The Necessary Evil

by André Couvreur

  And he imposed on the spectators the violent irradiation of his force, of his wrestler’s arms and his superb forehead rich in audacity and ideas. Emotion took hold of hearts, alarmed by the unexpectedness of the attempt; Bordier had a slight tremor in his fingers; but Caresco, impassively, put on his large waxed cloth apron. Soeur Cunégonde had taken the chloroform compress; with a slow and regular movement she approached it and drew it away from the child’s nose.

  “Take hold of the tongue, Sister,” said Caresco. “We might have need of a few tractions. We’ll begin. The right side first. Hold firm, Bordier.”

  He dipped his hands in the sublimate again, and then picked up a scalpel from the tray of instruments. An immense self-confidence ennobled him. His dark eyes gleamed with the flamboyance of boldness, of triumph in the struggle. How much stronger he was than the people surrounding him! Who, among those surgeons grouped behind his back—some of whom might be famous abroad—who, among those men whom his scalpel held breathless, would have dared to risk a similar exploration of the brain, and be as able as he was to accord no more credit to this living body than a cadaver extended on the autopsy table? Yes, he was the strongest, the one most organized for victory. Neither his heart not his hand would falter.

  From the forehead to the occiput he flourished his audacity with a magisterial curve. The scalpel touched the bone; blood inundated the furrow.

  “Sponge, Bordier!”

  He widened the wound further with a rasp and detached the periosteum.

  “The trepan!”

  Bordier handed him the instrument, formed like a brace and bit. Caresco applied the point to the cranium, weighed upon it with all his strength, and began to turn, and turn.

  The bone screeched, a bloody pulp carried away by the gyratory movement soiled Soeur Cunégonde’s white habit and head-dress, and flew up to lodge in Bordier’s eye; he did not flinch. Then there was a tearing sound like breaking wood; it was the roundel of bone giving way, which was about to permit the introduction of the gouge. The first stage was complete.

  Caresco looked at the little girl. Her face had a waxy pallor beside the red cranium. A pair of tongs dangled from the mouth, with the tongue in its jaws, repeating like a crazed pendulum all the movements imparted to the head. But the respiration was calm and regular; the surgeon continued his work, excavating further holes in the skull with the energy of a wrestler.

  “Messieurs, to open the skull I’m going to follow the furrow traced in the scalp, sectioning the bony bridges that I’ve just created by making these crowns with the trepan. You’ll see that it will give us a nice flap. My only fear is that of falling upon a sinus of the dura mater, which would produce a lot of blood. But that would only be a minor misfortune. I have no fear of blood, you see.8 I leave that anxiety to poor operators, those who go slowly. Bordier, pass me the gouge and the mallet.”

  Two graceful nickel-steel instruments were placed in the master’s hand. In that powerful hand, they would do the work of destruction, enter victoriously into the bone of the cranium under the effort of repeated blows, as a sculptor’s chisel carves stone. It was the same shrill sound that it rendered, and that sound echoed from the metallic framework of the operating table, becoming dull and deep.

  Caresco struck with a ferocious intoxication, insensitive to the splinters of bone, to all the horror of that red disorder, and to the frisson that was shaking the watchers. One of them had fainted. Caresco did not hear him fall, continuing his terrible volley. Half of the furrow was hollowed out. A tide of blood surged forth.

  “Sponge, Bordier!”

  He had struck the sinus that he had dreaded attaining. Blood flowed, and flowed, invading the linen, designing a rill on the metallic bed and came to fall on the floor, splashing.

  “It’s bleeding heavily,” Bordier breathed, fearfully.

  “All the more reason to hurry. Hold firm.”

  Again he made the gouge groan. The danger multiplied the strength of his wrist tenfold. There was a minute of anguish. Suddenly, he let go of the mallet and, making us of the gouge as a lever, lifted up the bony flap that he had just excavated. Through the larger opening blood passed more abundantly.

  He slid his fingers between the cranium and the brain, tugged the resistant bone violently toward him, and with an effort that tensed his physiognomy as well as the muscles of his arm, with a traction beyond human strength, he finally folded back the jagged bony window that hung down over the ear, maintained by a hinge of scalp, laying the encephalum bare.

  He applied a tampon to the gaping sinus, and then passed a cloth over his forehead, constellated with drops of sweat.

  The circle tightened around him. Curious heads leaned over the hideously sanious, red, congested viscera, speckled with a purulent exudate. The Viennese with the gold-rimmed spectacles could not restrain his astonished exclamations. Journalists were taking notes.

  Soeur Cunégonde, momentarily anxious, on seeing the respiration embarrassed, pulled the tongue; a few respiratory efforts were produced, lifting the meager breast, making the ribs stand out. Serenely, she added a few more drops of chloroform to the compress.

  “Is the thermocautery ready?” demanded Caresco.

  He picked up a curette to sweep away the exudates that were veiling the cerebral circumvolutions—but again blood came to saturate the tampon that he had placed over the sinus. A stain showed at the surface; it expanded and enveloped the entire compress.

  “What!” he murmured. “It’s still bleeding!”

  Anxiety caused him to dart a glance at the little girl and interrogate the anxious physiognomy of Soeur Cunégonde, who pulled the tongue again. Then, alarmed, he exclaimed: “But Sister, the patient is no longer breathing!”

  She was, indeed, no longer breathing. Her face abandoned by blood, the lips blanched, the eyes vitreous, extinguished by death, she was lying on the elevated bed in the midst of white sheets speckled with red, her lamentable, little body thin and lived, with her limbs tied, with the horrible tear of the wound giving her the attitude of a torture victim. The spectacle, exciting a moment ago, became frightfully tragic by virtue of the panic of the entourage, contending with the inertia of the cadaver.

  “Artificial respiration, quickly!” cried Caresco.

  With a thrust of the hand he replaced the bony flap over the brain and, taking hold of the two arms that the sisters had just freed from their bonds, with a regular and methodical movement, he extended them and then brought them back to the thorax. He repeated that maneuver for some time Bordier pulled on the forceps suspended from the tongue, producing a rhythmic traction, and leaned on the thorax to assist the artificial respiration.9 Vain attempts! The throat rattled several times, but the beast did not rise of its own accord, conserving its mute inaction.

  “Compresses of boiling water in the hollow of the stomach!” Caresco howled. “An injection of serum!”

  The sisters hastened to obey. Bordier inserted the needle of a large syringe under the skin, injected the liquid, which formed a swelling, and massaged the swelling. The body maintained its rigid indifference.

  “Done for!” groaned Caresco. Then, wearied by his muscular efforts, already seeking an excuse, he turned toward the consternated watchers.

  “Messieurs,” he said, “be good enough to withdraw for a moment. As you see, we’re in difficulties; you might hinder our movements. Go to the reception room, and don’t worry—I’ve brought patients back from further away than this.”

  He smiled. Some tried to meet his gaze and failed. There was a general retreat toward the reception room. The most nauseated made for the exit door.

  Bordier had resumed the artificial respiration, without conviction. His muscles were unaided by his will; he was deeply distressed by what had happened, and felt his legs weakening. Although accustomed to contact with cadavers, which he had been dissecting for a long time, the skin of the little corpse whose arms he was agitating caused him an impression of anguish that squeezed his throat fr
ightfully. He would have been glad to see Caresco fall down dead in front of him. He judged himself a victim of that fatal endeavor, and tried to deny his share of the responsibility. A revolt filled his soul, a scorn for his collaborator’s base smile. He was clawed by a crazed desire to hurl his resignation at the other’s head, finally to let out all his disgust, all is abomination and to flee that murderous house.

  “My poor Bordier, your efforts are futile,” Caresco said to him. “Nothing to be done—she’s been dead for ten minutes; it’s necessary to accept it. Let’s take advantage of the opportunity, since the cranium is open, to test the electrical reactions on the encephalum, and see how sensitive that organ is at the point of death. That might be the object of an interesting communication to the Societé de Biologie.”

  Such was the funeral oration that his base and ferociously egotistical soul dictated to him.

  Upstairs, in the mansard, the old woman was waiting. Plunged in an abyss of sadness, still was still staring dazedly at the empty crib. Suddenly, a noise of footsteps made her shudder.

  Soeur Cunégonde appeared before her.

  “Madame, God is submitting you to a hard trial...”

  She did not understand at first, and stammered a few words that tumbled with difficulty from her toothless mouth.

  “Yes, the child’s operation did not go well…”

  She uttered a howl of distress. “She’s dead?”

  “She was very weak, the poor child. You brought her too late. In sum, everything possible as done to save her from death...”

  “She’s dead?” she demanded, again, sinking her fingernails into the wood of the crib.

  “Pray for her…she’s with the good Lord.”

  The old woman stood up, her eyes crazed. She twisted toward the heavens her arms, now useless, being no longer destined to support their cherished burden. Gray wisps escaped her bonnet, striping her face, even more withered by despair. Foam covered her lips.

  “They’ve killed me! They’ve killed me!”

  And before Soeur Cunégonde could stop her, she ran out on to the landing, stopped for a second to look down into the dark space of the stairwell, stepped over the railing, and hurled herself into the void.

  Her body spun, rebounded from the second floor, and then crashed head first on to the marble flagstones of the vestibule.

  Bordier, who was coming out of the operating theater at that moment, understood the whole drama. At a hectic run that cut short his respiration, he went to inform Caresco.

  The latter, however, after having examined the body, still master of circumstances, coldly said: “Fracture of the skull; she’s still breathing...no liquid from the nose, mouth or ears, so nothing fundamental. We’ll trepan it. We might save her.”

  And the grandmother was carried into the operating theater as the cadaver of her granddaughter was being removed.

  The surgeon went back into the reception room.

  “Messieurs,” he said, “I believe I can offer you an operation similar to the one I’ve just done. We’ve just been brought the body of an attempted suicide who threw herself from the fourth floor and fractured her skull. We’re going to trepan her. If you’d care to go into the operating theater...”

  CHAPTER VII

  In an elegant house in the Rue du Bois de Boulogne, which Armand Caresco provided for his mistress, Mathilde de Guinac—still known as “the beautiful Tripe-merchant” to her good friends—a sumptuous dinner was in preparation. In the drawing room, Mathilde, clad in silk, was supervising a waiter who was lighting the long candles of a chandelier. A black dress, forcefully tightened at the waist, thinned the opulence of her flesh. From a neckline covered with golden embroidery the milky whiteness of her breasts emerged, as if from an over-filled vase, ready to overflow. At the back, the neckline plunged much further, almost to the waist, allowing a vertebral column masked by fat to be divined. That block of flesh was dominated by a small head, chubby and child-like, plastered with cream, the kohl of the eyes and the incarnadine of the lips accentuating the features corroded by adipose tissue.

  As the candles lit up, the bad taste of the furniture stood out, more richly and more garishly. Bright gilt caught the light and reflected it toward the mirrors; the silk upholstery, red curtains were varnished by the gleam; expensive trinkets mingled with absurd futilities picked up in department stores or suburban fairgrounds. A Tanagra figurine was set shamefully beside a small golden clyster-pump.10

  There was a ridiculous and offensive clutter of disparate things scattered over the furniture, haphazard objects symbolizing the mistress of the house: souvenirs, to each of which Mathilde could have accorded a lover’s name; the detritus of mercantile nights, kisses and spasms offered at variable prices, according to the current tariff. The occasional picture came from a painter who had screwed her and paid in kind, not being able to do so in cash. A little ivory phallus had been given to her by an old debauchee she had flagellated. An onyx vase was the offering of the keeper of a brothel to which she went in quest of a few louis when she ran short. Every object was sealed with the shame and infamy of her life as a merchant of amour.

  When the waiter had finished lighting the chandelier, Mathilde sent him away. Alone, waiting for her guests, who were late, at first she sat down in an armchair, picked up a book that she immediately abandoned, yawned, then got up and went to pose before the mirror over the fireplace.

  Her gaze fell upon a photograph of a child that depicted her at a young age, in a communion dress. How old had she been then? Twelve. How old was she now? She could no longer remember exactly, by dint of lying about it. She made the mental calculation, counting on her fingers. Then, meditatively, she leaned her elbows on the marble mantelpiece, facing the mirror, and contemplated the puerile image for some time.

  The slender form was naïve and stilted; the keen dark eyes made a black patch in the whiteness of the skin and the costume. How much she had changed since then! She glanced at herself again in the shiny mirror, deploring her stout stature. But what a road she had traveled—what intrigues, what parties, what celebrations, and what debacles too!—since the age of sixteen, when as a little errand-girl in a factory she had succumbed to the solicitations of an accounts clerk whose moustaches had such a conquering twist! She had loved him for three months, and had then abandoned him when she became infatuated with an actor, a star of the Théâtre de Belleville who lubricated his voice with absinthe that he did not water down.11

  The Thespian had forced her to quit the factory in order to live with him full-time. Then, one day, the great leading actor having no more voice at all, the director of the Théâtre de Belleville had fired him. There was atrocious poverty; in order to live, the man tried to give lessons in declamation, but neither advertisements in newspapers nor leaflets handed out in the street brought pupils to his lodgings. It was Mathilde who brought in the money necessary to the household expenses; she went on to the streets every evening to obtain the price of shameful acts of kindness.

  She knew the filthy furnished rooms in which, under sheets soiled by others, she submitted to the proximity of dirty men, greasy hands and lips reeking of alcohol, who left traces of caresses and kisses on her skin. Oh, the hours of horror and disgust when, an octopus of amour, naked on the bed in accordance with male fantasy, shivering in fireless rooms in winter, she simulated the intoxicating joys of erotic excitement, biting the pillow in order not to yield her healthy mouth to the sanious mouth! What bitterness, what a calvary!

  She had paid in those frightful times for everything she had obtained from men subsequently. One night, she was picked up in a police sweep. At Saint-Lazare, the doctor had recognized the first signs of a horrible disease; they had kept her there for four months.

  When she came out of prison she had found that her lover was dead. The idea occurred to her of living decently, of putting on the modest dress of the factory again and resuming a calm existence of toil and virtue. The mirage of a peaceful home with an honest wo
rker and children dazzled her heart. But could she, now that she had begun her fall into the abyss, escape it unaided, without a saving branch to which to cling? What employer would take on a girl without qualifications, with short-cropped hair, with garments that were not simple enough, although well-worn? What lover would offer marriage to a former inmate of Saint-Lazare, obliged to submit every three months to a special examination, and still at risk of seeing the stigmata of a shameful malady reappear from time to time?

  She did not think of addressing herself to the societies that occupy themselves with the rescue of fallen women of her sort. Then too, vice kept her imprisoned in its harsh claws; in spite of her disgust, she was dominated by voluptuous memories, by miry habits. She recommenced streetwalking in the evenings; a few savings permitted her to get a place of her own; she triumphed over poverty.

  Later, she could be seen traveling along the Allée des Acacias in a victoria harnessed to two horses. She knew Jewish bankers, snobs and foreign princes. A leader of the right in the Chambre became her lover; she made law. Improvident, she neglected to fill a stocking for the future. By the time she was forty, she had grown enormously fat. She was about to fall off her pedestal into the ultimate mire when, at a supper at Sylvain’s, she had met Armand Caresco, whom the opulence of her flesh immediately inflamed, and who took her away in order to take a flesh-bath.

  The following morning, on quitting Mathilde’s bed, Armand had decided to keep her as a mistress. Independent of the real attraction that he experienced for her powerful, ever-practical body, he imagined the benefits he might obtain from a woman so well-known, who had connections in all levels of society. And for three years they had been living together, he retained by a violent sensual habit, she deploying all the science of voluptuousness that twenty-four years of practice had taught her, in order to retain the prey that an unexpected windfall had thrown into her claws.