Hallucinating Foucault (11 page)

Paul Michel looked at me with vindictive respect. He had drawn blood at last.

“What did you say your name was?” he asked, all provocation, dragging at his cigarette.

“You know perfectly well,” I snapped.

His whole face changed. The lines changed places, his eyes widened suddenly. He smiled.

“But I keep forgetting.” He took my arm gently and pulled me towards one of the rubber-covered metallic chairs. “Come, sit down.”

He grinned at me, and the smile was full of imploring good humor and simplicity. Disarmed, I laughed. We sat down, even closer together, our knees touching, and smoked in silence.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“In this unit? A year.” He continued to gaze at me with terrible concentration. Suddenly, he reminded me of my Germanist. It was the same owlish, interrogating intensity. I was disconcerted.

“And they told me in Paris that you keep getting out. Though I can’t see how.”

He smiled again. The same wonderful, transforming smile.

“Voilà,” he said. “It’s a professional secret. You can imprison the imagination. You can drug it into oblivion. You can even drive it mad. But you cannot keep it locked up. How old did you say you were?”

“I didn’t. But I’m twenty-two.”

“You’re too young to be writing a book about me. You’re too young to be reading me. Why didn’t your mother intervene?”

I laughed with him.

“Remember—I’m writing about your fiction, not you.”

He smiled again.

“Then—what in God’s name, mon petit, are you doing here?”

And then I sensed the change. It was as if he had sucked himself back from me into a huge retreating wave, all that was left was the rush of washed sand and pebbles. Suddenly I knew how dangerous he was.

“Give me another cigarette.”

“You nicked the packet.”

He never took his eyes off my face as he stood up to remove the packet from the back pocket of his jeans. He was alarmingly thin. We smoked another cigarette. Then he said, “Who are you?”

I hesitated. I said, “I’m your reader. Your English reader.”

His whole body flared for a second, like a dormant fire, touched by the wind, then went out into utter darkness. He sat frozen. Then he said, clearly, slowly, and without any gesture of menace beyond the lowering of his voice, “Get out. Before I kill you.”

Pascale Vaury appeared in the doorway. The smell of warm shit invaded the room.

“I think that’s long enough for today,” she said, as if we were winding up an exhausting session of physiotherapy. I backed away from Paul Michel’s glittering, terrible eyes. I was so shaken and frightened that I neither shook his hand nor said goodbye. Instead I stumbled away from Pascale Vaury, down all the locked corridors of the mind. Her white coat was the sign of Orpheus, retreating towards the light. But it was I who could not look back. The terrible acrid, fetid smells thinned, vanished, gave way to bleach and polish. The doctor talked to me calmly, over her shoulder. I caught a word or two, but understood nothing. We went down all the empty staircases, which were untrodden, void. I found myself standing again before the glass office. Less than an hour had passed. It was all over.

Pasale Vaury was shaking my hand.

“We have your address in Clermont? Will you be staying long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, ring me if you want to visit him again. I can best judge whether it will be possible or not. Goodbye.”

I was in the street, sick, nauseous, terrified and without any cigarettes. I looked up at Paul Michel’s enigmatic message.

J’AI LEVE MA TETE ET J’AI VU PERSONNE

I turned on the blank cream wall, furious, and shouted.

“You say you looked up and saw no one. That’s not true. You saw me. I was here. I’ve come to find you. You saw me.”

A car passed. The driver stared. I was standing in front of the largest psychiatric hospital in central France, crying and shouting at the writing on a blank cream wall.

It was just after eleven o’clock in the morning. I turned away
down the narrow streets, almost hysterical with disappointment, frustration and rage. I had found him at last, my lost writer, and he had turned me away, unwelcomed, unwanted, unheard. I had nothing left. I found myself in the Place de la Victoire, went straight into the café and bought myself another packet of cigarettes and a beer. I ate nothing. All afternoon I wandered the tourist-ridden streets of Clermont, hating the great, black, noisy city, the hawkers and the market people, the traveling funfair belting out music in the square. I haunted the cafés, washed my face in a public fountain, chatted with two drug pushers, picked at the bookstalls, chain-smoked drearily until my mouth tasted like an ashtray. It was nearly six o’clock when I climbed off the bus in Romagnat.

I was struggling to understand the keys my landlady had given me when the door flew open. There she was, bristling with excitement, the growling poodle nestled in her arms.

“Quick! Quick! He’s on the phone. Your madman’s on the phone. He’s already rung twice. He doesn’t sound mad. Quick!”

I rushed into the hall, negotiating her mass of furniture, ornaments and lace tablecloths. I snatched up the phone.

“Bonsoir, petit. T’es rentré? Ecoute, je m’excuse. I’m sorry. I wasn’t very helpful. I liked meeting you. Come back tomorrow. And bring me some more cigarettes.”

It was his voice. I was overjoyed.

“Do you always threaten to bump off your visitors?”

He laughed; a warm, extraordinary laugh.

“Eh bien, oui, tu sais … pretty much. But not very seriously.”

“You sounded serious enough to me.”

“Be flattered, petit. There’s not many people I take seriously.”

“Do you really want to see me again?”

There was a pause. Then he said, “Yes. Very much. I don’t get to meet many of my readers. Come back tomorrow. Promise?”

“I promise.”

I put down the phone and kissed my astonished landlady. The poodle barked and barked, beside himself. We were on our second celebratory apéritif by the time her husband came home. I had told her all that had happened, every detail, several times, in a delirium of excitement and she was enthralled.

The next day was extraordinarily hot. It was Sunday. Madame Louet watered her geraniums at eight o’clock. Buy half-past nine the drops were already evaporatng on the stones. There were no buses, but I proposed to walk down the hill into town. Madame Louet told me not to be silly, hijacked the car and off we drove, through all the empty streets, overhung by the great bells of the cathedral, to the narrow gate of Sainte-Marie.

I stood ruefully before the guardian dragon in the glass box. This time the corridor was not utterly empty. Two elderly women sat side by side on the bench, staring at my every move. The woman removed her glasses.

“Vous encore?” she snapped. I nodded.

“You didn’t phone. Dr Vaury asked you to telephone if you wanted to come back.”

“No. But Paul Michel phoned me.”

“He’s not a doctor. He’s a patient. He can’t just see anyone he likes, you know. You don’t have any official permission.”

“Can I speak to Dr Vaury now?” I began to panic.

“She’s not on duty.”

“But somebody must be.”

The woman looked at me wrathfully. I was an inconvenient phenomenon. She picked up the telephone and quarreled with someone on the other end. I walked up and down the corridor in desperation, my every step critically observed by the two fates. Their hands picked at their skirts.

“Sit down,” commanded the woman in the glass box, enraged, slamming down the phone.

We all waited. My palms were sweaty with the fear that I would be prevented from seeing him. In the tepid, unmoving air and artificial light I sat gazing at my stained trainers, sinking into wretchedness. Then the miracle occurred. A hand tapped gently on my shoulder. I looked up and I saw Paul Michel, grinning wickedly, the immaculate white nurse standing behind him. I leaped up and for the first time my writer kissed me, three times, on one cheek after another.

“Bonjour, petit. You’re a magician. We’ve got permission to walk around the garden.”

His keeper smiled broadly. “He’s on parole. But just in the garden, mind.” The nurse vanished with a rattle of keys.

“Look. A clean shirt.” Paul Michel straightened up. He was wearing well-ironed whites that smelled faintly of mothballs. He looked like a faded cricketing champion. His face was taut, ill, gaunt, excited. But there was the same, glittering, anarchic energy that I had found so bewitching, so disturbing. He inspected me critically.

“You’ll have to dress better than that if you go out with me, boy.” I stood there, grinning foolishly at him. He laughed out loud, a huge, mocking, ringing laugh.

“If you’re going into the garden, go,” roared the dragon.

“Calme-toi, mon amour,” cooed Paul Michel, leering into the glass box. He sauntered away, while I, scuttling behind him, was left nodding apologetically to administration and the yellow, gaping faces of the fates.

Paul Michel knew exactly where he was going. We reached another narrow door with an answering machine fixed in the wall. He pressed the buzzer and leaned his face against the grille.

“Libera me, mon amour,” he whispered, all charm and subversion. I realized that access to the garden was controlled by the office. Looking across the paved courtyard I could make out the dragon, peering from her window. The door hummed open and we came out into the sun.

Paul Michel stretched like a cat, closing his eyes, lifting his drawn, white face to the light. He took my arm and led me away down the avenues of limes. One of the nuns strode past, nodded to him, then stopped and stared at me aggressively.

“Who’s your visitor, Paul Michel?” she demanded.

“My reader,” he said calmly, “but I’ve got no idea what he’s called.”

“Behave,” said the nun, smiling slightly, “and don’t pretend to be madder than you already are.”

“Yes sir,” said Paul Michel in English.

The nun, who was tiny, reached up and ruffled his hair as if he was a child.

“Just you behave,” she repeated, “and don’t smoke yourself into hysterics.” She strode off.

“That’s Sister Mary-Margaret,” he said by way of explanation, as we strolled underneath the lime trees. “She’s great. I don’t get any shit from her. She always says what she means. I like the nuns. They’re more direct than the doctors. More open to new ideas, new methods. They’re very tolerant too. Once, when I was in crisis and you know, smashed things up a bit, they put me on the strong drugs and in the locked room. She was the only one who could feed me, talk to me. I can’t remember it all very well. But I remember her face, very close to me, saying the rosary, I think. Repeating the same prayer. I don’t think that it was the prayer particularly, but the repetition calms you down. I got better very quickly after that.”

“What triggered it off? Does it come in bouts?”

“Mmmm? Yes. I suppose it does. Let’s sit down.”

“You don’t mind the nuns?” I remembered the strong anticlerical streak in Paul Michel’s writing.

“No, no,” he said, ruminating. “Sister Mary-Margaret once said to me that most of the saints were considered to be mad. And that their opinions were often not very different from mine.”

“Really?”

“Yes. If you think about it, it’s true. The saints were always visionaries, marginals, exiles from their own societies, prophets if you like. They went about denouncing other people, dreaming of another world. As I did. They were often locked up and tortured. As I am.”

His face darkened. I suddenly reached out and took hold of his hand. It was my first real step towards him. He looked at me and smiled.

“Am I a great disappointment to you, petit?”

“No,” I spoke the truth, “you’re not. I was devastated when I thought that you didn’t want to know me. I was overjoyed when you phoned. How did you manage to arrange this?”

“I spoke to Vaury. She’s all right. Most of the time. She’s read my books. I persuaded her to let me out. I made armfuls of promises. She stood over me every time I phoned you. I don’t have the right to use the phone.”

“Why not?” I could not comprehend this world of bars and prohibitions.

“Eh bien, well, petit—to tell the truth, the last time I used the phone I called the fire brigade.”

“You what?”

“Mmmm. They arrive with ladders and crowbars, smash the windows and let us all out.”

I began laughing and laughing. No wonder the dragon hated
Paul Michel. The man was without limits or restraint. He was beyond their control. They had no access to his mind, but he understood theirs perfectly. He was a free man.

“Mais, t’es fou,” I laughed uncontrollably.

“Exactement,” smiled Paul Michel.

We sat smoking silently together, for the first time, perfectly at ease.

“So, petit … tell me which one of my books you like best. I assume you’ve read them all if you’re doing your research properly.”

I nodded.

“Well, which one?” Suddenly he was like a child, demanding praise, approval. I hesitated.

“La Fuite,
I think. That was the one which moved me most. But technically
La Maison d’Eté
is the best. So far. That’s your chef d’oeuvre.”

He said nothing, but was clearly very pleased. After a while he said reflectively, “Yes, you’re right.
La Maison
is a perfect piece of writing. But it’s cold, cold, cold.
La Fuite
reads like a first novel. It’s not the first I wrote, but it has the emotional energy of a first novel. And of course, like every inexperienced idiot, I couldn’t resist putting everything in. Everything I’d ever thought was significant, important. You write your first novel with the desperation of the damned. You’re afraid that you’ll never write anything else, ever again.”

He looked ordinary, meditative, a writer in repose, the sunlight and shadow shifting across his face as the wind moved in the lime trees, and all around him the tall, bare cream walls of the madhouse, the high gates, the sealed windows. I think it was then that I made my decision. If I did nothing else for this man I admired so much, I would help him escape from this prison.