The Doctor of Thessaly Read online

  In surprise, the fat man faced her.

  ‘Do you accuse your own sister of the attack on your fiancé?’ he asked. ‘That’s a serious charge, Chrissa. Take care what you say, because some things, once said, have repercussions which cannot be helped. Sometimes, there can be no retraction – so be sure of what you are saying before you speak again.’

  ‘Who else?’ Rage she had so far suppressed filled her face. ‘Who else is bitter enough to want to ruin my happiness? Who else is there who’d want to make a fool of me this way?’

  Indeed, thought the fat man. Who else, indeed?

  Down in the lane, the households again fell silent as he went by. At the lane’s end was an old orchard, where the trees still bore their winter-hardened fruit: figs too high to reach and pomegranates too numerous to pick. In places, the orchard wall had fallen, giving a view of long grass scattered with poppies and yellow daisies.

  Passing one of these gaps in the wall, the fat man heard the fall of stones, as if a foot had slipped, but giving no hint of awareness, he walked on to the corner, where he stopped, took out his cigarettes and slowly lit one. As he drew in the first of the smoke, unobtrusively he turned his head. A man was crossing the orchard, making for a wooden door in the wall on its far side. It was no one the fat man recognised: a mountain man, long-haired and heavy-bearded, who loped away, wrapped against the winds of his terrain in the shaggy skin of one of his own sheep.

  Ten

  The smell of hospitals, thought the fat man, was universal: rubbing alcohol and carbolic, starched laundry and soiled sheets, flowers and boiled vegetables. On the ward to which he had been directed, the doors of many rooms stood open, and curious patients and their relatives inside craned their necks to watch him as he passed.

  But the door of room 112 was shut. In 111, the volume on a small radio was turned up high, broadcasting an interview with a farmer about the rising costs of cotton production. An elderly man lay pale and dozing on a metal-framed bed; in a chair beside him, his black-clothed wife was knitting a baby’s bonnet, her needles working an intricate pattern from a ball of pale-blue wool.

  At the closed door, the fat man hesitated. The old woman looked up from her knitting, and seeing him, bustled across to the doorway.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked. Her tone was proprietorial, as if the hospital employed her as receptionist.

  The fat man hesitated, considering whether to indulge her. She was the type who would miss nothing in the comings and goings on the ward, and that type was often useful; and so he turned to her and smiled.

  ‘I’m looking for Louis Chabrol,’ he said. ‘They told me 112, but I don’t want to disturb him.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that.’ She placed a hand on the small of his back to usher him forward. ‘Go in, kalé, go in. He doesn’t mind. He’s used to me being in and out.’

  ‘But if he’s sleeping . . .’

  ‘Sleeping, waking, it’s all the same in here,’ she said. ‘All they have to do is sleep. He’ll be glad to be woken up. He’s had no visitors; you’re his first. He wouldn’t want to miss you.’

  On the fat man’s behalf, she opened the door. Room 112 seemed identical to the room next door, although there was no radio, and the man lying on this bed was somewhat younger, with his eyes heavily bound in white bandages. The room was pleasantly warm, the heat rising off the aged radiator comforting.

  Aware that the doctor might be sleeping, the fat man was about to speak gently, but the old woman pushed past him to the window.

  ‘Pouf! So hot in here!’ she said. ‘I keep telling them, fresh air is what they need. Heat slows the blood, and the sickness takes root. If you keep the blood moving, they get better much faster.’

  Lifting the latch on the window, she threw it open, letting the warmth out and much colder air in. On the bed, in silence, the doctor moved his arms beneath the blankets.

  ‘See?’ she said, turning to the doctor as she did so. ‘He’s livening up already.’

  She leaned over him as if professionally assessing his condition, and as she leaned, she raised her voice to speak, as if the doctor was suffering from deafness.

  ‘There’s a gentleman to see you, kalé,’ she said, so close to his ear and so loud, the doctor flinched. ‘When he’s gone, I’ll come back and help you with your lunch.’

  Touching the fat man’s arm, she drew him away from the bed.

  ‘Are you a relative, kalé?’ she asked, in a low tone. ‘Because there’s been no one, no one at all. I’ve done what I can; it’s my duty, as a Christian, to help him. He needs a lot of help, as you can see, and the hospital food’s not much. We’ve been glad to share what we have, my husband and I. We’re a little out of pocket – you’re bound to be, aren’t you, when you give charitably? – but I ask for nothing. I ask for no repayment of the debt, kalé. We’ve given what we can out of charity.’

  She stood before him, waiting, as he knew, for reimbursement.

  The fat man smiled.

  ‘Your good deeds do you great credit,’ he said, ‘but I am not a relative.’

  Muttering, she left them. The fat man crossed silently to the door and quietly closed it; but instinct told the doctor he was not alone, and he moved his head from side to side, as if to give his ears their maximum range.

  ‘Is someone there?’ He spoke uncertainly, as if he mistrusted all his senses.

  ‘Yes,’ said the fat man. ‘Shall I close the window?’

  ‘Please do,’ said the doctor. ‘Every time the room gets warm, she makes it her business to come and open it. If my care’s left to her, I’ll die of pneumonia. Who are you?’

  ‘You don’t know me,’ said the fat man, ‘though we met very briefly when you were brought down from the chapel.’ He closed the window firmly, slotting the latch back into place. ‘I am Hermes Diaktoros, of Athens, and I’m investigating the attack which has been made on you. Would you mind – if you feel up to it – answering a few questions?’

  ‘They should have told you,’ said the doctor. ‘I won’t be pressing charges. I asked for no police involvement. There was no need for you to come.’ His voice was rough from lack of use, his words somewhat unclear, both because of his reluctance to move his painful jaw, and because his accent – perhaps under the influence of painkillers – seemed more pronounced.

  ‘May I sit?’ asked the fat man.

  Without waiting for a reply, he picked up a tubular-framed chair from the corner of the room, and placing it at the doctor’s bedside, tucked his holdall between his feet and sat down. Bending close, he scrutinised the visible injuries on the doctor’s face. The skin where he could see it was stained yellow-brown with iodine, and coated in parts with thick, white cream of zinc. Beyond doubt, the damage was serious. There were places where the skin was lifting as dead tissue peeled away; elsewhere, where the chemical had eaten deeper, dark scabs had formed.

  ‘You’re looking at my face, and I’m sure it isn’t pretty,’ said the doctor bitterly. ‘Do they not say we should count our blessings? Perhaps I should count as one of mine the fact that I shall never see the damage.’

  ‘No, it isn’t pretty, at the moment,’ agreed the fat man. ‘But never despair. A few more days are needed yet before the likely long-term outcome can be even guessed at. As you, as a medical man, will know.’

  ‘I know what the outcome will be; I need no sugar-coating. I won’t see again. I’m blind for life.’

  ‘Prognoses may be affected by attitude.’

  ‘Mind over matter? Be reasonable. I’m a practical man by nature, and as you say, medically trained. I’ll leave here with a white stick, no doubt of it.’ ‘If you believe that, then my first question must be, why do you want no investigation? If some malicious person has robbed you – as you believe – of your precious sight, why do you not want that person caught, tried and punished for their crime?’

  ‘I have my reasons. And since I do, I ask you to respect them, and leave me.’

  But
the fat man folded his arms, and made himself more comfortable in his uncomfortable chair.

  ‘I have given this some thought,’ he said, ‘and I think your wish to avoid any investigation has three possible sources. Firstly, you may yourself be known to the police, and be avoiding contact with them. That strikes me as unlikely in your case. Secondly, you may already know who attacked you and have decided to mete out your own justice, in your own time – a more vicious justice than you could ever hope to win going through the courts. Many people in your position want an eye for an eye, and believe there must be a physical element to any true justice – in short, you wish to inflict pain in return for what you have suffered. I must counsel you very strongly against this course. It would, beyond any doubt, catch up with you in the end. Or thirdly, you may wish – for reasons of your own – to protect the perpetrator from the scandal of prosecution. You may wish to protect that person’s family. But whatever your reasons, you have no need to hide them from me. I am not a member of any police force. I act on behalf of a higher authority, and you have my word that, whatever I discover in the course of my investigation, I will report nothing to the police without your permission. I can be very discreet if I choose to be, and I am always pleased to keep secrets if the situation warrants it. So you may confide in me in absolute confidence.’

  In the hall outside, china rattled on a trolley, and a coarse female voice called out for coffee orders.

  ‘I want no investigation,’ said the doctor, ‘and it is painful for me to talk. Please leave me.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re missed in Morfi,’ said the fat man, as if he hadn’t heard the doctor’s request. ‘The people will be anxious for you to come back and take care of them.’

  ‘Not all of them.’

  ‘Oh?’ queried the fat man. ‘Who wouldn’t be?’

  ‘That old fool of a doctor they had before me, for one,’ said Dr Louis. ‘He’ll be glad to step back into his old shoes, with me out of the way. Poor beggars! He’ll see them all buried before he’s done.’

  ‘Is he not competent, then?’

  ‘It’s only recently he nearly killed a girl. He diagnosed a pelvic inflammation instead of appendicitis. If I hadn’t stepped in, she’d have died. He dislikes me because I showed up his incompetence. When this attack took place, where was he? Of course I was in pain and couldn’t see, but I don’t remember him being there to help.’

  ‘No,’ said the fat man, thoughtfully. ‘No, I don’t think he was there.’

  He stood, and from the window looked down on the everyday world of the street below – businessmen and shoppers, hawkers and loiterers. He glanced back at the doctor, who would, in all likelihood, never see any of it again, and considered the drastic and life-limiting consequences of that probability.

  ‘I spoke to your fiancée,’ he said. ‘She’s desperate to see you.’

  The doctor’s face turned a little in the fat man’s direction.

  ‘I want to see no one,’ he said, ‘including you, whoever you are. Please ring the bell for me as you leave, or there’ll be no coffee again for me this morning. They leave me for hours with no attendance at all.’

  ‘Can I do anything for you?’

  ‘Unless you wish to feed me coffee or fetch a urine bottle, no.’

  ‘Your fiancée would leap at the chance to nurse you,’ said the fat man gently. ‘She does not strike me as such a shallow woman that she would desert you – though obviously your condition will be a shock to her at first. Shall I ask her to come and take care of you?’

  ‘The sooner she sees me, the sooner she’ll leave me, and then what? She’ll be praising the skies for her lucky escape, and I’ll be shipped home to rot in some institution. No. Tell her she must wait. The more time that goes by, the better a prospect I’ll look. She might yet be persuaded to marry me, if the approach is right.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me for saying that you show more concern for your own welfare than you do for the woman you should love.’

  ‘If you’ve met her, you’ll know Chrissa is not young. She and I are both well into middle age. We were rescuing each other from a lonely retirement, not stepping out on a path strewn with rose petals. I am no romantic, and I don’t think she is, either. Our arrangement was a practical one.’

  The fat man raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Are you sure that is her view?’

  ‘How should I know? Probably not. Sometimes I think the older women get, the more starry-eyed they grow. It’s hormonal.’

  ‘You don’t love her.’

  ‘Our marriage would be convenient to us both. Ask her if she loves me, and look into her eyes when she gives her answer.’

  ‘And now it would be highly convenient for you if she became both eyes and nursemaid.’

  The doctor gave no answer. His hand patted the bedclothes to find the call button, which, unseen by him, hung on its wire over the side of the bed. The fat man picked it up.

  ‘I’ll leave you then, for now,’ he said, placing the call button silently on the bedside table.

  ‘Tell them, please, to bring me more painkillers.’

  ‘Are you in much pain?’

  ‘Look at me, and tell me what you think!’

  ‘Creatures in pain are often angry at the world. The pain will pass. That, at least, will get easier. I’ll see you again before I leave, Louis.’

  But by the door, he hesitated.

  ‘Of course there will be no investigation if none is required,’ he said. ‘But oblige me by answering one further question. What took you to the chapel? Why did you go there in the first place?’

  ‘I went because of the boy.’

  ‘Boy? What boy?’

  ‘He gave me a note.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘He came to my room. The note asked me to go to the chapel immediately, that there was an emergency.’

  ‘Where is your room?’

  ‘Behind the butcher’s shop. People come to me there, sometimes. They knock on the window; it overlooks an alley.’

  ‘Who was the boy?’

  ‘I have no idea. There are so many.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘More child than youth, or well grown?’

  ‘It’s impossible to tell their age these days. Boys of ten outgrow their fathers.’

  ‘And at the chapel, you saw no one?’

  ‘I opened the courtyard door and – pouf! – my life was over.’

  ‘No one spoke to you? No words were said?’

  ‘Nothing. Straight away I felt the pain and begged for help. I dared not open my eyes. But he just stood there; I could sense him watching. And then he left; I heard him go.’

  ‘How did he leave? On foot? Did you hear an engine, or a motor?’

  ‘Nothing but my own voice.’

  The fat man looked at him.

  ‘I’ll fetch the nurse,’ he said.

  As he passed the door of room 111, the old woman jumped up from her chair.

  ‘Are you leaving so soon?’ she asked. ‘Do you know the relatives? I’ve done my best, you know, but it isn’t easy, caring for two. My husband’s in a bad way.’ The old man had not moved. On the table beside him, the radio announced the weather for farmers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the fat man, ‘but I don’t know the family. You must excuse me.’

  She watched him down the full length of the corridor, as far as an office where he found two nurses considering the entries on a batch of three-part forms.

  ‘Ladies, kali mera sas,’ he said. ‘One of your patients is asking for more pain relief. Dr Louis Chabrol, in 112.’

  Together, the nurses turned to a board on the wall, where a badly drawn grid held the names of patients on the ward. The crossings-out and pencilling-ins were many; they made the grid impossible to read.

  ‘I know who you mean,’ said one, at last. ‘The Frenchman. Is he a doctor? I didn’t know that. Did you know that, kalé? The Frenchman’s a
doctor.’

  The other shook her head.

  ‘They tell us nothing,’ she said. ‘They keep us in the dark.’

  ‘But you ladies strike me as having considerable experience, professionally,’ said the fat man.

  ‘Twenty years, I’ve done this job,’ said one.

  ‘Twenty-two,’ said the other, ‘and I’ve paid for it with my back. They all want lifting and hauling, in and out of bed. We shouldn’t be doing this, at our age.’

  ‘But with all your experience, surely you know all the medical men in this area?’ asked the fat man.

  ‘Oh yes, we know them all,’ said one.

  ‘All their foibles, their little ways,’ said the other.

  ‘But you don’t know Dr Chabrol? He’s been practising in Morfi.’

  ‘Has he?’

  ‘What happened to Dr Dinos?’

  ‘So you’ve had no contact with Dr Chabrol at all? No referrals, no phone calls?’

  ‘Not that I recall. Do you remember any referrals from him, kalé?’

  The other nurse shook her head.

  ‘It rings no bells with me,’ she said. ‘Chabrol, Chabrol. No, kyrie, it rings no bells at all.’

  Eleven

  Leaving the hospital by the main entrance, the fat man made his way through the town’s busy streets. From time to time, he paused at shop-window displays where items caught his eye: a shirt by a French designer in a particular shade of mauve, a collection of baseball caps in the colours of American football teams, a well-chosen selection of imported wines at a delicatessen.

  On a corner by the park stood a lottery-ticket vendor, whose cap showed the logo of the Chicago Bears. His vast beer-gut swelled over trousers his belly had long outgrown; a tight belt held their waistband in a slant from the top of his buttocks to the underside of his gut. Pinned to a long pole held over his head, the pink and white lottery tickets fluttered in the wind.

  The fat man stepped closer to the vendor, and noticing his interest, the vendor bellowed his repetitive cry.

  ‘Lottery! Get your lottery tickets!’