I turned my head in order not to stare and instead caught my father’s gaze.
“It is an entirely involuntary and uncontrollable reaction,” he said. “You have to consider it simply a symptom.”
The heat washed up into my cheeks.
“Of course,” I said firmly, and felt hopelessly unprofessional.
Throughout the night the sisters kept vigil at Mother Filippa’s bier in the convent chapel, while I sat next to the person she had considered her adopted son. Papa, who like the Commissioner had had the previous night interrupted by the unfortunate kitchen maid, lay in the room next door, catching a bit of much-needed sleep. I had strict orders to wake him up if Oblonski’s breathing, pulse, temperature, or color changed significantly.
This was an unusual duty for me. Most of my father’s living patients were admitted to the Saint Bernardine Hospital and thus in the sisters’ care, and the dead did not require watching. Toward morning I must have dozed off a bit because I had the dizzy sensation of waking up and being in the process of sliding down from the chair on which I had been sitting.
His breathing was different, but it was hard to determine whether it was worse or better. A bit more rapid, yet at the same time less congested. Then I caught a liquid shimmer under the half-closed eyelids and understood that the change was caused by the patient being conscious.
“My name is Madeleine,” I said. “I am here to take care of you.”
Why did I immediately feel this need to console and soothe? Was it a legacy Mother Filippa had managed to pass on to me? Perhaps it was because I had seen the newspaper page she had hidden in her drawer for seven years and thus knew precisely how inhumanely people could behave toward someone like him.
He lay completely still and looked at me through his eyelashes. He did not say anything, but after a few seconds he placed his free hand discreetly over the erection bump and pressed it against his thighs in an attempt to make it less visible. Why that gesture seemed so heartbreaking that it came close to making me cry, I did not completely understand.
“Are you thirsty?” I asked. “Does it hurt? I can get my father. He is a doctor.”
He did not answer and did not in any way show that he had understood me. His eyes closed again, but I did not think he was sleeping. It was merely the only way he could hide.
I let him do so. In this way we remained, silently next to one another in the faint glowing circle of the lamp, and waited for it to be morning.
Emile Oblonski did not resist when my father pushed the thick wax plate into his mouth and made him bite down on it with a light pressure against his chin. He just seemed confused yet eager to do what was asked. He still had not said a single word, but his eyes followed our every move, as if he constantly had to make sure that we did not want to hit him.
I mixed plaster powder with water and poured it carefully into the tooth print. In this way we would soon have a model of Emile’s teeth that could be compared to the bite marks on Mother Filippa’s body.
“Has anyone told him that Mother Filippa has died?” I quietly asked my father while we waited for the plaster to set.
“Not that I know of,” he said, and tried to scratch himself under his own plaster cast. “Of course one cannot rule out that some of the proud hunters may have run their mouths.”
“But . . . shouldn’t he be informed?”
“You assume that he does not already know because he didn’t kill her himself.”
Papa was right. I did. And I had no cause for that assumption.
Still I insisted. “She considered him her adopted son. And if he is innocent . . .”
“If he is innocent, you will ruin a great deal for him by giving him that kind of information before Marot has questioned him,” said my father sternly. “The more you tell him about the crime, the harder it will be for him to appear ignorant and unimplicated.”
The questioning. It was of course necessary and unavoidable, but when I looked at the poor battered human being lying curled up in the hospital bed, trying to hide behind his closed eyes . . . I could barely stand the thought.
“Go home, Maddie. You need to sleep.”
“I can do that here.”
He looked at me for a few seconds. He needed a haircut, I noticed distractedly, it was starting to curl at the ends, which did not suit him.
“I will have Marot find a carriage,” he said.
I wanted to protest. I did not want to be packed up and sent home as if I were a fretting child; I wanted to know what was happening.
“You need me here,” I said.
“No, Maddie, I do not. Go home and sleep.”
The house in Carmelite Street did not feel homey or safe; it closed around me like a shell that I would have preferred to be without. The air was stale, the sound of the mantel clock in the salon earsplittingly loud. My stomach rumbled with hunger and a sense of injustice. I knew why my father had sent me home. It was not because he did not need me, though he could probably manage the rest of the work with the assistance of the Commissioner and the nuns. It was because I had defended Emile, because I had revealed that my feelings were biased. But he was not as impartial and objective as he believed himself to be. He also was working on certain assumptions that did not all have a basis in cold, objective facts.
I ate a small handful of raisins but could do nothing to ameliorate that other feeling of discomfort. Finally I went upstairs and tried to sleep for a few hours. I was only partly successful. My semiwakeful thoughts continued to circle around Emile, and when I was woken up completely and suddenly, it was with an unreleased and shameful feeling in my entire body.
Elise Vogler was knocking on my door.
“Maddie, you have a visitor.”
We had played together as children even though I was five years older than she. When we were alone, I saw no reason to insist on “Mademoiselle” and other stupid formalities.
“Who?”
“The professor from Heidelberg.”
I sat up with a jolt.
“What time is it?”
“Almost twelve thirty.”
“Good God, Elise, help. Offer him a glass of sherry or something. Say I will be down in a moment.”
There was no time for my so-called health corset and no Elise to help me with it in any case. I pulled on an old bodice belt that I could manage myself, and perforce had to grab a loose blouse with a ruffled front and a gray skirt from my school days. I rolled up my night braid, stuck a few hairpins in it, and shook my head quickly to make sure it was fairly firmly in place. Damn the man. Had he never heard of announced visits?
The air in the salon was musty and somehow off. It had been neither aired nor dusted yesterday, I guessed, because my father and I had both been away.
The man waiting on the edge of the chair I thought of as the Commissioner’s was not at ease, either.
“Madeleine,” he said the moment he saw me. And that alone told me something was wrong; where was the gallant hand kiss, the usual courteous urbanity? He looked as if he had slept as little as I had.
“Professor. Elise will have told you that my father is not at home?”
“Yes.”
No more than that. What was wrong with the man?
“More sherry?” I asked, because I could see he had already emptied his glass.
“No.”
He was being decidedly impolite. I remained standing, somewhat at a loss, and did not know what to do with this person who was staring at me with a look that resembled that of a condemned prisoner. Perhaps I should not be alone with him?
“Madeleine, I need to ask you . . . Will you marry me?”
Expecting anything but that, an astonished “Why?” shot out of me.
“I . . . I have the greatest respect and admiration for you,” he said. “If you would do me the honor . . . no scientist could have a better wife. And I for my part would do everything to ensure that your intelligence receives the education it deserves. A woman like you ought t
o study at the country’s highest centers of learning. Why aren’t you already at the Sorbonne? They accept women.”
The Sorbonne. That name, to me, had exactly the same kind of ring as Jerusalem probably had for a priest or a nun. But how could I leave my father? He had no one else. And where would we get the money?
“That is unfortunately not possible,” I said.
“What? The Sorbonne—or marrying me?”
“I thought you were already married . . .”
“Me? Why did you think that?”
“I assumed . . . in your position.”
“You were wrong. And you have not answered my question.”
“No,” I said. “I can’t.”
He looked completely helpless, but I did not understand why. Something was hidden under the surface, but it was not anything as simple and straightforward as the erection Emile Oblonski had tried to repress. I had previously noted the intense attention with which the professor observed me in certain situations, but if it had been head-over-heels love or simply physical desire, then why this odd way of presenting his errand? I need to ask you. As if he would really prefer not to. And still it was clear that he sincerely hoped I would say yes.
“Why is it suddenly so urgent for you to have a wife?” I asked.
He got up. I unconsciously took a step backward, and he held his hands up in an odd disarming gesture, as if he were calming a frightened horse. “It is not just ‘a wife’ I want,” he protested. “It is you. Yes, I admit that it would be convenient for me to be married. As you said yourself, it is expected of a man in my position, and there is a position at the Sorbonne that I would like to apply for. But that is not the only reason. And you . . . you also need a husband, a marriage that will not limit you and trap you in mediocrity . . .” The last he said with a passion that had otherwise been markedly absent in his odd proposal. “I believe I know you well enough to realize that you are not a woman taken in by flowers and banalities, so I have made my suggestion in rational terms. But that should not lead you to believe that I do not have strong feelings for you.”
Would I have taken him seriously if he had got down on one knee and waved a bouquet of pink roses at me? No, I did not think so. And there were elements of the “offer” that were definitely tempting. Especially the part about allowing me to develop my intellect. Why, then, was I feeling insulted and belittled in spite of the fact that he had offered me what Madame Aubrey in her commencement speech had called “the highest honor a man can show a woman”?
I would soon be twenty-one. Many would be of the opinion that marriage was long overdue.
Then I remembered another scene—the terrified woman in labor and her animal-like bellows, and the empty blank gaze. Married. Impregnated. Conquered by biology.
“I don’t think I am ready to be married,” I said. “And if I am to be totally honest, I do not know if I ever will be. There is so much more I want to be than just . . . a wife.”
He nodded and actually looked as if he understood.
“I am willing to take that chance,” he said. “If we can just announce the engagement, you may decide when the wedding will be. Or if it will be. I think you will be convinced in time, but if I am wrong, I promise you that we will part without bitterness.”
An engagement. It sounded less categorical and monumental than a marriage. An engagement could be long, several years, if necessary. During all that time I would have a practical shield against the courting behavior of other males. And I knew how much it would mean to my father and the concerns he had on my behalf. It would be living proof that he had not ruined my chances of a respectable marriage with his unorthodox way of raising me.
“I will think about it,” I said.
His face changed entirely. It was as if he lit up from the inside, and at that moment I felt that he perhaps might in fact have feelings for me and not just have a rational need for a wife.
“And does that mean you are planning to say yes?” he said with a smile that contained at least some of the gallant charmer I had met that day in Heidelberg. “Once you have finished thinking . . .” Damn him. I could feel a tugging at the corner of my mouth, but I was not going to smile.
“It is a theoretical possibility,” I said pointedly.
He came close to me for the first time and placed a hand on either side of my neck. His palms were warm and a bit damp, and I could smell the precise mixture of cologne and formaldehyde that I was beginning to associate with him. Goodness, was he planning to kiss me? It would, of course, be not entirely unnatural, given the circumstances, yet I had not given him a “yes.” At the most a “perhaps.”
But yes, that was what he was planning. It was a bit abrupt and choppy, so that my upper lip made unexpected contact with his front teeth and later swelled up as if he had hit me. Nor was I entirely sure what I thought about the tongue that hastily slid across mine, probably resulting in a not insignificant transference of microorganisms. What my body felt about the rest of him, however, was disturbingly unequivocal. Yes, please, it begged, with an intensity that was not all that different from Cecile Montaine’s. Yes. Now. Come to me.
Did he know what he was doing to me? Did he know that I stood there feeling certain muscles contract, certain physical processes start up? Oh, God. The answer to Rodolphe Descartier’s question had suddenly become quite clear. Yes. I was like that. True, I did not have the courage to unbutton the man’s pants as Cecile had supposedly done, but had he pushed me down on the chaise longue and performed the coitus then and there, my body would have been altogether ready to receive him.
He did not. He let his hands rest around my waist a moment, then he let go of me completely. I was left with the sensation of having been betrayed by the body I had believed myself to be the mistress of. Deep in my abdomen there was still a muscle that trembled faintly and sent a quivering warmth both down and up. Married, impregnated, conquered . . . I had made my decision not to end up like that. Damn the man, and damn biology. Was it really so easy for it to topple the intellect?
“I have to speak with your father,” he said. “Where is he?”
“At the convent,” I said, attempting to collect the shreds of my dignity and my good breeding around me. “There was a death . . .”
“Lung abscesses?” His gaze became scientifically focused.
“No. It does not look as if it has anything directly to do with the mites.”
I told him about the circumstances of Mother Filippa’s death.
“And now they think that this Oblonski is responsible? What is his motive supposed to be?”
“I do not think they believe he needs a motive. It is enough that he is who he is.”
“Has he been violent before?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“If it is him, then something must have happened that has brought on this change in behavior.”
“Yes.”
“But you do not believe it is him?”
“I did not say that.”
“No. But I can see it on your face.”
If he could see that, perhaps there were other things he could see as well. I half turned so that I was no longer facing him directly.
“The most peculiar thing may be that he did not have any sign whatsoever of mite infection,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “That is very peculiar.”
My father came home half an hour later. You could see his exhaustion in the way he handled the crutch and in the shadows on his face. But he lit up when he saw the professor.
“August,” he said and held out his hand. “It is so good to see you.”
“Albert,” said the professor and shook his hand warmly. The thought occurred to me just then that it was a bit peculiar that the two of them had a less formal and more openly cordial rapport than the professor had with me, the woman he wished to marry. Perhaps one of these days we might progress to a mutual first-name basis?
“I brought a few copies of The Journal of Parasitology
for you,” said the professor to my father, who had collapsed gratefully onto the chaise longue. “Hot off the press!” He opened his briefcase and gave one copy to my father and another to me.
I peeled back the buff-colored cardboard cover and paged through it eagerly. And there, in black on white, was the article “by Albert Karno, MD, and Professor August Dreyfuss, Forchhammer Institute” about our Pneumonyssus variant, with an addition written by the professor about its ability to transfer an abscess-forming bacterium—all of it illustrated with a quarter-page drawing of the mite executed by M. Karno. That is what it said—“drawings by M. Karno.” I could feel my smile growing, a foolishly vain reaction in the midst of much more serious events, but all the same, I was happy.
“Wonderful!” said my father, looking decidedly cheerful. “Wonderful, August!”
“And then I have a request,” said the professor.
“Ask away,” said my father.
“You see, today I have asked Madeleine if we might become engaged to be married.”
My father was caught by surprise—at least as much as I had been, I think. He was still sitting with The Journal of Parasitology in his hands, peering at us across the top of a page that announced a breakthrough in the treatment of intestinal worms in cows.
“Madeleine! Is it true?”
“She has almost said yes,” said the professor with a teasing smile.
“Dear friend! I . . . I must say . . .”
“So we have your permission—once I manage to convince Madeleine to give me a date?”
My father cleared his throat. “Dear August. Dear Madeleine. Nothing could make me happier.”
So far, so good. But would it also make me happy? I looked from one smiling man to the other, and I still had my doubts.
“I am afraid it really is Oblonski,” said my father as he sipped his Gewürztraminer. “They caught him near a hunting cabin where he had apparently been living for weeks. Perhaps that was also where Cecile Montaine stayed during the weeks she was gone.”