Mesmerised (25 page)

Darkness and Light

November 25th

‘Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.’

Charles B
audelaire

The same chipped paintwork, bare floorboards and the smell of mouse droppings; the same posters advertising an exhibition at the Louvre, five years ago; the same thumbprints on the wall, and the same squeak on the stairs. But everything feels different. I pause before reaching the top, follow the turn in the staircase and darkness is swallowed by light coming through the open door.

‘Gachet
! You haven’t been here for a while,’ Père Suisse says, aiming his sputum into the same aluminium cup he sometimes used to collect student fees. ‘I knew you’d be back; they all come back.’ He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stares at me inquiringly.

‘Thank you Suisse, it’s good to be missed.’

Despite everything, I’m determined to be positive. I look around the room. Nothing’s changed: chairs set before easels; a model on a stand sitting on a plush guilt and velveteen chair with a shawl draped casually over her groin and one breast. She holds a brass jug and looks towards it. Before her, five or six artists, as usual, struggle for their own idea of perfection. Same old scene except there isn’t anyone here I recognise.

‘Where is everybody?’ I ask.

‘They’ll be back; they always come back.’ Suisse replies, sitting down on a stool, leaning forwards, hands on knees. ‘ … Mostly.’

‘Old man, I hate to disappoint you but I’m not coming in today
either.’

Père Suisse nods. His eyes are misty, probably from too much absinthe and wine
. I’m not in the mood to sketch with strangers, and although I feel I owe him something more by way of an explanation, I can’t think of anything pacifying to say. In the end I just leave, touching the peak of my cap and wishing him a good day. I make my way through the darkness back out into the street where I buy several newspapers. I will read them tonight. I am heading for home to paint and make the most of the good light, so rare in November. On the corner of my road I am accosted.

‘
Doctor Gachet.’

A woman grabs my arm. She wears a navy cloth coat
and scuffed, misshapen shoes that she has matched with a misshapen hat. She holds tightly onto a child’s hand, a female aged around six. The child hits her repeatedly with her free hand.

‘Get off me, you cow
!’ the little girl screams. ‘Get off me, get off me, get off me!’

‘I need help with her,’ the mother says. ‘I was told to tell you that
Florette is walking now. Her parents said that I should wait outside your building and that you do not keep regular hours. They said I should come anytime and wait for your return. Would you be able to see my daughter?’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘She has the devil in her. Would you be able to help?’

‘I don’t know,’ and thinking of Bella’s deep mental pathology,
add, ‘Yes, maybe, there is a good chance that I could.’

‘You are not my mummy.
I hate you. I don’t want to see that ugly man.’

The child’s mother looks at me. ‘She lies all the time and doesn’t care what she says. She’s brandished a knife at one of my sons.’

‘Come on follow me, best for you to tell me all of this in my consulting room.’

‘The whole family is frightened to go to sleep at night. I’ve got six children and she could easily do one of us in
– more than one of us.’

We manoeuvre our way through street vendors and mounds of
litter.

‘
Ow! She’s bitten me, the witch.’

The mother lets go of her child’s arm and stops to suck at the tattoo of teeth marks on her wrist.

‘What do I have to do, hang you up by your hair?’ she screams at the girl.

‘Bet you would if you could catch me,’ the girl replies, sticking out her tongue, hands on her hips like a woman of the night.

‘I was always such a good girl, I can’t believe she’s mine,’ the woman tells me.

We arrive at seventy-eight.

‘Come in,’ I say. ‘This is not a conversation we should be having on the street.’

I lead the way up to my apartment. The little girl kicks at my heels from behind as we climb.

‘Don’t do that,’ her mother cries.

‘I’m not doing anything.’

‘Yes, you are, you’re kicking the doctor.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

My key is in the lock. The door sweeps aside a pile of letters. One of the envelopes bears my father’s handwrit
ing. A sudden dark-grey cloud covers the sky and it feels like dusk. I pull down the light and strike a match. The girl kicks the coalscuttle. A puff of soot stains the brickwork of the fireplace.

‘I’m so sorry,’ says the mother, grabbing hold of her daughter’s hand.

‘Get off,’ the child says, trying to pull away.

‘Please take a seat in front of my desk.’

The mother sits down obediently. The girl wanders into my kitchen/dispensary.

‘No!’ I shout, running behind her, fishing her out.

‘What do you like to do … .’

‘Edith,’ her mother says.

‘What do you like to do Edith?’ I ask.

Her answer is an angry face.

‘Can you draw me a picture?’

She shakes her head fiercely.

‘Of anything you like. It doesn’t have to be nice.’

She nods and says, ‘No.’

Folding back my rug and carpeting the floor with newspaper, I set up an easel with drawing paper pinned at every corner and reluctantly hand over a piece of charcoal to Edith. Once behind my desk, I ask Edith’s mother to tell me her daughter’s story.

‘She was born in August. The medium said she’s a lion, what do I expect? I told her not this, definitely not this. All my children are washed, clothed and fed. I don’t push them out into the street. My husband and I don’t drink. We pay our bills. We have principles. There are those that judge me by Edith’s behaviour. People who steal, people who cheat, selfish parents; they call us filth. Can you help me to understand that?’

I sit back in my seat, look over to the left wall for inspiration. A smaller copy of the original
Dejeuner sur l’Herbe
hangs there unframed. A present from Edouard.

‘I don’t think I can, but there’s some evidence that a homeopathic remedy might
encourage Edith to calm down.’

I glimpse at
the girl. Her palms are blacker than a chimney sweep’s. The paper on the easel is a mess of scribbles and she is tearing through it with a remnant of the charcoal and her nails.

Samuel Hahnemann’s idea is that syphilis with its caries and ulcerative symptoms equals destruction in the body. Clemens taught me that a human being is one
– the body is a mirror image of the mind. I’d wager there is syphilis in Edith’s ancestral history. I’m also longing for this child to be gone before she takes the destructive mind set out on my furniture, especially the embroidered foot stool which Blanche brought over from her home especially for me to rest my feet upon.

‘Please, watch over Edith whilst I make up her remedy,’ I say to the mother, who up until now has been intent upon watching me.

It is dark in my kitchen/dispensary and I ignite a few candles. In the flicker of light and shadow, I prepare a dose of Mercury 1M, the remedy for destructive processes and syphilis. Once again the silence in the well grabs me, this time making my skin crawl and the hairs on the back of my neck stand like the hackles on a cat. As if I were in some bizarre children’s game, I carry the remedy on a spoon to my patient.

‘Look up there,’ I say to Edith. ‘What’s that you’ve got in your mouth?’

In the failing light, she looks at the ceiling, opens her mouth with her fingers pulling at her lower jaw and I shovel the remedy in. She spits it out onto the newspaper covering the floor. It doesn’t matter. The remedy coats the pills and it has seeped into her etheric body via her saliva. In my understanding she has taken the remedy.

‘She’s had the remedy.’

‘She spat it out.’

‘Trust me, she’s had the remedy. You can take her home.’

Shuffling out her daughter, the mother says, ‘I’m not paying for this. You’ve hardly asked me any questions. How do you expect her to get well with one pill that landed on your floor?’

‘And bring her back next week,’ I call out after
them as they descend the stairs.

The room wears Edith’s ruinous spirit. As I tidy, Edith melts into a pool of bizarre clinical encounters in my mind. Then I hunt through my store cupboard beside the bedroom for a clean sheet of canvas. It’s time to paint
Night
. I set up my easel and line up the pastels on a clean wooden board: midnight blue, royal blue, and bitumen. With big sweeps of my arm I create a background of the compost-scented royal blue. I have no pending clinical situations to think about and there is nowhere else that I am supposed to be. I kick aside a nebulous, uneasy feeling, pick up the midnight blue and mould shapes into the canvas with the side of my hand of buildings vaguely resembling the Louvre and Notre Dame. My mind feels strangely relaxed. Blanche will be pleased. Tonight, I will make
her
dinner for a change.

I’m trampling
my newspapers underfoot and I’ve just realised they are spoiled. I would like to have taken them later to a café to read. Rudely distracted from my creativity, I pick up the shredded papers off the floor, sit on the sofa with my feet on Blanche’s footstool, and look over the articles that are not torn or smudged. One in particular, in small print on the penultimate page, catches my attention. At first I notice it because it has a homeopathic remedy stuck to its centre and then because the newsmonger mentions my name:

I was sitting next to a medical man the other day at the bar in my favourite inn. When I told him my name he remembered me as the writer who compared the cholera mortality rates between allopathic and homeopathic medicine in this newspaper some months ago.

He told me his name, which I promised not to mention in print, although I can say that he is a senior member of the Faculty of Medicine just finishing an investigation into homeopathy at the
Hopital la Sâlpètriere in Paris. What I can also say is that he is an extremely generous human being when it comes to red wine.

His passion for controlling the quality of medicines came through most ardently in his speech. A point of view that he made great pains to suggest that I write about. In his opinion, medicines should be regulated by the Faculty of Medicine and should only include those that have been manufactured to a high standard and approved by an expert druggist
. Remedies such as herbal quackery and homeopathy should be outlawed.

He related a recent incident concerning a
Doctor Gachet, who had been granted permission by the Faculty of Medicine to treat a prostitute named Bella Laffaire with homeopathy for a diagnosis of manic insanity. Except when our hero examined the patient himself, he found that it was not insanity that she suffered from but waywardness. He said, ‘Doctor Gachet claims great success because this woman can be released from hospital to go back into her old life. Such is the chicanery of homeopaths and homeopathy.’

I did not tell him that my daughter was saved from cholera by homeopathy.

November 26
th

It seems as if everyone I have ever met is at Ernest Hoschedé’s. Ernest fills parties with frequenters of the bohemian cafés in the same way his father fills up a department store with customers; enthusiastically. So, this get-together proves to be a much less decorous affair than Madame Manet’s. There are no waiters here. Nevertheless, effervescent alcohol flows like surf over the necks of bottles held high above people’s heads as they wade through crowded rooms. There is a large vat filled with the stuff over by the window in the main room. The air pulsates with human bodies all pushing close to one another. People, continually jolted, look around, find another familiar face, and in this way conversations are cut short and new ones initiated.

Blanche hangs on to my shirtsleeve. I can feel the heat of her through her lace dress. The din of ascending voices makes it hard to focus on the one you are meant to be listening to. Someone behind me says, ‘Have you seen Sarah Bernhardt?’

‘She’s here?’ another asks.

‘I think she’s just left.’

This is one gathering where there will be no guitar, piano or violin playing. Blanche, for once, can be social without being hampered by her instrument. Not that she would see it that way. She tugs at my arm.

‘Victorine’s over there, can we go and talk to her?’ she
asks, and I realise that for over ten minutes we have been in the centre of the milieu, silently looking around like foreigners stunned by an alien world.

‘Of course, yes, let’s go over there.’

She is by the window, behind the table generously bearing a large, frosty, silver bowl of caviar, toast, and sour cream. A woman absently strokes Victorine’s arm whilst she speaks with her lips close to our friend’s ear. As we approach, I have second thoughts about disturbing the couple and look over to Blanche who tilts her head towards that side of the room.

‘Paul,’ Victorine calls, loud enough for a dozen guests to acknowledge with their eyebrows. We continue to shove ourselves through the throng in her direction.

‘It’s like Saint-Lazare station tonight,’ she says, kissing me on the cheek and reaching out to clutch Blanche by the hand. ‘This is Lilliene, my new girlfriend,’ she giggles and says. ‘Lilliene, this is the most wonderful doctor in the world, Paul Gachet. He can cure syphilis painlessly and prevent it. And this is my most favourite violinist of all time, Blanche Castets.’

I follow the direction of Vi
ctorine’s line of vision as she throws back her head and relieves her face of a few strands of stray hair. Edouard speaks with Ernest, Claude, and two nameless ladies in the corner by the door. He has his back against the wall and his posse in a semi-circle around him.

‘The last tim
e I was in a place this crowded, Edouard was being ridiculed over
Dejeuner sur l’Herbe.
Being the model, I didn’t feel too good either,’ Victorine continues.

‘And now?’ asks her lady-friend still stroking her arm.

‘Lilliene, such a shame you don’t paint,’ Victorine answers.

Someone pushes at my back. I lose my footing and fall forward into
the round of our small group. When I look over my shoulder Charles is mouthing
bonjour
, although I’m not sure it’s to me. My back is pushed again from the other side. I twist around to see Doctor Quackenetre standing next to Bella’s pimp. Both of them look as if they want to talk to me. Their unspoken camaraderie is unlikely, looks wrong and feels ungainly.

‘Excuse me,’ I say, pre
paring to turn back to my female friends.

‘Quite a lady’s man,’ the pimp says. ‘I should give you my card.’

‘After the last time we met, I have no intention of renewing our acquaintance.’

‘
Doctor Gachet is a homeopath. One of a growing number who deal in useless medicine and false ethics,’ the doctor says to his new friend.

That familiar feeling of dread that seems to come upon me so frequently recently, has struck me dumb.

‘Not a man you can do business with either,’ the pimp says.

‘No, not a business
man at all. There are many people here who like the idea of magic pills. It is a romantic notion that’s taking over from religion. I see it as part of my job to integrate and help these people embrace reality. Although, reality can be pleasurable too, as you and I both know.’

‘This is a strange conversation to be having in my presence,’ I manage
to say.

‘Not really,
you have to get a grasp of how things actually are. ‘You see,’ the doctor continues, now addressing his ally, ‘one has to have a good understanding of the world in order to survive. You have it. My colleagues in the Faculty have it. I like to think I have it. The world has to turn. Decisions have to be made and men have to get on. Doctor Gachet here isn’t in touch with the way things work but I think we can talk him into it given enough time. Now excuse me, one must socialise. It’s lesson one.’

I catch them before they move off in different directions.

‘One minute,’ I call, taking a few steps forward to make our liaison more intimate and not to cause a scene. ‘You are not worthy to shine Bella’s shoes,’ I say to the pimp. ‘And you sir, are a bigot and an ass and should know better.’

Quackenetre
affords me a disfigured smile.

I look over my shoulder
. Victorine and Blanche are engrossed in conversation. Lilliene watches. I can hear their conversation. ‘Musically you have something unique too. You say I involve my whole being when I play, but you involve the whole of life when you introduce a song and suddenly, the sound from the guitar, your voice, and the story, become one like a series of pictures in sound,’ says Blanche.

‘Thank you, that means so much, especially from you,’ Victorine replies.

When I turn back
, Quackenetre and his teammate have gone. I tell Blanche that I’m going to get another drink and ask if anyone would like one, but really it’s an excuse to escape the conversation, any conversation. I meander through the crowd into an equally peopled and humid room and out again into the white marbled reception hall and sudden brightness, through the front door into a courtyard, where it’s night again and teeth-chatteringly cold.

I
break into a run.

When I return, Blanche is looking for me by the front door.

‘Where have you been?’

‘For a run, I needed to get some air.’

I look down at myself. My shirt is hanging outside my trousers and my tie is
askew. I can feel clammy perspiration sticking my hair to my brow.

‘You rea
lly should find the remedy for “acts strange at parties”. I suppose you’re going to ask if we can leave now.’

She is right. I was just about to say ‘Can we go?’ But I change my mind instantly, and spend the rest of the evening trying to catch the attention of Georges as he ever so expertly avoids
me.

Later.
In bed. Naked. Skin to skin. Floating. Blanche sleeps, back towards me. I move a lock of hair and kiss her shoulder.

‘I love you,’ I whisper.

She moans.
I think over the events of this year: Edouard Manet treating Victorine like his girlfriend and marrying Suzanne; meeting Blanche at the protest; Bella Laffaire; The Salon des Refusés; myriad patients; my political situation; Charcot’s voice –
I’ve been advised you’re going away.
I pull my body away from Blanche, slowly, gently, so as not to waken her. She moans again. I put one foot on the floor. She throws her body backwards, towards me, awake.

‘Paul,’ she says sleepily, watching me. ‘Come back to bed.’

I don’t blow out the candle. I lie on my back. She’s in my arms. Her hair tickles my nose when I breathe. There is tension all over me as she sucks one of my nipples and plays with the other.

I need to get back home. I need to start writing everything that
has happened to me concerning the Faculty, the hospital and Bella Laffaire. I need to send this account to the journalist whose daughter was cured of cholera by homeopathy, along with my copy of the clinical report.

‘Blanche,’ I say to deter her.

‘What?’

She lifts her head and looks at me with smoky eyes.

‘Nothing,’ I say.

She smiles.

I watch her kiss my chest. Feel her mouth on my belly. Feel the tension only where it’s meant to be.

As soon as she is asleep, I leave her for the early hours on dark winter streets where Paris is like a magician looking over his shoulder checking-up on who sees how the tricks are performed.

Voilà
!

Deep in the night, watching Paris with a sense that Paris also watches me. The heart of darkness
, the truth scrabbling out from underground, rats that the journals convince are not real in Napoleon’s sparkling world. They exist. I hear them. They squeak, grind and hiss and run over my feet, press their fat bodies under my trouser hem like a quick caress in passing. I smell the sewers in their coats. Their red eyes meet mine. We share the same landscape. We are prey, haunted to seek out the solace of this nowhere time.

The drunk at my
feet rolls over into the gutter. An empty beer bottle follows him. His corpse-like pose represents the perfect example of a prize trick gone wrong. The tarts on their way home from hotels and the customers who would not pay for the whole night pass me by as if I am invisible or sidle up to me with their musk overpowered by cheap perfume.

‘Come on
, try it.’ A particularly jaded one nudges me. ‘You never know, you might like it,’ she says, as if selling ice-cream.

Voilà
.

The night itself is stiff
in its near-frozen temperature. Hausmann’s roofs are like the hats that conjure doves. Paris’s body is ribbed with bridges, the Seine an icy vein. One solitary hansom jerks through the streets. A low-flying bat lands on the nose of the horse. If you painted that, they’d call it a fantasy, and yet I witness the phenomenal reality. The carriage passes, its passenger a solitary man dressed as a woman, who pulls his scarf across his face like a veil. His exposed eyes are laughing at me. Cutting winds, like the waves from a swordfight, lower my attention to the ground and blow me home.

Voilà
.

The strange stillness I have come to associate wi
th 78, rue du Faubourg St Denis is disturbed. Comforting sounds of mortality seep through its walls once more. I place my key in the lock. A baby cries. A door slams. A voice shouts, ‘Can’t you fucking shut that baby up?’ On entering, ‘No, I fucking can’t’, together with the percussion of continued banging on a wall. A dimmed oil lamp shakes on the ceiling and the crystals chime to the pounding of feet. I drag mine upstairs and mistrust what I see. There is light seeping from my apartment. I rub my eyes. It must be an illusion. The brightness must be coming from somewhere else and yet I can’t quite convince myself that there’s a moonstruck window in the roof that I have never noticed before. I slow my pace, afraid, stand still for a moment considering whether ghosts have taken over or men in white coats have come to take me away, but no, I push the door open fully.

Et
voilà.