Charles Bovary, Country Doctor

by Jean Améry

  “On my own. On my own account, at my own risk.”

  My choice and mine alone. The risk has been added to the account, and will be duly paid for.

  “Your honor, esteemed gentlemen of the jury! You must reach a verdict concerning a man who in cold blood and with great deliberation treacherously slew two men with poison. His felony is all the graver as he used his position of officier de santé and this marshaled the prestige of science to order the preparation of the toxin. With his own hand, he wrote out the recipe, and convinced his friend, the apothecary, of his wish to take the drug in measured doses as a remedy for his alleged sleeplessness. The pharmacist is not to blame. The highly respectable Monsieur Homais of Yonville, who was presented with the cross of the Legion of Honor in recognition of his service to the fatherland and to His Majesty the King, did nothing more than his duty when he mixed those poisonous drops, which are harmless in small measures but toxic in larger doses and at higher concentrations. Your Honor, esteemed gentlemen of the jury, do not let yourself be led astray by so-called humanitarian considerations of the kind that nowadays hold sway to the detriment of public order and justice! An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, so the scripture says, cruelly but justly. A head for a head: so must we interpret the law. The young notary Léon Dupuis and the landholder Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger, a venerable nobleman in the best years of his life, were the victims of this poisoner. Two heads fell: now the blade must fall on the neck of the murderer, so the people of this country do not despair of justice on earth, and whoever hatches murderous plans may know that he will have no more indulgence here on earth than up above in the kingdom of God.”

  La guillotine. In solitude, far from the tricoteuses. [47] What’s there to fear? What can be worse than the hammer and anvil, my cravings and my jealousy, which have pounded my head from above and below until nothing remains? The man drawn and quartered yearns for pleasure while his appendages snap and break off, his skin tears from his trunk, and the four horses pull him apart. He wants to see your lovers, the ones you pleasured until they cried out in joy, sink from their chairs, a cramping right hand clutching their hearts, their traits twisted into death-grimaces, their tanned skin turned waxen. I want them buried without honors, their greenish cadavers thrown into the earth without a coffin, like dead livestock. That is what I want: do it. A man of parts, my good neighbor, the quack! Had he done nothing more than mix up my love-and-death potion, he would deserve the Légion d’Honneur a hundred times over. He has vouchsafed scientific progress, sparing me the search for firearms, which I had no idea how to operate. Praised be those quantities which became quality thanks to the learned investigations Homais advocates. Now things will take their course.

  “The accused may rise. Tout condamné à mort aura la tête tranchée.” [48]

  “It’s done, the balance sheet is as clear as that of an orderly salesman. Gentlemen, I am prepared to pay down to the last sou.”

  “Seek the pardon of His Majesty, Bovary, you still have a little chance.”

  “And I waive the motion for a pardon.”

  Take their course. The market in Argueil, farmers in blue smocks, fat cows herded into the marketplace. Steers with their faces turned toward the pickets. My horse, my good, gentle animal, tears of farewell draining from your beautiful eyes. What can I do? I have to let you go, though my heart breaks no less than if you and your soft mane, which is spread out and falls over your shoulders, were laid in three coffins and lowered into the earth. Adieu, adieu, I blow you kisses, let the farmers snicker, I pay them no mind. Did they love you? Did you carry them patiently on the paths in the meadows and over the hills? No time for negotiating, I have negotiations of my own to conclude. Such-and-such amount, it’s a swindle, but anyway, I’m used to lies and swindling. Just hand over a few francs. Insistent creditors must be satiated, I have to pay the pharmacist what he’s due for his phials, no mixing business with pleasure. Adieu, faithful one, whose eyes are glass and who must be wedged with hard hands into a horse’s coffin. Oh, how dark it is in the chamber of death. The nostrils cold, the hooves still harder than on the country roads, flecks on your forehead, which I used to scratch absentmindedly, also because you liked it, and would dig gently at the ground with your right foreleg. The deal is done, a handshake, a fruit brandy, the horse is yours, farmer, the money is mine, it doesn’t weigh much in my pouch, but it will have to be enough for the band of corpse-fleecers. It’s a scoundrel who gives less than he has.

  So it goes, according to the conception of the man in his hermitage in Croisset. Naturally he runs into the paramour here, who is a buyer and seller of horses and livestock and must find a farmer to clear out the cesspit at la Huchette for the love of God and manure. It is inconceivable that he be overlooked. The tall stature, the flapping Nankeen pants, the dashing, billowy jabot, the broad-brimmed hat, the bearing of one accustomed to giving orders. Viens près de moi, ma tendre petite chatte, ouvre tes jambs. [49] Tender kittens know they must obey, that they want to obey.

  But still, when they meet, he goes pale. The slightly tanned face blanches, the pert moustache tips go slack, the brazen eyes turn nervous and wander elsewhere. The confident voice is lost in stammers. Murmurs about the esteemed eternal beloved, the dreadful incident reported in the press; deepest sympathies, condolences.

  “But could we not, Docteur, have a glass of beer together? May I invite you?”

  “Your Honor, this was no less deliberate than the later murder of Léon Dupuis. The accused knew precisely where Monsieur Boulanger was to be found: in Argueil, where he regularly went on market days. Bovary slyly inveigled the victim with a discussion of animal husbandry and farming, spoke now of this thing and now of that, and when, for a moment, Monsieur Boulanger glanced away, distracted by an especially promising offer of cattle, his companion, with lightning speed, spilled the contents of the phial into his beer. The rest is known to you all: Herr Boulanger, who was thirsty, drank the contents of his glass in one swig, a few witnesses noticed him saying the drink had an unusual taste; no sooner had he uttered these words than he clutched at his head and heart and tumbled from the chair. Charles Bovary, a well-known doctor, spoke of sudden heart failure. And when, as in the case of Léon Dupuis, the authorities summoned a local doctor to certify the death, he ordered an autopsy, which established the presence of a fatal dose of poison.”

  “Thank you. Let’s go in here, though I don’t really feel like drinking.”

  “It will be a very good harvest this year. For the farmers, a hot August is a good sign. The hay’s in from the fields, the vintners in the south are jubilant. And how splendid the beasts look compared with the year before. See those big oxen? I’d like to know how much. . . .”

  Now’s the time, while he’s looking over at the animals. The phial burns in my left hand like fire. His eyes turn back then, but don’t hold my gaze. Flickering, they shift from the oxen to the barman, as though begging for help. He drinks, his face is flushed in deep red, he lurches from his chair, his nostrils quiver, he smells danger. Monsieur Rodolphe is afraid of Charles Bovary.

  The country doctor became fearsome as he stared at him, the little bottle hidden in his left fist. Triumph! The sun of Austerlitz stands high in the heavens and cloaks the rival’s face in purple, and even in panic, in the sundering of his features, twisted in a death-grimace, it remained comely. His purple face, warped and handsome, bent over Emma’s pale flesh, there was no pushing away then, only submission to a thing long yearned for. The countenance of your bliss, Emma, turning your lusty pallor to a lugubrious mirror of death. His nervous hands, slightly quivering, pointed one way and another, anxious as though burrowing through your linens and silks. Hands that are like a part of you to me. How was it when they crumpled the linen without a thought, advanced on your throbbing skin, and stroked your breasts? Hands, strong and at the same time well cared for, seizing, seized, even as they thrash in fear before the avenger’s phial. It is as if I felt them on my body, withered but
still stocky, as if I were Emma’s rotting cadaver, dug out of the earth and obscenely caressed. . . .

  “We stand, Your Honor, Gentlemen of the Jury, before a case in which the crime of double murder is made still more egregious and unpardonable through the addition of necrophilia and homosexual aberration. I demand a closed chamber, for regrettably, what the accused has proposed to reveal here is a danger to public morals. The defendant, infected by his wife’s dissoluteness, which judicial language lacks words to describe, is the most appalling specimen I have ever come across in the long course of my life as a guardian of order and morals. Look at him, how he sits there, his gaze unmoved, at his table at the inn, hatching his plans for murder, necrophilia, and sodomy, le visage blême, serrant dans la main gauche la fiole avec le poison [50]—the palefaced killer!”

  “It is an excellent day at the market. The coins are clinking, all is cheer, and soon, when the deals are done, with each trying to bamboozle the other, the farm folk will set to drinking their cider and schnapps, and God help me, they will grab each other by their scruffy manes in the end, and one will tell his neighbor he’s hoodwinked him, so it goes week after week, believe me, I know the country people; but what can be done, as a landowner, you have to growl and run with the wolves. Hey, barman! Another beer for Monsieur Bovary and me.”

  “Are you unwell, mon cher? You’re so pale. You stare at me as if you were a farmer and I was a head of cattle you hoped to purchase. Was your beer stale or spoiled from the August heat? I myself note a somewhat unpleasant aftertaste. My hands are shaking, though their grip is so steady and they are so sure when shooting. Perhaps we’d better have something stronger, a shot of eau-de-vie, a cognac. Waiter! No beer, better two cognacs for the doctor and—”

  Whirr of voices, whizzing of hands, sweat on my forehead, deathly weariness in my heart. Rodolphe, Léon, beds of hay or cushions, in the far distance a clear, drawn-out cry, a scream, protracted, as though it will never fall silent again; it resonates, mingles with the last twitches of the nerves. Léon, Rodolphe, pieces of myself broken off from Emma’s heart.

  “Cognac? No, thank you. Or yes, it will do me good, anyway at home I have everything I need in the cabinet to restore my strength if weariness should overcome me once more.”

  “Courage, my poor man, to your health and to the honor of Madame’s memory.”

  “Monsieur Rodolphe?”

  “Quoi donc?”

  “I don’t hold it against you. No, I don’t hold it against you any longer. C’est la faute de la fatalité.”

  And then off, retour à Yonville, by shank’s mare, as I once traveled from Rouen to my parents’ house in the village. My poor little horse lies in the grave and its brown locks are spread over its shoulders. Three coffins. There in the dust and the heat, cooled by evaporating sweat, but also hot from the eau-de-vie, so my heart pounds like the fleshless knucklebones of my beloved in her mahogany chamber: onward, toward duty. Things remain as they were and yet should not have been, according to the rights of man and the citizen. The one will drink glass after glass, as he pleases; and the other, in moderation, will submit honorably to his embrace. Landlord and notary, men of the upper class, holders of a good fortune whose nature they are wholly ignorant of. All is drowned in the gentle waves of my lassitude, ardent lust extinguished by cool sweat.

  “Monsieur le Procureur du Roi! It was all a mistake. The gentlemen are alive and well. The one is out frolicking, hunting women and wild game, the other is busy scribbling away on his reams of paper with his cold-footed Léocadie back at home—a woman, God save her, no less frigid than Veuve Dubuc was years ago. Charles Bovary, officier de santé, has done no harm to either, he’s never so much as tried to harm a mouse, he is weeping for his deceased mare, which was solemnly laid in its grave. Sta viator, for you tread on a cherished companion in duty, a lover of oats and hay.”

  “May God mercifully accept the soul of this good horse into His kingdom, and redeem and preserve it from the clutches of the Prince of Darkness. It did what it could in the blessed days when the master was a master and the serf a serf. Praise to God on high!”

  “Let us not withhold praise to the brave steed with its brown locks lying in peace now in the earth. The inexorable progress of mankind will bring us one day to a stage in which not even the mute beasts will be excluded from the all-embracing spirit of humanity. . . .”

  “The country doctor has killed neither man nor beast. This is plain to see, and I plead for his release. To the paramours, he looks comic and a little bit contemptible. Before the law and the court, however, he stands without blame: a man of bourgeois duty, who serves passion and virtue, in accordance with the demands of fatalité. Charles Bovary numquam ridiculus erat. Amen.”

  On foot, the miles and whiles become so long when you have to stop every hundred yards, because the legs will not budge and the mind is distraught. Out of the gravel comes scree, out of the scree come the boulders I must scale. The sun burns mercilessly, passion bénie, the crags cut through the hands and feet, vertu. Glowing hammer from above, scorching anvil below, between them the poor man from whom everything was taken.

  He no longer knows who he is, and in vain scans the pitiless, cloudless sky for what he was. I would like to turn back time. No, Mother, I’ll not marry the widow. What do I care for her money? I would rather become a proper doctor. Mes chers confrères, Messieurs Larivière, Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, Canivet: here is my report on the successful operation, soon the peasant Hippolyte will be shaking a leg.”

  “You mean well, Monsieur Rodolphe, but, as doctor and husband, I cannot permit my wife to go on riding excursions.”

  “Bonjour, mon petit Léon, I need to have an honest word with you. You revere my wife, c’est normal, more than one man grovels at her feet, what can you expect! But you, if I’m not mistaken, have invited her to travel in a fiacre to Rouen and the surrounding countryside. Naturally she declines. This sort of little escapade may be customary in Paris, where morals are looser. But we’re in the provinces here, les moeurs de province are stricter, and I, Docteur Bovary, head of the hospital, must rebuke ideas of this sort. Madame Bovary is no grisette, and whoever takes her for such will face the barrel of my pistol. I say all this in the spirit of friendship.”

  “Rodolphe, Léon, she wants you both, one at a time and together, she likes that. One pleasure her head, the other her feet, and the middle belongs to all three of us, beauty commands this, fate demands it. And you, Homais, see to the pleasure of all four of us, intertwined; Monsieur l’Abbé, bless this exquisite love game. I want it, do it, she likes blows from the whip, too, and her cries of pain are jubilant lust.”

  Temptations. Realities that never became real.

  “Contradictiones in adiecto, [51] my good man, dangers for the mind, enlightenment, humanity. For the gods’ sakes, don’t leave the ground of logic. This cross I wear consigns me to keep watch over deviations of thought.”

  “In God, all contradictions are resolved, everything else is over-refined drivel. It is only from sin that the Lord turns his head away in disgust. On your knees, Bovary!”