by M. D. Elster
He doesn’t answer me. Instead, he sighs, and takes the photograph out of my hands, returning it along with the others to his attaché case.
“Hmm,” Mr. Duval says, ignoring my question and addressing Dr. Waters. “This is going to be far more complicated than anticipated. At this point I would be reluctant to put her on the stand. It’s a problem…” he says. “She’s our only witness.”
CHAPTER 14.
“Can you delay the trial at all?” Dr. Waters asks. The two men — Dr. Waters and Mr. Duval — are now discussing my case as though I am no longer present in the room.
Mr. Duval shakes his head. “I thought we’d only have to deal with a public defender, but someone anonymously donated to his defense, and now the attorney is demanding a speedy trial. I think the strategy is to catch us before we’re ready. If Léon Reynard doesn’t wake up from his coma, and Anaïs here is unfit to testify, all I’ve got are the accused’s fingerprints on a gun.”
“That ought to be enough, shouldn’t it? After all, he’s a Negro, isn’t he?”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Duval shrugs. “But I don’t want to bungle this case. What’s your prognosis for Anaïs? I really need her on the stand, but not like this.”
“It’s difficult to say. I’ll be frank, Mr. Duval: Her sanity comes and goes. She suffered an episode of manic psychosis yesterday. We were forced to sedate her. And obviously, the sedation necessary to subdue one of these psychotic episodes is quite potent. It renders a patient unconscious for many hours. All that time sedated is time we lose — in order for a talking cure to work, the patient has to be, at the very least, conscious!”
“Hmm, yes; I see your point. That’s rather discouraging. Are there any other treatments to be considered?”
“There are.” Dr. Waters nods. “In fact, I believe electroshock therapy would help her case a great deal — it would subdue the tantrums on a more permanent basis, and make her more docile. Then we could begin to get to the root of the trauma that has blocked her memory.”
Mr. Duval shakes his head in astonishment. “Why aren’t you administering electroshock immediately, if that is the case?”
“Her guardian would have to sign off on it,” Dr. Waters explains. “Obviously, her stepfather is indisposed. Technically, his power of attorney lies with a lawyer in Switzerland — a one Mr. Victor Girard, of Zurich — but out of courtesy to Léon Reynard’s fiancée, we are leaving the decision up to her.”
“Would that be Miss Colette Baudin?” Mr. Duval asks.
“Indeed.”
“Well, where does she stand on the question of administering the electroshock?”
“She hasn’t made up her mind. But I think she’ll come around. I believe it’s only a question of needing the medical world explained to her — as it is with all women.” Dr. Waters pauses, and turns to look at me, as if remembering my presence in the room.
“I have an excellent idea,” he says to me. “I think you ought to see the electroshock machine, Anaïs, and that way you can see there is absolutely nothing to fear. I’ll have Nurse Kitching escort you to the operating room, and she can explain all about how it works. It’s really nothing — no knives, no needles, nothing like that! You’ll see.” Oddly excited, he strides to the door and pokes his head out. “Nurse Kitching!” he calls.
“Anaïs,” Mr. Duval tips his hat at me as I am wheeled away. “I look forward to talking to you again soon.”
Nurse Kitching rolls me over to the North Wing, seemingly bored with this task. She doesn’t notice the fact that I am extra quiet, or that my arms trembling. She pushes my wheelchair down a long corridor, and finally through a pair of swinging doors.
“Here we are,” she sing-songs, “the electrotherapy room…”
I study the room. The walls are covered in yellowing white tiles; the ceiling is shiny with new mint-green paint perspiring in the humid climate. There is a surgical lamp in the middle of the room that looks rather like a medieval torture device. I look around the room, taking in this-and-that detail, until my eyes finally find what they are searching for, and my heart nearly stops at the sight of it.
It is a giant box made of wood and metal, festooned with dials and gauges, mounted on legs with little wheels on the bottom — no doubt so it might be wheeled about the surgical wing of a hospital. Black electrical chords hang in menacing swags. They are connected to some sort of headset with steel discs.
“See?” Nurse Kitching says, flourishing a hand. “Not so scary, is it?”
I don’t say anything. Nurse Kitching frowns to glimpse my dubious expression.
“Hmm,” she says. “How about I show you how it works — I won’t turn it on, of course — and you can see how simple it is.”
Immediately, I don’t like this idea.
“All right, hop on up here and lie down,” she says, cheerfully patting the cold metal table. I don’t obey right away and her mouth twitches and she crosses her arms. “Hurry up now!”
Reluctantly, I get up out of the wheelchair and lie down on the table.
“Now,” she says, “we would cover you up and tuck you in, nice and tight…”
I’m smart enough to understand that by “tuck you in nice and tight,” she means strap me down with restraints.
“And then we put this wooden paddle in your mouth — that’s to make sure you don’t bite your tongue — and buckle it like so…”
She puts the paddle in my mouth and buckles the straps at the back of my head.
“And then the electrodes go here…”
She places a headset on me so two metal discs rest against my temples.
“A bit cold, aren’t they,” she laughs in a sympathetic voice. “But that’s the worst of it. All we do is flip a little switch — just like turning a light on and off — and voilà! You’re all done…”
She sounds pleased with her demonstration, but it doesn’t matter; I can’t hear her anymore. My heart has started to pound. I’m short of breath and the room is spinning. I see yellowing tile and mint-green paint twirling around me until everything blurs.
Then, I see my old book of fairytales… the beautiful illustrations… the story about a gentleman fox. It’s a pleasant escape from this nightmare of an operating room. But then the fairytale images go away and a stranger, darker collage of images takes its place.
Flashes of bright light. Rumble and clash of… thunder? Is this the hurricane I’m remembering? Over the boom and rumble of thunder I hear two voices arguing… a man and a woman… they are having a terrible row of some sort. More flashes of light. Where am I? “Stay away from the window, Anaïs!” I hear my mother call. She is worried about something — “beware the Blitz,” I hear children half shouting, half sing-songing. “Stay away from the window,” I hear my stepfather command as the hurricane rages outside. Another sound — a lamp breaking, a gun going off. The terrible thunder shaking the walls all around me.
“Anaïs!” Nurse Kitching shouts. “Anaïs! Orderlies! Quick — the Thorazine! Calm her! She’s having some sort of psychotic attack!”
Blackness descends.
CHAPTER 15.
My stepfather. I dream of my stepfather. Perhaps this is a defense mechanism, a knee-jerk reaction to the drugs they’ve given me, for after all, my stepfather is my only comfort: A man who took me in and sheltered me and kept me from harm when there was no one left to claim me. A man who helped me escape the terrible war in Europe. I owe him a great more than I am sure I will ever be able to repay.
Not that my stepfather has ever given the impression of needing anything, ever, in all the time I’ve known him. Monsieur Léon Jean-Jacques Reynard, he introduced himself to my mother with a courteous bow that first night he came to hear her sing. But even his great modesty could not conceal his regal air, for after all, he was born to an aristocratic family and descended from a marquis, no less. While it sounded too fantastical to imagine, and while he eventually settled in a posh enough but less w
himsical townhouse in Paris, he spent his childhood in a moated castle. A moated castle! — I remember thinking when he told me stories. Whenever he spoke of his youth he talked of wet-nurses and valets and other antiquated varieties of servants I thought only existed in fairytales; I imagined trumpeting angels delivering him to his parents on elegant wings, depositing him gently in a gilded cradle. I still wonder — even now — if my imagination wasn’t far off the mark.
Of course, cradles were long in his past. He was older than my mother — he already in his late forties and she still in her twenties at the time of their first meeting — but he wore his age very well, and it was difficult to take more than mere precursory notice of the years between them. Perhaps this was because he was so kempt. He had the look of extreme care, of a man who had always taken precautions to maintain himself; his thick mane of black hair was only lightly threaded with silver and always appeared freshly cut, his moustache appeared meticulously barbered, his nails very clean and manicured. His lips peeked out from below his moustache: the pink, supple, shiny lips of a younger man. The skin below his eyes — the apples of his cheeks — was also surprisingly rosy, with a perpetual glow rather like waxed fruit. His most striking feature was perhaps his eyes. They crinkled at the corners — not quite the way my father’s had — the crinkle was less Father Christmas and a little more devilish. But what was most striking was the color: They were a piercing, pale blue. They were so pale, in fact, his pupils often appeared like two pinpricks, giving his gaze the intensity of a hawk’s. This was quite novel, in my opinion. Blue eyes ran in our family, and yet I have never seen eyes that have looked anything quite like my stepfather’s. The blue of my mother’s eyes — eyes that I have inherited, or so people tell me — is such a dark blue it is often mistaken for brown until a closer investigation is made. The eerie, milky white-blue of my stepfather’s eyes, by contrast, was so unusual, so otherworldly, it temporarily mesmerized all who shook hands with him.
He came to the nightclub that first night to hear my mother sing, and then returned every night thereafter, without fail. Sometimes he sat with a group of Germans. Other times he sat with wealthy Parisians and other Frenchmen of great means and reputation: Famous bankers and factory owners, as well as aristocrats much like himself. It was whispered backstage that his interest in befriending the Germans was purely tactical, that he was secretly in league with de Gaulle himself. No proof revealed itself during those early days, and we dared not whisper about such things within earshot of the Germans — if he was cooperating with the Resistance, he was our champion and we wished him no harm — but the whisperings had a calming effect on my mother. I believe they were the reason my mother dropped her guard and failed to rebuff my stepfather when he finally made his intentions known. After all, she loathed the Germans. Annoyed that she had to keep this loathing a secret, she was magnetically drawn to anyone who quite possibly hated the Germans even more than she did.
At first, she agreed to meet him during daylight hours for tea at the Ritz. I waved to her from the window of our little pigonnier of a room, watching her go. I knew she was nervous for him to see her, dressed as she was in her own shabby clothes as opposed to the shimmering evening gowns she wore while singing at the nightclub. But her lack of couth attire did nothing to discourage his interest, for my stepfather quickly doubled his overtures. Instead of one outing per week he insisted on two, then four, then six. He did not, however, invite my mother to be his guest at one of the hotels near the nightclub. Quite the contrary — my stepfather’s interest in my mother seemed to be of a much more lasting, noble variety. On several occasions, he insisted my mother bring me along, so that he become properly acquainted with me in equal right. I was deeply flattered. Since my father’s passing, no man had paid me nearly so much attention. He learned — and more touchingly, accurately recalled — the names of my dolls, a small collection that soon grew by virtue of his own donation.
“I wouldn’t mind it,” I told my mother one day, “if you and Monsieur Reynard got married and you let him take care of us.”
“We don’t need anybody to take care of us,” my mother was quick to retort.
“Why, Mother,” I said, taking her hand in my own, staring with my child’s gaze solemnly into her face. “Why, yes; yes, we do.”
Her eyes widened and she fell silent, considering the relative wisdom of this pronouncement.
After that, I noticed a minor shift in my mother’s disposition towards Monsieur Reynard, from enjoying his company to contemplating just how far to let him in, and what his company meant in terms of our fate. I knew she was considering what I had said. I could also see that my future stepfather — for he was not my stepfather just yet — had taken on a slightly saintly corona in her eyes. She asked him about his involvement with the Resistance one night as the three of us took a moonlit stroll along the Seine. Like the natural little family that we were together, we were holding hands — all three of us — when eventually my mother loosed her grip and I received the signal that I ought to pretend sudden interest in an imaginary frog and trail some distance behind. I obeyed, but endeavored to remain close enough so that, with enough concentration, I might still be able to eavesdrop. I already knew what her question would be, so the soft murmur of her syllables wasn’t hard to guess. But it was my stepfather’s answer I was most interested to hear.
“Darling, it’s best if I don’t tell you about any of that,” he said, turning to face my mother. “I don’t want to endanger you, or worse still, endanger young Anaïs. But it’s safe to say that whatever you might guess about me is true. Will you keep my secret?”
The river with its tumultuous current sparkled under the moon’s strikingly white beams, and my mother and Monsieur Reynard looked like two silhouettes cut from black paper. I saw my mother’s silhouette nod with a somber grace. Then she leaned closer, and the two black paper cutouts became one.
I assume my mother revealed her own secret not long after that, for they were promptly engaged, and I daresay my mother would not have agreed to marry him while carrying the burdensome truth about her identity — that is, I should say… the truth about our identity: hers and mine, too.
Despite the war, the wedding was a festive, sumptuous affair. My mother stood in a hand-sewn lace gown and suffered through the lie of the cathedral, understanding it to be necessary. It was the reception that pleased her the most. Away from the terrifying alter with its lifelike figure of Christ nailed to the cross, the reception was by contrast much more relaxed, full of dancing and easy laughter. My stepfather called upon every friend and colleague who owed him a favor; as it turned out, there were a great many. I have a strange, childlike pocket full of memories of that wedding. I still remember throwing rice at them from a little tulle pouch with a pink satin bow. I remember the sinful white vanilla ganache of the wedding cake; and somewhere, wrapped up in a linen handkerchief, I still have a few sugar-spun confection roses I surreptitiously filched from the topmost tier. I remember watching the two of them dance their wedding waltz together, my mother and stepfather. He looked so pleased by my mother; I wanted a man to look at me like that someday.
He moved us into his townhouse, a white-stone mansion on the Île Saint-Louis, where from the parlor and from several of the bedrooms we had a view of the very same quai where we had strolled the night my mother had summoned forth her courage and asked him about his political allegiance. It was no moated castle, but it was still much more grandiose than anything I had ever known. There were five floors — if you counted the foyer — and a little elevator if you didn’t feel like taking the beautiful marble staircase, with its steps so ancient and well worn they bowed a bit in the middle, rubbed away over time by the soft-soled slippers of many a wealthy aristocrat and a small army of butlers.
I was given my own bedroom, and told to dress it up any way I liked. In honor of my previous life, I asked for it to be papered in blue silk — I picked out the exact color of the flowers that ca
rpeted the Hallerbos in spring.
“A most regal color,” my stepfather said, sealing my choice with his approval over the breakfast table one morning. “Very noble taste. I see I have married into a superior bloodline…. a very superior bloodline, indeed.” He winked at my mother. Ordinarily she laughed at his jokes, but in this case, she only dropped her eyebrows and gave him a look.
“Anaïs,” he continued, clearing his throat and taking a serious tack, “I want to tell you something very important.”
“Yes?”
“You and your mother — I am here to protect you now. I will always see to it that no harm comes to you, that you are always safe, do you understand?”
“Yes, Monsieur Reynard.”
“No, no, no. No ‘Monsieur Reynard’ business from here on out, understand? We are family now, Anaïs. You are to call me ‘father,’ or ‘stepfather’ if you must.”
He was still a bit of a stranger to me at that point, but I remember my heart swelled at these words. I stood up from my chair, climbed into his lap, and put my thin arms around him, relishing this increasingly rare occasion to be so close to an adult, to play the baby again. My opportunities to do so were getting fewer and further between. At that time I was eight, but nine was just around the corner and I was already mourning the loss of my younger, more blissful naïve years. My mother smiled at me, her eyes glassy as she took in the picture of my stepfather and me, hugging like father and daughter.
It’s a foolish thing — even as a child — to mourn the loss of one’s naïveté. Ignorance does not make you safer; if anything, it only makes your dreams a safer place to dwell, the landscape of your imagination more benign and your mind more docile. Truth be told, even then I was a temperamental, sharp-witted little thing; I don’t believe I really wanted to return to my infancy. I suppose I can’t be blamed for wanting to act the part, given the circumstances. Those who were children during the war were never really children at all; in consequence, childhood is the most exotic destination of which we may dream. We simply can’t resist it.