The Killing Spirit

by Jay Hopler

  And Dr. Périer—could he trust him? Dr. Périer was always bouncing with optimism, which was fine if you had something minor—you felt fifty percent better, even cured. But Jonathan knew he didn’t have anything minor. He had myelocytic leukemia, characterized by an excess of yellow matter in the bone marrow. In the past five years, he’d had at least four blood transfusions per year. Every time he felt weak, he was supposed to get to his doctor, or to the Fontainebleau hospital, for a transfusion. Dr. Périer had said (and so had a specialist in Paris) that there would come a time when the decline might be swift, when transfusions wouldn’t do the trick any longer. Jonathan had read enough about his ailment to know that himself. No doctor had yet come up with a cure for myelocytic leukemia. On the average, you died after six to twelve years, or even six to eight. Jonathan was entering his sixth year.

  Jonathan set his fork back in the little brick structure, formerly an outside toilet, that served as a tool shed, then walked to his back steps. He paused with one foot on the first step and drew the fresh morning air into his lungs, thinking, How many weeks will I have to enjoy such mornings? He remembered thinking the same thing last spring, however. Buck up, he told himself, he’d known for six years that he might not live to see thirty-five. Jonathan mounted the iron steps with a firm tread, thinking that it was already eight-fifty-two, and that he was due in his shop at nine or a few minutes after.

  Simone had gone off with Georges to the ȣole Maternelle, and the house was empty. Jonathan washed his hands at the sink and made use of the vegetable brush, which Simone would not have approved of, but he left the brush clean. The only other sink was in the bathroom on the top floor. There was no telephone in the house. He’d ring Dr. Périer from his shop the first thing.

  Jonathan walked to the Rue de la Paroisse and turned left, then went on to the Rue des Sablons, which crossed it. In his shop, Jonathan dialed Dr. Périer’s number, which he knew by heart.

  The nurse said the doctor was booked up today, which Jonathan had expected.

  “But this is urgent. It’s something that won’t take long. Just a question, really—but I must see him.”

  “You are feeling weak, M. Trevanny?”

  “Yes, I am,” Jonathan said at once.

  He got an appointment for twelve noon. The hour had a certain doom about it.

  Jonathan was a picture framer. He cut mats and glass, made frames, chose frames from his stock for clients who were undecided, and once in a blue moon, when buying old frames at auctions and from junk dealers, he got a picture that was of some interest with the frame, a picture which he could clean and put in his window and sell. But it wasn’t a lucrative business. He scraped along. Seven years ago he’d had a partner, another Englishman, from Manchester, and they had started an antique shop in Fontainebleau, dealing mainly in junk which they refurbished and sold. This hadn’t paid enough for two, and Roy had pushed off and got a job as a garage mechanic somewhere near Paris. Shortly after that, a Paris doctor had said the same thing that a London doctor had told Jonathan: “You’re inclined to anemia. You’d better have frequent checkups, and it’s best if you don’t do any heavy work.” So from handling armoires and sofas, Jonathan had turned to the lighter work of handling picture frames and glass. Before Jonathan had married Simone, he had told her that he might not live more than another six years, because just at the time he met Simone, he’d had it confirmed by two doctors that his periodic weakness was caused by myelocytic leukemia.

  Now, Jonathan thought as he calmly, very calmly, began his day, Simone might remarry if he died. Simone worked five afternoons a week from two-thirty until six-thirty at a shoe shop in the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, which was within walking distance of their house. She had begun working only in the past year, when Georges had been old enough to be put into the French equivalent of kindergarten. They needed the two hundred francs a week that Simone earned, but Jonathan was irked by the thought that Brezard, her boss, was a bit of a lecher, liked to pinch his employees’ behinds, and doubtless to try his luck in the back room where the stock was. Simone was a married woman, as Brezard well knew, so there was a limit as to how far he could go, Jonathan supposed, but that never stopped his type from trying. Simone was not at all a flirt; she had a curious shyness, in fact, that suggested she thought herself not attractive to men. It was a quality that endeared her to Jonathan. In Jonathan’s opinion, Simone was supercharged with sex appeal, though of the kind that might not be apparent to the average man, and it especially annoyed Jonathan that that swine Brezard must have become aware of Simone’s very different kind of attractiveness and wanted some of it for himself. Not that Simone talked much about Brezard. Once she had mentioned that he tried it on with his women employees—two besides Simone. For an instant that morning, as Jonathan presented a framed watercolor to a client, he imagined Simone, after a discreet interval, succumbing to the odious Brezard, who, after all, was a bachelor and financially better off than Jonathan. Absurd, Jonathan thought. Simone hated his type.

  “Oh, it’s lovely! Excellent!” said the young woman holding the watercolor at arm’s length.

  Jonathan’s long, serious face slowly smiled, as if a small and private sun had come out of clouds and begun to shine within him. She was so genuinely pleased! Jonathan didn’t know her; in fact, she was picking up the picture that an older woman, perhaps her mother, had brought in. The price should have been twenty francs more than he had first estimated, because the framing was not the same kind the older woman had chosen (Jonathan had not had enough in stock), but he didn’t mention this and accepted the eighty francs agreed upon.

  Then Jonathan pushed a broom over his wooden floor, and feather-dusted the three or four pictures in his small front window. His shop was positively shabby, Jonathan thought that morning. No color anywhere, frames of all sizes leaning against unpainted walls, samples of frame wood hanging from the ceiling, a counter with an order book, ruler, pencils. At the back of the shop stood a long wooden table where Jonathan worked with his miter boxes, saws, and glass cutters. Also on the big table were his carefully protected sheets of matboard, a great roll of brown paper, string, wire, pots of glue, and boxes of variously sized nails, and above the table on the walls were racks of knives and hammers. In principle, Jonathan liked the nineteenth-century atmosphere, the lack of commercial frou-frou. He wanted his shop to look as if a good craftsman ran it, and in that he had succeeded, he thought. He never overcharged; he did his work on time, or if he was going to be late, he notified his clients by postcard or a telephone call. People appreciated that, Jonathan had found.

  At eleven-thirty-five, having framed two small pictures and fixed their owners’ names to them, Jonathan washed his hands and face at the cold-water tap in his sink, combed his hair, stood up straight, and tried to brace himself for the worst. Dr. Périer’s office was not far away in the Rue Grande. Jonathan turned his door card to OUVERT at 14:30, locked his front door, and set out.

  Jonathan had to wait in Dr. Périer’s front room with its sickly, dusty rose laurel plant. The plant never flowered; it didn’t die, and never grew, never changed. Jonathan identified himself with the plant. Again and again his eyes were drawn to it, though he tried to think of other things. There were copies of Paris-Match on the oval table, out of date and much thumbed; Jonathan found them more depressing than the laurel plant. Dr. Périer also worked at the big Hôpital de Fontainebleau, Jonathan reminded himself; otherwise it would have seemed an absurdity to entrust one’s life to, to believe a life-or-death diagnosis of, a doctor who worked in such a wretched little place as this looked.

  The nurse came out and beckoned.

  “Well, well, how’s the interesting patient, my most interesting patient?” said Dr. Périer, rubbing his hands, then extending one to Jonathan.

  Jonathan shook his hand. “I feel quite all right, thank you. But what this is about—I mean the tests of two months ago. I understand they are not favorable?”

  Dr. Périer looked bl
ank, and Jonathan watched him intently. Then Dr. Périer smiled, showing yellowish teeth under his carelessly trimmed mustache.

  “What do you mean unfavorable? You saw the results.”

  “But—you know I’m not an expert in understanding them perhaps.”

  “But I explained them to you. Now, what is the matter? You’re feeling tired again?”

  “In fact, no.” Since Jonathan knew the doctor wanted to get away for lunch, he said hastily, “To tell the truth, a friend of mine has learned somewhere that—I’m due for a crisis. Maybe I haven’t long to live. Naturally, I thought this information must have come from you.”

  Dr. Périer shook his head, then laughed, hopped about like a bird, and came to rest with his skinny arms lightly outspread on the top of a glass-enclosed bookcase. “My dear sir—first of all, if it were true, I would not have said it to anybody. That is not ethical. Second, it is not true, as far as I know from the last test. … Do you want another test today? Late this afternoon at the hospital, maybe I—”

  “Not necessarily. What I really wanted to know is—is it true? You wouldn’t just not tell me?” Jonathan said, with a laugh. “Just to make me feel better?”

  “What nonsense! Do you think I’m that kind of a doctor?”

  Yes, Jonathan thought, looking Dr. Périer straight in the eye. And God bless him, maybe, in some cases, but Jonathan thought he deserved the facts; because he was the kind of man who could face the facts. Jonathan bit his underlip. He could go to the lab in Paris, he thought, insist on seeing the specialist Moussu again. Also he might get something out of Simone today at lunchtime.

  Dr. Périer was patting his arm. “Your friend—and I won’t ask who he is!—is either mistaken or not a very nice friend, I think. Now, then, you should tell me when and if you become tired. That is what counts.”

  Twenty minutes later, Jonathan was climbing the front steps of his house, carrying an apple tart and a long loaf of bread. He let himself in with his key and walked down the hall to the kitchen. He smelled frying potatoes, a mouth-watering smell signifying lunch, not dinner, and Simone’s potatoes would be in long slender pieces, not short chunks like the chips in England. Why had he thought of English chips?

  Simone was at the stove, wearing an apron over her dress, wielding a long fork. “Hello, Jon. You’re late.”

  Jonathan put an arm around her and kissed her cheek, then held up the paper box and swung it toward Georges, who was sitting at the table, blond head bent, cutting out parts for a mobile from an empty box of cornflakes.

  “Ah, a cake! What kind?” Georges asked.

  “Apple.” Jonathan set the box on the table.

  They had a small steak each, the delicious fried potatoes, a green salad.

  “Brezard is starting inventory,” Simone said. “The summer stock comes in next week, so he wants to have a sale Friday and Saturday. I might be a little late tonight.”

  She had warmed the apple tart on the asbestos plate. Jonathan waited impatiently for Georges to go in the living room, where a lot of his toys were, or out to the garden.

  When Georges left finally, Jonathan said, “I had a funny letter today from Alan.”

  “Alan? Funny how?”

  “He wrote it just before he went to New York. It seems he’s heard—” Should he show her Alan’s letter? She could read English well enough. Jonathan decided to go on. “He’s heard somewhere that I’m worse, due for a bad crisis—or something. Do you know anything about it?” Jonathan watched her eyes.

  Simone looked genuinely surprised. “Why, no, Jon. How would I hear—except from you?”

  “I spoke with Dr. Périer just now. That’s why I was late. Périer says he doesn’t know of any change in the situation, but you know Périer!” Jonathan smiled, still watching Simone anxiously. “Well, here’s the letter,” he said, pulling it from his back pocket. He translated the paragraph.

  “Mon Dieu! Well, where did he hear it from?”

  “Yes, that’s the question. I’ll write him and ask, don’t you think?” Jonathan smiled again, a more genuine smile. He was sure Simone didn’t know anything about it.

  Jonathan carried a second cup of coffee into the small square living room where Georges was now sprawled on the floor with his cut-outs. Jonathan sat down at the writing desk, which always made him feel like a giant. It was a rather dainty French écritoire, a present from Simone’s family. Jonathan was careful not to put too much weight on the writing shelf. He addressed an airmail letter to Alan McNear at the Hotel New Yorker, began the letter breezily enough, and wrote a second paragraph:

  I don’t know quite what you mean in your letter about the news (about me) which shocked you. I feel all right, but this morning spoke with my doctor here to see if he was giving me the whole story. He disclaims any knowledge of a worse condition. So, dear Alan, what does interest me is where did you hear it? Could you possibly drop me a line soon? It sounds like a misunderstanding, and I’d be delighted to forget it, but I hope you can understand my curiosity as to where you heard it.

  He dropped the letter in a mailbox en route to his shop. It would probably be a week before he heard from Alan.

  That afternoon, Jonathan’s hand was as steady as ever as he pulled his razor knife down the edge of his steel ruler. He thought of his letter, making its progress to Orly airport maybe by this evening, maybe by tomorrow morning. He thought of his age, thirty-four, and of how pitifully little he would have done if he were to die in another couple of months. He’d produced a son, and that was something, but hardly an achievement worthy of special praise. He would not leave Simone very secure. If anything, he had lowered her standard of living slightly. Her father was only a coal merchant, but somehow over the years her family had gathered a few conveniences around them—a car, for instance, and decent furniture. They vacationed in June or July down south in a villa which they rented, and last year they had paid a month’s rent so that Jonathan and Simone could go there with Georges. Jonathan had not done as well as his brother Philip, two years older than himself, though Philip had looked physically weaker and had been a dull, plodding type all his life. Philip was a professor of anthropology at Bristol University—not brilliant, Jonathan was sure, but a good solid man with a solid career, a wife, and two children. Jonathan’s mother, a widow now, had a happy existence with her brother and sister-in-law in Oxfordshire, taking care of the big garden there and doing all the shopping and cooking. Jonathan felt himself the failure of his family, both physically and as to his work. He had first wanted to be an actor. At eighteen he’d gone to a drama school for two years. He didn’t have a bad face for an actor, he thought—not too handsome, with his big nose and wide mouth, but good-looking enough to play romantic roles and heavy enough to play heavier roles in time. What pipedreams! He’d hardly got two walk-on parts in the three years he’d hung around London and Manchester theatres—supporting himself by odd jobs, including one as a veterinary’s assistant. “You take up a lot of space and you’re not even sure of yourself,” a director once said to him. And then, working for an antique dealer in another of his odd jobs, Jonathan had thought he might like the antique business. He had learned all he could from his boss, Andrew Mott. Then the grand move to France with his friend Roy Johnson, who had had enthusiasm, if not much knowledge, about starting an antique shop via the junk trade. Jonathan remembered his dreams of glory and adventure in a new country, France; dreams of freedom, of success. And instead of success, instead of a series of educational mistresses, instead of making friends with bohemians, or with some stratum of French society which Jonathan had imagined existed but perhaps didn’t—instead of all this, Jonathan had continued to limp along, no better off really than when he’d been trying to get jobs as an actor and had supported himself any old way.

  The only successful thing in his whole life was his marriage to Simone, Jonathan thought. The news of his disease had come in the same month he had met Simone Foussadier. He’d begun to feel strangely weak, and had
romantically thought that it might be due to falling in love. But a little extra rest hadn’t shaken the weakness; he had fainted once in a street in Nemours, so he had gone to a doctor—Dr. Périer in Fontainebleau, who had suspected a blood condition and sent him to a specialist in Paris. The specialist, Dr. Moussu, after two days of tests, had confirmed myelocytic leukemia, and said that he might have from six to eight—or, with luck, twelve—years to live. There would be an enlargement of the spleen, which in fact Jonathan already had without having noticed it. Thus Jonathan’s proposal to Simone had been a declaration of love and death in the same awkward speech. It would have been enough to put most young women off, or to have made them say they needed some time to think about it. Simone had said yes, she loved him, too. “It is the love that is important, not the time,” Simone had said. None of the calculation that Jonathan had associated with the French, and with Latins in general. Simone said she had already spoken to her family. And this after they had known each other only two weeks. Jonathan felt himself suddenly in a world more secure than any he had ever known. Love—in a real and not a merely romantic sense, love that he had no control over—had miraculously rescued him. In a way, he felt that it had rescued him from death, but he realized that he meant that love had taken the terror out of death. And here was death six years later, as Dr. Moussu in Paris had predicted. Perhaps. Jonathan didn’t know what to believe.

  He must make another visit to Moussu in Paris, he thought. Three years ago, Jonathan had had a complete change of blood under Dr. Moussu’s supervision in a Paris hospital. The treatment was called Vincainestine, the idea or the hope being that the excess of white with accompanying yellow components would not return to the blood. But the yellow excess had reappeared in about eight months.