Martin got up from his foolish position and sat down on the bed, staring at the blue woven carpet. Except for the squeezing pain in his stomach, every part of him had grown numb. He did not want to argue with Clarie, he wanted to talk to her. To tell her about his dreams and fears. It was selfish, he knew. But he could not help remembering. Sitting on a bench near the Hôtel de Ville in Aix, telling her about Merckx, crying, feeling her reach for him, pull him to her, embracing him, holding him, understanding. Because she had lost her mother. Because he had lost his father. She was the only one who knew his deepest, most dangerous secret. That he had broken the law by letting his friend desert the army. More, she was the only one who knew the depths of his remorse and his pledge never to be half-hearted again when someone he was close to needed him.
But now he didn’t know how to help Clarie. Perhaps it would be best to let her find her own way for a while. In the meantime, Martin had to do everything he could to protect his friend, to make sure that they would never find Singer with a knife sticking out of his chest.
“What are you thinking about?” Clarie had on her coat and was standing over him.
“Us, the baby.” It was a lie. But he thought that was what she wanted to hear.
“Not about your work?”
Was there resentment in her voice? If so, Martin thought with a sigh, he deserved it for being away so much. “That, too. I didn’t tell you. Another man was killed last week. A relative of David Singer.”
“Was he old?” She was putting on her gloves, one finger at a time, right in front of his face.
“In his sixties, I suppose.”
“Oh,” she said. “I must hurry.”
He watched as her skirts disappeared through the bedroom door. Was Daniel Erlanger too old to command her sympathy? Or too distant? Too Jewish? Where had his generous-spirited Clarie gone? He had never dreamed that she would so casually dismiss the death of a kind, old man.
He was still in a nightmare.
31
Monday, December 10
THE SNOW BEGAN VERY EARLY Monday morning. By dawn, the skies had thrown a diaphanous veil over Nancy. By the time Martin left for the Palais, the streets were covered with a slippery silver carpet. Hours later, snowflakes floated down as big as feathers. They kept falling, layer upon layer, muting the sounds of the city and clogging its roadways. It was as if the world had stopped.
Martin stood at the window, staring out, remembering. When he was a boy, a day like this had thrilled him. He’d wanted the world to stand still while he ran free, free from school and the Jesuits, free from his father’s clock shop and his mother’s worries, free to roam, to flap his wings and make his mark in the snow. He’d open his mouth as wide as he could and catch the floating flakes, savoring their delicate melting on his tongue. Martin turned away from the sight of the snow-covered Place de la Carrière. Children feel so powerful. They think they can swallow the world in a few gulps when, in truth, it is the world that will swallow them.
Martin slipped quietly back to his desk, past his clerk, who was busily transcribing the morning’s interview. Martin no longer wanted the world to stop. He needed to push it forward. If the world stood still now, he would feel hollow inside forever.
He closed his eyes and prodded. One thing at a time. First the case, then Clarie. She was finding her own solace. Her own way. Eventually they would find each other again.
He opened his eyes to the sound of his clerk’s scratching pen and his own fingers drumming on the desk. Martin needed to find some new way, some sure way of investigating this case. Not Didier’s or Singer’s or Jacquette’s. He was going in too many directions at once. He angrily pushed aside a folder filled with newspaper clippings. In the last three weeks he had become an expert on the hatred of the Jewish race. And where had that gotten him? This morning’s interrogation of a local reporter, who had written a particularly vituperative column on the coming Dreyfus trial, had ended with a fine speech on how judges thought they could quash the freedom of the press. No new names, no new leads. Only the problem of what to do with the maddening defrocked priest whose detainment might become public any minute.
“Charpentier, the fire!”
Yet as his clerk was about to get up to stoke the potbelly stove, Martin said, “No, let me do it. You keep writing.” Too many directions. Just then, another came knocking on the door.
“Charpentier!”
This time his clerk moved quickly, before Martin could change his mind and go to the door himself, an unseemly proposition for a juge d’instruction.
Martin was still poking at the coals, when Charpentier came scurrying back to him. “It’s Doctor Bernheim, sir,” he whispered. Charpentier’s eyes were arched so high they almost touched the descending waves of his auburn hair. The famous Hippolyte Bernheim!
Martin winced and groaned. How could he have forgotten? Frustrated to the core with the antics of Hémonet, he had sent Jacquette to Bernheim to explain the investigation and ask if a consultation might be useful. Martin hadn’t imagined that the great expert in psychotherapeutics would answer the call on a day like today.
Martin laid down the poker and buttoned his jacket. He motioned with his head to Charpentier to invite the doctor in. Martin was at his desk by the time the surprisingly diminutive Hippolyte Bernheim entered, shaking the glimmers of snow off his cloak and bowler, and stamping puddles from his boots. He did this with a mixture of embarrassment and delight. Like a child.
After Charpentier took his coat and hat, Bernheim extended his hand to Martin. “It’s about time we met. I like working on cases. Especially intriguing ones.” The hand was cold, even as the doctor exuded confidence and warmth.
“You’ve already met my greffier, Guy Charpentier.” Martin gestured behind him.
Bernheim nodded and sat down, rubbing his hands together. “I haven’t seen a day like this since I left Alsace. And you know how long ago that was.”
Martin did, of course. Over twenty years since the end of the war, when the University of Strasbourg had passed into German hands.
“In Paris we never had such snow. That’s where I went first after the treaty. But this,” Bernheim extended his arms, “this is glorious, like a holiday.”
“Yet you are here. I’m so pleased you could see me so soon.” This was more than politeness. Already Bernheim had brought a burst of new energy into Martin’s somber chambers. The doctor was a robust middle-aged man, with a thick, dark mustache that stood out against his pale, cold-reddened face like a permanent smile set upon his upper lip. He still had a fine head of hair, a mix of black and gray, parted down the middle, and a trim gray beard. The clothes, a high collar, cravat and frock coat, added to the air of celebrity. Here was the leading light of “the school of Nancy,” the great rival to Charcot’s Parisian school of psychology.
“Anything I can do to help. I read the papers, you know. This is a nasty business. I say this as an Israelite, but more importantly as a Frenchman and a republican.” Chin thrust forward, Bernheim said these last words as if he were about to raise a toast. He had opted to be in France, to add his achievements to his country’s scientific and intellectual glory. His enthusiasm was infectious.
“Thank you. Of course you don’t mind if Charpentier takes notes.”
Bernheim grinned even more broadly. He liked being recorded. And, of course, Martin knew, his clerk would certainly want to be a part of anything to do with one of Nancy’s most famous citizens.
“Well, then, let’s get down to business, shall we?” Martin said, attempting to mirror Bernheim’s easy professional confidence. “I have two types of questions for you. First, I’d like to ask you to see one of our suspects. And then—”
“Do you think he did it? Would you like me to try to get a confession while he is in an hypnotic state?” Bernheim’s dark eyebrows lifted as his face brightened up even more.
Martin’s mouth fell open. “Do you think you could do that?” A confession would get Didier
and the press off his back. For the moment. But if it were false, it would only make things worse. And, more dangerous, it would leave the killer still out there.
Bernheim’s ebullience was not allayed by Martin’s alarmed question. “If you know my work, you know that most people can be ‘suggested’ into doing all kinds of things they would not normally do: for example, committing a crime or acting like an hysteric.”
“Even admit to something they did not do?”
“Yes! Or, telling a truth they dare not tell with their conscious mind. This is the very basis of my argument with Charcot, and why our methods are being debated across Europe right now. Charcot claims that only hysterics can be hypnotized. Then he takes these poor women, puts them under his spell and invites his colleagues and friends to the asylum at Salpêtrière to watch them. He even photographs them in that state.” Bernheim stuck out his lower lip with distaste. “I don’t like that. Anyone can be hypnotized, if they are willing. Suggestion and hypnotism should be used to cure people, not display them like animals in a zoo.”
Bernheim’s cures of mental and physical ills were so famous, some thought of him as a miracle worker. Martin began warily to shake his head. He needed assurance that the doctor did not intend to “perform a miracle” on his prisoner. “Of course, you would never induce a false confession.”
Bernheim crossed his legs as he sat back in his chair and gazed at Martin. “I can see I’ve perturbed you. Whether I could or not would depend on the willingness and character of the subject. But I’ll leave confessions up to you if you’d like. You just tell me what you believe about your suspects and what you want me to do.”
Martin had to smile in spite of himself. He should have known that his dismay would not get past a famous mind doctor.
“The suspect,” he explained, “is a priest, recently defrocked, and a drinker. I haven’t been able to find any connection between him and the victims, but I am not sure that anything he’s telling me is true. His behavior and speech are utterly erratic. But he may be acting a madman just to throw us off course. I need to know if he is really mad and how dangerous he might be.”
“Oh, yes, Hémonet,” Bernheim nodded. “Jacquette told me about him. But what about the tanner?”
“So you have been keeping up with the case.”
Bernheim shrugged. “Yes, and I am sure, as the two murders go unsolved, more and more people will be interested.”
This was not what Martin wanted to hear. He cleared this throat. “I released Pierre Thomas. I’m sure he’s innocent of everything but gullibility.”
“That can be dangerous too,” Bernheim interjected.
“Yes,” Martin agreed, bending his head forward, trying to keep his focus on what he needed from this important man. He had eliminated Thomas. He did not want to revisit that line of inquiry.
Bernheim seemed to sense his resistance. “Tell me more about your priest,” he said quietly. “What makes you think he might actually be unbalanced?”
“His ravings. His eyes, the way they seem to signal a mind going in and out, as if sometimes he’s not here. Sometimes he seems somewhere else entirely.” Martin struggled to explain. “Even though he knows that everything he says could be used against him, he can’t stop himself from raging against the Israelites. He may not be a murderer, but he certainly sounds murderous.”
“You don’t know how long he’s been this way, or if he was anywhere around the victims?”
“After we brought him in last Tuesday, I sent Jacquette out to interview the neighbors. Apparently when he became a priest they were all proud of him. Now they hold him in contempt because the bishop gave him the boot. Yet they swear he could not have committed any crime, because no one saw him leave the house. On the other hand,” Martin added, “as you know, villagers often stick together. They could be covering for him.”
“Of course,” Bernheim agreed. “What do his former parishioners say?”
“One of Jacquette’s men went back to his parish last week after we took Hémonet in. Those who would talk only said that his sermons against the Jews were getting more violent, but otherwise….” Martin shrugged.
“Otherwise he was normal?”
“I think so.”
“But, of course, that is not ‘normal.’ Jacquette told me about the book. This hatred he holds against the Israelites is a sickness, a disease. It has nothing to do with the rational mind. The so-called truths such people proclaim are delusions. They make the Jew the bogeyman for everything that is wrong with the world.”
The bonhomie had drained from Bernheim’s face, reminding Martin that the doctor was, indeed, an Israelite. Martin had not meant to imply that Hémonet’s hatreds were “normal.”
“However,” Bernheim said, as if to allay Martin’s discomfort, “this kind of delusion has become so widespread, it might appear to be in the realm of normality. With the Dreyfus trial coming up,” he sighed, “I expect worse. In fact,” the doctor leaned forward eagerly, “I’ve seen far worse, in a case that might be of interest to you.”
Good God, not another one, Martin thought, as a sudden spurt of anxiety heated his neck and face. “Go on, please,” he said, dropping each word with purposeful evenness, as he tried to appear pleasantly engaged in what Bernheim had to tell him.
“Well,” Bernheim sat back and smiled, “just last year, I saw a soldier, a young corporal with an old noble name, but no money, and filled with overblown ambition. Yet he could no longer even lift his rifle to aim and shoot. Every time he was ordered to do so, his arm became as stiff as a tree trunk, and his fingers cramped like withering branches.” Bernheim held up his hand, crooked forward, to demonstrate. “As you can imagine, to bring such a case to my attention would have been an embarrassment for most of our army men. But his commander was an enlightened fellow, who had some affection for the lad and had heard about my so-called cures. So he forced him to come see me. That young man was hostile, I can tell you! So I called upon my old colleague, Dr. Liébeault, to take a look at him. Ambroise has the manner of a kindly country doctor, which he was, but the mind of a brilliant diagnostician, which of course he is, for he is the very creator of our psychotherapeutics through hypnotism. In any case, as soon as he got the boy to cooperate and go into a ‘sleep,’ that young officer began to spout all kinds of anti-Israelite nonsense. It turns out he could not shoot at a target because he had been ordered to do so by a Jew, the very lieutenant who brought him to me.” Bernheim chuckled. “You can imagine what he thought about being sent to someone named Bernheim. The Israelite conspiracy! Now, there’s a case for you.”
Was it? Was it a case for Martin? He had to clench his teeth together in order not to groan. The army. He grimaced before asking, “Is this young corporal here, now, in Nancy?”
“I should think not. Given that he had developed a severe hysteria with full psychosomatic symptoms, Liébeault and I recommended that the lad either submit to our treatments or be sent home for a long rest.”
Martin suppressed a sigh of relief. “And the lieutenant, the boy’s superior? Do you remember his name? Is he still around?”
“I never saw him again. I’d have to find his name in my notes.”
“Please do. We’ll look into it.” Martin wrote down “Jacquette. Jewish officer?” If some discontented soldier had seen the Israelite lieutenant with Ullmann and Erlanger, would he have assumed there was a “conspiracy”? Martin’s mind was racing so fast, it tripped over itself. He winced at the possibility that he was beginning to think like an anti-Israelite. Why did he assume that a Jewish officer from another region knew the victims? He etched nervous circles around Jacquette’s name, and wrote “a connection?”
He had to ask the next, logical question. “Do you think that there are other men in the garrison prone to this kind of hysteria?”
“Well,” Bernheim pursed lips together, considering, “certainly not to the extent of displaying such dramatic physical symptoms. But I am sure there is seething resen
tment, especially now, with the Dreyfus accusation fueling the flames. When someone thinks he has a right to a certain status, a certain command, a certain superiority, and all of a sudden he is passed by in favor of someone he thinks is unworthy, unlike him and everything he’s known, well, then, he feels he’s lost something. It’s been taken away from him. That causes resentment.”
Bernheim watched as Martin scrawled “army, resentment, loss.” “Yes,” he said, approvingly, “and that brings us back to your man.”
“The ex-priest.” Martin looked up.
“Yes. I think, given his attitudes toward the Israelites, we had better ask Liébeault to look at him, although we’ll have to drag Ambroise in from the country.”
This time Martin could not suppress a sigh. More delays. More complications. “You have no opinions, no—”
“Yes, I do,” Bernheim broke in. “I would say that the physical symptoms you describe go beyond mere resentment. They seem to be either the result of an addiction to drink, or the result of a great loss, a kind of mourning. Or a very lethal combination of the two.”
“Loss and mourning?”
“Yes. My guess is, whatever seeds of madness he harbored in his soul are blossoming because he has lost the one thing that was most important to him.”
“You mean the priesthood,” Martin whispered. The words loss and mourning had pierced him like a knife, transporting him elsewhere.
“Yes. He cannot teach or preach or succor. He cannot perform the rites that give him, according to his beliefs, supernatural powers over a congregation. He no longer has any station in life. Yes, loss. Loss can drive you mad.”
“That would be enough?” Martin stumbled over the words. Clarie, too, was not always present. Her mind seemed to wander whenever they talked. She had lost the thing that was most important to her, their son. He could not keep from asking, “Is indifference also a sign of going mad from loss?”
The Blood of Lorraine Page 26