Beware of Pity (38 page)

The small, sturdy man had come close to me, fists clenched like a boxer. Perhaps I ought to have thought him ridiculous in his soft dressing gown and down-at-heel slippers, but his honest fury was overpowering as he shouted at me again, “Murder! Murder! Murder! Yes, and you know it yourself. Or do you think that proud, sensitive creature will
get over
revealing her heart to a man for the first time if that honourable man’s answer is to run away in panic as if he’d seen the Devil? May I suggest a little more imagination on your part? Didn’t you read the letter,
or doesn’t your heart see anything? Even a normal healthy woman would find such rejection hard to bear. Such a blow would destroy the balance of her mind for years! And this girl, who is held together only by her senseless hope of a cure, the hope
you
gave her—this broken, betrayed human being—do you think she would get over such a thing? If the shock of it didn’t finish her off she would do it herself! Yes, she would do it herself—someone in despair cannot endure a humiliation like that. I am convinced she would not survive such brutality, Lieutenant, and you know it as well as I do. And
because
you know it, your running away would not only be weakness and cowardice, it would be base, premeditated murder.”

I instinctively retreated from him even further. The moment he spoke the word “murder”, I had seen it all in a flash, as if in a vision—the balustrade of the terrace on top of the tower, and how she had clutched it with both hands! How I had to take hold of her and snatch her back at the last minute! I knew that Condor was not exaggerating. She would do exactly that, throw herself over—in my mind’s I saw the paving stones far below, I saw everything at that moment as if it were just happening, as if it had already happened, and there was a roaring in my ears as if I myself were plunging down those four or five storeys to the bottom of the tower.

But Condor still persisted. “Well, don’t deny it! Show some courage for once. It’s your professional duty.”

“But doctor … what am I to do? I can’t force myself to … oh, I can’t say what I don’t mean! How can I seem to go along with her crazy delusion? … ” And I lost control of myself. “No, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it! I can’t and won’t bear it!”

I must have been shouting, because I felt the iron grip of Condor’s fingers on my arm.

“Hush, for God’s sake!” He quickly went to the light switch and turned it off again. Now only the lamp on the desk was casting a dim cone of light from under its yellow shade.

“Oh, God help us—I have to talk to you as if you were one of my patients. Now then—sit down quietly on this chair, where even more difficult subjects have been broached.”

He moved closer to me.

“So no more going off the deep end, and take it slowly and calmly, will you? Let’s take this one thing at a time. First—you moan ‘I can’t bear it!’ But that doesn’t tell me enough. I have to know
what
you can’t bear. Why are you so horrified to think that the poor child has fallen passionately in love with you?”

I took a deep breath, preparing to answer, but Condor quickly intervened.

“Don’t be too hasty! And most important of all, don’t feel ashamed. In principle I can understand that your first reaction would be alarm when you hear such a passionate declaration. Only an idiot is pleased to think of himself as a ladykiller, only a fool is puffed up with pride at such an idea. A decent man is more likely to feel dismayed when he discovers that a woman has lost her heart to him, and he can’t return her feelings. I understand all that. But as you are so extraordinarily, so very extraordinarily upset, I have to wonder—is there some special feature of this case, I mean in the particular circumstances …”

“What circumstances?”

“Well … the fact that Edith … I find it hard to put these things into words … I mean does her … her physical disability perhaps make you feel a certain reluctance … give you a physiological distaste for her?”

“No, no … nothing like that,” I protested forcefully. After all, it was her very helplessness, her defencelessness, that had so
irresistibly attracted me, and if I had now and then felt something strangely close to a lover’s tenderness it was only because her suffering, her physical disability and isolation, had shaken me so much. “No, never!” I repeated with almost bitter conviction. “How can you think such a thing?”

“Good. That does to some extent reassure me. A doctor often has opportunities to observe that kind of psychological inhibition in those who appear the most normal of human beings. To be sure, I’ve never been able to understand men in whom the smallest flaw in a woman’s appearance engenders that idiosyncratic state of mind, but there are countless men who do feel that when, out of all the millions upon millions of cells that make up a human body, the smallest detail, say of pigmentation, is not quite right, it immediately rules out any possibility of an erotic relationship. And unfortunately it is always impossible to overcome such revulsion; that’s the case with all instincts. So I am doubly glad that you are not one of those men, and it is not because she is lame that you shrink from her. However, then I can only assume that … may I speak plainly?”

“By all means.”

“If you took fright not because of the fact of her disability itself but because of the consequences … I mean, if it was not so much that you feared that poor child’s love for you as that you were secretly afraid other people might learn of it and mock it … then in my view your extreme distress is nothing but a kind of fear—forgive me—of looking ridiculous in front of other people. In front of your military comrades.”

I felt as if Condor had driven a sharp, thin needle into my heart. For what he described was what I had felt, unconsciously, for a long time, only I had not dared to think of it. From the very first day I had shrunk from the idea that my comrades might
mock my strange relationship with the lame girl—mock it with the basically kindly but soul-destroying teasing typical of their kind for any of us ‘caught’ in the company of an oddity or a less than elegant woman. For that reason alone, I had instinctively erected a double barrier between the two worlds in my life, the world of the regiment and the one where I mingled with the Kekesfalvas. Condor’s assumption was correct—as soon as I was aware of Edith’s passionate love my principal feeling had been of shame in front of others: her father, Ilona, Josef the old servant, my comrades. I had felt ashamed of that fatal pity of mine even to myself.

But now I felt Condor’s hand stroking my knee, as if magnetically.

“You mustn’t feel ashamed. If anyone understands how you can be afraid of people as soon as something is out of tune with their well-regulated ideas, then I do. You have seen my wife. No one could understand why I married her, and everything that is not on the straight and narrow line of what we call normality makes them first curious, then malicious. My medical colleagues whispered that I had botched her treatment, and married her only out of fear of the consequences—my friends, or so-called friends, spread the rumour that she was rich, or was expecting a large legacy. My mother, my own mother refused to meet her for two years. She had had another match in mind for me, the daughter of a professor—he was the most famous specialist in internal medicine at the university—and if I had married the girl I would have been a lecturer three weeks later, then a professor myself, and I’d have lived in clover all my life. But I knew that it would destroy the woman I did marry if I let her down. All she believed in was me, and if I had taken that belief from her she would have been unable to go on living. And I will tell
you frankly, I have never regretted my choice. For believe me, doctors of all people seldom have a perfectly clear conscience. We know how little we can really do to help, we know that as individuals we can do nothing to mitigate the immeasurable extent of daily suffering. We scoop out only a thimbleful, a few drops from that unfathomable ocean, and those we think cured one day show the symptoms of another malady the next. We always have a sense of having been too remiss, too negligent, and then there are the real mistakes we make, the wrong conclusions we inevitably reach—and it is always good to know that you have helped at least
one
human being, there is
one
person whose trust you have not disappointed, you have done
one
thing well. After all, we need to know whether we have just made our way through life in dull stupidity or whether we have lived for some purpose. Believe me”—and I felt his warm and almost affectionate presence close to me again—“it is worth taking on a difficult task if that means making life easier for someone else.”

The deeply felt emotion in his voice touched me. All of a sudden I felt a slight burning sensation inside me, that familiar pressure as if my heart were expanding. I felt the memory of that unhappy child’s desperate loneliness awakening my pity again. And now, I knew, that torrent of feeling would well up in me again, and there was nothing I could do about it. But no, I told myself, don’t give way! Don’t let yourself be dragged into all that again! I looked up with determination.

“Doctor—everyone knows the limits of his own strength, at least to some degree. So I must warn you, please don’t count on me! It’s up to you, not me, to help Edith now. I’ve already gone much further than I meant to in the first place, and I’ll tell you honestly, I’m nowhere near as good or as self-sacrificing as you think. I’m at the end of my tether! I can’t bear to be adored
and idolised any more, to act as if I wanted that or would put up with it. It’s better for you to understand the situation now than be disappointed later. I give you my word of honour as a military man that I am warning you honestly if I now repeat—don’t count on me, don’t overestimate me!”

I must have spoken very firmly, because Condor looked at me, rather taken aback.

“That sounds almost as if you had come to some definite decision.” He suddenly got to his feet. “The whole truth, please, and not just half of it. Have you already done anything … anything irrevocable?”

I stood up too.

“Yes,” I said, taking my petition to resign my commission out of my pocket. “Here. Please read that for yourself.”

Casting me an uneasy glance, Condor hesitantly took the sheet of paper before going over to the little circle of lamplight. He read it slowly and in silence. Then he folded the paper up again and said very calmly, in a matter-of-fact tone suggesting that he was stating the obvious, “I take it that, after what I told you just now, you are fully aware of the consequences? We have established the fact that if you run away the effect on the child will be tantamount to murder. Murder or suicide. It is therefore, I assume, perfectly clear to you that this document represents not just a request to resign your commission, but a … a sentence of death on that poor child.”

I made no reply.

“I have asked you a question, Lieutenant Hofmiller! And I repeat it—are you aware of the consequences? Will you take the full responsibility for this on your conscience?”

I still said nothing. He came closer, holding the folded sheet of paper, and handed it back to me.

“Thank you. I want nothing more to do with the matter. Here—take it!”

But my arm was paralysed. I didn’t have the strength to raise it. And I did not have the courage to meet Condor’s probing gaze.

“Then you do not … do not intend to proceed with this death sentence?”

I turned away and clasped my hands behind my back. He understood.

“May I tear it up, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “Please do that.”

He went back to the desk. Without looking at him, I heard a sharp sound as the paper tore once, twice, three times, and then I heard the torn scraps fall, rustling, into the waste-paper basket. In a curious way, I felt light at heart. Once again—for the second time on this fateful day—a decision had been made for me. I didn’t have to make it myself now. It had happened of its own accord.

Condor came towards me and gently made me sit down in the easy chair again.

“Well … I think we have just averted a great, a very great misfortune! And now to business! At least I’m glad of this opportunity to have come to know you better—no, don’t protest. I am not overestimating you, I don’t consider you the wonderful, good man whom Kekesfalva praises to the skies, I think of you as my partner, and a highly unreliable one because of the uncertainty of your feelings and the impatience of your heart. Glad as I am to have prevented your senseless escapade, I don’t like the way you make up your mind and then change it again so quickly. People so subject to fluctuating moods ought not to be given serious responsibilities. You’re about the last person I’d turn to for anything requiring stamina and steadfastness.

“So listen, please! I’m not asking you for much—only for what is absolutely necessary. We have induced Edith to begin a new course of treatment—or rather, she thinks it’s new. For your sake she has said she’s prepared to go away for months, and as you know we leave in a week’s time. Very well. I need your help during that week, and I will relieve your mind at once by repeating, only during that one week! All I’m asking you is to promise not to do anything abrupt and unexpected during that single week, and above all not to do or say anything to show how unwelcome the poor child’s love is to you. That’s all I want from you now—and I think it is the least I can ask—a week of self-control in the interests of saving another human being’s life.”

“Yes … but then what?”

“We won’t think of that just now. When I have to operate on a tumour I can’t spend for ever wondering if it will recur in a few months’ time. When I’m called in to help, the one thing I can do is to give that help without hesitating. In any case it’s the only right thing because it is the only humane thing to do. The rest is in the hands of chance, or as those more devout than I would say, in the hands of God. We can’t do everything in a few months! Perhaps her condition really will improve more quickly than I thought, perhaps her passion will die down when there’s distance between you—I can’t consider all contingencies in advance, and you certainly shouldn’t try! Concentrate all your powers on not letting her see, within this crucial time, that her love is … is so abhorrent to you. Keep telling yourself—a week, six or seven more days, and I am saving a human being, I will not injure or offend her, disturb or discourage her. A week in which you are determined to act like a man—do you think that’s too much for you?”