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Fiction Short Story

by Helen Courtney-Lewis

Don Luca’s Cancer

The Reverend Don Luca no longer knew to which saint he should direct his prayers for relief from the pains that tortured him of late. They had started silently. At first he thought that it was a simple stomach upset and treated himself accordingly by fasting. But his troubles didn't cease. His breath became foetid and accompanied by a feeling of nausea; the pains grew more frequent and increased in their intensity. Though they struck mercilessly, without warning, he refused to visit the doctor. He had no faith in medical science: it was his belief that when the sick got better, they did so despite the medical profession.

He tried to hide his suffering, but his pain was evident to all. His pallor and weight-loss caused his steps to drag and falter like a soul in Purgatory. Advice rained from every corner—he should go to Naples to visit the celebrated specialist X, who, they assured him, would make a new man of him. One visit only would be sufficient, they told him. Even that would be superfluous, because the great man was blessed with a clinical eye, and a mere glance would suffice to diagnose the trouble. He could in a flash prescribe the right medicine, for which only he had the formula.

The poor priest listened to their opinions and attempted to object—he didn't doubt the magical powers of the good man, but like other men he was fallible. One hair of the Lord's beard could do more than all the science known to the great Professor, he told them, and remember the fellow villager who had gone to him for a cure but had died anyway. The more Don Luca tried to re-dimension the fame of the scientific luminary, the more heated became the discussion. The fellow villager had died because he hadn't followed the Professor's instructions. They said, “He is a genius.”

Don Luca's suffering had now reached such a point that gradually he allowed himself to be persuaded. It was clear that the Eternal Father, in whom he had such faith, had given ample evidence of his total disinterest. His prayers, confessions, recitations of the rosary and his "Lord, help me,” had not received the slightest response. Therefore, wasn't a mortal however fallible, preferable to a God in Heaven incapable of performing miracles?
 
He decided to go to Naples.

The Professor was considered a genius of modern science. He never made a wrong diagnosis, affirmed his patients. To tell the truth, the Professor was not above using a few wiles in order to enhance his fame. After all, dear God, one lives from one's patients and a little astuteness does no harm, even when practised by the best of men.

With his patients he was a man of few words. He would shake his head knowingly, half close his eyes and, drawing in a deep breath, sigh, ending with a final, "Well," which summed up the whole situation rendered so dramatic by his magnificent performance. He gave no explanations and his silence denoted a well of wisdom.

However, capable he most certainly was and, due in part to his great knowledge and in part to his magnificent 'mise-en-scéne,' his fame had spread and his surgery was filled every morning with the sick who arrived in search of a cure.

Thus, our priest left his native village to visit the celebrated doctor in far off Naples.

Waiting his turn, he calmed himself by reciting the rosary a dozen times: the thought that Jesus had offered up his suffering soothed his troubled heart, and as the pains lessened, he became convinced that his illness was nearly cured.

When the nurse ushered him into the enormous surgery, the illustrious Professor was waiting by the examination table. The doctor, small of stature, possessed a leonine head covered by a flowing mane of snow-white hair. Turning his benevolent gaze away from Don Luca to rummage in a glass case full of instruments and vials, he ordered, "Undress."

The priest removed his tunic and underwear and lay down. The examination commenced. It was thorough. The doctor examined the whites of his eyes, tapped his chest, told him to say, “Ninety-nine,” and pressed his ear to Don Luca's back and chest. Don Luca could hardly breathe for the emotion he felt.

Finally, the Professor placed his hands on the patient's stomach, assumed an even graver expression—almost to underline that he had finally found the source of the trouble. He proceeded to move his hands delicately, pressing down like pianist with his fingertips while holding his hand over the keys and playing only one note at a time. He explored a wider zone, pressing down with greater force. He then took one step back and intoned, "You may dress now."

While Don Luca was replacing his tunic, the Professor donned his spectacles and proceeded to scribble prescriptions. His silence was ominous to the poor priest, who summoning up his courage stammered fearfully, “Well, Doctor, what have you found?"

The doctor evaded this direct question. "Take this medicine. It will calm the pain."

The priest, who had foreseen something of a serious nature answered in a quavering voice, "What is it Doctor?  Something serious?”

The doctor fixed him with a solemn expression, then in a low voices, he said rapidly—as though to rid himself of a distasteful task, "Listen, Father, with you there is no need to prevaricate, you are a man of the Church, a man of God who preaches courage and resignation of the spirit. Well, the time has come for you to practice these virtues. You have a cancer and medical science is impotent to cure you." He spoke with brutal finality. Don Luca had hardly enough breath to ask how much longer he had to live.

"Six months at the outside. I'm sorry." He accompanied the priest to the door and, sticking his head into the waiting room bellowed, "Next please." When the bus arrived in the village, a small group of parishioners awaited him. Everyone knew by now of Don Luca's suffering and his trip to Naples. When they saw him descending from the local bus, pale, unsmiling and bowed down by the weight of his death sentence, they moved away silently, as though he was invisible—leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Don Luca took up his life as before; but due to the perpetual anguish that removed all pleasure from his life and paralysed his thoughts, he grew thinner and thinner. His appetite was gone. His Sunday sermons became pathetically disjointed and faltering. His parishioners, at the thought that their beloved preacher was a candidate for an early and painful death, flocked in ever increasing numbers to the church and were moved more easily. Don Luca was by now the piteous concern of the whole village; everyone agonised for him—they talked of little else. Some even spoke of him in the past tense as though he were already dead and under the cold ground. Only one inhabitant refused to believe the gravity of the priest's illness.

Don Ciccio was a plumber and owned a small workshop next door to the Rectory.  He could not accept the idea that a man like Don Luca, once so strong and dynamic, could die like an idiot, consumed little by little every day. His affection for the priest enabled him to formulate his own diagnosis. He had nurtured an opinion for a long while and, as time passed, his conviction became firmer.

One day the priest, eyes fixed on his prayer book, and mind tangled with thoughts of his predicament, passed him on the street. The plumber halted him and blurted out, "Excuse my nerve: but according to me, it's a load of shit.”

"What's a load of ss sshit??" stammered the shocked priest, thinking the plumber was referring to some unnamed person. It was a sentiment with which Don Luca might well have been in agreement, but would not have dared to express, even in the privacy of the Confessional.

"That cancer, in my humble opinion, is not a cancer, but a load of shit that's been stuck in your belly so long it's become petrified—it happens to horses sometimes.” Though Don Luca was ready to clutch at any straw, Don Ciccio's theory seemed to him to be the fantasy of an over optimistic affection, coupled with demoralising ignorance.

The priest, who was now an expert in matters appertaining to his illness, proceeded to demonstrate that the lump protruding from his stomach was indeed cancerous, and not a mass of faeces. But the more he tried to be persuasive in difficult medical terminology, the more heated was the diagnostic enthusiasm of Don Ciccio. In fact, the more the plumber insisted, "You never know," and, "Anyway, what have you got to lose? Nothing ventured, nothing gained," the more the priest was willing to listen. At first to placate Don Ciccio, then, infected by his enthusiastic optimism, he decided to surrender to the plumber's administrations. No sooner said than done. Don Ciccio fetched a whole litre of Epsom salts, a dose big enough to purge ten mules, and then led the priest to the Rectory.

By now Don Luca was a docile patient. The plumber made him lie on his bed, warmed some water and administered, at one and the same time, a strong enema and the whole litre of Epsom salts.

What took place in Don Luca's intestines would be impossible to describe: but it is certain that the poor priest was overcome by such a volcanic turbulence and churning within him that he hadn't time to rise from the bed and rush to 'that place' before an explosion erupted with such violence that the bed was transformed into a battle field, causing Don Luca to weep with humiliation. The plumber rubbed his hands and laughed with satisfaction and encouraged the priest to further efforts: "Good! Push, Father, push! Get rid of it all; push, push … collaborate!"

When it was over, Don Ciccio massaged the priest's stomach with great care, using the same artistry as the worthy cow herdsmen who imitate real doctors. The swelling had disappeared; his stomach was as smooth to the touch as a newborn babe's. The good fellow's hands trembled with emotion and when he was certain of the miraculous cure and overcome by a wave of excitement, he ran to the window and shouted to the four winds, "Don Luca has got rid of his tumour! I've cured him!"

At the sound of his voice, the verger who, like most of his kind was the village simpleton, not knowing how to manifest his joy, ran to the church tower and, clinging to the bell rope, rang the good news for all to hear. The clanging of the bell which announces great events brought all the villagers spilling out into the street; field workers laid down their tools and rushed to the village, converging on the Rectory, where, on hearing the cause for all the hullabaloo, joined in the celebrations.

Don Ciccio leant from the window waving to the crowd like a prima donna, while Don Luca, blessing them from another window, warded off their applause and directed it towards Don Ciccio, plumber by trade and doctor by inclination.

After a few days a post-card addressed to Professor X, Director of the Department of Pathology, arrived at the University of Naples. It read as follows:

“Illustrious Professor,

That famous cancer you diagnosed I was suffering from? I defecated it in your honour and in the face of the celebrated medical school of Naples.

Signed, F.U. Don Luca X.”

The Professor, who was most certainly a great man for his knowledge and modesty; framed the post-card and hung it in his surgery, obliging his students to read it, warning them to be cautious in their diagnoses and to show humility in their opinions.


About the Author
Helen Courtney-Lewis lives in the Balearic Islands, Spain and has just celebrated her 80th birthday. She is multi-cultured and widely travelled, speaks five languages and is an artist, writer, photographer and actress; her first appearance on the London stage was at the age of five. As a writer, Helen has worked for many years as a journalist and columnist, specializing mainly in comedy. At the present she’s working on an anthology of her humorous tales, many of them inspired by personal experience. "I'd better self-publish them if I'm to get there in time," she quips. "I have never tackled a book, except on cookery. I prefer the short and sweet and, in any case, I can't sit still long enough."