Doctor Death (8 page)

The patient was a boy of twelve or thirteen, and the focus of the operation was his left knee. Even from my elevated perch I could see that it was swollen and discolored, but naturally I was not in a position to determine why. Luckily Doctor Lanier was aware of his audience and began to explain, with a certain dramatic pathos.

“Tumore albus, gentlemen,” he announced. “A source of intolerable pain for the sufferer. I have heard it described as having glowing hot nails pounded through the joint. The patient cannot walk, and even sitting down, the torment is difficult to endure.”

The boy was not yet anesthetized. He was following Lanier’s presentation with intense, almost hypnotic attention, and even
from a distance the fear in his eyes was unmistakable. I hoped they would soon produce the ether mask.

“The condition is caused by osteoarticular tuberculosis, and it is irreversible. We can’t return the joint’s original health and painless mobility. But we can, gentlemen, ease the pain and restore the patient’s ability to walk with this new technique, pioneered by my honorable colleague Eduard Albert in Vienna. By fixing the joint with these surgical screws and transplanting tissue from the healthy part of the tibia, we can provoke a fusion of the femur and tibia that will leave the patient with a painless and usable extremity, though the leg will naturally be stiff.” He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder, but in spite of the gesture he was in fact still speaking to the hall. “In a month, my boy, you will be able to walk again!”

The boy looked like a paralyzed animal. Only his eyes moved. He was clearly trying to control himself, but although he did not make a sound, tears were trickling down the sides of his face, staining the thin white pillow under his head.

“The procedure is called arthrodesis, and this is only the third time it has been attempted in France,” announced Lanier. “As my honored colleagues can probably imagine, an antiseptic regimen is critical for a successful result. Everything must be sterile. All linens and all instruments have been boiled, but since we can’t boil the patient”—he paused dramatically so that the audience could politely offer a muted laugh—“we must use Lister’s protocol and spray with carbolic acid, just as I am now washing my hands in a carbolic acid solution. Bacteria are the enemy, gentlemen, and they are everywhere in the air around us. Caution is critical! A good surgeon must be able to see them with the inner vision of his intelligence, just as we see flies and other polluting insects with our actual eyes. Do not for a moment let down your guard, it can cost your patient his life!”

This was more than the boy could take. He looked around wildly as if he expected “polluting insects” to attack him, and a thin high-pitched sobbing escaped him. It seemed as if Lanier only now sensed the child’s fear. He placed his gloved, carbolic-moistened hand on his shoulder and said something so quietly that I couldn’t hear the words. The boy stopped whimpering. It was hard to tell if he was really calmer, but now they finally brought the ether pump, and a few minutes later the anesthetic took its effect.

I let go of the breath I unknowingly had been holding. Ether was undoubtedly one of science’s greatest gifts to the surgical patient. But it was a blessing for the surgeon and his assistants, too, who no longer needed to immobilize a screaming, half-crazed human being while they operated.

The operation began. I leaned out as far as I dared over the balcony railing, but what I could see was limited. Mostly I had to be content with Lanier’s running commentary, which I carefully noted in my little notebook.

Just as Lanier was transplanting the healthy tissue, I heard a noisy throat clearing behind me. It was one of the students who for reasons best known to himself had elected to leave the pack and join me instead.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but are you Mademoiselle Karno?”

“Yes,” I said, without taking my eyes off the procedure.

“I thought so,” he said.

He remained at my side even though I ignored him. It was extremely irritating, but there was nothing I could do about it short of leaving myself. Not until the patient was carried away and the quiet hissing of the carbolic pump had ceased did I leave him and the rest of the students to hurry down the narrow staircase and across the room to Doctor Lanier. He was in the middle of an indignant discussion with a white-haired gentleman who had
kept his gray overcoat on in spite of the humid heat in the room.

“Bacteria exist,” insisted Lanier. “They can be observed and described by anyone who has a microscope!”

“My good man, please do not speak to me as though I were dim-witted! Of course they exist; I don’t doubt that. I am just asking how you deduce that it is the bacteria, rather than the air’s miasma, that cause infections? Where is the proof that will overturn the classic science of medicine and throw Hippocrates from his throne? It is lacking, sir. Lacking!”

Lanier saw me and lit up in a way that was unlikely to have anything to do with me specifically.

“Excuse me,” he said firmly. “I have an appointment with this young lady. We must resume the discussion another time. Perhaps if you could in the meantime study Pasteur’s simple experiments with the swan-neck flask . . .”

He didn’t introduce me to the man in the gray coat but grabbed my elbow and led me quickly from the operating theater.

“Save me, dear Madeleine, from fossils and their ossified worldview. Miasma! Ffffh. This is a bright new era, doesn’t he see that?” The question was apparently rhetorical, and he continued without leaving room for an answer. “How can I help you? How is your father?”

“Much better,” I said. “The Mathijsen bandages have made a huge difference.”

“Good, I expected they would. And get him off the laudanum as quickly as possible. I wish I could offer him an anodyne that was less addictive.”

“He is aware of the dangers. That is not why he sent me.”

“I see. So how can I help you?”

I told him about the corpse that had disappeared and Inspector Marot’s theory. “Mademoiselle!” he said. “Saint Bernardine is not in the business of stealing corpses!”

“Of course not,” I said soothingly. “But who knows if the hospital’s . . . purveyors . . . have fewer scruples? Would you please ask around? My father and the Commissioner are not interested in
how
the corpse has come into the hospital’s possession . . .”

“It is not—”

“But
if
it were to be found here, they would naturally wish to see the good Father Abigore’s remains returned. Here, I have copies of my father’s detailed description. Would you be so kind as to circulate it among the hospital’s personnel? Especially among the students, perhaps? Say that we are offering a reward that will fully cover the cost of obtaining another corpse.”

Lanier looked at me with something that seemed close to loathing.

“I have the greatest respect for your father, Madeleine, and I understand that it can be difficult to raise a daughter without the help of a wife. But this . . . the way he
uses
you. It is
unseemly.
”

The force of his words was so violent that I blinked. I simply did not understand the depth of his outrage. Had he not just stood there talking of a new era? But certain ossified worldviews were apparently still unshakable.

“Everything I do for my father I do freely,” I said, with the hollow sensation of speaking to deaf ears. “I am just happy I can be of assistance.”

Lanier sighed. “That is precisely what is wrong,” he said. “He abuses your praiseworthy loyalty, but you can’t tell me that it does not offend your female nature when he forces you to be a witness to all . . . this.” He took the description of the corpse and shook it in the air between us as if it were a papal ban.

“In no way,” I said, but it was pointless. I wondered what he would have said if I had shown him the detailed notes I had taken during the operation that I had been “forced” to observe. “Will you make inquiries about the missing corpse?”

He was about to angrily refuse. I could see it. But at that moment inspiration struck and I knew how to convince him. I blinked rapidly a few times to stimulate the tear ducts. Then I placed a pleading hand on his arm.

“Doctor Lanier, I do hope that you can help us. The poor man was a priest, a pious man of faith. If we don’t get him back, his poor soulless body will never rest in consecrated ground. The thought torments me, can’t you see that?”

He stared at me. “Oh . . . ,” he said. “Yes. That . . . I am sorry, that was insensitive of me. I shall do what I can, of course.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said, and gave his arm a hopeful squeeze. “That would make me feel so much better.”

When I got home, the house was in an uproar. Madame Vogler was racing around with a broom and a dustpan all the while shouting contradictory orders to Elise.

“And make sure to buy plenty of petits fours. And get out the nice sherry glasses; they must be washed and polished. And flowers. We must have flowers. See if you can get some white lilies. No, wait. Cherry branches! Cherry branches in the Japanese style, that will be perfect for this time of year . . .”

She stopped when she saw me. Her cheeks were flushed, and her pale blond hair was frizzy with humidity and in the process of escaping the tidy chignon she normally arranged it in.

“My goodness,” I said. “What has happened?”

“A professor is coming!” said Madame Vogler. “All the way from Heidelberg!” And then she hurried on, in a cloud of soap vapors and perspiration. Elise headed out the door without as much as saying hello or goodbye and raced down the street while I stood alone in our narrow hall and felt my own pulse rise. Heidelberg.
It could only be Professor Dreyfuss, who apparently had decided to seek me out—or at least my father, just as he had said he would. There must be news about the mite!

Professor Dreyfuss arrived half an hour later. We could hear him a mile off, partly because of the engine noise from the automobile in which he traveled, but also because of the uproar and shouting from the children on the street. Such a thing had never been seen in our neighborhood—as far as I knew there were only two in all of Varbourg.

The professor parked in front of our door and stepped out. I had time, just, to draw back from the window when he looked up, so I don’t think I was seen staring in the same openmouthed wonder as the rest of Carmelite Street. Elise ran down to let him in, in a freshly ironed apron and with her hair braided so tightly that her eyes were practically turned to slits.

He looked only a little less eccentric today, in a long khaki-colored duster and knickerbockers, along with a leather helmet with goggles, which he handed to a somewhat bewildered Elise, who was not quite sure how one handled such things.

“Mademoiselle Karno,” he said, and kissed my hand just like last time.

“Professor,” I said. “You have driven all the way from Heidelberg in that?”

“Not all the way,” he said. “From the family’s country house near Heeringen. A little more than eighty kilometers.” He looked proud.

“Perhaps you should drive the car into the neighbor’s courtyard? A machine like that is a great temptation for the street’s children.”

“I paid off two of the most scary-looking,” he said. “I gave them permission to sit in the car and promised them a drive later if they made sure that no one else touched it.”

That sounded to me like a direct invitation to bloodshed, but the chosen were no doubt ready to fight to the last breath for the privilege he had set before them, so presumably his divide-and-conquer tactic meant that the automobile would make it through the battle unscathed. In any case, there was nothing more I could say without being impolite.

My father was still forced to spend most of his time in the salon, but in honor of the professor’s visit he had insisted on being helped onto the chaise longue so he did not look like a “damned invalid.”

Professor Dreyfuss greeted him with an eagerness and a respect that warmed my filial heart.

“I have read your article about the connection between cotton dust and weaver’s cough,” he said, and shook my father’s hand enthusiastically with both of his. “Pathbreaking!”