A Noble Profession

by Pierre Boulle

  No beast would have done that, he thought to himself. And, while the fog thickened, he saw the forms of beasts swarming around him—beasts without genius; beasts with uncivilized minds and no real conscience; beasts that alternately assumed the shape of an old witch

  with bloodshot eyes exhausting herself pointlessly in futile endeavors, of an imbecile girl hiding her head like an ostrich, incapable of enduring the consequence of her

  own convictions, and of a dull brute whose only reaction to pain was to scream.

  He endured the torture no less than eight times. Nothing more could be added to his triumph. He was frightened he might faint if he submitted any longer to the mystic state into which he had been plunged by this overwhelming mixture of physical pain and mental exaltation. He placed the capsule between his teeth. As the mother lifted the poker yet again, her features contorted with fury, he looked her straight in the eyes, brought his jaws together, and in one gulp swallowed the liquid along with the bits of broken glass. He felt the jolt of the poison instantly and lost consciousness, regretting he was unable to prolong the enjoyment of his victory forever.

  35

  “I saw him on the sofa when I finally steeled myself to enter the room. But I didn’t stay there

  long. The smell and the smoke ... It was really hellish, sir. I couldn’t even bring myself to examine him properly. A rapid glance ... I saw he was dead, all right. I opened the window and hurried out. It was Claire who told me the story, bit by bit—not a word from the mother, of course—and even then I had to bully her before she would talk, between one fit of hys- terics and the next.

  “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it,” she kept saying over and over again. “It was all make-believe. Mother had promised. We were only going to frighten him. He was a coward; I was convinced the mere threat would be enough. I didn’t mean it to go any further. I expected him to give in; I was sure he would sign when he saw the red-hot iron.”

  “Extremely sound reasoning for a young girl," Dr. Fog observed. “Only this time he did not give in.”

  “He did not give in, sir. And if he put up such resistance . . .”

  The doctor's composure seemed to aggravate Austin’s feelings.

  “If he put up such resistance, that proves he didn’t talk the first time. Morvan was the traitor. It was criminal of us to leave him like that at the mercy of those two raving women.”

  “Do you think so?” Dr. Fog remarked gently. “Incidentally, what did you do with his body?”

  Austin gave a shrug. This detail seemed to be of small importance compared to the problem that was preying on his mind. He began to reply in an offhand manner, then saw in this subject a fresh opportunity to voice his indignation.

  “We buried him in the forest. As you can imagine, I didn’t think it was right or proper to leave the body of a patriot lying there like that or to stuff it away in the cellar, like the other one. I felt the least we owed him was a decent burial. I took the risk of moving him in broad daylight. The old woman had disappeared—I don’t know what has become of her since, incidentally—but I forced Claire to help me. I kept her at it until she was ready to drop. I was prepared to beat her, torture her even, if she made any fuss; but she obeyed without any protest. We carried him as far as we could and buried him in a deep hole. I made her kneel by the side of the grave. I was a bit on edge, sir.”

  “I can well believe it,” the doctor said sympathetically.

  “In spite of all my precautions, I’m still afraid the Germans may find him."

  “They haven’t found him."

  Austin looked up in surprise as the doctor walked across to the far end of the room.

  “They haven’t found him,” he repeated. “If they had, they wouldn’t have taken the trouble to send me this. Listen."

  It was the tape recording. Austin heard Cousin’s voice, at first with amazement, then with mounting excitement. When it came to an end he fell silent for a long time, dumfounded, a prey to a mixture of emotions he was unable to explain. Eventually, under the piercing gaze of Dr. Fog, he said stupidly:

  “So it was true?"

  The doctor nodded.

  “And they sent you the tape?"

  “With their compliments. Rather neat, I must say. Otto, I suppose, discovered Gleicher’s body. He must have realized Arvers had led them up the garden path and made his getaway, so he hastened to put his threat into action. You may be sure there is more than one copy of this document. . . . But that isn’t all, Austin. In the package, which was delivered to us by devious means, there was also a long letter giving precise details about the Lachaume farm incident. Otto reopened investigations and seems to have gone to a great deal of trouble to reach a definite verdict. A vindictive creature, I imagine, that Otto, and furious at having been duped. . . . To cut a long story short, it’s now absolutely clear that Morvan could not have been killed by the two Gestapo men. Do you realize what that implies?”

  “You mean to say it was . . . ?”

  “Put yourself in his place. He could not allow such a witness to live.”

  Austin shuddered. Dr. Fog gave a shrug.

  “I’d always suspected that, anyway,” he observed nonchalantly.

  Austin, who was beginning to derive some consolation from the proof that Cousin was a criminal, was revolted by this admission.

  “And knowing that all the time, sir, you sent him back there with Morvan’s sister!”

  “He was still of potential value to us,” said the doctor, “but only in conjunction with the Morvan family. Events have proved I was right. Mind you, I couldn’t have foreseen everything, but at least he eliminated Gleicher as a dangerous enemy—albeit a somewhat ingenuous one, like most amateurs in this business.”

  “So on the whole you find that your stratagems have culminated in a brilliant success!” Austin exclaimed, unable to contain himself.

  “A partial success,” the doctor corrected him modestly.

  “A partial success?”

  “Yes. I had hoped he would also wipe out Bergen for us, but he wasn’t ripe for that yet.”

  Austin could think of nothing to say in reply and gazed at him in a sort of daze. This rational method of exploiting human passions filled Austin with indignation, yet at the same time he could not help feeling a certain admiration for the psychological approach. His curiosity got the better of him, and it was in the humble tone of a student questioning his master that he asked for further explanations.

  “How could he have behaved so heroically under torture after showing such abject cowardice before?”

  “I’m sure my fellow psychiatrists could give you at least a dozen reasons, all of them more or less valid. They would tell you that paranoia frequently entails such incongruities. They would quote the case of the coward who commits suicide because he is frightened of dying. The truth, Austin . . .”

  Until then he had been speaking in his professional tone. His attitude now underwent a sudden change, as frequently happened. He leaned forward, his eyes shining, his face illuminated as though by some inner flame—symptoms, the young man thought, which in others might have indicated enthusiasm or violent excitement, but which in this case betrayed the solution of a difficult problem.

  “The truth is that on the first occasion, you realize, it was only a question of the lives of some fifty people. Fifty human lives—that wasn’t a sufficiently clear or striking symbol of duty to enable him to overcome his instincts. Whereas the second time . . .”

  Austin automatically broke in.

  “The second time, he himself was at stake.”

  “He and he alone,” Dr. Fog agreed. “He, with that dream world of his—he, the ideal creature of his own imagination! He would have accepted the destruction of everyone on earth, Austin, but not of that fabulous being. For himself, for himself alone, he was capable of showing heroism.”

  Austin lapsed into a painful meditation, confused, constantly haunted by fleeting shadows that he felt were converging
toward some mysterious point, and constantly disappointed by interferences that hindered the clear perception of this pole. After several minutes of these discouraging mental gymnastics, he felt the need to seize on some more tangible elements.

  “There are certain steps to be taken, sir. Morvan must be vindicated. As for Claire, whom I've brought back to London and who is more or less under house arrest. . .”

  The doctor made a listless gesture, as though to dismiss these unimportant details.

  “You can set your mind at rest. Morvan will be showered with honors—the highest posthumous awards. I've

  already seen to that. As for him . . .” It was now his turn to appear uncertain and distracted. After a pause he went on:

  “Morvan’s citations will be sufficiently glorious for the family to renounce any idea they may have of wreaking their vengeance on a ghost. As for him . . . No one knows his story in detail, apart from the two of us. Do you feel it’s necessary to spread it abroad, Austin?’’

  Austin did not reply. With slow, deliberate gestures Dr. Fog took a pair of scissors, detached the tape, and started cutting it up into small pieces that he dropped into the metal basket in which he burned his top-secret papers. He went on speaking while he applied himself methodically to this task. Every now and then his voice acquired a curious pitch, which he seemed to regret and tried to correct immediately afterward.

  “An intellectual, Austin—I summed him up correctly. Mind you, intellectuals are to be found just as frequently among stonemasons and professional soldiers as among artists and men of letters. If you look hard enough, you will even unearth one or two among members of the secret service. Don’t you agree?”

  Austin gave a faint smile. The doctor dropped some pieces of paper into the bucket, set fire to them, and watched with close attention as they burned.

  “I think he has paid the price. When a man has paid the price he ought to be allowed to rest in peace. . . . You spoke about hell just now, Austin? As a matter of fact, I think there’s quite a chance he’ll rest in peace. What do you think?”

  There was a suggestion of real anxiety in the question, in spite of the casual manner in which it was put. Instead of giving a direct reply, Austin described something else he had remembered.

  “When I went back into the room, sir, when I forced myself to look at him closely, I was struck by the expression on his face. His body was hideously contorted, of course, and his limbs all twisted, but his features were relaxed, almost serene. It was incredible. His face bore the mark of a wonderful beatitude and an ecstatic smile still lingered on his lips.”

  “A reflection of his dying thoughts,” said Dr. Fog.

  “I’m not surprised. Yet you accused me just now of mental cruelty! Believe me, I haven’t failed in my duties as a doctor ... I did much more for him than simple humanity required.”

  He went so far as to indulge in certain remarks that were hardly those of a man of science. He seemed willing to discuss the Arvers case forever. Austin could have sworn he was positively reluctant to dismiss it from his mind. Each word he uttered appeared to reveal a fresh horizon.

  “I’ve found myself thinking about him quite a lot these last few days,” he said in a low voice, “even here, in this room, where he only made one brief appearance—remember?—but where the file is kept containing the essentials of his troubled spirit. His reports constitute an extraordinary body of work that can’t be judged by the standards of his professional writing—a cathedral, Austin, a cathedral constructed in the baroque architectural style of his ideal, its walls permeated with anguish, its stones cemented together with the fierce exertions of his despair, its spire soaring toward some inaccessible star.”

  “Romanesque, sir?” said, Austin, peering at him intently.

  “What an idea . . . And yet, who knows? I’d like to have your opinion about this: Do you regard an hallucination as a conclusive symptom?”

  Austin could not suppress an exclamation.

  “An hallucination? You, sir!”

  “I saw it as clearly as I can see you now. I happened to be reading through his reports at the time. And is it surprising that he should be thus incarnated in these pages? I tell you, his essentials are all there. The phantom that appeared to me was infinitely more consistent than his material self.

  “I’ll make a clean breast of it. When it rose up before me, I was terrified for a moment. No one in this country has been fond of ghosts since Shakespeare, not even specialists in mental diseases; and I was appalled, horrified, at the thought of having to render him an account.”

  Austin noticed with increasing stupefaction that the doctor’s voice, as he uttered these last words, betrayed something closely akin to emotion.

  He held his breath, convinced that he was about to hear some deep secrets, but Dr. Fog managed simultaneously to recover his self-possession and control over his voice.

  “My fears were groundless, my anxiety childish. All the ghost said was, ‘Thank you.’ I don’t think I’ve ever felt such professional satisfaction, and also such relief. . . . No, Austin, I could never have survived an error of diagnosis!”

  THE END