Mesmerised

by Michelle Shine

  ‘Have I what?’

  ‘I guess you have then.’

  ‘Ah, that,’ he says, remembering.

  More silence. The screech of mating birds, the distant sound of a Pianola.

  ‘Well, I’d better be going. I was just passing on my way out to lunch.’ Edouard stands up and falters like a drunken man. I notice he does not have his cane.

  He walks to the door almost perfectly but leans slightly to the right. Standing in the doorway he turns around, ‘Who is Rose?’ he asks.

  I think about the cafés. An endless whirr of multitudinous conversations amidst the chink of glasses and the clattering of plates, the scent of pipe tobacco mixed with alcohol, the tang of boiled seafood, and the implausible truth that Edouard’s world hasn’t changed a bit. He asked me a question. What was it?

  ‘Pardon?’ I ask.

  ‘Blanche asked if I knew her.’

  ‘Rose?’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Rose was my cellmate.’

  He hesitates. I nod my head slowly.

  ‘Oh, the old lady we found next to you with the cadaverous smell?’

  I close my eyes, a little touched.

  ‘Well I’m off then,’ he says, eventually.

  I always used to think Georges a little spoiled and yet he lives alone, without staff, and has the makings of a very good wife. The chicken broth he serves is excellent and he leaves me alone for hours at a time, always making sure there is fresh water on the table next to me when he goes out. However, my sheets have not been changed for quite a while. The odour of my own perspiration is unhealthy and a little disconcerting as I notice it for the first time. I make a mental note to ask him for a bath and clean sheets when he comes home. I’m still unaware how I came to be here and how Edouard and Georges happened to show up and rescue me like musketeers.

  ‘I’m very grateful,’ I tell Georges when he comes in next time.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For this.’

  ‘You don’t think I could leave you to rot in a stinking cellar do you? Saving people is my role in life. I am a homeopath, like you, dear boy.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘You sent someone asking for some remedy or other. A Monsieur Detramp, which I thought was strange; I’ve always known you to make your own medicines.

  ‘ “You don’t think I’m just going to give it to you?” I said to the man, and told him that I’d be glad to help but wanted to deliver the medicine myself.

  ‘ “Well, you’ll have to speak to Inspector Fornier then, because he’s the one that gives the orders concerning this case,” he said, in very bad French.’

  ‘ “Inspector Fornier?” I asked.

  ‘ “Yes,” he said, “Your friend is in jail.”

  ‘I was shocked. Shocked.’ Georges stands by the window, looking out as if he’s expecting someone. ‘I couldn’t think what stupid thing you might have done, so I told Detramp to take me to this man Fornier straight away. He stood there with his hand out, the fusty sod, rubbing his grubby forefinger and thumb.’

  Silence.

  ‘And what happened then?’ I asked.

  ‘Where was I? Oh yes, I saw Fornier. He met me in your apartment. It’s been ransacked, by the way.’

  I can feel myself wince.

  ‘Strangely enough, your kitchen/dispensary is untouched and there’s a painting of Camille’s, one of Victorine’s and a Dejeuner still hanging on the walls; I had to put them all straight of course. It seems to be your case-notes that have gone along with every book you’ve ever owned. Tell you what, you don’t need to get a new carpet, your clothes are making a very nice job of it on the floor.’

  ‘Bella’s case-notes,’ I say, remembering I was going to send the folder to the journalist.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I’ve shown homeopathy can work on diseases of the mind. I received permission from the Faculty to treat an advanced case of delusional insanity under the supervision of a Doctor Ipsen, head of pharmacology. He watched my patient’s thought processes grow more balanced over a relatively short period of time.’

  Georges slowly seats himself in the chair at my bedside.

  ‘Go on,’ he says.

  ‘I was invited to lunch at Doctor Charcot’s home, my boss. I was told that my patient – Bella Laffaire – had been misdiagnosed. That madness cannot be cured and therefore Miss Laffaire was never really ill.’

  I attempt to get out of bed but I am weak and have to be content with sitting on the side, naked, lowering my head in order to muster up some energy. I would make a good portrait of a skinny man.

  ‘And they have the audacity to damn homeopathy when they have nothing curative to offer themselves. Charcot’s daughter, who had a sudden dangerously high fever when I was there, was saved by one dose of Aconite, Belladonna and Chamomilla, to which Charcot was very grateful, but not grateful enough to stick out his neck for me or homeopathy,’ I say, my weak voice in an ascending pitch throughout. My speech seems to have tired me. I have a pain in my chest that I try to locate with my fingers. I hear the distant click of the front door opening and look up.

  ‘Georges I’ve brought the soup,’ a voice calls and the door to the bedroom sweeps open. I start to tremble uncontrollably again. Georges walks out of the room.

  ‘You’re safe,’ Blanche whispers in my ear as she puts a blanket around my shoulders.

  I nod a little too ferociously. She pushes my shoulders back towards the pillows, and kisses my forehead.

  ‘I’ve been worried about you,’ she says and I laugh.

  ‘You disappeared. I didn’t know what to think.’

  ‘Rose was my cellmate. She died.’ Silent tears are falling.

  ‘You need to sleep,’ she says, standing up.

  ‘No!’ I call out. ‘I’ve been sleeping and now I’m awake.’

  She allows me to hold her and I cry like a baby in her arms.

  December 18th

  We are having breakfast in George’s overlarge kitchen with its black and white tiled floor, cream painted walls and frosted glass windows. It was Blanche who made the broth and now it is I who have introduced Georges to croissants. I decide that those wifely aspirations I perceived in him are not his forte after all.

  ‘You still haven’t told me what Fornier said to you.’

  ‘After two minutes in his company I decided to take him to the Bade for dinner. He came as soon as he was off duty and I bought him enough alcohol to loosen his bureaucratic tight-lipped tongue and do you know what he told me?’

  I widen my eyes.

  ‘He said that when he received word that he was to arrest you for a murder you never committed, he had been delighted to do it and throw away the key. When I asked him why, he said he has reason to believe you are planning to overthrow Napoleon! Talk about deluded.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I think he really believes that,’ I say. ‘What about Breton?’

  ‘He’s been born again as a man of property in Provence.’

  ‘I’m obviously worth quite a lot locked up, how did you get me out?’

  ‘I took out an envelope stuffed with rather a lot of francs and asked if this would change his mind about your role in organising a coup. He seemed to be very accommodating after that. Oh, I forgot to tell you, I found a note pushed under your door from a lady called Catherine.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘She’s lost her job, but she has a friend who works at the Hospital for Sick Children who has been sending her homeopathy patients because you have obviously gone away. She asked if you’d get in touch upon your return.’

  ‘Do you have the note?’

  ‘No, Fornier grabbed it out of my hand and tore it up. I have no idea of what he thought I might do with it – give it to you I suppose. It had her address on it.’

  ‘It’s time I went home.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ he says, slapping me on the back.

  December 19th

  Having no
key, I hire a man to change the lock. He asks me several times whether I am sure this is my apartment. I tell him to go and check with Inspector Fornier who is conveniently pacing the street below. He looks at me oddly, but he changes the lock anyway. When I finally get inside, home acts like a stranger, even after I’ve cleared up the debris of torn paper and ripped clothes. It is the walls that alienate me in the way of an abandoned pet upon the owner’s return.

  ‘Am I different?’ I say aloud.

  I go to sit on the stool in my kitchen/dispensary.

  ‘This is my basket of logs. I just left them down here whilst I carried the other one upstairs,’ a sweet woman’s voice berates from the well.

  ‘Are you joking? It’s mine. I need them. The temperature might have risen slightly but it’s going to snow tonight,’ a gruff and aggressive male voice replies.

  ‘Precisely, that’s why I bought two baskets and carried them all the way from Montmartre! I can’t fight you. You’re bigger and stronger than me. But, what am I going to do, you bastard, when it’s freezing tonight and my baby cries? If she dies her father will kill you.’

  ‘I think not, I don’t see him around.’

  I can’t find the energy to run downstairs. It used to feel as if Paris was my city and I, intrinsically, belonged to it. Lately, as I lay awake for hours staring at the floral cornice of George’s guest room ceiling, all I thought about was London as described to me by Henri with its embrace of modern art and its open-mindedness.

  Hands in pockets, I stand by the window. Through a small pane of clear glass I see an angular piece of brickwork in shadow against a white marble sky and a bird in flight.

  ‘Are you harassing this woman?’ another man’s voice.

  ‘I was just asking if she wanted me to help her carry that basket of wood up to her apartment.’

  ‘It sounds like she’s declining your generous offer.’

  ‘Good riddance then.’

  So, Paris can manage without me.

  December 20th

  Victorine lets me in. ‘She’s upstairs. I suppose you want to know why I’m here.’ She leads the way and I am jealous of her sense of belonging. ‘We’ve become good friends,’ she explains.

  Blanche’s bedroom greets me like a guest. I stand at the threshold momentarily, case in hand. Blanche lies on the bed fully clothed facing away from me. I am nostalgic for what used to be in this room. I go forward and hold onto the brass bedstead at the foot of the bed. Blanche turns and stares at the case – a still life by the door.

  ‘Hello,’ I say.

  She doesn’t move. I sit next to her and take her hand in mine. We stay like that for quite a while. There are no neighbours squabbling outside the window, you can’t even hear a carriage rolling over the pebbles. This is a much quieter part of town. She lifts her head and looks at me.

  ‘You’re too thin,’ she says.

  ‘I’m not the same.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know how to react to that,’ she says, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

  ‘Yes, and don’t go teaching Victorine any of your naughty ways,’ I say.

  Blanche laughs.

  I squeeze her hand.

  ‘Oh Paul, this is so difficult for me.’

  ‘I know, but you have a life here whilst everything about me is lost and uncertain.’

  ‘And you don’t want me to come with you.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Not at this time.’

  December 20th

  Night

  That conversation with Blanche plays on my mind: her lips, soft on my neck, and the definite arousal conceived by her body against mine. I am angry with myself for not saying how difficult this is for me too, that if she came with me she would end up hating me, that I’m troubled and must do this alone. It’s six-thirty in the evening. I’m in the back of a hansom riding out of Paris towards Calais where I will board a boat to Dover in the early hours. I look behind me at the road. Snow has just started to fall as predicted. My departure will probably be delayed. Cafés give way to tree lined roads but the moon still follows me. It feels like midnight a long way from home.

  Epilogue

  1883

  The door clicks closed. Paul Gachet looks up from his notes and looks around him. The walls host a whole collection of impressionist paintings, hung, what might first appear randomly but is in fact, with great precision. Works by Camille Pissaro, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Armand Guillaumin, August Renoir and others. He takes a satisfied breath and leans back in his chair to admire the artwork. Paintings, like homeopathy, have the power to change one’s perception if you let them. Paul chooses to let them have their way with him constantly.

  His final patient has just left. He looks at his watch: three o’clock, there’s still time to catch the train to Auvers sur Oise. Increasingly, he dislikes staying overnight in Paris these days. The city often feels like the loneliest place in the world and the countryside is a soft balm for his melancholia.

  He recalls an afternoon when he’d spent a day painting by the window in his old apartment in rue Montholon and he was struck with a deep and perceptible malaise. He had dabbed the canvas with pale colours that lent nothing to lifeless forms. Ayush was there at the time eating strange food and observing Paul.

  ‘Melancholy is a sickness of the privileged,’ Ayush said, ‘Satisfaction can only be maintained when there are no expectations.’

  Paul is yet to meet the European who is satisfied with what he has. Maybe it would be the wrong decision to go home tonight, he thinks. Perhaps he should attend the dinner arranged by Camille for his painter friends. He could spend some time visiting Le Salon beforehand. It is always interesting to know what the judges at Le Beaux Arts have chosen to exhibit.

  He takes down his frock coat and hat from a hook by the door, locks up and begins to make his way downstairs. A liveried coachman ascends at the same time. Paul stands to one side to let the man through.

  ‘Doctor Paul Gachet?’ the coachman asks, lifting his hat.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Monsieur Edouard Manet is desperately ill. I have been asked to come and find you to ask if you would accompany me to his house.’

  Eugenie Manet opens the door.

  ‘Doctor Gachet, I really don’t think there is anything you can do,’ she says.

  ‘Well, perhaps I can still see him, now that I am here,’ he says, taking off his hat.

  Looking smaller and less imposing in these more modest surroundings, she leads the way through the corridor to Edouard’s bedroom, lets Paul in and closes the door behind him.

  Edouard lies in a bed opposite. Suzanne and Leon sit by his side.

  ‘Hello, Edouard,’ Paul says, clutching his remedy case in front of him.

  ‘I’m dying. Like my friend Baudelaire. How can you bear to come and see me?’ Edouard asks. ‘The rheumatism has turned to gangrene. They won’t tell me – is it syphilis?’

  ‘May I examine you?’

  ‘I should have asked you to do that years ago.’

  Edouard has a golden quilt over his body that matches the curtseying swags at the window. The odour in the room is pungent and foetid.

  ‘May I?’ Paul asks, grabbing hold of the edges of the bedspread and pulling back the quilt to view a leg like raw meat that has been burnt at the edges.

  There is a deposit on the cotton sheet the colour of scarab. He places the pad of a finger upon each of Edouard’s lower lids and gently pulls them down. The conjunctivae are yellow and a luminescent green pus has settled in the corners.

  ‘Tongue’ Paul commands.

  The organ is spongy with a border of bite marks, a Mercury characteristic.

  ‘Other symptoms?’

  ‘I sweat and drink buckets at night.

  ‘What medicine are you taking?’

  ‘Mercury.’

  ‘And Georges has given you?’

  ‘Mercury again. He said there is a difference. I don’t understand.’

  Paul sit
s on a gilt chair opposite Edouard’s wife and the young man.

  ‘It’s not good, Edouard,’ he says.

  ‘My lovely people,’ Edouard says, turning towards Suzanne and Leon. ‘I need to discuss something with my physician.’ He pats Leon’s knee and his wife’s hand.

  Reluctantly, the two stand a little awkwardly and file out.

  ‘They adore me,’ Edouard says.

  ‘They’re your family.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, you remembered, they’re family. Leon is my son.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I love Leon like a son. It’s all been such a rush and I don’t feel up to it, but I’ve re-written my will to include him, against Maman’s wishes. He’s spent the whole of the last few weeks running from physician to physician to try and help me. Now he’s found a Doctor Tillaux who said he can save me.’

  Paul gets up to stand by the window. Rain pelts the glass like shattering stones till all he can see is blurred light. He puts his fingertip to the glass. A drop of condensation falls away like a tear. Rubbing a wet thumb and forefinger together, he says, ‘Yes, you have syphilis and the disease has gone too far. No one can save you, Edouard.’

  ‘They want to operate. Take the leg off.’

  ‘And you want my advice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If it was me I wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘He is the professor of surgery at the School of Medicine.’

  ‘I don’t care who he is. The disease is inside you. It’s all over your being, in your liver, in your skin, in your tongue, in your eyes. Think about this rationally, an amputation has got to be about the most painful thing that you can do to a man, and it won’t take away the disease, just your leg. The shock alone will kill you.’

  ‘So what can you do for me?’

  ‘I can administer a remedy but what it will do for you is out of my hands.’

  ‘So, what do you think it will do?’

  ‘What I hope it will do is bring you peace before you die.’

  ‘Jesus, you are candid.’