He stopped again, and regained control.
“Forgive me, I know I sound agitated … but I’m not drunk, not yet … although I often am, I freely confess it, in this hellish isolation … bear in mind that for seven years I’ve lived almost entirely with the local natives and with animals … you forget how to talk calmly. And then if you do open up, everything comes flooding out … but wait … Yes, I know … I was going to ask you, I wanted to tell you about a certain case, wondering whether you think one has a duty to help … just help, with motives as pure as an angel’s, or whether … Although I fear it will be a long story. Are you sure you’re not tired?”
“No, not in the least.”
“Thank you … thank you. Will you have a drink?”
He had been groping in the dark behind him somewhere. There was a clinking sound: two or three, at any rate several bottles stood ranged there. He offered me a glass of whisky, which I sipped briefly, while he drained his glass in a single draught. For a moment there was silence between us. Then the ship’s bell struck half-past midnight.
“Well then … I’d like to tell you about a case. Suppose that a doctor in a small town … or right out in the country, a doctor who … a doctor who … ” He stopped again, and then suddenly moved his chair closer to mine.
“This is no good. I must tell you everything directly, from the beginning, or you won’t understand it … no, I can’t put it as a theoretical example, I must tell you the story of my own case. There’ll be no shame about it, I will hide nothing … people strip naked in front of me, after all, and show me their scabs, their urine, their excrement … if someone is to help there can be no beating about the bush, no concealment. So I won’t describe the case of some fictional doctor, I will strip myself naked and say that I … I forgot all shame in that filthy isolation, that accursed country that eats the soul and sucks the marrow from a man’s loins.”
I must have made a movement of some kind, for he interrupted himself.
“Ah, you protest … oh, I understand, you are fascinated by India, by its temples and palm trees, all the romance of a two-month visit. Yes, the tropics are magical when you’re travelling through them by rail, road or rickshaw: I felt just the same when I first arrived seven years ago. I had so many dreams, I was going to learn the language and read the sacred texts in the original, I was going to study the diseases, do scientific work, explore the native psyche—as we would put it in European jargon—I was on a mission for humanity and civilisation. Everyone who comes here dreams the same dream. But then a man’s strength ebbs away in this invisible hothouse, the fever strikes deep into him—and we all get the fever, however much quinine we take—he becomes listless, indolent, flabby as a jellyfish. As a European, he is cut off from his true nature, so to speak, when he leaves the big cities for some wretched swamp-ridden station. Sooner or later we all succumb to our weaknesses, some drink, others smoke opium, others again brawl and act like brutes—some kind of folly comes over us all. We long for Europe, we dream of walking down a street again some day, sitting among white people in a well-lit room in a solidly built house, we dream of it year after year, and if a time does come when we could go on leave we’re too listless to take the chance. A man knows he’s been forgotten back at home, he’s a stranger there, a shell in the sea, anyone can tread on him. So he stays, he degenerates and goes to the bad in these hot, humid jungles. It was a bad day when I sold my services to that filthy place …
Not that I did it entirely of my own free will. I had studied in Germany, I was a qualified doctor, indeed a good doctor with a post at the big hospital in Leipzig; in some long-forgotten issue of a medical journal a great deal was made of a new injection that I was the first to introduce. And then I had trouble over a woman, I met her in the hospital; she had driven her lover so crazy that he shot her with a revolver, and soon I was as crazy as he had been. She had a cold, proud manner that drove me to distraction—bold domineering women had always had a hold over me, but she tightened that hold until my bones were breaking. I did what she wanted, I—well, why not say it? It’s eight years ago now—I dipped into the hospital funds for her, and when it came out all hell was let loose. An uncle of mine covered up for me when I was dismissed, but my career was over. It was then that I heard the Dutch government was recruiting doctors for the colonies, offering a lump sum in payment. Well, I understood at once the kind of job it would be if they were offering payment like that. For I knew that the crosses on graves in the fever-zone plantations grow three times as fast as at home, but when you’re young you think fever and death affect only others. However, I had little choice; I went to Rotterdam, signed up for ten years, and was given a big bundle of banknotes. I sent half home to my uncle, and as for the other half, a woman in the harbour district got it out of me, just because she was so like the vicious cat I’d loved. I sailed away from Europe without money, without even a watch, without illusions, and I wasn’t particularly sorry to leave harbour. And then I sat on deck like you, like everyone, and saw the Southern Cross and the palm trees, and my heart rose. Ah, forests, isolation, silence, I dreamed! Well—I’d soon had enough of isolation. I wasn’t stationed in Batavia or Surabaya, in a city with other people and clubs, golf, books and newspapers, instead I went to—well, the name doesn’t matter—to one of the district stations, two days’ journey from the nearest town. A couple of tedious, desiccated officials and a few half-castes were all the society I had, apart from that, nothing for miles around but jungle, plantations, thickets and swamps.
It was tolerable at first. I pursued all kinds of studies; once, when the vice-resident was on a journey of inspection, had a motor accident and broke a leg, I operated on him without assistants, and there was a lot of talk about it. I collected native poisons and weapons, I turned my attention to a hundred little things to keep my mind alert. But that lasted only as long as the strength of Europe was still active in me, and then I dried up. The few Europeans on the station bored me, I stopped mixing with them, I drank and I dreamed. I had only two more years to go before I’d be free, with a pension, and could go back to Europe and begin life again. I wasn’t really doing anything but waiting; I lay low and waited. And that’s what I would be doing today if she … if it hadn’t happened.”
The voice in the darkness stopped. The pipe had stopped glowing too. It was so quiet that all of a sudden I could hear the water foaming as it broke against the keel, and the dull, distant throbbing of the engines. I would have liked to light a cigarette, but I was afraid of the bright flash of the lit match and its reflection in his face. He remained silent for a long time. I didn’t know if he had finished what he had to say, or was dozing, or had fallen asleep, so profound was his silence.
Then the ship’s bell struck a single powerful note: one o’clock. He started. I heard his glass clink again. His hand was obviously feeling around for the whisky. A shot gurgled quietly into his glass, and then the voice suddenly began again, but now it seemed tenser and more passionate.
“So … wait a moment … so yes, there I was, sitting in my damned cobweb, I’d been crouching motionless as a spider in its web for months. It was just after the rainy season. Rain had poured down on the roof for weeks on end, not a human being had come along, no European, I’d been stuck there in the house day after day with my yellow-skinned women and my good whisky. I was feeling very ‘down’ at the time, homesick for Europe. If I read a novel describing clean streets and white women my fingers began to tremble. I can’t really describe the condition to you, but it’s like a tropical disease, a raging, feverish, yet helpless nostalgia that sometimes comes over a man. So there I was, sitting over an atlas, I think, dreaming of journeys. Then there’s a hammering at the door. My boy is there and one of the women, eyes wide with amazement. They make dramatic gestures: there’s a woman here, they say, a lady, a white woman.
I jump up in surprise. I didn’t hear a carriage or a car approaching. A white woman, here in this wilderness?
I am
about to go down the steps, but then I pull myself together. A glance in the mirror, and I hastily tidy myself up a little. I am nervous, restless, I have ominous forebodings, for I know no one in the world who would be coming to visit me out of friendship. At last I go down.
The lady is waiting in the hall, and hastily comes to meet me. A thick motoring veil hides her face. I am about to greet her, but she is quick to get her word in first. ‘Good day, doctor,’ she says in fluent English—slightly too fluent, as if she had learnt her speech by heart in advance. ‘Do forgive me for descending on you like this, but we have just been visiting the station, our car is over there’—here a thought flashes through my mind: why didn’t she drive up to the house?—‘And then I remembered that you live here. I’ve heard so much about you—you worked miracles for the vice-resident, his leg is perfectly all right now, he can play golf as well as ever. Oh yes, imagine all of us in the city are still talking about it, we’d happily dispense with our own cross-grained surgeon and the other doctors if you would only come to us instead. Now, why do you never go to the city? You live like a yogi here …’
And so she chatters on, faster and faster, without letting me get a word in. Her loquacity is nervous and agitated, and makes me uneasy. Why is she talking so much, I ask myself, why doesn’t she introduce herself, why doesn’t she put that veil back? Is she feverish? Is she ill? Is she mad? I feel increasingly nervous, aware that I look ridiculous, standing silently in front of her while her flood of chatter sweeps over me. At last she slows down slightly, and I am able to ask her upstairs. She signs to the boy to stay where he is, and goes up the stairs ahead of me.
‘You have a nice place here,’ she says, looking around my room. ‘Ah, such lovely books! I’d like to read them all!’ She goes up to the bookcase and looks at the titles. For the first time since I set eyes on her, she falls silent for a minute.
‘May I offer you a cup of tea?’ I ask.
She doesn’t turn, but just looks at the spines of the books. ‘No thank you, doctor … we have to be off again in a moment, and I don’t have much time … this was just a little detour. Ah, I see you have Flaubert as well, I love him so much … L’Education sentimentale, wonderful, really wonderful … So you read French too! A man of many talents! Ah, you Germans, you learn everything at school. How splendid to know so many languages! The vice-resident swears by you, he always says he wouldn’t go under the knife with anyone else … our residency surgeon is good for playing bridge but … the fact is,’ she said, still with her face turned away, ‘it crossed my mind today that I might consult you myself some time … and since we happened to be passing anyway, I thought … oh, but I’m sure you are very busy … I can come back another time.’
Showing your hand at last, I thought. But I didn’t show any reaction, I merely assured her that it would be an honour to be of service to her now or whenever she liked.
‘It’s nothing serious,’ she said, half-turning and at the same time leafing through a book she had taken off the shelf. ‘Nothing serious … just small things, women’s troubles … dizziness, fainting. This morning I suddenly fainted as we were driving round a bend, fainted right away, the boy had to prop me up in the car and fetch water … but perhaps the chauffeur was just driving too fast, do you think, doctor?’
‘I can’t say, just like that. Do you often have fainting fits?’
‘No … that is, yes … recently, in fact very recently. Yes, I have had such fainting fits, and attacks of nausea.’ She is standing in front of the bookcase again, puts the book back, takes another out and riffles the pages. Strange, I think, why does she keep leafing through the pages so nervously, why doesn’t she look up behind that veil? Deliberately, I say nothing. I enjoy making her wait. At last she starts talking again in her nonchalant, loquacious way.
‘There’s nothing to worry about, doctor, is there? No tropical disease … nothing dangerous …?’
‘I’d have to see if you are feverish first. May I take your pulse?’
I approach her, but she moves slightly aside.
‘No, no, I’m not feverish … certainly not, certainly not, I’ve been taking my own temperature every day since … since this fainting began. Never any higher, always exactly 36.4°. And my digestion is healthy too.’
I hesitate briefly. All this time a suspicion has been lurking at the back of my mind: I sense that this woman wants something from me. You certainly don’t go into the wilderness to talk about Flaubert. I keep her waiting for a minute or two, then I say, straight out, ‘Forgive me, but may I ask you a few frank questions?’
‘Of course, doctor! You are a medical man, after all,’ she replies, but she has her back turned to me again and is playing with the books.
‘Do you have children?’
‘Yes, a son.’
‘And have you … did you previously … I mean with your son, did you experience anything similar?’
‘Yes.’
Her voice is quite different now. Very clear, very firm, no longer loquacious or nervous.
‘And is it possible … forgive my asking … that you are now in the same situation?’
‘Yes.’
She utters the word in a tone as sharp and cutting as a knife. Her averted head does not move at all.
‘Perhaps it would be best, ma’am, if I gave you a general examination. May I perhaps ask you to … to go to the trouble of coming into the next room?’
Then she does turn, suddenly. I feel a cold, determined gaze bent straight on me through her veil.
‘No, that won’t be necessary … I am fully aware of my condition.’”
The voice hesitated for a moment. The glass that he had refilled shone briefly in the darkness again.
“So listen … but first try to think a little about it for a moment. A woman forces herself on someone who is desperate with loneliness, the first white woman in years to set foot in his room … and suddenly I feel that there is something wrong here, a danger. A shiver runs down my spine: I am afraid of the steely determination of this woman, who arrived with her careless chatter and then suddenly came out with her demand like a knife. For I knew what she wanted me to do, I knew at once—it was not the first time women had made me such requests, but they approached me differently, ashamed or pleading, they came to me with tears and entreaties. But here was a steely … yes, a virile determination. I felt from the first second that this woman was stronger than me, that she could force me to do as she wanted. And yet, and yet … there was some evil purpose in me, a man on his guard, some kind of bitterness, for as I said before … from the first second, indeed even before I had seen her, I sensed that this woman was an enemy.
At first I said nothing. I remained doggedly, grimly silent. I felt that she was looking at me under her veil—looking at me straight and challengingly, I felt that she wanted to force me to speak, but evasively, or indeed unconsciously, I emulated her casual, chattering manner. I acted as if I didn’t understand her, for—I don’t know if you can understand this—I wanted to force her to speak clearly, I didn’t want to offer anything, I wanted to be asked, particularly by her, because her manner was so imperious … and because I knew that I am particularly vulnerable to women with that cold, proud manner.
So I remained non-committal, saying there was no cause for concern, such fainting fits occurred in the natural course of events, indeed they almost guaranteed a happy outcome. I quoted cases from the medical press … I talked and talked, smoothly and effortlessly, always suggesting that this was something very banal, and … well, I kept waiting for her to interrupt me. Because I knew she wouldn’t stand for that.
Then she did interrupt me sharply, waving aside all my reassuring talk.
‘That’s not what worries me, doctor. When my son was born I was in a better state of health, but now I’m not all right any more … I have a heart condition …’
‘Ah, a heart condition,’ I repeated, apparently concerned. ‘We must look into that at once.’ And I mad
e as if to stand up and fetch my stethoscope.
But she stopped me again. Her voice was very sharp and firm now—like an officer’s on a parade ground.
‘I do have a heart condition, doctor, and I must ask you to believe what I tell you. I don’t want to waste a lot of time with examinations—I think you might show a little more confidence in me. For my part, I’ve shown sufficient confidence in you.’
Now it was battle, an open challenge, and I accepted it.
‘Confidence calls for frank disclosure, with nothing held back. Please speak frankly. I am a doctor. And for heaven’s sake take that veil off, sit down, never mind the books and the roundaboutation. You don’t go to visit a doctor in a veil.’
Proud and erect, she looked at me. For one moment she hesitated. Then she sat down and lifted her veil. I saw the kind of face I had feared to see, an impenetrable face, hard, controlled, a face of ageless beauty, a face with grey English eyes in which all seemed at peace, and yet behind which one could dream that all was passion. That narrow, compressed mouth gave nothing away if it didn’t want to. For a moment we looked at each other—she commandingly and at the same time inquiringly, with such cold, steely cruelty that I couldn’t hold her gaze, but instinctively looked away.