The Thibaults (27 page)

His books were stacked on the hall floor alongside his unopened trunks. The heating-apparatus was emitting a gentle warmth, and brand-new electric lamps shed an uncompromising brilliance on everything in the flat. Antoine had the rest of the evening before him to set his house in order; he made up his mind to have everything unpacked and in its appointed place—a congenial setting for the new life that was beginning—within the next few hours. He pictured the dinner in the flat above drawing to its dreary close: Gisèle drowsing over her dessert; M. Thibault, as usual, perorating. And Antoine relished the peace around him, and the inestimable boon of solitude.

The glass over the mantelpiece reflected him half length. He drew near it, not without a certain self-satisfaction. He had a way of his own with mirrors, and always viewed himself full face, squared his shoulders, and clenched his jaws, while his eyes seemed boring almost angrily into their reflected selves. He preferred not to see his lanky torso, short legs, and somewhat puny arms, for the disproportion between his rather undersized body and the bulkiness of his head, the volume of which was increased by the thick beard, was distasteful to him. But he approved of himself; he regarded himself as a fine figure of a man, built on exemplary lines. What particularly pleased him was the look of grim determination on his face, for, by dint of creasing his forehead as if he felt obliged to concentrate his full attention on each incident of daily life, a bulge had formed at the level of his brows, which, overshadowing his eyes, imparted to them a curious piercingness that pleased him as the outward sign of an indomitable will.

He decided to begin with his books, and, taking off his coat, started by giving a vigorous tug to the closed doors of the empty bookcase. Let’s see now, he mused. Lecture note-books at the bottom, dictionaries within easy reach; medical manual—yes, that’s the place for it. Tra la la! he hummed light-heartedly. Well, well, here I am, I got my way. The ground-floor flat; Jacques. It all panned out—who’d have believed that possible three weeks ago? He began to speak aloud, in a high-pitched voice, impersonating an admirer. “That chap Thibault has an in-dom-i-ta-ble will. Never knows when he’s beaten. Indomitable!” Casting a humorous glance at the mirror, he cut a caper, which all but dislodged the pile of books and pamphlets he was propping under his chin. Steady now! he adjured himself. That’s better. My shelves are coming to life again. Now for the manuscripts. Oh, for this evening, let’s put the files back into the file-case, as they were before. But one of these days we’ll have to sort them out, all those notes and comments. Quite a lot I’ve got together. The important thing is to have a simple, efficient system for classifying them; with an index, of course, that I keep absolutely up to date. Like Philip’s. Yes, a card-index. Of course, all the great doctors …

Gaily, with an almost dancing step, he moved to and fro between the hall and the bookcase. Suddenly he emitted a boyish laugh, which came as a surprise. “Dr. Antoine Thibault!” he announced, haldng for a moment and straightening his shoulders. “It’s Dr. Thibault! Of course you’ve heard of him; the child specialist!” He side-stepped nimbly, made a rapid bow, then, sobering down, resumed his journeys to and fro between the hall and study. The wicker basket, next. In two years’ time I’ll annex the Gold Medal. House physician at a clinic. Hospital diploma. So I’m setting up here for three or four years at most. Again he mimicked a high falsetto voice: “Thibault is one of our youngest hospital staff doctors; Philip’s right-hand man.” I got on the right scent when I specialized at once on children’s diseases. When I think of Louiset, Touron, and the rest of them—the damned fools!

Damned fools! he repeated absent-mindedly. His arms were full of all sorts of objects and he was looking round perplexedly for the best place for each. Pity Jacques doesn’t want to be a doctor. I could help him, I’d see him through. Two Thibaults as doctors! Why not, after all? It’s a career worthy of a Thibault. Hard, I grant you, but how rewarding, when one has a taste for fighting against odds, and a bit of. personal pride! Think of all the attention, memory, will-power it demands! And one never gets to the end of it. And consider what it means when one’s made good! A great doctor, that’s somebody! A Philip, for instance. One has to learn, of course, how to adopt that gentle, assured manner. Very courteous, but distant. Yes, it’s pleasant to be someone, to be called in for consultations by the colleagues who’re most envious of one!

Personally I’ve chosen the most difficult branch: children. Yes, they’re the trickiest cases; never know how to tell you what’s wrong and, when they do, lead you all astray. That’s it; with children one can count only on oneself; got to face up to the disease and hit the diagnosis. X-rays luckily … A competent doctor today has got to be a radiologist, and know how to use the apparatus himself. Soon as I’ve taken my M.D., I’ll take a course on X-rays. And later on, next door to my consulting-room, there’ll be an X-ray room. With a nurse. No, a male assistant’s better; in a white coat. On consulting days, for every case that’s in the least complicated—zip!—a photo.

“What gives me confidence in Dr. Thibault is that he always begins with an X-ray examination.”

He smiled at the sound of his own voice, and winked towards the mirror. Why, yes, I don’t deny it, that’s Pride, with a capital P! He laughed ironically. The Thibault pride, as Abbé Vécard calls it. My father, too, of course. But I—oh, well, let it go at that! It’s pride. Why not? Pride comes in very useful as a driving force. I make good use of it, too. Why shouldn’t I? Isn’t it up to a man to make the most of his talents? What are my talents, now? He smiled. Easy to answer that. For one thing, I’m quick at getting things, and I’m retentive; what I know sticks. Next, I can work. “That chap Thibault works like a horse!” So much the better; let ‘em say it if they want to, they’d all like to be able to do as much. And then, what more? Energy. Definitely that. “An extraor-di-nar-y energy!” He said it out loud, syllable by syllable, turning again to the mirror. It’s like a battery; well, a charged cell, always on tap for any effort I require of it. But what would all those talents come to, if there wasn’t a driving force to actuate them? Tell me that, M. l’Abbé! He was holding in his hand a flat, nickel-plated instrument-case that gleamed under the ceiling light, and was wondering where to put it. Finally he reached up and placed it on the top of the bookcase. “Eh, lad, it’s naught to be ashamed of!” he shouted in the jovial, bucolic Norman voice his father sometimes affected. “And there’s a lot in pride, saving your respects, M. l’Abbé.”

The wicker basket was nearly empty. From its depths Antoine took two little portraits in plush frames and gazed at them musingly. They were photographs of his maternal grandfather and his mother. The former portrait showed a handsome old man standing beside a table piled with books, on which his hand was resting; the other, a young woman with fine features and indefinite, rather gentle eyes. She was wearing an open square-cut bodice and two silky tresses fell upon a shoulder. He was so familiar with this likeness of his mother that it was thus he always pictured her, though the portrait dated from the time of Mme. Thibault’s engagement, and he had never known her with her hair like that. He had been nine years old at Jacques’s birth, when she had died. He could remember better his grandfather, Couturier the economist and friend of MacMahon, who had just missed being made Prefect of the Seine Department on the fall of M. Thiers, and had been for some years Dean of the Institute. Antoine had never forgotten his pleasant face, his white muslin cravats, an his razors with mother-of-pearl handles, one for every day of the week, in their sharkskin case.

He stood the two portraits on the mantelpiece, amongst his specimens of stones and fossils.

The room was rapidly undergoing a complete transformation. Th miscellaneous objects and papers littering his desk had still to be ax ranged. He set about it with a will and, when everything was in place, surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction. As for my clothes and linen, he decided lazily, that’s old Mother Friihling’s affair. To make his escape from Mademoiselle’s leading-strings still more complete, he had arranged for the concierge to do all the work in the ground-floor flat, without help or interference from above. Lighting a cigarette, he settled luxuriously into one of the leather arm-chairs. It was seldom he had a whole evening to himself like this, without anything definite to do, and he was feeling rather lost. It was too early to go to bed and he wondered what to do with himself. Should he stay where he was, smoking cigarettes, thinking of anything, or nothing? Of course he had letters to write but—no, he didn’t feel like letter-writing.

I know, he suddenly thought, rising from the chair and going to the bookcase. I meant to look up what Hemon says about infantile diabetes. Setting the fat, paper-bound volume on his knee, he began glancing through its pages. Yes, I ought to have known that; it’s obvious. A frown had settled on his face. Yes, I was completely mistaken; if it hadn’t been for Philip that poor child would be done for, and it would be my fault. Well, not exactly my fault. Still … He closed the book and slammed it onto the table. Curious how stiff, almost cutting, the chief can be on such occasions. Of course he’s awfully vain, likes to act impressive. “My poor good Thibault,” that’s what he said. “My poor good Thibault, the diet you prescribed was bound to make the child get worse.” Yes, he said that in front of the nurses and students; a nasty slap in the eye!

Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he took a few steps in the room. I really ought to have answered him back. I should have said: “For one thing, if you did your own duty …” Just that. He’d have said: “M. Thibault, on that score I do not see how anyone …” Then I’d have driven home my point. “Excuse me, Chief. If you came to the hospital punctually in the morning, and if you stayed until the end of the consultation hour, instead of dashing off at half-past eleven to visit your paying patients, I wouldn’t have to do your work for you, and I wouldn’t run the risk of making blunders.” Yes! In front of them all! What a sensation! Of course he’d have been sick to death with me for a couple of weeks or so—but what the devil would that matter? Who cares?

A vindictive expression had suddenly come over his face. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he began absent-mindedly winding up the clock. He shivered, put on his coat again, and went back to his chair. His cheerfulness of a short while back had evaporated and he felt a sudden chill at his heart. The damned fool! His lips twisted in a rancorous grin. Crossing his legs impatiently, he lit another cigarette. But even as he murmured: “Damned fool!” he had been thinking of the sureness of eye, the experience, the amazing intuition of Dr. Philip, and at that moment the genius of his chief seemed to him something almost superhuman.

What about me? he thought, and a vague distress seemed to grip his throat. Shall I ever get to understand things in a flash, as he does? Shall I ever have that almost infallible perspicacity which is what really makes the great physician? Shall I? Of course I’ve a good memory, I’m hard-working, persevering. But those are virtues of the underling. Have I anything more in me? It’s not the first time I’ve boggled over an easy diagnosis—yes, there’s no getting over that, it was simplicity itself, a “classical” case, with all the obvious symptoms. Suddenly he flung his arms up. Yes, it’s going to be a hard struggle. I’ve got to work, pile up knowledge day by day. But then his face grew pale. He had remembered Jacques was coming next day. Tomorrow evening, he thought, Jacques will be in the room over there, and I …

He had jumped up. And now the project he had formed of living with his brother appeared to him in its true light, as the most irreparable of follies! He was no longer thinking of the responsibility he had undertaken, he was thinking only of the handicap that was bound from now on, whatever he might do, to retard his progress. What a fool he had been! It was he himself who had hung this millstone round his own neck. And now there was no escape.

He crossed the hall unthinkingly, opened the door of the room that had been prepared for Jacques, and stood on the threshold, unmoving, peering into the darkness. He felt profoundly discouraged. “Damn it!” he said aloud. “Is there no way of escape, no place where one can have some peace? Where one could work, and have only oneself to think about? Here one has to give in all the time—to the family, to friends, and now to Jacques! They all conspire to prevent me from working, to make a mess of my life!” The blood had gone to his head; his throat was parched. He ran to the kitchen, drank two glasses of cold water, and returned to his study.

In a mood of black depression he began to undress. All in this room, in which he had not yet got used to his surroundings, in which familiar objects seemed different from their former selves—everything in the room suddenly seemed hostile.

He took an hour to go to bed, and longer still to fall asleep. He was not accustomed to have the noises of the street so near; each passing footfall made him start. His mind was obsessed with trifles; he remembered the trouble he had had in finding a cab, coming home the other night from an evening at Philip’s place. And from time to time the thought of Jacques’s return came back with harrowing intensity, and he started tossing this side and that in nervous exasperation.

Furiously he adjured himself: I’ve my own way to make, blast it! Let them look after themselves! I shall let him live here, now that it’s all fixed up, and I’ll see he does the work he has to do. But there it ends. I’ve promised to look after him, and that’s all. It must not stand in the way of my career. My career! That’s the big thing!

Of his affection for the boy not a trace remained that night. Antoine recalled his visit to Crouy. He pictured his brother as he then had seen him: emaciated, with the pale cast of loneliness. Quite possibly, it struck him now, the boy was consumptive. In that case he would persuade his father to pack off Jacques to a good sanatorium, to Auvergne, to the Pyrenees, or, better still, to Switzerland; then he, Antoine, would be alone, his own master, free to work just as he pleased. He even caught himself thinking: I’d take his room and use it as my bedroom.