The Lepers

by Henri de Montherlant

  He was led through a room full of terrifying appliances. 'What a waste!' he thought. 'One would be enough to make me confess.'

  Lobel stuck a bit of tin-ware up his nose, pawed his hands knowingly, and gave him a few of those taps on the knee with a hammer that children find so comic. Then he examined the macula. 'Close your eyes.' He tickled him on the spot and all round it with a sort of pin. 'Can you feel anything?' The man who knows. Who may be coarse, vulgar, ignorant, dishonest. But who knows. And the man in front of him, who may be a man of the highest intelligence and refinement, but who nonetheless says to him: 'I am in your hands.' Religion demands that this should also be man's attitude towards the priest. But the priest is a charlatan, whereas the doctor really knows. Costals, standing there, grave in his surrender and passivity, had already gone beyond. Beyond what? Beyond his will. He was no longer master of himself.

  More tickling. 'Can you feel anything?' Costals in his agitation answered a little haphazardly. It seemed to him at times that it was his body that was insensitive whereas the macula was sensitive: surely that was not how it ought to be. In the same way, when Lobel tested the patch for heat and cold with some scruffy little tubes, Costals at once confused hot and cold - just as, long ago, as a boy, when the riding-master commanded: 'Right!' our young genius forthwith pulled the reins to the left.

  'Undress.'

  A little laugh.

  'If you were a Spanish lady I'd tell you to keep your underclothes on. I never make Spanish women undress. I don't want my native attendants to see how dirty a European woman can be.'

  When the examination was over:

  'Are you obliged to stay in Morocco?'

  'Not at all.'

  'Well, go back to Paris without delay. The more detailed examination I should have to give you would take several days. But there's no point in starting anything here (starting, noted Costals), because if you require treatment - which, I hasten to say, is highly unlikely - you would have to have it in Paris. Here, we're not all that well equipped for research.'

  'He didn't tell me that when we talked about Rhadidja,' Costals thought. 'Although I asked him to treat her as he would treat me. No, Arab, in other words anima vilis: nothing to be done about that.' He did not realize that, in advising him to leave, Lobel was mainly concerned with getting rid of somebody who might be a nuisance. Then, shamefacedly, like a man asking his mistress, 'Do you love me?' he asked: 'Well?'

  'It's quite impossible to make a diagnosis. As far as I can judge after such a cursory examination, you have none, I repeat, none of the primary symptoms of Hansen's disease. Only that spot is suspect. But that could be dermatitis, it could be vitiligo, it could be all sorts of things. Marrakesh is the paradise of skin diseases. It seems most improbable to me that leprosy should declare itself three months after a contact. I've never known a case, I've never heard tell of a case, where incubation was as rapid as that. It's true that we're rarely confronted with first symptoms. In fact we only have fairly advanced cases to deal with...And then, if you have contracted the disease, it could have been from an earlier contact. Rhadidja might have been in incubation all these last years.'

  Costals told himself that there must surely be important questions to ask, but although he had been alerted for twenty-four hours (if not for three months) he was caught off guard and did not know what they were.

  An assistant came in and murmured something to Lobel. The door remained open, revealing European patients waiting outside, huddled together on narrow benches like prisoners in a police station - Spaniards holding black caps between their hairy fingers, Italian women who seemed to have three or four breasts, with infants sucking at each of them like rivers sucking at the sea.

  Lobel picked up an X-ray photograph from the table and held it up to the light.

  'Look at that!' he said. 'What a beautiful picture!'

  'What is it?' asked Costals, outraged that Lobel should take an interest in someone other than him, and leave him so quickly.

  'A cancer of the stomach.'

  'The chap's done for?'

  'And how! But you must admit it's a fine picture.'

  'Medicine's all very well,' said Costals, pulling on his trousers. 'Saving lives! But what for? A plaintiff or a defendant in a criminal case has scarcely finished wringing our hearts by the justice of his cause before we discover that he too isn't worth bothering about. It's the same with patients; how many of them are worth curing? When they're sick they're likeable enough; the virulence of their stupidity is abated. But when they're cured! And what will they do with that precious life you restore to them?'

  'Oh! if we thought like that! Besides, the job keeps us on our mettle.'

  'It seems to me that medical murder must be a terrible temptation. ... It has sometimes occurred to me during a rough sea voyage that if the ship sunk I should die more easily if I knew that a hundred and fifty human beings were perishing at the same time.'

  'Seriously?' said Lobel. For him, such sentiments existed only if unexpressed. 'No, no, really, that won't do at all,' he added with a smile. Costals was trying to do up his tie without much success, there being no mirror in the room. 'Come to the window,' said Lobel. One of the shutters, closed to keep out the strong sun, made a foil behind the window-pane.

  'Once when I was staying in a strange town I had to have some injections from a doctor I didn't know. After these injections, I discovered that he was a devout Catholic, a member of the St Vincent de Paul society, and a regular communicant. I may tell you I hesitated whether to let him give me the rest of my injections.'

  'I don't understand....'

  'Yes, if he had discovered that I was a sworn enemy of the Catholic Church...He could have put anything he liked into the injections.'

  'You certainly have a flattering idea of doctors and Catholics!'

  'St Paul, having cited one of Jesus' sayings, adds "... for he knew what was in man". I too know what is in man.'

  'Believe me, doctors often know it far better than literary men,' said Lobel, rising to his feet. 'That's it, he's showing me the door,' thought Costals. 'And yet we were just moving into a territory where we might have touched on important things. But there it is, he doesn't take to me; and between doctor and patient there must be some degree of mutual sympathy.' Ah! where were the beloved doctors of the urinary tract, who were always so cordial, who slapped you on the back and called you 'Old boy' the very first time they had dealings with you, who told you dirty stories and saw you off with the time-honoured jokes of eternal France: 'Only the third time? ... Now if it had been the sixth or the seventh! ...' or else: 'Now all you have to do is go and catch it again' (and even the humble eight-hundred-francs-a-month assistant, opening the door when you rang, would insist on telling you then and there: 'I must put your mind at rest at once. It's negative ...'). With all those people, disease became almost a feat; there's something about a dose of clap that reminds one of a citation for gallantry. But as for Lobel, Costals took his leave of him with that sensation of being of no importance, of being abandoned, that he felt whenever he came away from his publisher's office.

  As the thought that 'they can put what they like into injections' had stuck in his mind, and Rhadidja would be remaining in Lobel's care, he took out his cheque book. 'I should be glad if you'd accept, for the hospital ... ' There are times, when one gives away money, when something inside one weeps. Not at 'forking out', but because it is so useless.

  Costals came out of the hospital visibly affected. He felt physically incapable of smiling even had he wanted to; there was sweat on his forehead although the heat was moderate and very dry. No longer were there Europeans, Arabs, Negroes in the street, no longer any differences of nationality or race or class; only one great difference - between those who were diseased and those who were not. However, as he was being driven to the post office in a barouche to pick up his mail, he fell into one of those pointless rages with the native driver that are proper to a man in good health. 'Even if my body wa
s falling to pieces, by God! that wouldn't prevent me from being the boss.' Which, translated into imperial language, came out as: 'I've got one foot in the grave, but that still leaves me one to kick you up the a— with!'

  But back at his hotel, suddenly, it was the moment when the sick man panics - a moment as easy for the doctor to discern as is for the spectator the moment when a boxer is groggy or the moment when a runner cracks up. A horrible temptation to bury himself in the book on leprosy, and at the same time a fear of doing so. 'I'll open it again when I'm feeling better, when I'm strong enough to face the awful things I shall read in it.' He stood at the table, his eyes staring blankly, suddenly dumbfounded, shattered by the thought that he was not immortal. Was it he who, yesterday at the same hour, had greeted the discovery of the spot with equanimity? Was it not a dream? How could he have? How had he functioned at that moment? As astounded at having for a moment been serene in the face of death as he was astounded, these past few days, at having been able to live with his son far away. The fact that man is incomprehensible we know, not from other men, but from ourselves. How can one welcome the end of earthly enjoyment with equanimity? Yet those who do so - 'heroes', 'sages', 'saints' - are legion: dying 'well', the supreme vulgarity. Why, they're simply unhinged. After all, they may perhaps be men for whom life is insipid. The tragedy is not the loss of life but the loss of happiness. If there were no happiness there would be no fear of death. That is the ultimate punishment of the happy, the ultimate revenge of the 'vale of tears' school: the infallible prescription for dying without horror is to have been sick of life. Costals was paying for having enjoyed life madly, and for wanting to still. It was the existence of beautiful creatures that made him a coward, divine faces that gave him such horror of non-being. 'To think that I shall never see all that again!' Then he remembered a sentence he had written in one of his books: 'I shall not die, for my passions hold me to the earth.' It was his passions that were casting him out of this earth, yet it was to them still that he turned to keep him there. It was from them, and them alone, that he wished to receive all that was good and all that was evil.

  His thoughts drifted towards his work. 'I bequeath to the world something that is dear to it,' said the dying Byron. As for him, he would bequeath to the world something against which the world had never ceased to protest. Yesterday he had thought that four more years of life would give him time to finish at least the slice of work on which he was at present engaged. Illusion! Under the shadow of death and physical pain and gradual debilitation, a man may write a few scattered pages, but he cannot produce a finished work. Thus, for want of a few years, he would leave behind an incomplete and unworthy picture of himself. (And what joy his disappearance would give to his fellow-writers! Ah! that alone should be enough to keep him alive!) However, this regret tormented him less than regret for lost pleasures - and one other regret...For at this moment his mind turned towards his pleasures, towards his work, and also towards his son: the only three things that had mattered to him in life.

  His son! 'What will become of him? What happens to someone who has no one to love him?' The blow was so sharp that he put his hand over his eyes. It was always the same: a life in which reason was supreme, that is to say a life of non- suffering; but it was enough for him to care for a single being, and his soul was plunged into anxiety and servitude. 'It's horrible to love someone,' he blurted out aloud. 'Ah! why did I bring him into the world! Without him, and without him alone, I would have gone through life like an invulnerable dragon....' In accordance with his habit of jotting down there and then every emotional experience, he wrote on a blank page of one of the letters he had just collected: 'I remember that day last April when I went to see my son in Cannes and stayed at (the name of a grand hotel) because there were builders working in the house. I remember that beautiful morning when we sat on a bench in the garden of the hotel. Everything was in flower; a hose fluttered its quavering comet's tail over the red tennis court; the blue distances flaunted their villas hanging there like apples of power and happiness. My son was sitting on my left, reading a booklet describing the eleven scientific ways of drowning oneself according to the rules with a skiff one has built oneself - his feet on a garden chair, his head resting on my shoulder, and from time to time butting me like a young goat. When a breeze blew a cloud of spray over his face from another near-by hose, he shut his eyes and smiled. I said to him: "Do behave yourself! The gardeners can see you." And he, pouting like a badly brought-up child of the rich, replied: "Well, you pay enough here." ' Costals stopped writing. In evoking this memory he had been trying to clutch at something that would show his son in a bad light, looking for an escape hatch through which to escape from the prison of loving him. And he could see that there was indeed a slightly vulgar side to him; but it was no use, he still loved him. It was him he would take to the grave with him, like one of those stone knights on their tombs with their little pages at their feet. 'No, no, I don't want to lose all that!'

  Who would believe it? Those horrible tentacles and suckers he had grown in order to cling on to life eventually lost their strength and slackened their grip. One cannot sustain even the fear of death for long at a time; that subject, too, exhausts itself, like all the others. Then Costals opened his letters (all except one, from Andrée Hacquebaut, which he put away in his suitcase unopened) and sat down to answer them all conscientiously. He noticed how firm his handwriting was. 'For how much longer?' He caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror, and was astonished to see how hard and energetic its expression was. He thought of what was behind it, and sniggered. Next day he sailed from Casablanca.

  19

  to Pierre Costals

  Paris

  Letter forwarded to Marrakesh.

  Andrée Hacquebaut

  Saint-Léonard (Loiret)

  17 March 1928

  What childlike joy some women would retain until their hair was grey if they felt they were loved! You were so sweet four days ago, when we walked to the La Mutte crossroads together, that I feel quite revived. You forgave me the pain my last letter had caused you: the mistletoe reproaching the oak for preventing it from living its own life! In the three months since I started writing to you again, you could so easily have shown me, had you wanted to, that you were bored by me. You have not done so; therefore.... Anyway, heaven alone knows the pleasure I get from writing to you, the joy I've experienced through you during these three months. I watch over you as you watch over me. But watch over me well, I haven't yet had my full share of happiness. Perhaps, this time, you have accepted me for ever.... By the way, what is the significance of the heart I have only just noticed stamped inside the cover of those of your books which you sent me and which isn't on those I have bought? [This mark, made by the publisher, indicated that these were complimentary copies and could not therefore be sold (Author's note).]

  I saw that you used one of my recent letters [This letter had not been opened by Costals (Author's note).] in your short story in Candide. I'm glad to come across myself in your writings, to think that, in creating them, you must have lived with me. And when you live with me like that, it makes me better, more of a woman.

  A publicity van from the X store in Orleans came to Saint-Léonard the other day. What a mad desire I had to buy everything. I bought some boots. I'm crazy about my little boots. Booted and hacquebooted! And so rejuvenated! And you, when I took them off, you sat there holding one of them between your feet so caressingly, as though my foot were still inside it.

  I've just been singing at the top of my voice a slow pre-war waltz, Amoureuse. Nothing releases me more than to sing madly some old refrain like that, in the most refrainish way possible.

  Life is wonderful. Have I not got what I wanted? I wanted a unique place in your heart. Ah! how delicious it would be if I were a young widow with a flat in Paris and...Oh, fiddlesticks!

  This letter was filed away by the recipient, unopened.

  20

  On arriving in Morocco,
Costals had written to Solange: 'I must pay tribute to the excellent behaviour of the sea during the crossing.' No tribute on the return journey: it's a real calamity, this element.

  The sea blotted out three quarters of the port-hole - sometimes the whole of it - and it was simply unbelievable that it did not shatter it: perhaps it recoiled from the human stench that accumulated in every cabin of a French liner. Costals drew the curtain over the port-hole: no submarine life for me. But the curtain had been designed in such a way (a thoughtful touch) that its swaying to and fro ensured that you were fully aware of the degree of the ship's roll. Costals roused himself from a bout of nausea and lurched to the notice-board where the number of his lifeboat would be indicated. But it was a French ship, so the number had not been filled in. As for the lifebelts, no question about it, they could be relied on to keep a man afloat - but upside-down, because the tapes were too long. However, all was well. A pity about that tenacious fly, though: a fly that hasn't paid for its passage, and isn't seasick either - ah! no, it's too much.

  There was no question of thinking, but of hanging on, with a glance at his watch every quarter of an hour: 'Only eighteen hours more. In twenty minutes, only seventeen hours. No, we're bound to be late. To hell with these calculations.' Costals, his nose blocked, sneezed and snuffled and blew. Was it rhinitis, one of the symptoms of leprosy? Then, a little later, an armpit and the inside of one of his thighs began to itch. And pruritus often occurs in the early stages of leprosy. ...