Charles Bovary, Country Doctor

by Jean Améry

  “What is it? What is it? Calm down! Pull yourself together! You know I love you. . . . Come!”

  “Enough!” with a dreadful air.

  Pushed away. I didn’t fall, like the child, didn’t strike my head, I understood nothing, I thought it might perhaps have been a valgus. She grieved. For me, for the wealth that fame would have brought me, for Hippolyte, whom she wished to order a wooden leg for right away, paying for it out of pocket, it was the least we could do, we owed it to him after he lost his clubfoot. She seemed frozen with grief. Few words, and then only at the table. No more fingers dancing on the black and white keys, she gave the maid, Félicité, only the most necessary orders, even if it seemed to me she was Emma’s most trusted companion in her sorrow. Bitter quarrels when Mother came to visit. Desolation hollowed her, poisoned her blood, brain fever left her bedbound, and once more, hat in hand, I had to go begging Canivet to assist me, and with a great deal of money and very deferential words, I even sent for Docteur Larivière. Again, she got better, nature lent a hand, or God did, how should I know. I cried from joy when she sat upright among the piled cushions and ate a slice of bread with jam for the first time. She was weak, so she didn’t push me away when I gave her a tincture of iron, for her strength. People stood by me, kind Homais showed up, and Abbé Bournisien brought some pious books, by way of reconciliation; I appreciated it all, even Homais’s enlightening discourses and the muffled pounding of the priest’s godly erudition. I took help where it was offered and went out to do my duty, which grew harder every day, for the bills kept piling up. I strained to hear the coarse bellow of a whooping cough, and through it, I heard her faint voice, which longed for peace and heavenly bliss. I scrubbed the brown scabs from the wounded hands of workers, and in the mirror I saw the skin of her pale face growing clearer. With the morning dew on the paths through the meadows, I felt her tears on my still-sleepy brow. I praised the Lord and the discreet consolation of nature, and Larivière’s enlightened spirit and Abbé Bournisien’s hand pointing soothingly up into Heaven. She was alive: that was all, and that sufficed. And there, again, was the contentment I’d known in my days in Tostes. I didn’t mind if the demands for money turned insistent. Lheureux nattered on, diligent and shameless.

  “Madame, une élégante, ordered a flowing duster, the same kind the ladies in Rouen and Paris are wearing, even when they’re not setting out on a journey, it’s all written down, but no rush, remember, I’m not some Jew or cutpurse, I look after my clients, it’s just that I must get the books in order. For the likes of us, the knife is always at our throats, a bill is no death sentence, Monsieur Bovary, my good man, sign here, you’ll find the rest somehow, and a good Sunday to you.”

  What did I care? She was alive. Une élégante, indeed she was. There were times when I came home and settled down to dinner with a groan, and I no longer saw in her the pretty farm girl Père Rouault had entrusted to me. She was pale, like a bride of Christ, slender in her beauty, but not gaunt like Héloïse, that was the difference. The priest came and went, Homais looked angrily into the field, I excused myself from their quarrel over God and nature. Homais swore on Monsieur Voltaire, the Abbé said that, on his deathbed, the great author had eaten his own excrement. Yes, I said to one, yes to the other, my head was no match for these subtleties. Only my heart understood. My marriage bed was warm, my heart burned.

  “Come, Emma.”

  “Laisse-moi, mon ami, I’m tired, I sewed clothes for the orphan children and read a long while in Monsieur l’Abbé’s edifying books.”

  “Oh, of course, my dearest, forgive me”—and still, sleep, the sleep of the righteous, swept over me. Whatever she wished was good enough for me.

  “To my mind, Madame spends too long among clouds of holy incense, it’s awful for the health and the vigor of the soul, the ancients loved sea air and bright light, not the gloom of churches,” Homais warned.

  “Your wife has turned to God after her convalescence, and that is as it should be. But her longing for our Savior has an ardor appropriate only to those who have given themselves over to the Redeemer. Among townswomen, married ladies, faith should be strong, but not burning,” Bournisien demurred.

  I said nothing, I didn’t force our conjugal embrace, and could take no side in the squabble between divine revelation and the undying principles of 1789. She was as dear to me at the prayer stool as in the ballroom, as heartwarming with pious books as on her father’s farm, when I watched her skim cream from the milk with her slender finger. Or so I pretended, and I did what had to be done, and there was much that had to be done. Had the law allowed it, had the people deemed it proper, I would have rounded up patients in front of the church and the mairie, yelling like a toothbreaker at the market in the old days. It didn’t occur, the bourgeois is a man of moderation.

  From early on, my fate was sealed. Can you lend me your penknife, Flaubert? Mais oui. And: merci—and nothing else, that much I gathered. Mother’s words, too, marked the boundaries of my world. Nothing sumptuous, beyond the Sunday meal of poulet à l’estragon, nothing uppity. Nothing uppity, nothing lofty. I overturned the border stones when I set my sights on the most beautiful girl in the département. It all seemed so simple, so totally natural, then.

  “Out with it, then! You think I don’t know already?” said Père Rouault, with a chuckle.

  “I couldn’t ask for better. I’m sure the girl is of the same mind, but we still have to ask her opinion.”

  And then, while I waited outside trembling, he threw open the shutter, the agreed-upon sign if she gave her consent. A country wedding, with much too much cider and venison and lewd jokes, the way it is for people of our class. But lofty nonetheless: her skin, which I now had a legal claim to, was far too smooth beneath her brown hair with the heavy chignon; her head held too many thoughts from her uplifting readings, far different from those Homais and Bournisien recommended, her scent, which lingered in the alcove, came all too close to the heart, so that I stumbled, when I stood up on our wedding night, took off my nightcap, and sought out, bewildered, the cool air of the morning fog lying over the fields. Now that it is too late, everything is clear to me. In Tostes, where soon the specter of haggard Héloïse was banished from all the rooms, I thought I deserved it all. I didn’t bother Père Rouault about the dowry, contrary to custom. I would savor the lovely woman, the élégante, who was secretly already with child, just as before, on the holidays, I would let my mother’s omelet flambée dissolve blissfully in my mouth before swallowing it one bite at a time down my delighted gullet. This, too, was fatalité: she was beautiful, and I nothing more than a bumbling oaf, of middling stature, with chubby cheeks, who rode his horse like a peasant and not like a gentleman. A man carries his fate with him, it comes out in his body as well as his rank. Her rank was good enough for Charbovari, charbovari, charbovari, char—

  “Urbane, Père Rouault’s daughter! Don’t make me laugh.”

  And Héloïse, who loved me, sniggered wickedly, the laughter of joy never once emerged from her thin-lipped mouth.

  But Emma was an élégante, whether by the grace of nature or God, so I was smug when I fetched her from her father’s farmhouse, a nobleman could have had her, had I not stuck my grubby nose in, oblivious to a fate that had chosen for me—who knows?—a wife like good Madame Homais in her slovenly gown, or indeed, poor Héloïse; she did love me, despite her constant bickering, which spoiled my every free moment. Emma was my impertinence, and now everything is over, no aristocrat can free her, she is the bride of the earth and my boorish body’s craving. Nobles and gentlemen, her due from nature and God, if not from rank.

  They live up there in the castles, they know the flight of birds. Their tailcoats are made of the finest cloth, and their exquisite pomades give their hair a silken gleam. Their kerchiefs are monogrammed and exude sweet scents. Their gazes show the indifference of those used to daily gratifying their whims, to giving orders with a heavy hand, to using force to get their way, whether riding
a purebred horse to death or else loose women in bed. I saw them at the ball, how they spoke with obliging scorn, that is not something that can be imitated, nor should it be yearned for—I stood back in silent astonishment. And in pride, too, that they treated Emma as their equal and bowed gracefully to win her favor. I will never understand how a person can be supple and yet so strong in inclining the torso, in speaking with the hands so that it gives the ladies pleasure. They look like their steeds—my own faithful beast is nothing more than a nag—and muscles of steel quiver under their milky white skin. How nice that she could gather her thoughts out on horseback with the good Monsieur Rodolphe, and how sad when he went away, and she no longer had the pleasure of curling her knee up by the horse’s mane and leaping off like a duchess.

  Rodolphe. His letters to her: well-turned phrases, fine words of the kind a gentleman offers a lady, une élégante who made all the women Yonville turn green with envy. Letters a gentleman writes to a lady, signé: votre ami. Not a single phrase too many.

  Who dares say otherwise? Come forward, come now, so I may draw my pistol and pull the trigger!

  No guns in the house. What does a country doctor want with a firearm? He is not there to kill. He must be prudent and gentle, so the people don’t die on him, otherwise word gets round, he starts looking ridiculous and gets pushed aside like a clumsy child who bumps into a piece of furniture and whose father must rush over with a lead tincture to clean the wound. Prudent in the utmost, never putting on airs, a slave to duty, as one learns. Silence and a smile for those above, warm words of friendship for the lowly, conscious of the lines that separate you from the humble and the high. Monsieur Rodolphe was above me, but he generously deigned to mix with the country doctor, and I did the same when a cottager doffed his hat before me and yammered on hoarsely about his wicked cough and the snowfall from the winter before. . . .

  “Could be, Docteur. . . .”

  Docteur! That was too great an honor!

  “It stands to reason that a little excursion now and then could do Madame some good, in moderation, understand! Fresh air, distraction, carefree indulgence . . .”

  “What an excellent thought, my humblest thanks for the suggestion.” And then: “You should follow Monsieur Boulanger’s advice, Emma. Your health above all other considerations. Look strange? The people? I couldn’t care less. We’ll order you a riding costume.”

  It heartened me, oh yes, it did me honor. I really didn’t care about the rumors that came murmuring into my ears from afar. One sees Madame often nowadays with the nobleman on his horse, Madame has exquisite taste, she bounds over the brook like the Comtesse de Prou, and she’s bounded over us folks who know our place and who honorably, by the sweat of our brow, as the Good Book commands—Silence. Monsieur Boulanger is from la Huchette, but his name is not de la Huchette; the lowborn, who never went to lycée in Rouen, don’t understand that. [14] But I held back, at most said knowingly, one is a doctor, one knows what’s best for a fragile woman’s health. No disdain when one speaks to enlighten. Only benevolence, and the awareness that, if one isn’t really a doctor either, one has learned his business by the sweat of his brow, and honorably, in spite of everything. It heartened me that he took her with him, that gentleman with the eloquent words and gestures. A clear thinker, Homais nodded his head in agreement. My neighbor didn’t lack for reasonable recommendations.

  “Bonne promenade! And be careful, above all, be careful, accidents can come so quickly, maybe the horses are a bit hot-blooded!”

  The saddle creaked, she grasped the reins tight, breezily she forced the trembling horse to a halt when she came home. I was content. She disappeared past the forest’s edge, a neck’s length behind the gentleman, then I mounted my own gentle nag, and as we trotted along, I leafed through my small book on diagnosis and therapy. Il lui a fait la cour, c’est normal, [15] no one is so stupid as to miss that, there was no need for rumors to figure it out. She had every right to enjoy the admiration of a gentleman of the old nobility, to feel the faint, panting kiss on the glove of the finest buckskin, I didn’t carp over the cost of her riding tackle, even if I myself never cared to have soft top boots, but shod my feet in rough leather, that was good for the soggy paths I had to tramp through when the weather was bad and I sank up to the ankle in the loam and manure. To each his own, according to his birth. Some lay their heavy limbs on hard straw mattresses forever, others fall on piled cushions with a light head into tender sleep. Urbane, the daughter of Père Rouault, scoffed poor Héloïse, whom the earth perhaps weighs on more heavily now than Emma. Une élégante, said Homais, with a wicked glimmer in his beady black Gascon eyes, scouring our Normandy for money and hearsay. And what else should I have done, when I’d taken the doctor’s oath, the oath of the bridegroom and father of the family? Joined in matrimony before the law and before God! Blithely spoken, that word: dieu. Who is right, I don’t know, the brilliant Monsieur Homais, perhaps, or the priest in his black soutane, but it does seem to me that neither can be certain, for both the voluble neighbor and the man of God refused to believe it heartened me when men lusted for her, que Dieu me pardonne, [16] I feel others’ lust in my own base body, against all precepts of the bourgeoisie and conjugal honor—

  “Emma, I lust for you, I lust for you. . . .”

  “Are you shouting? Are you unwell?”

  “No, no, it’s just the pain overcomes me, and sometimes I mumble my sore thoughts, not only to myself, the way others do, and I end up doing their bidding. They beg to be shouted, Monsieur l’Abbé, the good manners my mother taught me cannot dam up my wailing thoughts. What can you do? My throat has ceased to obey.”

  “Your throat? It’s your soul, my esteemed friend! You must entrust your soul to God, then it will stop howling, and instead will submit. Ask your good father-in-law, Père Rouault, he, too, lost his dearly beloved and bawled and threw fits. Unseemly! I told him as much back then. The soul belongs to God, who lets us weep for the dead, as is proper, but we are not to rebel against his will. You mourn the dead, then go on living among the living, such is the will of the Lord, who has breathed the spirit into us. It has been that way from times of old till now, such was the custom in the blessed days when the master was the master and the serf a serf. Your cry, which I pity, but which I cannot condone, is the consequence of a revolt: against tradition, God, and the mother of us all, the holy Catholic Church! Your pain is godless when it comes bellowing out of you like that. Whether you admit it or not, even in your sinful cries of sorrow, which I hear, because the pastor of a flock must always have sharp ears, the spiteful voice of your friend and neighbor Homais is present, perverted by the forbidden writings of Monsieur Voltaire. Did you know that on his deathbed, the poor man ate his own excrement? These things happen when we forget the WORD. Pull yourself together and pray! Feast on the favorite dish of the righteous! Come to God’s table for the Holy Communion. Confess your sins. Here I stand to set you aright. God has given me the strength to lift up a hundred-kilo sack of grain at harvest time and heave it onto my shoulder as if it were a basket of dry kindling. He gave me the strength to bind and unbind, and commands me daily to keep the old ways, to honor the good days when no one rebelled against the Lord of the heavens and the lords of the earth. On your knees, Bovary! But without that ardor that is displeasing to God. Sin lurks in the deepest corners of false humility. Live honorably with the living, the dead are in His kingdom, where no earthly howling reaches them.”

  May he vanish, and with him his God, who stole her from me. I loathe him, this God, him and nature, which offered no aid against the poison’s abomination! Did He love her, the Crucified? Did the priest adore the coiled hair in her armpit? I will let my throat scream, as my soul demands, God or no God! Reason or unreason. I kneel down—before her, as Monsieur Rodolphe must have, in reverence and in lust. What is tradition, what is bold progress to me? Sin—nonsense! I obey my longing, not the fanatics, who can all eat their excrement if so revolting a thing strikes their f
ancy. Master is master and serf is serf. I was master of the sickbeds redolent of sweat, and serf to her beauty, which was her fate, which made Mother choke on her words, and soared over the envy of the other women. Murmurs and sniping, I paid them no mind. Had other things to do. Duty. Sniffing at the saddle, where her sweet fragrance mingled with that of the horse, the pretty, soft mare, dear Emma. Ma bonne, I called for you, it must be true that great words belong to the great, fine words to the fine; even as a boy one learns humility. Your penknife, Flaubert. Utmost thanks, Monsieur Boulanger, how generous of you to request to take my wife out, a quick ride will do her good.—And then, whispers.

  “A riding uniform! Who ever heard of such a thing? The wife of a country doctor. Luxe, luxure, vice in a village of upright people, women like that should be whipped.”

  Went my way, a hardworking, humble man, whose pride, paid for regardless of the price, those toothless, shriveled maws had no notion of. Come now, open wide, the wisdom tooth is rotten, it will have to be pulled, and with a steady hand I tore the stump from the bloody tissue. For her. Her teeth were white and strong and would never have stunk from the spread of cavities. The lips above them were tender, like the pulp of a fruit, too good for mine, which I licked loudly after eating; then I was punished with a withering glance. Beauty seeks beauty, that is a right old adage, no less true than the word of God or the laws of nature. The peddler and usurer understood that better than the scriptures or the encyclopedia. The silk shawls, lace bonnets, and rustling petticoats suited her, and I got my share, richly doled out, all too richly, when I think of the coarse attire that covered my chubby body, which smelled of phenol and cowpats. Fragrance seeks fragrance—does the Good Book not say that? The Vicomte soaked his kerchief with violet water, and when they waltzed, she gazed at him, sniffing tactfully. An emerald on the hand that clasped her hips. That was proper. Or no? Not at all, according to tradition and the precepts of humanity? Was my abiding by it tawdry? Glimmering chains, English calico covering on the fauteuil, porcelain instead of stoneware, and riding, riding. Luxe et luxure—I nodded along, and then nodded off after eating, the day always weighed heavy on my body, and what she prepared and seasoned for me with love and skill filled my stomach and made my paunch grow. Ridiculus eram. Quidquid volueris, vous l’aurez voulu, Georges Dandin, [17] I still remember that, I evoke it now, and I know why I was pushed away and still managed to whisper, while I stumbled and fell, a wretched: How nice!