The Eternal Adam and other stories (29 page)

Then, as I turned my back on the theatre,
on the corner of the Rue des Corps-nuds-sans-tête, a dazzling emporium met my
eyes. Shop-front in carved wood, Venetian glass protecting a splendid
window-display, expensive trinkets in copper or enamel, tapestry, porcelain
which looked quite modern, although it was exhibited there like the products of
the most venerable antiquity. This store was a real museum, with a Flemish
cleanness, without a single spider’s web in its windows, without a single grain
of dust on its floor. Along the façade, on a plate of black marble, in lapidary
letters, extended the name of a famous second-hand shopkeeper of Amiens, a name
quite inconsistent with his usual line of commerce, which consists of selling
broken flower-pots!

A few symptoms of madness began to arise in
my brain. I could not bear to see more of this. I took to flight. I went across
the Place St Denis. It was ornamented with two dazzling fountains, and its
age-old trees threw their shadows on a plaque green with the patina of time.

I rushed up the Boulevard St Michel. I
glanced at the clock on the station. It was only three-quarters of an hour
slow. Progress, eh! And I dashed like an avalanche into the Rue de Noyon.

There were two buildings that I didn’t
know, that I couldn’t recognise. On one side I could see the home of the
Industrial Society, with its buildings already old, hurling out through a tall
chimney steam which was no doubt driving the mechanical compositors dreamed of
by one of our wise colleagues. On the other side rose the Post Office, a superb
building which contrasted strangely with the damp dark shop where, last night.
I had succeeded in stuffing a letter through one of those narrow windows so
likely to give one a crick in the neck.

This was a last blow directed against my
poor brain! I made off up the Rue St Denis, and past the Palais de Justice.
Incredible – it was completely finished, but the Court of Appeal was still
being held amidst the scaffolding.

I reached the Place St Michel. Peter the
Hermit was still there, calling us to some new crusade! I threw a sideways
glance at the cathedral... The bell tower on the left wing had been repaired,
and the cross on the tall spire, at one time bent by the western gales, stood
up with the rectitude of a lightning conductor... I hurried on to the open
space before the cathedral. It was no longer a narrow blind alley between
squalid hovels but a large square, well laid out, surrounded by fine houses,
which allowed it to show at its best that superb specimen of the
thirteenth-century Gothic art.

I pinched myself hard enough to draw blood!
A cry of pain escaped my lips to prove that I was still awake. I looked in my
pocket-book, to verify the name on my visiting cards. It was my own! So I was
really myself, and not a gentleman who’d come direct from Honolulu to fall
right into the capital of Picardy?

‘Let’s see,’ I told myself. ‘I mustn’t lose
my head! Either Amiens has changed greatly since I was here last, or I’m not in
Amiens! Go along with you!... What about the burst pipe in the Place Périgord?
– So the Somme is only a couple of steps away, and I’ll go... The Somme! But if
someone told me that it flows nowadays into the Mediterranean or the North Sea,
I shouldn’t have the right to be surprised!’

At that moment I felt a hand laid on my
shoulder. My first idea was that I’d been recaptured by my keepers. No! I
realised it was a friendly grasp.

I turned round.

‘Well, good morning, my dear patient,’ came
the affectionate voice of a portly gentleman, with a round smiling face. He was
dressed in white, and I’d never seen him before.

‘Well, sir, to whom do I have the honour of
speaking?’ I asked, determined to make an end of it.

‘What, you don’t recognise your own
doctor?’

‘My doctor was Dr Lenoel,’ I replied, ‘and
I... ‘

‘Lenoel!’ exclaimed the man in white.
‘Really, my dear patient, have you gone mad?’

‘If I haven’t, sir, you have,’ I replied.
‘So you can decide which it is!’

I must have been honest to let him choose!

He looked at me attentively. ‘Urn,’ he
said, his cheerful face clouding over. ‘You don’t seem too well. But, never
mind, never mind. I’ve the same interest as yourself in keeping you healthy!
It’s no longer as things were in the time of Dr Lenoel and his contemporaries,
worthy physicians to be sure... But we’ve made progress since then!’

‘Oh!’ I replied. ‘You’ve made progress...
So now you heal your sick?’

‘Our sick! Have we had any sick since
France adopted the Chinese system! Now it’s just as if you were in China. ‘

‘In China! That wouldn’t much surprise me!’

‘Yes, our patients pay us their fees only
so long as they keep well! When they aren’t the cash-box shuts! So isn’t it to
our own interest to see they never get ill? So, no more epidemics, or hardly
any! Everywhere a flourishing health that we tend with pious care, like farmer
keeping up his farm. Illness! But with this new system that would ruin the
doctors – and on the contrary, they’re all making their fortunes!’

‘Is it the same for the lawyers?’ I asked,
smiling.

‘Oh, no! You’ll understand that there
wouldn’t be any trials, whereas, whatever one does, there are still a few small
ailments ... especially among close-fisted people who want to economise on my fees!
– Look here, my dear patient, what’s wrong with you!’

‘Nothing’s wrong with me. ‘

‘You can recognise me now?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, so as not to contradict
this strange doctor who might possibly be able to use it against me.

‘I’m not going to let you get ill,’ he
continued, ‘for that would ruin me – Let’s see your tongue. ‘

I showed him my tongue and I really must
have put on a pitiful expression.

‘Um, um,’ he murmured, after examining it
with a lens.

‘Tongue coated! – Your pulse!’

I resignedly let him feel my pulse.

My doctor took from his pocket a tiny
instrument I’ve heard mention of recently: putting it on my wrist, he obtained
on squared paper a graph of my pulse-beats which he read easily, like a post
office clerk reading a telegraphic message.

‘The devil!’ he said.

Then, producing a thermometer from nowhere,
he stuffed it into my mouth before I could stop him.

‘Forty degrees!’ he exclaimed. (A hundred
and four fahrenheit. )

And as he mentioned that figure he turned
pale. His fees were plainly in danger.

‘Well, what have I got?’ I asked him, still
half suffocated by the unexpected introduction of that thermometer.

‘Um! um!’

‘Yes, I know that answer, but it’s one
fault is that it isn’t precise enough. Well, what I’ve got, doctor, I’m going
to tell you. I feel that I’m going off my head. ‘

‘Before the proper time, my dear patient!’
he replied pleasantly. To reassure me, no doubt.

‘Don’t laugh!’ I exclaimed. ‘I can’t
recognise anybody – not even you, doctor! I feel as if I’d never seen you
before!’

‘Well, well! You see me once a month, when
I come to collect my little fees!’

‘No, no! And I’m beginning to wonder
whether this town is Amiens, and this street is the Rue de Beauvois!’

‘Yes, my dear patient, it is Amiens. Oh, if
you’d got the time to climb up the cathedral spire, you’d soon recognise the
capital of our dear Picardy, defended by its ring of forts. You would recognise
these charming valleys of the Somme, the Arne, the Selle. shadowed by these
lovely trees which don’t bring in five sous a year, but which our generous
aediles
keep up for us! You would recognise these outer boulevards, which
cross the river on two splendid bridges and make a green belt round the city!
You would recognise the industrial town which since the citadel was pulled down
has sprung up so quickly on the right bank of the Somme. You would recognise
that broad thoroughfare, called the Rue Tourne-Coiffe! You would recognise...
But after all, my dear patient, I don’t want to contradict you if it amuses you
to say we’re in Carpentras, right down in the south of France!’

I could plainly see that this worthy man
was taking care not to contradict me openly – of course, you have to humour
maniacs!

‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘listen to me... I’ll
gladly take anything you prescribe... I don’t want to rob you of my money!...
But let me ask you one question. ‘

‘Ask, my dear patient. ‘

‘Is today Sunday?’

‘The first Sunday in August. ‘

‘What year?’

‘The onset of madness characterised by loss
of memory,’ he muttered. ‘That’ll take a long time. ‘

‘What year?’ I insisted.

‘It’s the year... ‘

But just as he was going to tell me I was
interrupted by noisy shouts.

I turned round. A troop of loungers had
surrounded a man: he was about sixty years old and looked very strange. This
personage walked as though he were scared and hardly seemed able to keep on his
feet. Anybody would have said that half of him was missing.

‘Who’s that man?’ I asked.

The doctor, who had taken my arm, was
saying to himself. ‘We’ve got to take his mind off his monomania, so that... ‘

‘I asked who that fellow is, and why that
crowd is following him!’

‘That fellow! What, you’re asking me who he
is? But he’s the one and only bachelor left in the Department of the Somme!’

‘The last?’

‘Not a doubt about it? And you can see how
they’re hooting him!’

‘So now it’s forbidden to be a bachelor?’ I
asked.

‘Almost, since they’ve been taxed. The
older they get, the more they have to pay, and unless they manage to settle
down that will ruin them in no time! That poor wretch you saw has had a largish
fortune completely swallowed up. ‘

‘So he’s got an unconquerable aversion for
the fair sex?’

‘No – the fair sex have got an
unconquerable aversion for him. He’s missed 326 chances of getting married. ‘

‘But still there are some girls to be
married. I suppose?’

‘Very few, very few. No sooner do they
reach marriageable age than they’re married!’

‘What about widows. ‘

‘Oh, widows! They don’t even give them time
to recover. Before ten months have elapsed, off to the Hotel de Ville. Just
now. I’m certain, there aren’t twenty-five widows available in France!’

‘But the widowers?’

‘Oh, them, they can take their time!
They’re free from compulsory service, and they’ve nothing to fear from the tax-collectors!’

‘Now I understand why the boulevards are
crowded with couples, young and old, conscripted under the cloak of marriage!’

‘Which has often been a flag of revenge, my
dear patient!’

I could not keep back a shout of laughter.

‘Come along, come along,’ he said, grasping
my arm.

‘One moment – doctor, we really are in
Amiens, I suppose?’

‘There, it’s taken hold of him again,’ he
muttered.

I repeated my question.

‘Yes, yes, we’re in Amiens!’

‘What year?’

‘I’ve told you already, in... ‘

The sound of a triple whistle cut short his
words. It was followed by a loud blast like a foghorn. A gigantic vehicle
appeared down the Rue de Beauvois.

‘Stand clear, stand clear!’ the doctor
shouted, pushing me to one side.

And I fancied he added between his teeth,
‘Now all it needs is for him to break a leg! I’ll end up having nothing in my
pocket. ‘

It was a tramcar. I hadn’t so far noticed
that steel rails furrowed the street, and I must say I thought this innovation
quite natural, although at present there’s no more chance of a tramway than
there is of a bus!

The doctor beckoned to the conductor of the
great vehicle, and we took our places on the platform, already crowded with
travellers.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked, quite
resigned, by now, to let things happen.

‘To the regional competition. ‘

‘At the Hotoie?’

‘At the Hotoie. ‘

‘So we really are in Amiens?’

‘Of course.’ The doctor threw an anxious
glance at me.

‘And what’s the present population of this
town since they started taxing bachelors?’

‘Four hundred and fifty thousand
inhabitants. ‘

‘And we’re in the year of grace?’

‘In the year of grace... ‘

Another blast on the foghorn kept me again
from hearing the reply which would have interested me so much.

The vehicle had turned into the Rue du
Lycée and was making for the Boulevard Cornuau.

As we passed the College, whose chapel
already looked like an ancient monument, I was struck by the number of pupils
who were coming out for their Sunday walk. I couldn’t keep myself from showing
a little surprise.