Dokter Pulder zaait papavers

Summary

Kees Pulder, a doctor in a small village in the provinces, receives an unexpected visit from a friend of his student days, Hans van Inge Liedaerd, a celebrated nerve surgeon.

With growing astonishment he notices how he has still lived on in the memory of his former friend. But the next day he discovers, to his dismay, that Hans had something else in mind in visiting him, for all the morphine in his private dispensary has been stolen.

Despite the shock this discovery means to him, Pulder does not report the theft, even though he finds out that his former friend has served several prison sentences for theft from other village doctors. Dr. Pulder feels he has been deceived by his former friend, but at the same time he falls under the spell of his 'ambiance', an attitude to life in which much is risked in order to get out of the rut of the daily routine. Suddenly the country doctor feels his own existence to be utterly banal. When he hears Hans has succumbed to his drug addiction, he sets out to investigate the details of this friend's life. This leads him to Hans' mistress Mies, who is herself an addict and in a sorry state. She has become a highly bizarre person. Always drunk, she tells Pulder all manner of things about her former lover, things which finds stranger and stranger.

His relationship with Mies leads him to drink, too, and he is soon on the downward path. Pulver neglects his family and practice and becomes involved in a weird suicide plan, which Van Inge Liedaerd had thought out for himself and Mies. Before this plan can be carried out, however, Pulder lands up in prison as the results of a road accident caused by himself when under the influence of drink.