Doctor Death (39 page)

She wrote to Doctor Fleischer, but he just answered that he no longer used this method of treatment; it was now considered to be too risky. She sent more letters, attempting to explain that she did not care about the risk, that she was afraid, that he had to help her. In the beginning, he was understanding, but gradually his replies became shorter and shorter and finally her letters came back with a scribbled “Return to sender” on the envelopes.

She tried to explain to Mother Filippa, but the abbess did not understand the extent of her terror. “Illness is not necessarily a punishment from God,” she said. “Everyone can get ill, even the purest. What exactly is this sin that you imagine He wishes to punish you for?”

“Beastly feelings,” she stammered. “Beastly desires.”

“Oh, Imogene. We all have those. If God were to punish us just for feeling and thinking something, He would have plenty to do.”

Imogene was astonished. Mother Filippa was the convent’s most elevated leader, the one who had to be the cleanest, the strongest, the most compassionate. If not even she was free of the beast, then who was?

“Imogene, sickness is not a punishment. Sometimes it just comes to us. If we are lucky, it is a trial from which we can learn. Other times, we must just accept that we humans do not understand everything.”

For a long time Imogene considered what she was supposed to learn from her trial. Arthritis tore at her joints, the headaches
made it hard to think. She tried to stay as far away from Cecile as possible, but the girl could not be avoided. She wanted to help, she claimed. And her eyes. Her soft dark eyes. They followed every movement Imogene made when she taught Cecile’s class, noted every tremble, looked for every sign of weakness. Every time Imogene had to sit down in the middle of a class, or the chalk fell from her bent, arthritic fingers, Cecile was always there, every single time, with the loving concern that she could not brush off.

Including the afternoon that the girl’s true intentions came to light.

“Imo, you are my friend, aren’t you? You care for me. I can tell.”

Imogene had dismissed the class ten minutes early, because she was too dizzy to go on. But Cecile had not gone. She had followed Imogene into the storeroom behind the biology classroom.

“Cecile, stop,” said Imogene with all the authority she could muster. “Go join the others. I am your teacher. We cannot be friends.”

“Yes we can. I will help you. I can make it stop hurting. And you . . .”

“What about me?” asked Imogene, caught against her will.

“You could perhaps tell Sister Beatrice that I have a private tutorial with you tomorrow. After physics. Could you do that?”

So that she had an excuse. So that she could meet Wolf-Emile and give herself over to
that
, down in the wolf pen, while the animals looked on. Imogene could barely contain her disgust. But the girl continued to stand there looking completely innocent. The gaze was still soft and loving, not at all calculating. Not insolent or challenging. A cramp in her abdomen made Imogene gasp for air.

“Imo, Imo. Come on . . .”

“Go away . . .”

“Are you feeling ill? Sweet Imo, let me . . .”

This time she wasn’t even gone. She was still there, still looking out her own eyes, still trapped in her own body, feeling the saliva that dripped down her chin, tasting the blood through the material of the blouse when she bit. Hearing, quite clearly and distinctly, Cecile’s cry of pain, and her voice afterward, light, breathless, lighter and younger than it usually was.

“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter . . . Imo, I will let you. If it helps, I will let you . . .”

There was no one she could talk to. Mother Filippa, the oh, so virtuous Mother Filippa, had taken in a wolf, the old male wolf, because Emile had said it was being harassed by the others. It lay at her feet at mealtimes, it followed her around the convent like a shadow, at night it slept in her room, and who knew . . . who knew what happened behind the closed door? Nausea rose in her throat, and still . . . still she could feel the wolf in her own body every time she thought of it. No help. There was no help to be had. Everything was putrid and unclean, and the beast had penetrated everywhere.

It was her father who saved her. He recognized the signs of the illness and took her to Les Merises, without hesitating, without discussing it with anyone. He did not even allow her to give notice, but merely sent a short note a few days later. And when two of the sisters appeared, full of compassion and questions, he lied and said she was not at home.

The night after the sisters had been there, she had another nightmare about the wolves. She could not stand to be in her bed,
she could not stand the house and the night, the darkness, and the moon. Her father found her the next morning in the chapel, still only in her nightgown and with bare feet, stretched out on the floor in front of the Madonna.

He was angry. At her, at the nuns, at the illness that had returned in spite of everything they had done, everything she had gone through to be free. She had never seen him so angry before. He had shaken her so hard that she had finally told him about her fear of the beast, about what had happened at the convent.

His disgust was as violent as his anger.

“You are not going back,” he said. “Not to that place.”

“I cannot be here, either,” she said. “I cannot stand to be with people anymore. Not even with you. Not until it stops, or I die.”

“Do not say that!”

“Why not? Better a death in the hope of heaven than a life in sin!”

The moment she said it, she knew that was how it had to be—she had to find her salvation somehow. Alone.

He protested for a long time, but for once she was more stubborn than he was. Finally, he helped her to move out to Vabonne’s old hunting cabin, where she was at least certain that the nuns would not find her.

It was the end of September, and the forest around the cabin flamed red against yellow, golden against green. The lake lay like a secret world at her feet when she sat on the veranda and saw the last dragonflies dive toward the surface, greedy, dying, with a hunger that could not be met. Iago lay at her side, the only company she allowed herself beyond her father’s short visits.

She was still awaiting her salvation; she had still not understood
what God was attempting to teach her. She prayed long and often, mostly to Madonna, because the Mother of God seemed to be more understanding and compassionate than the Almighty Himself.

But she was not without work to occupy her. When Doctor Fleischer refused to help her, she had to try to help herself. She had brought her microscope and her travel laboratory, and in those long autumn days full of transformation, she probed and examined and registered every bit of herself, her blood, the skin flakes of her eczema, her body’s temperature and fluids. She even began to compare it with Iago’s blood, skin, tissue, and fluids, which initially he allowed her to do, but later liked less and less, until she finally had to anesthetize him with ether in order to take her samples.

It was under anesthesia that she saw them. They came creeping out of the dog’s nostrils, tiny pale white specks that revealed their spiderlike nature under the microscope—an eight-legged symmetry that related them to scorpions, ticks, and other arachnids.

At that moment she was seized by an attack that pulled her out of the golden September day, out of the hunting cabin’s reality, out of her wrecked body.

All at once she was back in the convent. She even dreamed that she woke up in the small chamber in the teachers’ wing where she had lived six days of the week. She woke up, and for the first time in months felt completely light and unburdened by pain. Happy, she dressed and set out for morning prayers. In the hall in front of her walked two young girls hand in hand, dressed in the gray school uniform.

“Good morning,” she said, and one of them turned around. It was Christine, and she smiled and curtsied briefly. But when the other figure turned her head, it was not a young girl’s profile that appeared but a horrible bubbling mixture of animal teeth, animal
drool, animal bristles, and human features. The drool ran from the distorted lips down across the girl’s chest, and worms and mites poured out of her nostrils and ears. But the grimacing lips formed human words:

“Good morning, Imo.”

Imogene stood as if turned to stone. Other students passed her, curtsied, and hurried on. The lauds bell rang out its last peals.

“Do not to be late, Imogene.” Mother Filippa’s voice sounded behind her. “That sets a poor example.”

But when she turned around, it was not Mother Filippa standing there. It was the wolf. Its eyes were olive green precisely like those of the abbess, and its smile was one no beast ought to have been able to produce.

Suddenly Imogene held a flaming sword in her hands. It stung and burned her palms, but she raised it and swung it at the wolf. The beast stood completely still and did not attempt to evade the stroke of the blade. And the sword cleaved it in two precise halves that fell to the ground like two sides of a cow’s carcass in an abattoir. Mother Filippa was standing in front of her, shining and slightly transparent, and laughed and cried with happiness at the same time.

“Thank you, dear Imogene. Thank you. I am free now. You were not too late!”

And when Mother Filippa’s soul then rose up and vanished, Imogene finally knew what her calling was. Fire must be fought with fire, not just in Imogene’s own body, but in the whole world. She had to find the sword that would do that, the tool that could cleave body and soul, so that animals were purely animals and humans purely human, and not this unclean whorish mixture of one thing and another.

She came to herself much later in frigid, unforgiving darkness. Overwhelmed by weakness, she lacked any strength to get up, turn on the light, make a fire, or even pull a blanket over herself. Iago had lain down next to her, warming her body with his own, but her hands and feet were numb and senseless from the cold.

Sword. Mites.

Mites. Sword.

She slowly began to understand.

VI

March 31–April 16, 1894