Memories of Doctor Emile Trousseau, in his white coat and scorpion tail moustache entering the scene:
‘Next!’ he used to shout, clapping his hands.
A nurse pulls a baby away from its mother. ‘He has diphtheria. He must have the operation.’
Then being told in the staff room how it all made sense really. That yes, the majority of the babies do die, but best to perform the tracheotomy anyway, and remove the laryngeal obstruction. Science will one day arrive at a place where the babies will live to tell the tale. But whilst we wait for that to happen, those who haven’t the time queue on the stairs to my apartment. Once again, I am careful not to pinch skin or cloth with my footsteps. Every few yards I say hello to no one in particular. The door to 2C is slightly ajar. An old and wizened person with an androgynous face pops their head out into the hallway. ‘Get away with you,’ their world-weary voice calls in my wake. ‘Get away with you and your fucking circus here every day.’
The door slams, the sound reverberates and the walls and floor send tremors as if from an earthquake. First in line are a mother and child. I open the door, usher them in, stooping to pick up my post.
It is a fine day. Through the window, the sun is so bright and warming that I have to close the shutters. I sit behind my desk and wave for my patients to sit down in front of it. The mother wears a brown serge shapeless dress. She has fair hair and ruddy cheeks as if she has been drinking. The boy sits beside her with no shoes, picking his nose.
‘How can I help?’ I ask.
‘I am Madame Bonnet,’ she says. ‘And this is Gustave. It’s not all the time, Doctor, but when Gustav shits there is no time for him to get out into the yard. He ruins his clothes with it and our house stinks.’
I watch the boy. He kicks his legs and stares at the wall. The mother smacks his arm. He turns around to face me. I make a guess that he is about six years old.
‘What’s it like?’
‘What’s what like?’
‘The stool, his motions.’
The mother looks at me. Her brown irises are vacant.
‘The shit,’ I say.
‘It’s like water, green, with jelly bits and it keeps on coming and coming and coming,’ she is making waves with her arms.
‘All day? He seems all right now.’
‘No, only in the morning but his stomach makes noises like those machines in the pub.’
‘Gustav, will you come and stand next to me for a second, I want to have a look at your belly.’
Gustav ignores me but swings his legs with greater gusto. His mother lashes out again and he stands abruptly then slowly saunters over to my desk.
I rub my hands together to make them warm, lift the boy’s holey chemise to reveal a swollen abdomen beneath dusty, grey skin.
‘How often does he have a bath?’
The mother guffaws.
‘Do you have a standpipe close to your house?’
‘Just outside. We don’t live in the country, you know.’
‘Make him wash his hands before he eats. Actually, it would be better if the whole family did this. Do you feed him vegetables, meat?’
The mother guffaws again.
‘Do you get pain, Gustav?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where do you get your pain?’
‘Here,’ he says, pointing to his navel.
‘And what do you do when you get your pain?’
The boy comically walks around the room, holding his middle, bending over and crying, ‘Aw, it hurts. It really hurts.’
His mother and I share a smile.
‘Any vomiting?’
‘Yeah, but not ’im,’ she says.’
‘You?’
Madame Bonnet rubs her belly. At least, hers is a healthy condition. I know the remedy that will alleviate Gustav’s symptoms, but the problem is from eating rotten food and lack of hygiene and I doubt this will change. I leave them alone whilst I make up his medicine in my dispensary. Podophyllyum, common name, Mayapple. I pour about twenty tiny pillules of the 30th potency into a small vial. I tell the mother she must administer the prescription twice a day until he’s better. She must not leave the medicine in direct sunlight. I show her how I have made an indent in the cork so she can pour the remedy into it and directly into Gustav’s mouth and I tell her to come back next week. She takes four grimy sous out of her pocket and places them reluctantly on my desk. The money barely covers the cost of the medicine.
‘Next week I won’t charge but I want to see him, even if he’s better.’
The mother nods. When they leave, I open my letters quickly before I invite the next patient in. One is from my friend Camille. His wife is in labour. The midwife has just arrived. Would I come along whenever I can? The second is from my father, which reminds me that he might be interested to learn I will be exhibiting a painting at the Salon des Refusés.
More memories.
A conversation with my father:
‘You’re a sympathetic young man, Paul. Can’t you forget art, which is never going to earn you a decent living and, I don’t know, be a doctor?’
‘Be a doctor?’
‘Yes. Go to Paris. Study at La Sorbonne.’
Those last few months at home were bittersweet. The weather had been fine. I’d taken my easel outside, to paint what was left of the inn in a series of canvases that caught the light at different times of the day. I did not want to leave Lille. I was already practising the only thing I ever wanted to do. But my father had paid for a place at the university.
‘I’ve heard there are studios where you can receive art tuition in your spare time. I know how important the subject is to you. It can be your hobby. More than a hobby perhaps, but not a career.’
The days shortened and, as they did, I felt a tug of rebelliousness. I was curt with my father, offhand with my mother, slamming doors and hitting the wall with my fist. My father cornered me, slapped me verbally with good reason until I had to admit that helping people with their ailments could, possibly, be a satisfying profession.
I tear open the envelope. As usual, his writing is full of concern. He asks if I am being over generous with my time and if I have enough money to eat. I have told him I do well enough several times but still he sends me a cheque every so often for several hundred francs. I rub the cheque between thumb and forefinger, finding it something tangible to show he cares.
I take a hansom to La Varenne. On the ride into the countryside, I realise that I didn’t have an opportunity to mention to Charcot that Victorine would like to make portraiture of Bella Laffaire. It is not within my nature to feel comfortable about letting someone down and I am upset by the realisation that this is exactly what I have done. Modern art is important and not just aesthetically, it is a visual historical document of our world.
To the clip-clop of horse’s hooves, I travel down an avenue where the tall trees filter light as if through a lace curtain. The fields to either side are Camille’s current inspiration. I recognise the vivid greens and pale yellows.
When I arrive, I walk through Julie’s vegetable garden that is less than luscious at this time of year, and enter the equally spare house with its timber walls and copper pots. Camille meets me at the door. He is brimming with pride.
‘It’s a boy,’ he tells me excitedly. ‘We’ll call him Lucien. Let me pour you a glass to celebrate.’
I missed the birth but they did not need me. Julie is wan. She has Lucien at her breast. Both mother and baby seem extremely content.
‘Will you give the baby something, to keep him well?’
I sit down at the wooden table with its hand-embroidered tablecloth and Camille brings over a bottle of local red wine. He pours two glasses and pushes one towards me. I take a sip.
‘You can’t be more well than well, Camille.’
‘It’s a dangerous world.’
‘In an epidemic we can give a remedy to ward off any symptoms. In the meantime, I will come here anytime you are worried.
This is excellent wine,’ I say, tipping my glass to the light to watch it glow.
‘Would you like a glass Julie?’ Camille calls to other side of the room.
‘Do you want to get your baby drunk, Camille?’
‘He’ll get drunk if you drink wine? Through the milk?’
‘How come men don’t know anything?’ Julie asks me.
‘Anyway, I need to pay you for coming,’ says Camille.
‘We’re friends, it’s all right, I would have come anyway.’
‘I am a friend but you still have to survive.’
I look around at the humble surroundings and so many canvases stacked up against the walls. ‘And so do you,’ I say.
‘This is your work. You must take something. I’ll be affronted if you don’t.’
‘A painting then.’
Camille’s dry, fleshy hand reaches across the table. I grasp it. The deal is done.
It is late in the evening. I’m outside Blanche’s home, leaning against a street lamp, blowing clouds of frozen air towards the starry sky. I wear my old coat and scarf but my nose is so cold it reminds me it’s there. This time it is I who has brought her dinner. A friend of mine, a fellow artist, owns a restaurant where they make the best onion soup. His wife has sold me a pot, together with a chunk of pungent Gruyere and a freshly baked baguette, all packed with pink tissue paper in a straw bag. When Blanche arrives we don’t speak, she simply takes the bag and opens the front door.
‘I’ve run out of kerosene,’ she says eventually.
By the light of the moon, we manage to spark a fire in the small square room at the front of the house. There is a velvet armchair but no other furniture. Blanche has brought in a stool and a music stand. I have a large piece of paper attached to a canvas on a frame, which I place on the music stand. I sit on the stool facing the armchair where Blanche has settled. Charcoal pinched between my fingers, I take it to the page. The music stand collapses. Blanche laughs and I fumble to set it straight again. Flames lap up the sides of the chimney and glow on her face. All around me are candles so I can see what I draw, but I don’t think I can draw now. I stare at her face. Look away. If this is going to be a portrait I must ascertain her physiology. I must understand how her clothing falls over her person. I must contemplate the flesh beneath, her breasts and the muscle of her thighs. My lips and my mouth are dry. She coughs into a handkerchief and dark shadows appear on the cloth.
‘Please humour me, let me find you a remedy,’ I say.
Day of Leisure
May 3rd
‘If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow.’
Emile Zola
I’m once again at Père Suisse with my painter colleagues. Camille, of course, is nearly always there, and when he misses a session those that have turned up are temporarily in mourning. He is like a father figure to us all. Paul has turned up. He is the one that I believe Camille has a special eye on, although his paintings are to my perception bizarre, with every subject and object outlined in bitumen, quite childlike, quite admirable. Claude pays us a nostalgic visit, and Victorine, as usual, is here.
‘We’re going to amaze the public,’ Camille says excitedly.
‘I think we will shock them,’ says Paul. ‘Whistler’s “White Girl”, Dejeuner sur l’Herbe … .’
All eyes turn to Victorine. She is the female model in Edouard’s painting.
‘I agree, they won’t understand,’ she says, shrugging her shoulders. ‘But actually, we are naïve if we ever thought they would.’
I find myself nodding. ‘You are prepared then, Victorine?’
‘We will cause a furore, of course, and everyone will be talking about our revolution. But it takes time for new ideas to be accepted by the people; the general public are sheep.’
‘Quite the philosopher, Victorine,’ Paul says.
‘It’s our chance to exhibit. We must hope for the best,’ says Camille.
Claude remains quiet, shifting his long black hair behind his ears, twitching his drooping moustache and focusing his jet eyes intently on his painting. It is of the view through the window, another depiction of his beloved Seine.
‘Maybe no one will turn up,’ says Paul.
Victorine is finishing her watercolour of La Notre Dame. She noisily drops her paintbrush into the jar.
‘Aren’t you friends with Zola?’ Camille asks. ‘An article from him to whet the public appetite, why not?’
‘Promising something novel packed with diversity and spice,’ Paul laughs.
‘Why don’t you invite him to preview our art?’
‘Perhaps I will.’
Silence. There’s a sudden commotion in the building. It’s coming from the landing just outside the studio. Père Suisse scratches his stomach and shuffles out to see what is going on. With the door open, the din tumbles in with greater volume. Two youths push past an aggravated Père Suisse. The concierge stands behind them.
‘I will not have you louts in my building,’ he says holding his stomach and waving his index finger above his head. ‘I know your sort with your thieving, grubby hands.’
The two boys stand panting as if before a headmaster.
‘Mum sent me,’ one of the boys cries.
It’s Gustav Bonnet.
‘All right everyone,’ I say, standing up. My chair scratches noisily backwards across the wooden floor. ‘I know this boy. Gustav what are you doing here?’
‘A man called de Bellio was knocking at your door and the concierge told everybody to get out.’
‘He was screaming that all the other tenants had had just about enough of you,’ said the other, elder boy, panting.
‘I don’t follow. Why was the concierge vexed?’
‘They’re queuing right around the block for you and right up to your door,’ Gustav says.
‘Who’s queuing? I don’t understand.’
‘It was my mum. She told everybody that you cured me of the shits. Some man died in his sleep because of them. Another man said that it was in all the newspapers that the water had become poisoned and everyone’s blaming Napoleon and his lackey Haussman for saying it’s all been cleaned up.’
‘And Georges, I mean Monsieur de Bellio? He’s meant to be in Romania.’
Both boys shrug. ‘Told us where you were,’ Gustav’s friend says.
I make my excuses and follow the boys back to rue Faubourg Saint Denis. They run ahead of me, looking behind every so often to see that I am still there. With every step, I become angrier. Not with the queue outside my front door or with the concierge who views the incident as a disturbance of the peace, but with the bloody mindedness of those who won’t acknowledge the validity in treating epidemics with a medicine that works. Where’s Zola now? I ask myself. Where’s the writer who continually tells the knuckle bone truth about our society? Will he cover this? I seriously doubt it. The last time someone wrote a piece highlighting the success of Hahnemann’s medicine, its detractors, our eminent professors, shot him down in print for favouring fakirs and witches with murdering ways. He was not gainfully employed again, so I am told.
I arrive at the tenement to find only a few stragglers hovering in the courtyard. The concierge and a policeman with a paunch and stony eyes are there to greet me. My guides have made themselves scarce.
‘This is him,’ Monsieur Breton says.
The policeman takes my arm. I shake it free and say, ‘What’s going on?’
‘Let’s go inside,’ he says, with one hand on my back pushing me along.
I sit on a chair in Monsieur Breton’s tiny kitchen. He leans on the portal wiping his hands on a cloth. The heat from the stove is stifling. I can smell stale hops and garlic on the policeman’s breath. ‘Your friends started a riot in the street whilst they were waiting for you,’ he says, motioning with his head towards Monsieur Breton. ‘He says you’re a doctor, but I’ve listened to the evidence about your behaviour. You have followers amongst the common people and I just want to warn
you that the government will not take kindly if you’ve started your own anti-establishment party.’
‘I am not a politician.’
‘We don’t need another revolution.’
‘I’m a doctor. I’m also an artist and I rushed back from a painting session with some of my peers because I was informed that those people who were queuing outside here were potential patients … all of them not well.’
‘They were overheard discussing that this was because of a defect in the new water supply.’
‘Apparently an article in a newspaper made that suggestion.’
‘And you found a crowd to prove it, isn’t that so?’
‘I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Don’t worry, I am not going to arrest you,’ he says, moving away from me. ‘I am sure that Monsieur Breton will do his job and keep an eye on you. I don’t want you to be the cause of any more fighting on the street – in my area – do you understand?’
I remain silent with indignation. His open palm slaps my ear. I hear the crack then a ringing sound. The flesh of my lobe burns
‘Monsieur Breton, you didn’t see that, did you?’
Monsieur Breton slowly shakes his head.
I say that I understand.
When Blanche arrives at eight o’ clock with wine and a cassoulet, there are not many left outside my door, I advise the remaining few to come back tomorrow. She is cold and I put the fire on whilst she warms up the food which she tells me took all afternoon to shop for and cook. Then we sit on the floor facing each other with our plates in our laps and I tell her how my day has been.
‘I didn’t realise that to be true to myself my life would be so controversial. Sometimes it’s like fighting the whole world.’
‘If you want,’ she says. ‘You can give me a remedy.’
‘You have to answer some questions. Did I tell you already that this is delicious?’
Her smile is magnanimous. ‘Yes,’ she says ‘And Paul, you can go ahead and ask.’
‘Ask what?’
‘You know. Ask.’
She is holding me steadily with her gaze. For one moment I think that she is giving herself to me.
Mesmerised Page 6