But I felt a certain guilt in thinking about both these women so close in succession, although I knew I would be foolish indeed if I thought I could control the meanderings of my mind.
And then I faced that it was not my heart that had been kindled by Odette, but the very baseness I so deplored in other men. So I was human after all. I would be doubly careful, then, when I met her at the party. Because I knew that my very humanness would make me seek her out, make me see if I could quench this unholy thirst by conquering it before it conquered me.
Chapter 37
From the Journal of Augustine Dechelette
I WAIT FOR Edouard. All along the endless hallways the air is completely still. In the Great Goctor’s office the black walls soak up all the air and light, and my voice falls straight to the floor. Even outside in the courtyard the air is as still as the sunlight, which is always pale, as though it loses something in reaching past the walls and down to where we pace or cry or stand and stare. Even the sound of crying seems flat—it is only at night that sounds take on any resonance.
And in the hydro-treatment rooms even the great gasps of steam do not disturb but only add to the heaviness of the air, which weighs, like layer upon layer of cotton blankets.
But when Edouard visits he brings the wind. His hair always looks as if he has just been running. His cheeks are always flushed with vigor and good health. He has a wonderful amount of animal spirits, and during his visits he shares them with me, as if they were an elixir, a far better elixir than even the green and yellow of my own meadows at home. Edouard’s Healing Elixir, like the tonics Maman used to take for her nerves. Used to. As if my entire past were dead and gone, and I only away from home these few months!
I have alluded to Edouard in my letters; but gently, lest I frighten Maman. I see now how I have hurt her: What must it have done to her to find out that her own daughter lusted after a married man! What must it have done, in the weeks and months leading up to my commitment to La Salpêtrière, for her to see my sadness, my surliness, my constant sulks and temper? Oh, I know now that I did not have green disease; I do not even believe in green disease anymore. But I cannot blame her for thinking that something was terribly wrong with me. And something was. Immaturity, bad judgment, the need to pull away from what I loved most: my parents. Even Papa felt my moods. And, scientific-minded man that he is, it was only natural that he would find a new cause for the old malady of growing up and blame it on Progress, at that.
I hear a knock on the door, how odd; I have no treatments until three. Perhaps it is Edouard already!
I am the happiest girl in the world!
Chapter 38
Edouard
I HAVE HAD a shock. A shock, and I have sorely disappointed myself: I have never before put my feelings ahead of my work. And yet, to see her limbs performing the same contortions as those of that old woman with religious mania. Not until now have I seen that old woman as fully human. Through my lens I gave her the same careful consideration I would an interesting rock formation, or a waterfall, a delicately posed corpse. The dead woman I photographed in the dirty courtyard at dawn with Capt. Bezier was more real to me, more alive than that old woman. That I could see her as less real than a pretty corpse–I am ashamed of my nature as a man.
And then I think of Adelaide. When she is in the midst of her constrictions she says appalling things: I could be so much more . . . entertaining . . . than your girlfriend. I am quite certain she is mad. I have seen her befriend Augustine, but even then there is a certain nervousness, a certain overabundance of animal spirits that sometimes accompanies things worse than green disease. I give no consideration to what Adelaide says while in delirium.
Augustine said not a word, although the sounds she made while she posed were disturbing indeed. She went through each constriction and every phase of an hysterical attack as though she had been practicing a routine.
And yet it looked so real! As real as the old woman’s conniptions, as real as any of the movements I had seen depicted in Richet’s albums. How could this be the girl I know? She said not a word, but her face became as wanton as any I have seen lost in their hysteria.
THAT MORNING I was readying the camera equipment for Dr. Charcot’s Friday lecture. The Friday lectures differ greatly from their Tuesday counterparts in that the latter are held for the masses; often the entire Amphitheatre is filled. But one must receive a special invitation to attend a Friday lecture, as they are intended not for the ignorant, spectacle-hunting public but for those students with a real interest in and talent for the subject. Generally those that attend are handpicked by the doctor himself.
The Friday lecture is held in a private office into which a bed is sometimes wheeled. The hysteric, once hypnotized by Dr. Charcot, enacts the whole arc of the hysterical attack, from the initial facial spasms and characteristic opening cry through the frozen contractures of the hands and feet to the attitudes passionnelles to the lessening of symptoms, until the attack is over.
And today the girl brought in was Augustine The first thing she saw was me; I wanted to run and comfort her. But her bearing stopped and almost affronted me. She was so calm of demeanor, as though walking dressed only in her shift into a room full of strange men were commonplace to her. Only her eyes betrayed her. She stared at me terrified, and yet I was certain I was the only one who saw it. She looked haunted; she looked as if she might bolt; she looked angry with me for being there.
And then her eyes went blank, and she walked lightly over to Dr. Charcot and stood in front of him, the dutiful student, and I did not know her anymore. It was her poise that most unsettled me. After that one moment of bright blue fear, the Augustine I know simply disappeared. No more was she the frightened girl I had first seen on the Amphitheatre stage, and no more the charming woman-child who caricatured Dr. Charcot and was brought almost to tears by the plight of a voiceless insane woman.
In their place was a young woman, beautiful and unapproachable. She held herself as a dancer might, still and pale as ivory. Her eyes were like a sailor’s, trained always on some distant horizon only he can see. She looked toward the wall but it was not the wall she saw; I do not know what she saw. I felt a sudden, aching desire that she look toward me as she had in the Amphitheatre, as if my face were the only life raft that could save her.
Dr. Charcot spoke briefly to her, too softly for me to hear, and she walked over to the divan and lay upon it. If I had not known this girl I would have thought her a cataleptic.
And then she began to move. As Dr. Charcot narrated the steps of the hysterical seizure, Augustine moved, always few steps ahead of him, leading him through a dance she seemed to know better than he.
I cursed myself for showing her those pictures of Adelaide. And yet Adelaide had schooled her well. Augustine cried out, a clarion call. Every student drew in a simultaneous breath. Then her face became a rictus of fear that slowly melted into a beatific, disturbing smile; her eyes were fixed on something we could not see, and that something was beautiful. And then, with startling abruptness, the smile went wanton, the eyes wild, the apparition before her both alluring and threatening; she began to entreat it with little purring growls, and her hands, which had been clenched, opened like flowers and, as if they belonged to someone else, gently stroked her collarbones, her neck, her face unaware and ecstatic.
This is not Augustine, I thought, and knew I was protecting myself. Because this was as surely Augustine as the girl I knew was Augustine, and I knew I was going to have to reconcile the two. Because I would never abandon her.
The attitudes passionelles were the most difficult to watch—worse than the face of the sensual, wholly foreign Augustine were the movements she made, rolling across the bed, kicking as if at an unseen assailant, and then suddenly arching her back until she was a dreadful rainbow against the rumpled sheets.
It was over quickly. She collapsed against the mattress,
and suddenly nothing was happening at all.
The lights went up, as they would at the theater, and two attendants approached Augustine where she sat straightening her shift on the bed, suddenly demure, pulling the cloth to cover her legs, smoothing her hair: like an actress after a performance.
And I understood.
One of the attendants took her arm. “Wait,” I said. Dr. Charcot turned at my voice and glared. The darkness in the depths of his eyes reached for me across the room. But I ignored him and walked toward Augustine, who was looking at me now with some of the same fear I had seen on her face when she first noticed me in the room.
“Are you all right?” I whispered. She relaxed; she shook off the attendant and he abruptly left the room, following the doctor, who surveyed us from out in the hall.
“I would like to explain it to you,” she said seriously, her eyes begging forgiveness.
“You do not have to explain,” I said gently, sitting next to her on the bed. She scooted away; she was so clearly Augustine again! “You are confined in this place through no fault or choice of your own, and yet you have made a place for yourself. And not only a place, my most clever girl, but art! You wanted to dance, Augustine, and who am I to judge how you have chosen to dance? What else could you have done? And it is art, what you do. I can see that. You are a born actress.”
“Then you do not hate me?” she asked, still cowed, still ashamed.
“Hate you? I could almost say I respect you all the more. Augustine, your pictures are to appear in a book. You are already being studied, in England as well as France, as the quintessential hysterical patient. Your pictures have been in magazines, did you know that? I have not wanted to see them; please forgive me. You have made your name. Is that not what you wanted?”
“Not this way. Not with my shift up to my thighs!”
I found myself laughing.
“But are you Augustine when you perform? Is Sarah Bernhardt herself when she performs? An actress immerses herself in her part, and I have never seen a more thorough performance. Please do not feel ashamed. We do what we must to survive, and I think none the less of you for it.”
“Attend to your work, M. Mas,” a deep voice said behind my right ear, and I got up off the bed so hastily I almost fell. I looked over, expecting to see Augustine frightened, ready to protect her. But she was smiling a small smile, as if to herself. She seemed to rouse herself to speak to me, and her eyes were blank: “Thank you, Monsieur Mas. You have been quite the gentleman.”
And she let herself be led away, stumbling a little, seeming weak and faint. I turned and went back to my equipment without looking at Dr. Charcot.
Chapter 39
From the Journal of Augustine Dechelette
I HAVE ONCE again received unexpected visitors. What an odd life this is! The last thing I expected, upon being committed to the Hôpital Salpêtrière, was to become a young woman who entertained visitors!
But yesterday one of the attendants came to my room to tell me I had visitors, and would I like a few minutes to freshen up? This was odd too, because I didn’t know whether it was meant as a small kindness or an observation of the habitual dishabille shared by all the patients here.
I brushed my hair and pinched my cheeks. I almost used some of the blush Adelaide had given me, but I was certain it must be Maman and Papa come to see me; if it had been Edouard, Claude would have said visitor, not visitors. And for a moment I almost laughed aloud at the thought of Maman should she come to visit her only daughter in the mental institution and find her with an artificial blush on her cheeks!
So I restrained from biting my lips as well, lest so much color in my face alarm Maman, and awaited my dear parents.
I was so happy! I had not expected to see them for some time. Papa had written that there was a great workload at home and besides, he felt it would be better for me to be away from anything that reminded me of home. I knew that meant Maman was afraid to come to Paris again. But I had missed them so!
Maman would cry, of course (and so would I), but Papa and I would have a chance for one of those spirited intellectual debates I knew we both so missed. He had already indicated, in his letters to me, that he did not hold with these modern ways of treating a young woman’s distress (that is the word he used, distress, and I loved him the more for it).
So I was sitting, all anticipation, and the door opened and I smiled my joy into the faces of strangers.
I froze. It was a lady and a gentleman, and very fine ones at that. The first thing I noticed was the feathers: a profusion of black feathers on a sleek black hat. How I had always loved to look at the hats in the copies of the Woman’s supplement of the Journal Illustré my father did not know I managed to acquire! I had not seen a hat like this. The first thing I thought was, Oh, I have not kept up with the latest fashions! Which would have made me laugh, its being such an utterly ridiculous thing to think while confined to La Salpêtrière, but I did not laugh. I had no urge. The face beneath the hat was so exquisite, and had so warm a smile, that I was more moved to cry. The woman stood timid in the doorway, holding the arm of the gentleman, whose countenance, though less warm, was nevertheless welcoming. He seemed more concerned for his wife than for me. She stood like a deer come upon suddenly in the forest, and I was so struck by her consternation at barging in on a complete stranger, indeed, by her so obvious fragility of spirit, that I found myself saying gently, “It’s all right.” I wanted to comfort her.
She smiled, and the warmth grew deeper as her reservations were assuaged.
“You see, V, I told you the young lady would not mind,” the man said, and I fell in love with her name. So innocent a name, with a purity that matched her delicate beauty.
“Excuse me,” said the man. “My name is Monsieur Soulavie, and this is my wife.” Again she smiled at me, and my smile in return was eager. And then for the first time I really looked at the man, M. Soulavie. He was very tall, imposing in his good looks, and would almost have frightened me were it not for the softening of his wife’s presence. I could not find a reason for my disquiet upon observing him, and it was only that, a faint unease in his presence.
“My wife saw Dr. Charcot’s examination of you at the Amphitheatre,” he said, and I noticed that his voice was kind, and thought, Had it been kind a moment ago? But I was also instantly humiliated: These people had seen my degradation.
“I felt terribly bad for you,” V said. Her voice was like a lullaby. “I had a sister . . .” she said softly, and I saw her small fist clench and her lower lip suddenly quiver.
“Come in,” I said to her. “You are welcome here.” And she ran across the room and knelt at my feet, with a loud sigh of her petticoats, which billowed around her like fog.
“Please,” she said. “You are so like her.” She broke down and sobbed.
I did not know what to do. That a woman of such obviously high station should be crying at my feet alarmed me. I wanted, quite desperately, to help her. She had already, in an instant, become important to me. I looked importunately at her husband.
He was all consternation and consideration, for me as well as for his wife. He knelt beside her, he smoothed her hair. He whispered comfort and endearments, his cheek to hers.
Then he looked up at me and said, “Suicide,” so quietly I almost did not catch the word.
I gasped, and Mme. Soulavie looked up. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “So very sorry.” She was clearly trying to compose herself.
“Charles and I were at lunch with friends last week, and they absolutely insisted we attend one of Dr. Charcot’s famous Lectures du Mardi. I was hesitant . . . my nerves.” She looked down, a faint blush rose to her cheeks. “But they did not know of my sister, and although my dear Charles”— indicating her husband—“tried to make excuses, our friends were quite adamant. I did not want to appear rude. So we went, and it was as if the Fates
had brought me there. As if God himself had wished me to see you.”
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