These Good Hands

by Carol Bruneau

  Whatever we lacked in refreshments I made up for in dress. The red one from Blot’s opening was ragged but no less resplendent. A grand occasion, this. A celebration of sorts — an inauguration, if slightly funereal.

  I toasted Criteur by raising my hammer. All of my pride scattered at the first blow.

  “You’re certain about this? Certain you know what you’re doing?” So like him to turn fickle, the briefest protest before he cheered me on. “Never again will Monsieur and his gang dare torment you!”

  My hammer clawed and bit into dried, brittle flesh. The heads of statues cracked open and toppled from necks. Limbs fell from torsos. Clay and plaster pinging against walls and shutters were a hail of stinging insects. Swarming. Their dust, a greyish-pink cloud, left a bloody taste in my mouth. Metallic. When it settled, only a pile of parts remained, faintly human.

  “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” crooned Criteur, morose if not remorseful. “You know what they say about relics.” He went on, once upon a time, about the fearless heretic in Florence, Savonarola, and his Bonfire of Vanities — Savonarola, who fought fire with fire and was burned at the stake, his ashes pulverized and tossed in the Arno. “Not a crumb remained to be bought, sold or stolen.” My praticien’s smile was brave. Nudging a plaster finger with his toe, he kicked rubble into the tiny fireplace. We had just enough coal to start a blaze. “Let there be nothing left,” he said, warming his hands. “Nothing the world’s evildoers can salvage and reassemble — not a scrap to boast about and pass off as theirs. Ridding ourselves of what Monsieur covets is the price of peace — a hefty one.”

  Harder than agreeing was luring my lovelies, my pride, from under what furniture we hadn’t burnt for warmth. The last tidbits left by Blot’s boy did the trick. Slowly, slowly they came out, purring, rubbing at my shins.

  When it was dark, very dark, I swept up the ashes and dumped them in a cart standing derelict in the street. A tinker’s or traveller’s, it was still there in the morning. We watched through the shutters. When the owner appeared, Criteur paid a franc to have him empty it into the river.

  “Are you insane, stepping outside in broad daylight?”

  My praticien grinned. “What’s your problem? You’re free now — who cares who’s watching? If our tinker-traveller-carter was sent by the Rat himself, all the better, don’t you see?”

  But Criteur had either forgotten or gone blind. A few works remained, spared the hammer — not the least of which was yours, my mistresspiece, to be guarded with my life until such time as Maman forgave me. Forgave us.

  And, maybe, just maybe, until I forgave you.

  When Blot came seeking works for another gallery show, Criteur huddled below the sill. Speaking through the shutters, I was forced to tell a certain truth, that my oeuvre — what remained after Monsieur’s helping himself to it — had been pillaged and plundered. Blot went away, but to his eternal credit, left bread and a hunk of cheese.

  ***

  PAPA PAID ANOTHER visit, one so brief it barely allowed me the chance to cling to his hand. His grip was frail and his eyes were rheumy. His gaze lingered on the ashes strewn over my carpet, a scattering of rags, the one luxury in my cloister. Ice was on the insides of the windowpanes and our breath formed clouds. The fingers were worn clean out of my gloves. My poverty assaulted him. “Look at you,” he said. “My girl, you’re freezing. You’re starving!”

  “Where is Maman? Why won’t she come?”

  Looking away, he suggested that if I cleaned myself up he would take me for a meal.

  “Does she think I’m made of air?” I persisted. “That I’ve left Paris, the planet — disappeared?”

  He covered his mouth with his hand and tapped the floor with his cane, a rhythm prodding enough to summon Criteur, who thankfully kept out of view, slouching behind the wardrobe. Papa’s tapping provoked tears; through their blur I saw the sum of things.

  How Monsieur and his gang had turned the family against me. How no amount of thievery had satisfied his quest to destroy every last bit of what I valued.

  I peered into our father’s face, his breath warming my cheek. “Will you bring her to see me? Will you do that for me, Papa — this maman who gave birth to me, to my brother and my sister,” there was no point even mentioning you, “who may as well be dead for all I hear from her? If I could just see Maman, I could show her — I’ve done my penance, whatever she expects. Paid for my mistakes, dearly. Papa,” I begged, “if you would just bring her, I could prove … prove that I’m still, still, the daughter she loves.”

  “Ma petite, you know I can’t.” He watched Baudelaire and Rossetti preening, then wrestling each other on the bed. “You’ve made your place, and it’s not one, I think, that your maman can stomach. You can’t expect … surely you see? You know it’s not a question, a matter of … atonement.”

  Had he ripped a page from Paul’s good book?

  Flouncing my hem, I shooed Verlaine from rubbing her chin on his shoe — had Papa stepped in something bad? His eyes lit on my shins, their pale, bluish streaks. Chilblains. “But you love me, don’t you Papa? You, at least, forgive me? The evil one and his friends haven’t turned you completely against me?”

  A sigh came from his throat — a sigh of weariness. It couldn’t have been easy being married to Maman all these years. Till death do us part.

  His eyes mirrored mine. “Your poor maman. She never showed it, but once, she had only love for you.”

  The room and even the cats seemed to recede — all of it but my pride cried to be swept into a bin and disposed of, somehow. I spat at a bit of charred clay. “Papa,” I barely heard myself speak, “you would deny me? This small, small favour —”

  “You deny yourself, ma petite.”

  Then he embraced me, his old man’s arms enfolding me in what felt like a phantom’s hug. My ear to his chest, only his heartbeat proved it wasn’t a dream, its strange rhythm in my pulse. Wordlessly he pressed an envelope into my hand and vanished.

  That, C, was the last I would see of him in this earthly vale. Whether or not we meet again, a taunt or a promise, I’m soon to find out, in that place where prophet Paul says everything broken is made whole again — where, when push comes to shove, most would hope to go, though I hear the way into it is tinier than the eye of Maman’s finest needle.

  Consolation lies in the fact these years have made me thin.

  ***

  THE ART OF destroying took what remained of you, as addictive as sculpting had been when you were still near.

  One day, Monsieur’s cohort — Sylvestre, who had all but thwarted that other agent’s purchase of L’ge Mûr, in who knows what two-step of deviance and deceit — rapped at my shutters. He had come to wrench away what my hammer and Criteur’s flames hadn’t claimed.

  “Go away!” I hissed, but half-heartedly, for Maman’s oblivion, and yours, had consigned my mistresspiece to a final limbo that neither it nor I could see a way out of. With my muse — my hope — all but run out, I could no more finish than trash what I had begun. It’s hope that lets us keep breathing, hope that makes us act. Without it the only course is suicide.

  Wait for death or bring it on — what difference, if we fear no judgment? Should life be like you and simply abscond, like puddles lifting from pavement when the sun comes out, lifting soundless into nothing?

  Which, in the end, is what Criteur did.

  That he would betray me, to act of his own accord! At the end of a long, long winter, near the beginning of March, I caught him one day before dawn, moments before darkness entertained daylight’s creep. He had wrested your piece from the wardrobe and set it on the hearth. Its faceless figures, yours and Maman’s, were turned toward the grate, your closeness, your togetherness an embarrassment, a sham no more to be. Worse than wishful thinking, worse than forgery, it was a patent falsehood. Maman and the child I’d been held tightly, warmly, lovingly in her arms. A lie.

  A blessing, I now see, that I hadn’t fully captured you. S
eeing your graven face would’ve shattered my heart and the warmth of anyone’s illusions.

  And yet I tried to stop him. Seized his hand, gripped the hammer in my fist. I did everything in my power to deflect the blows.

  I’m sorry to say, your figure took the worst, bludgeoned beyond repair or recognition. Though pieces of the mother endured, my idea — the grand idea of this work to outshine all works, to bring together all that had been broken and severed — succumbed.

  I don’t suppose you remember what the evil one once said? “If there’s anything more beautiful than a beautiful thing it is its ruin.”

  Criteur’s rebel act, though, was fortuitous, and perhaps one of mercy. I couldn’t have safeguarded the statue any longer, lacked the heart to.

  A letter from a long-lost cousin from the Champagne was the cudgel landing a final blow. I knew it was bad news, just seeing his name on the envelope. You can guess the rest — to me it was a shock, the kind that stops time and sense. Papa was dead. He had died many days earlier. Not a peep from Maman or either of my siblings. No one had even thought to tell me he was sick, let alone to offer the chance to say my goodbyes. I was worse than an orphan, cut adrift with no family at all. Monsieur had fully succeeded in poisoning against me those I cherished most.

  All but my faithful praticien, I had let myself believe.

  Somewhere in the gloom, I heard Blot come and be turned away. “Shall I finish her off for you, now that your maman’s heart is truly stone?” Criteur offered when I took to my bed. “Be my guest,” is what he said I said.

  In darkness we stumble as far from lies as we do from the truth. Hiding under the covers, I did not, could not, watch him strike the final blow or light the fire to reduce Maman’s effigy to ash. Perhaps I even slept?

  Possibly, instead of destroying her, he spirited her off to Sylvestre’s warehouse. A thieving traitor like the rest. Nothing would surprise me, least of all his move to the enemy camp. Was the writing on the wall?

  I’ve not seen hide nor hair of him since. To live is to see and be seen. Friendless and without talisman or taliswoman to guide me I entered a sightless state, a blind death. Worse than having both eyes put out, it has amounted to having the nerves stripped from my fingers. Deprived of touch, of sight, what remains?

  ***

  FOR ALL I know, it was Criteur who called Monsieur’s henchmen, the helmeted goons who came one Monday morning to abduct me. Two burly men in riot gear, they were. They ambushed me, forced their way into the flat. It was an act of outright war. A small miracle they didn’t shoot or toss grenades through the window. Oh, but I put up a hell of a fight, gave them everything I had at first. Flailing, thrashing, kicking and scratching to fend them off, as tough as a cat being pulled from a mouse’s nest.

  It was Eastertime and the walls were papered with pictures of Christ I’d cut from the paper. Lent’s fourteen Stations of the Cross, the Saviour’s stumble towards death — his torments and persecutions not so different from what Monsieur’s mob was inflicting on me. Except, unlike Pilate, they knew what they were doing, they weren’t just blindly, dumbly, following their god’s plan.

  “Help me!” I screamed to the stricken thorny-crowned image, screamed and screamed in vain. “Call them off!”

  Wrestling me into the devil’s lingerie, their camisole, the invaders harpooned me feet-first through the window and into their waiting camion, a wailing flashing ambulance.

  This, oh my dear dead younger self, was my breech birth into the long dark night that’s been my life ever since. So I was borne into internment — an endless nothing, a nothing without end — as innocent, as dumb, as clotted cells scraped from the womb.

  “Where are you taking me? What is my crime?” I screamed, friendless, till my voice, my senses, all but abandoned me too. But don’t waste your tears on me, C — God, no. Who knows but we might see each other soon, if you have the guts to come and visit and allow your face to shine upon mine. You know where to find me. Your older, wiser Camille.

  27

  … AND DEVOTE MYSELF TO THE WELFARE …

  MONTDEVERGUES ASYLUM

  19 OCTOBER 1943

  Today a fresh list of directives came down from Admin, basically ripped from the pages of Essentials of Medicine. Head was only too happy to share them. They were nothing new, but it gave her a charge to impress them on Novice and me. She recommended that we girls take up crocheting and pass it on to those who could benefit, with no mention of its hazardous need for a hook. She was positively gleeful — till she read out the final point, her smile withering.

  “‘Psychiatric nursing places an extra strain on workers’ patience and imagination, as recovery is often slow and the reward of a healthy patient delayed. THEREFORE, it is incumbent upon ALL SUPERVISORS to treat staff with understanding and respect.’”

  “Amen to that,” said Novice.

  Head quickly flipped pages to a memo, with more of what we already knew. “Consider it a refresher, Nurse,” she said pointedly, clearing her throat, and went on with a list of doctors’ obligations.

  Novice interrupted. “If that’s it, I’ve got fifty sponge baths waiting.”

  If only sponge baths were all I’d had ahead of me. The shift started off with “artwork” on the wall — someone’s finger-painting, more or less. Dear God, the things that can be accomplished with feces. With no orderly available to remove it, I found a scrub brush and applied my own elbow grease.

  Having just mentioned occupational therapy, Head saw an opportunity. “You, Poitier. Since you have an obvious appreciation for guests expressing themselves,” she smiled, “and the need to ingratiate yourself to Admin, you might consider volunteering. Extracurricular activities do help, you know. Keep guests and staff out of mischief. It’s not too early to start considering Christmas.”

  A pageant, she meant. Novice had filled me in. The dreaded pageant was a yearly entertainment staged by the guests for the hospital’s holiday enjoyment. I’d seen a few handbills from last year’s event lying around.

  “I’m sure you can organize something. Maybe your scribe, Mademoiselle, could help you write a play. Pity we didn’t ask her brother for tips when he was here.” Presumptuous as can be, her tone actually made me smile. “Think about it, Nurse. You could have some fun. And in the meantime, when our new directeur takes action —”

  “But I thought —”

  “That by now he would’ve? Yes. Well. He has things well in hand, I’m sure. Don’t think for a moment you’re off the hook for what you did. A little advice: I wouldn’t second-guess Admin. The pageant looks very good on a resumé —”

  “A play? You expect me to do a play —”

  “You have a problem with that, Poitier? Oh, I see — it would cut into your off-hours.”

  I couldn’t help thinking of Head’s role model, the famous surveillante at the Salpêtrière, Maman Bottard, who did not leave her workplace once in three solid years — or was it six? Did she figure in some drama of our supervisor’s making?

  I said I’d think about the pageant, and I did, for the ten minutes it took to thoroughly scrub my hands. Even then a dead meat smell clung to them.

  A play, for pity’s sake. I could barely wrap my head around it. Something based on an Aesop’s fable, some story featuring a tortoise and a hare, a tale about the nature of success? Or a fox and a rabbit, plus a cat — we could use Mademoiselle’s — and a mole, a part made for Head. The moral of the story: Keep your eyes on the prize, even if doing so is fairly pointless. Something Sister might say, something which could seem vaguely uplifting for all but the most afflicted?

  No play. A play is above and beyond the call of a Bottard and Nightingale, and where I draw the line.

  ***

  ATTENDING AT DEATH is a necessary part of the job. “Think of the body as a house being vacated. Being objective helps,” Sister Ursula told me the first time. “You’re ushering the occupant to freedom. That’s it.” Never mind that she also said a camel would s
ooner squeeze through a needle’s eye than the rich enter glory’s gates.

  Am I wrong in thinking helping a patient die is midwifery in reverse? Though it’s easier for a baby’s crowning head to exit the cervix, I suspect, than for a sane goner to wish the world goodbye.

  I cannot help but compare everything to labour and delivery, to memories of mine. That day only the sisters’ capable hands kept me from going completely off my nut. The pain of transition,

  I’ve read, is like sustaining twenty bone fractures at once. A mercy I didn’t know that at the time. I was too green to ask for anything for it. No nitrous oxide, morphine or “twilight drug,” scopolamine. Was suffering enough to make me a martyr, make my resumé like Mademoiselle Bottard’s?

  “You don’t want to forget,” my midwife-sister had said. One doesn’t forget, certainly not the pain. Oh, I remembered well enough to never put myself back in the position of repeating it. Maybe in that respect I am more like Florence and Marguerite, who stayed single all their lives.

  I thought of Renard with a vague, rather generalized regret. Now that he was dead, I could almost call it a longing.

  During delivery it helps greatly to dim the room. Different with the dying, though. As their sight fades it helps if they have good light. One wants to keep things bright to the end. If I could have, I’d have prised the bars one by one from Mademoiselle’s window.

  From the moment I stepped into her room, it unnerved me how her soft cries, tiny complaints, almost mimicked a newborn’s. Not just those of any newborn, but of mine. As Sister said, it was — it is — a blessing that new babies can’t talk. Nobody holds their hands through the ordeal.

  I held Mademoiselle’s hand continuously, massaged each burled knuckle. Her cries strengthened at times, as if she were rallying. “Soon I’ll be there, won’t I, Nurse? He’s waiting, you see. In Villeneuve. Papa,” she murmured feverishly. “Coq au vin for lunch. In the garden. Papa and I. We will draw lines, he and I … in the dirt. I’ll listen … listen for insects, worms …”