IT WAS INEVITABLE: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequitedlove. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. TheAntillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, andhis most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromaticfumes of gold cyanide.
He found the corpse covered with a blanket on the campaign cot where he had always slept,and beside it was a stool with the developing tray he had used to vaporise the poison. On the floor,tied to a leg of the cot, lay the body of a black Great Dane with a snow-white chest, and next tohim were the crutches. At one window the splendour of dawn was just beginning to illuminate thestifling, crowded room that served as both bedroom and laboratory, but there was enough light forhim to recognise at once the authority of death. The other windows, as well as every other chink inthe room, were muffled with rags or sealed with black cardboard, which increased the oppressiveheaviness. A counter was crammed with jars and bottles without labels and two crumbling pewtertrays under an ordinary light bulb covered with red paper. The third tray, the one for the fixativesolution, was next to the body. There were old magazines and newspapers everywhere, piles ofnegatives on glass plates, broken furniture, but everything was kept free of dust by a diligent hand.
Although the air coming through the window had purified the atmosphere, there still remained forthe one who could identify it the dying embers of hapless love in the bitter almonds. Dr. JuvenalUrbino had often thought, with no premonitory intention, that this would not be a propitious placefor dying in a state of grace. But in time he came to suppose that perhaps its disorder obeyed anobscure determination of Divine Providence.
A police inspector had come forward with a very young medical student who was completinghis forensic training at the municipal dispensary, and it was they who had ventilated the room andcovered the body while waiting for Dr. Urbino to arrive. They greeted him with a solemnity thaton this occasion had more of condolence than veneration, for no one was unaware of the degree ofhis friendship with Jeremiah de Saint-Amour. The eminent teacher shook hands with each of them,as he always did with every one of his pupils before beginning the daily class in general clinicalmedicine, and then, as if it were a flower, he grasped the hem of the blanket with the tips of hisindex finger and his thumb, and slowly uncovered the body with sacramental circumspection.
