Mesmerised (20 page)

Melancholia

October 26th

‘There is no doubt that when, in an effort to know the man, we compare Manet’s paintings with the curiously unsatisfactory chronicles written by his friends – Bazire, Proust, Zola, Duret and others – we are faced with an inconsistency that leads to the conclusion, difficult as it is to accept in view of the artist’s legendary worldliness, that Manet was secretive, that much of what puzzles us was intended to do so, that much of what appears enigmatic is indeed rooted in mystery – in short, Manet cultivated the disturbing character of his pictures.’

Charles Baudelaire

A Père Suisse outing to
the Louvre: creamy pox-marked stone walls; majestic, mosaic-tiled floors; light pouring in from all sides. Here is every artist’s history – on plinths, hanging from walls, in the very structure of the building, even absorbed by the molecules in the air. Every time I come here tears prick the corners of my eyes. I arrive at the room exhibiting marble sculptures amid the faint timbre of visitors’ muted words. Victorine sits lonely on a bench. Opposite, Claude and Henri sit and sketch frantically. She stares ahead in exactly the same way that Edouard portrays her. Usually her spine is a bamboo rod. Now she slouches. As her physician I am concerned.

I sit beside her.

‘You’re not inspired?’ I ask.

‘Oh Paul,
Doctor Gachet,’ she smiles and looks up into my face and I can see that she has been crying. She laughs nervously as I read her deep emotion.

‘You’re
going to ask me if I’m all right. I am,’ she says, sniffing. ‘You’re a good friend and a caring physician but please don’t ask me about this. I’m just a little sad.’

I don’t say a word but take a leaf of sketch paper, cha
rcoal and a wooden board, from my portfolio. Placing the board on my knees with the paper on and the charcoal on the bench at my side, I fix upon
Captif.
Three centuries in the past, Michelangelo captured the male form like a living image with muscles that stretched and flexed. His statues breathe feelings. I notice
Captif
wears a shadow across its feet.

Victorine speaks again.
‘They’re all in the Batignolles having a celebration, the Manet family. I saw them through the window on my way here. Edouard saw me and came out. He had a letter in his pocket that he pressed into my hand.

‘
“I was going to come by later and give this to you,” he said.

‘
“What is it?” I asked.

‘
“Take it. Read it later. It’s a pledge.”

‘
I asked him what he was talking about. I was angry. There was something in the way he was addressing me.

‘
“I think
Dejeuner
and
Olympia
are amongst my best works. You inspired them. The note is signed by me to say that when I sell my work for a decent price you will be rewarded,” he said.

‘
“I don’t need this.” I told him, but he closed my hand into a fist with the letter inside it and put a finger to my lips.

‘
“Yes you do. It’s an insurance policy. One you might need to call on.”

‘
“Why now?” I said.

‘
“I’m going away tomorrow to Holland. I’m going to marry Suzanne,” he said.’

She stops
talking. I study the sculpture.

‘I wasn’t going to tell you
and now I have,’ she says.

‘It will remain confidential,’ I say, gazing at her tearstained face.

‘He doesn’t love her, not sexually, he told me that, but he’ll marry her anyway with Madame Manet’s blessing. She is giving him a gift of 10,000 francs. It’s an advance on his inheritance. Have you seen how she treats Suzanne? It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’

Could Leon be
Edouard’s father’s son? Is this why Madame Manet both resents her future daughter-in-law and blesses the marriage? A family scandal kept secret by an arrangement amongst all players. But it is only supposition, and as Clemens has demonstrated, it’s an unreliable explanation. It seems the more I get to know Edouard the less I know him. He is like a puzzle with a thousand tiny pieces; each one that’s found and put into place represents only a fragment of the whole, a picture that as yet I can’t determine.

I shrug
. Start to sketch. But can I reproduce on paper such perfection as
Captif
? Of course not.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t understand my reaction myself,’ she sniffs and laughs and holds a handkerchief to her nose.
‘Look at me. Why am I doing this? I’m an expert in seeing men come and go.’

I do as instructed and gaze at her face. The confident, dynamic Victorine is nowhere to be found. She seems small
er, fragile, broken. A cold draught sweeps over us. She shivers. Her lips are tinged with blue. I put my wooden board on the floor and place my coat around her shoulders.

‘Come. If you’re not going to sketch today then at least let me take you home.’

‘Don’t you wish to sketch, Paul? Claude told me that he bumped into you and you’ve been looking forward to coming here all week.’

‘It’s
all right, really. I can come back another time and so can you. I’m meant to be meeting Blanche soon anyway. It’s fine.’

We walk down rue de
Rivoli, past Père Suisse, through Hotel de Ville where Edouard stays with Suzanne, over the bridge with ribbed, moss-coloured water trembling beneath us. A vicious wind blows our hair from our faces. Notre Dame looms to our left and we walk towards it. Every time I pass this gothic cathedral I have to look up. Metallic green figures walk up and down from the spire: a fiddler, a priest, a dancer.

‘Do you ever pray?’ I ask her.

‘No, do you?’

‘No, but I consider myself to be a religious man.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I have my own religion based on wanting to be an asset to the universe.’

‘Do you mean being good?’

‘Yes, I suppose I do.’

‘Honestly, why don’t you just say what you mean then? You always make things more complicated.’

‘That’s how I am.’

We arrive at her front door in rue Maître Albert. She places her key in the lock, enters the dark corridor then hugs the door. A black cat curls itself around her calf.

‘What will you do for the rest of the day?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know. Probably buy a bottle of cognac and write a song. Thanks, Doctor Paul, for bringing me home,’ she says and her voice is low. She waves her fingers at me, I open my mouth but before I can say anything she closes the door.

I have time
, but not enough to make it worth returning to the Louvre, so I go back to the café where I had breakfast this morning. I sit facing the window and the Seine. Henri walks towards me. I stand and wave and he joins me.

‘That’s good. I’ve been looking for you. I’m pleased I found you. I guessed from the way you went off and didn’t say goodbye that something is wrong with Victorine.’

‘Did you know Edouard is getting married to Suzanne?’

‘Oh, really?’

‘You don’t sound surprised.’

‘How can I be? Whenever he’s drunk and morose he’s always moaning that one day he’ll end up wed to her
, and if you’d ever spoken to Antonin about his friend, he would have you thinking that Suzanne and Edouard were once Romeo and Juliet. Surely, Victorine must know she’s not marriage material. What did she expect?’

‘Not to be affected by the news,’ I say, a little stunned, certainly I
hadn’t been expecting yet another twist in the tale.

We order coffee.

‘Has Claude stayed at the Louvre?’

‘A messenger brought a letter. He’s been summoned by his
father.’

I nod.

I know Claude is dependent on his father for money and that he bears a grudge about it. It seems that somewhere along the line we all have a price to pay. As if reading my thoughts, Henri says, ‘I’m planning to go to London to get away from this place where not one of us, with the exception of Courbet who never paints outside, is considered worthy. In England, they withhold their emotions and appreciate the avant-garde. I’ve been told that my work will sell really well there and I’m more than ready for a bit of that.’

At this moment
, it seems inconceivable for me to be anywhere other than France and more specifically Paris. London has a reputation for being without passion, grey and cold. Paris, as harsh as she can be, makes me feel alive.

‘And what about love?’
I ask.

‘A handicap in the present clime
. Look at Camille: painting night and day then walking the streets in his old Russian hat looking for a buyer. Too many times he’s gone cap in hand to his mother who treats him like the door-to-door salesman he has become. Are you seriously asking if I want to live my life like that? No thank you. You’re a doctor, it’s different for you.’

‘Everyone has their problems.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘You paint, you have a profession, you earn your own money, get on well with your parents – who are both still alive – and you have a lovely lady friend, so I hear. No, you are definitely all right.’

I am with Blanche in the Tuileries. It is inclement, hardly the well-to-do scene that Edouard painted last year. The wind whistles and slaps our faces. I put my arm through hers and hold both her hands in my own. We walk through the trees under an umbrella of russet and yellow leaves, whilst a brown carpet crunches underfoot. The gardens are almost deserted. A few solitary gentlemen fix us with strange stares that make me wonder who is odd – them or us? A nanny pushes a squeaky perambulator. It is the first time I have ever seen one that is not a sketch in a newspaper. We stop and ogle at the sight of this recent invention.

‘Do you think in wanting more of you I am being selfish?’ she asks.

‘I agree, we never have enough time together, just us two, but I am miserable when I’m compromised in the things that I do.’

‘I think I’ll write a symphony, and when you want to be with me I will tell you I can’t.’

‘No, seriously, I think you should do that. You’re a brilliant musician and composer.’

‘You say that because you love me.’

‘No, I say it because I think it. And I love you. They’re two separate things.’

She looks at me quizzically but her smile is broad. She squeezes my hand.

We start walking again. Two figures stroll towards us. One is tall and thin wearing a navy coat with a white lace collar. The other is shorter, slightly more rounded, with black stockings and scuffed shoes peeping out from under a black cloth coat. I recognise their conjoined gait long before their faces become clear. I have seen them walking off together many times, one woman towering over the other, holding onto her ward as if at any moment the shorter of the two will slip away. I am taken aback. I start walking faster to reach them quicker. I intend to make a fuss. As I pull on Blanche’s arm, she asks, ‘Do you know those women?’

At that moment, the taller one tightly shakes her head as the two stroll past.

‘Paul, I asked you a question,’ Blanche says.

‘Yes, from the hospital,’ I answer, looking over my shoulder so that now it is Blanche pulling me forward.

‘What’s the matter? You’ve gone white.’

‘Something must have happened. This is not good news. Nurses don’t have permission to take patients outside the hospital grounds.’

‘Who are they?’

‘
Nurse Morrisot and Bella.’

Blanche nods knowingly and takes a big stride.

‘She doesn’t look as if she is insane,’ Blanche says.

‘You couldn’t tell in passing but she isn’t, not anymore, not in my understanding. The homeopathy is working. I don’t believe in coincidence, Blanche. There must be a reason why we should catch them here. Obviously, whatever’s going on I’m meant to know about it
. I’m going to run after them.’

‘Do you trust her?’

‘Who?’

‘The nurse
.’

‘Strangely enough, I would have said one hundred per cent until now.’

‘She seemed to indicate that whatever’s going on she is handling it.’

‘Yes, she did.
But I’m the doctor. I’m responsible.’ I look over my shoulder. Catherine and Bella are walking through a gate into the street. They are heading in the right direction for the hospital. I reflect on Catherine’s part in Bella’s treatment. She has proved herself to be intelligent, responsible and caring. She has been an ally. I don’t know what she’s up to now but I decide to award her my trust.

‘If you want to run after
them … .’

‘No, it’s all
right, Catherine knows what she’s doing.’

‘Are you sure?’