Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  James shook his head again. ‘I don’t really know. I have no reason to suspect so. But, I’ve only recently arrived in Paris and the condition predated my arrival.’ He was speaking to the doctor, but his attention was all on Ellie. She had taken several turns of the room now, her eyes wide, like some life-size doll. She seemed utterly unaware of the life around her, yet she didn’t bump into furniture or objects. There was a small satisfied smile on her face which sent a chill through him.

  ‘A disappointment in love, perhaps?’

  James flinched. ‘Can she hear us?’

  Ponsard shook his head. ‘No, Monsieur. She is altogether elsewhere.’ His voice went down an octave. ‘Yes, that’s good, Mademoiselle. Very good. Keep on going. You will remember nothing of this, of course.’ He turned back to James, the question still on his face.

  ‘I … I’m afraid I can’t help you. I will try to find out. But I don’t think so. She would have said something. Ellie … my sister put aside any hopes of marriage some years back, I believe.’ James fidgeted.

  ‘Ah yes. Our women are like that now. No man quite meets their expectations, yet at the same time they want to be like us.’ He chuckled, his expression slightly sly. ‘Unfortunately, it affects their constitution. Weakens them. But no matter. I suspect that your sister has a somewhat dramatic personality, that she is perhaps excessively sensitive, of a nervous disposition. In women like her, illness can provide some advantage, indeed some consolation. There can be a benefit to feeling fragile.’

  ‘What benefit can there possibly be?’ James protested. ‘She can’t leave her room without help. She can do almost nothing for herself.’

  ‘So then you – or someone else – does for her.’ Ponsard smiled as if all this were utterly self-evident. ‘If there is anything my patients have taught me, Monsieur Norton, it is that there can be incalculable benefits, particularly for women, in illness. One doesn’t have to put oneself through the indiscretions that those others, who feel armed against all eventualities, undergo because of their healthy constitution. And it keeps one’s mind off other things. But I see you don’t approve of my reasoning.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s just that Ellie suffers so acutely that I can’t imagine how she could – if you are right – inflict such suffering on herself.’

  ‘The human animal is indeed a strange one, Monsieur. Our science is new and has only begun to penetrate its mysteries. Her condition is neither willed nor voluntary, if that is what you are suggesting. It is outside her control. So we must try and do what we can for Mademoiselle. I will prescribe a course of potassium bromide, really just to ensure that there is no epileptic base to her condition. If the bromide has no effect, then we know we are clearly dealing with a hystero-epilepsy. And, of course, there will be some treatments. They calm the imagination, occupy the mind.’

  ‘Nothing more?’

  ‘That is already a great deal, Monsieur. Sometimes there is a cure. The Nancy School will tell you that hypnotism can effect it. I am only in partial agreement. To be completely honest, since you have come through Madame de Landois, I will confess that I am not always certain what concatenation of life events and treatments brings the cure about.’ He threw James a shrewd, assessing look. ‘Enough to say that the most photographed and documented of Charcot’s hysterical patients after some years became a laboratory technician. None of us understand whether it was by his intervention.’

  Ponsard turned again to Ellie. ‘And now, Mademoiselle,’ he murmured in that low soothing voice, ‘you may return to your chair. You will feel calmer when you wake. Stronger. Refreshed.’

  James watched Ellie sit down dutifully. The doctor quietly commanded her to close her eyes and at the touch of his fingers to open them again.

  When she did so, she looked round with a smile.

  ‘Have you had a good rest, Mademoiselle?’

  Ellie nodded.

  ‘Good. That is good. Here let me help you with your stockings.’

  James saw the man bend to the task and wondered whether he would now tell Ellie of what she had been capable of in her hypnotised state. But all Ponsard did was to pat her gently on the shoulder, describe the course of bromides and suggest that she come to see him three or four more times. Her legs were once again lifeless.

  Ellie had been looking at the handsome grandfather clock which stood in a corner of the room. Now she gasped. ‘But, Dr Ponsard. I can’t have been here all this time. You … you put me to sleep?’ Her face grew suspicious, distorted.

  ‘Yes, Mademoiselle, I put you to sleep. Applied a little mild hypnotism. It relaxes the nerves wonderfully. And you need rest above all. Don’t overtax yourself. Put your books and your cares aside. Leave them to the men in your family. We need you to regain your strength, to cure you of that exhaustion you spoke of.’

  James could see the warring emotions in his sister’s face, anger and fear and hope all wrestling with each other. But she only asked in a timorous voice, ‘So you have hope for me, Dr Ponsard?’

  ‘My hope is equal to yours,’ he replied, bowing. And with the beneficent beam of a peasant priest blessing his flock, he urged them from the room.

  Ellie didn’t speak until the Avenue Hoche was well behind them. James sat tensely at her side, uncomfortable with his hidden knowledge. How was he to suppress his vivid memory of that other Ellie, the one who walked quite adequately, though with the drugged gaze of a somnambulist? It seemed to him a form of collusion with the doctor, but if it was in Ellie’s best interest, he must keep quiet. He sighed inadvertently.

  ‘Did I say something unspeakable, Jim?’ Ellie’s fingers dug into his arm. ‘What did he do to me? He seemed so kind. I didn’t realise he was going to …’ Her voice rose. The eyes she turned on him were wide in fear. ‘I don’t like the idea of hypnotism, Jim. I don’t like it one tiny bit. It makes one so defenceless.’

  He patted her hand. ‘But if it helps, Ellie. And rests you.’ He followed Ponsard’s cue.

  The carriage suddenly swerved and she fell against him. Her cry was a howl of terror.

  He helped her right herself. ‘It was only a dog, Ellie.’ He studied her face. ‘What is it that you’re so afraid of?’

  ‘You can be brave, Jim.’ Her voice held a scoff. ‘You don’t have to subject yourself to these people.’

  She smoothed her dress with prim, nervous gestures and it tumbled through his mind that what she feared was that the doctor might touch her without her knowing. His thoughts wandered and he found himself with Olympe again, Olympe who had also, as Marguerite had explained, walked without being aware of it. Walked away. Walked to escape. And Ellie sat still to escape. Yes. He must talk to Marguerite about Ellie. She had recommended Dr Ponsard, after all, evidently in the full knowledge of his techniques.

  Ellie was speaking again, her voice low, barely audible above the coach’s clatter. He gave her his attention.

  ‘Once I really thought I would do something with my time on this earth, Jim. Something great. Something useful. Something beautiful. But nothing … nothing has come of it. There’s nothing for a woman like me.’

  ‘You’ll get better, Ellie. I know you will.’

  She didn’t seem to have heard him.

  ‘Had I been born a man, it would have been quite different. I could have done what Raf does, or you, or anyone. Do I shock you, Jim?’

  James was indeed shocked by the bitterness in her tone, more than by her words, but she didn’t give him time to answer.

  ‘Maybe the hypnotism loosens one’s tongue. It’s meant to put to sleep that vigilant little watchdog we all carry within to keep us in order. You know, I’m not the only one to be subject to the whims of the doctors, Jim. Olympe was once. Yes even she, with all her accomplishments. She used to suffer from fugues.’ Her laugh had an uncanny peel. ‘I could do with a fugue.’

  ‘Olympe told you about that?’

  ‘She told me that and much much more. Strangely, given the vast difference in our backgrounds
and temperament we were sisters in spirit. Perhaps because we had both suffered in the same way. She too had experienced those storm clouds hovering over her shoulder, then bursting into a drowning deluge.’

  The fierce passion on her face made James uneasy. ‘Did she tell you that, too? Or did you intuit it?’

  ‘Tell, intuit. What difference does it make? We didn’t spend our time together in courts of law. We recognised each other.’ Her voice grew dreamy, took on the rhythm of hooves on cobbles. ‘She’d been down in the abyss, too. In the pits where the hammers clang through your head without cease and the waters are rising, rising slowly to envelop all of you. And there’s no way out. No seam of gold or coal to tap to allow you to bribe your passage, even if you could. No way out at all.’ She paused. ‘That’s what she must have felt at the end. The other night when the moon was full, I felt she was right beside me, talking to me.’

  ‘What did she say?’ James heard himself ask, struck by his own irrationality.

  She looked up at him as if he had startled her awake. A small, troubling smile hovered round her lips. It gave her face an unsettling canniness. ‘You really want to know, don’t you, Jim. She’s cast her spell over you, too.’ She laughed. ‘I dare say you’re more interested in dead women than live ones.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Ellie.’

  ‘Silly Ellie. Silly Ellie. Do you know how much I used to admire you, Jim? When we were young. Before Maisie. You used to come home and tell me everything about your classes. Aristotle and Plato and Seneca. I felt they’d become intimates. I knew you were going to become a great man. And then you went off and married that Maisie. She dispersed you. Why did you ever tie yourself to such a fool of a woman?’

  She clamped her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve overstepped myself. Forgive me.’

  James looked stonily out the window. Was Ellie right? Her words pierced him like poison arrows, thrusting their venom deep into his past.

  She was babbling again, saying things he didn’t want to listen to, her voice rising and falling as if she were several women in one. Maybe that Ponsard had made her worse, turned her into that frightening Ellie he had only had glimpses of in the past, unleashed her tongue. He concentrated on the streets, only growing alert to her again when Olympe’s name fell on his ears.

  ‘Have the police learnt anything more, Jim? Has Raf?’

  Judith’s name almost tumbled from his mouth, but he held himself back just in time. He wanted to know whether Olympe had ever spoken of her to Ellie. But Ponsard had said to keep her calm and evoking the Salpêtrière was hardly conducive to that. Not that she was calm, in any event. Yet he restrained himself, saying only in a soft voice, ‘There may be a man from her past who unhappily stepped into her life again.’

  ‘Oh. She never told me about that.’ Her eyes glittered strangely.

  ‘We’re trying to locate him through her father.’ The carriage turned into the Boulevard Malesherbes and with what he hoped didn’t sound like relief, he said, ‘We’re here, Ellie. You’ll want to rest now.’

  ‘Will I, Jim? Yes, you’re right. And Harriet should be here. So you needn’t worry about me. No, you needn’t worry.’

  ‘She’s a very good friend.’

  ‘My own ministering angel. And not a fool.’ She shot James a triumphant look.

  THIRTEEN

  Judith Arnhem perched on a stool in the corner of the cell-like room. Her eyes moved furtively, chasing invisible shadows on the floor. Like one of those women in paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite school, her hair was wild – a dark, tangled undergrowth spangled with white by the moon. It occluded her face which she kept bowed. Her hands were arced on her hospital smock, two stiff crabs, scuttling now and then to pick at the material.

  Only when Dr Comte spoke, did she look up. James was again struck by her uncanny resemblance to her sister, the same fine oval of a face, though somewhat thinner, hollowed out. The eyes were beetle black.

  ‘I have brought you two visitors, Judith. Distant cousins from America.’ Comte’s voice was tinged with irony. ‘Messieurs James and Rafael Norton. They wish to speak to you.’

  Judith shook her head fiercely and like a trapped animal hunched further into the corner of the room.

  ‘Oh yes, you will speak to them since they have come all this way.’ Comte moved towards her with a belligerent gesture, but Raf’s voice stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘You can leave us now, Doctor. We’ll be perfectly fine on our own.’ His tone was all calm intractable authority. James had the sudden realisation that it was only when the two of them were alone, that Raf reverted to an earlier rebelliously wayward self.

  ‘Judith will be happy to talk to us since we are friends of her sister’s. And privacy will be best.’

  Dr Comte seemed about to protest, but Raf put out a staying hand. ‘We’ll call you if we need you. We shan’t be very long. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for providing the room.’

  ‘I don’t like that man,’ James murmured when Comte had left them. The doctor had made them leap innumerable hurdles before permitting the interview, had kept them in a corner of the baying ward, had made them sign some incomprehensible form, had questioned them about Olympe’s death, then perniciously added that the fact of it sat well with his hypothesis. The Arnhem family tree was a promising one for proof of hereditary pools.

  James had wondered at Raf’s steely composure amidst the bedlam. Only a single look of savage dismay had scudded across his face and that, when they first crossed the threshold.

  Now Raf shrugged. He was staring at Judith and James wondered whether he too was struck by the likeness with Olympe. She returned his gaze. For a long moment, no one spoke, then she looked away and Raf went to sit closer to her on the pallet of a bed. For lack of another place, James settled beside him.

  ‘We’re friends, Judith. Your father asked us to come and see you. He was hoping to come too, but he was unable to. He wanted you to tell us what you had told him about Olympe’s death.’

  ‘Rachel.’ The word was at once a correction and a cry. The voice was hoarse, strangely raucous in the small room. Judith’s hands picked up speed as they moved across her skirt. James had a sudden impression that if she had the freedom her legs might be moving as quickly. Ellie leapt into his mind, but didn’t linger.

  ‘Yes, of course, Rachel.’ Raf repeated with remarkable composure. ‘Her death has been a great shock to us all.’

  ‘They got her. Got her. Down with her. Down with her. Diseased. Defective. Degenerate. They’ll get all of us.’ Her voice had the droning force of an oracle and she had started to rock, at first slowly, then picking up speed as if she were atop a child’s hobby horse. The small stool creaked beneath her. ‘All of us. Me next. A huge fire. Hot. Incandescent. Only bones left.’ Her eyes grew as vast and fearful as her troubled imaginings.

  For a moment Raf was silent.

  ‘Who do you mean by they?’ James asked softly.

  ‘I don’t know you.’ Judith stopped her rocking for a moment. ‘You.’ A finger arced with ferret speed to point.

  ‘I’m Jim,’ he heard himself use the name which fell more easily from French lips.

  ‘But you know me?’ Raf intervened. ‘Rachel told you about me.’

  A small smile curled her lips and suddenly, as she nodded, she looked like an ordinary young woman whose pallor and disarray might have been the result of a passing illness. ‘Yes. I know you. You’re a journalist. From New York.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Raf returned her smile, his own charming, suasive. ‘And I … I was very fond of Rachel.’ He paused. ‘There wasn’t a fire, you know. Quite the opposite. It was water. She was drowned.’

  ‘Water,’ she repeated and started to rock again, her eyes flitting like a bird across the cage of the room. ‘Water. It doesn’t matter. Water kills. Washes the body. They keep the bodies. Take them apart. I’ve seen them.’

  ‘Whom have you seen?’ James
asked gently.

  ‘Them. Them.’ She bent towards Raf, her voice lowered in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Them. The doctors.’ She stopped, looked behind her, then towards the door, as if invisible eyes were watching her. ‘They’re killing us all. All.’ She let out a wild moan and was suddenly on her feet lurching across the room in a drunken gait.

  ‘It’s all right, Judith. There’s no one else here. Only us.’

  ‘Not you. Not you.’ She stared at Raf. ‘Only us. Don’t let my father come any more. Tell him. No more. One by one.’ She slapped her hands together and the sound echoed through the room. ‘One by one. Like flies. All of us.’

  Raf moved to put a stilling arm round her shoulder, but she veered away from him. She was shaking now, her fear palpable, thick, cloying so that it spread across the small space to envelop them like a rank, oily substance.

  ‘First there was Sarah, then Elisabeth, then Bette, then Rebecca.’ She was counting on her gnarled fingers. ‘And now Rachel. Rachel. Dear Rachel,’ she howled as she perched on the stool again. She covered her sobs with her hands.

  Raf cast James a helpless look.

  ‘Apart from Rachel, are these all friends of yours in the ward?’ James asked after a moment.

  She looked up, her face streaked with tears. ‘Not only this ward. The men too. They told me. No names.’

  Abruptly, she was up again. ‘It doesn’t matter, Messieurs,’ she said in the small formal voice of a well-brought up schoolgirl. ‘It doesn’t matter for me. I want to die. Thank you for coming. Goodbye.’

  She gave them a look of heart-rending purity, then turned her face to the wall just as the door opened and a stout nurse peered in.

  ‘Dr Comte has asked me to tell you that your interview time is up now, Messieurs. Are you all right, Judith? There’ll be dinner soon.’

  Judith didn’t answer, nor did she return their goodbyes. She was struggling against the nurse’s attempt to lead her back to the main ward.