Vertigo by Boileau-Narcejac

Author:Boileau-Narcejac [Boileau-Narcejac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

ONE

'Take a deep breath… Cough… Another deep breath… Fine… As for the heart… Hold your breath a moment… Hum!… Not so good… You can put your clothes on again.'

The doctor looked at Flavières, who put on his shirt, then turned away a little awkwardly to do up his fly-buttons.

'Married?'

'No… I've just come back from Africa.'

'Were you a prisoner?'

'No. I was called up in 1940, but the doctors wouldn't pass me. It was my lungs, I believe. The result of a pleurisy I'd had two years before.'

'Are you thinking of living here in Paris?'

'I don't know. I've got a practice at Dakar, but I might go back to my former one here.'

'Lawyer?'

'Yes. The trouble is, my flat's been taken over by somebody else. And to find a place these days…'

The doctor scratched an ear, still studying Flavières, who was fumbling irritably with his tie.

'You drink, don't you?'

Flavières shrugged his shoulders, but his face had fallen.

'Do you mean you can see signs of it?'

'It's your affair, of course,' said the doctor.

'Yes, I drink a bit,' Flavières admitted. 'Life's not that beautiful.'

It was the doctor's turn to shrug his shoulders. He sat down at his desk and removed the cap of his fountain pen.

'Your general condition is far from satisfactory,' he observed. 'You need a good rest. In your place, I'd settle somewhere in the Midi—at Nice for instance, or Cannes… As for the obsessions you've told me about, they're not within my field. You must see a specialist about that. I'm giving you a note for my colleague, Dr. Ballard.'

'In your opinion,' muttered Flavières, 'is it serious?'

'Go and see Ballard.'

His pen scratched over the paper. Flavières took out his wallet and produced some notes.

'Go to the Food Office,' said the doctor, still writing. 'With this certificate you'll be given an extra ration of meat and fats. But what you need most is warmth and rest. Avoid all worries. No correspondence, and no reading… It's three hundred francs… Thanks.'

He was already conducting Flavières to the door while a fresh patient came in through another. Flavières went down the stairs, grumbling. A specialist! A psychiatrist who would unearth all his secrets, would make him talk about Madeleine's death. Out of the question! Rather than that, he would go on living with his nightmares, losing himself every night in a labyrinth of corridors crawling with vermin, or searching frantically for someone in the dark. It was the heat of Dakar and the glaring light that had got him down. Now he was saved.

He turned up his coat-collar and started towards the Place des Ternes. He hardly recognized this Paris, still plunged in the mists of winter, these great empty spaces, these broad avenues along which hardly anything passed but bicycles and jeeps. He felt a little out of place, being too well dressed. He hurried along quickly like everyone else. The Arc de Triomphe loomed up indistinctly in the grey mist. Everything was the colour of the past, the colour of memory. What feast

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