My heart skipped a beat. ‘And what do you say?’
‘I tell her Madame Édmonde is dead,’ said Renand, ‘but she never remembers. She’s lost her wits.’
I felt a charge like being plunged under cold water.
‘I asked her once why she wanted to know,’ said Carlotta. ‘Hard to imagine it, but it seems she and Madame Édmonde were both Communards.’
Excusing myself as politely as I could without drawing attention to myself, I dashed out of the building, grabbing my jacket and hat on the fly. I looked up and down the street. The woman was nowhere to be seen. I turned left and ran around the corner, to the end of the island, where the cathedral and the Île de la Cité come into view. I saw her from a distance: she had just stepped onto the Pont Saint-Louis, headed towards the cathedral. I ran after her.
‘Madame!’ I shouted as I neared her. The hunchbacked figure stopped and turned. It was almost forty years since I’d last seen her. She had aged terribly, but she was still recognisably Mathilde. ‘Madame, I’m told you’re looking for Édmonde de Bressy.’
‘Yes.’
‘Unfortunately, Édmonde passed away several years ago.’
‘I see. You’re quite sure?’
‘Quite sure, madame. You can stop looking for her.’
‘Thank you for letting me know.’ I could hear her familiar, sing-song accent.
‘You’re welcome,’ I said. Mathilde turned to continue her way along the bridge. ‘She did manage, however, to make a crossing before she died.’
Mathilde froze for a moment and then straightened her back. She turned to face me. ‘What is your name, monsieur?’
‘My name is Hippolyte Balthazar.’
‘And what is mine?’
‘Your name is Mathilde Roeg.’
‘I’ve been waiting for you a long time.’
We must have made a curious sight, she and I, beggarwoman and dandy, embracing on that bridge for so long.
I could not lodge Mathilde in my apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann, as it was too close to that of Artopoulos. I feared what he would do if he discovered I was harbouring her. Instead, I found her a comfortable room in an out-of-the-way hotel where we might converse to our hearts’ content. There we talked for the rest of the day. For eleven years, Mathilde told me, she had been in hiding, moving from boarding house to boarding house, making a living of sorts peddling books. She had never received the telegram I’d sent her from Kansas, or if she had, she’d never read it. Although a bookseller, she was still illiterate. Stubborn as she was, she had never even attempted to learn. When Lucien travelled, she told me, she would put all her correspondence in a pile on her desk at the Baudelaire Society, awaiting his return. When I heard this, I could not suppress a shiver of horror. Artopoulos must have read the telegram. It was the first definitive sign that he was who I’d suspected him to be, and that he had known who I was from the very beginning. He must have been expecting me, when I first appeared at the Baudelaire Society. And ever since, he had been toying with me, never once saying or doing anything that gave himself away, even though he must have known that I suspected him in return.
Why had he indulged me so? I have considered the matter many times since, and my only answer, unsatisfactory as it may be, is the memory of that first glance he gave me the day of our first encounter in the lobby of the Baudelaire Society. Perhaps he had found an unexpected solace in our friendship, a relief from what would otherwise have been a crushing loneliness. And as I was the only soul in the world who truly knew him and his secrets, he showed me something I would never have expected of him: he showed me mercy. That mercy mixed with solitude and became love. I in turn had found solace in him, I in turn had loved him, the way one loves a sparring partner, a cellmate or an enfant terrible, knowing it to be dangerous, painful, wrong even, but doing it anyway, out of fatalism, defiance or compulsion.
As for the mystery of Mathilde’s disappearance, I never received a satisfactory explanation from her, but I suspect there was more to it than just grief. The double loss – and in such dreadful circumstances – of her son and Édmonde would have unhinged the sturdiest mind, but there was more to it even than that. Artopoulos had only just joined the Baudelaire Society, the first new member in more than a decade. I imagine, upon his arrival, he assumed his characteristic quasi-aristocratic entitlement over the place, as if Mathilde had merely been keeping the chair warm for him. Something had occurred between the two of them, soon after the news of the murders of Lucien and Édmonde, something that forced her to flee. Perhaps he’d attacked her, perhaps he’d admitted to his crime, perhaps it was something else altogether. Whatever it was, it was something vicious, something cruel, something unforgivable. Mathilde never told me the full story, and what little she revealed was only ever let slip or hinted at, but I remembered my encounter with Mehevi on the island decades earlier and no further explanation was required. Thereafter, my vigilance around Artopoulos was only heightened, and I began orchestrating an almost imperceptibly gradual cooling of our friendship.
I rented Mathilde an apartment on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis and saw to it that she lived a life of ease. I was overjoyed that – despite everything – she had survived. I visited her every day. We shared our sorrows about Lucien. Other than Artopoulos, she was the only person in the world who knew me truly, but I kept them hidden from each other. On one occasion, I managed to smuggle the story Charles had written out of the Baudelaire Society library and read it aloud to her. She showed me none of her previous resistance. Time, memory, our reunion, the death of her son, perhaps even the shadow of her own mortality, all of these seemed to have softened her opinions on the subject of crossing. When I raised the possibility of undertaking another crossing, she didn’t dismiss me as she once might have done, but rather listened with an open mind. Within a few months, she agreed that the time had come. She never gave up peddling books – it was her way of finding a new body. The only problem, she often complained, was that no one ever wanted to look an old woman in the eye.
In the spring of 1913, I was called one day to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital to attend to a woman who had suffered, that very morning at a café on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, a fugue state. There was Mathilde, her eyes wide open, her lips whispering something indecipherably Germanic, her head shaking as though in disbelief – all symptoms of that bewilderment that haunts the ambushed soul after a crossing. I asked the policeman who’d brought her there what he knew of what had occurred. Witnesses had reported, he said, that at the time of the incident she’d been telling the fortune of a German tourist. Precisely what had happened was a mystery – the young man had left the scene. That was all the policeman knew.
My relief that she had managed a crossing was tempered by the sorrow that whoever she’d crossed with was now somewhere far away. How much of his previous existences did he remember? What were the chances of our ever crossing paths again? I placed the shell of Mathilde in a home for the elderly. She never recovered from her fugue, and some time later she died in her sleep, a year before Europe began to tear itself apart. She was buried in a grave in a suburban cemetery marked only by her initials. I’d managed to keep our reunion a secret from Artopoulos, and I wanted to keep it that way.
Like so many others, the outbreak of war brought out a bloodlust in Artopoulos hitherto disguised as a fondness for hunting and social advancement. He enlisted at the declaration of hostilities and urged me to do the same. Having gone through the horrors of the Commune, I was a little more circumspect, but I figured I might do some good in the Medical Corps. Artopoulos pulled some strings and received a captain’s commission in the cavalry. The war only widened the distance that had grown between us. As the conflict dragged on, its barbarity seemed to shatter the artifice of our already dubious friendship. I found my distance from him a relief. Our letters became less frequent and more guarded until eventually we stopped writing altogether.
The man who was wheeled into my office at two o’clock
that afternoon was unrecognisable as the man I’d once counted as my closest friend. His body, face and limbs were contorted, distended and racked with convulsions – one of the worst presentations of shellshock I’d seen. The war had wrecked him.
‘Bonjour, Artopoulos,’ I said as the nurse handed me his case notes.
‘B-b-b-b-bon-j-j-jour,’ he laboured as I skimmed the paperwork. The notes revealed his rank was second lieutenant. This surprised me. The death rate of commissioned officers in battle was such that promotion was almost guaranteed, and his battalion, stationed in Champagne, had seen some of the worst of the fighting. But Artopoulos had been demoted, twice. The notes explained several of his men had complained of unwanted, forceful advances.
The nurse cleared her throat. I looked up from my reading and sprang to my feet, pulling her by the arm until we were both outside my office door. ‘Can you stay?’ I asked in a low voice. ‘In case he takes a turn for the worse?’
‘I’m sorry, doctor,’ she replied, ‘I must attend to my rounds. If you need me, just ring the bell.’
As soon as I had closed the door behind me, Artopoulos jumped up, smiled and, taking a cigarette from his shirt pocket, began to smoke as he sauntered to the couch and let himself plump happily into it.
‘Sorry about the histrionics, but it isn’t easy getting an audience with Your Highness these days.’
‘Is this one of your pranks, Artopoulos?’
‘Not at all, old chap. In fact, this whole war is a little on the serious side, wouldn’t you agree? Not that you would know it, from this island of tranquillity.’ He flashed one of his trademark smirks, laced with irony.
‘I know all about it through my patients. I was assigned this role because somebody thought I might make a difference here. And so far that has tended to be the case.’
‘You could have insisted on active combat, I suppose,’ said Artopoulos. ‘But I don’t blame you for avoiding it. It’s hell out there.’ He stood and began pacing the room. ‘Balthazar, you need to get me out of this war.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because we’re friends,’ he said, turning towards me. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Are we not?’ No, I thought to myself, we are most decidedly not friends.
‘How do you suppose I might go about it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. A medical discharge perhaps? Write me off as an incurable case.’
‘But you’re not sick.’
‘They don’t know it.’
‘I wish it were as easy as you presume, but I can’t do that with a stroke of my pen. I don’t have the authority. There are processes in place precisely to avoid that kind of . . .’ I realised I could not finish the sentence politely.
‘Of what?’
‘Of cheating.’
‘Cheating?’ Now it was his turn to be taken aback. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way after I’ve taken such trouble to find you.’ There was a hint of menace in his voice.
Artopoulos paused, standing at the windowsill, looking out at the park that surrounded the asylum. ‘Careful someone doesn’t see you,’ I said. He returned to the couch. My mind was bursting with questions. Why had he come to me? Why had he not crossed with someone else?
‘Well, since you’re here, why don’t you tell me something. A little talking cure could be very helpful.’
‘What would you like to know?’
‘Tell me about your demotions.’
Artopoulos froze, giving me a very serious look, as if deliberating on some thorny dilemma. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Most unfortunate. I – I was . . . I was trying to . . .’ His voice trailed off, his mouth open as if about to speak, but unable to articulate the words intended to pass through it. He was perfectly conflicted between two equal and opposite desires: the desire to reveal himself and the desire to remain hidden. At last, I thought, the veil of civility is about to fall away. At last, he is going to tell me who he really is. He is going to tell me what he can do. He is going to tell me that in fact he wasn’t making advances on those men at all, that what he was actually doing to those men was holding their faces still so that he could look them in the eyes. He is going to tell me that it is impossible to force a man to look you in the eye, that an eyeball is a slippery and rubbery thing that cannot be controlled, that it is easier to pop it out of its socket than to keep it still, that it is simpler to blind a man than to make him look. Then finally he is going to tell me why he is here, and what he wants from me. He is going to tell me that he was responsible for the murders of Lucien, of Édmonde, for their eyeless bodies, for their lives cut short. And finally he is going to tell me that I am the one ultimately responsible for his crimes, that I started it all, all those generations ago, when I deprived him of his body, his friends, his world.
‘There’s something you should know,’ he said at last.
‘What’s that?’
‘I know.’
‘What do you know?’
‘I know that you know.’
‘And what do I know?’
‘Everything. Everything there is to know.’
‘So why speak in circles, why not just say it?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t want to push you away. Because you’re the only friend I have. You’re the only friend I’ve ever had.’
‘Nonsense. You have many friends. Many more than I have.’
‘No. Without you, I have no one. You’re the only one who knows.’
‘Knows what?’
‘Everything.’
Evidently, that was all I was going to get out of him. I suppose it was a confession, of sorts, or as close to one as someone as secretive as Artopoulos could manage. I waited for him to say more, but by now he was just sitting on the couch opposite me, staring sadly into nothing.
‘Well, your performance has earned you twelve weeks’ respite here at the hospital,’ I said. ‘It’s a start.’
‘What good will it have done if I have to go back? The war won’t end in three months.’
‘But you’re not sick. So technically you’re on a holiday to which you’re not entitled.’
‘Entitled? Do you think anyone is entitled to what is going on out there?’
‘Of course not. Every day, I treat men – and now it seems also women – whose psyches have been destroyed by what they’ve endured out there. But I can’t end the war.’
‘What can you do?’
‘I can alleviate suffering.’
‘Alleviate mine!’
‘You’re not sick!’
‘So you refuse to help me?’
‘Oh, I’ll help you, don’t worry. I’ll keep the secret of your charade to myself. But I can’t get you out of the war. You see, I’m rather good at my job. My patients tend to get better. To get you a discharge, you would have to be too sick to go back. That’s quite rare. It would require some first-rate acting on your part. And the decision is out of my hands. Of course, I can make a recommendation, but ultimately it’s the Medical Review Board that decides. You’d have to convince them, and they don’t like me very much.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because no one else can replicate my success rate.’
‘Your success rate!’ he spat. ‘Tell me, how do you achieve your success rate?’
‘The same way I’ve always done it. I hypnotise, and then I analyse.’
‘So hypnotise me. I’ve asked you often enough – dozens of times, probably, and you always fobbed me off.’
‘I didn’t fob you off.’
‘Do it now. Don’t you think you owe me that much?’
Of course I owed him. I owed him everything, in a way. But crossing with him was out of the question. Obviously I didn’t want to cross with him only to be sent back to the trenches, who would? But equally I didn’t want him in my position, occupying my life, colonising it. ‘Well, for one thing, you’re not sick. And for another, we know each other too well. As I’ve said to you man
y times, I don’t think you’re suggestible.’
‘Oh, that’s nonsense.’
‘Not at all. It’s a fact. Not everyone can be hypnotised.’
‘How do you know I can’t? You’ve never even tried.’
‘Well, even if I could, there’s another problem. You see, recently, treatment of shellshock has changed. When analysis doesn’t work, they send you off to electric shock therapy.’
‘So they’re torturing men back into the trenches?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Ah,’ he huffed, ‘you’re just making excuses.’ He slumped back despondently in the couch. ‘I think you’re being most unreasonable. After all, I welcomed you when you were a nobody. I cared for you. I paid for your studies. I gave you your career. And the one time I ask you for help, you refuse me.’
‘I’m not refusing you. I’m telling you I can’t give you a discharge.’
‘Then hypnotise me, at least!’ he shouted, loud enough for someone in the corridor to hear. The menace had returned, this time as more than a hint.
‘Please, keep your voice down,’ I said, placating him. Perhaps, I thought, there was a way I could squirm my way out of the corner I was backed into. ‘Very well. We’ll try it. But if it doesn’t work, don’t blame me.’ With a sigh, I dragged my armchair closer to the couch and sat on its edge. I had no idea what to do. Improvising, I pulled out my pocket watch and opened it.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Artopoulos.
‘I’m going to hypnotise you.’
‘Not with your watch! Do you take me for a fool? We’re not in a circus. I know your methods. With your eyes! Hypnotise me with your eyes, damnation.’
‘Yes, yes, keep calm, I beg of you.’
Until now, I’d never looked into someone’s eyes for any length of time without wanting to cross. This situation – not wanting to cross – was completely unknown to me. Moreover it wasn’t just anyone’s eyes I was looking into. It was Artopoulos. There was nothing I knew about crossing that he didn’t know.
Our gazes met and settled into each other. The key, I told myself, was to keep my soul completely still. I had to stop it from reaching out. I had to stop his, somehow, from reaching in. But almost as soon as our eyes met I felt the forward lurch, the tingling, the beginnings of dissipation. A tide of panic began to rise in me. I had to do something. I had to abandon ship. So I looked away.
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