to comprehend my refusal, I added a vague explanation: “The sight of dead bodies, you know…”

  “What? The sight of dead bodies? What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’ve just told me that he’s dead.”

  “You’ve misunderstood,” he said. “He’s dead, but he’s as healthy as you or me.”

  Bewilderment must have been painted on my face.

  “I thought you remembered,” the doctor explained. “I was pushing Dirk into the future. He was eight years ahead when, suddenly, within the last week, all possibility of communicating with him was broken off. I tried everything before giving in to the evidence. He fell silent because, in eight years, he will quite simply be dead. But while waiting for the eight years to elapse, he’s here, solid and very much alive. You can judge for yourself.”

  He got up then, went to the little door, and the scene I knew so well began again.

  “We’re going to work, Dirk—will you come down?”

  On hearing Dirk’s footsteps on the stairway, the indifference that I had felt until then gave way to a vague anxiety. What was the phantom that was about to appear?

  Dirk came toward me, his hand extended. I had to vanquish a slight hesitation, but I shook the hand. It was vigorous and warm, like a true hand.

  “Come on,” I said, turning to the doctor. “Are you sure that he’s…” Dirk’s presence prevented me from pronouncing the word.

  “Alas,” sighed the doctor. He went to tap Dirk on the shoulder; then, without any inhibition, he said: “Dead, dead—he’s really dead, I assure you. In the long run, it was certainly to be expected, but who would have thought that that, in eight years, this stout fellow would already be clapped out? He’s solid, though—look at him. I thought he was good for another thirty years, and I continued fearlessly, gaining several future weeks every day. With an advance of only eight years, I thought I still had a healthy margin in front of me, but crack! He’s come apart in my hands…”

  A sort of despairing wrath returned some animation to the doctor’s face. He strode back and forth, while continuing his lament.

  “At the very moment when I was in the process of learning, thanks to him, some astonishing things about the treatment of cancerous tumors by cosmic rays! As you can imagine, with an advance of eight years, I was no longer playing the stock market—a mere initial amusement; in any case, there were difficulties…

  “No, what inter
ested me was deciphering the science of the future. I was directing the experiment to its true goal, realizing the dream of all scientists: to know the next episode of the great serial of discovery, the state of science for future generations. You’ll recall the words of your Renan: ‘I would give everything that I know to be able to read the little textbook that will educate the schoolchildren of the next century!’ And now the dream that I was in the process of realizing has suddenly collapsed, because of the death of this imbecile. It’s my entire life’s work that’s come to nothing…”

  Dirk was listening, as if it were happening to someone else. The scene was curious. Ever suspicious, I ventured a few objections. “What tells you that he’s dead? He isn’t talking to you anymore, but perhaps it’s you that will be dead in eight years?”

  “I thought of that, but I have irrefutable counter-proofs. The microphone installed in his room continually records on tape, day and night, everything that he lets slip. What he says in his sleep, take note, is independent of the external surroundings, since every night resembles any other night in the past or future. Until the last few days, the tape recorded fragments of nightmares, but for three days, there’s been complete silence, after one last night that it isn’t difficult to recognize as a night of death-throes. Look, I’ll play it for you…”

  “No, no—I believe you. There’s no need.”

  My eyes never left Dirk, who seemed to be following the entire conversation, turning his head from one interlocutor to the other, smiling, and sometimes passing his hand distractedly over his cheek. An interested movement had made him sit up when the doctor proposed that we listen to the night of his death-throes—but more sustained attention permitted the recognition of the automatic nature of these gestures, and a certain absence in his facial expression might have revealed the living dead man.

  In spite of my determination to stay out of the whole story, I could not help being affected by the interesting nature of the scene. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead. I mopped my brow; in fact, I felt very ill-at-ease. With the insensitivity of an executioner, the doctor continued to give me details in a loud voice. I wondered whether, in spite of everything, Dirk did feel and understand something.

  The doctor only felt sorry for himself. “Twenty years of study, ten years in the laboratory, two years of daily cares devoted to bringing a marvelous subject to perfection, an experiment to which I have sacrificed everything—much more than you can suppose—and it all disappears at a stroke! What do you think I can do with my life now? All that work was my reason for living. I have nothing left—nothing! Start again? I’m too old, and one doesn’t find such a subject every day. I thought I had reached the extremity of distress once, with my marital misfortunes—today, it’s even worse. I’ve fallen back to zero, with nothing to hold on to. All hope has left me. The real dead man, in this story, is me. He’s all right—look at him…”

  The scene was becoming painful. The doctor was getting carried away, and his face was going purple. As I made no response to his plaints, he was raging in a void, like a damned soul.

  “This central heating is truly pitiless!” he suddenly exclaimed. “It’s stifling in here.”

  Marching toward one of the stained-glass windows, he opened it wide with a single thrust. A gust of fresh air irrupted into the room, and a marvelous mountain vista appeared in the window-frame. Beyond Lac Leman, the view extended to the great chain of the Alps. Above the lake’s mists, in the clear pale blue sky, the dazzling whiteness of snowy peaks rose up, seemingly suspended miraculously in space. It was a magnificent winter day, illuminated by a low December Sun, cutting out the contours so clearly that no detail escaped the gaze. One might have believed that one could touch the summits by reaching out an arm. The large surfaces of glaciers reflected the sunlight in places like convex mirrors. Elsewhere, light translucent clouds rose up over the eastern slopes, toward the shadow. The entire panorama of the high mountains was empty, devoid of dwellings and human beings, as immense and pure as a gigantic snow-crystal, in which nature seemed to be contemplating itself. The icy air that came to bathe the temples drew thoughts irresistibly toward dreams of altitude. The doctor had stopped speaking; a release-valve had been opened in our minds. I took refuge in the contemplation of the landscape.

  “Whisky?” the doctor suddenly proposed.

  He handed me a glass of whisky and soda, offered one to Dirk, and let himself fall into the depths of an armchair, holding his glass in his fist and agitating a piece of ice. In the silence of the room, nothing was audible but the crystalline sound of the ice knocking on the wall of the glass.

  It was then that something extraordinary happened.

  “Hosanna! Hosanna!” said a loud voice.

  I turned toward Dirk; his mouth was still open and the liquid was swaying in the glass that he was holding.

  Startled, the doctor dropped his, which broke on the parquet. “Did you hear that?” he asked me, in a low voice.

  “He can speak, then,” I said.

  Without seeming to attach any importance to our stupefaction, Dirk drank a mouthful of whisky, put down his glass and then, gripped by a frisson, cried: “Hosanna! Hosanna!”

  “You see, he’s not dead!” I exclaimed, triumphantly, glad to score a point off the doctor for the first time.

  My triumph was facile. The words “stupefaction” and “bewilderment” were insufficient to describe the doctor’s expression. Mouth open, his eyes quite round, fixed on Dirk, his intelligence seemed to have quit his face conclusively. In a low voice, he murmured: “He’s dead, dead—I’m sure that he’s dead.”

  An idea suddenly crossed my mind, and I exclaimed, on a whim: “Well then, he’s in Heaven!”

  I expected a burst of laughter on the doctor’s part. I saw him go green.

  “In Heaven?” he said, in a pitiful, stammering tone. “No, that’s impossible. There is no Heaven. There’s only death, nothingness, oblivion…”

  As in the course of a combat in which one is mysteriously alerted to the adversary’s secret weakness, I sensed at that moment that the moment of my revenge had come. I took full advantage.

  “What do you know?” I proclaimed, drawing myself up to my full height authoritatively. “The décor, always the décor—that snow, that purity of atmosphere: he’s found himself at home. He’s in Heaven, in Heaven… This is the moment when the experiment will become truly interesting, and we shall learn what no one has ever been able to learn. At this moment, he’s singing the praises of God…”

  And for the third time, Dirk uttered his double “Hosanna!” I was almost convinced by it myself. Excitedly, I turned back to the doctor, and cried: “Do you understand? He can see God!”

  I did not have to go on. The doctor’s eyes turned up, his upper body stiffened in shock, and then he collapsed like a dead weight on the floor.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I lifted him up again, laid him on the leather-clad divan and bathed his temples with whisky. Dirk continued drinking, as if nothing had happened. I was looking for a hand-bell to summon help when the doctor came to.

  “The fresh air caught me unawares after that heat,” he said. “Will you close the window, please?”

  His speech was slurred, and the pallor of his face against the background of brown leather was striking. A continuous tremor shook his right hand, which was extended alongside his body.

  “Who should I call?” I asked.

  “No one,” he replied. “I’ll be better momentarily.”

  “Nevertheless,” I persisted, “A physician…”

  “I know what it is.” He tried to raise his left arm to the back of his neck, which must have been causing him pain.

  I slipped a cushion under his shoulders.

  “Awfully sorry to put you out,” he muttered. With all his might, he tried to collect himself. “Take Dirk back, I beg you,” he asked, then.

  When I returned, I found him sitting on the divan. He had made an effort to get up; he w
as still grimacing.

  “Danger of hemiplegia on the right side,” he murmured. And he gave voice to a little click of the tongue to emphasize the gravity of the diagnosis.

  “I’ll ring for someone to carry you to your bed,” I decided.

  “Never, never,” he protested. “I don’t need anything; I don’t trust anyone. It will all be better momentarily. If you want to oblige me, sit down. Let’s have a chat to try to see things clearly. You’ll help me to think—my head still feels heavy.”

  He closed his eyes and passed his left hand repeatedly over his face, which was creased like the skin of a pachyderm.

  “You said something very stupid in speaking of Heaven just now, Pierre…”

  I knew full well that that was the irritant point, but I wasn’t going to abandon a dominant position out of pity for his condition. He had taken a beating, physically and morally, but I sensed that he was still tough.

  “How, then, do you explain that Dirk is dead, but that he can speak?” I asked him.

  “I can’t explain it yet; that’s why I need to think.” He laughed mockingly. “Heaven! But that’s the opposite of what I’ve thought my entire life. I’ve never ceased to turn my back on it, on Heaven—and I won’t, for the sake of a few exclamations let slip…”

  “But the experiment,” I persisted. “Your experiment…people find what they weren’t looking for—that’s almost the rule in any scientific investigation.”

  When I pronounced the word “experiment,” he opened his eyes again and fixed me with a long round-eyed stare. He wanted to see whether I was speaking seriously, whether I might be seeking to deceive him by latching on to his weakness. He was committed to his “experiment,” the old fox, and he found himself caught in a dilemma: either cease to believe in his experiment, or accept its conclusions.