This extraordinary system, apart from facilitating the general services considerably, meant that a patient only mildly affected would not be troubled by a dying co-sufferer next door and ensured a uniformity of atmosphere on each floor. Treatment, of course, would thus vary from floor to floor.
This meant that the patients were divided into seven successive castes. Each floor was a world apart, with its own particular rules and traditions. And as each floor was in the charge of a different doctor, slight but definite differences in the methods of treatment had grown up, although initially the director had given the institution a single basic bent.
As soon as the nurse had left the room Giovanni Corte, no longer feeling feverish, went to the window and looked out, not because he wanted to see the view of the town (although he was not familiar with it) but in the hopes of catching a glimpse, through the windows, of the patients on the lower floors. The structure of the building, with its large recesses, made this possible. Giovanni Corte concentrated particularly on the first-floor windows, which looked a very long way away, and which he could see only obliquely. But he could see nothing interesting. Most of the windows were completely hidden by gray venetian blinds.
But Corte did see someone, a man, standing at a window right next to his own. The two looked at each other with a growing feeling of sympathy but did not know how to break the silence. At last Giovanni Corte plucked up courage and said, “Have you just arrived too?”
“Oh, no,” said his neighbor, “I’ve been here two months.” He was silent for a few moments and then, apparently not sure how to continue the conversation, added, “I was watching my brother down there.”
“Your brother?”
“Yes. We both came here at the same time, oddly enough, but he got worse—he’s on the fourth now.”
“Fourth what?”
“Fourth floor,” explained the man, pronouncing the two words with such pity and horror that Giovanni Corte was vaguely alarmed.
“But in that case”—Corte proceeded with his questioning with the lightheartedness one might adopt when speaking of tragic matters which don’t concern one—“if things are already so serious on the fourth floor, whom do they put on the first?”
“Oh, the dying. There’s nothing for the doctors to do down there. Only the priests. And of course . . .”
“But there aren’t many people down there,” interrupted Giovanni Corte as if seeking confirmation, “almost all the blinds are down.”
“There aren’t many now, but there were this morning,” replied the other with a slight smile. “The rooms with the blinds down are those where someone has died recently. As you can see, on the other floors the shutters are all open. Will you excuse me,” he continued, moving slowly back in, “it seems to be getting rather cold. I’m going back to bed. May I wish you all the best . . .”
The man vanished from the windowsill and shut the window firmly; a light was lit inside the room. Giovanni Corte remained standing at the window, his eyes fixed on the lowered blinds of the first floor. He stared at them with morbid intensity, trying to visualize the ghastly secrets of that terrible first floor where patients were taken to die; he felt relieved that he was so far away. Meanwhile, the shadows of evening crept over the city. One by one the thousand windows of the sanatorium lit up, from the distance it looked like a great house lit up for a ball. Only on the first floor, at the foot of the precipice, did dozens of windows remain blank and empty.
Giovanni Corte was considerably reassured by the doctor’s visit. A natural pessimist, he was already secretly prepared for an unfavorable verdict and wouldn’t have been surprised if the doctor had sent him down to the next floor.
His temperature however showed no signs of going down, even though his condition was otherwise satisfactory. But the doctor was pleasant and encouraging. Certainly he was affected—the doctor said—but only very slightly; in two or three weeks he would probably be cured. “So I’m to stay on the seventh floor?” inquired Giovanni Corte anxiously at this point.
“Well, of course!” replied the doctor, clapping a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Where did you think you were going? Down to the fourth perhaps?” He spoke jokingly, as though it were the most absurd thought in the world.
“I’m glad about that,” said Giovanni Corte. “You know how it is, when one’s ill one always imagines the worst.” In fact he stayed in the room which he had originally been given. On the rare afternoons when he was allowed up he made the acquaintance of some of his fellow patients. He followed the treatment scrupulously, concentrated his whole attention on making a rapid recovery, yet his condition seemed to remain unchanged.
About ten days later, the head nurse of the seventh floor came to see Giovanni Corte. He wanted to ask an entirely personal favor: the following day a woman with two children was coming to the hospital; there were two free rooms right next to his, but a third was needed; would Signor Corte mind very much moving into another, equally comfortable room?
Naturally, Giovanni Corte made no objection; he didn’t mind what room he was in; indeed, he might have a new and prettier nurse.
“Thank you so much,” said the head nurse with a slight bow; “though, mark you, such a courteous act doesn’t surprise me coming from a person such as
