Mesmerised (5 page)

Meeting with Charcot

April 22nd

‘
The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.’

Samuel Hahnemann
, The Organon of Medicine.

Charcot comes towards me. He has a doctor at either side and his commanding voice fills the air.

‘
Doctor Gachet, the other day a new staff nurse was confined to a room with a young madwoman who was not yet admitted to this hospital. Your orders, I believe. Perhaps you would like to enlighten me?’

‘Well, yes, I’ve been wanting to talk to you
… .’

‘Lots of paperwork and we still don’t know who brought her here.’

‘It was a friend of mine. I’d like to talk to you about her treatment.’

‘I’ve booked her in for electroshock therapy.’
Doctor Charcot takes his watch from his top pocket and studies it. ‘If there’s anything more, you’ll have to keep up with me,’ he says, walking away hurriedly. His accomplices and I follow like a snake on his tail as he continues to speak. ‘I’ve read your thesis on melancholia. There is no doubt that you have been very thoughtful on the subject. You should study hypnotherapy amongst other practises. Embrace the future, Gachet. You know, I’ve started to wonder if memories live on long after we are conscious of them, and influence who we are to become. Doctor Gachet, do you believe that to be true?’

‘Yes, I do, and I also believe in another of your theories, that symptoms are the expression of a diseased organ.
Doctor Charcot, why not the same theory for symptoms expressed by the mind?’

‘“
Why not?” indeed.’

Charcot pushes his way through a series of heavy wooden doors and lets them swing backwards. I must slip through quickly behind him or else
be struck.

‘I think that when a person is fragile and cannot face their own emotions, something shatters inside them
– but supposing there is a medicine that mirrors a patient’s disturbance exactly and, in doing so, strengthens their inner resolve?’

Charcot stops and looks at me.

‘What type of medicine?’

‘A dynamic medicine
: homeopathy.’

Charcot’s cronies laugh into their fists and turn around to try and hide their mocking amusement. The man himself remains serious but silent then after some time continues to march.

We have entered the hospital library and arrived at the staircase leading down to the reading room: oak-panelled walls, a huge drawing room fit for Napoleon himself; bow-legged walnut sideboards; portraits of Generals; tasselled sofas; a man smoking a clay pipe, tears continually falling down his cheeks, mumbling, turning round in circles, shouting an obscenity; a child with her back wedged into a chair, raised legs out in front, clutching a china doll and sucking her finger. Actually, she is not a girl but a woman with creases on her face, bleeding scarlet lipstick and thick black, uneven kohl lines along the margins of her eyes. Another man: he is wearing a monocle, pocket watch, round glasses, and a suit full of holes. He talks only of doom and haughtily introduces himself to everyone as Jesus Christ. There are others. Two nurses stand like soldiers observing the scene. One has her back to us, clanking metal against porcelain.

‘We are the leading hospital in the world for diseases of the mind. You won’t see another one in all five continents that allows mentally ill patients t
o wander in a room like this,’ he says, chest puffed.

I am talking to an eminent man, a
very brilliant man. A man who recognises disease syndromes and names them. They bob towards me with every nod of his head – Tourette’s … Multiple Sclerosis … Parkinson’s.

There are
many polished medals pinned to his silk embroidered coat, and there are scuttling rats and damp cells in the basement that serve as patients’ bedrooms.

I look him in the eye and
say, ‘What about cure?’

That Evening

‘
I am an artist … I am here to live out loud.’

Emile Zola

On my way home I buy a copy of
Moniteur,
Napoleon’s propaganda paper. I am intrigued by the headline,
The Emperor’s Salon
.
An exhibition of all rejected works will open on May 17
th
, at The Palais de l’Industrie, a fortnight after Le Salon itself. Napoleon has said, ‘Let the public be the judge of the nation’s art!’

‘Ha!’ I say, looking around.

A surly woman clutches her handbag close to her bosom. She
watches me closely and widens the space between us as she walks past. Other pedestrians follow suit.

Blanche sits on the stairs outside my front door, a silhouette in the dim light. I look over my shoulder, key poised in the lock.

‘If I’d known you’d been waiting
… .’

‘I’ve only come to invite you to a café-concert. Tomorrow evening, I’m playing violin,’ she says, standing up, brushing the dust off her coat. I look down and notice that she carries a wicker basket filled with bread, salad, cheese and ham.

‘Do you have dinner?’ she asks.

‘Come in,’ I say. ‘Be at home.’

I sit on a stool in my pharmacy. Blanche stands at the sink. She washes leaves covered with salt, shakes out the water and absently eats some. There is a leather-bound notebook in front of me open at a blank page. I write ‘Phosphorus’ and the date in my best calligraphy. I haven’t taken the remedy myself yet but such startling symptoms, experienced during its making, are embossed on my brain. I must record them for posterity.

‘If you come tomorrow evening, I hope you won’t judge my playing too harshly. I tend to get nervous if someone I know is in the audience.
Anyway, enough of that. How was your day?’

I look up and Blanche is smiling. All thoughts of
Phosphorus disappear from my mind.

‘Go away!’ – a female voice. A neighbour screams from somewhere outside the window. ‘Just go away. Get out. Will you just get out?’

‘Madame,’ a male voice calls back. ‘You have one more night then you must pay the rent. One more night, do you hea
r? Tomorrow I will bring an eviction order and the police.’

‘You fucking swine, just get out of here. What right do you have turning a young mother with three children out onto the streets?’ another male voice intervenes.

‘You sir, have drunk your inheritance. It’s not up to me to protect your family.’

‘I have a knife insid
e. I suggest you run away while I get it.’

‘That poor woman,’ Blanche says, coughing into her hand.

‘Are you
all right?’

‘It’s a cough. I’ve had it on and off since childhood.’

‘I could treat it.’

‘No. D
on’t be silly. It’s fine. Ssh now, I need to concentrate whilst I cut up the ham.’

The pages of my notebook have fallen open, fan-like, onto words copied some time ago from a
Materia Medica:

Platinum
: Platina,

Mentals
: Ailments from, vexation, humiliation. Hauteur with contemptuousness for those around her. Conceit. Delusions of superiority; thinks she is a queen … .

I read again,
thinks she is a queen.

Blanche says something.

‘Pardon?’

‘Do you have olive oil?’

‘I don’t usually eat here.’

After supper, we sit in my apartment before the soporific warmth of the fire. I’m on the sofa. Blanche is on the floor leaning against my legs. I tell her of my childhood: my mother’s kitchen with fine herbs that hung from oak beams and aromas that never failed to entice the gastric juices; my father’s study, its roaring fire and comfortable high-backed leather chairs; the scent of linseed and turpentine when learning to paint. I hold a lock of her hair loosely in my palm and run a finger from the base of her skull to the top cervical bone in her spine, an area that’s soft and special like an oyster. I like the fact that I am able to impress her with my story about saving the horses.

‘Really?’ she asks.

‘Really,’ I answer.

And I make her gasp at the tale of jumping off a rampart.

The clock on the mantel strikes midnight.

‘I don’t
… ’

So fearful of the negative thing she is going to say, I
feel my heart begin to pound.

‘
… want to go,’ she says.

‘We still have hours until morning.’

‘Then I’ll stay just a little bit longer.’

‘Tell me something about you
,’ I ask.

She takes the slippers from my feet.

My toes look waxy in the candlelight.

‘I would like to travel to China, Africa, India and those little islands on the Caribbean Sea.’

‘How would you get there?’

She laughs as I wriggle my toes.

‘I always thought I’d get there on a boat with a handsome captain. You probably think I’m too old to dream about such things. Anyway, lately, I’ve thought about going there with you.’

I don’t speak for a very long time but join her on the floor, take her hand in mine
. It is cold and I hope to warm it.

She coughs.

‘I’d like to treat your cough.’

‘No, it’s fine. I’m
all right, really.’

Her face has lost its translucence. Her cheeks are red from the hacking spasm. Earlier, she stood by the mirror and slightly rouged her pale lips.
When I looked at her she half-smiled and turned away, embarrassed.

‘
And I want to bed you,’ I say, with immediate regret.

Blanche says nothing. She stares at the fire.
We are silent. The fire crackles. Time passes too quickly. She leaves in a hansom in the early hours. I stand on a kerbstone in my slippers to wave her off. When I turn to go back home the perfect night evaporates. Left behind is concern. Her cough frightens me.

It’s dusk and I am running through trees. Light flickers. I trip over roots and thick ropey weeds but manage to stay on my feet, just. A russet squirrel swishes through brittle autumn leaves, scuttles past me, and climbs up a pine. A bee hums at my side. I hear a screech and the flapping of wings. My breath and my heart create percussion in my ears. Colette in her calico dress and hobnail boots has already reached the clearing.

‘Come on,’ she calls.
‘Run, run.’

Colette does something strange to my organs. She makes me desperate to catch up and touch her. There is so much I don’t understand. I run as fast as I can. When I reach the edge of the forest I pant for a while and hold my chest. There is something unreal about the light here. The sun lies low on the horizon and the sky is muddy
. It is neither night nor day. It is in between.

Colette dances round in circles in the clearing with her arms stretched out to the sides. The wet grass makes her
boots shine. I laugh at her unashamedness.

‘I’m coming,’ I yell, determined to get ahead, pushing myself
forward, flying beyond her with the might of a conqueror. Then scrabbling up the hill on all fours towards the castle, handfuls of grass threaten to slide from my grasp and caked mud creates pressure under my fingernails.

Behind me Colette screams in playful com
petition, ‘No, wait, wait, wait.’

I’m ahead. I’m the winner.
Hero. And king. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. I run across the slack drawbridge, which is conveniently down, shouting, ‘Ho, ho, ho’ with my arms in the air. I climb the nearest wall, my limbs in superb co-ordination, until at the top I look down. Twelve years old and full up with the notion that this is not a child’s game, but neither is it the way that adults behave. It is in between, an unidentified space that hardly exists at all. Nothing feels real here and therefore I can do anything, anything at all.

Colette throws herself up the hill towards me. With every lungful of breath it feels as if she’s jutting into me, merging with me, becoming my own flesh. My want is enormous and I must do something courageous to mark this moment
, this omnipotence. But I don’t know what to do and so I jump, expecting to land like a cat. The moat is dry and stony. I arrive with a lump of skin grazed from my buttocks and with my ankle twisted beneath me. My foot is limp and hanging. I moan like an animal in pain.

The Day
after the Night Before

April 23rd

‘
Colour is a matter of taste and sensitivity.’

Edouard Manet

I awake.
Panicked. Soaked in perspiration, kicking off the covers. Daylight and birdsong tumble into the whitewashed room that is too square and too small for all its furniture. The brass bedstead rattles behind me as I move. The cupboard opposite overwhelms like a schoolmaster. There’s only space to get out of bed on one side, there’s a too narrow gap between the window and sink on the far wall. I splash my face with water and wash the putrid sweat from all areas of my skin. I have to go to work. To the hospital where I am never as productive as I would like to be, held back as I am in my therapeutic capabilities.

My first thought is of Bella
Laffaire, admitted to the hospital but not on my terms. She will be exposed to hypnotism, electrotherapy and genital manipulation. In my understanding, these therapies are contrary to the Hippocratic oath –
primum non nocere –
first do no harm.

I’m not sure that I have a valid alternative. I have no experience of treating such deep mental pathology with homeopathy, although my experience in general suggests that it is definitely worth a try
, especially if I think the catalyst is well known to me. I intend to make a fuss.

My watch says it’s early, which after such a late night surprises me. I have only slept until my usual waking time. Too few hours and yet I don’t feel tired. Good. I will go to Père Tanguy and buy paint.

When I arrive he is busy, entangled with the artistic needs of Victorine. I stand in line anticipating my next art project: Blanche has agreed to model for me.

It is mostly dark in the long narrow shop that is situated in a back street just off
Pigalle. Sunlight slips through a gap between two houses across the street and just about manages to permeate the bald mat by the door, but ignores the window where one of Camille’s paintings, a blue-tinged impression of the Boulevard des Italiens, sits on an easel looking out onto the street. The place is cluttered. Madame Tanguy in her thinning black dress and greying apron sits at a small table at the back of the shop. In front of her are a cash box and a sales register where she scrupulously records every business transaction her husband makes. She has a clump of steely hair tied in a bun. Each parched strand denotes an element of stress caused by her husband’s open heart and generosity.

Old Tanguy wears a blue work shirt and a pair of wide black trousers. He bends over and looks for something amongst a pile of equipment
: half constructed easels, paint pots, rolls of canvas and brushes. On the walls hang numerous works of art, coy in the darkness.

I imagine the old merchant coming down at night carrying a lantern that he
holds up close to an image he has framed, his heart swollen with pride as he illuminates the magic of Paris streets, country scenes, café culture, the railway station and models, by the young artists whose visual delights are as delicious as ice cream.

Old Tanguy hands Victorine a brown paper bag that is full to the brim. She holds it in front of her like a baby. She faces me but I don’t think she can see me. I would guess that I am in silhouette with the low-lying sun falling in from behind me. So, I am not surprised when she does not say ‘hello’ nor realise that I am watching her
: her winsome smile, head tilted slightly to one side, an affectation which is both childish and suggestive. Tanguy wipes his palms on his trousers and says, ‘Mademoiselle Victorine, pay me next time.’

‘I will bring you in a painting, Monsieur Tanguy
. You are so kind.’ She places her gloved hand on his shoulder, leans over and kisses him delicately by his ear.

‘
I will bring you a painting next time,’ she says again, in a whisper that is shockingly intimate, especially with the old man’s wife looking on. I have moved forward and am standing next to the couple. Now, Victorine can see me well. In the background Madame Tanguy is half-standing in her chair, presumably to catch a better glimpse of what is going on.

‘Doctor Gachet,’ Victorine says, placing that same gloved hand fleetingly in one of mine.
‘Nice to see you.’

Tanguy and I watch as she sways out of the shop
, her satin bustle a polite invitation.

Madame Tanguy brings me coffee. When I leave it is nearly ten. I have just enough time to take my purchases home and then get to the hospital
. On the street, I am caught unawares by the sight of Victorine.

‘I’ve waited for you,’ she says, toppling slightly as the heel of her shoe gets caught between two
cobbles. There is a horse and cart behind her. I grab her elbow to pull her away from the middle of the road. ‘And the things you’ve bought?’ I ask, noticing her arms are empty.

‘I’ve dropped them at my mother’s,’ she says motioning with her head across the street. ‘She is the laundress.’

We walk and I give her time to continue.

‘It’s about Bella. I’d like to come to the hospital to paint her.’

‘Do you have her permission?’ I ask.

‘Do I need it?’

‘I can ask Doctor Charcot. I have to see him this afternoon.’

I realise that I am walking very fast. Victorine is almost running to keep up. I slow down to be courteous.

‘How is she?’ she asks.

‘Nothing can change in such a short period of time.’

‘Were you able to admit her in the way that suited you best?’

‘No. No, I
wasn’t.’

‘Doctor Gachet, can I ask you, what was the problem?’

‘I’m not sure it is appropriate for me to tell you. It’s hospital business. Internal affairs. Why do you ask?’

‘I care about women.’

‘Women in general?’

‘Yes, women in general,’ she says.

I nod and think about this.

‘I want to treat her using homeopathy, which is perfectly legal, valuable and effective, but beyond the credibility of the medical establishment.’

‘A bit like the situation for modern painters then.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Exactly like that.’

‘And what will happen to her if you don’t get to treat her with your remedies?’

‘She’ll be hypnotised by Doctor Charcot and everyone will applaud. I won’t get the opportunity to speak to her. She will become institutionalized, confined
– probably for life.’

‘And homeopathy will cure her?’

‘It’s worth a try.’

Victorine stops. We have come to La
Pigalle.

‘
Doctor Gachet, Paul, you’re an honest man, I like you,’ she says in parting. I watch her walk away and reach with my fingers for the peak of my cap. I am upset. It is unprofessional. I have said too much.

In his office and separated by his desk, ‘What is it Gachet?’ asks Charcot. ‘I am busy. I trust you will be quick?’

‘
Doctor Charcot, I want you to seek permission from The Faculty to practice homeopathy on the new patient, Bella Laffaire.’

‘I’m sorry Gachet, am I losing my mind? Haven’t we had this conversation already?’

‘Not conclusively and to my satisfaction.’

‘I see.’

‘Doctor Charcot, with all due respect, I have been working at this hospital for longer than you have and the only difference between our positions here is that you have been allowed to experiment with your brand of science and I have not.’

‘For a reason.’

‘Please, share the reason?’ I ask, sitting down and pulling up my trousers by the creases at my thighs.

‘I don’t have the time for this,’ he says.

‘That is not a good enough reason.’

‘You will have to come back.’

‘Then give me a time,’ I say, leaning forward and bringing my fist down on his desk.

Charcot stiffens and there’s an involuntary twitch in his cheek. He marches to the door, looks sideways along the hall, closes the door softly and comes back and seats himself behind his desk.

‘Maybe we should do it now. Homeopathy is frowned upon because of its absurdity.’

‘And mesmerism
… .’

‘Hypnotism.’

‘If you wish … then hypnotism is not absurd?’

‘You can see it man,’ he roar
s, raising his body from the seat with his hands on his desk, his face coming, phantom-like, towards me. ‘The reaction of hypnotism, you can see it clearly.’

‘And you can see the response when you give a homeopathic remedy.’

Charcot sits down again and stares at his clasped hands.

‘Doctor Gachet, I have no words for you.’

‘Then send a letter.’

‘You will turn this establishment into a laughing stock.’

‘I will prove something. Either that homeopathy is a valid form of medicine or that it is quackery. Tell the Faculty that it is an important experiment that you wish to conduct under the roof of Salpêtrière.’

Charcot sits back and turns his head to look out of the window. When he faces me again I can just abo
ut discern the briefest of nods.

I do not believe in coincidence. I believe that forces of the universe dictate when certain fates collide. That is how Victorine and Blanche, two strangers with only my friendship in common, both happen to be performing at the Café de Bade on the same night, and how I find myself sitting next to Edouard Manet.

‘Doctor Paul Gachet, you don’t normally come here in the
evening,’ he says, pulling off his lemon suede gloves, and loosening a silk cravat held at his throat by a topaz clip. ‘It’s hot in here.’ He looks around and back again as if he is a little lost and says, ‘Do you mind if I sit with you?’

‘Of course not, help yourself. I’ve come to see Blanche
Castets play the violin.’

‘Really?
I thought you’d come to see Victorine.’

‘That is a bonus.’

Fascinated by his captivating aura, I watch him flick away the tails of his frock coat, ease himself into a chair and rest a palm nonchalantly on the gold pommel of his cane. He says, clearly to his own amusement, ‘Yes, Victorine is definitely a bonus.’

At which point she arrives, squeezing between tables and pushing past staff with a steady gaze and a flower in her hair.

‘Two of my favourite men sitting together,’ she says, offering us in turn a very confident hand. ‘You’re not drinking. I’ll get the waitress.’ The crowded room absorbs her.

Edouard looks at me out of the corner of his eye. I smile and his old grin widens. Then the light touch of a woman’s fingers rests against my lids from behind and blinds me to everything but the colour red.

‘Blanche?’

She takes the shutters away from my eyes. I
stand, introduce her to Edouard who, like Charles, kisses her knuckles while looking up into her eyes. She turns towards me and raises her eyebrows. She wears the lace dress that she wore the day we met.

‘Your friend Victorine will be playing before me,’ she says, sitting down without waiting to be asked. I sit down too, noticing Victorine has found a waitress who she steers in our direction before the maitre d’ entangles her.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Edouard asks.

‘Just water,’ Blanche says.

‘Just water, are you sure?’

‘Yes, I am
. Yes.’

‘Gachet?’

‘A beer.’

‘A glass of water, o
ne beer and I’ll have a cognac,’ Edouard says, then turning towards Blanche. ‘Mademoiselle Blanche, what is your act?’

‘I am a musician. I play the violin.’

‘And do you write your own music?’

‘I do, but if you notice Monsieur Edouard, there is a prejudice against original material. The owners of all the café concerts seem only to be interested in popular melodies.’

Blanche reaches for my hand and holds it in my lap.

‘Ah, here come
our drinks,’ Edouard says.

A waiter climbs on the bench next to me and twists the valve on a kerosene lamp. The light dims. Victorine sits on a stool in the centre of the café with lamps all around her
on the floor. The flower has gone from her hair. She wears pantaloons, a white blouse and a wide brimmed hat. She looks like a matador and plays Spanish guitar with verve and great accomplishment. ‘Mesdames et Monsieurs, I will play a song for you,’ she says, strumming. ‘That Bonaparte’s military men sang when they were at war and away from their loved ones. Imagine. A young man lying in a bunk – all around him are more robust less sensitive souls – playing cards – drinking spirits from a hip flask – laughing – sweating in their underwear from the heat in the belly of the ship.’ The notes on her guitar become more defined. She starts playing chords and humming. She sings.