Pianist in the Dark (7 page)

Maria Theresia was thus asked to sit on a stone bench in the sun.

She immediately began blinking, of which Barth made much ado.

“None of my cataract patients has ever had a problem with the noonday sun!”

Mesmer objected that cataract patients were not blind and that their optical nerves never suffered any damage. Their vision was impaired for a few months, not for years, as was the case with Maria Theresia.

Barth commanded him to leave them alone.

“Who knows the power of your magnetism? I wouldn’t want to take the risk of letting it interfere with our examination!”

Mesmer had no other choice but to obey. He went back into the house, expecting the worst.

He was furious, powerless to protect her from this inauspicious visit. Maria Theresia was not used to being assailed by a slew of questions from malevolent strangers. She was sitting in the sun; she had not had lunch. She was alone, and the panic she was feeling would make her answers incoherent.

But Mesmer underestimated his mistress’s determination to meet the challenge. It was Barth who had confined her head to a cataplasm for months on end. She intended to make him regret his judgments.

“What do you see at the other end of the garden, on your left?”

“A long, pale blue ribbon that is in fact a river. The Danube.”

“What is the sky like today?”

“Deep blue, as it often is in Vienna during the winter. It is called a dry cold.”

“What word do you use to describe that thing reaching up to the sky?”

“A tree. A holm oak, to be exact. Down the path, by the lake, are some rosebushes.”

“What color is your dress?”

“Sea green, like my eyes. My favorite.”

“And the ring I’m wearing?”

“A ruby, I think. Bloodred.”

“What am I holding?”

“A white handkerchief.”

“Yes, but apparently you do not see the yellow border around it.”

“I recognize the object.”

“Yes, but your description is imprecise.”

Maria Theresia started to feel the onslaught of fatigue pressing against her temples.

“What do you see in the palm of my hand?”

“I see nothing. The object in your hands is reflecting sunlight onto me. It is very unpleasant.”

She was forced to use her hand to protect her eyes from the reverberation that sent needles into her skull and made her vision blur.

“It’s a mirror! Every woman knows a mirror!”

“My eyesight is too recent for me to have acquired a taste for coquettishness.”

She was hot. Her head was spinning. She felt nauseous.

“What is Professor Umlauer holding in his hand?”

Everything around her was blurred.

“A stick?”

He let out a smug laugh.

“A cane, you mean. What color is it?”

“Dark, I think.”

“Black! Not a very difficult color to recognize!”

“I know. I’ve lived in blackness since I was a child ...”

“And what is this?”

He held out a round, thick object. She could not even make out its color.

“A candle?”

“Come now! Think! Do doctors walk around with candles in their pockets? It’s a cigar, like the ones Mesmer loves to smoke!”

“He never smokes in front of me for fear of irritating my eyes.”

She closed her eyes, tilted her head backwards, and started when suddenly he took her hand and placed it on his coat collar.

“What do you feel beneath your fingers?”

“You’re hurting me. Feels like dog hair!”

Barth stood up, revolted.

“It’s ermine!”

Mesmer, who had been watching from a window, stormed into the garden to put an end to an interview that was visibly exhausting his patient.

Barth walked toward him.

“This young woman may not be blind, but she has a hard time describing a view that she has had several months to study. She had trouble distinguishing the objects we submitted to her. And sunlight makes her feel ill. I fear that without your daily efforts she would once again be engulfed by the blackness she once knew. I admit that progress has been made, but I cannot state for a fact that Mademoiselle Paradis has regained her sight.”

Mesmer had a hard time containing his anger.

“In that case I myself will present her to the Empress, who will no doubt be less loath to acknowledge that progress has been made.”

“The Empress placed her trust in me a long while ago. Mark my words, such an audience will never happen. By the way, might I ask Mademoiselle Paradis to play one of her compositions for us? I am curious to see how her newfound eyesight has affected her playing. The Empress is a huge admirer of her pianistic skills. In fact, it just crossed my mind: If, thanks to your care, Mademoiselle Paradis ceases being blind, would not her father have to give up the annuity of two hundred ducats?”

He leaned toward Maria Theresia.

“Do you really wish that I declare you cured? You should think it over.”

Beside himself, Mesmer grabbed Maria Theresia by the arm.

“Mademoiselle Paradis needs to rest after the exhausting examination you have submitted her to. I will not see you to your carriage. Understand that my first priority is her health.”

He headed up the front steps, pulling Maria Theresia hastily in his tow, to get her out of sight before she lost consciousness.

Barth shot a knowing glance at Umlauer.

They had won this round.

M
ARIA
T
HERESIA KEPT TO HER ROOM FOR SEVERAL
days. Was it the glare of daylight or the fragility of her nerves? She lost some of her eyesight; plunging back into a world of shadows, she asserted that everything around her was a blur and that she could no longer distinguish objects and colors.

She started playing piano again, set on regaining her agility. She played with a blindfold so as not to be tempted to look at her fingers on the keyboard.

In truth, she was lost.

Mesmer had saved her from a life divided between the authority of her parents and the demanding routine of concerts. But nowadays her progress caused more trouble than her blindness ever had, and she no longer knew what was preferable: to be blind or to give up trying to regain her sight. In either case, she ran the risk of being sent back to her parents’ home. So she opted for this no man’s land, a semblance of sight, enough to keep up the treatment yet not enough to be declared cured. Alone, she walked about the house and garden, but she refused all attempts to work on her eyes.

She managed to have the rumor spread in Vienna that Barth’s examination had increased her melancholia and worsened her eyes. She was hoping both to hurt him and gain herself some time.

Mesmer was no dupe, but he did not try to gainsay her, even though he was furious not to be able to parade his triumph for the world to see. He had cured Mademoiselle von Paradis, and the four patients in the pavilion were recovering from their nervous disorders. But how could he persuade his colleagues that simply by placing his hands on receptive bodies he could obtain better results than the treatments they recommended? How could he persuade such self-satisfied gentlemen? Why had he ceased being respected as a doctor the minute he’d started getting concrete results?

Mademoiselle Paradis’s case awakened his old complexes about his inferior social class and his all-consuming need for social recognition. He had thought that treating her would be the crowning achievement of his career. Now he understood that it might in fact be his downfall. He could, without anyone second-guessing him, obtain satisfactory results on weaker minds or members of the lower classes. But succeeding where his illustrious colleagues had failed, on someone they had been unable to treat—this was unacceptable. By taking up interest in her, he had overreached himself. He was accepted as an original, an eccentric, a patron of the arts doubling as a man of science who afforded himself the luxury of exploring the fringes of medicine. But not as a scientist revolutionizing his era.

It became apparent that his peers were refusing to associate with him. The Court doctors snubbed him. Even the Baron von Stoerck, his mentor and supporter, avoided crossing paths with him and spoke of him to colleagues with references to his “imagination.” Fewer people came to his parties. They invited him less to their own. He was no longer in the uppermost stratum of high society.

He decided to restore his reputation. He was seen, with Madame Mesmer at his side, at every concert, every opera. In his home he welcomed illustrious musicians, singers, and dancers. He held sumptuous banquets. Mademoiselle von Paradis was no longer anywhere to be seen. She was kept out of the Mesmers’ social picture. Her poor health, after all, placed such festivities off-limits to her.

Mesmer beat her at her own game.

He spent less time with her during the day. At night he visited her less often. He was still enamored of her youth, fascinated by her innocent yet lucid state of mind. He was still convinced that he could wrench her from her shadows, but with his own future now at stake, he was less sure that he wanted devote all his energy to her recovery.

“I am no longer your favorite patient,” sighed Maria Theresia when they were alone together in her room.

Mesmer protested her use of irony.

“You govern my thoughts and my future lies in your hands.”

“This is what I deplore! Why must I offer proof of my recovery when it is still incomplete? I would be better off in the pavilion with your anonymous patients. At least no one comes to monitor their health!”

“I informed your father of the reason for your relapse. I also told him that you have started making progress again but that it is too soon to plan a concert.”

“The Empress has to see the progress I’ve made so that you can take credit for it and I can be spared further torment. If I ask her for an audience, she cannot refuse, can she?”

She was sitting at her writing desk. Mesmer turned his back to her, too moved to confront her.

She stood up and came beside him at the window, putting her arm in his, staring at the sky.

“I don’t see any light, not even the moon. Does it mean there is bad weather coming tomorrow ... or have we fallen from grace? Is our lucky star no longer shining on us?”

Mesmer was on the verge of tears. He took her hands, held her against him.

“I wanted to protect you, but I cannot keep any secrets from you. We’re going to have to fight. A rumor has spread through Vienna that is sullying your reputation as well as mine. People are saying that we are lovers and that your so-called progress is the effect of ‘amorous suggestion,’ that is, some power I purportedly have over you. In other words, in my presence you can see things that you wouldn’t be able to see alone. Something along the lines of the sorcerer and his willing victim. They say our work is a hoax.”

She let him pull her closer.

“So our love is no more than a premeditated power play on your behalf? An attempt to manipulate me? That in addition to being blind, I am stupid and impressionable? You are well-versed in the rules of high society—tell me how to fight against an enemy who has no face.”

“Your father hinted that if you went home, it would put an end to the gossip.”

She clutched onto him, begging him, abandoning all restraint.

“I don’t want to. I can’t. I can no longer live without you. My father rules over his house with an iron hand. He terrorizes everyone. He loves me, but he keeps me under his thumb, in a way you would never do, even out of love! If the gossipmongers knew what life was like in the Paradis home, my father would have been stripped of his privileges long ago!”

“That is exactly the other rumor being spread. If you get better, your father will be deprived of the generous annuity the Empress allotted you.”

Maria Theresia laughed bitterly.

“There we go! Barth’s threat is finally being acted out! So let him be deprived of that annuity! Why should money be worth more than my health? My father will not let such rumors be spread because he is the first person sullied by them.”

“Think again! He is terrified at the idea of losing this godsend that has changed your lives for fifteen years now. The taste for this manna is very easy to acquire and very hard to lose. He will never give up his two hundred gold ducats.”

Maria Theresia slid onto the bed and buried her head in the pillows.

“Cursed! I am cursed! My blindness made them suffer and my recovery has made them mad. Even you prefer me ill to cured. Life is so cruel! It allows me to discover passion and harmony, then steals it away as if it were a mirage! What good is seeing if all it does is open your eyes to the truth of human nature? Have I been through all this just to come eye to eye with cowardice, lies, and trickery? To see you run away from me because I’ve become a burden? It is better to die than to be confronted with greedy, wicked men incapable of love!”

She was screaming, banging her head and beating her chest. She let him subdue her, then she collapsed, howling her turmoil.

Mesmer held her against him, ashamed. He knew her words rang true.

She had asked for nothing. She had listened to the doctors, to her father, and now to Mesmer. They had all betrayed her trust.

His sincerity was beyond reproach. But feelings evolve quickly. Depending on circumstances, what was true one minute may no longer be true the next.

Now he was ready to forgo Maria Theresia in order to save his career.

M
ARIA
T
HERESIA THREW HERSELF INTO HER
exercises at the piano. She had removed her blindfold and was rehearsing tirelessly the same movement, a Mozart adagio. Losing her temper, she would rail aloud against her fingers when they hesitated at the keyboard or hit two keys instead of one. She couldn’t separate her eyes from her hands when she was playing; if she was not intrigued by her short fingernails as she struck the black and white keys, she was distracted by the light reflecting off the piano’s polish. She forced herself to act blind by keeping her eyes off the piano and staring at a point in the distance, near the window with its curtains drawn.