Mesmerised

by Michelle Shine

  ‘Doctor Charcot, what is going on here?’ I ask.

  Quackenetre says, ‘Doctor Ipsen has changed his mind about Bella Laffaire’s diagnosis. He thinks we have all been a bit too brash in labelling this patient manic, or deluded or even needing help. You see, a relative of hers has come to claim her. A rather forceful and somewhat powerful man whom the police have advised us to placate … .’

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ I say to no one in particular. Combing my hand through my hair, I start to pace.

  ‘He claims that Bella has always been a little highly strung. In fact he called her “my darling little shrew” a number of times.’

  ‘I know who he is. That man is a pimp,’ I say.

  ‘Come now, Gachet,’ Quackenetre says forcefully, coming to stand.

  ‘Doctor Ipsen are you sure? Are you really sure that you will lie like this to appease a pompous cunt who thinks he is above the law?’

  ‘Thank goodness your wife and children are not here Jean-Martin,’ Quackentre again. ‘Doctor Gachet, this is totally unnecessary, this obscene language from a doctor, my God!’

  Doctor Ipsen remains sitting. His eyes harden, magnified behind myopic lenses. He looks at me and says, ‘Doctor Gachet, Bella’s relative is circumstantial, but after the fiasco of your last consultation, I can’t let your little homeopathy experiment go on. I feel morally compelled to render it null and void. You are lucky that I am not hauling you up in front of all the directors of the Faculty for a hearing. And I don’t believe I’ve lied, I have simply changed my mind.’

  ‘Good day, gentlemen,’ I say. I pick up my portfolio and walk out into the hall.

  Charcot comes after me. He grabs my arm.

  ‘Gachet,’ he whispers, ‘I have always liked you, and in some ways respected you, but don’t you care? Can’t you see it? Are you really such a fool? Think quickly man, what good will it do and what will it prove if you walk out now? They have talked about it and they will rescind your membership of the Faculty. You won’t be able to practice medicine officially and the scandal will be humiliatingly written up in all the newspapers. Do you really want that?’

  A lump of bile rises in my throat. I feel like I’d just been sick all over the man’s shoes. I wipe my mouth as if I had just done so and follow him back into the room.

  The scene is quite surreal. At least it is in the way that I experience it. They say the effects of absinthe can come back to haunt you during stressful times. Maybe that is what’s happening to me now.

  We are in the dining room: an oval space with an oval table and a glass domed roof. The walls are the colour of a mossy pond. Doctor Ipsen and I sit in the middle of the table, facing each other. Doctors Quackenetre and Charcot are at either end. There is stilted conversation and much silence interrupted by the scratching and chink of cutlery against china. At first I thought I’d get drunk, but in truth, the wine is not worth risking a headache. So I watch them when they do speak, each of them in turn, attempting politeness, asking for salt to be passed or if nurse Morrisot has been employed a long time. They seem to be strangely comforted that I actually came back to eat with them. Do they really think I’m obliged to take on their politics without further ado?

  ‘Doctor Ipsen is travelling to America on Monday. He will be there for three months on Faculty business. With his special interest in medicinal drugs, he is the best to perform the link between us doctors and pharmacology. We’re lucky we have someone so accomplished. So, on Friday he’ll be winding things up for the Faculty in Salpiêtrière,’ Quackenetre says.

  I have a chimera: I stand up, walk over to Quackenetre, lift his plate full of food and crash it over his head, then swipe my fist upward beneath his jaw. I then turn around and walk casually to the other end of the table. ‘The paintings on these putrid walls are pure crap,’ I say to Charcot.

  Back in reality: ‘That’s fine,’ Charcot agrees with a forkful of food midway between his mouth and his plate.

  I smile to myself.

  ‘It’s a real shame about homeopathy, Gachet. We were all rooting for it even if we did already know that it couldn’t possibly work.’ This is Ipsen.

  In a fancy again: Ipsen’s on the floor, his chair fallen over behind him. I’m straddling his body and repeatedly pummelling his bloody face with my fist.

  Then reality seeps in. The door opens behind him. A very elegant young woman enters. She has two small children, a girl who is trying to keep her balance in her mother’s wake and a boy, a little older, buttoned to his chin in a thick woollen coat.

  ‘Jean-Martin, I’m sorry to disturb your lunch, I’ve had to come home early, Genevieve is not well. She is burning up a fever. I thought, perhaps, you might attend to her right away.’

  ‘Genevieve is our baby. Excuse me gentlemen.’ Charcot says, and leaves the room accompanied by his family.

  Neither Quackenetre nor Ipsen speak, although both have clearly finished their food. Waitresses bustle in and remove our plates, so efficiently I barely have time to thank them. Moments later Charcot bursts back into the room. ‘Doctor Ipsen, we need an anti-pyretic,’ he says.

  ‘Willow bark, of course. If you don’t have any here we can hail a hansom to the nearest hospital.’

  ‘Her age makes her too delicate. I saw abdominal haemorrhage time and time again at the Hospital for Sick Children after giving willow bark,’ I say.

  Ipsen does not reply but purses his mouth and drums his fingers on the table. The waitresses bring our ice cream.

  Madame Chanterel asks, ‘Is everything all right with the catering?’

  No one answers.

  ‘Jean-Martin, Jean-Martin, come quick,’ Madame Charcot calls.

  Doctors Charcot, Quackenetre and Ipsen run towards the sound of her voice. I follow behind. When I arrive in the nursery, the doctors are standing by the door in conference about what therapeutic step to take.

  ‘None of us are experts in infant diseases, I’m going to take her to the hospital,’ Charcot says.

  ‘It’s November, she’ll die of cold on the way,’ Quackenetre says.

  ‘Willow bark, willow bark,’ Ipsen says again. ‘Doctor Charcot, you should listen to me.’

  Madame Charcot is sitting on the floor by the crib. I go to sit beside her.

  ‘I have three homeopathic remedies for fever in my pocket. My suggestion is that we give her one of each whilst your husband makes up his mind. The worst that can happen is that none of them is the right one. They cannot cause even one iota of harm.’

  I see her silhouette nod in this darkened room.

  ‘Do you have two spoons? I must crush the pillules into a powder first.’

  ‘Jean-Martin,’ Madame Charcot calls.

  Her husband makes his way over, wearing the light from the hallway like an aura.

  ‘Doctor Gachet wants to give Genevieve something homeopathic,’ she says.

  ‘Just while you’re making up your minds what to do,’ I say.

  Charcot looks towards his colleagues and nods.

  ‘It will do no harm,’ he tells his wife.

  ‘He needs two spoons,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll go and get them.’

  Just by chance I made a home visit this morning to another baby with a fever. I brought Aconite, Chamomilla and Belladonna with me in my pocket. Rare is the infant fever that is not brought down by one of these.

  Doctor Charcot hands me the spoons. I decant one pillule of each remedy onto one of them and crush them down with the convex bottom of the other. Then I pour some of the granules between the infant’s lips. A powdery white moustache glows above her mouth.

  ‘Let me know how she gets on,’ I say, coming up to stand and then, seizing the moment, in a loud voice, ‘Doctor Charcot, you’ll have to forgive me. I must look in on a patient and so must be leaving now. Thank you for lunch.’ I nod to the other two. ‘Doctors Ipsen, Quackenetre.’ and leave, not at all sorry to be gone.

  24th November

  It is Monday. I am res
tless. I leave early from Blanche’s home. I have my portfolio of the case of Bella Laffaire under my arm. I am wondering what to do with it – what can I do with it?

  This morning Blanche has a private client who lives on the rue de Rivoli, a woman in her early twenties whose fiancé wishes to marry a woman who plays the violin – a challenge, according to Blanche. When I tried to speak to her at eight o’clock, she could not think past what to wear and not being late. So, I have breakfast alone by the river in Café Filou, in the Boulevard des Augustins. I’ve bought a copy of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. I intended to read it over coffee and croissants with honey but find myself staring out at the unwelcoming waters made choppy by a blustery wind. Boats sway and threaten to lose their cargo to an iron-grey and greedy Seine.

  At the table behind me, two men are having a whispered conversation. I’m sure that if they were talking normally, I would be deeply engrossed in the long essay about Courbet by now and would not have heard a word. But as it is, my curiosity is piqued and, in spite of myself, I can’t help but listen.

  ‘A generous offer but I can’t accept,’ says a voice that I recognise. ‘My colleagues wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘Then how else can we pay you?’

  ‘My wife is most taken with last year’s gift. She is in the South right now with a team of people she’s employed. She tells me every room will be a different colour. It should be ready by next summer vacation time. Maybe a yacht and a crew for the season?’

  ‘Every year for as long as all the hospitals in Paris keep ordering our laudanum. Of that, you can rest assured.’

  ‘Very generous. Very generous indeed and most appreciated.’

  ‘It’s the least we can do.’

  ‘Well, business concluded. I must be on my way.’

  I hear chairs scrape backwards on the wooden floor. A hip pushes against my table.

  ‘So, sorry.’

  I look up at Doctor Ipsen. His face is panicked. ‘Oh, it’s only you Doctor Gachet,’ he says, then quickly calms down again. ‘Good morning, nasty day.’

  ‘Unforgiving,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, well,’ Ipsen says, looking around to see his associate walk out. ‘I’ll see you at the hospital.’ He even lifts his bowler hat to me and that makes the demon rise inside me. The waitress comes and I mumble something about feeling sick and needing to leave. Once on the street the savage wind bites at my skin. I cannot help myself. I run down to the riverbank and kick a sack of apples left on the quayside. The coarse material ruptures and dozens of green orbs tumble out after me, rolling and bruising and falling into the Seine like a fairy-tale of rats. There are barrels of oysters and mussels. I punch one of them several times.

  ‘Hey!’ a voice calls out.

  I hear footsteps running towards me, mingling with the blood that’s pumping in my ears. As the skin on my knuckles rips, I hit the barrel again, almost topple it with naked bone.

  A hand grabs my shoulder, turns me round. A stranger’s fist hurtles towards me. I grab the man’s arm and hit him in the guts with a ragged hand. He falls backwards into the barrels and squirms on the floor. I start walking backwards.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’

  Wiping my mouth I turn around to make my way back up the stone stairs. I catch Doctor Ipsen looking down for just one second before he walks away. My assailant grabs me by the shoulder again and this time when he turns me towards him, he pummels my face till I see the moon rise behind my closed lids and feel my spine scrape its way down the rocky wall.

  I lie there for some time, my neck propped up on a rock, my clothes dishevelled, watching a gang of dockers pat my assailant on the back.

  ‘Thanks mate, we could have lost the lot.’

  ‘Couldn’t let him get away with it,’ my attacker replies.

  ‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ another asks.

  They all turn to look my way. I am Portrait of the Well-Beaten Man.

  ‘He’ll live,’ their hero tells them. He picks up a stray apple and hurls it into the river. ‘He’s a thug who only got what he deserved.’

  I think to move but my limbs fail me; a thwarted effort despite my sense of urgency. Eventually the cold inspires me to try and move again. Getting up is difficult. My body feels arthritic. I come onto all fours and hang my head, giving my neck some relief, but my swollen eyelids are hard to open, and in this position especially, they throb. I look up and almost cry. I crawl to the street where I sit by the kerb and wave down a hansom. Several pass me by. One stops. The coachman jumps down.

  ‘I appreciate this,’ I manage to say

  ‘You’ve been inside my carriage before. Doctor Gachet, isn’t it?’

  I nod.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ he says.

  I see a tall, well-built man with curly hair.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re the homeopath. We had a long conversation about my father. You recommended Benzoic acid 30c for his gout. Works like a treat. He gets it about twice a year now instead of all the time. Whenever I give him the remedy it shuts him up fast. So, I owe you a favour. Where to?’ he says, hurling me inside.

  Sometimes I do believe that there is a God. What were the chances of entering the hospital mid-morning and Catherine being the first and only person I see?

  I lean up against the wall and pant.

  ‘Where’s Madame Lemont?’

  ‘She’s had to go home, her mother is ill. But what happened to you?’ There is a slight lilt to her voice, a sense of amusement as if she is talking to an errant schoolboy.

  My face took all the blows but my body feels the most bruised and weak. I almost keel over. ‘It’s a long story. I got into a fight,’ I say, as she hauls one of my arms over her shoulder, takes my weight and urges me to walk. If she marries they shouldn’t revoke her right, it is innate for her to be a nurse.

  In the medicaments room, also thankfully empty of any other staff, she dresses my wounds and administers Arnica 30c from a small vial she extracts from her pocket and gently rubs Calendula cream on my bruises.

  ‘I’m very grateful,’ I tell her.

  ‘Well, others might but I couldn’t leave you there propped up by the wall.’

  ‘Sit down, Catherine, I have some bad news.’

  ‘You didn’t murder the other chap?’

  ‘No.’ I laugh and cover my face with my hand to hold it still against the pain. When I’ve composed myself I look up.

  ‘This afternoon will be the last time I’ll have the opportunity to see Bella. They’re dismissing her from the hospital. Handing her over … .’

  ‘To that horrible man?’

  I place my head in my hands and see the Café Guerbois and Victorine blowing Turkish cigarette smoke up in the air. A man with a botched scar, his arms around a girl in a faded blue dress. Bella. She sways as if drunk.

  ‘Look, as far as the Faculty are concerned, the homeopathy experiment has failed.’

  ‘But I don’t understand.’

  ‘Do you know why Doctor Ipsen is so against homeopathy? He takes bribes from a laudanum manufacturer. I overheard the fraudulent dealings this morning whilst having breakfast in a café. You know, I’ve thought about it, he makes more money if patients don’t get well.’

  ‘What can you do?’

  ‘I have no proof, no influence, there’s nothing I can do.’

  Catherine sits down. ‘My mother always said it’s a rotten world.’

  It’s Bella’s final consultation. Doctor Ipsen is very much noted for his absence. Catherine sits behind me as usual but this time she doesn’t write anything down. She stares trance like as if she doesn’t want to be a witness to what is being said. Bella sits on a hard-backed wooden chair before me. I am in my usual position, propping myself up on the side of a bed.

  ‘I had a visitor,’ she says, beaming.

  ‘Oh yes?’ I answer. ‘Who?’

  ‘Victorine. She wants to paint me. She also said that if I ever get o
ut of here, her mother will give me a job as a laundress.’

  ‘And the man you are frightened of?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, looking down. ‘There is always him.’

  ‘Bella, I don’t know how to tell you this. The hospital has agreed for him to be your guardian. When he comes next time he has the right to take you home with him. I’m so sorry, if it was up to me this circumstance would never have happened.’

  Bella looks at me impassively. With her fingers, she plucks out her eyelashes, one by one.

  After seeing Bella, I walk out of the hospital, disregard the pebbled path and stain the bottoms of my trousers with mud as I walk across the damp grass.

  ‘Doctor Gachet! Doctor Gachet!’ booms a voice. Fast, heavy footsteps squelch in the mulch. Next, heavy breathing in my ear. Charcot.

  ‘Oh my God, what’s happened to you,’ he says, panting as I, a devilish sight, turn round. ‘Never mind, don’t answer that, but please, I need to talk to you, come back inside.’

  He marches me back through the hospital to his office like a brigadier. He shuts the door firmly and sits behind his desk.

  ‘Genvieve is well,’ he says. ‘I am so grateful to you and homeopathy for that. You are an honourable man. I’ve spent many, many hours over the last half a day unable to concentrate on anything else but clarifying my own thoughts about you and your medicine and I’ve come to the conclusion that I should advise you not only as a colleague but also as a friend.’

  ‘Advise me about what?’

  ‘To be careful. Look, no one has suggested that I dismiss you but I’ve been advised that you are going away.’

  ‘You obviously know something that I don’t.’

  ‘Exactly. Look Paul, you’re playing a dangerous game with powerful people.’ He rises to lecture and pace. ‘I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Yes, homeopathy works, but would I give up my career for it, my life? Of course not, I have a family to think of, a wife.’ Now he is standing behind his desk, holding onto it fast with ghostly hands and leaning forwards towards me like a bird of prey. ‘I don’t need homeopathy Gachet, I value my career already.’ Restless again, ‘You make me nervous,’ he says, turning towards me, a hand reaching for two glasses from his cabinet. He sits down, splashes brandy into one and pushes the other and the bottle towards me.