Hallucinating Foucault (9 page)

The hospital was like a city within a city. There were gardens, car parks, walkways, cafés, shops, a security barrier and a mass of huge, ancient buildings with new wings projecting outwards in black glass and concrete. The porters indicated the general reception, but I walked some distance before finding the steps leading up to bland offices and automatic doors. Hospitals are strange intermediary zones where sickness and health become ambiguous, relative states. There are people distraught, hysterical, others resigned and staring, the caretakers in white coats and comfortable shoes, utterly indifferent both to the bored and the desperate. There are three distinct groups ambling through the corridors, each designated by their dress: frightened visitors in outdoor clothes, the shuffling wounded in dressing gowns and slippers, the masters with their technological systems and washed faces. I waited in the queue at the office. Two women peered into their computer screens, ignoring the
hesitant row of waiting applicants. A woman perched on a black plastic bench rebuked her whining child. Another carried an enormous bouquet of gladioli, like a peace offering.

All of them knew what service they wanted, but not how to find it. I had only a man’s name and an article in a homosexual magazine, written nine years ago. And now I had his private coded writing, his messages to himself. Hidden in my inside pocket, the copied sheets glittered against my chest.

“Je cherche un malade qui s’appelle Paul Michel.”

“Quel service?” She didn’t look up. Her fingers were already flying over the keys.

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t look up.

“When was he admitted?”

“June 1984.”

“What?” She stopped the whole process and turned around to look at me. Everyone in the queue behind me leaned forward, expectant.

“You must go to the Archives,” she snapped.

“But I think that he’s still here.” I looked at her desperately.

“He was brought in because he was mad.”

She stared at me as if I too was unhinged. Her colleague had got up and come to the counter.

“You must go to the Psychiatric Service,” she said, “and ask there. They may have a record of what was done with him. They have a separate entrance.”

She drew a massively complicated map on the back of an admissions card. As I left the general reception area all the people there stared at my every movement, warily, fascinated. The mother pulled her child back onto her knees. It was my first experience of what it meant to be connected, in any way, to the fate of Paul Michel.

It took me nearly half an hour to find the psychiatric wing of the hospital. And here there were no steps, no wide doors, no pot plants, simply a narrow entrance into a blank wall. I had to ring from outside; the door was permanently locked. As I stepped into a kind of air lock I saw the red eye of a camera mounted high on the wall, taking me in. I came out into a small lobby with a glass office exactly the same as all the administrative boxes in every bank in France. It seemed incredible that I had not come to cash my traveler’s cheques. The women there stared at me inquisitively, but did not speak. I started on the offensive.

“I’ve come to see Paul Michel.”

But the name meant nothing to either of them. One of them tried to help.

“Michel? M-I-C-H-E-L? Is he one of our regular patients? Do you know which service?”

I was confused. There were different systems even within the psychiatric wing. She looked at me speculatively.

“Does he come to the clinic? Or is he in the geriatric ward?Has he been here long?”

The other woman rummaged in the files which were clearly not yet computerized.

“There is no one here called Paul Michel,” she said definitively.

“Look. He was brought in because he was mad. And violent. Nearly ten years ago.”

“Il y a dix ans!” They sang out an incredulous chorus.

“You’ve made a mistake.”

“Are you sure it was this hospital?”

“Cal Doctor Dubé. He might know.”

“Ecoutez,” I began to insist, “he was first admitted in June 1984. But I rang just over two weeks ago and the woman I spoke to
knew who he was. He must still be here. Please ask one of the doctors,” I begged them.

“Take a seat.

“I sat on a hard chair. There was no carpet on the floor. The blank cream walls smelled of bleach. There were no windows and the long white striplights gleamed in the tepid air. I waited, listening to the telephone incessantly ringing for over twenty minutes. Then, like a genie appearing from the tiles, a young, white-coated doctor appeared at my elbow.

“Vous êtes anglais?” he asked, puzzled.

“Yes. I’m trying to find Paul Michel.”

“L’écrivain?”

At last someone had heard of my lost writer. I nearly seized the doctor with excitement.

“Yes, yes. That’s right. Is he here?”

“What is your relationship to Paul Michel?” the doctor asked, giving nothing away. Panic stricken and suddenly inspired I told the truth.

“Do you speak English?” Intuitively, I sensed that this would give me back my lost advantage. The doctor smiled. “Yes. I do. A little.”

“Well, I’m his reader. His English reader.”

The doctor was completely mystified by this statement.

“His English reader? You work on his books?”

I saw my chance.

“Yes. I’m his reader. It’s crucial that I see him. I can go no further with my work until I do see him. And even if he doesn’t write anymore I am still his reader. I can’t relinquish my role.”

This was obscuring the issue with verbiage, and it was clear that the doctor did not understand the word relinquish.

“Eh bien, alors. Je ne sais pas … But in any case he is not here.
He was transferred last year to the service fermé at Sainte-Marie in Clermont-Ferrand after his last escape.”

I caught my breath and froze.

“Escape?”

“Mais oui—vous savez—they often do try to escape. Even in pajamas.”

And the man whose writing I knew so well, whose scrawling hand was now indelible on my own hands, whose courage was never in question, came back to me with full force. He was still there, still present, unbroken.

“Sainte-Marie? Clermont?” I repeated his words.

“Yes. I shouldn’t think you’d be able to see him.” The doctor shook his head reflectively. But I would not now be defeated.

“Did you know him well?” I demanded.

The doctor shrugged. “You’ve never met him? Well, he’s not the kind of patient with whom you ever make much progress. It’s sad to say that. But it’s true. Why don’t you telephone the service at Clermont?”

I took the number and thanked him warmly, then carefully negotiated my exit back out through the sequence of locked doors. I felt the women’s eyes, suspicious, incredulous, attached to my back.

Jubilant, I ran most of the way back to the student residence. I had taken the room for a month in the first instance and had a terrible argument with the woman in administration who would only reimburse me for a week. I had less money, but now I knew where I was going. I scribbled a postcard to my Germanist telling her that I had found out where he was and that I was going to find him. Then I packed everything I possessed, including all the damp clothes from the windowsill and the poster, gave the pot plant to two unconvinced Americans, and caught the 5:30 train from the Gare de Lyon to Clermont-Ferrand. Paris sank behind me; the flat, cut fields
of central France unfolded like a checkerboard. I had a terrible sense of urgency and fear. It was as if every second counted, as if I had only hours in which to find him, to tell him that his reader, his English reader, was still loyal, still listening, still here.

Looking back, I see now that I had become obsessed, gripped by a passion, a quest, that had not originated with me, but that had become my own. His handwriting, sharp, slanting, inevitable, had been the last knot in the noose. His letters had spoken to me with a terrible, unbending clarity, had made the most uncompromising demands upon me. I could never betray those demands and abandon him. No matter who he had become.

I
arrived at Clermont-Ferrand in the misty twilight. The station was full of displaced tourists, and one anguished, uniformed courier trying to conjure up a bus in the car park. I was one of the last off the train and the car park was discouragingly empty. Clermont is built with volcanic rock in a gulf beneath a chain of volcanoes. It is a black city, with a huge, black, Gothic cathedral. I wandered the streets with my rucksack looking for a one-star hotel. Everywhere was
COMPLET
. Finally a tired woman crouched behind a dried floral tribute in one of the pensions took pity on me. She was nursing a vicious poodle, which growled at my appearance.

“You’re English? It’s nearly ten-thirty. You won’t find anywhere tonight. Not this late. Just a minute. I’ll ring my sister. She sometimes takes tourists. But it’s a long walk out to her house. She lives in the suburbs. Shall I give her a ring?”

I was by now used to the French voice of doom. Everywhere will always be shut, the person you want unavailable, on holiday or dead, the restaurant reserved for a private party, another film showing, or the book out of print. I sat philosophically on an overstuffed, stained sofa and waited. And as always, obstinacy and persistence were rewarded. Yes, her sister would take me. Was I clean? Yes, acceptably so. Her husband would pick me up on his way home. One hundred and twenty francs, cash payable in advance, breakfast included, shower in the room, and if I wanted to stay for a week she’d
do a special deal. She liked English people. She often took in the English. English and Dutch. But not Germans. I sat in exhausted silence until nearly eleven o’clock when a bulging, slouching man cruised through the door, pausing only to spit tobacco in the dust.

I understood very little of whatever it was he said as his accent was beyond me, but I managed to murmur appropriate things about the beauty of the volcanoes and the grandeur of the mountains. I also managed to explain that I wasn’t there to take part in the music festival or the sky-diving formations competition. I managed to persuade him to smoke one of my cigarettes.

“I’m looking for a writer who is in the Hôpital Sainte-Marie.”

“Sainte-Marie?” He was startled.

“Yes. Do you know where it is?”

“Everyone knows Sainte-Marie. C’est en pleine ville.”

He looked at me doubtfully and pulled up in front of a villa bursting with geraniums. Another tiny poodle growled around my ankles as I heaved my rucksack past the door. In the morning I found myself encased in polyester sheets inside a tiny room throughout which every available surface was covered with various species of glass, crystal or china animals; a terrifying array of Bambis, Lassies and prancing kittens. Creatures of all sizes and colors were amassed on the shelves and dressing tables. Some of them turned out to be barometers which translated into a livid blue if the weather was fine. I decided not to unpack my books. My socks and underpants were beginning to smell musty with damp, so I risked arranged them along the windowsill, which was the only flat surface not rampant with adorable little beasts.

Monsieur Louet had already gone to work when I got up, but Madame, a duplicate of her sister in every detail down to the poodle, so much so that I began to imagine I had hallucinated the hotel, was wild with curiosity about Sainte-Marie.

“Is it someone you know well?” she asked, pressing bread rolls and croissants upon me.

“No,” I said, gratefully wolfing down every crumb, “we’ve never met.”

She was very disappointed.

“He’s locked up, is he?”

“I should think so.”

“The service fermé? There is a service fermé at Clermont.”

“I imagine that’s where he is.”

“Did he—” she hesitated, “attack anyone?”

“I’m afraid he did. Lots of people.”

“Aren’t you anxious?”

“Yes. A bit.”

“Let me tell you how to get there. You’ll have to take the bus.” She was already desperate that I should set out and return, articulate with descriptions.

The hospital was a great walled block, with a mass of interior buildings, like a convent or a prison, in the center of the city. I found out afterwards that it had been run by nuns and that they still controlled the council that governed the hospital. The narrow windows were opaque, either masked with frosted double glazing, or patterned grilles and bars. The rue St Jean-Baptiste Torrilhon was at the heart of a dense mesh of narrow inner-city streets. I hesitated at the corner of the Voie Ste Geneviève, unable to find the main entrance. This was in fact on the other side of the enclosure. I had missed it altogether. I went on down the road past the double-parked cars. The building turned inwards, its back hunched towards the street. At no point were the walls lower than thirty or forty feet. They were covered in graffiti, mostly obscenities.

Then I saw, above a narrow door, a huge slogan written in giant black letters, curving like an arc over the entrance.

J’AI LEVE MA TETE ET J’AI VU PERSONNE
(
I raised my head and I saw no one
)

Beneath the words was a small bronze plaque which said,

CMP Ste MARIE
Service Docteur Michel

and beside the plaque stood the door, tight as an arrow slit. Beneath the bronze someone had written a poem on the wall. It was as if every official statement carried its own commentary.

I understood the French, but not the sense, not entirely. Just to the right of the poem was a bell. Sonnette. I took a deep breath and pressed the innocent white square. A camera eye, red, gleaming, flickered and swiveled behind the thick glass door. Then the buzzer sounded and I was let into an air lock, exactly the same as the one in Sainte-Anne. Inside were the same cream walls, artificial lights, airless,
windowless corridors, the same reinforced glass box, two different women, with the same suspicious expressions.