The Mad Women's Ball

by Victoria Mas

  A distant cry startles the three, and they turn in unison: the scene is dominated by the imposing silhouette of the chapel. At the far end of the path, figures are running towards them. Among them, the nurse who witnessed Geneviève slipping the note to Eugénie.

  ‘There she is! I told you!’

  Next to her, three doctors in white coats increase their speed, determined to catch the fugitives. Geneviève fumbles with the keys.

  ‘Quickly.’

  She finds the key she needs, slips it into the lock and opens the door – outside is the street with its hackney carriages, lampposts, buildings.

  ‘Go, quickly, go!’

  Eugénie glances worriedly from the approaching doctors to Geneviève.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Just go, Eugénie.’

  The girl sees that the matron is standing very straight, upright, and her jaw is clenched. She takes the woman’s hand.

  ‘Come with us.’

  ‘Well, are you going to go or not?’

  ‘If you stay, madame, they will—’

  ‘That is my business.’

  Had her brother not suddenly grabbed her arm, Eugénie would not have moved.

  ‘Come on!’

  Théophile ducks under the low arch, dragging Eugénie with him. When the girl turns back for a last look, the matron has already closed and locked the door.

  Hardly has she managed to slip the keys into her pocket than Geneviève feels the men grabbing her by the arms. Behind her, she hears the nurse shriek.

  ‘She helped one of the madwomen escape! She’s as mad as they are!’

  Geneviève looks at the hands restraining her and offers no resistance. In fact, she feels her body relax. She is relieved.

  ‘Take her inside.’

  As she is being led back to the hospital, Geneviève looks up: there are no clouds left in the sky. Above the dome of the chapel, against the blue-black canvas, the stars begin to glitter. Geneviève smiles. The stony-faced nurse, who has been watching her intently, glowers.

  ‘What have you got to smile about?’

  The madwoman looks at her.

  ‘Existence is fascinating, don’t you think?’

  Epilogue

  1 March 1890

  Snow is falling on the hospital grounds, laying a pale white mantle over the lawns and rooftops, collecting in small drifts on the leafless branches of the trees. The alleyways and paths are deserted.

  In the dormitory, the women have gathered around the stoves. It is a quiet afternoon and some of the patients are sleeping; a few are playing cards in the warm glow, while others wander between the beds, talking to themselves, or to the nurses who do not listen. In one corner, a small group is huddled around a bed. In the middle, sitting cross-legged, Louise is knitting a shawl. Dozens of balls of wool are nestled at her feet. Around her, the women clamour to have the next shawl she makes.

  ‘Quit your fighting, there’ll be one for every one of you.’

  Her hair is loose, a dark cascade that tumbles down her back. She is wearing a large black dress. The scarf that Thérèse once wore is now tied around her neck. Her fingers wield the needles deftly. From the moment she first picked them up, she found herself knitting easily, effortlessly, as though all the hours spent watching Thérèse had seeped into her fingers. She knits and thinks of nothing other than the strands of wool that she twists and knots and entwines around each other.

  Five years earlier, on the day after the costumed ball, Louise was found. It was late evening before a panicked cry went up in the ballroom: not only was Louise nowhere to be found, but people were also saying that Geneviève had helped a patient to escape. The festivities had been curtailed, the madwomen returned to their dormitories and the guests ushered towards the exit.

  At dawn, a nurse had happened to open the door of the room. On the bed, Louise was lying in exactly the same position as the night before: her head thrown back, her eyes open, staring, her legs splayed and bare. She remained in this cataleptic state all day, and there was nothing anyone could do to rouse her. That night, a doctor had found her aimlessly wandering about the hospital grounds. All of her limbs seemed to be working again, although something in her mind was broken. She was led back to her bed and after that didn’t leave it. For two years, she had to be fed and changed and washed while lying on her mattress. She had also ceased to speak. Even Thérèse, who sat with her every day, stroking her hand and talking to her as though nothing had happened, did not hear her voice again before she died.

  Thérèse passed away peacefully in her sleep. The following morning, the women all gathered around her lifeless body. Without warning, Louise got up from her bed and went to join them, issuing instructions for the funeral and the last rites. The women watched, dumbfounded, as this girl who, for two years, had not set foot out of bed or uttered a single word, recovered her voice and the power of movement as if by magic. On the day after Thérèse died, Louise picked up her knitting needles and her wool and carried on her work. For the past three years, it has been with Louise that the women have pleaded whenever they want a new shawl. Meanwhile, she has knitted and distributed her creations with the dedication of a skilled worker. The last traces of childhood have faded from her face. At times, when she is annoyed, there is a ruthless glimmer in her eyes. She is no longer pitied, as she was before: she is feared.

  Away from the other women, Geneviève is sitting on her bed writing a letter. A blue shawl covers the blonde mane of hair that spills over her shoulders. It is one that Louise made her for the winter. She pores over the paper, oblivious to the other patients who mill around, trying to read what she has written. They have grown accustomed to seeing her, not in her nurse’s uniform, but in a simple robe like all the others. In the first weeks on the ward, every eye was drawn to her incongruous presence. She was not the same woman any more; there was something gentler, more serene, about her. As a madwoman among other madwomen, she finally seemed normal.

  Hunched over the paper, she dips her nib into the little inkwell perched on the bed, and writes:

  Paris, 1 March 1890

  My Dearest Sister,

  Outside, everything is white. We are not allowed to go out and touch the snow. The ward is freezing. You can imagine how I look forward to some hot soup when the dinner bell sounds!

  Last night, I dreamed about you. I could see you perfectly: your soft skin, your red curls, your pale lips. Exactly as though you were sitting opposite me. You were watching me in silence, but still I could hear you speaking. I wish that you would visit me more often. It makes me so happy to see you. I know that you are truly with me in those moments.

  Some days ago I had another letter from Eugénie. She is still writing for La Revue spirite. She would like to send me a copy, but she knows it would be confiscated. Her talent is well-known among the small group of believers in Paris. She is prudent and surrounds herself with people who are not likely to take her for a heretic. If they only knew.

  The people who judged her, the people who have judged me . . . their judgement stems from their own beliefs. Unswerving faith in any idea inevitably leads to prejudice. Have I told you how calm I feel since I began to doubt? What is important is not to have beliefs, but to be able to doubt, to question anything, everything, even oneself. To doubt. That has become so clear to me now that I am on the other side, now that I sleep in these beds I once despised. I do not feel close to the women here, but now, at least, I can see them. As they are.

  I still go to church. Not to mass, obviously. I go alone. When the chapels are empty. I do not pray. I am not certain that I have found God. Nor do I know whether that will happen one day. But I have found you. And that is all that matters to me.

  I do not know whether I will be released soon, or indeed ever. I am not convinced that freedom lies beyond these walls. I have spent most of my life on the outside, and I did not feel free. Hope must be found elsewhere. To wait to be set free is both futile and unbearable.

 
; People are clustering around me, trying to read this letter, so I will stop now.

  I think about you constantly. Come and visit me soon, you know where to find me.

  I love you with all my heart.

  Geneviève

  Geneviève looks up at the madwomen leaning over her bed.

  ‘I’ve finished writing, there is nothing to read.’

  ‘That’s annoying.’

  The women disperse. Geneviève gets off the bed and crouches down next to it: between the cast-iron legs there is a small, locked briefcase. She grasps the handle and pulls it towards her. Inside, hundreds of letters are neatly arranged. She places the pen and the inkwell on one side, folds the letter she has written and places it at the front of the stack. She snaps the case closed, pushes it back under the bed and gets to her feet. Then she pulls the shawl around her as she walks over to the windows under the watchful eye of the nurses. Outside, the carpet of snow that covers the paving stones is getting thicker. Geneviève stands, motionless, thinking about the Luxembourg gardens in winter. The perfection of its pristine paths. The icy tranquillity. Footsteps in the deep snow.

  It is such a splendid scene that she almost wishes it might last for an eternity.

  She feels a hand on her shoulder. Turning, she sees Louise staring at her. Geneviève seems surprised.

  ‘Have you abandoned your knitting?’

  ‘They wear me out, the lot of them, pestering me all the time. So, I’m making them wait.’

  Louise folds her arms and gazes out at the snow. She shrugs.

  ‘I used to think it looked beautiful. Now I don’t feel anything.’

  ‘Do you still find some things beautiful?’

  Louise lowers her head and thinks for a moment. With one foot, she traces a crack in the tiles.

  ‘Don’t know, really. I think . . . when I think about my mother, I remember I used to think she was beautiful. That’s about it.’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Yes. It’s enough for me.’

  Louise looks at Geneviève as she stands by the windows, her wrinkled hands clutching the shawl.

  ‘Don’t you miss it, Madame Geneviève – the outside, I mean?’

  ‘I think . . . I never really was outside. I was always here.’

  Louise nods. The two women stand shoulder to shoulder, staring out at the gardens that grow paler as the snow continues to fall before them.

  Notes

  1 Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93), French neurologist known for his work on hypnosis and hysteria.

  2 Joseph Babinski (Polish: Józef Babiński; 1857– 1932), French-Polish professor of neurology.

  3 Literally ‘The Knitter’, but the French word harks back to the French Revolution and the women who sat knitting beneath the guillotine.

  4 Louise Augustine Gleizes, known as Augustine or A, who was Charcot’s most famous patient – she escaped in 1861.

  5 Jules Grévy, president from 1879 to 1887.

  6 Which established free education.

  7 Le Livre des Esprits, edited and published by Allan Kardec in 1857, was hugely controversial, and the first major work of Spiritism.

  8 Leader of the French spiritualist movement after the death of Kardec.