Singular Amours

by Edmond Thiaudière

  Then the physician took it into his head to take her pulse, and naturally observed a complete lack of pulsations. Nevertheless, he did not want to believe that, and contented himself with saying that the pulse as very weak, almost imperceptible. Doubtless as a check, he applied his ear to the rib cage, where the heart ought to be, and could not hear it beating and more than the pulse. He raised his head, amazed, reapplied his ear, moving his head and if in search of the best place to ausculate, straightened up and took a few paces in the sacristy without saying anything.

  Finally, he came back to us and said, in a doctoral fashion: “One can scarcely feel more heartbeat than pulse. If Madame hadn’t spoken just now I’d be very anxious, but I assume that the near-annihilation of the pulse and the heartbeat is due to the fright that caused her fall. Soon we can put mustard-plasters on her legs, in order to obtain a good circulation of the blood.”

  I had a terrible desire to laugh at the diagnostic and therapeutic skills of a doctor who mistook a mannequin for a woman, but I pursed my lips and limited myself to replying: “Va bene, va bene, si vedra, si vedra.”36

  “Perhaps,” he went on, “a little bleeding will be necessary.”

  “Si vedra, si vedra, Signor Dottore.”

  With his head in his hands, Mr. Little was walking back and forth in the sacristy repeating: “My dear Betty, my dear Betty.”

  “Ché dice, il signor inglese?” said one Monsignor who was in the sacristy, addressing me.

  “He’s saying: ‘My dear Betty,” Betty being the name of his wife...it’s because he’s very upset to see her in such a state.”

  “I understand,” replied the Monsignor.

  And the physician added: “The danger is certainly great, but believe me, I’ll do everything possible to go get her out of it.”

  In the meantime, the stretcher arrived; we lay Mrs. Little down on it and we set off for the Hotel di Spagna, unfortunately followed by the Italian doctor, who, doubtless seeing in the English couple clients capable of paying well, was hanging on to his prey, no matter what we tried to do to get rid of him.

  For a moment he disappeared, and we thought he had finally yielded to our objurgations, which were conceived in the most gracious terms, but not at all. He had simply gone into the premises of a pharmacist, from which he did not take long to emerge with a box of mustard plasters.

  When we arrived at the Littles’ room, he went in behind the porters, while I remained discreetly on the threshold.

  Having placed Mrs. Little on a divan, the porters left again, but the doctor was still there.

  “Signor dottore,” I called to him.

  He approached, and I invited him to go with me, insisting that the invalid needed rest above all, but he did not want to listen to reason, saying and repeating that his professional duty obliged him to remain.

  He even engaged Mr. Little, offering to help him undress Mrs. Little and put her to bed, so that he could examine her, palpate her at his ease, discover the internal or external lesions that must have been produced by the fall, and apply the appropriate treatments to them.

  You will understand the worthy Mr. Little’s embarrassment. He asked me in English by what means it would be possible for him to get rid of that diabolical doctor, and I replied that there was only one that could not fail, which was to pay him to go away.

  In an Italian as bizarre as his French, he therefore offered to pay the importunate fellow, and, with that intention, took his purse out of his pocket, but the fellow protested in a dignified manner that they would discuss that later that he would doubtless have to visit Madame several times before she had recovered, and that, in any case, the initial consultation was not concluded, since he had not yet examined the patient.

  “No, no,” said Mr. Little, with an entirely British sang-froid. “Andate vin.” And at the same time, he handed the physician two five-franc pieces—but the latter refused very energetically to take them, still in the name of professional duty.

  Thinking that it was perhaps too little, Mr. Little offered twenty francs—further refusal—and then forty francs.

  “Soon, if you wish,” said the physician, “but once again, allow me to accomplish my professional duty. It is necessary that I first place mustard plasters on your wife, and perhaps draw a little blood.”

  “Offer him sixty francs,” I said to Mr. Little, and perhaps he’ll consent to leave us alone.”

  And, indeed, as Mr. Little took another twenty francs out of his purse. I said to the physician in a confidential tone, as if I wanted to espouse his cause: “Signor, here’s a fine sum of sixty francs; believe me, take it, since he absolutely doesn’t want to put your science to contribution.”

  “Monsieur,” he replied, haughtily, “I would never accept money that I haven’t earned.”

  “You have earned it, Signor, you have earned it by proceeding with the examination in the sacristy of St. Peter’s sending for a stretcher and accompanying us here.”

  The physician shook his head negatively, and I whispered to Mr. Little to raise the sum to eighty francs. He resigned himself to doing so, but in vain. The physician claimed that we were insulting his professional dignity.

  That crampon-physician was beginning to irritate me furiously, so I said to Mr. Little: “Right…offer him a hundred francs, and if he still doesn’t make himself scarce, throw him out, and even down the stairs, without giving him anything.”

  Mr. Little having offered the hundred francs, on my advice, he neither accepted them nor refused them, but represented to us so mildly and so modestly the humiliation to which we were subjecting him, by preferring to pay him for not giving his cares to a patient rather than giving him, that there was some scruple on my part about leaving him in error relative to Mrs. Little’s condition.

  “What if, in order to get rid of him, while saving his self-respect,” I said to Mr. Little, “you were to confess to him that it is not within the competence of a physician but that of a mechanician to treat your poor wife?”

  Mr. Little did not reply at first, but he started reflecting on the case. After a few seconds, though, he said to me: “No, no—it’s something that no one other than you must know.”

  “But it must be known in Chester!”

  “In Chester, yes, and in a part of England, but I want at least that it should not be so in Italy.”

  “I won’t hide it from you,” the physician said to me, “that Madame’s condition appears to me to be very grave, to such an extent that it is not impossible that she might die for want of sufficiently prompt treatment while you are deliberating. It seems, in truth, that you have sworn the death of the patent, since you’re preventing her from receiving my cares.”

  Molière, in my place, would certainly have responded to the Italian physician that it was, on the contrary, because we had sworn to preserve the life of the patient that we were preventing her from receiving medical treatment, but I contented myself with smiling and, turning to Mr. Little I said to him in English: “The very persistence that he puts into wanting to employ his art in spite of us shows that he’s a idiot. He’s so myopic that one might believe that he can see very little. Believe me, to get rid of him, allow him to continue his medical examination, and even allow him to apply the remedies he judges appropriate.

  Mr. Little yielded to my arguments. He agreed that he would undress Mrs. Little and put her to bed, after which the physician could do what was necessary.

  That was, in effect, how things went.

  Before anything else, the doctor examine Mr. Little’s face, from which Mr. Little had been obliged to remove the veil, and he soon declared doctorally that the parted lips and the fixed eyes indicated that the poor woman had not recovered the usage of her senses. He went so far as to place his cheek in proximity with Mrs. Little’s lips, as if he wanted her to kiss him, which made Mr. Little so indignant that he nearly flew off the handle. But he only did that, in reality, as you will understand, in order to feel the invalid’s breath, f
or, after having said to us fearfully: “Non sento lo spirito,” he hastened to ask us, for a decisive proof, for a mirror—“un specchio”—which we gave him.

  Having observed, naturally, that the mirror was untarnished, he remarked, not without naivety, that the signora nevertheless had the complexion of a healthy individual.

  All things considered, he judged that nothing was more urgent than to place the mustard plasters, and with that intention, he uncovered the patient’s legs—which, in truth were entirely natural, and if nature had not equipped the right foot with a little toe with a nail there was as good an imitation as the one must have ornamented the original.

  While the mustard plasters were taking effect—or, rather, not taking effect—Mr. Little made me party to the apprehension he had that they might spoil his wife’s artificial skin.

  Meanwhile, the doctor was making every effort to ausculate the heart, with his ear applied to Madame’s embroidered chemise—without perceiving anything at all, naturally.

  After twenty minutes, the mustard plasters having not modified Mrs. Little’s condition, he became very anxious. After pacing back and forth in the room several times, silently, with his chin in his hand, he came to where I was sitting, some distance from the bed, and confided to me that the situation was definitely very grave, that the signora might already be dead, that that was in any case greatly to be feared, and that I ought to do my best to prepare the husband for such a cruel event, while he, although there was scarcely any doubt about the circumstance, in order to acquit his conscience would attempt a bleeding, in order to have the proof of it.

  I had a mad desire to laugh, but I could not in all decency satisfy it.

  Mr. Little, naturally very afflicted by the accident that had overtaken the locomotive apparatus of his pseudo-wife in the basilica of St. Peter, and also bewildered by the truly unexpected behavior of that fool of a physician, was leaning on the night table next to the bed and seemed plunged in an immense chagrin.

  Having tapped him gently on the shoulder, I confided to him what the astonishing disciple of Aesculapius had just told me, and I added: “I understand all the pain that this accident to Mrs. Little must have caused you, since, until the mechanician has repaired her, it will be impossible or you to take her on your excursions, but, on the other hand, you ought to be glad to see a physician deceived by her and believing her to be flesh and bone. So much stupidity on his part might even be advantageous to you, by permitting you, when he has certified the death, which cannot be long delayed, to take the body back to Chester in a coffin.”

  “Yes, but once arrived in Chester I would find myself in a great embarrassment, for everyone knows back there that my Betty is dead and buried. What would they say on seeing the arrival of that coffin, which would not be followed by an inhumation?”

  “You’ll reveal the matter to the authorities and a few friends, since they already know of the existence of your artificial wife, and they’ll admire even more the skill of the mechanician and the good fortune that you have had in still being able to possesses an animated and lifelike image of your wife.”

  While we were conversing thus, the physician had taken a lancet-case from his pocket and a rolled-up strip of cloth, which he placed on the table, and he brought a bowl from the bathroom, apparently destined to receive Mrs. Little’s blood, in the event that any gushed forth.

  “It’s definitely necessary to carry out a bleeding,” he said to Mr. Little. “Allow me to do it.”

  “But he’s going to cut into my poor wife’s arm,” replied the worthy Englishman, “And there’s no longer any means for that wound to form a scar.”

  “Yes, yes! When the mechanician repairs Mrs. Little, he’ll be able to design at the place of the wound a little white line, like those appearing on the arms of people who have been bled. That will add further to the illusion of life. In the meantime, the death will be certified by this skillful doctor; the blood won’t flow, and that’s what we need. So let him do it.”

  Meanwhile, the doctor asked me to hold the bowl under Mrs. Little’s arm, which he had laid bare, and which was, believe me, marvelously modeled, with discreetly blue subcutaneous veins in places.

  He cut, and, as you might think, not a single drop of blood emerged from the incision.

  “I had, in truth, retained some hope,” he said, “however faint, because of the appearance of the visage, still colored, but this is the proof that none can remain. The poor woman is really dead. See for yourself. All the blood is in the heart. You will have to prepare your friend for the sad reality. I can’t say precisely that it was his fault, but perhaps, without the delays that he brought to the acceptance of my help, we would not have to deplore this misfortune.”

  “Alas, Signor,” I exclaimed, “What must be must be; but since you had the extreme goodness to come to our aid with a zeal that I am pleased to recognize, when the poor woman was still alive...”

  “No, no,” the doctor interrupted, “she was already dead.”

  “Yes, but in sum, we hoped that she was still alive. Now she is dead and we know that she is dead, can you not continue your good offices?”

  “How?”

  “Well, by making the arrangements necessary after a decease, and which our quality as foreigners, only knowing Rome as foreigners know it, does not allow us to make ourselves. I’m convinced that Mr. Little would testify his gratitude broadly.”

  “But it’s not customary,” he said, resuming a smile more acute than might have been expected of him, “for physicians to occupy themselves with such things. They can do so less than anyone else, in order not to give purchase to the slander that, after losing the dying, they hang on to them even after death. I can only speak to the owner of the hotel, who will take all the necessary measures diligently. Firstly, is the inhumation to take place at the Campo Santo of Rome or should the body be transported to England.”

  “It must be transported to England.”

  “Immediately, or after a sojourn in a temporary crypt?”

  I extracted Mr. Little from the dolor in which he appeared to have plunged—and had, in fact—in order to report that further conversation to him and ask him whether he wanted provisional obsequies in Rome for Mrs. Little, in order to remain in the eternal city for a few more days, or whether he preferred to depart the following day or the day after for England, with the apocryphal body of his wife.

  He decided on the second alternative, as being more appropriate in two ways, firstly because it avoided the comedy of fictitious obsequies, and secondly because he would be able to replace the once-more-inert body of Mrs. Little in the hands of the mechanician more rapidly.

  All the dispositions having been made in concert between the physician and the hotelier, who were remunerated generously, Mr. Little quit Rome the following evening—which is to say, last Saturday—and I believed it to be my duty to accompany him, even though he insisted that I stay, not wanting, he said, to hasten my departure. It was not important to me whether I departed a little sooner or later, for I had known Rome for a long time, and I hope to return there several more times before dying.

  On arriving at the railway station in Rome, in the waiting room, I started. The first person who struck my eyes was our physician, whose name as Signor Minelli. I knew his name because I was in possession of his card, and the name was easy to retain, as that of a doctor even more astonishing than Diaforus.

  Had he sworn to follow us to England and had he promised to carry out an autopsy of Mrs. Little once removed from her box?

  I was afraid of that, but I soon observed that I was mistaken. He was simply going to Civitavecchia, doubtless to give his aid to a moribund.

  He darted a slightly inquisitive glance at Mr. Little, whose physiognomy was by then quite plaid, and then asked me in confidence a most unexpected question.

  “Il suo amico voleva molto bene alla moglie?”37

  “Very much,” I told him. “Never was any woman more loved by her husband. One so
metimes speaks of ‘loving madly,’ and it’s almost always an exaggeration, but in this case it’s quite literal, I assure you.”

  “Truly?” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought so.”

  “No similar love has ever been seen,” I said, except that of Orpheus for Eurydice, at it’s even stronger than that.”

  Our journey from Rome to Paris went much more agreeably, for me at least, without Mrs. Little than it would have done with her, and although I deplored her first death in Chester, I secretly rejoiced in her second one in Rome.

  We are contenting ourselves with passing through Paris; I’m leaving again with Mr. Little for Chester, where the mechanician, alerted by telegram, will in us and determine the repairs to be made to the defunct wife.

  If, as is to be feared, they will be considerable, they might last for some time, during which poor Mr. Little is counting on my presence to help him avoid the chagrins that might perhaps be rendered more painful by Mrs. Little’s second, entirely artificial, death than by her first, natural one.

  At the same time, I shall see his own automaton, of which he had promised to show me its most hidden workings, not having, so far as that one is concerned, the modest reservations that the automaton of his wife inspires in him.

  I know already that the automaton in question, which still lacks teeth and hair, since it will inherit the model’s, is destined, like that of Mrs. Little, after the death of the proprietor, for Madame Tussaud’s. Mr. Little hopes to eternalize in that fashion the memory of a faithful amour that death, thanks to an ingenious subterfuge, was unable to succeed in breaking.

  Notes

  1 Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-426-3.

  2 Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-474-4.

  3 The Davenport brothers, Erastus and William, were fake spiritualist mediums active from the 1850s to the 1870s whose most famous trick involved their being tied up inside a large box containing musical instruments, which would begin to play when the box was sealed. Jules Talrich (1826-1904) was an anatomical sculptor famous for making lifelike heads. He opened a wax museum In Paris in 1867. The “torpedo-child”—torpedo presumably referring to the fish also known as an electric ray—may be one of the “electric boys” exhibited in the latter part of the 19th century capable of inducing electric shocks when charged with static electricity, but the easily-discoverable references postdate the story.