Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online Page B

Perrier’s attitude that he must humour his patient.
    ‘Yes, I can take the sample. The result will probably be the same as last time. You can never have complete assurance from the medical men, M. Trevanny …’ The doctor continued to talk, while Jonathan removed his sweater, obeyed Dr Perrier’s gesture and lay down on an old leather sofa. The doctor jabbed the anaesthetizing needle in. ‘But I can appreciate your anxiety,’ Dr Perrier said seconds later, pressing and tapping on the tube that was going into Jonathan’s sternum.
    Jonathan disliked the crunching sound of it, but found the slight pain quite bearable. This time, perhaps, he’d learn something. Jonathan could not refrain from saying, before he left, ‘I must know the truth, Dr Perrier. You don’t think, really, that the laboratory might not be giving us a proper summing up? Pm ready to believe their figures are correct —’
    This summing up or prediction is what you can’t get, my dear young man!’
    Jonathan then walked home. He had thought of telling Simone that he’d gone to see Perrier, that he again felt anxious, but Jonathan couldn’t: he’d put Simone through enough. What could she say, if he told her? She would only become a little more anxious herself, like him.
    Georges was already in bed upstairs, and Simone was reading to him. Astérix again. Georges, propped against his pillows, and Simone on a low stool under the lamplight, were like a tableau vivant of domesticity, and the year might have been 1880, Jonathan thought, except for Simone’s slacks. Georges’ hair was as yellow as cornsilk under the light.
    ‘Le schvang gom?’ Georges asked, grinning.
    Jonathan smiled and produced one packet. The other could wait for another occasion.
    ‘You were a long time,’ said Simone.
    ‘I had a beer at the café,’ Jonathan said.
    The next afternoon between 4.30 and 5 p.m., as Dr Perrier had told him to do, Jonathan telephoned the Ebberle-Valent Laboratoires in Neuilly. He gave his name and spelt it and said he was a patient of Dr Perrier’s in Fontainebleau. Then he waited to be connected with the right department, while the telephone gave a blup every minute for the pay units. Jonathan had pen and paper ready. Could he spell his name again, please? Then a woman’s voice began to read the report, and Jonathan jotted figures down quickly. Hyperleucocytose 190,000. Wasn’t that bigger than before?
    ‘We shall of course send a written report to your doctor which he should receive by Tuesday.’
    ‘This report is less favourable than the last, is it not?’
    ‘I have not the previous report here, m’sieur. ’
    ‘Is there a doctor there? Could I speak with a doctor, perhaps?’
    ‘ I am a doctor, m’sieur.’
    ‘Oh. Then this report – whether you have the old one or not there, is not a good one, is it?’
    Like a textbook, she said, This is a potentially dangerous condition involving lowered resistance …’
    Jonathan had telephoned from his shop. He had turned his sign to FERME and drawn his door curtain, though he had been visible through the window, and now as he went to remove the sign, he realized he hadn’t locked his door. Since no one eke was due to call for a picture that afternoon, Jonathan thought he could afford to close. It was 4.45 p.m.
    He walked to Dr Perrier’s office, prepared to wait more than an hour if he had to. Saturday was a busy day, because most people didn’t work and were free to see the doctor. There were three people ahead of Jonathan, but the nurse spoke to him and asked if he would be long, Jonathan said no, and the nurse squeezed him in with an apology to the next patient. Had Dr Perrier spoken to his nurse about him, Jonathan wondered?
    Dr Perrier raised his black eyebrows at Jonathan’s scribbled notes, and said, ‘But this is incomplete.’
    ‘I know, but it tells something, doesn’t it? It’s slightly worse – isn’t it?’
    ‘One would think you want to get worse!’ Dr Perrier