The Green Muse

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by Jessie Prichard Hunter


  So that when the door opened, I was smiling too. “Someone to see you,” said the attendant, whom I had not heard moving in the hall. He withdrew but left the door open. And standing there was the man I had seen at Tuesday’s lecture, the ginger-­haired man who had been working the camera. He was holding the camera now, so tightly that his knuckles were entirely drained of color. He looked absolutely terrified, which made me like him right away. If he had been at his ease in a place like this I shouldn’t have liked him at all.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say; I said, “Thank you,” without even knowing why.

  “No,” he said sincerely. “It is I who must thank you.” He seemed to become suddenly aware that he was holding something, and that that something was his camera; he ran one hand across the pebble grain of the leather box, and I could see it soothed him: “You are a photographer,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, with evident relief. “My name is Edouard Mas. If I am disturbing you—­”

  I almost laughed. “ No,” I said. “I am happy for the company.” I went and sat on the edge of the bed, indicating that he might take the chair. I felt ludicrously grown-­up, like a little girl with a leaf-­and-­grass tea set, and beetles from the garden as party guests.

  “Please,” I said, motioning again to the wooden chair. With plantain flowers for cakes, and hazelnuts for buns.

  “I am I am doing a study,” he said, lowering himself awkwardly into the chair, “of—­of this place.” He fell silent.

  I studied his countenance. He was no blockheaded boy like the ones I’d known. Nor yet was he a city sophisticate. He was completely without artifice, and miserable there in that chair, which was too small for him (for he was a tall man, something more noticeable when he was sitting, oddly).

  “You don’t have to be nervous around me,” I said easily, and thought, Who is this girl? Receiving a strange man in her room at the mental institution as though it were as natural and normal as a child’s tea party. And yet I could not be afraid of this man, or suspect his motives. I had never seen anyone so sincere in his aspect; he had a noble brow and an honest mouth and firm chin. There was no dissolution in that face, and no arrogance either. His eyes were completely frank, without the slightest insinuation.

  “Of what does your study consist?” I asked him; only later did I notice that while we spoke I only once wondered what my own aspect was like, what I might look like to him: farm girl, crazy woman, child. But it didn’t matter. From the very first, nothing mattered when talking to Edouard but the light in his pale eyes.

  “Do you want to take pictures of me?” I asked. I did not want to appear excited, but I was, terribly. To be photographed as part of a study ! And instantly I was crestfallen: a study of the insane. Everything changed.

  But he surprised me by saying, “What are your dreams, Augustine?”

  “Is this part of your study?”

  “No,” he said. “I just want you to know that I am not interested in you as a specimen.”

  I tried not to show my delight; I tried to remain demure. “ I do not know that I have any dreams here. I have given up all the ordinary dreams of my sex: a husband, children, the opportunity to create a home. I would so love a home! With a little garden, and . . . but you see, there is no point in dreaming about such things. I had a friend once, she had a mirror. Do you have a mirror, Monsieur?”

  “In my apartment, yes. Would you like me to bring you one?”

  “I don’t know. I do not know whether I want to see what I have become now. I used to look in the mirror at least once a week. And oh! Look what that did to me. Perhaps if I had not looked, I would not have dreamed. I would not have dared . . . Oh, if I had never thought, Perhaps I am pretty enough for—­” I stopped, appalled at myself.

  “Looking in a mirror cannot affect your morals, dear girl,” he said, smiling. “Is that what you think? I think every woman in Paris has looked into a mirror at one time, and they are none the worse for it. Who told you that looking into a mirror was hurtful?”

  “Oh, I have always known it. My mother has never looked into a mirror. Papa would never allow such a thing. He is worried enough about the clocks!”

  “The clocks? Surely there is no harm in looking at a clock!”

  I let out a little laugh and was alarmed to hear that it sounded like a little cry.

  “Oh, no, my good Monsieur, you must not think our little village that much a backwater! But my father protests the coming day when all clocks in France are set to Paris time. He says he will tie himself to the face of the big clock on the cathedral on that day.”

  Edouard laughed. “I think I like this Papa of yours.”

  “But you do not think he is right about mirrors.”

  “Many ­people fear progress, and not just scientific or industrial progress, but everything that comes with them. There can be no harm in a pretty girl finding out just how pretty she is.”

  I stiffened; I became aware of myself. A blush suffused my visitor’s cheeks; it was clear he was sorry at having said something so bold. And I was touched that he suffered the same as I from crimsoning of the skin. He made as if to reach out his hand but did not move.

  “Aren’t you afraid,” I said suddenly, “of being alone with an insane woman?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. It was characteristic of him, I was to find. It was almost the only time he lost his restraint.

  “You are not insane, Mademoiselle,” he said. He was still chuckling. “I do not know how you came to be in this place, but it was not through any infirmness of mind, of that I am certain.”

  “But how can you know such a thing?” I asked in surprise. “I have spoken to Dr. Charcot, and he seems to think I belong here.”

  “You have spoken to Dr. Charcot?” His voice lowered and took on a tone of hushed respect.

  I bridled; I could not help it. “Dr. Charcot is a terrible man!” I blurted. “He sits in a black room with black furniture and makes pronouncements on ­people as though they were here only for his amusement!” Instantly I was chagrined; what if he were to leave? I felt a sense of loss far greater than was warranted. I do not know what showed on my face.

  But his eyes remained kind. “I am certain,” he said gently, “that the great doctor has a fearsome aspect. I have heard”—­and here he laughed lightly—­“that many of his students fear him greatly!”

  Perhaps it was because I had been so isolated that Edouard immediately assumed for me the importance that he did. That I was so starved for a kind word or glance that the first man who smiled on me would be perceived almost as a savior.

  But I do not think it so. There was something in his eyes approaching nobility, something in his smile approaching the sublime. His compassion was at once so immediate, so complete, that, once it had enveloped me, I would ever after fear losing it. Edouard had, in the space of a moment, become my friend.

  “I have been engaged by Dr. Charcot to make a photographic study of his work here at La Salpêtrière,” he said. For the first time he forgot himself; he leaned forward in his seat. “First I propose to photograph the building and the grounds; next, the inmates. Then I shall make studies of the hydrotherapy equipment, and the uses to which it is—­what is it, Mademoiselle?”

  I pointed out the window. I put my finger to my lips and made a motion with my other hand.

  Edouard slowly turned his head to see that the woman in the courtyard was holding a dandelion with a broken head in her left hand. Her right hand had not ceased its flapping, but the left had apparently stopped long enough for her to pick the flower, whereupon it must have continued its flapping at least until the dandelion’s head broke. I could not ascertain her age; I know only that she was past young adulthood and was looking at the damaged flower with awe and something like satisfaction. She flapped her left hand a few more times, and the head broke off and fell sof
tly to the ground.

  And the woman began to scream like an infant, in great big gulping cries. I turned my head away because her face had taken on all the disconsolate anguish of a toddler, and I could not bear it.

  Edouard took my hand. It was a natural gesture, almost without meaning. Certainly he was not taking a liberty. I leaned my head against his shoulder and cried without shame for the poor imbecile in the courtyard, and for my own desolation. And Edouard let me cry, and made no further move to comfort me.

  Chapter 28

  Edouard

  THE PHOTOGRAPHS SHONE wet; Augustine hesitated. If she were to reach out and touch that supplicant hand, would her own fingers dip, and disappear into that luminescent flesh? “It’s quite all right, Augustine,” I said gently.

  She laughed, to cover her nervousness; she succeeded only in showing it more clearly. But then she seemed to realize something obvious and somehow grotesque. “This is Adelaide!” she cried. Frozen in a gesture of helpless rage, her face contorted in pain or ecstasy, she seemed both more and less than the Adelaide we knew. I knew that Augustine was seeing her face as a stranger might, and was ashamed, as a stranger might be ashamed who happened upon a woman in the midst of her toilette. The intimacy of the shots was shocking: Adelaide was lying on an untidy bed, dressed only in a coarse shift. Her back was arched at such an angle that only her head and feet touched the bedsheets. Her eyes were half closed, and both hands were clawed into fists bent back against the wrists at an unnatural angle. Her arms looked as if she were struggling against the air, as if the air were dirt and threatening to smother her; she seemed to be desperately digging her way out of some invisible grave. Her shift was hiked up high above the knee, and her feet were bare. Her mouth was contorted, her lips half-­snarling. She looked both completely mad and completely ordinary. Mad if you did not know her.

  “Why do they make her do that?” Augustine asked me.

  “Well,” I said slowly, “it is difficult to explain.” I did not want to go on.

  “But what is she doing?” She seemed almost afraid of the picture; it might move.

  “She is evincing the arc-­en-­ciel aspect of an hysterical attack. It has been explained to me. You see, the hand held so is an indication of what is termed tonic immobility. This contracture is unpredictable, I am told, and may sometimes be held for so long that the condition becomes permanent.”

  “But that’s Adelaide! She isn’t the least bit ill!”

  I was startled. “But of course she is, or she would not be here.”

  “So you think I am like that, too?” I could see by her face that she really did. “But she speaks with Dr. Charcot,” she went on. “She has told me. He demonstrates for her what she should best be doing on the stage. I mean”—­seeing my face—­“not that he does so on purpose, but that she holds her hands this way and that, and waits to see what pleases him.”

  “Augustine,” I said gently, “Dr. Charcot is the foremost authority on hysteria in the world. Certainly he is able to tell a true contracture from a false one indeed! Surely he would not need to coach a poor sick girl to obtain the results he desires.”

  “Adelaide is not ill,” she said again. “Her parents could not control her. She was in love.”

  “Augustine, we are not talking about you. We are talking about an hysteric, a woman who is being treated here for a serious illness. Dr. Charcot’s revelations have changed the face of neurology. He has opened a gateway into the mind of insanity. These subjects—­”

  “I was one of ‘these subjects’ just two weeks ago! Why do you visit me, Edouard? Is it because you feel pity for me?”

  I blushed beet.

  “No, Augustine. I do not feel pity for you. For your situation, but not for you. Please forgive me. I did not realize how upsetting this would be for you. I will put the pictures away.”

  “No. No.” She seemed suddenly desperate that I not leave, as if I might never come back. “I have another appointment with Dr. Charcot this afternoon.” She thought I must think her mad.

  I regarded her with a smile. “But that is good, is it not, to be seen by one of the finest doctors in the world?”

  “I—­I don’t know. Edouard, I am so afraid! I swear to you that I am not insane.” She had tears on her cheeks, on her hands, and I could tell she was ashamed. “My parents say they have told the doctors here—­”

  “Shh. Augustine, all you have to do is trust Dr. Charcot. Surely you could not be in better hands.”

  “When I think about the Amphitheatre, when I think about Dr. Charcot and his black office, I see his eyes looking into my eyes, and that is enough almost to put me into a trance once more. Thought becomes image only: I have no words to describe what had been done to me, and I become once again that terrified and helpless girl; the word prey comes to mind.

  “Dr. Charcot is the Master of Sleep. He not only induces the trance, he decides exactly what the subject will do during the trance. In the Amphitheatre, I was deprived of my own will. And I could not resist his will. I was an automaton onstage. And yet it is so strange, Edouard! There is a connection between the Master and me—­he forces me to give up my will, and yet as I do so it feels as if I am the one giving to him. I have some awareness during a trance not of being controlled but of giving. Oh, you cannot understand it!”

  “Augustine, you are not mad,” I said fiercely. “But.” I reached out to touch her hand, then checked myself. “Dr. Charcot can be of help to you even so. Surely he will see how sane you are, and surely he will intervene with your parents on your behalf. He is a great man, Augustine. You need only have faith in him.”

  Then I busied myself with my pictures and reached to stroke my camera, and I felt a tug at my heart.

  “I think I will choose, just for now, to believe you,” she said charmingly, although her cheeks were still wet with tears. “Not that I should trust Dr. Charcot! No, I will believe that you do not think me mad. Because it is bearable thus, if you believe in me. I will do my best; it is all I can do.”

  If only she knew what I saw when I looked into her eyes!

  And I will ignore the persistent tugging at my heart, and the empty feeling it carried, after I left, all the rest of the day.

  Chapter 29

  From the Journal of Augustine Dechelette

  I SAT IN a black wooden chair across the black desk from Dr. Charcot and found him no less frightening than I had before. I tell myself I will not be afraid, but his eyes are so deep that I can hardly see them, and yet it is as though a gleam shoots out from their depths, and I am as helpless as a deer before a gun.

  “At the root of each case of hysteria there is a trauma,” he said, “every time.”

  I said nothing. I knew what Adelaide would have me do, but I could not do it.

  “Augustine, in order for me to know how to properly handle your case, I have to know what the trauma was. I know this is difficult for you, but it is necessary. It is the whole crux of the matter.”

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself to speak.

  “I fell in love.”

  I dared look up; Dr. Charcot was simply regarding me. Clearly this was not going to be good enough.

  “It is true. He was a married man. Nothing happened,” I added hastily, and I swear I saw a look of disappointment cross the doctor’s face. “But he did not love me back.” And as I said it I knew it was true. I was nothing to him, and I cried a great deal at home because I think I knew it even then. I would neglect my work and dream, looking at the pattern of the paper on the dining-­room wall.”

  The doctor waited. Clearly he did not believe I had told him all.

  “I have a broken heart,” I said finally. “That is what is wrong with me.”

  The doctor considered this. Surely a broken heart is not enough to cause green disease. And just as surely my parents had told him that I had self-­polluted, and
oh, did he know it even now? Were his attendants peeking through the sliding panel when I did not know it?

  But his next words reassured me.

  “Your mother was very circumspect. She said that you became not simply recalcitrant but obstreperous, and that that is not in your usual nature. She was concerned at the amount of time you spent with a certain friend . . .” He checked his notes. “Yvette. But I imagine that at least part of that time was spent with your lover.”

  “He was not my lover!” I burst out, and when I started to cry I thought I would never stop. The doctor did nothing, proving himself human after all, and I cried and cried until I could not breathe, and he handed me a black handkerchief and I started to laugh. Now he certainly thought me insane, and I had not had to resort to stories of seduction and absinthe at all!

  “I’m sorry,” I said, when the handkerchief was so wet I dared not cry anymore.

  “You need not be,” he said shortly. “We have come to the root of your trauma. Unrequited love in a young woman can lead to a great deal of damage, stopping up, as it were, the natural channels through which a woman expresses her femininity.”

  I really did not know what he was talking about. But I was too concerned with my appearance to notice.

  “I am shallow,” I said suddenly, “because I am not listening. I only care how awful I must look.”

  I swear he almost smiled. “You need not worry about that. We will arrange for some simple toiletries for you. I know you brought a brush, and a journal as well. The journal has been restored to you already, and the brush you brought will be restored as well. And there was a book.”

 

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