Mesmerised (17 page)

Someone
tugs at my sleeve: the snotty boy.

‘Hello,’ I say.

He approximates a smile and shuffles from foot to foot. I search in my jacket pocket for a coin which I flip into the air, catch it and slide one fist over the other. I hold out my clenched hands, which tremble slightly, in memory of that last encounter. He points, guesses right. I try the trick several times until he looses then I give the franc to the boy. He shakes his head.

‘Go on,’ I say. ‘You won it fair and square.’

He snatches the coin quickly but he doesn’t run away.

‘I want to help Bella,’ he says.

‘Can you read? Is this written by your father?’

He shrugs.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

He shakes his head.

‘How about a dance?’

He laughs.

‘Will you talk to me about Bella? Tell me how you find her, that sort of thing?’

He nods.

‘Come,’ I say, leading him away from the café into a narrow street where we sit side by side on a doorstep.

‘If she’s happy with you then I think you shoul
d keep her,’ he says with liquefied eyes.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Paul.’

‘We have that in common.
I am Paul too. Pleased to meet you,’ I say, extending my hand. We shake. ‘Paul, Bella is in hospital. She’s very sick with strange thoughts. I want to help her too. So, that’s another thing we have in common. I need you to answer some questions. Is that all right?’

He smiles weakly
.

‘Tell me some stories about Bella, anything that you remember. It will help me to understand the problem a bit more.’

‘Can’t she answer your questions?’

‘No,’ I say gently, shaking my head.

‘I won’t get her into trouble?’

‘I have nothing to gain except Bella’s cure.’

Paul thinks for a long while. I wait for him and stare at the moon.

‘Bella looked after me better than
my mum. My dad loves her like a daughter, he says. But I caught him doing things to her, grown-up things. She used to boast a lot, and she told us about her wonderful apartment in Boulevard St Germaine with silk sheets and satin curtains. Robert used to say, “Yeah, right, so why are you still here then?” He’d get a swipe across his head for that.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Carry on.’

‘She always had a story about people like the Emperor’s wife. “Ooo, she’s not as pretty or as cunning as yours truly,” she’d say to the mirror whilst she put on her rouge. “I’m better than your mother,” she used to tell us every day. “Never you forget that,”’ he says, wagging his finger and puffing out his chest. ‘And then she ran away.’

‘Did she talk about the past, before she looked after you?’

‘Her mum died. She always said, “None of this would be happening if my mum was alive”.’

‘None of what?
Do you know what she was talking about?’

‘Looking after us when she should be “out there
lording it instead of scrubbing dishes in a hovel”,’ he says, holding his stomach and spitting the words out.

He talks on for a while more and when he finishes I notice he sits straighter, and his misty eyes have cleared.

‘Did anyone ever tell you that you are a magnificently eloquent young man and a wonderful mimic?’ I shake his hand again with emphasis this time.

He looks perplexed.

‘You’ve just helped Bella,’ I say.

He is still
angry. I ruffle his hair. ‘Go on, it’s late. I’m going home now, thank you for your help.’

He hesitates.

‘Go on,’ I encourage further and watch as he runs off.

I make my way downhill towards the centre of Paris. My descent propels me forwards with hurumphing breath and legs that do not wish to carry me. The streets are dark with only a slight relief of intermittent moonlight squeezing through gaps between the rooftops. I’m trying to hold onto Paul’s description of Bella but I can’t control my cogitations.

‘Bella at the hospital is costing me money
… I happen to know your lady friend Blanche Castets. I think she finds me a little fierce.’

I am angry with myself. I’m not usually a fighter but I should have knocked him senseless
. The weasel, the pompous pimp.

I have arrived at Boulevard des
Italiens. It is late. Somehow the whole evening has passed by. Only a couple of old sops sit on the pavement. They have empty wine bottles at their sides. Propped up against a shop-front, legs straight out before them, they sing some made-up aria without a tune whilst looking directly at each other’s eyes. Three or four carriages with drivers line up outside the cafés on the other side of the road. The street lamps are lit here; the night is no longer sinister.

I stan
d outside the Bade. Blanche is there. She wears a floral dress, one I haven’t seen before. She sits alone at a table facing the street. Her eyes are downcast. Her violin lies before her. It has one string curling up into the air.

At the back of the restaurant there are a group of doctors from the hospital. One stands with his glass raised. His colleagues sit beside him
, having backed away to give him space. They hold their hands outwards ready to applaud. In a bucket of ice are several bottles of champagne. How very new.

I move behind the door to one side.
I have to peer around a panel to see her. A man and a woman leave. He wears white gloves. There are shiny buttons on his shoes. She has a large magnifying glass hanging on a ribbon from her wrist. They push past me as they walk out the door.

‘It’s not like the Bade to have strange men loitering in the doorway,’ he says, as they walk away.

A waiter brings Blanche a balloon glass with a wave of liqueur – I think it’s cognac. He lifts it off the tray onto the table and puts a small coffee before her. She sips. I imagine the liquor leaves oily deposits on her glass. She turns her head towards me. For one second I think she has seen me but there is no sense of recognition in her eyes.

The medical men are all sitting down
now. A waiter brings the bill on a silver tray. He stands at ease and averts his gaze while his patrons sort the finances out between them. I bring my fist to my mouth and turn around, homebound.

I change my mind and move back to the window. Blanche’s body trembles and I know she is coughing. Failure wells up in my throat. The
doctors are standing, putting their coats on, kissing goodbye. I move around the corner facing the kerb but my back can still be spotted through the glass wall. The door creaks open. Male voices full and throaty in the air. The temperature has suddenly dropped. A cool north-easterly wind sweeps through the streets again and again. I imagine them in a gang, collars up, stamping feet. I hear their farewells of ‘Goodnight,’ and I suppose their hands are waving whilst their little crowd disperse.

‘Where are you going? My man can take you,’ I hear.

‘No, that’s fine. I’m happy to walk and clear my head – too much champagne,’ another says, and in reply, a laugh that stabs the air.

‘Let me take you home. You’ve got to be up early in the morning.’

I know the voice. It belongs to Doctor Beaune, a handsome senior medical man in his fifties with white hair and a neat precise cut to his clothes. It is well known that he lives alone and his camaraderie with orderlies is spoken of in hushed tones.

‘I’m very grateful. Very grateful for your concern but it is precisely because I have to be up early tomorrow morning that I must walk to tire myself out and, as I have already said, clear my head.’

No more words. Just footsteps. It’s hard to discern their direction. I place my hands in my pockets, stand on the kerb, face the road and hope for the best. It is hard to keep my head down when the pounding of leather on stone makes its way towards me, but I dare not look up. Instead, I cross the street. When all is silent I turn around and run back towards the Bade. I pull at the locked door handle then peer through the glass. It is darker than dark.

‘Blanche,’ I call, running through the empty streets in the direction of Quai d’Orsay. My heart thumps and bangs against my chest wall, paining me, for the second time in a day.

‘Blanche.’ I call repeatedly. I don’t have the stamina and stop in the middle of the road, panting. There’s no oxygen in my lungs with which to call out further. I stumble to the side, grab onto a lamppost in an effort to stop my legs from buckling. I imagine myself on my knees in the dirt having lost it all.

As my breathing slows and my legs recover, I contemplate walking the rest of the way to Blanche’s mews. I hear
laughter from an alley behind and footsteps coming towards me. I wonder if it is one of the doctors from the restaurant this evening, the pompous pimp – or heaven forbid – Inspector Fornier. It is Blanche. She has a black silk coat on with all the buttons undone and underneath it her floral dress. There are no pins in her hair. She makes me smile.

‘We can’t keep holding discussions on the street at night like this, as a couple we’ll get a reputation.’

‘But you have to tell my why you were screaming my name,’ she says, walking hypnotically towards me.

‘You heard?’

‘Someone told me.’

‘We’re near the river. There’s a bench there. At least let’s go and sit down.’

She encourages me to take her arm.

‘They told me you sounded desperate.’

‘I am.’

‘To see me.’

‘I am concerned. There’s a woman named Bella at the hospital. I’ve been given permission to treat her homeopathically. I think I’ve told you about her before. I went to Montmartre to visit her family. To help me establish her remedy, I needed to find out more about her history and so on. Anyway, I got pounced upon by her pimp at the beer garden, he said he took you out to dinner and that you like the ballet.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Do you know who I mean? He said you find him fierce.’

‘Oh, him.’

‘You do know him then.’

‘He’s sometimes at the Bade. He always sits at the bar and
and earwigs on everyone’s conversation. I told him to stay away from me when he grabbed hold of my arm. No one talks to him, not even Victorine.’

She shivers. I put my arm around her shoulder and we watch the moon’s reflection in pieces upon the water.

‘Did you?’ she asks, through a yawn.

‘Did I what?’

‘Find out what you need to know for that girl’s remedy?’

‘I’m not sure yet, but yes, I think I did.’

She whispers in my ear. I am conducting a homeopathic proving. The remedy is something people say to each other. I have just learned that ‘I love you’ are the most potent words. I close my eyes and cover her cold hand with mine.

The Medical Detective

May 26th

‘Now, in order to act really in conformity with nature, the true physician will prescribe his well-selected homeopathic medicine.’

Samuel Hahnemann
, The Organon of Medicine
.

I stand by the window. Blanche sleeps. She told me that she’s not coughing as much and no haemorrhages since she took the remedy.

‘It’s come back again
, but Paul, it’s really not so bad.’

I’ve instructed her to take the remedy daily
. If the cough goes, to stop. If it starts again, to pick up the daily dose.

Looking out onto the river, I can’t see their bobbing movement, but I can just about discern the shapes of barge
s docked on the other bank and a bird floating across the darkness – no, I think it’s a bat.

There’s a pattern of shadows thrown across the bed made by the lace curtains awash in moonlight. Blanche stirs and I hold my breath. I don’t want to wake h
er. I move towards where she lies, stand over her, kiss my fingers and place them on her parted lips. I feel the wetness of her mouth. Is it the way the shadows fall, or do I see a faint smile widen her cheeks?

Already dressed, I leave. My legs ache from all the walking I have done in a day, especially ascending Montmartre. You often see old widows dressed in black clutching the very walls of the houses as if life has conspired to throw them down the incline. For me
, I just wish I had some Arnica, Leopold’s Bane, a plant that heals bruising from injury predominantly, but also aching from over exertion. You don’t have to be a homeopath to prescribe it, it always works well. I’ve heard anecdotes about men in brawls who have been given this remedy at the time of their incident and not manifested a predicted black eye. And in my experience, postpartum women heal in half the time. A small bottle of Arnica 6c used to be in my pocket the whole time, until I thought about the theory that if you carry it about with you, you are tempting fate in some way. Now I leave it at home. I regret doing so now. There will be no transport on the streets at this hour. It’s a long walk home and it’s dark. The moon has slipped behind a thickening cloud. Many of the roads are unlit. I have an idea for a painting. Midnight blue landscape, black shadows – from afar the two colours blend completely and any form is indistinguishable. Up close you can see the configuration. I will title it ‘Night’.

When I arrive home the air in my apartment is chilled and saddened. Tomorrow I will check the walls for damp. I boil a pan of water on the stove; drinking chocolate will warm me.

Even at this time there are muffled voices coming from the well outside like whisperings in a bad dream. I take a chair to the window, sip the thick, sweet liquid and stare at the sky. I am tired but won’t rest until I find Bella’s remedy. Back at my desk I light a lamp and open my two
Materia Medicas
. Big tomes both of them, leather-bound, pages edged in gold and almost as thin as a layer of skin:
Materia Medica Pura by Samuel Hahnemann
and
Characteristics by Clemens von Boenninghausen.
Pulling up my sleeves as if about to dig a ditch, I abandon them and sit back in my chair to think. Five remedies come to mind:

First is
a medicine for delusions that I have tested on myself. My experience of this drug is that one feels better than in normal humdrum life. Colours seem brighter. Music has more depth. Simple foods taste glorious. There is a sense of lightness that came over me both in body and mind like walking on air. Things felt so pleasurable, even ecstatic, so much so that tears can be produced from laughter over nothing funny at all. For me all it took was dropping an onion into the sink. There was also some sense of omnipotence, a feeling that my artwork was significant and as important as Manet’s. But I felt like I was being dropped from a great height as the effect wore off. The true, blunt world was hard to endure. Yet, I had never before experienced such delight, and since then only with Blanche, for the primary effect is a feeling very much like being in love. I look in the books. Hahnemann says of Cannabis,
Sometimes a furious mania, so that he spat in the faces of those around him.
And yes, I can imagine Bella doing that but her overall state is not mirrored by the essence of Cannabis.

Next, I consider
Phosphorus. What is it that I associate most with Phosphorus? It’s compassion and sympathy almost to the point of pathology. Maybe Bella is sympathising with the historical figure of Marie Antoinette. Ah, but this is conjecture and the link is too tenuous for me to take seriously. It is almost as if I have created this association to feed my own laziness and to solve the problem quickly.

Forget
Phosphorus. Belladonna then. Bella-donna. This poison must be the remedy. At last, my nerves are all sitting to attention even though my energy reserves are completely depleted. I rub my eyes. Belladonna is the remedy I associate most with the word congestion. Dry fever. Inflammation. Pulsation. Like a boil that comes to a head. Delusion and violence. The books say:
spitting and biting, fantastic illusions, frightful pictures before the eyes, frenzy and madness, chattering like a mad person, insanity, talks madness and folly, great restlessness, restless with anxiety
. Yes, it is entirely possible that Bella could need this remedy but there is nothing specific enough in the remedy description for me to shout ‘Aha, I have the cure’.

Then
there’s
Hyoscyamous
(Henbane) that I know to have mania of an exhibitionistic nature. I read in Boenninghausen:
loquacious insanity, shamelessness, lasciviousness, kissing mania, furious, jealous, fear of being poisoned, unhappy love with jealousy, phantasies
. Added to that in Hahnemann:
extreme fury, he rushes at people with knives, he strikes and tries to murder those he meets, foolish acts, performs ridiculous antics like monkeys, sings love songs and ballads, insanity
.

How I wish
I had been able to take notes when I was with the boy Paul. I am desperately trying to recall what he said, something about Bella boasting, a sense of superiority. That’s right, when he was wagging his finger he was mimicking Bella saying, ‘I’m better than your mother, never forget that.’ And, ‘None of this would be happening if my mum was alive.’

I recall the scene
on our protest day. The man at the window with the caved-in face shouting that he was not going to pay her because he couldn’t get an erection and Bella’s response, ‘The devil will have his way with you; what about the first time?’ She is feisty. I will give her that. Her main delusion is that she is a beheaded queen. I think that I need to ask her more about Marie Antoinette. But for the purpose of finding her remedy, I have to believe that what I know now is the essence of it and if so, jealousy and unhappy love don’t seem to come into it. In my mind I toss this remedy aside and recall the last one on my mental list for insanity,
Stramonium
(thorn-apple) – another plant. People who need this medicine are violent, they fear violence, so much so that they cling to people and things. I do not even bother to read the books. Bella is not in that state. The road to cure will not be found by using
Stramonium
. Of these five homeopathic preparations, the most similar is Belladonna but Bella needs a remedy with the expression of boastfulness and feelings of superiority that do not reflect the lowly life she leads. It is 4 am. Just for a few moments, I will rest my head on my desk. My bony arms will suffice as my pillow.

Falling asleep on a counter or a desk is becoming a bad habit. I can see by the light tumbling in and climbing over me, warming me up, that it is already morning. Time to get going although, unusually for me, I don’t have to be anywhere soon. For a few seconds I think how nice it would be to begin painting that night scene and I contemplate a stroll to Père Tanguy’s to buy midnight blue, royal blue and bitumen. Or pastels. I shall have to decide. But not now. Whether I like it or not, today is set aside to find the
Simillimum
, the most similar remedy, for Bella Laffaire.

With one hand on my lumbar and a stiff gait, I move like an old person over to the kitchen. Chocolate is congealed in my one and only cooking pot and I curse myself for not rinsing it out
the night before. I put one hand through my hair, contemplating the job that at this moment appears to be beyond me.

‘Pitiful,’ I tell myself. ‘Gachet, you are truly
… .’

I catch my reflection in the curved side of the pan. The image is a little distorted but not too much of a lie. The margins of my eyes are inflamed. I have the untidy
beginnings of a beard, an unruly mustachio, wild hair that looks as if it has never been brushed. I stick my tongue out. It is thick and white. What a fright. I run the tap. The water trickles, then spits at me viciously. The rude pipes gurgle and grind. With a pumice stone I scrub the metal blind. The atmosphere of a dream is haunting me. Dogs. I was dreaming of dogs, dogs from my childhood that I learned didn’t really die but have miraculously been projected into my adult life, lying on the floor looking up at me with their take-notice-of-me eyes. The room is filled with other dogs, not my own, curling around my legs, licking their wounds, or standing before me anticipating love. Then it came to me that they were all my dogs, although I hadn’t fed them or walked them for years. The realisation of this hit me like a bout of self-loathing and this is what’s haunting me. I scrub my hands clean.

I try meditation
, focusing on a burnt orange disc against a coffee background like a planet in my mind. In the past, the answers to many questions have come to me this way. Nothing happens this time and I still don’t know Bella’s remedy. Maybe it hasn’t been proved and so doesn’t exist yet – what a bleak thought.

At my desk, with
the
Materia Medicas
open, I count down the remedies in the index of both. Hahnemann has described more than one hundred substances in a thousand pages. Clemens has written up nearly one hundred and fifty preparations in equal space. I feel like I’ve been kicked awake only seconds ago, my eyes smart from lack of sleep. Rubbing my lids to clear my vision, I sit down, resigned. One of the
Materia Medicas
is open at page one in front of me. I begin to read. Only two thousand pages to go.

Page two hundred in
Materia Medica Pura
. All symptoms merge into one. I’ve contemplated the different characteristics of over twenty-five remedies. I like to think I have discerningly eliminated medicines from the ‘possibles’ pile, but the truth is that substances lost their individual expression over one hundred pages ago when my brain became a desert.

At dusk, I do not recognise myself in the shaving mirror. The candle in the soap dish by the sink flickers. My face is gaunt. There are definite lines around my nose and my mouth. Life seems to have aged me recently
so much quicker than it ever has before.

What would Blanche think of m
e if she turned up now? I’m hypnotised by my bed and am thrown into it by some invisible force. Pulling the blanket up to my chin, curving my back, knees into abdomen, chin on breastbone, I become a mollusc. The cotton sheets beneath me feel cold and damp. I am desperate for a world where there are no expectations. It is what I hope to give myself when I fall asleep.

Day or night? Time is losing its relevance. There is a big notice on my front door:

Dr GACHET EST MALADE
.

I ask a neighbour passing by in the hall, ‘Please, tell Monsieur Breton, on your way down, that Doctor Gachet is sick and will knock on his door as soon as he’s better.’

‘You’re right
.’ The neighbour wears a woollen hat that looks like a sunken syllabub. I wouldn’t recognise her again except that her shape is incredibly round. ‘You look like death and you wouldn’t want to pass that on to anyone else,’ she says reproachfully, folds of her skin wobbling under her chin.

Blanche arrives at 8pm with a simple supper of bread, wine and cheese. I have no appetite. We sit down to eat. I tell her how grateful I am that she’s come round
, but as she speaks I am tapping my knees with my knuckles.

‘I feel that this is a decisive moment for homeopathy,’ I tell her. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth, because I think I’m going to fail.’

‘That’s why you need food to keep you going. You have work to do and I have a book to read.’

The evenings are still cold. I light the fire.
Work. I sense Blanche looking at me every so often. Eventually, she falls asleep and the fire, starved of wood, dwindles to embers. Having already read and re-read one hundred remedies I am still no wiser. I suddenly wish I had never heard of homeopathy, and also that I wasn’t such an idealist but an ordinary doctor, enthralled by the mesmerism classes run by Charcot.

I carry Blanche to my bed and undress her. In her slumber she s
prawls happily all over my side. Hovering at the edge I fall asleep with ease.