Mesmerised (4 page)

Wonderful Weekend

April 18th

‘A multitude of small delights constitutes happiness.’

Charles Baudelaire

A
s agreed, I arrive at the home of Blanche Elisabeth Castets on Saturday at eleven. It has taken me over an hour to walk there under a clear sky in kind air. I find myself pleasantly expectant and whistle along the way.

She lives in a house
set in a small courtyard close by Quai D’Orsay. After I ring the bell, I sit and wait for her on the bench outside, elbows on my knees, chin cupped in hands, staring at my highly polished brown shoes on the cobbles. The winter sun is uncharacteristically warm and induces a heady feeling of wellbeing similar to the experience of Cannabis
intoxication. All my thoughts have wafted away.

‘
Doctor Gachet, I’ve kept you waiting all this time,’ she says, without a hint of regret.

I look up
, quite surprised to see her beside me. ‘That’s quite all right, I’ve enjoyed the anticipation.’

I stand and we begin to walk.

‘Your eyes are quite mesmerising.’ She shakes her head slightly. ‘I know, that seems forward. I have always been outspoken when I’m nervous. As a child, I used to get reprimanded for it. Obviously, I am a slow learner and now it’s too late.’

I raise my eyebrows. The word mesmerising reminds me of Charcot’s experiments and I am especially interested in her positive use of the word.

‘I think you are lovely just as you are.’

She gives me a sidelong glance.

‘You do?’ She interlocks her arm with mine.

‘We can walk along the banks of the Seine, if you like. I often do that, in search of an inspiring place to paint and draw.’

‘You’re an artist
and
a medic? Of course you are, but how is it that you have so much talent, Doctor Gachet? Stupid question, no, please don’t answer that.’

‘Paul.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Paul. I’d like you to call me Paul.’

‘Blanche.’

‘
Blanche, and you manage quite well without them, your parents, I mean?’

‘I don’t have a choice. I am here. I must carry on.’

‘Not easy.’

‘No, you are right
, it’s not, but no one said life would be.’

‘I agree, things are easier
without preconceived ideas, but not everyone can manage that. You are blessed if you do.’

‘I suppose you’ve got to be blessed with something.’

We speak in this easy flowing manner until the saffron sun smudges the horizon. We watch the spectacle from the bridge of Alex III and are speechless before it.

Reluctantly, I leave her on her doorstep. She closes the door and I realise that I would gladly forego my place at Père Suisse in the morning for another few hours of being in her presence. I scratch my head wondering if I should knock to tell her this, when a window springs open above me.

‘I don’t have to practice my violin tomorrow.’

Her voice trails towards me like the scent of roses on a summer’s afternoon.

I am in excellent spirits when I arrive at the rue de
l’Hôtel de Ville to check on my patient. Once again, Suzanne Leenhoff greets me.

‘I’m so pleased you called,
Doctor,’ she says, anxiously. ‘Come in.’

‘He is no better?’ I ask, as she leads me through to Leon’s
bedroom.

‘Doctor, I am very worried. He has a violent cough.’

My mood flattens instantly. I regret taking full responsibility for his health. I could have easily arranged admittance to the Hospital for Sick Children, but my experience in these matters led me to believe he was better off at home. However, when I enter the room I find several reasons to have faith in my instincts restored. The window is open. Leon is no longer drowsy with glassy eyes and dilated pupils but sitting up and reading. The rash has gone from his neck.

‘Is he eating?’ I ask, making my way over to his bedside in order to perform a more in depth examination.

‘Yes, he had a breakfast of bread, cheese and sausage. He ate quite well.’

‘And drinking?’

‘Not so much,’ she replies.

‘The body needs water, Leon. How are you feeling today?’

I place my wind-chilled hands upon his neck, which sends him into a bout of coughing that severely grates the air, and his face reddens. I let him finish then unbutton his nightshirt. The rash on his chest and stomach has faded from crimson to pale pink. I rub my palms together for warmth and rest my fingers for some moments on his brow, which no longer exudes a steamy heat. Angling his head towards the window I ask him to open his mouth, although the fact that he had eaten a hearty breakfast is already indication enough that his fauces are on the mend.

‘Now,’ I say, turning round to face his mother. ‘How was he yesterday, after I left?’

‘At first, I thought it was a miracle. Within ten minutes of having that little pill he brightened and he has not been so hot ever since, but in the night he was coughing and coughing, so I gave him the powder like you said, and that’s when his cough got very bad, frighteningly harsh as it is now and I thought at one point that he wasn’t going to regain his breath,’ she said, all in one go, as if she was coming out in sympathy with the boy’s arrested inhalation.

‘Miss
Leenhoff, my prognosis is very good. He is so much better in himself and this is a major indication. His body will repair itself now. I’ll pass by again tomorrow.’

‘Aren’t you going to give him anything for his cough?’

‘His body will heal itself.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to go to the shop for
linctus then.’

I pick up my bag. Inside it there are bottles neatly separated by a metal grid. I look for the one with
Sac Lac
– sugar powder – written on its label. I pour twenty pillules into a two-gram vial.

‘Give him one every two hours, and you won’t need the
linctus.’

‘Thank you,
Doctor,’ she says.

April 19th

Sunday.
Blanche and I stroll along the river once more. Like a homing pigeon I walk her in the direction of rue Faubourg Saint Denis, all the while pointing out the merits and the drawbacks of a scene from a technical, artistic, point of view. I speak about the light, such an inspirational factor. The way in which my friends see colours inside colours, which they blend on canvas, bringing purple to the heavens, yellow to grey paving stones and blue to grass.

‘Music has tones and hues too,’ she tells me.

She stops walking and hums. When she’s finished, she asks, ‘What colour did you see?’

‘The colour of
light.’ But I wanted to say, ‘The colour of you’.

We eat lunch in the
Café Guerbois. I introduce her to the writer, Charles Beaudelaire. His face is powdered white and eyelids kohled like a geisha. He sits amongst a small entourage of young men and women, each dressed in varying degrees of eccentricity and style. I look from one to the other: An angelic face. A blond curly wig. A swish of royal blue velvet. The rustle of organza. The glint of gold. An amused expression occupies them all. Charles makes a show of kissing Blanche’s hand whilst gazing up into her eyes. His friends let out a collective and precipitating, ‘Woah.’

‘What a wonderful secret friend you have,
Doctor Gachet,’ Charles says. ‘Will you join us?’

Blanche takes a deep lungful of air and says, ‘
This is only our second rendezvous. I think we should be alone.’

I am relieved a
nd flattered. Once at our table, after a game of ‘No, after you’, she says ‘Your accent is strange.’

‘I grew up in Lille.’

I unwrap a piece of charcoal from a cloth and sketch an unnamed bird of prey on a napkin.

‘It’s for you,’ I say, pushing the drawing towards her.

‘I’ll frame it, but you have to sign it. Put Paul van Ryssel,’ she says, pushing the drawing back to me. I thought about it briefly then wrote under the date Paul van Ryssel – Paul of Lille. From now on it is how I will sign all my artwork.

We order a feast of onion soup followed by goose with bacon and peas. But a strange spell of enchantment has been cast over us; we can’t eat and the food congeals on the plates.

On my way home, once again, I return to
Edouard’s second household, a strange family of sorts where every member proudly bears a different surname. This time a very hurried Suzanne Leenhoff greets me.

‘Oh, I forgot you were coming,’ she says, wearing a coat and quite clearly just on her way out.

‘How is Leon?’

‘He is quite well. He is in the studio with Edouard who wants to paint him. I am just on my way to collect him now.’

Monday Morning

April 20th

‘
Symptoms, in reality, are nothing more than the cry from suffering organs.’

Jean-Martin Charcot

I am late.
Disorientated. Staring at the open wardrobe when I need socks from the drawer. Stirring salt into my coffee. Outside the arched entrance of Sâlpetrière my stomach groans as I anticipate the smell that overwhelms so many of my days: the stink of boiled cabbage mixed with ethanol.

Moving through the lobby,
I bid Madame Lemont, the concierge, a good morning. As usual, her bonnet barely nods in reply. My footsteps echo on the stone floor. I’ve been told that prostitutes were once massacred here and if you listen carefully you can still hear their screams in the buzzing silence. I am barely past reception when the sight of Victorine Meurent accompanied by another female surprises me. They sit on a bench attached to the wall.

‘Victorine, what are you doing here?’

‘Doctor Gachet, Paul, we need to see you immediately!’

‘I am already running late,’ I say, but the look on Victorine’s face is a determined stare.

‘Come this way.’ Looking over my shoulder, Madame Lemont’s countenance shrivels in disgust. I wonder if it is only here, in this wintery hallway, that she finds human compassion so difficult to abide.

Victorine holds the arm of her companion with both hands and follows me through to the atrium and up some stairs. I can hear the rustle of petticoats as we climb. We go into a ward that I know to be
unoccupied. I perch on one of the beds. The women stand.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask.

Victorine’s friend has her head bowed. She has a skull full of thick, matted blonde curls. I look down at a pair of dirty pink shoes. When I raise my eyes Victorine meets my gaze and vigorously shakes her friend’s arm.

‘Tell him,’ she says. ‘Tell him what you told me.’

Her friend lifts her head. There is lightning in her glare. The girl tugs her arm away from Victorine’s grasp and hurls herself towards me. Her nails are talons directed at my face. I catch her wrists. She thrashes and tries to bite me.

‘You bloody men are all the same,’ she screams. ‘All you want to do is to cut off my head,’ and in seconds she’s a snake on the floor reaching for my ankles.

‘Go on, tell him who you are,’ Victorine calls loudly.

‘He knows who I am. It’s him. He betrayed me.’

‘Tell him anyway,’ Victorine goads.

‘I am,’ she says, on all fours now, wobbling her head like a coquette, ‘Marie Antoinette.’

Silence.

I stand with my chin in my hand. Victorine’s eyes are questioning mine. This maniac is hardly out of childhood.

‘Wait here,’ I tell Victorine.

In the corridor I bump straight into a young nurse who I have never seen before.

‘We’re in the midst of an emergency, come with me.’

There are often screams reverberating in these halls
, hospital staff huddled together to contain a dangerous patient. But the girl is quiet now. It must appear to be a silent emergency, like a suicide.

Victorine paces
as we enter the room. Her temporary ward rolls on the floor and moans.

‘Nurse?’

‘Yes Doctor.’

‘Your name?’

‘Morrisot. Catherine Morrisot.’

‘Nurse
Morrisot, this woman on the floor, her name is … .’

‘Bella,’ Victorine interjects.

‘This girl Bella, I have good reason to ask you to look after her for an hour or so. Please keep her here, in this room, and be kind. If anyone asks what you’re doing, tell them you’re acting on the orders of Doctor Paul Gachet. Do you understand?’

Nurse
Morrisot nods. I gesture to Victorine, and to the sound of our footsteps we exit the building. When we reach the arched entrance to the courtyard, I thrust my hands in my trouser pockets, turn towards Victorine and ask her to explain.

‘Yesterday, I was at home about to begin painting. I’d set up an easel by the open window. I quite liked the feel of the dim light making a grey background for Notre Dame
. It was damp. There was a horrible smell of manure and a mean wind blew the candle out.

‘
I said “
Merde
!”, then someone called through the door, “Mademoiselle Victorine Meurent, I have a note for you from Bella Laffaire.” It was a very young male voice. “I’m sorry, I don’t know Bella Laffaire,” I said.’

Victorine paused and I pictured the scene. I
had been to Victorine’s garret once when she had a sore throat. It was just one room with a bed and a chair, some clothes, cooking utensils, and a guitar.

‘He said, “You saw her a few days ago at La
Pigalle. Mademoiselle Meurent, it was when Bella was arrested.”

‘You remember,
Doctor Gachet … Paul? You were there.’

I gave my assent.

‘Well naturally, I was reluctant to let the boy in. I remember swaying a little, trying to think of an alternative, but I could not think of a satisfactory reason to refute him. So, I drew back the bolt and threw open the door. He could not have been any older than nine or ten, wearing a double-breasted coat with silver buttons. He had pale and sickly skin and a rivulet of mucus ran out of his nose. “You have a note?” I asked, without inviting him in. He was like a little soldier handing me a message.’

Victorine takes a crumpled piece of paper from behind the ruffle
at the neck of her blue velvet dress. She hands me the note.

Mademoiselle Victorine Meurent I am dreaming of your kindness and that you will come and get me because the policemen are animals who think that when a woman needs to sell her body she should give it away for free and that it is a game to beat her and whilst this goes on there is no hope of making enough money to pay for the keep of an invalid mother some snotty-nosed kids and a father who drinks spirits till he beats her Bella Laffaire

‘“I need to paint,” I told the boy, but he just stood there silently until I waved my arms in the air from the sheer frustration of being disturbed and said, “Where is she?”

‘He led me to the police station where they kept me waiting for half an hour. Then a gendarme with a fat stomach said that I could take her if I gave him twenty francs. Twenty francs! He thought I was her madam. I paid the money and believed that would be the end of it but she followed me home. She stood on the pavement for half an hour shouting up at me about the French court, many lovers and having her head cut off, and that’s where I found her this morning, trying to sleep off her madness under a tree.’