‘You have reserved?’
‘I’m with Monsieur Boenninghausen.’
‘Ah, Monsieur Boenninghausen, of course. Come this way. I have positioned him at a little table at the back. It is very discreet and very good for meetings. There are three of you tonight?’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ he remembered. ‘There are definitely three.’
We moved through an arch into a more sober space, where the air was relaxed and quiet. There were four tables. One empty, another occupied by a famous actress and her retinue. One of my favourite painters, Gustav Courbet, sat alone at a third. He wore an old ornate shirt, torn at the elbow, and ate hungrily with his large hands. A topaz on his thumb gleamed from the security of its gold setting His features were framed by his long dark hair and obscured by his bushy beard. He is one of a handful of very successful artists in Paris who welcome the moderns. His own art threatens the boundaries of acceptance but also mesmerises with its brilliance. I hesitated. Clemens Boenninghausen tugged at my arm.
‘Paul,’ he said, rising from the fourth table to hug me and then introducing me to the man in a white suit sitting next to him. The man had marbled skin like coffee with cream and gold wire-framed spectacles.
‘Paul, this is Doctor Sharma, he is a doctor in India, apprenticed to Doctor Honigberger, homeopath to Maharaja Ranjeet Singh. Have I got that right?’ he asked.
‘Yes Monsieur Boenninghausen, your introduction was excellent; you managed to get everything right.’
‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Doctor Sharma,’ I said, offering my hand.
‘The menus were brought to the table. I noticed that whilst Clemens took his pince-nez from his breast pocket to read the Carte, Doctor Sharma simultaneously took his glasses off.
I pulled my chair closer to the table and read through a list of cold pâtes, roast partridge, steamed fish, fried eggs and broiled kidneys whilst Clemens ordered a bottle of iced champagne.
‘Doctor Sharma has some interesting ideas,’ Clemens said, looking over his lenses with his arms outstretched, palms on the table before him. ‘If I had met Ayush as a young man – I hope you don’t mind if I call you by your first name,’ he said, turning his head towards the Indian doctor. ‘ – I would have studied under him this philosophical pursuit called meditation.’
‘Actually, it is more than that. We have found in India that it is possible to be refreshed quite quickly after practising meditation and this helps during a session that is overloaded with patients. You have to go from one to the other quite quickly as a homeopath. You have to listen very carefully to what everyone says. And you have to come up with the right remedy time and time again, even when you ask yourself “What to do?” You have to be very present in the now. But how is it possible to do this when you have thoughts generated from your previous patient going around in your brain or things from your own life cloying your own mind? We physicians are only human. Categorically, meditation is to be a big a help with this problem.’
The waiter brought over our champagne. With a white cloth around the cork, he prised the stopper off and the bottle steamed. Clemens was still looking at me, drumming his fingers.
‘And how do you meditate?’ I asked.
‘Ayush needs somewhere to stay. If you accommodate him for the next two weeks, I’m sure he’ll teach you.’
The waiter poured. We lifted our glasses and drank. The wine was fiercely cold and it smarted on my tongue and at the back of my nose. My eyes began to water. I put down my drink and wiped my lips with the napkin.
‘Tell me Clemens,’ I said with a broad smile. ‘Was it ever to be my choice?’
Ayush ate shellfish with his fingers as if he had been doing it all his life, licking his fingers and twisting them unselfconsciously in his serviette until they were clean. He was interesting and naturally hypnotic. He assured me that Blanche’s anecdote about elephants walking across the beach with priests in saffron robes was perfectly plausible.
‘They would be giving rides on the elephant for money to make a pilgrimage. This is quite common,’ he said. And, ‘There are many kings in my country. Many people who are rich enough have their clothes woven in gold and every Raj has a special room full of buxom courtesans. There is real magic in India like the man who cured himself of TB by doing asanas.’
‘I’m sorry, Ayush but I don’t understand the term “asanas”,’ said Clemens.
‘It is an Indian word. It means making shapes with the body, many are named after animals, and the yogi holds each pose for quite sometime.’
‘Like a human sculpture,’ I said, quite fascinated.
Ayush’s face turned suddenly serious.
‘But you have to be very careful. In my country, there are also fakirs,’ he warned.
Ayush slept on the floor in my consulting room curled up in a Kashmir blanket. He ate dried foods cooked in spices that he had brought from India and I worried about the pungent smells having an effect on my remedies. During the days, he made himself scarce.
‘Walking this lovely city of yours,’ he said. ‘It is lucky for an Indian to have this experience.’
‘Where did you meet Clemens?’ I once asked.
‘He is a very famous homeopath. I read his books. I wrote to him. He said I should come to Paris because this is where Samuel Hahnemann died. I couldn’t be luckier. He met me off the boat and introduced me to you.’
In the evenings we sat on the floor. He remained cross-legged for hours whilst I wriggled on the hard wood with my legs straight out in front of me, my back against the wall. We would begin by humming.
‘Listen to your own humming,’ Ayush would command. ‘Concentrate on the sound of your humming.’
When we stopped my head was so full of a rushing silence it felt like a mountain stream had washed through my mind. With hands held together in prayer, thumbs resting on breastbone, head bowed, he recited words in Sanskrit and then translated for me: I bow before the noblest of sages, Pataňjali, who brought serenity of mind by his work on yoga, clarity of speech by his work on grammar, and purity of body by his work on medicine.
‘Now concentrate on your breathing,’ he said. ‘Breathe evenly. As the air is sucked upwards make it even in both nostrils. Breathe so the length of time of your in-breath is the same as your out-breath. Breathe so the speed of your breath is even with each breath.’
If my mind wandered to other thoughts, which it often did, I held my breath and Ayush would clap his hands and say, ‘All thoughts are directed inwards. Imagine the air filling up and then leaving your lungs.’
When he left two weeks later, I had learned, with great respect for my teacher, the discipline of daily practice. He stood in his white suit with his small bag at his feet, placed his palms together and bowed before me.
‘One day I will come back and teach you to meditate,’ he said.
‘Ayush, what have we been doing every evening for the last two weeks?’ I asked, mirroring his bow.
‘Preparation for meditation,’ he said, wiggling his head.
I sit on the floor with my back to the wall, humming then breathing as evenly as I can. Twenty minutes later, the jangled noise in my head has disappeared. I invite the first person in and am able to lose myself in another’s story once again.
Reunion
May 16th, still
‘For an Impressionist, to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.’
Paul Cézanne
It is almost a relief just to have arrived at Blanche’s house. I know that she will probably be out teaching, so I have brought supplies to use while I wait. I set up an easel and canvas and begin to draw her shy house concealed by an abundance of ivy. Then I try to sense the subtle colours and softness evoked by this sunny late afternoon by introducing water based paints. A pigeon marches up and down the windowsill outside her bedroom like a sentry. A red squirrel scurries up a tree. I am captured by my subject. The hours pass. The warm spri
ng air cools. Shadows lengthen and eventually overwhelm. I set up garden flares in old glass jars that I found abandoned by the river and I paint until I can no longer see.
I am loath to pack up my things and leave this spot although night has closed in and Blanche has not returned. I sit on the bench hugging myself with my arms. I watch stars signal as if from a lighthouse to a ship, they mesmerise like Charcot’s hypnotherapy, like Auysh’s conversation. I fall asleep.
A loud thump wakes me. I was dreaming of sitting in a small restaurant with Victorine. She was speaking but I wasn’t listening. I was anticipating Blanche but she did not arrive. The dark mood in the dream greets me as I wake. My hands and nose are so cold they burn. I notice there is an envelope in my lap. It is white, luminous. I shake myself into the present and attempt to open it but the blood in my fingers is ice. I wouldn’t be able to read whatever is inside anyway. The flares have gone out. A cloud veils the moon and darkness has swallowed the world. In that moment, I do not care about the neighbours. I bang on the door.
‘Let me in Blanche,’ I call up to her bedroom. ‘I need to talk to you. I’ve been here since this afternoon.’
I hear no response, so I pick up a stone from beside the tree and toss it upwards towards her bedroom. It hits the window. I do not care if the glass is scratched or broken. I see a small light that can only be from a match and then a larger flare that moves towards the window. I do not know if she sees my face in the glare, if it catches the hint of tears.
‘I’m coming down,’ she calls in a loud whisper.
When the door opens I am grateful and move quickly inside. The hallway is narrow. Her body is almost touching mine. She puts her palms on my cheeks.
‘In the morning we will talk,’ she says to my eyes.
I lower my stare.
I see her chest rise and fall.
I’m afraid to move.
‘Please, hold me,’ she says, and somewhere in that moment I must have dropped the envelope. Reaching out she gasps at my frozen touch but her skin is like a drug.
‘Here,’ she says, helping me to remove her clothes faster.
The back of my head smashes against the wall as I pull her towards me. Her naked breasts are against my chest. I interlock my hands beneath her buttocks and lift her. Her legs become my wings as she takes me within. She shudders. I do not thrust.
‘Please,’ she says.
For one chanced moment, I look to the opposite wall by the still open door and our silhouette, a butterfly.
I do not want to move. Blanche brings all the bedding she can downstairs to cover me. I tell her it’s a cold night and I need her warmth too and it feels good to hold her whilst we fall asleep. When we wake with the first hint of dawn, I cannot remember a time when I felt happier. We are wrapped in sheets, eating stale bread with crusts that fall like snow from a roof, and ripe, pregnant cheese. Juice from a soft tomato dribbles down her chin. I lick it clean. I want to lick her everywhere. I smooth away a curl of her hair and my lips get lost somewhere behind her ear. Blanche’s breath hastens.
Here in Paris, we are taught vaginal stimulation at medical school. It is thought to be a cure for hysterical paroxysms. A condition, we were told, that comes from the womb.
When Canard massaged the clitoris of a young woman in front of a group of students, I walked out. I was told that she fought him hysterically in the beginning but eventually ‘climaxed and calmed down’.
‘The therapy works,’ Canard argued.
‘We don’t do this to men,’ I said.
‘Have you ever seen a hysterical man, Gachet?’
‘It is hysterical to lose one’s temper and want to kill, but men do this all the time. Why don’t you test out your theory on such a member of our human race?’
‘Can you really not stand the fact that we make these women feel better?’
‘Many cry afterwards and their tears are not joyful.’
‘They whimper,’ he said with his hands on the table and his face too close to mine. ‘Where they screamed before.’
‘And you expect me to be placated by what you’ve just said?’
‘Doctor Gachet, it’s time you gave up your fight. Medicine is medicine,’ he said pushing himself away from the table. ‘It is how we practise it. Do you want to be a buffoon all your life, or do you want to become a doctor? Because if you do, I suggest you go very quiet from now on. My patience is running out for your ignorance in the ways of the world.’
So, help me God, I am grateful to the education now. I understand the female anatomy in some detail. How it works has been explained to me, graphically. In Blanche’s home, the sun pushes its rays through the clouds in the sky. I lift my face toward the window and a beam of light blinds me. Lost in the sound of Blanche’s breath, I encourage her to lie then kiss my way down her body.
‘Does this feel nice?’ I ask, looking up into the sun, hesitating.
‘Paul,’ she says, ‘Please, don’t stop, go on.’
The Salon des Refusés
May 17th
‘Insults are pouring down on me thick as hail.’
Edouard Manet
Blanche moans and the sun slips behind a cloud. I stop kissing her to look at her face. She is wondrously abandoned upon our eiderdown bed that’s still on the floor. I am Hercules. The blood is pulsing through my veins. My heart is big and thumping. I am flying but one second later all my organs are lead weights. I sit on the end of the sheet she’d brought down last night for us and put my head in my hands. Blanche throws her arms around my neck from behind.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asks, with her lips so close to my skin she raises the hairs around my seventh cervical. I shake my head and turn around.
‘I’ve just remembered something. I didn’t turn up for Georges de Bellio last week. I’m sorry … I … just lost the moment.’
‘Go and see him,’ she says standing and handing me my underclothes.
‘Blanche, we still haven’t spoken about us and I have to know why the other night you told me you don’t want me, and now this, which has been wonderful, but … .’
‘We can’t do this here, not now, when you have to go.’
She has manoeuvred herself around and is kneeling in front of me.
‘Tonight then.’
‘I am playing at the Bade.’
‘Then when?’
Silence.
‘Blanche, last week we were practically engaged.’
‘Well, maybe that was the problem.’
I look to the tall ceiling, the decorative cornice of grapes on a vine and a square of soot above the mantelpiece.
‘Am I supposed to understand?’
‘Let’s just say it has something to do with the fact that I’m frightened.’
‘Of me? What have I ever done to make you feel frightened? Surely not the intimacy, you seem to enjoy that well enough.’
‘No Paul,’ she laughs. ‘I’ve had other lovers if that’s what you think.’
‘What are you frightened of Blanche?’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she says.
‘Please, I am not your enemy.’
‘Being left,’ she says, sweeping up the bed sheets, walking out and leaving a trail of crumbs in her wake.
It is still early morning. Blanche asked me to leave in the end. I have no idea what happened to the envelope, or what was inside it. I looked for it before I went but it had mysteriously disappeared. I am a little angry that Blanche is so sensitive to being abandoned but not about abandoning me. I walked, of course. Through the damp air of an earlier rainfall that has shined the surface of things. And now, at home, I’m alone dragging out the bathtub from the cupboard again. Cold water will do. I carry bowlfuls from the tap to the bath. My emotions are in control of me. I hope I can wash them away.
I put a foot gingerly over the side. The water is shockingly iced but it feels punishingly good. What must Georges de Bellio think of me? Thoughts come in waves through my mind about Blanche
. What do I do with this need to constantly be with her? She doesn’t make it easy. If I’m honest with myself, she was coughing again. How can I be the objective observer? How can I treat her? She is frightened of losing me and I have a premonition that I will not only lose her but also my old friend Georges.
I sit on my knees in the bath. My genitals protest. The water stuns, numbs. I splash it on my face. There’s a war in my guts and the feeling doesn’t go away.
‘Nooo!’ I call out, disturbing the ghosts in the walls.
As I step out of the bath, I notice the date on yesterday’s paper lying on the floor. The opening of the Salon des Refusés is already happening. I have been writing the date on patients’ notes all week and I hadn’t even realised it was approaching. I don’t usually forget things. Perhaps I need a remedy to balance out my energies. Or is it the Phosphorus having its way with me?
There are classes at Père Suisse but he won’t be expecting anyone, and as for Georges, my guess is that he will be one of the first visitors standing in line, moustachios glistening.
It is barely 9am and I get dressed for the second time this morning. I must hurry to the Palais de l’Industrie, there’s no time to walk. Luckily, I manage to flag down an empty hansom. The coachman raises an eyebrow when I choose to sit next to him.
‘Fine morning,’ he says, proudly as if this day is his creation.
‘The Palais de l’Industrie,’ I say, willing the horse to move faster. Exhibition staff will be putting the finishing touches to the hangings. All our paintings are almost ready to show off.
‘Would you like me to go quickly?’ he asks.
‘Thank you,’ I say, drumming my fingers on my thigh.
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