I have been writing for hours, my thumb is aching, and I have eaten at my desk, spreading pâté and butter on bread, with a few glasses of Château Latour to stimulate the memory.
I would have liked to reward myself with, I don’t know, perhaps a visit to Brébant-Vachette, but until I have understood who I am, I can’t be seen around. Sooner or later, though, I’ll have to venture into place Maubert to bring back something else to eat.
Let us think no more about it for the moment, and return to our writing.
During those years (I think it was ’85 or ’86) I became acquainted with that man at Magny whom I still call the Austrian (or German) doctor. His name now comes back to me—he was called Froïde (I think that’s how it’s written), a doctor around thirty years old who most certainly came to Magny only because he couldn’t afford better, and was doing an apprenticeship with Charcot. He sat alone at a nearby table, and at first we limited ourselves to polite nods. I judged him to be gloomy by nature, ill at ease, timidly eager for someone to confide in, to unburden his anxieties. On two or three occasions he had found a pretext for exchanging a few words, but I had always remained aloof.
Even though the name Froïde did not have the same ring as Steiner or Rosenberg, I nevertheless knew that all Jews who live and make money in Paris have German names, and, my suspicions having been raised by his hooked nose, one day I asked Du Maurier, who made a vague gesture, adding, «I’m not sure, but in any event I prefer to keep my distance—Jew and German are a mix I don’t much like.»
«Is he not Austrian?» I asked.
«It’s the same, is it not? Same language, same way of thinking. I haven’t forgotten the Prussians who marched along the Champs-Élysées.»
«I am told that medicine is among the professions most often followed by Jews, as much as usury. It’s a good thing never to be in need of money, and never to fall ill.»
«But there are Christian doctors too,» Du Maurier replied with an icy smile.
I had made a faux pas.
There are Paris intellectuals who, before expressing their distaste for Jews, concede that some of their best friends are Jews. Hypocrisy. I have no Jewish friends (God forbid). All my life I’ve avoided Jews. Perhaps I have instinctively avoided them, because the Jew (like the German) can be identified by his smell (as Victor Hugo put it, fetor judaica). This and other signs help them to recognize each other, as pederasts do. My grandfather used to say that their smell is due to the excessive use of garlic and onion, and perhaps mutton and goose, coated with sticky sugars that make them splenetic. But it must also be the race itself—their infected blood, their feeble loins. They are all communists—look at Marx and Lassalle. In this respect, my Jesuits were right for once.
I’ve also managed to avoid Jews because I keep an eye on names. Austrian Jews, as they grew rich, bought fancy names, of flowers, precious stones or noble metals, becoming Silbermann or Goldstein. The poorer ones acquired names such as Grünspan (verdigris). In France and Italy, they disguised themselves by adopting the names of cities or places such as Ravenna, Modena, Picard and Flamand, or they were inspired by the revolutionary calendar (Froment, Avoine, Laurier)—quite rightly, seeing that their fathers had been the hidden authors of the regicide. But you also have to be careful about first names, which sometimes conceal Jewish names—Maurice comes from Moses, Isidore from Isaac, Édouard from Aaron, Jacques from Jacob and Alphonse from Adam.
Is Sigmund a Jewish name? Instinctively I had decided to keep a distance from the mountebank, but one day Froïde knocked over the saltcellar as he went to pick it up. Certain rules of courtesy have to be respected between neighboring tables, and I offered him mine, observing that in some countries knocking over the salt was considered bad luck, and he laughed, saying that he was not superstitious. From that day on we began to exchange a few words. He apologized for his French, which he described as patchy, but which was easy to understand. They are nomadic by habit and have to cope with all languages.
I said politely, «It’s just a matter of getting used to the sound,» and he smiled at me with gratitude. Slimy.
As a Jew Froïde was also deceitful. I had always heard it said that those of his race must eat only special food, cooked in a particular way, and for this reason they always live in ghettos, whereas Froïde tucked into all that Magny had to offer, and was not averse to a glass of beer with his meal.
One evening it seemed he wanted to let himself go. He had already ordered two beers and, after dessert, while he was smoking nervously, he asked for a third. And then, as he was talking and waving his hands, he knocked the salt over for the second time.
«It’s not that I’m clumsy,» he apologized, «but I am rather anxious. It’s been three days since I last received a letter from my fiancée. I don’t expect her to write as I do, almost every day, but this silence worries me. She is in delicate health; it upsets me terribly not to be with her. And I need her approval for whatever I do. I would like to hear what she thinks about my dinner with Charcot. Because you know, Monsieur Simonini, I was invited to dinner at the great man’s house a few evenings ago. It doesn’t happen to every young visiting doctor, and a foreigner at that.»
There, I thought, the little Semite parvenu, working his way into respectable families to advance in his career. And did his concern about his fiancée not betray the sensual and lascivious nature of the Jew, always thinking about sex? You think about her at night, don’t you? And maybe you touch yourself fantasizing about her—you too should read Tissot. But I let him go on.
«The guests were men of quality: Daudet’s son, Doctor Strauss, Pasteur’s assistant, Professor Beck from the Institute and the great Italian painter Emilio Toffano. An evening that cost me fourteen francs—a fine black Hamburg cravat, white gloves, a new shirt and a dress coat for the first time in my life. And for the first time in my life I had my beard trimmed, in the French style. As for my shyness, a little cocaine helps to loosen the tongue.»
«Cocaine? Is it not a poison?»
«Everything is poisonous if taken in excessive doses, even wine. But I have been studying this remarkable substance for two years. Cocaine, you see, is an alkaloid taken from a plant that is chewed by the natives of South America to resist the Andean altitudes. Unlike opium and alcohol, it provokes mental states of excitement without producing negative effects. It is excellent for relieving pain, principally in ophthalmology, or for the cure of asthma, useful in treating alcoholism and drug addiction, perfect against seasickness and valuable in treating diabetes; it suppresses hunger, drowsiness and fatigue like magic, is a good substitute for tobacco, cures dyspepsia, flatulence, liver attacks, stomach cramps, hypochondria, spinal irritation, hay fever, is a valuable restorative in consumption and cures migraine; in cases of serious tooth decay, insert a wad of cotton soaked in a four percent solution into the cavity and the pain subsides immediately. And above all it is marvelous for depressives—in restoring their confidence, raising their spirits, making them more active and optimistic.»
«In cases of serious tooth decay, insert a wad of cotton soaked in a four percent solution into the cavity and the pain subsides immediately.»
The doctor was by now on his fourth glass and had clearly reached a state of gloomy intoxication. He leaned forward as if to make a confession.
«Cocaine, as I always say to my beloved Martha, is excellent for someone like me, who doesn’t consider himself particularly attractive, who in his youth had never been young and now at thirty is unable to grow up. There was a time when I was full of ambition and desperate to learn, and day after day I felt discouraged by the fact that Mother Nature had not, in one of her moments of compassion, stamped me with that mark of genius which she grants to people every now and then.»
All of a sudden he stopped, with the air of one who realizes he has laid bare his soul. Whining little Jew, I thought. And I decided to embarrass him.
«Is cocaine not said to be an aphrodisiac as well?» I asked.
Froïde blushed. «It also has that virtue, so I understand…But I have no experience in that respect. As a man, I am not inclined to such itches. And as a doctor, sex is not a matter that much interests me. Although sex is beginning to be much discussed at the Salpêtrière. Charcot discovered that one of his patients, a certain Augustine, during an advanced phase of her hysterical manifestations, revealed that her earliest trauma had been sexual violence inflicted in early childhood. Naturally I don’t deny that among the traumas provoking hysteria there may also be phenomena linked to sex, that is quite clear. But I think it is simply too much to reduce everything to sex. Perhaps, though, it
