CHAPTER IX

MY FRIEND THE DOCTOR

In the morning I arose as usual, though with difficulty.  I tried to persuade myself that I was merely suffering from a violent attack of dyspepsia, the natural result of Concordia diet.  When the waiter brought my breakfast I regarded it with resentful eye, feeling for the moment very much like my grumbling acquaintance of the dinner hour.  It may be as well to explain that the breakfast consisted of very bad coffee, with goat’s milk, hard, coarse bread, and goat’s butter, which tasted exactly like indifferent lard.  The so-called butter, by a strange custom of Cotrone, was served in the emptied rind of a spherical cheese—­the small caccio cavallo, horse cheese, which one sees everywhere in the South.  I should not have liked to inquire where, how, when, or by whom the substance of the cheese had been consumed.  Possibly this receptacle is supposed to communicate a subtle flavour to the butter; I only know that, even to a healthy palate, the stuff was rather horrible.  Cow’s milk could be obtained in very small quantities, but it was of evil flavour; butter, in the septentrional sense of the word, did not exist.

It surprises me to remember that I went out, walked down to the shore, and watched the great waves breaking over the harbour mole.  There was a lull in the storm, but as yet no sign of improving weather; clouds drove swiftly across a lowering sky.  My eyes turned to the Lacinian promontory, dark upon the turbid sea.  Should I ever stand by the sacred column?  It seemed to me hopelessly remote; the voyage an impossible effort.

I talked with a man, of whom I remember nothing but his piercing eyes steadily fixed upon me; he said there had been a wreck in the night, a ship carrying live pigs had gone to pieces, and the shore was sprinkled with porcine corpses.

Presently I found myself back at the Concordia, not knowing exactly how I had returned.  The dyspepsia—­I clung to this hypothesis—­was growing so violent that I had difficulty in breathing:  before long I found it impossible to stand.

My hostess was summoned, and she told me that Cotrone had “a great physician,” by name “Dr. Scurco.”  Translating this name from dialect into Italian, I presumed that the physician’s real name was Sculco, and this proved to be the case.  Dr. Riccardo Sculco was a youngish man, with an open, friendly countenance.  At once I liked him.  After an examination, of which I quite understood the result, he remarked in his amiable, airy manner that I had “a touch of rheumatism”; as a simple matter of precaution, I had better go to bed for the rest of the day, and, just for the form of the thing, he would send some medicine.  Having listened to this with as pleasant a smile as I could command, I caught the Doctor’s eye, and asked quietly, “Is there much congestion?” His manner at once changed; he became businesslike and confidential.  The right lung; yes, the right lung.  Mustn’t worry; get to bed and take my quinine in dosi forti, and he would look in again at night.