‘I already know what you’re going to ask.’
‘Even to take Bella into the grounds is impermissible. To take her outside the hospital is folly, complete folly. If I can bump into you then so can anyone else.’
‘It was my decision and I was prepared to take the consequences should I have been caught.’
‘Why did you? – And how did you do it?’
‘The man Bella is frightened of came to visit. After he left she was gagging for breath and clutching her throat. I instinctively knew that she would be better for some air, so I borrowed a coat from Nurse Fontaine and took a chance in smuggling her out.’
‘But to the Tuileries, that’s miles away.’
‘I know, but it seemed to do her so much good.’
The rural road is unlit and we both carry lamps. Their effect is being slowly annihilated by the oncoming watery daylight. The wind assaults us from all sides.
‘Do you think I can make a living out of homeopathy?’ she asks.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I am getting married,’ she says. ‘Please, Doctor Gachet, don’t tell anyone.’
You can’t be a nurse and a wife in Paris. Sâlpetrière expects the complete devotion it received from the nuns. And if those women in winged hats hadn’t overruled doctors’ decisions in the name of Our Lord then no doubt they would still be employed today. Instead, modern nurses are ordinary, humbler folk. That is, except for Marguerite Bottard.
‘I don’t make much money from homeopathy,’ I tell her honestly. ‘Most of my patients are poor and I treat them for next to nothing or free. But there are others who do make a living from it. So, yes, I do believe you can.’
‘I am a woman, Doctor Gachet. Do you think I will find myself pinned to a stake if I do?’
‘They don’t do that anymore Catherine.’
‘I’ve seen them Doctor Gachet. It’s in their eyes when they look at you. They would have your head rolling off a block if they thought they could get away with it.’
Sâlpetrière stands before us like a holy place, wide with three central arches and a big black dome. The building casts the illusion of righteousness and the doctors inside are the illusionists who perpetrate that thought. I turn to Catherine.
‘Congratulations on your engagement. Your secret is safe with me. I will see you inside.’
I have somehow managed to persuade Ipsen to come down to Bella’s cell for this consultation, partly because I want him to experience how Bella has to live, and partly because I believe her personal surroundings will put her most at ease.
‘Hello Bella,’ I say jauntily, as we walk in the door.
She is dressed in a long, grey, calico nightgown and sits on the side of her straw bed.
‘I’d like you to tell me how you think you are doing?’
‘I’m all right,’ she says.
Ipsen and I sit on chairs, side by side, like a jury. Catherine stands behind me by the door, notebook in one hand, pen poised in the other, making her customary notes.
‘Tell me, why do you think you are all right?’
‘I can see myself now and what I have done,’ she says with her head bowed.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘That I’ve sold my body to men,’ her voice is barely a whisper.
‘And, in your opinion, what is wrong with that?’
‘Nothing, only perhaps it shouldn’t be so.’
‘Why shouldn’t it be so?’
‘There is no reason. Only I know that there are those who think that it shouldn’t be so.’
‘And what do you think?’
She lifts her head and shakes it.
‘I wish it wasn’t so.’
She looks at me directly with liquefied eyes.
I swallow and ask, ‘And who are you?’
‘I am … .’
‘Yes?’
‘I am … .’ She closes her lids and opens them. ‘Bella Laffaire,’ she says.
‘This is ludicrous,’ Ipsen says, through his teeth.
I sit forward and put my hand on his knee.
‘Carry on, tell me about Bella Laffaire,’ I say to Bella.
In the chapel, an alternative exit to the building, Ipsen stops me by pulling on my arm.
‘Doctor Ipsen,’ I say, above the droll sound of the organ. ‘If I didn’t know better I would think you were being aggressive.’
‘Don’t ever do that again, Doctor Gachet.’
‘Do what?’
I look around. A woman in black with a lowered veil kneels on a cushion in one of the pews. A dozen candles flicker on a table in the corner and a palette of colour is thrown on the floor by light coming through the stained glass window over the altar.
‘Put on that spectacle as if you are a producer in a theatre. It is my opinion, and I represent the Faculty here, that you are making a mockery of a very serious profession.’
I look up to the rafters in the high ceiling, then to the far wall where a porcelain Jesus looks down at me full of melancholy as he hangs crumpled on his cross.
‘Doctor Ipsen,’ I say. ‘I did not put on a spectacle. I merely asked the patient questions, which she answered eloquently. If you saw drama, then it is in the nature of her cure.’
‘There is no cure. We don’t have a cure for madness,’ he spits.
‘And is it your opinion that a madwoman can get better without any medical intervention at all?’
‘You’re wasting your time Gachet, Bella Laffaire will never get better.’
‘Then how do you explain what you saw?’
‘I saw nothing,’ he says loudly, stamping his foot like a spoilt boy.
The organ music grows louder. I walk off for I can stand no more, but on second thoughts turn around. The organist strikes one long irritating chord then the music suddenly stops. Ipsen and I stand there locking horns. I wait for the sound to dissipate.
‘You miserable bastard, you saw and heard everything,’ I call out.
My words resound off the walls. The mourner stands up, and looks at me accusingly. Ipsen raises his chin. The angry sounding footsteps heading for the door are my own.
I refuse to let Doctor Ipsen provoke a bad humour inside me, but I have lost all power to remain calm and collected. There is tension in every cell of my body and bile rises up into my oesophagus like the fire of a terrible dragon. I take large strides then break into a run. Feeling awkward, because my work clothes are not suited to this exercise, I push myself to run faster on legs that would rather collapse beneath me. I run, panting, lungs strained and bruising. I run with a stitch in my diaphragm and blisters swelling on the pads of my toes. I run to the river that has been whipped by the wind into a crocodile skin. Along the embankment, past the Louvre, through the Tuileries, left at Place Concorde, across Pont Neuf to Quai d’Orsey, I run behind the Palais de Justice, through the winding streets to her. I run to Blanche. I arrive puffed out, but have only half-exhausted my anger. She opens the door.
‘Come on, we’re going out,’ I say.
I don’t know what she sees but she does not question the command. Silently she goes to get her coat. I wait, huffing, one hand on the doorframe.
‘Where are we going?’ she asks, shutting the door.
‘We’re going to celebrate the efficacy of homeopathy,’ I say.
She takes my arm. I am already feeling better. ‘I can’t even begin to tell you what it was like,’ I say. My strides are wide and fast, so that I am sweeping her along. ‘Bella was like a different person. All that manic behaviour was completely gone. She was rational. But it was more than that. She’d worked it all out for herself: all the emotions that she couldn’t face before. She said, “I’ve always been my mother’s little princess whatever happened to me, whatever I have done,” I wanted to get up and dance.
‘Of course, I should be celebrating with my medical colleagues, but who wants to celebrate with a bunch of beaurocratic dinosaurs anyway, especially when I can buy you champagne and
watch as it wets your lips?’ We have stopped in the middle of the street. I smile but she stares at me with concern.
‘I worry for you,’ she says.
I look up to the sky. ‘I know.’I bunch her fist in mine and we cross the river and walk towards Tortini’s and every few moments Blanche glances in my direction. There is a false bounce in my stride as she glides along beside me.
‘Doctor Gachet’ is a whisper on the wind – a ghost in the air – words in my head.
I turn around.
A blast of cold air punches me in the face.
‘What is it?’ Blanche asks.
‘Oh, nothing,’ I answer.
We turn down a street lined with clothiers, a chemist, and a wine shop.
‘Let’s go in here,’ she says, as we look at our reflections imposed in the window, behind it a display of bottles with expensive price tags.
‘Why?’
‘They sell very fine champagne.’
‘I want to take you … .’
‘Home and besides I’m uncomfortable in these clothes.’
I wanted to feed her potent bubbles on a spoon. I wanted to hear her laughter and make love to her as a celebratory rite. Instead, we have abandoned the bedroom. She wears a shirt of mine, sits with her feet up by the fire and listens to my wrath.
‘How can Ipsen do this? And why, Blanche, why? Why would he want to pretend that there has not been a significant change in Bella? Do you think it is personal? Do you think it’s less about homeopathy and more about having taken a dislike to me? That’s perfectly possible I suppose, but why deny humanity a beneficial medicine? Surely he’s above that, don’t you think?’
Blanche looks up at me, sipping from her glass as I pace.
‘Look, it’s not conclusive, I agree. One patient doesn’t prove anything, not really, but it should pave the way for more test cases, more investigation. I just can’t believe that he has taken this attitude. And where does this leave me?’ I look to my glass and the wine going flat. ‘I need a plan.’
I wake up with a start, on the floor, with my head on the sofa, next to a sleeping Blanche. There is an empty champagne bottle on the table, the sharp odour of alcohol on her breath. I stroke her arm, put my ear to her mouth to check her breathing, then go to sit on a chair facing the window. Silk veils of clouds sail across a darkening sky.
I decide to create a document, a scientific paper worthy of appearing in a medical journal: ‘The case of Bella Laffaire’. Copies will be sent to every medical society across the globe. It shall contain Ipsen’s diagnosis of the patient, my hypothesis and conclusion, all the detailed case-notes with my observations, a long explanation as to the homeopathic process and how I came to my prescription. A well-scripted accompanying letter will be proofread by my father. I’m sure he will oblige. I will use the most professional approach to present the evidence. I can see myself in the future, lecturing in medical schools all over the world.
I sit down on the floor to meditate for as long as it takes. When she wakes, I want Blanche to see me tranquil. I need her to know that I can work it out – for both of us – and that she doesn’t really ever have to worry about me.
The Pinch of the Game
November 23rd
Tell me, do you think I’m going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know … .’
Paul Cézanne
I have my own ideas about why Ipsen denies the efficacy of Bella’s treatment but do not wish to assume anything. So, I have taken to following him. In the evenings he returns home to a buxom wife and three well-built children, which is surprising because he is so thin. Perhaps it’s his conscience disallowing him to put on weight.
He employs two liveried coachmen, owns two ornate carriages, and always makes sure that he is dropped outside the hospital gates so that he can walk into work. He lives by the park in l’avenue Hoche.
He accompanies his wife to the Opera, to dinner parties in well-to-do parts of town, to gown shops on a Saturday, and at least three times a week in the early hours he frequents a bordello in Place de Clichy. He takes coffee in Café Filou, a small establishment opposite the Seine.
I visit Charcot. His office at La Sâlpètriere overlooks the sincere beauty of a natural landscape – a grass plain of some acreage, scattered trees and a barely diminished horizon, here on the outskirts of urbanized Paris.
‘Come in Gachet, come in,’ he says, with one arm casually draped over my shoulder and guiding me towards a chair. ‘Sit down’.
Such a welcome far from pacifies but instead makes me slightly overcome and I at once forget what I have come to say. ‘Bella Laffaire,’ is all I manage to get out before he speaks again.
‘I know.’ He stands next to his desk, his arms behind his back ‘I want you to know that personally speaking, I have the greatest respect for you and homeopathy. I mean it must be an intellectually stimulating pursuit to have at first attracted and then seduced a man like you.’
He takes a breath.
‘Doctor Charcot, do you believe that a case of manic insanity can be cured without any medical intervention?’
‘Actually, Gachet, I don’t believe that mania or insanity can be helped at all, as with all nervous disorders at this point in time, they are incurable. An insane moment might pass, but the predisposition to insanity? No, that remains to overwhelm the patient at any time.’
‘If I said that there is some reason to suspect that underlying emotional issues are being addressed in the case of Bella Laffaire, would I have your interest?’
‘My personal interest, yes. But I don’t make the rules.’
‘Doctor Charcot, with the Faculty’s permission, Catherine Morrisot and myself have meticulously written up the case of Bella Laffaire for only one reason: to demonstrate the effectiveness of her treatment. I need to have the opportunity to present it to someone who does make the rules.’
Charcot bites his bottom lip. He comes to stand beside me with one hand on the back of my chair.
‘Come to my house on Sunday for lunch. It is in the best interests of everyone concerned that this matter is resolved quickly. Do you prefer partridge or goose?’
I stand outside Charcot’s front door eying the varnished heavy oak panelling and signal my arrival using the brass lion-head knocker. A tall, slim, grey-haired woman, dressed in black comes to the front door and although she smiles, her face betrays a bad smell in the air.
‘Good afternoon,’ I say, taking off my cap.
I try to hand over a small cardboard box tied up with ribbon but she does not take it from me.
‘And you are?’ she asks.
‘I’m Paul, Doctor Paul Gachet.’
‘I see,’ she says, grabbing a piece of paper from the top of the sideboard. ‘Yes, I have you. Jean-Pierre is serving aperitifs in the sitting room. You know the way?’
I shake my head and then as an afterthought she says, ‘I am Madame Chanterel of ‘Le Delicieux’. My waitresses will be serving you lunch.’
Doctor Charcot’s apartment is probably the same size as Madame Manet’s but with a very different décor. The carpet is plush, the colour of fresh blood. A cast-iron dog sits upon the floor. The walls are wood panelled. A number of pen and ink drawings in black frames hang here and there. I lean over to inspect Charcot’s taste in art: a Paris street, La Notre Dame, La Sâlpètriere. All unremarkable and unsigned.
‘Doctor,’ Madame Chanterel says.
‘I’m sorry, yes, please lead the way.’
The sitting room could be an extension of Charcot’s office but for its heavy velvet drapes drawn against the day. Every light is lit but all are shaded with frosted glass that hardly brightens the atmosphere at all. The fire is paltry: two skeletal logs and a single flame like a tongue between them.
Doctors Ipsen and Quackenetre sit at either end of a sofa smoking cigars. Doctor Charcot comes forward from his stance in front of the fire.
‘I bought chocolates for your wife,’ I say, handing him the small cardboard box.
>
‘She’s taken the children over to friends. But thank you, I’m sure she’ll enjoy them,’ he says, placing the box on top of the mantel.
A middle aged man in a tuxedo approaches me from out of nowhere.
‘Sir,’ he says. ‘What can I get you to drink?’
‘We’re all having Pernod,’ says Charcot.
‘Then I will too,’ I tell the man and turn towards Charcot. ‘The chocolates will melt if you leave them there.’
He takes them away and puts them on an occasional table barely two feet from the fire. Ipsen squirms slightly and with one finger pushes his glasses further up his nose. Quackenetre leans forwards, eyes twinkling with anticipation, as if he is about to witness a horse race or a duel. I place myself in the leather-studded armchair opposite the fire. An interesting painting of a ship in a very stormy sea is badly lit on the wall in front of me. It looks like a reproduction of one of Edouard’s earlier works and I find myself wanting to take a closer look.
‘I was just saying that you would be bringing your notes on the case of Bella Laffaire.’
Ipsen and I exchange a brief glance.
‘Yes,’ I say, reaching down to the floor to pick up my portfolio.
‘I would like to take a look at that,’ says Doctor Quackenetre, reaching out towards me with one hand.
‘Of course,’ I say, passing him my work.
He puts his cigar down on an ashtray and opens the folder. The first page is an index. He seems to read it with some attention. Then he whips the air with it as if to shake the paper free of creases, and deposits the sheet on the floor by his feet. Everyone looks at him as he thumbs through the rest of the papers, closes the cover and replaces the ribbon.
‘I suggest,’ he says, holding it out towards me. ‘That you do away with this.’
‘Did I hear you correctly?’ I ask, taking it from him.
‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘You absolutely did.’
I look at Charcot who is in his usual lecturer’s pose, hands behind his back, and Ipsen who intently stares at nothing. The Pernod arrives as green as I perceive my face to be. I wait until the waiter walks out of the room.
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