‘Music has tones and hues too,’ she tells me.
She stops walking and hums. When she’s finished, she asks, ‘What colour did you see?’
‘The colour of light.’ But I wanted to say, ‘The colour of you’.
We eat lunch in the Café Guerbois. I introduce her to the writer, Charles Beaudelaire. His face is powdered white and eyelids kohled like a geisha. He sits amongst a small entourage of young men and women, each dressed in varying degrees of eccentricity and style. I look from one to the other: An angelic face. A blond curly wig. A swish of royal blue velvet. The rustle of organza. The glint of gold. An amused expression occupies them all. Charles makes a show of kissing Blanche’s hand whilst gazing up into her eyes. His friends let out a collective and precipitating, ‘Woah.’
‘What a wonderful secret friend you have, Doctor Gachet,’ Charles says. ‘Will you join us?’
Blanche takes a deep lungful of air and says, ‘This is only our second rendezvous. I think we should be alone.’
I am relieved and flattered. Once at our table, after a game of ‘No, after you’, she says ‘Your accent is strange.’
‘I grew up in Lille.’
I unwrap a piece of charcoal from a cloth and sketch an unnamed bird of prey on a napkin.
‘It’s for you,’ I say, pushing the drawing towards her.
‘I’ll frame it, but you have to sign it. Put Paul van Ryssel,’ she says, pushing the drawing back to me. I thought about it briefly then wrote under the date Paul van Ryssel – Paul of Lille. From now on it is how I will sign all my artwork.
We order a feast of onion soup followed by goose with bacon and peas. But a strange spell of enchantment has been cast over us; we can’t eat and the food congeals on the plates.
On my way home, once again, I return to Edouard’s second household, a strange family of sorts where every member proudly bears a different surname. This time a very hurried Suzanne Leenhoff greets me.
‘Oh, I forgot you were coming,’ she says, wearing a coat and quite clearly just on her way out.
‘How is Leon?’
‘He is quite well. He is in the studio with Edouard who wants to paint him. I am just on my way to collect him now.’
Monday Morning
April 20th
‘Symptoms, in reality, are nothing more than the cry from suffering organs.’
Jean-Martin Charcot
I am late. Disorientated. Staring at the open wardrobe when I need socks from the drawer. Stirring salt into my coffee. Outside the arched entrance of Sâlpetrière my stomach groans as I anticipate the smell that overwhelms so many of my days: the stink of boiled cabbage mixed with ethanol.
Moving through the lobby, I bid Madame Lemont, the concierge, a good morning. As usual, her bonnet barely nods in reply. My footsteps echo on the stone floor. I’ve been told that prostitutes were once massacred here and if you listen carefully you can still hear their screams in the buzzing silence. I am barely past reception when the sight of Victorine Meurent accompanied by another female surprises me. They sit on a bench attached to the wall.
‘Victorine, what are you doing here?’
‘Doctor Gachet, Paul, we need to see you immediately!’
‘I am already running late,’ I say, but the look on Victorine’s face is a determined stare.
‘Come this way.’ Looking over my shoulder, Madame Lemont’s countenance shrivels in disgust. I wonder if it is only here, in this wintery hallway, that she finds human compassion so difficult to abide.
Victorine holds the arm of her companion with both hands and follows me through to the atrium and up some stairs. I can hear the rustle of petticoats as we climb. We go into a ward that I know to be unoccupied. I perch on one of the beds. The women stand.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
Victorine’s friend has her head bowed. She has a skull full of thick, matted blonde curls. I look down at a pair of dirty pink shoes. When I raise my eyes Victorine meets my gaze and vigorously shakes her friend’s arm.
‘Tell him,’ she says. ‘Tell him what you told me.’
Her friend lifts her head. There is lightning in her glare. The girl tugs her arm away from Victorine’s grasp and hurls herself towards me. Her nails are talons directed at my face. I catch her wrists. She thrashes and tries to bite me.
‘You bloody men are all the same,’ she screams. ‘All you want to do is to cut off my head,’ and in seconds she’s a snake on the floor reaching for my ankles.
‘Go on, tell him who you are,’ Victorine calls loudly.
‘He knows who I am. It’s him. He betrayed me.’
‘Tell him anyway,’ Victorine goads.
‘I am,’ she says, on all fours now, wobbling her head like a coquette, ‘Marie Antoinette.’
Silence.
I stand with my chin in my hand. Victorine’s eyes are questioning mine. This maniac is hardly out of childhood.
‘Wait here,’ I tell Victorine.
In the corridor I bump straight into a young nurse who I have never seen before.
‘We’re in the midst of an emergency, come with me.’
There are often screams reverberating in these halls, hospital staff huddled together to contain a dangerous patient. But the girl is quiet now. It must appear to be a silent emergency, like a suicide.
Victorine paces as we enter the room. Her temporary ward rolls on the floor and moans.
‘Nurse?’
‘Yes Doctor.’
‘Your name?’
‘Morrisot. Catherine Morrisot.’
‘Nurse Morrisot, this woman on the floor, her name is … .’
‘Bella,’ Victorine interjects.
‘This girl Bella, I have good reason to ask you to look after her for an hour or so. Please keep her here, in this room, and be kind. If anyone asks what you’re doing, tell them you’re acting on the orders of Doctor Paul Gachet. Do you understand?’
Nurse Morrisot nods. I gesture to Victorine, and to the sound of our footsteps we exit the building. When we reach the arched entrance to the courtyard, I thrust my hands in my trouser pockets, turn towards Victorine and ask her to explain.
‘Yesterday, I was at home about to begin painting. I’d set up an easel by the open window. I quite liked the feel of the dim light making a grey background for Notre Dame. It was damp. There was a horrible smell of manure and a mean wind blew the candle out.
‘I said “Merde!”, then someone called through the door, “Mademoiselle Victorine Meurent, I have a note for you from Bella Laffaire.” It was a very young male voice. “I’m sorry, I don’t know Bella Laffaire,” I said.’
Victorine paused and I pictured the scene. I had been to Victorine’s garret once when she had a sore throat. It was just one room with a bed and a chair, some clothes, cooking utensils, and a guitar.
‘He said, “You saw her a few days ago at La Pigalle. Mademoiselle Meurent, it was when Bella was arrested.”
‘You remember, Doctor Gachet … Paul? You were there.’
I gave my assent.
‘Well naturally, I was reluctant to let the boy in. I remember swaying a little, trying to think of an alternative, but I could not think of a satisfactory reason to refute him. So, I drew back the bolt and threw open the door. He could not have been any older than nine or ten, wearing a double-breasted coat with silver buttons. He had pale and sickly skin and a rivulet of mucus ran out of his nose. “You have a note?” I asked, without inviting him in. He was like a little soldier handing me a message.’
Victorine takes a crumpled piece of paper from behind the ruffle at the neck of her blue velvet dress. She hands me the note.
Mademoiselle Victorine Meurent I am dreaming of your kindness and that you will come and get me because the policemen are animals who think that when a woman needs to sell her body she should give it away for free and that it is a game to beat her and whilst this goes on there is no hope of making enough money to pay for the keep of an invalid mother som
e snotty-nosed kids and a father who drinks spirits till he beats her Bella Laffaire
‘“I need to paint,” I told the boy, but he just stood there silently until I waved my arms in the air from the sheer frustration of being disturbed and said, “Where is she?”
‘He led me to the police station where they kept me waiting for half an hour. Then a gendarme with a fat stomach said that I could take her if I gave him twenty francs. Twenty francs! He thought I was her madam. I paid the money and believed that would be the end of it but she followed me home. She stood on the pavement for half an hour shouting up at me about the French court, many lovers and having her head cut off, and that’s where I found her this morning, trying to sleep off her madness under a tree.’
Meeting with Charcot
April 22nd
‘The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.’
Samuel Hahnemann, The Organon of Medicine.
Charcot comes towards me. He has a doctor at either side and his commanding voice fills the air.
‘Doctor Gachet, the other day a new staff nurse was confined to a room with a young madwoman who was not yet admitted to this hospital. Your orders, I believe. Perhaps you would like to enlighten me?’
‘Well, yes, I’ve been wanting to talk to you … .’
‘Lots of paperwork and we still don’t know who brought her here.’
‘It was a friend of mine. I’d like to talk to you about her treatment.’
‘I’ve booked her in for electroshock therapy.’ Doctor Charcot takes his watch from his top pocket and studies it. ‘If there’s anything more, you’ll have to keep up with me,’ he says, walking away hurriedly. His accomplices and I follow like a snake on his tail as he continues to speak. ‘I’ve read your thesis on melancholia. There is no doubt that you have been very thoughtful on the subject. You should study hypnotherapy amongst other practises. Embrace the future, Gachet. You know, I’ve started to wonder if memories live on long after we are conscious of them, and influence who we are to become. Doctor Gachet, do you believe that to be true?’
‘Yes, I do, and I also believe in another of your theories, that symptoms are the expression of a diseased organ. Doctor Charcot, why not the same theory for symptoms expressed by the mind?’
‘“Why not?” indeed.’
Charcot pushes his way through a series of heavy wooden doors and lets them swing backwards. I must slip through quickly behind him or else be struck.
‘I think that when a person is fragile and cannot face their own emotions, something shatters inside them – but supposing there is a medicine that mirrors a patient’s disturbance exactly and, in doing so, strengthens their inner resolve?’
Charcot stops and looks at me.
‘What type of medicine?’
‘A dynamic medicine: homeopathy.’
Charcot’s cronies laugh into their fists and turn around to try and hide their mocking amusement. The man himself remains serious but silent then after some time continues to march.
We have entered the hospital library and arrived at the staircase leading down to the reading room: oak-panelled walls, a huge drawing room fit for Napoleon himself; bow-legged walnut sideboards; portraits of Generals; tasselled sofas; a man smoking a clay pipe, tears continually falling down his cheeks, mumbling, turning round in circles, shouting an obscenity; a child with her back wedged into a chair, raised legs out in front, clutching a china doll and sucking her finger. Actually, she is not a girl but a woman with creases on her face, bleeding scarlet lipstick and thick black, uneven kohl lines along the margins of her eyes. Another man: he is wearing a monocle, pocket watch, round glasses, and a suit full of holes. He talks only of doom and haughtily introduces himself to everyone as Jesus Christ. There are others. Two nurses stand like soldiers observing the scene. One has her back to us, clanking metal against porcelain.
‘We are the leading hospital in the world for diseases of the mind. You won’t see another one in all five continents that allows mentally ill patients to wander in a room like this,’ he says, chest puffed.
I am talking to an eminent man, a very brilliant man. A man who recognises disease syndromes and names them. They bob towards me with every nod of his head – Tourette’s … Multiple Sclerosis … Parkinson’s.
There are many polished medals pinned to his silk embroidered coat, and there are scuttling rats and damp cells in the basement that serve as patients’ bedrooms.
I look him in the eye and say, ‘What about cure?’
That Evening
‘I am an artist … I am here to live out loud.’
Emile Zola
On my way home I buy a copy of Moniteur, Napoleon’s propaganda paper. I am intrigued by the headline, The Emperor’s Salon. An exhibition of all rejected works will open on May 17th, at The Palais de l’Industrie, a fortnight after Le Salon itself. Napoleon has said, ‘Let the public be the judge of the nation’s art!’
‘Ha!’ I say, looking around.
A surly woman clutches her handbag close to her bosom. She watches me closely and widens the space between us as she walks past. Other pedestrians follow suit.
Blanche sits on the stairs outside my front door, a silhouette in the dim light. I look over my shoulder, key poised in the lock.
‘If I’d known you’d been waiting … .’
‘I’ve only come to invite you to a café-concert. Tomorrow evening, I’m playing violin,’ she says, standing up, brushing the dust off her coat. I look down and notice that she carries a wicker basket filled with bread, salad, cheese and ham.
‘Do you have dinner?’ she asks.
‘Come in,’ I say. ‘Be at home.’
I sit on a stool in my pharmacy. Blanche stands at the sink. She washes leaves covered with salt, shakes out the water and absently eats some. There is a leather-bound notebook in front of me open at a blank page. I write ‘Phosphorus’ and the date in my best calligraphy. I haven’t taken the remedy myself yet but such startling symptoms, experienced during its making, are embossed on my brain. I must record them for posterity.
‘If you come tomorrow evening, I hope you won’t judge my playing too harshly. I tend to get nervous if someone I know is in the audience. Anyway, enough of that. How was your day?’
I look up and Blanche is smiling. All thoughts of Phosphorus disappear from my mind.
‘Go away!’ – a female voice. A neighbour screams from somewhere outside the window. ‘Just go away. Get out. Will you just get out?’
‘Madame,’ a male voice calls back. ‘You have one more night then you must pay the rent. One more night, do you hear? Tomorrow I will bring an eviction order and the police.’
‘You fucking swine, just get out of here. What right do you have turning a young mother with three children out onto the streets?’ another male voice intervenes.
‘You sir, have drunk your inheritance. It’s not up to me to protect your family.’
‘I have a knife inside. I suggest you run away while I get it.’
‘That poor woman,’ Blanche says, coughing into her hand.
‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s a cough. I’ve had it on and off since childhood.’
‘I could treat it.’
‘No. Don’t be silly. It’s fine. Ssh now, I need to concentrate whilst I cut up the ham.’
The pages of my notebook have fallen open, fan-like, onto words copied some time ago from a Materia Medica:
Platinum: Platina,
Mentals: Ailments from, vexation, humiliation. Hauteur with contemptuousness for those around her. Conceit. Delusions of superiority; thinks she is a queen … .
I read again, thinks she is a queen.
Blanche says something.
‘Pardon?’
‘Do you have olive oil?’
‘I don’
t usually eat here.’
After supper, we sit in my apartment before the soporific warmth of the fire. I’m on the sofa. Blanche is on the floor leaning against my legs. I tell her of my childhood: my mother’s kitchen with fine herbs that hung from oak beams and aromas that never failed to entice the gastric juices; my father’s study, its roaring fire and comfortable high-backed leather chairs; the scent of linseed and turpentine when learning to paint. I hold a lock of her hair loosely in my palm and run a finger from the base of her skull to the top cervical bone in her spine, an area that’s soft and special like an oyster. I like the fact that I am able to impress her with my story about saving the horses.
‘Really?’ she asks.
‘Really,’ I answer.
And I make her gasp at the tale of jumping off a rampart.
The clock on the mantel strikes midnight.
‘I don’t … ’
So fearful of the negative thing she is going to say, I feel my heart begin to pound.
‘ … want to go,’ she says.
‘We still have hours until morning.’
‘Then I’ll stay just a little bit longer.’
‘Tell me something about you,’ I ask.
She takes the slippers from my feet.
My toes look waxy in the candlelight.
‘I would like to travel to China, Africa, India and those little islands on the Caribbean Sea.’
‘How would you get there?’
She laughs as I wriggle my toes.
‘I always thought I’d get there on a boat with a handsome captain. You probably think I’m too old to dream about such things. Anyway, lately, I’ve thought about going there with you.’
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