Monsieur le Commandant Read Online Free PDF Page A

recommended. Following a lengthy examination of his patient, Professor Jacob beckoned me into the neighbouring room, his face a picture of solemn concern. He feared a brain tumour, and recommended immediate hospitalisation in his ward at Salpêtrière, where he could do more thorough testing with a view towards possible surgery.
    I chose for the moment not to inform Olivier or to move in with him on Rue Richer; instead, I took a room in a hotel by the Gare d’Austerlitz in order to be near my wife and visit her every day. I had a meeting with the professor a week later in his consulting room at the hospital. The Jew, all puffed up with his scientific wisdom, announced bluntly that there was indeed a brain tumour, and that it had already grown to such an extent that it was inoperable, even with the widest possible trephination. Crushed, I asked him how my wife’s condition would develop.
    ‘Injections will temporarily reduce the inflammation,’ Jacob explained with a serenity that I found unbearable, ‘so you can expect a mild improvement for the next three or four weeks. Then your wife’s mental and physical health will gradually weaken as the tumour grows. I advise you to have Madame Husson hospitalised near your home. She is in no pain. You can keep the gravity of her condition from her until the very end.’
    I asked in a subdued voice when that end might come. The Yid shrugged his shoulders and sighed.
    ‘There is no way to predict that, my dear Monsieur. It could be anywhere between four and nine months …’
    An ambulance took Marguerite home to Andigny, while I followed in the car. I will spare you, Monsieur le Commandant, a description ofmy feelings on that funereal journey. My wife was found a room in the Saint-Jacques hospice only a few paces from our house, and enjoyed a practically identical view of the Seine.

    I visited Marguerite there every day. The first month, as the hook-nosed specialist had predicted, she seemed to return to normal, and I allowed myself to hope once again. Perhaps the tumour would vanish as it had appeared, mysteriously and in silence? Perhaps the injections and the medicine were enough to stop it, shrink it, eradicate it? I told my wife that she was suffering from a nervous ailment that was better treated here than at home. She seemed to be satisfied with the explanation. Olivier, Ilse and the child came to see us every weekend. We took tea and pastries in the sickroom, which we filled with chatter. Marguerite would fall into a doze, sinking into a vague torpor that I attributed to inactivity or the drugs. We hugged her and tiptoed from the room. The others pretended to share my optimism when I accompanied them to the railway station. On the way there, I noticed the first signs of spring, the budding trees. I took these signs to indicate that Our Lord, in thus demonstrating his eternal power, would come to our assistance. ‘Help yourself, and Heaven will help you.’ Yes indeed, we had to hold fast, as we did at Verdun! The illness, and the prognosis delivered by the sinister Jew of Salpêtrière, would be overthrown!
    One Sunday in early April as I joined my family in the sickroom, I witnessed an unusual spectacle. Marguerite was holding Hermione and teaching her what I took at first to be a new game. The girl was told to rub her nose with the index finger of each hand in turn, drawing the skin upwards towards her brow, while my wife sang a little ditty, smiling and saying over and over, ‘My nose is growing straight, my nose is growing straight, pretty little nose so nice and straight …’ My son was absent, but Ilse was livid, watching the performance in silence. The tension in the room was palpable. Upon catching sight of me, mydaughter-in-law threw me a furtive glance before grabbing the child forcefully from her grandmother. I forgot the incident as we chatted about one thing or another. Marguerite, her eyes wandering, soon lost interest in Hermione as she followed, or