Cocaine (26 page)

Tito had no objection. He would have agreed if they had suggested sending for an electrician or giving him vitriol to drink.

Another doctor came. He was a typical physician of the old school. He remained standing by the bed with his arms crossed over his belly as if he were leaning on a windowsill. He felt the patient’s pulse, looked at his tongue, consulted his watch and a thermometer, and went through the usual exorcistic routine.

“Who’s your doctor?” he asked.

Nocera mentioned a name. The doctor made a grimace that betrayed what he thought.

“And what did he say?”

“A blood infection. Septicemia.”

“Rubbish,” said the doctor. “This gentleman has . . .”

The patient thought he saw the word “typhoid” forming on the doctor’s lips. But what he said was: “Mediterranean fever.”

“What did you say?”

“Malta fever.”

“Is it serious?”

“No. Serotherapy works wonders in these cases. What we need is Wright’s vaccine. We must act speedily. The first thing to do is to stop the previous treatment. I’ll go and get the vaccine and I’ll be back in an hour.”

This serious-minded doctor read the medical press and fell in love with the latest methods. A patient of his had died of Mediterranean fever six months before, and since then he had seen nothing but Mediterranean fever in all his patients.

“It’s perfectly simple,” he explained to Tito. “I shall inject several thousand million attenuated bacteria into your blood. Do you see this test tube? It contains three thousand million.”

The patient behaved like a martyr. He allowed himself to be injected without betraying the slightest feeling, either on his face or in the place where the needle went in. He simply said: “You’ve injected me with the bacteria of Malta fever, doctor, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Now, assuming for the sake of argument that I did not have that disease, that would have given it to me, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“So if your diagnosis is mistaken and I have typhoid, for instance, I should now have two diseases.”

“Certainly. But you haven’t got typhoid.”

“I know, I know,” the patient hastily added. It was just a hypothesis, an amusing hypothesis.”

So Tito now knew he had two diseases, typhoid and Malta fever. If I don’t die of the one I’ll die of the other, he said to himself.

His temperature, which had dropped, rose again, and he had bad pains all over his body.

“It’s nothing,” said the serious doctor. Those are the reactions invariably produced by Wright’s vaccine in these cases. It’s all perfectly normal and shows that my diagnosis was correct. It’s a very good omen.”

Maud and Nocera were not very satisfied with either of these doctors.

“As the first doctor was wrong, the second may be wrong too. The first one diagnosed a disease and made tests which satisfied him he was right. The second one diagnosed another disease and made tests which satisfied him that he was right too. I’d have a third opinion, and I’d call in the most famous doctor in the city.”

Before evening fell the famous, infallible medical luminary, that high priest of science, the greatest doctor in Turin appeared in Tito’s room.

He shook hands in a dignified manner with the other two doctors and said: “It’s typhoid. Even a dentist could see that.”

“Impossible,” exclaimed the first doctor.

“Have you tried Vidal’s test?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

“Once.”

“That’s not enough,” the luminary exclaimed. “Do it again.”

At last Tito was being treated by a doctor, obviously sent by destiny, who would cure him. Again he had blood extracted from a vein. This time the result was positive: one per cent.

“So it is typhoid?” he said.

“Yes,” all three doctors agreed.

And Tito said to himself: So far they haven’t cured me because they did not diagnose my disease. Now that they have recognized it they’ll prescribe the correct treatment, and I shall get better.

“You mustn’t have anything to eat,” the famous doctor said.

And Tito said to himself: I knew very well that if you have typhoid you mustn’t eat.

“And no more enemas.”

Tito was secretly delighted. He knew very well that the bowels must be left alone.

In fact the famous doctor turned to the other two and said: “If you give him an enema you’ll kill him. Even a midwife would know that.”

All the same Tito said to himself, they gave me twenty-four and I’m still alive. And they were just like the Niagara Falls.

“He must have cold baths to bring down his temperature. Do you understand?”

“Yes, doctor,” Maud, Nocera and the landlady replied.

“Afterwards he must be put back to bed immediately. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

And they left.

The patient felt he was coming back to life. It was not surprising that treatment for the wrong disease should be ineffective. But when the diagnosis was correct . . . And in this case there was no doubt that it was correct, for he was very well aware of having drunk a whole tube of bacteria culture on which the word “typhoid” was written.

But what baffled him was why those steaks and enemas had not killed him out of hand.

In the hands of these three doctors he felt as if he were being held by the feet by three acrobats hanging from the ceiling at a circus and being thrown from one to the other over long distances, turning giddy somersaults on the way, and his impression was that it was pure chance that they always caught him.

He was awakened from his meditation by Nocera and Maud, who gently ushered him into the cold bath.

“It’s awful,” Tito groaned, struggling and with his teeth chattering.

“Be patient, old man.”

“Be patient, my love.”

“Just another minute,” said the landlady with a watch in her hand.

“It’ll bring down your temperature,” Nocera said.

“It’ll make you better,” Maud said.

They quickly dried him and put him back to bed; he was as livid as a drowned man.

“You’ll soon get warm again, darling,” said Maud.

But instead of getting warm he felt colder in bed than in the bath, and he had a stabbing pain in the region of his right rib.

And he coughed.

Then he coughed again.

Then he spat blood.

The first doctor, who arrived soon after he was taken out of the bath, said that the stabbing pain in the ribs was merely an intercostal pain.

The famous doctor, the luminary of science, reassured everybody by saying: “It’s nothing. It’s a bone abscess characteristic of typhoid. Even an army medical officer would know that.”

But Tito knew that he had caught acute pneumonia in the bath.

When he started spitting blood the doctors silently withdrew, and Maud hurried out to fetch them back.

And Tito saw a priest in front of him, black and solemn, talking to him with a more than human voice.

“Who sent for you?” the patient said.

“No one,” the landlady lied.

“Priests can smell when someone’s dying,” Tito said in a little trickle of a voice. “They’re like the flies that lay their eggs in the nostrils of the dying. But, as he’s here, let him stay.”

The priest showed him a crucifix and made him say a prayer under his guidance.

“Listen, father,” Tito said. “There’s a box in that drawer with a photograph in it. Please bring it to me.”

The priest brought him the box, and Tito took from it the photograph of Cocaine in the nude.

“You’re going to tear it up, I hope,” the priest said, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.

“No,” Tito said with a laugh. “I want to look at it for the last time.”

“But in this last hour God is near your bed,” His minister said warningly.

“Good. Then He can look at it too.”

“And now you will confess,” said the priest, seizing the obscene photograph and putting it between the pages of his breviary.

“Confess? Is that laxative lemonade for the soul really necessary?”

“Don’t blaspheme, wretched man.”

“Go away, you fool.”

And he turned over on to his side, turning to the priest that part of his body into which three thousand million bacteria (Wright’s vaccine) had been injected.

The priest left. Halfway down he opened his breviary and blushed.

Nocera came in with an aunt of Tito’s, a horrible woman whom he rarely saw. In every family there’s at least one horrible aunt. There’s one in mine too.

She was glad that Tito was dying, but wept hot tears all the same.

“If you’re weeping it means I shall get better,” Tito said to her. “If I were going, you’d be laughing for joy.”

A man came in with three oxygen cylinders.

“Three? Why three?” the aunt who was one of those horrible aunts that they have in every family, including mine, wanted to know. “Why did you order three? Supposing he only uses two? Will the chemist take the other one back?”

“Yes, he will.”

“And will he give you the money back?”

“Listen, Nocera,” Tito exclaimed with his last remaining breath. “Get rid of this dreadful woman for me, otherwise I’ll get my own back on her. I’ll pay her the dirty trick of not dying.”

The high priest of medical science walked in.

“How are we, are we feeling better?” the illustrious doctor said, taking Tito’s pulse. “Are we feeling better?”

“Yes, we are, we’re going.”

And he died.

Nocera, Maud and the landlady went down on their knees round the bed, with their heads on the bedclothes, just as in the prints showing the death of Anita Garibaldi or Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour.

And that’s how one can get better after swallowing typhoid bacteria and being treated for septicemia and then for Malta fever. And that’s also how one can die of pneumonia after undergoing the classical treatment for typhoid.

When Pietro Nocera opened the will the only other person present was Maud. Her eyes were red from weeping.

Tito had stated clearly that he was going to kill himself, and he had killed himself for her.

This was the first time that Maud had ever felt remorse.

“If I had been more faithful to him, or had made him think I was faithful, he would now . . .”

“Forget it,” Nocera said to her. “Remorse is the most useless thing. You’d do better to go home and sleep. I’ll see to all the funeral arrangements.”

Maud once more kissed Tito’s brow, put a little rouge on her lips and went home to the room facing the courtyard that had been hers when she was a girl, the room to which an appetizing smell of good upper-class cooking floated up from the floors below.

Her father, with the respect due to her grief, asked whether there wasn’t a mid-season overcoat among the deceased’s belongings.

The official physician whose duty it was to ascertain the cause of death called at the deceased’s address and left again immediately, and a priest called and stayed for half an hour.

“My poor friend was an atheist,” Nocera pointed out.

“The deceased does not have to have been a believer,” the priest said, “It’s sufficient if the survivors are believers.”

“I really —”

“Not you, but . . .”

“Well, how much does it cost?”

“Twenty-five lire for each priest.”

“How many priests are necessary to make a satisfactory show?”

“At least eight.”

“That makes two hundred lire.”

“Then there are the nuns.”

“How much are they?”

“Two lire each with used candles, three lire with new candles.”

“And how many are needed?”

“About a hundred.”

“That makes two hundred lire.”

“But not with new candles.”

“As they have to be lit, it seems to me not to matter very much if they have been lit before.”

“You must add fifty lire for the carpets to lay at the church door.”

“Is that necessary?”

“It’s essential. Then there’s the mass and the benediction.”

“Can’t you give me an all-in price? What’s the least for which you can do it?”

“Mass, benediction and carpets, a hundred lire, not including the priests and nuns.”

“Very well, then.”

“Will you give me something on account of expenses?”

“Will two hundred be enough?”

“Yes.”

“Will you see to everything?”

“Yes. Will four o’clock tomorrow afternoon be all right?”

“Yes, Father. But how can mass be celebrated at four o’clock in the afternoon if it has to be said on an empty stomach?”

“We take it in turn to fast.”

Next the undertaker’s representative arrived to make arrangements for the hearse and the trappings for the horses. Nocera telephoned the cremation society, who sent a representative, and a musician also called.

“I’m the first clarinet in the prize-winning Musica in Testa band, and I can offer you very favorable terms,” the man said. “We have a select repertoire of funeral marches: Gounod, Donizetti, Wagner, Petrella, Grieg and Chopin. We have a worn banner, it’s so worn that you can’t read what’s written on it; it looks like the banner of a charity of which the deceased was a patron and benefactor. Every player has his own special headgear, and for a small supplement he will also wear a sword.”

“What does it come to with the sword?”

“Two hundred lire.”

“Very well, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“What about the pieces?”

“What pieces?”

“The pieces of music.”

“You choose them. The best you have in stock.”

Some men arrived with the coffin.

Nocera took out Tito’s green silk pajamas, and the men helped him to put them on the dead man.

Then they put him in the coffin.

“Shall we close it straight away?”

“Yes, unless there’s anything else to put in.”

The hearse was waiting outside the door. The undertaker’s assistants carried down the coffin and put it in the hearse with neatness and precision, and the procession set off. The balconies were full of curious onlookers, and women shopkeepers came to the shop doors and gossiped.

The procession was led by an undertaker’s assistant with moustaches trimmed in the American style.

He was followed by the band, which consisted of