But I have not written about the water cure, as I set out to do. Nor of my peculiar diet, specially chosen to suit my circumstances. Every afternoon I am taken for cool, short baths, including local effusions, which means they drip or spray water on particular parts of my body, and the water is always ice. I am dipped wearing only my shift into a chipped tub set in the middle of the room, and afterward subjected to vigorous friction, applied by two disinterested female attendants. Before I am even dry I must put on my clothing and go out, weather permitting, for my exercises. Such silly things to call being rubbed with some towels and taking a brisk walk!
Adelaide tells me that one of the major symptoms of green disease is an overly pale complexion. Her skin is perfect porcelain. I have heard that a girl can catch a good husband for herself just on the strength of such skin. I do hope they cannot cure her skin! My own is brown whatever the season; I have asked Adelaide if my face is dark and she says no quite emphatically, but my arms are still as brown as they always were at home.
I am fed a strict vegetarian diet, which at least includes yogurt and cheeses, else I would become far too thin. I am told that I have a poverty of the blood, and that iron in particular is to be avoided, and I am given a dreadful concoction to drink every morning that Adelaide swears is sheep’s blood and cod liver oil.
Adelaide knows all about it. She seems to feel no shame at all at suffering from chlorosis: She has told me proudly, more than once, that green disease is caused by disappointment in love only. She has not guessed my secret vice. I even suspect she would not care! I do not know what I would do without Adelaide.
My schedule and Adelaide’s coincide a great deal, as do those of all the more-favored hysterics, so we take our exercise walks at the same time in the largest courtyard.
I am told that the hospital houses almost exclusively those who cannot afford to be housed elsewhere. Adelaide says that the exceptions are those who promise well as hysterics, although what she can mean by that I really still do not know, and I will not tell her how desperately I want to know. Adelaide does not always answer my questions, having jumped so far ahead of my original thought by the time I can formulate one that she has sometimes quite lost me. Her quickness of mind is nothing short of astonishing, and it is a pity to see it wasted here.
Oh, I sound so bitter when I write about La Salpêtrière! I cannot forget that first, interminable walk to the Amphitheatre. I was barely conscious, I was so afraid. I was afraid all the time, then. Of the locked door of my room, of the attendants, of the silence. I was afraid of the view outside my window; I was particularly afraid of Rosalie, who often screams obscenities regarding the Magdalene.
I can almost laugh at Rosalie already, although of course I pity her terribly; but her imprecations no longer make me want to cry myself. Of course Adelaide thinks me silly for both fear and pity; she cries out like Rosalie but makes it about cows and chickens! The first time I was appalled, but I soon realized that although she is a skilled mimic, Adelaide is incapable of actual malice, or even of thinking truly evil thoughts of others. It is just that her natural exuberance carries her away.
And I realize that she is continually trying to calm me, seeing in me a spirit more delicate than her own, and therefore in more need of reassurance. And truly, I do become more comfortable here day by day, although that thought is not comforting in the least.
YESTERDAY I STOOD uncertain at the entrance to the courtyard. The courtyard is approximately fifty feet square. There is a high stone wall, with forget-me-nots and Johnny-jump-ups in the chinks. There are flagstones, large and unevenly placed. There are huge old rosebushes, ten feet high and full of deadwood, spanning the walls on two sides. There is a short flight of stone steps leading up to a stout oaken door that does not ever open; it looks as though no one has even tried to open it in decades. I do not know how old La Salpêtrière is: This courtyard could be a hundred years old, or as old as the fairy tale it seems to be part of; it is a place most unreal. There is even a swing, held upright by wooden posts, that sits square in the middle of the courtyard, and strange it is indeed to see grown women sitting and swinging like little children, without modesty or restraint. I sometimes wonder if I will try it myself one day; I would like to!
Women wander about in undisciplined order, standing, sitting, staring. or sometimes even spinning wherever they happen to be. Rosalie goes to the same corner every day and has the same conversation with the bees that buzz about the rosebush growing there. There is the young woman who does not speak, the one I felt so bad for frightening; her name is Lucille, and it is she who spins, sometimes for minutes and minutes and minutes, a look of vacant joy on her child’s face. I am the one who stands, for the most part: I look at the sky. I look at the sky and sometimes I do not think a single thing for what seems like hours.
Yesterday I walked straight over to the small patch of pansies that grows against the wall. If I were on the lane outside my home I would have picked one and examined the stripes on the petal: seven for consistent love; nine, a changing heart. Thick lines to the right, prosperity. I stood, and the lane and the girl that stood on the lane were equally distant from me, and I knelt and picked a petal without even noting the color. And stood in the sun afraid to look at it.
Then Adelaide comes bounding out into the courtyard like the only living thing here, and I am Augustine again, and I have a friend to talk with.
“Augustine”! Adelaide never seems sad anymore when I see her. “What are you doing?” she asked, and I almost cried, I almost laughed: “What am I doing? What would you have me do, Adelaide, in this place?” I asked her, but she was not affronted in the least.
“I would learn to dance,” she said. “Dr. Charcot would like for you to learn to dance. I heard him talking.”
“Whatever are you saying, Adelaide?” I was frightened to think of Dr. Charcot talking about me; I was afraid to think of being so much in his mind that he would speak of me.
“I heard him talking to one of the other doctors,” said Adelaide.
I felt the petal damp in my hand. What did they say? I felt my pulse quicken and the familiar globe rise in my throat.
“He said that you showed great promise. Oh, look over the wall. There’s a storm coming.”
“Adelaide, please tell me. At what do I show great promise?”
She turned with one arm still in the air, raised toward the lowering clouds that had not yet covered the sun.
“At performing! They did not say that, of course. But that is what they meant. ‘She shows great promise in the area of hysterical posturing.’ ”
I had to smile at how well she captured the doctor’s sententious drawl. But my palms were sweating now, and there were sudden dancing lights at the periphery of my vision.
“I do not know what you mean, Adelaide. What is this posturing he spoke of? How can I show promise at something when I do not even know what it is?” I could hear my voice rising in panic. Adelaide put her hand on my arm, and my heart, which had been beating so out of time, halted, for so long that I thought it might never start up again, then I was simply breathing, and Adelaide’s hand was on my arm.
“He thinks you make a fine hysteric, that is all. I would take advantage of that if I were you. A girl could go very far in this place if she is a fine hysteric. I haven’t the talent for it. I’ve tried, but my arms will not stay as I arrange them, and I will smile at the wrong moment. But you, he said you were ‘naturally’ . . . what was it? ‘Naturally expressive.’ What else? Hmm. ‘With exemplary extension of the extremities!’ That was it. Exemplary extension of the extremities.”
“But Adelaide, what on earth does that mean?”
“I have no idea, my darling.” And she was gone, running like a schoolgirl back inside as the clouds crept over the wall.
I looked down at my palm. The petal was bent but not broken. And I counted five veins across its p
urple width: five lines radiating out from the center: hope founded on fear.
A FEW DAYS later I spoke with Adelaide about our conversation in the courtyard. I knew she had what I needed to know: She had, after all, posed for Dr. Charcot. We were sitting in the Day Hall, the courtyard being lashed by summer rain. Lucille had screamed upon being told she could not go out today, and been taken away in fetters. So I was sad, and the warmth of the fire (for it is always, always cold in here) seemed as far away as freedom. But Adelaide could never bear to see me without a smile.
“If you want to convince the Good Doctor that you are a bona fide hysteric, you must have a story, Augustine,” she told me intently, grasping my hand softly and whispering, although the attendants were across the room and paying no attention whatsoever to us. “My parents may not have known the extent of my involvement with François, but I made certain the Good Doctor did! Drama is necessary if you are to succeed in this place. And I tell you, you will succeed! I will see to it. I have told you, the hysterics receive compensation—not in money, certainly, but do you think I could charm the attendants into giving me books if I could not pose? I mean, of course I could, but would the Good Doctor allow it? No, he would not. You can get your own books; you can get pudding! You can get a journal.” I had not told her that I had already received a journal and been assured books, as well as visitors. I knew that Adelaide had suffered the ordeal of the Amphitheatre just as I had, and that for it she had received no books, no journal, no pudding. She had worked hard to gain Dr. Charcot’s favor, and I would never hurt so dear a friend with such unnecessary knowledge.
“So,” she said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “What shall it be?” She must have seen something in my face, but fortunately she did not recognize it for what it was. “I know!” she exclaimed. “A rape!”
“Adelaide!”
“Oh, all right. You were seduced by your cousin. I know he plied you with drink. You did not know what it was! Because it was absinthe. The Green Fairy. Yes, absinthe. Do you know how it is mixed and drunk?”
I did. I had read about it. So, it seemed, had Adelaide.
“He put extra sugar in it. It is so bitter without a lot of sugar, no matter how cold the water or fine the make of the liquor.”
I tried, and failed, not to look shocked.
“Augustine, I promised myself long ago that I was going to live my life. Adventure, love, joy, even degradation of liquor. But I was not degraded, my love François was with me!” And she sounded so happy I found I could not judge her.
“What does it taste like?”
“Oh, green. It turns pearly, but it starts out green. Just tell the Good Doctor it tastes green. That will do nicely, don’t you think?”
“I . . . I suppose.”
“You won’t be convincing if you talk like that! Have you not always wanted to act? We will write a part for you. Oh, Augustine, what fun we shall have! But we must start right away. You will be seeing the Good Doctor again very soon, and we must have our story ready.”
If ever I am fortunate enough to be a mother, I already know I will be able to deny my child nothing; certainly I cannot deny Adelaide anything. And it was exciting: my first character! And Adelaide had already spoken about dancing. I am no fool—this is not the stage that Sarah Bernhardt inhabits. It is not Nadar’s famous studio, where he has photographed both her and countless other famous, talented, and renowned people. People out of magazines and books. I am never going to be one of those people. But perhaps this is just what I need: an opportunity to try to do what is so near, in such an odd way, to my dreams.
And with such a friend at my side I cannot fail. She will not let me!
Chapter 26
Edouard
I SIT AFTER a dinner of chicken stew I cooked myself over my fire in an old iron pot my mother gave me when first I left home. I am a passable cook and find that I enjoy it; the repetitive motions, the mixing of ingredients, and the careful cooking are not unlike the repetitive motions involved in developing a photograph. I must be a very simple man indeed, that such a trivial thing as cooking, a woman’s job, brings me pleasure!
I have before me a photo album of pictures taken at La Salpêtrière, given me by Richet to study. He assures me that his trust in me has already proven well placed, but still he wants me to study these photographs, that I may gain a better understanding of such things as lighting, positioning of the subject—a dozen seemingly innocuous things that can result in excellence or disaster in a picture.
I approached the album with a keen anticipation. Learning is a passion of mine; why did that make me think of Augustine? Alone in my bachelor apartments I almost blushed: I wanted to learn more of Augustine; I knew she was far more than the frightened thing I had seen on the stage of La Salpêtrière, more than an ignorant country girl suffering from green disease. How I knew this I could not say. Richet had told me I was a sentimental fool, no matter that the young lady in question was beautiful and helpless.
I shook off such thoughts; after all, if I were similarly swayed by every patient I photographed at La Salpêtrière, I would not last a month! I realized that Richet had given me this album to desensitize me to the patients I would be photographing for our study. A steady mind is perhaps even stronger, in my profession, than a steady hand. And surely if I could photograph the dead I could photograph the living, no matter their condition.
So I took a sip of the coffee I had brewed before my meal, and opened the album. One thing I am not good at is brewing coffee. It is always either too weak, too strong, or burnt. One day when I marry, I really do have to make sure my wife is more than proficient in this task.
As I mused I began to look. Not to study, not yet, but simply to look. That is the first task of the photographer; I think it is the first task of man, actually, but then, M. Martillon always did tell me that I reflected too much. M. Bousson, however, did not.
As I looked I was both shocked and appalled. No other patient in these pages was as Augustine; no other possessed the grace, the charm, the beauty of Augustine. Here were pathetic specimens of insanity indeed: an old woman standing screaming in front of the camera, a young girl writhing on an unmade bed, a woman so vacant of expression that I could not tell if, let alone what, she was thinking at all. The old woman was galvanized, the caption told me, by religious mania; the young woman by the ravages of green disease coupled with an unhealthy preoccupation with sex. The other was indeed incurable; the caption showed that she had not spoken in all her life, and almost all her life had been spent at La Salpêtrière. All hope of her learning to speak had been abandoned long ago, and she showed little or no interest in her surroundings or other people. I stared at her picture a long time, trying to put myself in her place. I could put myself in the place of the dead easily enough, from long exposure to its horrors and my devout belief that without death, life would have no meaning, but I could not begin to imagine what it must be to be so trapped inside oneself that there never could be any escape.
The old woman was merely repulsive. Religious mania has never made much sense to me, our faith being so clearly laid out for us that there is no need to tax the mind and spirit by overzealousness. But of course that is one of the most common paths to madness, particularly among women. So I determined to memorize the expressions on her face as she flailed through her hysterical seizure, the particular angle of the wrists held stiff at her sides, the expression of passion on her aged face as she communed with angels, the rage she expressed when she thought herself Mary Magdalene, the effects of hysteria on her limbs.
The third subject was a pretty, dark-haired girl who seemed almost to be playing at madness. There was something unconvincing in the way she pulled her skirt above her knees as she smiled lasciviously into the camera, in the hideous arch of her body in the rumpled bed. I did wonder why the bed was not more neat, the sheets more clean. But I am not here to question Dr
. Charcot’s methods, I am here to learn.
Then I realized that I knew this girl. This was surely Adelaide Blanchot, of my own village! She was older, but still she wore her hair in a fringe, like my little sister, and had the biggest, darkest eyes I have ever seen. What was this falseness about her photographs that was not present in the others? Did it mean she was more, or less, mad? I had to put the book down a moment and sip at my burnt coffee while I cooled my head. It was cruel indeed to see this girl I had grown up with in such a state.
But soon enough I picked up the album again, and soon enough I was lost in the pictures and stories. I did not leave the album until I felt I felt I had attained at least a little of the distance required for my work. And by that time I had had to light a second, precious candle, as the fire had reduced itself to ember; I was cold, but I was also satisfied. The pictures of Augustine had not yet been added to the book, else my task would have been an impossible one. I could not get her out of my mind; I loved her name; I could not forget her eyes. My own eyes were tired, but my heart was wide awake.
And my dreams that night were beautiful.
Chapter 27
From the Journal of Augustine Dechelette
I HAVE HAD a visitor. It is quite extraordinary. I was sitting at my window looking into the courtyard at the woman who screams. She had no attendant with her, and her arms were free. She moved about haltingly; she held her arms at a stiff, unnatural angle in front of her and flapped her hands unceasingly. I had never seen anything like it. Her hands flopped like dead things, broken wings. And she let out the same high-pitched, intermittent screams I had noticed before. But she did not seem upset as she moved about the confines of the narrow enclosure. She had an absentminded smile on her face, and as she leaned to inspect a tiny growing thing, a rose or a dandelion, her eyes lit with a child’s joy.
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