Mesmerised (22 page)

‘Here, here,’ from the rest of the group.

‘And I’m not a socialist. Now, you can celebrate with me or drown your
own sorrows, I don’t much care, but can we please get on with the business of getting drunk, and eating? Which, the way I see it, is the reason we’re here!’

Clothilde
and her henchmen bring in the food. A fat goose, with sprigs of cranberries and scented with oregano, cut into portions and sliding off the bone. Pale venison, lean, deeply blushing, and tender. Potatoes, carrots and leeks roasted in olive oil with rosemary, sage, and garlic. Steam rises from the banquet and silences the gang.

‘So good,’ says Armand.

‘Yes, lovely.’ Camille.

‘Quite wonderful
.’ Paul.

The door opens and two men walk in.

‘This is a private party,’ Edouard says.

The two men stand in the doorway as if they haven’t heard.

‘Look, we have all the tables here and there is no room for strangers.’ Edouard waves his arms in the air as if he is conducting music.

‘That’s
all right, we’ll go and sit at the bar,’ the taller man says.

‘Do you know who that is?’ I interrupt Charles
and Emile.

‘His name’s slipped my mind. H
e’s the one who wrote that article, the worst one, about
Dejeuner sur l’Herbe,’
says
Emile.

Edouard
stands and sways over to the bar. His walking stick marks each step.

‘There is no overflow to this party,’ he says.

The journalist turns towards the bar. Edouard grabs his jacket collar in both hands. ‘Listen here you little parasite, don’t think you can write disparaging articles about my work when you clearly know next to nothing about the ins and outs of my profession. And don’t come in here when I’m with my friends so you can spread your voyeuristic filth all over the front page tomorrow.’

‘Now, come on, I know you’re feeling a little sensitive about your nasty little painting but I have every right to be here and have a drink with my pal Pierre,’ the man says pushing Edouard away.

Edouard falls backwards, steadies himself, and marches forward. With the pommel of his stick he hits the man fairly hard upon his cheekbone.

‘Maybe now you understand,’ he says, shrugging his shoulders and walking away.

The man reaches out for Edouard and clutches his arm as Clothilde and her henchmen come through from the kitchen.

‘Get out of my restaurant
!’ she shouts, clapping her hands. ‘Get out, get out, get out!’

The reporter lets go of Edouard and holds his cheek with one
hand whilst lifting the other in the air. ‘All right, all right we’re going,’ he says.

On his way out he sidles close to
Edouard. ‘Why don’t you fuck your own grandmother,’ he profanes, through gritted teeth.

On their way out, the intruders hustle a group of women in the doorway. Three models walk in laughing at some previously told joke. They immediately lighten the tainted atmosphere, help themselves to wine and warm the knees of Henri, Armand and
Edouard, until Blanche walks in with Victorine.

‘
Edouard,’ Victorine says, standing before him, pulling off her lace gloves finger by finger. ‘You’re having a painter’s party and didn’t invite me. I met Blanche in the Boulevard Saint Germaine and she agrees that it has to be a mistake,’ she says, her cleavage heaving just above the lap-girl’s face as she leans over to kiss Edouard on the cheek. Straightening up, she snatches the glass away from Edouard’s lap-girl and drinks the contents in one swallow. ‘Congratulations,’ she says.

Edouard’s
mouth hangs open.

Blanche quietly seats herself beside me. She watches the scene wide-eyed whilst puffing out her cheeks. ‘I’m pleased you came,’ I whisper in her ear. ‘I thought you were working.’

I am conscious that my breath smells of cheap alcohol whilst she is wrapped in the scent of something far more heavenly. I look at the food on the table congealing on white plates.

‘My pupil isn’t well,’
she says.

Blanche and I slip away from the alternative wedding party that is missing its bride. We leave unseen, I hope, and I know I will swear to Camille that we were still there when such and such happened – the invisible couple.

I take her to
that little restaurant in Montmartre with only three tables, each one lit by a diminishing red candle around its flickering flame. We are the only patrons in our private dining room. We eat oysters, and feed each other until we both confess that the aphrodisiac actually causes slight nausea. She is working in the evening and keeps checking on the time. I, on the other hand, choose to forget it. Or maybe, all the alcohol I’ve consumed makes that decision for me.

‘So tell me what you were unable to tell me this morning
,’ she says.

It is a rude awakening. I am in a good mood. I don’t wish to be drawn back into my problems.

‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s just work,’ I say, turning my beer glass around and around.

‘Paul, I can’t stand this, I want to be your friend.’

I am wilting. My shoulders are hanging over the table now. I might even pass out. I purse my lips and shrug.

‘
Merde
!’ she says.

‘It’s Bella,’ I say.

Blanche nods. I notice her eyes are glazed and I look down at the table.

‘You know I used to worry that I wouldn’t find her a curative remedy. Now I am afraid for what will happen when she’s well. She has a visitor that D
octors Ipsen and Charcot entertain. I’m sure it’s her pimp. Blanche, I think I’m going mad with it all.’

‘I thought I was going mad when my parents died, but I didn’t. I think it’s because I didn’t let myself.’

The tears she harbours are infectious now. She offers me her hand across the table and I take it. We are framed in this moment.

‘Phew!’ I say, opening my shirt collar ‘It’s very hot in here.’

Outside on the pavement we embrace and I desperately try to feel her flesh through
her many layers of clothing.

‘Please, don’t work tonight,’ I request.

‘I have to.’

I impose my lips upon hers and search with one finger for the spot at the back of her neck that makes her shiver.

‘No you don’t,’ I say softly.

‘Don’t do this,’ she pleads.

I pull away, hurt, and say, ‘What?’

I walk Blanche to the Café Bade and watch her go in. It’s early. She wants to rehearse. With my attempts at seduction failed, I decide to go home and have that bath that I never managed to have this morning. I feel the roughness of my beard with my palm. With foaming soap and a sharp blade, I will raze, spruce myself up, then return to watch Blanche perform.

Dusk has come and gone. The world is in darkness. I find myself walking the wrong way, towards the embankment, watching a bitter chocolate
glow fall over the Seine, and a moon slither, white and bony, a scythe-blade behind a cloud. I turn towards Notre Dame, so overwhelming and large. Behind me the silhouette of the Louvre is low-lying with understated importance. To have permission to sketch and imitate the old masters is a validation in itself, but to have work on exhibit there must be better than receiving sainthood.

I think I can just make
outwhere de Concorde with Cleopatra’s needle pointing to the sky. And across the bridge, l’Ecole des Beaux Arts on the other side of the river, behind iron railings, a ‘keep-out’ reminder from the ones who rule.

I sit on a bench donated by the parents of some unfortunate young man. I lean forwards and put my chin in my hands.
Before me a row of Haussman’s creations with floor to ceiling windows, slated roofs, balconies like coats of armour or cast-iron lace. Paris. Despite its shortcomings, I’d rather be here than anywhere else.

Before I let myself in through the street door of my humble dwelling it feels strange. Everything remains visually the same but it appears to me as if something has intrinsically changed. The whiteness of the external walls seem more luminous and, in comparison, the shutters more grimy from the smoke heading over from the factories in Montmartre. I stand in the courtyard looking up at the interminable moon with its posse of stars. All is silent.

It takes too much time but I prepare myself a perfect bath anyway
. On the stove, metal pans of water produce steam. The warmth will melt my joints and arouse my skin, so that when I lie there every cell in my body will be revived. This is the theory. I am out of kerosene, so no lights, just candles and the fire to entice relaxation. I give into it with the will of a laudanum whore.

‘
Ahhhhh,’ I let out one long, most audible breath wishing Blanche was here to claim me or that I could just be happy to be here by myself. Is this why Camille married Julie, and Edouard, Suzanne? They teach at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts that women are a distraction to one’s art. In the world of medicine, they are an accoutrement. In life they are vital when the right one comes along. Above the splash and plop I hear a tenor in the street below.

I never wanted to leave you

It was far too soon for me to go

The pale light of morning came much too soon

I should have told you so.

I should have told you so.

I’m late. Time gets eaten away by mysterious predators. They chase me. My hasty footsteps clunk down the stone stairway and rebound off the walls. Another tenant bumps into me and I catch a fright. The hallway seems hollow and empty. I place my hand on his wool coat to check he’s really there.

‘Another quiet night,’ he says, lifting his hat to me.

I watch him enter his apartment on the ground floor. Then I run up one flight to apartment number two.

I knock.

No answer.

I knock again and again.

I bang my fists.

Monsieur Breton, let me in,’ I call.

Perspective

November 16th

‘No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters.’

Edgar Degas

The voices in the well have gone and, as I would an annoying brother who has come of age, I miss them. Even though they were a scandalous intrusion when I was with a patient and my concentration was stolen away from my work, I wish them back. I did not appreciate it before, but the melodrama and thrum of community life comforts. Instead, a preternatural silence prevails. My private practice hours have been affected too. Officer Fornier has told me that our concierge Breton is away on an extended holiday.

‘And the other tenants?’

‘Some have left,’ he said.

The street door is no longer left open or shut systematically. Whether my patients can get inside the building or not is now a random affair. For example, there is a knock on my door but I am not expecting anyone.

‘Yes,’ I say pulling back the barrier between myself, and a couple with a girl of around twelve. Her father carries her.

‘
Doctor Gachet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sorry for disturbing you outside of your consulting hours, but every time we arrived here within the times written on the plaque outside, we could not get in.’

‘Yes, we seem to have a serious concierge problem, but I have some time now if you’d like to come inside’

‘Thank you.’

I usher them in to sit at the other side of my desk. The girl sprawls with one arm around her father’s neck and her head on his shoulder. One leg has fallen between his knees, its foot lying dormant on the floor. The father lifts the heavy limb and places it next to its twin across his thighs.

‘Please, tell me, why are you here?’ I ask.

‘I’ll say it quickly
… .’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I want to know detail
s. Take as long as you like.’

The parents look at each other. Lifting her chin, the mother turns to me and
says, ‘We can’t afford to pay a lot more.’

‘It will be the same price
. Please go on.’

‘It started with pain in her stomach, diarrhoea, and vomiting.
My mother-in-law agreed to pay for a doctor. He prescribed this,’ the father says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a brown corked bottle. He leans forwards and hands it to me. I study the label: Doctor Landry’s bowel cure. The main ingredient is lead acetate.

‘You are giving her this?’ I ask.

‘Yes, two spoonfuls daily.’

I put the bottle on my desk.

‘Can you describe her symptoms now for me?’

‘Well, as you can see she has no energy to do anything. She can’t move her legs. She describes them as ‘dead’.
Florette, tell the doctor how it feels.’

Florette
lifts her head slightly and then lets it drop down again onto her father’s shoulder.

‘She keeps falling asleep and everything you ask her, she says she can’t remember.’

‘Either that or she can’t be bothered to talk,’ adds the mother.

‘And stomach pains, vomiting and
diarrohea?’ I ask.

‘They’re cured.’

‘She doesn’t go at all now, just lumpy black bits in her knickers.’

The father looks
at the mother accusingly.

‘Well, I have to tell him,’ she says.

I have seen similar cases many times. It is common practice to give derivatives of lead for spontaneous purging, although ironically, not long ago the practice was
to give emetics, sudorifics or bleed the patient dry. Now that is considered barbaric and dangerous. Lead, in my experience, does seem to alleviate rapid ejection from the bowels, but the physical cost is exhaustion, constipation, paralysis and in extreme cases, even death.

‘If you are to prescribe for
Florette, where is your strange, rare and peculiar symptom in this case?’
I can hear the voice of Clemens in my ears.

I walk around my desk and sit on the edge of it.

‘Florette, can you hear me?’

The father shakes her awake. ‘Answer the doctor,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ she says, weakly.

‘That’s good. In a minute I want to turn your chair to the window. I need you in strong sunlight. I’m going to pull down your lower lip and lift up your upper one. That’s all I’m going to do. Is this
all right with you?’

She doesn’t answer. Her father shakes her again.

‘Yes,’ she says again.

With difficulty, we manage to turn the chair. I perform the examination. There is a distinct blue line along the margins of her gums.
It is the strange, rare and peculiar symptom that as far as I know is only produced by lead.

Whilst I’m dispensing her remedy, I can’t help but give myself the permission to
be angry. Mercury for syphilis, heroin for coughs, cocaine for dentition: all poisons in their crude form. Whilst regular doctors pat themselves on the back for curing relatively superficial symptoms, their patients grow sicker, suffer more and often die. And they call us homeopaths murderers and charlatans.

The spirit of Clemens is with me again. He stands beside me
, tall and upright with a shock of white hair that he pushes affectedly to one side. ‘
You are what you accuse others to be
,’ he says with an amused smile, appreciating the irony.

I make up the remedy for
Florette. It is one that does not formally exist in the homeopathic pharmacopoeia, one that I have made up myself and used many times in cases such as this: lead, in Latin,
Plumbum
.

Similia
Similibus Currentur
. It causes and in the same way it cures. My medicine is not toxicum. I am confident that in its dynamic heavily-diluted form, it will encourage Florette to become well.

As the family leave my practice, the postman is at my door. He hands
me an unusual-looking envelope. I flip it over many times then tap it against my thumb. The paper is thick, smooth and grey with a crest as a watermark. By the shape of it, I guess it is an invitation.

I sit down on my stool in my
kitchen/dispensary to open it. It is from Ernest Hoschedé. He is having a party at his home and requests the pleasure of Mademoiselle Blanche and Doctor Paul Gachet to join him. I am amazed. The last time I saw Monsieur Hoschedé was in the Café Guerbois. He was with Georges de Bellio, the two of them very obviously ignoring me. But should I be surprised that he has chosen to invite us? Probably not. I have learned that, unlike homeopathy, the game of life has no measured outcome for any of its rules.

Catherine waits for me by the bridge at the bottom of rue de l’Hopital. It is a sombre and dark morning with a marbled sky and a wind that comes from behind us, biting our ears and whipping our clothes.

‘How are you Catherine?’

‘I am well thank you, Doctor.’

‘Shall we walk? I have something to say.’

‘I already know what you’re going to ask.’

‘Even to take Bella into the grounds is impermissible. To take her outside the hospital is folly, complete folly. If I can bump into you then so can anyone else.’

‘It was my decision and I was prepared to take the consequences should I have been caught.’

‘Why did you
? – And how did you do it?’

‘The man Bella is frightened of came to visit. After he left
she was gagging for breath and clutching her throat. I instinctively knew that she would be better for some air, so I borrowed a coat from Nurse Fontaine and took a chance in smuggling her out.’

‘But to the
Tuileries, that’s miles away.’

‘I know, but it seemed to do her so much good.’

The rural road is unlit and we both carry lamps. Their effect is being slowly annihilated by the oncoming watery daylight. The wind assaults us from all sides.

‘Do you think I can make a living out of homeopathy?’ she asks.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I am getting married,’ she says. ‘Please,
Doctor Gachet, don’t tell anyone.’

You can’t be a nurse
and a wife in Paris. Sâlpetrière expects the complete devotion it received from the nuns. And if those women in winged hats hadn’t overruled doctors’ decisions in the name of Our Lord then no doubt they would still be employed today. Instead, modern nurses are ordinary, humbler folk. That is, except for Marguerite Bottard.

‘I don’t make much money from homeopathy,’ I tell her honestly. ‘Most of my patients are poor and I treat them for next to nothing or free. But there are others who do make a living from it. So, yes, I do believe you can.’

‘I am a woman, Doctor Gachet. Do you think I will find myself pinned to a stake if I do?’

‘They don’t do that anymore Catherine.’

‘I’ve seen them Doctor Gachet. It’s in their eyes when they look at you. They would have your head rolling off a block if they thought they could get away with it.’

Sâlpetrière
stands before us like a holy place, wide with three central arches and a big black dome. The building casts the illusion of righteousness and the doctors inside are the illusionists who perpetrate that thought. I turn to Catherine.

‘Con
gratulations on your engagement. Your secret is safe with me. I will see you inside.’

I have somehow managed to persuade Ipsen to come down to Bella’s cell for this consultation, partly because I want him to experience how Bella has to live, and partly because I believe her personal surroundings will put her most at ease.

‘Hello Bella,’ I say jauntily, as we walk in the door.

She is dressed in a long, grey, calico nightgown and sits on the side of her straw bed.

‘I’d like you to tell me how you think you are doing?’

‘I’m all right,’ she says.

Ipsen
and I sit on chairs, side by side, like a jury. Catherine stands behind me by the door, notebook in one hand, pen poised in the other, making her customary notes.

‘Tell me, why do you think you are
all right?’

‘I can see myself now and what I have done,’ she says with her head bowed.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘That I’ve sold my body to men,’ her voice is barely a whisper.

‘And, in your opinion, what is wrong with that?’

‘Nothing, only perhaps it shouldn’t be so.’

‘Why shouldn’t it be so?’

‘There is no reason. Only I know that there are those who think that it shouldn’t be so.’

‘And what do you think?’

She lifts her head and shakes it.

‘I wish it wasn’t so.’

She looks at me directly with liquefied eyes
.

I swallow and ask, ‘And who are you?’

‘I am … .’

‘Yes?’

‘I am … .’ She closes her lids and opens them. ‘Bella Laffaire,’ she says.

‘This is ludicrous,’
Ipsen says, through his teeth.

I sit forward and put my hand on his knee.

‘Carry on, tell me about Bella Laffaire,’ I say to Bella.

In the chapel, an alternative exit to the building, Ipsen stops me by pulling on my arm.

‘
Doctor Ipsen,’ I say, above the droll sound of the organ. ‘If I didn’t know better I would think you were being aggressive.’

‘Don’t ever do that again,
Doctor Gachet.’

‘Do what?’

I look around. A woman in black with a lowered veil kneels on a cushion in one of the pews. A dozen candles flicker on a table in the corner and a palette of colour is thrown on the floor by light coming through the stained glass window over the altar.

‘Put on that spectacle as if you are a producer in a theatre. It is my
opinion, and I represent the Faculty here, that you are making a mockery of a very serious profession.’

I look up to the rafters in the high ceiling, then to the far wall where a porcelain Jesus looks down at me full of melancholy as he hangs crumpled on his cross.

‘Doctor Ipsen,’ I say. ‘I did not put on a spectacle. I merely asked the patient questions, which she answered eloquently. If you saw drama, then it is in the nature of her cure.’

‘There is no cure. We don’t have a cure for madness,’ he spits.

‘And is it your opinion that a madwoman can get better without any medical intervention at all?’

‘You’re wasting your time Gachet, Bella
Laffaire will never get better.’

‘Then how do you explain what you saw?’

‘I saw nothing,’ he says loudly, stamping his foot like a spoilt boy.