Matilde Serao - The Land of Cockayne

But another patient came into the room. There were two, rather—a youth and a girl of the lower class. He recognised the girl at once from her hollow, worn face and sad, black-encircled eyes, the lock of untidy hair. He had cured her of typhoid at San Raffaele hospital, when the epidemic was raging in Naples.

'Is it you, Carmela?'

'Good-day to you, sir,' said the girl, rushing forward to kiss the doctor's hand, which he quickly drew back.

'Are you ill?' he asked.

'As if I was ill,' she said, smiling, in a faint, melancholy way, while the doctor was trying to recognise the young fellow's face. 'I am going to have a misfortune that is worse than an illness, sir.' She turned to her companion as she spoke, and called out: 'Raffaé!' Then Amati saw the young fellow in all the guappesca style of bell-trousers, small folded cap, silver chain with a bit of coral, shiny squeaking shoes, and the half-scampish, impudent look of a lad of twenty who has given up the knife, the traditional sfarziglia of his ancestors in the Camorra, for the modern revolver. 'This is my lover, sir,' she said, humbly and proudly, whilst Raffaele looked straight before him, as if it was not his business. She gave the youth so intense a look, so full of tenderness and passion, that the doctor had to restrain an impatient shrug.

'Is he ill?' he asked.

'No, sir; he is very well, thank God! But he has—that is to say, we have—another misfortune coming on us; or, indeed, it is my misfortune, as I must lose him. They want to take him for the levy,' said she, in a trembling voice, her eyes filling with tears.

'That is natural enough,' answered the doctor, smiling.

'How can you say so, sir? It is infamous of the Government to take a fine lad that ought to marry. If you won't help me, sir, what will I do?'

'And what can I do?'

Raffaele, in the meanwhile, stood with one hand at his side, hanging his hat between two fingers; sometimes he looked Carmela up and down absent-mindedly and haughtily, as if it was out of mere good-nature he allowed her to look after his affairs; then he cast an oblique but dignified glance on the doctor.

'You are so kind, sir,' Carmela murmured. 'I want you to give Raffaele a medicine to make him ill, and get him scratched off the list.'

'It is impossible, my dear girl.'

'Why so, sir?'

'Because there are no such miraculous medicines.'

'Oh, sir, you mean you don't wish to do me this kindness. Think if they take him for three years!—three years! What could I do without him for three years? And, then, he won't go, sir! If you knew what he says——'

'I told her,' Raffaele interrupted emphatically, pulling down his waistcoat, a common guappa trick, 'that if they take me by force, we will hold a little shooting; someone will be wounded, they take me to prison, and what happens? A year's imprisonment at most. I must go to San Francesco some day, at any rate.'

'Don't speak that way—don't say that!' she called out in admiring terror. 'Beg the professor to give you the medicine.'

'Are you to be married soon?' asked the doctor, who no longer wondered at anything, from knowing the people so well.

'Very soon,' Carmela answered by herself, while Raffaele looked before him.

'When are you to be?'

'When we get the terno,' she retorted, quietly and with certainty.

'Then, not for some time yet,' the doctor replied, laughing.

'No, no, sir; Don Pasqualino De Feo, the medium, has promised me a safe number. We will be married very soon. But you must get Raffaele off.'

'There is no need of my services. Raffaele will be rejected, because he has a narrow chest,' concluded the doctor, after looking carefully at the dandy.

'Do you say so, really?'

'Really it is so.'

'God bless you, sir! if I had to have this sorrow too, I would die. So many sorrows—so many,' she said in a low tone, pulling up her shabby shawl on her shoulders; 'I am the mother of sorrows,' she added, with a sad smile.

'Good-day, sir,' said Raffaele. 'When you come to Mercato or Pendino district, ask for Raffaele—I am called Farfariello—and let me serve you in any way I can.'

'Thank you—thank you,' replied the doctor, sending them off.

The two again repeated their farewells on their way out—she with a smile on her suffering face, he with the look of a man that despises women. Other patients came in requiring his medical skill up to twelve o'clock, when the time for receiving visits was over. Bianca Maria had not appeared. She was ill, therefore.

He took breakfast very hurriedly, and ordered the coachman to bring round the carriage to go to the hospital at one o'clock. The day was getting more and more unpleasant, from the scirocco's damp, ill-smelling breath. He went out quickly, as he was rather late, and on the stairs, half in shadow, he met Bianca Maria going down also, with Margherita, her maid.

'Then, she is not ill,' thought the doctor.

But with the sharp eyes of an observing man, who finds out the truth from the slightest symptoms, he saw the girl was walking undecidedly; her face, as she looked up to bow, was intensely pale, so that again his medical instinct was to help her. He was just going to speak, to ask her brusquely where the pain was, but her proud, gentle eyes were cast down again absent-mindedly; her mouth had that severe silent look that imposes silence on others. She disappeared without his saying anything. Dr. Amati shrugged his shoulders as he got into the carriage, and buried himself in a medical journal, as he did every day, to fill up even the short drive usefully. The carriage rolled along silently over the thin layer of mud; the damp obscured the windows, and the doctor felt the scirocco in himself and in the air. Even the hospital could not soothe the doctor's discomfort, though to take his thoughts off it he went deeper into practical medical work and scientific explanations to the pupils than usual. He went backwards and forwards from one bed to another, followed by a crowd of youths, taller than any of them, with an obstinate man's short forehead, marked by two perpendicular lines, from a constant frown, showing a strong will and absorption in his work; his thick brush of black hair was roughly set on his forehead, with some white tufts showing already. So great was his activity of thought, words, and action, one expected to see the smoke of a volcano coming out. His orders to the assistants and his class, even to the nuns, were given harshly; they all obeyed quickly and silently, feeling respect for the iron will, in spite of his rough commands, mingled with admiration for the man who was looked on as a saviour. Even the room he had charge of looked more melancholy and wretched that day than ever; the dulness of the air saddened the invalids, the heavy, evil-smelling damp made them feel their pains more. A whispered lament, like a long, laboured breath, was heard from one end of the room to the other, and the sick folks' pale faces got yellow in that ghastly light; their emaciated hands on the coverlets looked like wax.

In spite of trying to stun himself with work and words, Dr. Amati felt the disagreeables of his profession more than ever. Through that long, narrow room, full of beds in a row, and yellow, suffering faces, and the constant smell of phenic acid; through the scirocco mist and damp, that made even the nuns' pink cheeks bloodless-looking, he had a dream, a passing vision of a sunny, green, warm, clear, sweet-smelling country place, and his heart ached for this idyll, come and gone in a moment.

'Good-bye, gentlemen,' Amati said brusquely to the students, dismissing them.

They knew that when he so greeted them he wished to be left alone; they knew, they understood, the Professor was in a bad humour; they let him go. One of the ambulance men brought him two or three letters that came while he was going his rounds; they were summonses, urgent letters from sick people longing for him, from a father who had lost his head over a son's illness, from despairing women. He shook his head as he read them, as if he had lost confidence—as if all humanity sorrowing discouraged him. He went—yes, he went; but he felt very tired, which must have come from his mind, for he had worked much less than usual. He was going along absent-mindedly, when a shadow rose before him on the hospital stairs. It was a poor woman, of no particular age, with sparse grayish hair, black teeth, prominent cheek-bones, her clothes torn and dirty, whilst the slumbering babe she carried was clean, though meanly clad.