Doctor Death (38 page)

After what Constance had said? No, thank you. She was not about to do any such thing. Not even when more marks appeared, one on her upper arm, two on her chest, one behind her right ear. She rose early to bathe in cold water before the others got up, and took care never to show herself uncovered. And she prayed and prayed, so intensely that it was noticed, though no one knew what she was praying for.

For it was the wolf that bit her. The wolf that came to her in the night. Its eyes glittered in the moonlight, its fur soft and prickly at the same time, its tongue coarse and warm. When her headache was at its worst, she could see it. Sometimes only as a shadow and other times large as life in the middle of the room, with wide-open jaws and pricked ears, and claws that clicked against the floor. She usually closed her eyes and prayed. She curled up, pressing her knees against the wall; she pulled the blanket tightly around her like a suit of woolly armor. Nothing helped. Its warm breath made her skin flush; its tongue rasped against the inside of her arm, across the round point of her shoulder, behind her ears, and down across her neck and bosom. She could not keep it away. She could not keep it out.

And one day she collapsed in full daylight, right in the middle of the evening meal, where everyone could see. Veronica provided her with a detailed description afterward. How she had suddenly fallen backward and had lain there shuddering with cramps so that her body danced across the floor, with blood around her mouth because she had bitten her tongue and cheek, and spasms so violent that her rhythmically kicking legs had toppled both the bench and the table.

“Poor Imo,” said Veronica with eyes that shone with equal parts compassion and fascination. “Was it the devil? Did he come to you? Did he come
into
you? Did it hurt?”

If it was the devil’s work, why could he not punish Veronica a little, too? But he did not; she was just as rudely healthy as she had always been, with her shiny hair, her perfect complexion, and her naturally rosy cheeks.

Imogene was no longer able to pretend that nothing was wrong. She was sent to the hospital and examined, first by the sisters and then by the doctors at Saint Bernardine. At first they thought it was a brain infection, but later—when she did not die but in fact got better—they leaned more toward the theory that she had suffered an epileptic attack.

She herself knew exactly what had happened, even though the entire afternoon had become a pitch-black hole in her memory. The wolf had taken her. In front of everyone, in broad daylight, it had overcome her resistance and violated her so deeply that not even the Son of God would be able to forgive her.

When the great Pasteur gave the illness a name, it was only too fitting. Lupus.
Le loup.
What else could it be called?

She suffered for two years. She lost most of her hair, and when it began to grow in again, it was as if it were not really hers. It was lifeless and stiff, like the bristles on an animal—not even the pelt of a wolf but something much less pleasant to touch. Pig bristles, perhaps. Ferrand married the daughter of a landowner from the neighboring town, and shortly thereafter her mother left Les Merises and moved back to her native region.

“All you think about is her!” she had shouted at her husband, so loudly that Imogene could hear it even though she lay in her own room, with the door closed. “Her, that cursed illness, and doctors, doctors, doctors. Throwing good money after bad!”

Two years later Maman died suddenly of a violent stomach
illness, without having spoken another word with her husband or daughter.

Imogene was well aware that it was all her fault.

“Imogene, this is Doctor Fleischer.”

He arrived long after she had finally given up. Long after she had come to believe she was the wolf’s prey forever and would never be free. The Other Doctor. That was how she always thought of him, even though there had been doctors by the dozen before him. He was the Other, the one who was different. Doctor Wilhelm Fleischer was completely bald and no taller than she was. But he had worked with some of the best doctors and researchers in all of Europe—Fehleisen, Koch, Pasteur—and he had even spent two years in the United States. And he had a cure, he said.

“You have probably heard the expression that you must fight fire with fire?” he asked.

Imogene nodded. Yes, she knew it.

“This is almost the same. We will fight one illness with another. Do you also know what bacteria are?”

“I received top marks in both chemistry and biology,” she said a bit indignantly. She was seventeen now and not a child.

“Excellent, then you will understand my explanation better.”

He described how he would take a bit of infected tissue and skin from a person suffering from erysipelas—“You may know it better as Saint Anthony’s fire”—and place it in a mixture of gelatin and serum, so that the Saint Anthony’s fire bacteria multiplied vigorously for a few days. Afterward he would inoculate her with this bacteria. She would become ill . . .

“Very ill. The sicker you become, the better it works!” he said. “High fever, violent headache, skin infections across large parts of
your body. You must be brave, but I promise you, once you get a fever, it will help. That is the fire we are going to use to drive out the wolf!”

“Is this not too dangerous?” asked Papa. “With such a high fever, and given that Imogene is already weak . . .”

“There is a risk,” said Doctor Fleischer. “But it must be weighed against the chance of a complete cure.”

Imogene looked at the small, bald doctor with a calm gaze, and she understood. Fully. She felt how right it was—that the fever fire would burn and cleanse her, exactly as purgatory purified the sinful souls who would otherwise be lost.

“Yes,” she said. “Do it. Fire with fire.”

They measured her fever at forty-one Celsius at its worst. None of what the wolf had done to her had been half as painful. But purgatory must hurt, she whispered to herself and allowed them to tie her wrists to the bedsides so she could not tear and scratch the infection. It felt as if her skin was burning off, but when she looked down her front, it was still there, just scalded and swollen and full of pus. Her dreams were full of fire. She fought for every breath she took.

But at last the fever fell. The fire burned out and took the wolf with it.

“There, you see,” said Doctor Fleischer to her father the day she was examined by him for the last time. “The power of nature is incredible.”

“I think we must thank the Lord,” said her father. “And you and your bacteria, Doctor.”

For five years she was well, and she believed God had forgiven her. She slept peacefully at night and did not need to bar her door and
her mind against that which wanted to get in. The fever had been her test, and she had come through it, purified and clean.

That is what she believed. Until the day Mother Filippa sent her down to the wolf stables with a message for Emile, and she found him together with Cecile.

She still did not like visiting the wolf stables very much. She could not free her soul from a final shudder of horror when she saw the gray shadows, the pale eyes, the dark gaping jaws. Luckily all the wolves were outside, she observed. But Emile was not in the little room that served as his home.

She considered turning back with the excuse that she could not find him. But then she heard the sound. It came from the wolf pen, and it sounded as if someone was moaning with pain. She feared that he had been hurt, perhaps had even been attacked by the wolves, and she grabbed a hayfork to protect herself if necessary. When she opened the gate, she saw the wolves at once. It was not the whole pack, just the old pack leader and three of the females. They stood completely still and were staring rigidly at something in the elder bushes, and only one of them turned its head when she came out.

At first she thought that Cecile was merely sitting on his lap, which, of course, was unsuitable enough. But then she realized that the skirt of the school uniform was pushed all the way up to Cecile’s waist. That her lower body was bared. And what she was sitting on, what she was raising and lowering herself over in a smooth, slippery rhythm, was not so much his lap as his erect member.

Although they were both facing her, neither of them saw her. Emile’s cheek rested on the girl’s shoulder and his face was turned
away. Cecile’s eyes were closed. She had both hands pressed against her own thighs, and her fingers glistened wetly. Imogene stood paralyzed for a moment, as motionless as the observing wolves. Then she threw down the hayfork and fled.

She did not say anything, did not go to Mother Filippa, as she should have. Instead she waited until the next time she had a tutorial with Cecile to bring it up.

If she had expected remorse, if she had expected shame, then she was disappointed. Cecile listened to her without lowering her eyes. She looked attentively at Imogene with soft, dark eyes, and then she took her hand.

“Poor Imo,” she said. “Were you very afraid of the wolves?”

“Let me go.”

If only she had not touched me, Imogene thought later. But she did. With her unclean hand, the hand Imogene had seen shining wetly, pressed against her penetrated sex.

The headache hit her like a hard, flat blow to the temples. She heard Cecile’s voice through a crackling blanket of noise, distorted and barely recognizable.

“Immmmmmmmo. Whaaaat issss wronnnng?”

She disappeared. And when she returned, she was lying with her head in Cecile’s lap and a pleat of the skirt’s woolly fabric had made a reddened furrow on her cheek.

“I did not dare to leave you,” said Cecile. “Imo? Are you feeling better now?”

She still refused to believe it. She had gone through purgatory, she was clean now. It could not be true. But then she saw the damp stains of spittle on Cecile’s white blouse, and the pale red blotches where the skin had broken and bled.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Cecile. “I know you cannot help it. I won’t tell anyone.”

Then she knew. She could feel it everywhere in her body, from
the pulsing temples to the heaviness in her thighs, the burning skin, the odd singing that constantly whined in her ears.

The wolf had returned. And it was stronger than ever.