Mesmerised

by Michelle Shine

  Rose looks at me. ‘That’s a big question,’ she says, looking to the ceiling. A drop from above falls onto her face, like a tear. ‘I was so angry I pulled out my hair.’ She looks away and says no more as if she has just told me the definitive answer.

  ‘And?’ I ask, eventually.

  ‘History, it’s all in the history. People take sides, but it’s always some powerful bastards manipulating things. Very few of them care about ordinary folk. It made me realise that I was a clodpate to think that I could ever do anything about it.’

  ‘What’s the answer then?’

  ‘There is no answer. Agh … ,’ she says. ‘You’re bringing it all back.’ She hits her forehead repeatedly with the heel of her palm.

  I lie on the light coating of dirty straw with my back towards Rose, the two of us odorous, and even though we don’t touch, strangely intimate. I can’t sleep. She’s right. Throughout history the balance of power shifts, but, fundamentally, human nature remains the same. But she’s wrong – in theory at least, there is an answer and I’m wide awake and excited by the possibility. What if the whole picture of disease is not expressed solely by any individual, the individual being merely one part that makes up the whole, like the stomach, the heart, a leg or an arm? And the whole body is a family, a country, society, humanity … .

  It is night. I must remember that it is night and such thoughts only seem less fanciful because of the lack of sunrays. But what remedy would heal, say, the staff at La Sâlpètriere? Characteristics shared generally by the nurses, Doctor Ipsen and Doctor Charcot are: love of power but respectful to superiors, deceitful, ambitious. My heart pumps wildly with enlightenment. The remedy is Lycopodium. I imagine creeping through the hospital with a bottle of high-potency Lycopodium dust and sprinkling it into the air for everyone to ingest.

  I turn towards Rose. Clouds have shifted and her face is a luminous blue in the moonlight. There’s a rattle in her chest that I’m sure has been instigated by the awful and relentless damp. Sometimes it makes me want to hang on to the window bars and haul myself up just to breathe something fresh. Rose’s mouth hangs open and a small trickle of saliva rolls down her chin.

  Jagged lumps of stone dig into my flesh. I manoeuvre my body then toss myself to face the other way. And Paris? What remedy would I put in the water that supplies Paris? I can’t think of an answer but the world suddenly appears very small and all the people in it interconnected in some way. Perhaps we are like ants, each one of us taking part in some vast mission, but only aware of our own individual task? And therefore, maybe, what appears to be might not really be so. It suddenly feels dangerous to presume or even to contemplate mass healing when no one person can be privy to the whole. Therefore, how can anyone judge any outcome? What to do if there’s a healing crisis? On second thoughts it is best to stick to the curing of individuals.

  I sit up and rub my damp forehead with clammy palms. Of all the things that I don’t understand, my most immediate question is, how have I ended up in a sewer like this?

  Some afternoon follows some morning. I’m watching the light. It delivers memories. The sun behind a skeletal tree beams onto the door and it reminds me of May in Blanche’s downstairs room. I tell myself that no reminiscence is allowed, and instead look towards the dark, wet corner and the gloom, hearing the scratching of rats, the parting of dry bracken and the painful cry of a fox outside. I breathe in Blanche’s phantasmal scent, have the taste of her skin on my tongue. Rose watches as I tremble and sweat with longing.

  There is a certain time of night when the wall is splashed with moonlight and the world is mysterious, which reminds me of Montmartre. I’m inspired to capture it in pigment upon canvas, but have to make do with going through the motions in my mind.

  My stomach nags with hunger. I can feel the jutting bones crunch in my shoulders. It feels as if I haven’t eaten for days. A loud clang jolts me. Light from a lantern is a shaft through the peephole that makes me scrunch my eyes. I use my hand for a shield. The door squeals open. Blinding white bursts through the dam.

  ‘I’ve brought you some food,’ our jailer says. ‘I hope you’re satisfied. I’ve got out of a nice warm cosy bed with my wife to come and feed you two. Couldn’t sleep when I realised that I’d forgotten your rotten needs. Not many men are as generous as me,’ he says, his voice trailing towards us.

  ‘What’s he here for? It’s the middle of the night.’ Rose’s words are so close to my ear I feel the condensation of her breath against my already moist lobe.

  ‘He’s brought us food,’ I whisper back.

  ‘About bloody time.’

  My sight has adjusted. Our man’s eyes are two pieces of shining coal and the ruddiness of his cheeks glows in the light. His large stomach prohibits bending without a clumsy effort. He bangs a tray down before us. Cold broth slaps over the side of a small metal pan. A wedge of bread sits on a bed of its own crumbs, and next to it, a chunk of cheese with a layer of mould that’s a more muted emerald shade than the bright moss on the walls. He strokes his unruly beard. Rose and I are wide-eyed before him like children in a fairytale.

  ‘Done my bit,’ he says, before walking out.

  Rose hits her forehead with her palm several times.

  ‘You really must stop doing that.’ I say.

  Then, as if someone has given us a shotgun start, we are silhouettes in the dark, tearing and gobbling food like lions at a slaughter. With dry bits lodged in our throats and threatening our breath we pull at the pan from one to the other, losing more liquid over its side. I catch myself out and let go slowly.

  ‘You first,’ I say.

  Rose looks at me with animal eyes, gulps noisily. By the light of the moon I see the whiteness of her throat and its muscles tighten and relax as she drinks. I pray to whatever deity might listen that she saves me some, and she does, but I’m so thirsty for liquid it is a tease and nowhere near enough. I watch Rose lick the pads of her fingers and use them as magnets for any fragments of food.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ she asks.

  ‘Rose?’ I say, with my hunger heightened and not sure whether I am any better or worse off now. ‘Nothing.’

  She sucks at her fingers as if they’re lollipops.

  ‘It’s just that … .’

  She lifts her chin questioningly.

  ‘It’s just that I believe the world needs people like us. Ultimately, nothing changes it’s true, but if we don’t fight for what we believe in then the world has got to be worse off, surely?’

  She looks through me.

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘Without us in here, you mean?’

  ‘It’s not just us Rose, there are others too.’

  ‘I don’t see them,’ she says, twisting her head to look over one shoulder and then the next.

  ‘Well, you’re in here.’

  ‘And if there were others, they’d be picked up like us and dumped in here too.’

  ‘You don’t believe that.’

  ‘Of course I believe it. It doesn’t do you any good to be caring. It bothers you and bothers you and bothers you until you have to yell, aim a rifle, or spit in someone’s face, but it doesn’t do you or anyone else any good, you just end up in here!’

  Rose picks her teeth with her fingernail then lies down again. A gust of cold wind whistles and shoots itself through the window at my thinning body until I shiver and wrap myself in my own arms. Rose shivers too.

  ‘In my next life,’ she tells me, ‘I’m not going to care.’

  Days and nights slide, one upon the other, like shuffled cards. How many days? How many nights? Must be quite a few. I walk round and round the circumference of the cell, moving through a forest of shadows and light. Rose lies on the wisps of straw wheezing loudly. Her hair is wet and slimy like seaweed. I have touched her forehead. It radiates a furious heat. Impotence from having no remedies at my disposal has created a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat. The feeling brings me back to a long ago time when I pac
ed the floor in my apartment with terrible frustration. Ayush has come back to visit me in my mind.

  ‘It’s no good Ayush, I can’t concentrate on my breath.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ he says. ‘“Can’t” is a restriction you impose upon yourself.’

  ‘But I have thoughts that seduce my mind all the time.’

  ‘Then banish them.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘Please, sit down, you are becoming worried and that is the opposite of the peace and serenity that this practice is trying to bring you.’

  ‘Peace and serenity, huh.’

  ‘You must sit down. You are feeling too much tightness in your throat.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  I slump on the floor.

  ‘Relax the tightness in your throat. Make your spine straight and your head light as if someone is pulling your hair towards the ceiling. Close your eyes. Feel the breath and see it entering your lungs. See it leaving your nostrils to mingle with the air. You are not forcing your mind. It must be effortless effort. Only have the intention and the rest will come.’

  I have the intention. I have asked our jailer to fetch us a remedy and I have recited Georges de Bellio’s address to him several times.

  ‘I do enough for you hopeless prisoners,’ was his response.

  ‘You could save her life. Could you live with yourself if you don’t?’ I appeal to his shadowed face.

  ‘What good would it do? What’s her life worth living in here, anyway?’

  ‘Natrum sulph.’ Natrum sulph – the compound mineral with characteristic symptomatology of asthma worse for dampness.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The remedy you need to bring for Rose is called “Natrum sulph.” ’

  ‘Is that her name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve been bringing her food for two years and I didn’t know that.’ His eyes glaze over in thought.

  ‘Do you remember the address?’

  ‘Yes,’ he comes back to life.

  ‘Natrum sulph.’ I can’t remind him too many times.

  Worn out, I am reduced to a shivering wreck. I wonder if it’s New Year’s Eve. There are voices outside, singing. It sounds like festivity. The temperature has dropped suddenly. A sharp, cold wind blows through the iron bars. I look up at the whiteness of the moon as if it could answer my prayers for warmth, Rose’s health, and flesh on my bones.

  Can it really be true, what has happened to me? A question I ask myself many times a day. There is no doubt that I have been a trusting fool, a stupid puppy with an ugly master. Looking back, I didn’t stand a chance. The Faculty of Medicine must have sent Ipsen to humour me, never thinking that insanity would benefit from a remedy with the overwhelming ingredient being water. They allowed me the stage upon which to hang myself, slowly. After all, I’d been nipping at their member’s heels for years.

  How they must have panicked, especially Ipsen when Bella began to improve. And how they must have patted themselves on the back with relief when they realised they could get away with denying that she was ever mad. And Charcot, my friend Charcot, brilliant, yellow, cowardly, but gleaming like the sun.

  And what does that make me? An insipid do-gooder? I thought I was more than that. I thought I was passionate. To restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed – homeopathy for the world and the world returning to Atlantis, when in reality, who would forgive homeopathy if it stripped the world of its palette of colours, its conflict and its stories? Religions have their gods, and the astrologers would have it that the universe dictates. On Earth there is no utopia, and yet, the idealistic desire for it lurks strongly within me. Perhaps I am a dangerous man after all.

  1864?

  ‘I remember that, although I was full of fervour, I didn’t have the slightest inkling, even at forty, of the deeper side of the movement we were pursuing by instinct.’

  Camille Pissarro

  Through the hole in the wall that I increasingly refuse to call a window is a pearly white screen. I stare at it for hours with eyes that feel as if they are protruding through their lids. Sometimes I see an iridescence that brings a smile cracking through the frozen bones in my face and warming the numbness in my brain just a bit. Even my lashes are frozen. If I had dexterity in my hands I would pick at the tiny icicles and eat them.

  The membranes in my throat are glued together, my lips have split and my mouth is so dry it is raw. My muscles are locked and my skeleton is brittle. I can’t move, so I just stay where I am in this catatonic state.

  I’m not sure how long I have been here. Maybe I’ve seen dozens of moons. We don’t seem to be visited by the jailer anymore. Just stillness. A, wet, cold stillness and a silence that hums around me whilst my innards have turned to flames. My breath rolls out of my mouth in clouds. I am hungry for air, trying to stay with it, not abandon myself too soon.

  And then I hear voices, the human sound of fraternity and communication, a beautiful memory breaking through the barrier that separates me from the world. Faraway voices, soft, quiet tones becoming louder and more distinct, getting closer.

  My lips try to widen into a smile. The pain of broken flesh is worth it just to know that there is a pulse in my heart after all. Laughter. The clack-clack-clack-clack of stepping feet that can still feel their toes. ‘I’m here,’ I try to say. ‘In here.’ But my throat is clogged and I can’t make a sound.

  ‘It’s intolerably cold.’

  ‘That’s an understatement.’

  ‘It’s starting to look doubtful. Every one of these cells seems empty. No sound from any of them. It’s the middle of winter, they’ve all probably died.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The prisoners.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. How’s your leg?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Maybe it’s healing at last, it’s normally worse in the cold.’

  Metal upon metal. Clunk, clunk, clunk, squeak and boom, and a gust of wind. They are inside now. The door. My heart lifts but my neck is too stiff and won’t obey the desperation to turn my head around.

  ‘Oh, my word.’

  Mucus blown into a handkerchief. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Would you gentlemen care to get this over with quickly? The note said that you are to take him, not hang around to enjoy the view.’

  ‘Is that him?’

  ‘I can’t tell; he has his back to us.’

  ‘He’s alive.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He’s sitting up.’

  ‘He’s slumped, he could be dead.’

  ‘I really think we should prod him and find out.’

  ‘You mean test his breathing.’

  ‘Yes, and with the stench in here, I wouldn’t blame him if he’s not.’

  Fingers dig into the waning muscles of my arms and the ache is so insupportably deep that an animal cries and the beastly noise is coming from me.

  No more white light. No more frost in my lungs. Or needle sharp breath. No stinging of flesh. Just warmth. Lovely warmth of soft bedclothes. My resting spine is bruised and aching, but my fingers move. I’m not in a prison cell. I’m not in my prison cell! My heart skips a beat. Maybe it was a nightmare that didn’t really happen.

  Where am I then? I can’t feel my feet. Were they blackened with frostbite? Did I have them removed? The ceiling light is on. Powdery blue velvet drapes are drawn. It must be night. That’s a small version of Olympia on the opposite wall. I have never seen this room before. Have I seen this room before? Have I lost my memory? I test myself. I am Paul Gachet of Lille, doctor, and there is pain in that thought. Paul van Ryssel, artist. That’s good. That’s very good. I remember who I am.

  ‘Bonjour. You’re are awake.’ I know the voice.

  I just can’t seem to find the will to turn my head and look.

  ‘Georges, is that you?’ I say.

  Daylight pushes through a gap in the curtains and lies on the floor like a sleeping
child.

  ‘Georges?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many days since I came here?’

  ‘I think about ten.’

  ‘Do I have all my limbs?’

  ‘Yes, but you have been very ill.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘You are recovering.’

  ‘What remedy?’

  ‘Carbo veg, at first, then Agaricus. Saving life and limb quite literally in your case.’

  There’s a pink light coming through the curtains, gentle and womanly.

  ‘Georges?’

  No answer.

  The silence that mocks me is like a woman too, a woman with a tongue in her cheek. An oak cupboard stands sentinel to one side. A china jug in a basin poses on the dresser ready to be painted. Olympia, its colours in shadow are hard to make out.

  ‘Anyone?’

  A fly or something has landed on my forehead. With one hand I attempt to swipe it away and find delicate fingers grasping mine, firmly and briefly. I try to open my lids but I see only black.

  Thirst. Water. Reaching out a little frantically to the bedside table. Knocking the glass that arrives by magic at my lips. Water. Warm and moist on my tongue but my body suddenly shivers uncontrollably with the cellular memory of iced temperatures freezing the marrow of my bones.

  I sit propped up on pillows holding a china teacup, creating a stir in a vervain infusion with trembling hands. I have just been told that I have been slipping in and out of consciousness for the last three weeks. Georges and Edouard sit beside my bed with their hands in their laps like an audience that is difficult to entertain.

  ‘You’re a bit of a celebrity at the Guerbois these days,’ Edouard says.

  ‘Competition,’ I smile.

  ‘Yes, the jury’s out as to which one of you has created the biggest scandal,’ says George.

  ‘I’ve been in prison?’

  ‘Where do you think you’ve been, on a yacht in Montpellier?’

  I ignore Edouard’s remark and ask Georges, ‘Have you forgiven me?’