Beware of Pity (22 page)

I had been listening intently. All he said was perfectly clear to me. But I must unconsciously have absorbed the old man’s insistence and anxiety. I wanted to hear more, something more precise, more definite. So I asked, “Then you think that you have already made progress—I mean
some
progress in her improvement?”

Dr Condor did not reply. My remark seemed to have annoyed him. He marched on faster and more firmly on his short legs.

“How can you say I’ve made some progress with her? Have you seen any? And what do you know about it anyway? You’ve known the girl only for a few weeks, and I’ve been treating her for five years.”

Suddenly he stopped. “And just so that you know, once and for all—I have made no essential improvement at all, nothing definitive, and that’s what matters! I’ve tried this and that with her like any quack, pointless, useless! So far I have achieved nothing.”

His vehemence alarmed me. Obviously I had wounded his sense of medical pride. I tried to make my peace.

“But Herr von Kekesfalva told me how refreshing Edith found the hydroelectric baths, and he said that especially since the inject—”

Dr Condor stopped dead and interrupted my half-finished word.

“Nonsense! Stuff and nonsense! Don’t let the old fool mislead you! Do you really think hydroelectric baths and such stuff can reverse paraplegia like hers? Don’t you know the medical tricks we play? When we don’t know what to do ourselves, we play for time, we keep patients occupied with chatter and little activities so that they won’t notice how baffled we are. Luckily for us, an invalid’s own nature is usually our ally. Of course she feels better! Any kind of treatment, eating lemons or drinking milk, cold-water treatment or hot-water treatment, will bring about an initial change in the organism and provide a stimulus that the ever-optimistic patient takes for improvement. That kind of auto-suggestion is our best assistant; it even helps the biggest fools among us doctors. But there’s a snag—as soon as the charm of novelty has worn off, reaction will set in, and then you have to switch your approach in a hurry, pretend there’s a new treatment, and so we doctors manipulate our approach in really severe cases until perhaps the real, right method of treatment is found. No, no
compliments
, I know very well how little of what I would like to do
for Edith has been done. Everything I’ve tried so far—don’t fool yourself—all that electrical stuff and massage and so on has failed to get her on her legs again in the literal sense of the phrase.”

Condor was criticising himself so fiercely that I felt I ought to defend him against his own conscience. I said, diffidently, “But … but I’ve seen for myself that she can walk with the aid of those devices … the things that stretch her legs …”

However, Condor was not speaking any more, he positively shouted in my face now, in such a loud and angry voice that two people out walking late in the otherwise deserted street turned to look at us curiously.

“A fraud, I tell you, all a fraud! Devices to help me, not her! They’re just to keep her occupied, don’t you see? The child doesn’t need them, I needed them because the Kekesfalvas were getting impatient. I couldn’t stand up to the old man’s urgings any more, I
had
to give him some confidence to keep him fighting. What could I do but lumber the impatient child with those heavy weights, as you might put a restraining device on a persistent offender? They were entirely unnecessary … well, maybe they strengthen her sinews slightly. There was nothing else I could do … I have to gain time. But I’m not at all ashamed of these tricks and devices. You’ve seen for yourself how successful they are—Edith persuades herself that she’s felt better since being fitted with them, her father says triumphantly that I helped him, they’re all enthusiasm for those wonderful, miracle-working devices, and you yourself ask me questions as if I knew the answers to anything!”

Interrupting himself, he took off his hat so that he could pass his hand over his damp forehead. Then he gave me a malicious sidelong glance.

“I’m afraid you don’t like that very much. It doesn’t fit your idea of the doctor as a healer who always tells the truth. In your youthful idealism you didn’t see medical morality as quite like this, and now I can tell that you are … brought down to earth, or even repelled by such practices! I’m sorry, but medicine has nothing to do with morality. In itself every disease is an act of anarchy, a rebellion against nature, and that’s why we may legitimately use any means of combating it,
any
means. No, don’t bother with feeling sorry for the sick—the invalid regards himself as outside the law, he upsets the natural order of things, and as with any rebellion we must act ruthlessly to restore order—we must use any weapon that comes to hand, because mankind as a whole and human beings as individuals will never be cured by kindness and the truth alone. If a deception will help the sick then it’s not a pitiful pretence any more, but the best of medicine, and as long as I can’t cure a case in fact, I must see how I can help the patient to endure it. And that’s no easy matter, Lieutenant, thinking up new ideas for five years, particularly when you’re not especially enthusiastic about your own skills. So never mind the compliments!”

A small, sturdy man, he faced me looking so indignant that I felt as if he would attack me physically if I ventured to demur. At that moment a bolt of blue lightning flashed from the sky like a jagged vein, and the deep sound of thunder growled and rumbled after it. Condor suddenly laughed.

“There, you see—Heaven itself gives us an angry answer. Well, my poor fellow—you’ve had a lot to put up with today, illusion after illusion cut away with the surgeon’s scalpel. First the one about the Magyar nobleman, then the one about the caring, infallible doctor and helper. But you must realise how the old fool’s paeans of praise irritate me! All that sentimentality
goes against the grain, especially in Edith’s case, because my slow progress rankles with me, and so does the thought that I’ve found nothing conclusive in her case and can’t think of anything to do about it.”

He walked on a little way in silence. Then he turned to me and spoke more warmly.

“I wouldn’t like you to think I’ve given her up, as we so delicately put it. Far from it, I am particularly determined to do all I can for her, even if takes another year, another five years. And odd coincidences do happen—on the very evening after the lecture I mentioned to you, I was reading a Parisian
medical
journal and found the account of a case of paralysis, a very curious case. A man of forty who had been bedridden for two whole years, unable to move any of his limbs, and in four months Professor Viennot’s therapy has got him to the point where he can happily climb five flights of stairs again. Think of it—a cure like that in four months, in a very similar case, whereas I’ve spent five years here getting nowhere. I was bowled over when I read that. Of course the aetiology of the case and the method of treatment weren’t quite clear to me. Professor Viennot seems to have combined a whole series of treatments in a curious way: irradiation with sunlight in Cannes, some kind of mechanical device and a certain set of gymnastic exercises. The brevity of the case history as reported gives me no idea, of course, of whether and how far any part of his method might be practicable in our case. But I wrote straight to Professor Viennot to find out more, and it was purely for that reason that I subjected Edith to such a thorough examination again today—you need the opportunity to draw comparisons. So you see that I’m not lowering the flag, not by any means. On the contrary, I’m grasping at any straw. Perhaps there may
really be a chance in this new treatment—I say
perhaps
, I say no more, and anyway I’ve talked far too much already. So that’s enough of talking shop for me today!”

At this moment we were approaching the station building, and our conversation must soon come to an end, so I pressed him once more. “In that case, then, your opinion is that … ”

But at that the short, stout little man suddenly stopped dead.

“I don’t have any opinion,” he snapped at me. “And there’s no
in that case
about it! What do you all want me to do? I don’t have a phone line to Almighty God. I haven’t said anything. Absolutely nothing definite. I have no opinion, I don’t believe or think or promise anything at all. And anyway I’ve talked far too much, so that’s an end to it! Thank you for your company. You’d better turn back at once, or your coat will be drenched!”

And without shaking hands, visibly ruffled (I had no idea why), he walked away on his short legs and, as it struck me, his rather flat feet to the station.

Condor had been right. The thunderstorm that we had felt coming for some time was unmistakably close now. Thick clouds crowded the sky almost audibly; they looked like heavy black crates crashing together above the restlessly tossing crowns of the trees, and the scene was sometimes brightly lit up by a zigzag streak of lightning. The moist air, violently shaken from time to time by gusts of wind, carried the smell of burning on it. The town itself looked different, and as I quickly walked back even the streets did not seem the same as they had been a few minutes earlier, when they still lay with bated breath in the pale moonlight. Now shop signs were rattling and banging, as if woken in
alarm by a bad dream, doors slammed, the cowls of chimney pots creaked, lights came on in many houses as figures in white nightshirts got up to see what was going on, and carefully closed their windows against the coming storm. The few late passers by hurried from one street corner to the next as if blown on a wind of fear, the large main square, where there were usually a few people out and about even at night, was entirely deserted, and the illuminated town-hall clock gaped at the unaccustomed void with a foolish, white gaze. But thanks to Condor’s advice, I would be home before the storm really broke. Only two more streets, then through the garden in front of the barracks, and I would be in my own room, where I could think over all the surprising information that I had learnt in the last few hours.

The little garden outside our barracks lay in total darkness; the air was dense and heavy under the tossing foliage, sometimes a brief gust of wind hissed through the leaves like a snake, and then the sound died down into an even more eerie silence. I walked faster and faster. I had almost reached the entrance when a figure came out from behind a tree, emerging from the shadows. My steps faltered for a moment, but I did not stop—it was probably only one of the whores who used to look for custom among the soldiers here. But to my annoyance I realised that a stranger’s footsteps were following me, and I turned, intending to confront the impudent creature so shamelessly pestering me and send her packing. A flash of lightning cut through the darkness at that very moment, and in the sudden bright light I saw, to my horror, an old man, shaky on his feet, breathing heavily as he followed me, his bald head bare, his round, gold-rimmed glasses sparkling—Kekesfalva!

In my first astonishment I couldn’t believe my eyes. Kekesfalva in the little park outside our barracks—it was impossible. Only
three hours earlier, when Condor and I took our leave, I’d left him in his house looking tired to death. Was I hallucinating, or had the old man lost his wits? Had he got up in the middle of a feverish fit, and was he now wandering around like a sleepwalker in his thin coat, without even an overcoat and hat? But there was no mistaking it, here he was. I’d have known the depressed, bowed, anxious way he walked among thousands.

“For Heaven’s sake, Herr von Kekesfalva!” I cried. “How do you come to be here? Didn’t you go to bed after all?”

“No … or rather I couldn’t sleep … I wanted to …”

“You must go home now, quickly! You can see that the storm will break in earnest any moment now. Don’t you have the car here?”

“Over there … waiting for me to the left of the barracks.”

“Thank goodness! Then off you go—if your chauffeur drives fast he’ll get you home in the dry. Come along, Herr von Kekesfalva.” And as he hesitated, I took his arm to lead him away. However, he shook himself free.

“In a moment, in a moment … I’ll be off home in a moment, Lieutenant Hofmiller … but … but first tell me what he said!”

“Who?” My question and my astonishment were both genuine. Around us the wind was blowing more and more strongly, the trees groaned and bowed down under it as if to uproot themselves, any moment now torrential rain could begin to fall, and naturally I had only one idea in mind, how to get the old man home. Obviously his wits were wandering! But he stammered, almost indignantly, “Dr Condor, of course … you walked back into town with him …”

Only now did I understand. Of course this encounter in the dark was no accident. The old man had been waiting impatiently here in the little park just outside the barracks, wanting to know
the answer for certain. He had been lying in wait for me at the entrance, where I couldn’t escape him. He must have been pacing up and down in terrible anxiety for two or three hours, poorly concealed in the shadows of this run-down little town park where maidservants waited at night to meet their lovers. He had probably assumed that I would only be going the short distance to the railway station with Condor, and then I would return to the barracks straight away. Guessing nothing of that, I had kept him waiting for the two or three hours that I had spent sitting in the wine bar with the doctor, and the sick old man had waited as he used to lie in wait for his debtors—tough, patient, unyielding. There was something about his fanatical persistence that both irritated and moved me.

“Everything’s fine,” I reassured him. “I have every
confidence
that it will all turn out well. I’ll tell you more tomorrow afternoon, I’ll tell you every word we said. But now you must get back to the car. You can see that there’s no time to lose.”

“Yes, yes, I’m coming.” Reluctantly, he let me lead him away. I managed to get him to go ten or twenty paces, and then I felt his limp weight hanging more heavily on my arm.

“Just a moment,” he stammered. “Just a moment on the bench there. I can’t … I can’t go on.”