Mesmerised (13 page)

‘What a disgrace,’ the man immediately in front of me calls out. The person next to him says, ‘I can’t believe Napoleon has allowed such pornography to be let loose in here.’

‘And I’ve come here with my wife,’ another yells back.

A pregnant woman faints.
Surely from the hot and stuffy overcrowded room? Three men ceremoniously carry her out. Several ladies dab their yes with handkerchiefs and sob theatrically. There are others, of the gentler sex, led to the exits by their escorts.

‘Excuse me, this is no place for my daughter,’ a man addresses me. The crowd
, like the red sea, parts. The man and his daughter walk through. I can stand it no longer and follow in his tracks.

A whole gang of artists is already outside. Camille is there, so is Edouard, Paul, Victorine, Claude and Henri.

‘Edouard, they scorn you but they’re not artists, what do they know?’ Camille says.

Edouard stands in front of everyone with aqueous eyes. He leans on his cane with both hands. ‘I’m not like the rest of you,’ he says. ‘Painting has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with being an artist accepted by the establishment. Today is a very big blow,’ he says, walking off, the tails of his caramel frock coat flapping. The rest of us are silent. The bells of Notre Dame chime midday. Victorine chases after Edouard, the clack-clack of her heels moving into the distance.

‘Friends are important. He makes it more difficult for himself, running away
like that,’ Camille says, to no one in particular. ‘Ah, well … .’

We disband.

On my way down the steps Paul slaps my back

‘It’s only the first day. Perhaps it will go better tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘There is always hope.’

Bird
with a Broken Wing

May 18th

‘
Don’t be afraid in nature; one must be bold, at the risk of having been deceived and making mistakes.’

Camille Pissarro

I sit with hope in my consulting room chair, listening to my own quiet breath making the morning’s din seem all the more distur
bing. It’s ironic. Even if I were a professional painter I would still be getting critically stoned for my beliefs. Maybe I am just an inherent revolutionary. What a crazy revelation to have about oneself.

There’s a knock at the door. I move towards the
sound and lift the latch. The chain jams the door.

‘Yes?’ I ask.

‘It’s me, Nurse Morrisot.’

‘Please come in.’

I release the chain and Nurse Morrisot’s face shatters any hope. ‘Doctor Gachet, Bella Laffaire is a lot worse. For the last few hours she’s been demonic. She’s pulled ancient texts down from the library shelves and stamped them to dust. She’s thrown books at lamps, smashing glass shades, and started fights with other patients. The nurses cannot contain her. Her bite is rabid. Please, you have to come.’

I put on m
y coat and follow her to a waiting hansom. During the journey rain splatters against the windows. We remain silent, only the leather squeaks beneath us. I wonder what this little episode means for the future of homeopathy and I worry that I have let down this noble system of medicine with my mistake. When we arrive, I delve into my pocket for money to pay the driver.

‘The hospital has given me
sous,’ Nurse Morrisot says.

I walk
off swiftly through the rain. A matron and her gaggle of nurses meet me at the door. Doctor Ipsen comes hurriedly towards us. His face is a screwed up rag.

‘Good evening,’ I say.

He looks straight through me and as he leaves he slams the street door. The sound echoes whilst I follow my entourage down a marble staircase to the basement where the smell of boiled cabbage gives way to excrement. I resist the desire to cover my nose. Bella lies on a straw bed in her cell. She has been bound and gagged. As soon as I walk in, her eyes plead with mine. Nurse Morrisot has caught up with us and stands next to me. She lowers and shakes her head. But to untie Bella now would only reignite the bedlam that occurred before I arrived. For the life of me I do not know what to do for her homeopathically.

‘Higher dose of
laudanum?’ Marguerite Bottard asks.

I hesitate,
then decide. ‘No, she is safe for tonight. I will be back again first thing tomorrow morning.’

Lost

May 18
th
, evening

‘It would be very unjust to object to a busy physician, because he, as a recuperation from his toilsome day's work, in the evening may drink a glass of wine in company with his friends.’

Clemens von
Boenninghausen,
Lesser Writings

I go to the Bade and sit at the bar. As usual, it is heated and crowded. Blanche drinks at a table in the corner with two of Charles’s cronies. I don’t catch her looking towards me but no doubt she has seen me poking my nose into my glass. After my second vin rouge, I decide that she is obviously ignoring me. With alcohol warming my gut I stroll along the busy, balmy boulevard to the Guerbois.

Everyone who has ever attended sessions at Père Suisse is there
, or so it seems. Another smoky, hot atmosphere, but at least in this place tonight, I have friends. Camille waves me over. He is with Julie, and their closest friends Piette and Adèle de Montfoucault. I wave at the quartet, mouth ‘later’, and walk on. I’m looking for Georges. Partisans circulate. Waitresses tiptoe with trays in the air. There is a man with an accordion making his way from table to table. Edouard, accompanied by his mother and two brothers, occupy a table in the corner. He is hunched over eating a bowl of soup. Eugenie Manet sits proudly upright as her two other sons look from one to the other.

I crane my head. Victorine is over on the other side of the room, sitting with a group of people I’ve never seen before. I see Georges beside a table positioned next to a wall. He is with Ernest
Hoschedés. The two men look like penguins. They have their chairs turned outwards towards the room. They drink coffee and smoke cigars. I push and shove towards them, excusing myself along the way.

‘Georges, I’m so pleased I’ve found you. I’ve been looking for you all day.’

He crosses his legs and inspects his cigar.

‘Look, I’m really sorry about
last week. I wish I could offer you a good excuse. I know it’s unforgivable and I feel terrible but the truth is that I forgot,’ I say bending down and whispering in his ear so he can hear me.

‘I’m upset with you Pau
l. We were conducting a proving, a scientific experiment of your own making. The remedy evoked symptoms that were uncomfortable. I didn’t want to participate but you cajoled me into it and for what? The greater good of mankind? For nothing, because you didn’t turn up.’

‘It’s not like me. It must be a proving symptom of
Phosphorus.’

‘Look at you, your shirttails are sticking out and you have madness in your eyes,’ he says, waving me away with a flick of his hand. I stand up straight and
am pushed back by the
mâitre d’
.

‘Excuse me M
onsieur,’ he says, bringing a group of new people through to be seated. Georges turns his chair around to face his table. He motions Ernest Hoschedés to do the same. A waitress walks in front of me with her tray held high, ‘Excuse me Monsieur, are you waiting for a table?’

‘No. No thank you,’ I reply, backing away.

In an alcove, there is a strange party going on. A dozen people sit in a line across four tables with their backs to the wall, men and women dressed in expensive clothes that would once have been considered the height of fashion. Their outfits are worn out and faded now, ghostly reminders of a time when their lives were richer, with responsibilities and relationships. Now, they are sorrowful and unseeing. They live only in some dreamlike internal world. I shudder. I’ve seen it at the hospital, the accidents, the loss of reason, and a future that is doomed by the wormwood in the glass in front of them. The craving for absinthe becomes everything. It is also Edouard’s tipple. He calls it his muse.

‘Monsieur, perhaps you would like to sit at the bar?’ the same waitress asks as she moves back through to the kitchen. ‘I think it is
your friend, yes, who is waving at you?’

I look in the direction she is pointing. Armand
Guillamin sits alone on a stool by the counter. I have met him many times before at Père Suisse. Like me, he has a day job. He works on the railway, I think. It would be good to talk to him. I make my way over to the bar.

‘
What are you drinking?’ he asks, draining his glass.

‘Not for me,
I’ve got problems at work. I have to keep a clear head.’

‘No my man, you’ve got that wrong, you have to be inspired. We’ll have two more absinthes,’ he says to the barman.

I look at the green slime in the glass for quite a while. Armand is already intoxicated. You can see it by the vacancy in his eyes. He’s talking but I don’t hear him, I’m thinking of Blanche and wondering what the hell is going on. I have fallen for her but our relationship is so strange. I think of Bella and my stomach tugs downwards. I will have to be very present first thing tomorrow. I need to find her a better remedy. I twirl the glass in front of me. The alcohol has legs and slips down the glass like a woman getting into bed.

‘I never worry about problems on the railway,’ Armand tells me. ‘Painting is everything
; the railway is just a job.’

I look up at him and try to smile.

‘Come on my man, I’ve bought you a drink, let’s drink,’ Armande raises his.

In the glass is a river
to drown in, some fairytale land. What is it that Edouard once said? ‘It opens the mind. Some of my best visions come from absinthe.’

Was he talking about
‘
Dejeuner
’? Because if he was talking about
Dejeuner
, it isn’t just a vision, it is the work of a genius. I’m going to need to find my genius in the hospital tomorrow morning. Like all men who feel doomed I grab at straws.

‘A santé,’ I say, lifting mine.

Blanche’s loving
eyes, hardened. Ipsen’s supercilious snarl. Bella’s warrior expression as she attacks me. Victorine’s amusement. Edouard’s nearly tears. My face in the glass behind the bottles. Thin lips downturned in misery. Elbows on the counter. Head cupped in hands. Blue eyes never bluer. One more Absinthe.

‘To
Dejeuner sur l’Herbe
,’ I say.

‘To
Edouard’s cat,’ says Armand.

‘Does he have a cat?

Armand laughs, ‘He has a blue cat with purple eyes, I can see it and anyway, does it really matter?’

‘Not at all, to
Dejeuner
.’

‘And
Edouard’s cat.’

‘To
Dejeuner
and Edouard’s cat.’

I call for one more
Absinthe.

One more.

And one more.

And I am on a cloud watching t
hem have a picnic on the grass by a river under the trees. Small droplets of light swim through the leaves and weave through the air like fireflies. Crickets hum in the long grass at the edge of the water. A finch lands on a patch of ground that is covered with bluebells. The finch says that if you medicate the humours with Absinthe then the spirit is weakened and grows less and less capable of dealing with pain.

Up on my cloud, I feel no pain.

I see Bella playing in a pool of water.

‘Hey everybody,’ she calls out. ‘I’ve caught a fish.’

Victorine sits naked on the grass staring out at no one. Beside her are Gustave and Eugène Manet fully clothed. The three of them have turned into china dolls.

‘You’re so unreserved, darling,’ it is Victor
ine’s voice.

I wobble on my cloud.

‘The fish is a silver slither of pond idiot gyrating and wanting to escape from her pincer hold,’ this is the voice of Gustave.

‘Waa
!’ Bella drops the creature and wades through mossy, Absinthe coloured scum, one hand on her belly, the other reaching out to the shore.

‘Fun,’ she says, when she reaches the others. ‘I like to have fun.’

‘Girls like Bella are cleverer than you think,’ Gustave again.

‘I can’t believe I had you fooled,’ Bella says.

I fall off my cloud. I am falling and falling and falling … .

‘Actually, it is childish. Bella is childish
.’ This is Eugène.

‘Is it darling? Is it childish?’ Bella asks.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m going home,’ says Victorine without moving her lips.

The four of them are in a boat on the water, with the reflection of sunrays like silver threads of rain. Gliding past cornfields and horses grazing, Victorine leans back against
Gustave. Bella sits on the side and the boat rocks wildly.

‘Is it deep? I can’t swim,’ she says.

I am sitting in the stern controlling the rudder.

I say, ‘Bella, you are a bloody fool.’

‘I’m not. I just want you to save me.’

We both stand. I just manage to save myself from going over the side. Bella falls against me. Her
breasts graze my chest. Her hipbones jut into my groin. Her lips are so close I feel the wetness of her breath.

‘Well!’ she says.

The three china dolls are watching.

‘Victorine,’ Bella says, ‘Don’t you know it’s rude to stare.’