Mesmerised (11 page)

Premonition

May 16
th
still

‘I’ve spent my life making blunders.’

Pierre-
Auguste Renoir

I have a feeling inside me that something awful is going to happen. It’s as if all my nerves have been mangled and my limbs have lost their fluidity. Walking home, I am hardly able to appreciate the crisp Spring light, the trees and their frivolous baby leaves in contrast with stoic old peeling trunks. I wonder if I look closely enough, squint or stare, whether the young foliage already has hints of aged russet, canary and light brown.

‘Not so fast
Doctor Gachet.’

‘Excuse me?’

A hand is on my arm.

‘There was a burglary this afternoon in one of the studios in your building. Monsieur Breton said he saw one of your patients leaving the scene of the crime.’

‘Impossible, I haven’t been here all day’.

The beefy policeman who detained me back in February stands before me, arms folded across his chest like a barricade, screwing up his jagged rock face and
pebble eyes.

I have since learned his name is Inspector
Fornier. I often see him walking up and down this street as if it is his own, swiping children around the head with little reason and one time when a woman complained of too little space, kicking over the Chinaman’s barrel of pickles that stands outside his shop.

‘Excuse me,’ I say, stepping forward. To my surprise he moves out of the way. ‘Good Afternoon, Inspector
Fornier.’

Patients wait outside my door. Once again, I stand at the window. This time, wondering what
Fornier wanted with me – and what is going to happen to Bella? If the remedy is not similar enough it could stir her energies making her madness seem even more exaggerated for a while. If that happened it could be helpful. By highlighting symptoms, a more similar remedy will be easier to find. But I dread such a beginning to her homeopathic treatment, whilst Ipsen is a spy who’s poised to pounce. Unable to curb such thoughts, I feel unable to concentrate on anyone else’s ailments.

I remember several years ago,
my mentor Clemens summoned me to a dinner meeting on one of his rare visits to Paris. On a Saturday evening, I walked into Tortini’s, in the Boulevard des Italiens. As I entered, the sound of chatter and laughter spilled out through the door into the street. The restaurant was full and serving staff bustled between tables. I had heard that the Duchess of Berri went there every night incognito and I found myself looking for a woman in disguise. One young waiter, carrying several salvers of boiled lobster in their screaming red shells, caught my eye and motioned for me to wait. I spied gay maiden aunts with young wards, dowagers with chaperones, many beautiful women and several enlarged tables of rowdy male companions. On a table in the corner I even thought I saw Napoleon – but without an entourage, I have to admit it was highly unlikely. Yet, the air was tinged with reverence, excitement and the scent of burnt sugar and roasting meat. Tortini in black frock coat, and broad smile, came towards me clutching menus in both hands.

‘You have reserved?’

‘I’m with Monsieur Boenninghausen.’

‘Ah, Monsieur
Boenninghausen, of course. Come this way. I have positioned him at a little table at the back. It is very discreet and very good for meetings. There are three of you tonight?’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘Yes,’ he remembered. ‘There are definitely three.’

We moved through an arch into a
more sober space, where the air was relaxed and quiet. There were four tables. One empty, another occupied by a famous actress and her retinue. One of my favourite painters, Gustav Courbet, sat alone at a third. He wore an old ornate shirt, torn at the elbow, and ate hungrily with his large hands. A topaz on his thumb gleamed from the security of its gold setting His features were framed by his long dark hair and obscured by his bushy beard. He is one of a handful of very successful artists in Paris who welcome the moderns. His own art threatens the boundaries of acceptance but also mesmerises with its brilliance. I hesitated. Clemens Boenninghausen tugged at my arm.

‘Paul,’ he said, rising from the fourth table to hug me
and then introducing me to the man in a white suit sitting next to him. The man had marbled skin like coffee with cream and gold wire-framed spectacles.

‘Paul
, this is Doctor Sharma, he is a doctor in India, apprenticed to Doctor Honigberger, homeopath to Maharaja Ranjeet Singh. Have I got that right?’ he asked.

‘Yes Monsieur
Boenninghausen, your introduction was excellent; you managed to get everything right.’

‘I’m very pleased to meet you,
Doctor Sharma,’ I said, offering my hand.

‘The menus were brought to the table. I noticed that whilst Clemens took his pince-nez from his breast pocket to read the
Carte, Doctor Sharma simultaneously took his glasses off.

I pulled my chair closer to the table and read through a list of cold
pâtes, roast partridge, steamed fish, fried eggs and broiled kidneys whilst Clemens ordered a bottle of iced champagne.

‘
Doctor Sharma has some interesting ideas,’ Clemens said, looking over his lenses with his arms outstretched, palms on the table before him. ‘If I had met Ayush as a young man – I hope you don’t mind if I call you by your first name,’ he said, turning his head towards the Indian doctor. ‘ – I would have studied under him this philosophical pursuit called meditation.’

‘Actually, it is more than that. We have found in India that it is possible to be refreshed quite quickly after practising meditation and t
his helps during a session that is overloaded with patients. You have to go from one to the other quite quickly as a homeopath. You have to listen very carefully to what everyone says. And you have to come up with the right remedy time and time again, even when you ask yourself “What to do?” You have to be very present in the now. But how is it possible to do this when you have thoughts generated from your previous patient going around in your brain or things from your own life cloying your own mind? We physicians are only human. Categorically, meditation is to be a big a help with this problem.’

The waiter brought over our champagne. With a white cloth around the cork, he prised the stopper off and the bottle steamed. Clemens was still looking at me, drumming his fingers.

‘And how do you meditate?’ I asked.

‘
Ayush needs somewhere to stay. If you accommodate him for the next two weeks, I’m sure he’ll teach you.’

The waiter poured. We lifted our glasses and drank. The wine was fiercely cold and it smarted on my tongue and at the back of my nose. My eyes began to water. I put down my drink and wiped my lips with the napkin.

‘Tell me Clemens,’ I said with a broad smile. ‘Was it ever to be my choice?’

Ayush
ate shellfish with his fingers as if he had been doing it all his life, licking his fingers and twisting them unselfconsciously in his serviette until they were clean. He was interesting and naturally hypnotic. He assured me that Blanche’s anecdote about elephants walking across the beach with priests in saffron robes was perfectly plausible.

‘They would be giving rides on the elephant for money to make a pilgrimage
. This is quite common,’ he said. And, ‘There are many kings in my country. Many people who are rich enough have their clothes woven in gold and every Raj has a special room full of buxom courtesans. There is real magic in India like the man who cured himself of TB by doing asanas.’

‘I’m sorry,
Ayush but I don’t understand the term “asanas”,’ said Clemens.

‘It is an Indian word. It means making shapes with the body,
many are named after animals, and the yogi holds each pose for quite sometime.’

‘Like a human sculpture,’ I said, quite fascinated.

Ayush’s face turned suddenly serious.

‘But you have to be very careful
. In my country, there are also fakirs,’ he warned.

Ayush
slept on the floor in my consulting room curled up in a Kashmir blanket. He ate dried foods cooked in spices that he had brought from India and I worried about the pungent smells having an effect on my remedies. During the days, he made himself scarce.

‘Walking this lovely city of yours,’ he said. ‘It is lucky for an Indian to have this experience.’

‘Where did you meet Clemens?’ I once asked.

‘He is a very famous homeopath. I r
ead his books. I wrote to him. He said I should come to Paris because this is where Samuel Hahnemann died. I couldn’t be luckier. He met me off the boat and introduced me to you.’

In the evenings we sat on the floor. He remained
cross-legged for hours whilst I wriggled on the hard wood with my legs straight out in front of me, my back against the wall. We would begin by humming.

‘Listen to your own humming,’
Ayush would command. ‘Concentrate on the sound of your humming.’

When we stopped my head was so full of a rushing silence it felt like a mountain stream had washed through my mind. With hands held together in prayer, thumbs resting on breastbone, head bowed, he recited words in Sanskrit and then translated for me:
I bow before the noblest of sages, Pataňjali, who brought serenity of mind by his work on yoga, clarity of speech by his work on grammar, and purity of body by his work on medicine.

‘Now concentrate on your breathing,’ he
said. ‘Breathe evenly. As the air is sucked upwards make it even in both nostrils. Breathe so the length of time of your in-breath is the same as your out-breath. Breathe so the speed of your breath is even with each breath.’

If my mind wandered to other thoughts, which it often did, I held my breath and
Ayush would clap his hands and say, ‘All thoughts are directed inwards. Imagine the air filling up and then leaving your lungs.’

When he left two weeks later, I had learned, with great respect f
or my teacher, the discipline of daily practice. He stood in his white suit with his small bag at his feet, placed his palms together and bowed before me.

‘One day I will come back and teach you to meditate,’ he said.

‘Ayush, what have we been doing every evening for the last two weeks?’ I asked, mirroring his bow.

‘Preparation
for meditation,’ he said, wiggling his head.

I sit on the floor with my back to the wall, humming then breathing as evenly as I can. Twenty minutes later, the jangled noise in my head has disappeared. I invite the first person in and am able to lose myself in another’s story once again.

Reunion

May 16
th
, still

‘
For an Impressionist, to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.’

Paul
Cézanne

It is almost a relief just to have arrived at Blanche’s house. I know that she will probably be out teaching, so I have brought supplies to use while I wait. I set up an easel and canvas and begin to draw her shy house concealed by an abundance of ivy. Then I try to sense the subtle colours and softness evoked by this sunny late afternoon by introducing water based paints. A pigeon marches up and down the windowsill outside her bedroom like a sentry. A red squirrel scurries up a tree. I am captured by my subject. The hours pass. The warm spring air cools. Shadows lengthen and eventually overwhelm. I set up garden flares in old glass jars that I found abandoned by the river and I paint until I can no longer see.

I am loath to pack up my things and leave this spot although night has closed in and Blanche has not returned. I sit on the bench hugging myself with my arms. I watch stars signal as if from a lighthouse to a ship, they mesmerise like Charcot’s hypnotherapy, like
Auysh’s conversation. I fall asleep.

A loud thump wakes me. I was dreaming of sitting in a small restaurant with Victorine. She was speaking but I wasn’t listening. I was anticipating Blanche but she did not arrive. The dark mood in the d
ream greets me as I wake. My hands and nose are so cold they burn. I notice there is an envelope in my lap. It is white, luminous. I shake myself into the present and attempt to open it but the blood in my fingers is ice. I wouldn’t be able to read whatever is inside anyway. The flares have gone out. A cloud veils the moon and darkness has swallowed the world. In that moment, I do not care about the neighbours. I bang on the door.

‘Let me in Blanche,’ I call up to her bedroom. ‘I need to talk to you. I’ve been here since this afternoon.’

I hear no response, so I pick up a stone from beside the tree and toss it upwards towards her bedroom. It hits the window. I do not care if the glass is scratched or broken. I see a small light that can only be from a match and then a larger flare that moves towards the window. I do not know if she sees my face in the glare, if it catches the hint of tears.

‘I’m coming down,’ she calls in a loud whisper.

When the door opens I am grateful and move quickly inside. The hallway is narrow. Her body is almost touching mine. She puts her palms on my cheeks.

‘In the morning we will talk,’ she says to my eyes.

I lower my stare.

I see her chest rise and fall.

I’m afraid to move.

‘Please, hold me,’ she says, and somewhere in that moment I must have dropped the envelope. Reaching out she gasps at my frozen touch but her skin is like a drug.

‘Here,’ she says, helping me to remove her clothes faster.

The back of my head smashes against the wall as I pull her towards me. Her naked breasts are against my chest. I interlock my hands beneath her buttocks and lift her. Her legs become my wings as she takes me within. She shudders. I do not thrust.

‘Please,’ she says.

For one chanced moment, I look to the opposite wall by the sti
ll open door and our silhouette, a butterfly.

I do not want to move. Blanche brings all the bedding she can downstairs to cover me. I tell her it’s a cold night and I need her warmth too and it feels good to hold her whilst we fall asleep. When we wake with the first hint of dawn, I cannot remember a time when I felt happier. We are wrapped in sheets, eating stale bread with crusts that fall like snow from a roof, and ripe, pregnant cheese. Juice from a soft tomato dribbles down her chin. I lick it clean. I want to lick her everywhere. I smooth away a curl of her hair and my lips get lost somewhere behind her ear. Blanche’s breath hastens.

Here in Paris, we are taught vaginal stimulation at
medical school. It is thought to be a cure for hysterical paroxysms. A condition, we were told, that comes from the womb.

When Canard massaged the clitoris of a young woman in front of a group of students, I walked out. I was told
that she fought him hysterically in the beginning but eventually ‘climaxed and calmed down’.

‘The therapy works,’ Canard argued.

‘We don’t do this to men,’ I said.

‘Have you ever seen a hysterical man, Gachet?’

‘It is hysterical to lose one’s temper and want to kill, but men do this all the time. Why don’t you test out your theory on such a member of our human race?’

‘Can you really not stand the fact that we make these women feel better?’

‘Many cry afterwards and their tears are not joyful.’

‘They whimper,’ he said with his hands on the table and his face too close to mine.
‘Where they screamed before.’

‘And you expect me to be placated by what you’ve just said?’

‘Doctor Gachet, it’s time you gave up your fight. Medicine is medicine,’ he said pushing himself away from the table. ‘It is how we practise it. Do you want to be a buffoon all your life, or do you want to become a doctor? Because if you do, I suggest you go very quiet from now on. My patience is running out for your ignorance in the ways of the world.’

So, help me G
od, I am grateful to the education now. I understand the female anatomy in some detail. How it works has been explained to me, graphically. In Blanche’s home, the sun pushes its rays through the clouds in the sky. I lift my face toward the window and a beam of light blinds me. Lost in the sound of Blanche’s breath, I encourage her to lie then kiss my way down her body.

‘Does this feel nice?’ I ask, looking up into the sun, hesitating.

‘Paul,’ she says, ‘Please, don’t stop, go on.’