Zeno's Conscience Page 4

  Sincerity and breath wasted! The doctor—was gasping: “I certainly hope the electrical treatments will not cure you of that illness. The very idea! I would never touch a Ruhmkorff* again if I had reason to fear such an effect.”

  He told me an anecdote that he considered delightful. A man suffering from my same illness went to a famous doctor, begging to be cured, and the doctor, after succeeding perfectly, had to leave the country because otherwise his former patient would have had his scalp.

  “My agitation isn’t the good kind!” I cried. “It comes from the poison that surges through my veins.”

  *Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff (1803—77), inventor of an electrical device, a “coil,” popular around the end of the nineteenth century.

  With a heartbroken expresson, the doctor murmured: “Nobody is ever content with his lot.”

  And to convince him, I did what he was unwilling to do, and I examined my disease, reviewing all its symptoms. “My distraction! It also prevents my studying. I was in Graz preparing for the first state examinations, and I made a careful list of all the texts I would require until the last examination was over. Then, as it turned out, a few days before the examination I realized I had studied subjects I would need only several years later. So I had to postpone the exam. True, I had studied even those other things only scantily, thanks to a young woman in the neighborhood who, for that matter, conceded me little beyond some brazen flirtation. When she was at her window, I could no longer keep my eyes on the textbook. Isn’t a man who behaves like that an imbecile? I remember the little, white face of the girl at the window: oval, framed by fluffy, tawny curls. I looked at her and dreamed of pressing that whiteness and that russet gold against my pillow.”

  Aesculapius murmured, “Flirtation always has something good about it. When you’re my age, you won’t flirt anymore.”

  Today I am certain that he knew absolutely nothing about flirtation. I am fifty-seven, and I’m sure that if I don’t stop smoking or if psychoanalysis doesn’t cure me, my last glance from my deathbed will express my desire for my nurse, provided she is not my wife and provided my wife has allowed the nurse to be beautiful!

  I spoke sincerely, as in Confession: a woman never appeals to me as a whole, but rather… in pieces! In all women I loved feet, if well shod: in many others, a slender neck but also a thick one, and the bosom, if not too heavy. I went on listing female anatomical parts, but the doctor interrupted me.

  “These parts add up to a whole woman.”

  I then uttered an important statement: “Healthy love is the love that embraces a single, whole woman, including her character and her intelligence.”

  At that time I surely hadn’t yet known such a love; and when I did encounter it, it was unable to give me health; but it’s important for me to remember that I identified disease where a man of science found health, and that later my diagnosis proved true.

  In a friend who was not a physician I then found the person who best understood me and my disease. I derived no great advantage from this association, but in my life it struck a new note that still echoes.

  This friend was a gentleman of means who enriched his leisure with study and literary projects. He talked much better than he wrote, and therefore the world was never to know what a fine man of letters he was. He was big and heavyset, and when I met him he was undergoing a strenuous cure to lose weight. In a few days he had achieved a considerable result, so that in the street everyone came up to him, hoping to enhance their own feeling of health, in contrast to his obvious illness. I envied him because he was capable of doing what he wanted, and I remained close to him for the duration of his cure. He allowed me to touch his belly, which shrank every day, and, in my malevolent envy, wanting to sap his determination, I would say to him: “When your cure’s over, what’s going to happen to all this skin?”

  With great calm, which made his emaciated face comical, he replied: “In two days’ time, massage therapy begins.”

  His cure had been planned in every detail, and he would certainly respect every date.

  I developed a great faith in his wisdom, and I described my disease to him. I remember this description, too. I explained to him that I thought it would be easier to renounce eating three times a day than to give up smoking my countless cigarettes, which would require repeating the same wearisome decision every moment. Having such a decision on your mind leaves no time for anything else; only Julius Caesar was able to do several things at the same moment. True, I am not asked to work, not while my accountant Olivi is alive, but why is a person like me unable to do anything in this world except dream or scratch at the violin, for which he possesses no talent?

  The thinned fat man did not reply at once. He was methodical, and he first pondered for a long time. Then, with a learned mien that was rightfully his, given his great superiority in the field, he explained to me that my real disease lay not in the cigarette but in the decision-making. I should try giving up the habit without any resolutions or decisions. In me—he felt—over the course of the years two persons had come into being, one of whom commanded, while the other was merely a slave who, the moment surveillance weakened, flouted his master’s will out of a love of freedom. This slave was therefore to be granted absolute freedom, and at the same time I should look my habit squarely in the face, as if it were new and I had never seen it before. It should not be fought, but neglected and forgotten in a certain way; abandoning it, I should turn my back on it nonchalantly, as on a companion now recognized as unworthy of me. Quite simple, really.

  In fact, it did seem simple to me. It’s true, moreover, that having then succeeded with great effort in dispelling all decisiveness from my spirit, I succeeded in not smoking for several hours, but when my mouth was cleansed and I felt an innocent taste such as a newborn infant must know, and a desire for a cigarette came over me, and when I smoked it I felt a remorse for which I renewed the decision I had tried to abolish. It was a longer way round, but it arrived at the same place.

  One day that scoundrel Olivi gave me an idea: I would strengthen my resolve by making a bet.

  I believe Olivi has always looked the way I see him today. I have always seen him a bit stooped but solid, and to me he has always appeared old, as I see him now, at eighty. He has worked for me and still works for me, but I don’t love him, because in my view he has prevented me from doing the work that he does.

  We made a bet! The first one of us who smoked would pay, and then each would regain his own freedom. So the accountant, who had been imposed on me to keep me from squandering my father’s legacy, tried to diminish my mother’s, which I controlled freely on my own!

  The bet proved extremely pernicious. I was no longer occasionally the master, but only a slave, the slave of that Olivi, whom I didn’t love! I smoked immediately. Then I thought to defraud him by continuing to smoke in secret. But, in that case, why should I have made the bet? To smoke a last cigarette, I hastily sought a date that might have some attractive tie with the date of the bet, which I could somehow imagine had also been recorded by Olivi himself. But the rebellion continued and I smoked so much I became short of breath. To free myself of this burden, I went to Olivi and confessed.

  The old man, smiling, collected the money and immediately took from his pocket a thick cigar, which he lighted and smoked with great gusto. I had no doubt that he had observed the conditions of the bet. Obviously, other men are made differently from me.

  Just after my son’s third birthday, my wife had a fine idea. She suggested I have myself confined for a while in a clinic, to rid myself of the habit. I agreed at once, first of all because when my son reached an age at which he would be able to judge me, I wanted him to find me stable and tranquil, and also for the more urgent reason that Olivi was ill and threatening to abandon me, hence I might be forced to take his place at any moment, and I considered myself ill-suited for such great activity with all that nicotine inside me.

  At first we thought of going to Switzerland, the t
raditional land of clinics, but then we learned that in Trieste a certain Dr. Muli had opened an establishment. I sent my wife to see him, and he offered to reserve for me a locked apartment where I would be guarded by a nurse, assisted also by other staff. As my wife told me about it, she smiled and even laughed out loud, amused at the idea of having me locked up, and I laughed heartily along with her. This was the first time she had participated in my attempts at treatment. Until now she had never taken my disease seriously, and she used to say that smoking was only a somewhat odd and not entirely boring way of life. I believe that after marrying me, she had been pleasantly surprised at never hearing me express any nostalgia for my freedom; I was too busy missing other things.

  We went to the clinic on the same day Olivi told me that nothing could persuade him to stay on with me beyond the following month. At home, we prepared some fresh linen in a trunk, and that same evening we went to Dr. Muli’s.

  He welcomed us at the door, in person. At that time Dr. Muli was a handsome young man. It was midsummer; small, nervy, his lively, shining black eyes even more prominent in his sun-burnished face, he was the picture of elegance in his white suit, trim from his collar to his shoes. He roused my wonder, but obviously I was also the object of his.

  A bit embarrassed, understanding the reason for his wonder, I said: “Of course. You don’t believe in the necessity of the treatment, or in my seriousness in undertaking it.”

  With a slight smile, which somehow hurt me, the doctor replied: “Why not? It may be true that cigarettes are more harmful to you than we doctors admit. Only I don’t understand why, instead of giving up smoking ex abrupto, you haven’t decided simply to reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke. Smoking is all right, provided you don’t overdo it.”

  To tell the truth, in my desire to stop smoking altogether, I had never even considered the possibility of smoking less. But this advice, arriving now, could only weaken my resolve. I spoke firmly: “Since it’s been decided, let me give this cure a try.”

  “Try?” The doctor laughed with a superior manner. “Once you undertake it, the cure must succeed. Unless you employ brute force to overpower poor Giovanna, you will be unable to leave here. The formalities to release you would take so long that in the meantime you would forget your addiction.”

  “We were in the apartment reserved for me, which we had reached by returning to the ground floor, after having climbed up to the third.

  “You see? That barred door prevents any communication with the other part of the ground floor, where the exit is located. Not even Giovanna has the keys. To go outside, she also has to climb to the third floor, and only she has the keys to the door that was opened for us on that landing. In any case, there are always guards on the third floor. Not bad, eh? In a clinic originally designed for babies and expectant mothers?”

  And he started laughing, perhaps at the thought of having shut me up among the babies.

  He called Giovanna and introduced me. She was a tiny little woman of indeterminate age: anywhere between forty and sixty. She had small eyes, intensely aglow, and a cap of very gray hair.

  The doctor said to her: “With this gentleman you must be ready to use your fists.”

  She looked at me, studying me, turned bright red, and shouted in a shrill voice, “I will do my duty, but I certainly can’t fight with you. If you threaten me, I’ll call the orderly, a strong man, and if he doesn’t come at once, I’ll let you go where you like, because I certainly don’t want to risk my neck.”

  I learned later that the doctor had given her this assignment with the promise of a fairly generous bonus, which had only increased her fright. At that moment her words irked me—fine position I had put myself in, and of my own free will!

  “Neck, indeed!” I cried. “Who’s going to touch your neck?”

  I turned to the doctor: “I would like you to instruct this woman not to disturb me. I have brought some books along, and I want to be left in peace.”

  The doctor uttered a few words of warning to Giovanna. Her only apology was to continue her attack: “I have children, two little daughters, and I have to live.”

  “I wouldn’t condescend to murder you,” I replied in a tone surely not calculated to reassure the poor creature.

  The doctor got rid of her, sending her to fetch something or other from the floor above, and to soothe me, he offered to replace her with someone else, adding: “She’s not a bad sort, and when I’ve instructed her to be a little more tactful, she will give you no cause for complaint.”

  Wishing to show what scant importance I attached to the person charged with watching over me, I declared my willingness to put up with her. I felt the need to calm down, I took from my pocket my next-to-last cigarette and smoked it greedily; I explained to the doctor that I had brought with me only two, and that I wanted to stop smoking at midnight on the dot.

  My wife took her leave of me along with the doctor. Smiling, she said: “This is your decision, so be strong.”

  Her smile, which I so loved, seemed a mockery; and at that very moment a new feeling germinated in my spirit, with the result that an enterprise undertaken with such seriousness was doomed perforce to fail at once. I felt ill immediately, but I did not realize what was making me suffer until I was left alone. A mad, bitter jealousy of the young doctor. Handsome he was, and free! He was called the Venus of doctors. Why wouldn’t my wife love him? Following her, as they left, he had looked at her elegantly shod feet! This was the first time since my marriage that I had felt jealous. What misery! It was no doubt a part of my condition as a wretched prisoner. I fought back! My wife’s smile was her usual smile, not mockery after having eliminated me from the house. It was she, indeed, who had caused me to be locked up, though she attached no importance to my habit; but she had surely arranged this to please me. And, furthermore, I should recall that it wasn’t so easy to fall in love with my wife. The doctor may have looked at her feet, but certainly he had done so to see what sort of boots to buy for his mistress. Still, I promptly smoked the last cigarette; and it wasn’t yet midnight, only eleven o’clock, an impossible hour for a last cigarette.

  I opened a book. I read without comprehending, and I actually had visions. The page on which I had fixed my gaze was occupied by a photograph of Dr. Muli in all his glory, beauty, elegance. I couldn’t bear it! I summoned Giovanna. Perhaps if I could converse, I would calm down.

  She came, and at once gave me a suspicious look. She cried with her shrill voice: “You needn’t think you can persuade me to neglect my duty.”

  Meanwhile, to soothe her, I lied, assuring her I wasn’t thinking any such thing, but I no longer felt like reading and would rather have a little chat with her. I made her sit down opposite me. Actually, she repelled me, with her old crone demeanor and her youthful eyes, shifty like the eyes of all weak animals. I felt sorry for myself, having to put up with such company! It’s true that even when I’m free, I can never choose the company most suitable for me; as a rule it’s the others who choose me, as my wife did.

  I begged Giovanna to entertain me, and when she insisted she could say nothing worthy of my attention, I asked her to tell me about her family, adding that nearly everybody in this world has at least one.

  She then obeyed, and started telling me that she had had to put her two little girls in the Institute for the Poor.

  I was beginning to enjoy her story because her brisk way of dealing with those eighteen months of pregnancy made me laugh. But her temperament was too argumentative and I simplv couldn’t so on listening to her when, first, she tried to convince me that she had no other course, what with her scant wages, and then that the doctor had been wrong, a few days before, to assert that two crowns daily were enough for her, since the Institute supported her entire family.

  She was shouting. “And what about the rest? Even after they’ve been fed and clothed, they still don’t have all they need!” And out she came with a whole stream of things she had to provide for her daughters, a
ll of which I have now forgotten, since to protect my hearing from her shrill voice, I deliberately directed my thoughts elsewhere. But I was distressed all the same, and I felt entitled to a reward: “Wouldn’t it be possible to have a cigarette? Just one? I’d pay you ten crowns. Tomorrow, that is. Because I don’t have a penny with me.”

  Giovanna was hugely frightened by my proposal. Then, speaking purely at random, just to be talking and to maintain my composure, I asked: “In this prison there must at least be something to drink, isn’t there?”

  Giovanna responded promptly and, to my astonishment, in a genuinely conversational tone, without yelling. “Yes, indeed! Before leaving, the doctor gave me this bottle of cognac. Here it is, still unopened. You see? The seal hasn’t been broken.”

  In my present position, the only avenue of escape I could then envision was drunkenness. To such straits had my confidence in my wife reduced me!

  At that moment my smoking habit didn’t seem worth all the effort to which I had subjected myself. Already I hadn’t smoked for half an hour and I wasn’t even thinking about it, concerned as I was with the idea of my wife with Doctor Muli. So I was entirely cured, but irreparably ridiculous!

  I opened the bottle and poured myself a little glass of the yellow liquid. Giovanna watched me, her mouth agape, but I hesitated before offering her any.

  “When I’ve finished this bottle, will I be able to have another?”

  Still in her pleasant conversational tone, Giovanna reassured me, “As much as you want! To comply with your slightest wish, the housekeeper must get up, even at midnight!”