An Old Man
All the newspapers had carried the advertisement:
The new watering place of Rondelis offers all desired advantages for a long stay and even for permanent residence. Its ferruginous waters, recognized as the best in the world for counteracting all impurities of the blood, seem also to possess particular qualities calculated to prolong human life. This singular circumstance is perhaps due in part to the exceptional situation of the town, which lies surrounded by mountains and in the very center of a pine forest. For several centuries it has been celebrated for numerous cases of extraordinary longevity.
And the public came in droves.
One morning the doctor in charge of the springs was asked to call on a new arrival, Monsieur Daron, who had come to Rondelis only a few days before and had rented a charming villa on the edge of the forest. He was a little old man of eighty-six, still sprightly, wiry, healthy, active, who went to infinite pains to conceal his age.
He asked the doctor to be seated, and immediately questioned him: “Doctor, if I am well, it is thanks to hygienic living. I am not very old, but have reached a certain age, and I keep free of all illness, all indisposition, even the slightest discomfort, by means of hygiene. I am told that the climate of this place is very favorable for the health. I am very willing to believe it, but before establishing myself here I want proof. I am therefore going to ask you to call on me once a week, to give me, very exactly, the following information:
“I wish first of all to have a complete, utterly complete, list of all the inhabitants of the town and surroundings who are more than eighty years old. I also need a few physical and psychological details concerning each. I wish to know their professions, their kinds of life, their habits. Each time one of these people dies, you will inform me, indicating the precise cause of death, as well as the circumstances.”
Then he graciously added: “I hope, Doctor, that we may become good friends,” and he stretched out his wrinkled little hand. The doctor took it, promising his devoted cooperation.
M. Daron had always had a strange fear of death. He had deprived himself of almost all the pleasures because they are dangerous, and whenever anyone expressed surprise that he did not drink wine—wine, that bringer of fancy and gaiety—he replied in a voice containing a note of fear: “I value my life.” And he pronounced My, as if that life, His life, possessed some generally unknown value. He put into that My such a difference between his life and the life of others, that no answer was possible.
Indeed, he had a very particular way of accentuating the possessive pronouns designating all the parts of his person or even things belonging to him. When he said “My eyes, my legs, my arms, my hands,” it was clear that no mistake must be made: those organs did not belong to everyone. But this distinction was particularly noticeable when he spoke of his physician: “My doctor.” One would have said that this doctor was his, only his, destined for him alone, to take care of his illnesses and nobody else’s, and that he was superior to all the doctors in the universe, all, without exception.
He had never considered other men except as kinds of puppets, created as furniture for the natural world. He divided them into two classes: those whom he greeted because some chance had put him in contact with them, and those whom he did not greet. Both categories of individuals were to him equally insignificant.
But beginning with the day when the doctor of Rondelis brought him the list of the seventeen inhabitants of the town who were over eighty, he felt awaken in his heart a new interest, an unfamiliar solicitude for these old people whom he was going to see fall by the wayside one after the other.
He had no desire to make their acquaintance, but he had a very clear idea of their persons, and with the doctor, who dined with him every Thursday, he spoke only of them. “Well, doctor, how is Joseph Poinçot today? We left him a little ill last week.” And when the doctor had given him the patient’s bill of health M. Daron proposed modifications in diet, experiments, methods of treatment which he might later apply to himself if they succeeded with the others. The seventeen old people were an experimental field from which much was to be learned.
One evening the doctor came in and announced: “Rosalie Tournel is dead.” M. Daron shuddered and immediately demanded, “What of?” “Of an angina.” The little old man uttered an “ah” of relief. Then he declared: “She was too fat, too big; she must have eaten too much. When I get to be her age, I’ll be more careful.” (He was two years older than Rosalie, but never admitted to being over seventy.)
A few months later, it was the turn of Henry Brissot. M. Daron was very moved. This time it was a man—thin, within three months of his own age, and very prudent. He dared ask for no details, but waited anxiously for the doctor to tell him. “Ah, he died suddenly, just like that? He was very well last week. He must have done something unwise, Doctor.” The doctor, who was enjoying himself, replied, “I believe not. His children tell me he was very careful.”
Then, no longer able to contain himself, M. Daron demanded, with anguish, “But … but … What did he die of, then?”
“Of pleurisy.”
That was joyful news, really joyful. The little old man clapped his dry hands. “I knew it! I told you had had done something unwise. Pleurisy doesn’t come just by itself. He took a breath of fresh air after his dinner, and the cold lodged on his chest. Pleurisy! That is an accident, not an illness. Only crazy men die of pleurisy.”
And he ate his dinner gaily, talking of those who remained. “There are only fifteen now, but they are all strong, aren’t they? All of life is like that, the weakest fall first; people who go beyond thirty have a good chance to reach sixty, those who pass sixty often get to eighty; and those who pass eighty almost always reach the century mark, because they are the most robust, the most careful, the most hardened.”
Still two others disappeared during the year, one of dysentery and the other of a choking fit. M. Daron derived a great deal of amusement from the death of the former, and concluded that he must have eaten something exciting the day before. “Dysentery is the disease of the imprudent; you should have watched over his hygiene, Doctor.” As for the choking fit, it could only have come from a heart condition, hitherto unrecognized.
But one evening the doctor announced the passing of Paul Timonet, a kind of mummy, of whom it had been hoped to make a centenarian, a living advertisement for the watering place. When M. Daron asked, as usual, “What did he die of?” the doctor replied, “Really, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? One always knows. Wasn’t there some organic lesion?”
The doctor shook his head. “No. None.”
“Perhaps some infection of the liver or kidneys?”
“No—they were perfectly sound.”
“Did you observe whether the stomach functioned regularly? A stroke is often caused by bad digestion.”
“There was no stroke.”
M. Daron, very perplexed, became excited. “But he certainly died of something! What is your opinion?”
The doctor raised his arms. “I absolutely do not know. He died because he died, that’s all.”
Then M. Daron, in a voice full of emotion, demanded: “Exactly how old was that one? I can’t remember.”
“Eighty-nine.”
And the little old man, with an air at once incredulous and reassured, cried, “Eighty-nine! So it wasn’t old age! …”