by Victoria Mas
Louise is holding a red dress trimmed with lace.
‘My name’s Louise. Mind if I sit down?’
‘Go ahead. I’m Eugénie.’
Eugénie clears her throat to dispel the sob. Louise sits and smiles at her. Her thick black curls spill over her shoulders. Eugénie is comforted by the girl’s gentle, youthful face, her childlike manner.
‘Have you picked your costume yet? I’m going as a Spanish lady. I’ve got everything I need, the mantilla, the fan, the earrings. Pretty, ain’t it?’
‘Very.’
‘What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Your costume.’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘Better get a move on, then! The ball is in two weeks.’
‘What ball are you talking about?’
‘The Lenten Ball! When did you get here? You’ll see, it’s lovely! All of Paris’s fine society comes to see us. And I’ll tell you a secret – but don’t tell anyone else . . . the night of the ball, my beau is going to ask me to marry him.’
‘Really?’
‘Jules. He’s a doctor. Handsome as a prince. I’m going to be his wife and then they’ll let me out of here. Soon I’ll be a doctor’s wife.’
‘Pay no heed to her foolishness, new girl.’
Louise and Eugénie turn to see Thérèse sitting on the bed next to them, quietly knitting a shawl. Louise indignantly gets to her feet.
‘You shut up! It’s not foolishness. Jules is going to ask me to marry him.’
‘Would you ever stop prattling on about this Jules and give our ears a rest? There’s enough racket in this place as it is.’
‘You’re the one should give our ears a rest, from your knitting. I’m half deaf listening to your click click click all day. I’m surprised your fingers haven’t seized up.’
Thérèse chuckles. Louise angrily turns on her heel and stalks off.
‘Our little Louise is in love . . . she’s got it bad. It’s worse than being mad. My name’s Thérèse. They call me the Tricoteuse. I hate the nickname. It’s stupid.’
‘I’m Eugénie.’
‘I heard. When did you get here?’
‘Yesterday.’
Thérèse nods. On her bed are several balls of wool and a number of neatly folded shawls. She is wearing one of her own creations – a beautifully knitted thick, black shawl. Thérèse must be about fifty, perhaps a little older. A few grey hairs peek out from beneath the scarf she is wearing on her head. Her soft, plump frame and her gruff but calm face give her a wise, maternal air. She seems relatively normal compared to the other women, although that depends on how one defines normal. Simply put, Thérèse shows no sign of any affliction that Eugénie can see.
The young woman watches the chubby fingers deftly knit.
‘What about you? When did you arrive here?’
‘Oh . . . I’ve stopped counting. But it’s more than twenty years, at least.’
‘More than twenty years?’
‘Oh yes, love. But I deserved it. Look here . . .’
Thérèse sets down her needles and pushes the right sleeve of her cardigan up to the elbow. Tattooed on her forearm, in green ink faded by time, is a heart pierced by an arrow and the words ‘FOR MOMO’. Thérèse smiles.
‘I chucked him in the Seine. But he was asking for it. Bastard didn’t even die.’
She pulls the sleeve down and returns to her knitting.
‘Loved him to death, I did. No man wanted me. I was ugly and had a limp ever since my pisshead father pushed me over. Thought I was done for. And then one day Maurice shows up. Serenades me with his tales of the good life. Takes me in his arms. Before I know it, he has me on the game. Beats me when I don’t bring back enough money, but I don’t care. It’s no worse than I got from my father. And anyway, I loved Momo. Ten years of my life and not a single night I wasn’t out there walking the streets of Pigalle. Not a single night I didn’t get a wallop, either from Momo or some john . . . But when Momo kissed me, I forgot it all. Till the day I caught him. Seen him go up to Claudette’s room, didn’t I? I saw red, I can tell you. After everything I’d done for him . . . So I waits for him to come out, see, and then I follow him, follow the bastard for an age, and when he gets to the bridge at Concorde, I can’t stand it any more, so I rush up behind him and give him a shove. Didn’t weigh more than a feather. Skinny as a rake.’
Thérèse sets down her knitting and gives Eugénie a smile – a cold smile born of years of endurance and resignation.
‘They slapped the cuffs on me right there. I was screaming and bawling, I can tell you. Don’t regret pushing him, though. Only thing I regret is not doing it sooner. ’Twasn’t the beatings that hurt me, ’twas the fact that he stopped loving me and started loving another.’
‘Twenty years . . . and they’ve never let you leave?’
‘I’ve no wish to leave.’
‘Really?’
‘No. Thing is, I’ve never felt as peaceful as I do here surrounded by madwomen. Men bruised and beat me. My body is a disaster. My leg hurts and I’ve got a limp. I get pains fit to make you scream every time I piss. I’ve a scar goes right across my left breast where some man tried to hack it off. Here I feel protected. There’s just us women. I knit shawls for the girls and I feel all right. So no, I wouldn’t leave, not ever. Long as men have pricks, all the evil in this world will go on existing.’
Feeling herself blush, Eugénie turns away. She is unused to such crude language. It is not so much the meaning that troubles her, but the language. She has grown up in hushed rooms where laughter was the only familiarity authorized from time to time, sheltered from misery and poverty, from a Paris she knows only through reading newspapers and the novels of Zola. Now, she finds herself rubbing shoulders with the flipside of the capital – the northern stretch from the slums of Montmartre to the slopes of Belleville, where the gutters teem with rats, filth and foul language. In her bespoke dress made by a seamstress on the Grands Boulevards, Eugénie feels terribly bourgeois. This single item of clothing marks her out among the women here; she wishes she could take it off.
‘You ain’t shocked by what I said, are you?’
‘No, no.’
‘See her over there? The fat one with her hands on her chest. Rose-Henriette. She was a maid for a family of aristos. But what with the man of the house bothering her all the time, she had a breakdown. T’other girl there, the one on tiptoes, that’s Anne-Claude. Fell down the stairs while she was running away from her husband. And little Valentine there, with her braids and that arm of hers that’s forever twitching: she was ravished by some maniac when she left the washhouse where she worked. Now, I’m not saying all the girls are here on account of some man. Aglaé there, with the paralysed face, she threw herself from the third floor when her baby died. Hersilie, the lass over there that never moves, was attacked by a dog. Then there’s them that never talks, we don’t even know their names. So, there you go. Pretty little story for your first day here, eh?’
Thérèse looks at Eugénie and carries on knitting. The bourgeois young girl does not seem particularly mad, even if Thérèse knows that the most profound madness is invisible. Thérèse remembers some of her johns; those who, at first glance, seemed to be well-mannered and polite, but once through the door of her tiny studio apartment turned out to be sick and deranged. Although madness in men is not the same as that in women: men use it against others; women turn it in on themselves.
And yes, there is something intimidating about this shy dark-haired girl that goes beyond her education and her background, something that is immediately apparent and sets her apart, something that goes deeper. Besides, the Old Lady would not be glaring at her from the far side of the room if she hadn’t also sensed something too.
‘What ’bout you? What brought you here?’
‘My father.’
Thérèse’s needles fall silent again, and she sets her knitting in her lap.
‘It’s easier if
it’s the police what brings you here.’
Eugénie does not have time to reply before a scream erupts in the midst of the general hubbub. White nurses’ uniforms rush towards the centre of the room while the patients quickly scatter, some terrified, others irritated by the noise. Rose-Henriette is on her knees, her arms folded around her chest, her hands clenched like claws, her whole body shuddering. She violently shakes her bowed head, her every breath a guttural wail. The nurses cannot manage to lift her frozen legs from the floor. Geneviève stiffly strides over, pushing the patients out of her way, then she takes a small phial from her pocket and pours a little liquid on to a gauze compress. She kneels down next to the poor wretch, who is oblivious to what is happening, and presses the pad against her face. After a few seconds, the screaming stops and the woman collapses with a soft thud.
Eugénie looks at Thérèse.
‘It’s easier if you’re not brought here at all.’
Rose-Henriette’s seizure casts a pall over the room, and the rest of the afternoon is spent in silent tedium. Some of the women have been given permission to go out into the grounds; others have decided to stay in bed, silently contemplating their costumes and dreaming of the impending ball.
Supper takes place in the refectory; as every evening, soup and two slices of dry bread are served in an atmosphere of calm.
Eugénie, finding herself ravenous, is scraping the bottom of the bowl to get the last dregs of soup when a hand suddenly appears holding out a mop. It is Geneviève.
‘Everyone here does their share. You’ll mop the floors along with the others. When you have finished, come and see me. And put down your bowl – there is nothing left in it.’
Without a word, Eugénie does as she is ordered. In the space of half an hour the benches are stacked, the bowls are cleared away, washed and dried, the floor is polished and the wooden tables wiped down. The crockery and the mops and buckets are tidied away and everyone heads back to the dormitory. It is eight o’clock.
As instructed, Eugénie goes to find Geneviève. The circles under the girl’s eyes are dark from lack of sleep.
‘Follow me.’
Eugénie is annoyed by brusque orders given without explanation – previously by her father, now by this sour-tempered nurse. Is she to spend her whole life being told what to do, which path to take? She clenches her jaw and follows Geneviève back along the corridor by which she arrived in the dormitory that morning. Outside in the grounds a few streetlamps glimmer in the darkness.
After a moment, Geneviève stops in front of a door and fumbles for her keys. Eugénie recognizes it as the room where she spent the previous night.
‘Am I to sleep here again?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I was assigned a bed in the dormitory.’
Geneviève slips the key into the lock and opens the door.
‘In you go.’
Eugénie chokes down her anger and steps into the icy room. As she did the night before, Geneviève remains standing in the doorway, one hand gripping the knob.
‘Could you at least explain?’
‘Dr Babinski will examine you tomorrow morning. He will be the one to decide whether or not you are to remain in isolation. In the meantime, I do not want you frightening the other patients with your tales of ghosts.’
‘Forgive me if I scared you last night.’
‘You did not scare me. You do not have that power. But I will not have you talk about my sister again. I do not know how you knew her name, and I do not wish to know.’
‘It was she who told me her name.’
‘Hold your tongue! There is no such thing as ghosts, understood?’
‘Ghosts, no, but there are Spirits.’
Geneviève feels her head begin to pound; she struggles to control her breathing. She was frightened last night, just as she is at this moment, faced with the dark figure standing by the foot of the bed. Never before has a patient caused her to lose her composure. Her most deeply held beliefs are being shaken and she must summon all her strength not to let it show.
She takes a deep breath and then hears herself say:
‘Your father did well to have you committed.’
Standing in the shadows, Eugénie silently takes the blow. Geneviève instantly regrets her words. Since when has she tried to deliberately hurt her patients? It is not in her character, nor in her moral code, to exploit another’s weakness. Her heart is beating harder in her chest. She needs to walk away, right now, to leave this room – but, somehow, she cannot. She hovers in the doorway, as though waiting for something she dare not confess.
Eugénie sits down on the edge of the bed and glances at the chair on which she sat the previous night. There is a moment of silence.
‘So, you do not believe in Spirits, Madame Geneviève?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Why, pray?’
‘The idea is absurd. It runs counter to every law of science.’
‘If you do not believe in the Spirits, why have you been writing to your sister all these years? Thousands of letters that you have never sent. You write to her because, deep down, you hope, you think, it might be possible that she hears you. And she does hear you.’
Her head spinning, Geneviève leans against the wall to steady herself.
‘I do not say this to frighten or mock you, madame. I want you to believe me so that you will help me leave this place.’
‘But . . . if . . . if what you say is true . . . if you can truly hear . . . then they will never let you out. It will simply make it worse.’
Eugénie gets to her feet and walks over to Geneviève.
‘You can see for yourself that I am not mad. Perhaps you are not aware of it, but there is a large spiritualist society in Paris, with scientists and researchers working to prove the existence of the beyond. I had planned to join those people, but then my father brought me here.’
Geneviève stares in astonishment at the face of this girl standing opposite her. Eugénie’s candour makes it impossible for her to carry on pretending. At a stroke, her habitual air of authority, her sternness and her stoicism fall away. Relieved of a burden she had not known she was carrying, she manages to articulate the question she has been aching to ask:
‘Blandine . . . is she here? In this room?’
Eugénie is surprised to find that she, too, has been relieved of a burden – a first step has been taken, a first obstacle overcome in her quest to win the trust and the compassion of the only woman who can help her to escape.
‘Yes.’
‘. . . Where?’
‘She is sitting on that chair.’
At the far end of the room, the little wooden chair is empty. The shock of it all is too great for Geneviève. She brusquely steps back and pulls the door closed, slamming it so loudly that every windowpane along the endless corridor trembles.
7
6 March 1885
‘Madame Geneviève? Can you hear me?’
A nurse is gently shaking Geneviève by the shoulder. The matron opens her eyes and is surprised to find herself in her office. There are scraps of fluff clinging to the hem of her skirt. Geneviève realizes that she is sitting on the floor with her back to the cabinet, her knees drawn up to her chest. Her neck aches. She looks up at the nurse who is watching her with a worried expression.
‘Are you all right?’
‘What time is it?’
‘Eight o’clock, madame.’
The pale glow of a misty morning infuses the room. Geneviève brings her hand to her neck. She remembers what occurred the night before. Talking to Eugénie, slamming the door, the sudden, overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. She had felt too weak to go home, and had decided to sit in her office to recover her strength and collect her thoughts. What had happened next, she cannot remember. It seems clear that she did not go home, but instead spent the night sitting on this dusty floor, in this office where, every day, committal papers are signed.
Geneviève struggles t
o her feet and dusts herself down. ‘Madame . . . did you sleep here?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! I got here very early this morning. I simply felt dizzy for a moment, nothing more. The question is, what are you doing here?’
‘I came to fetch the notes for this morning’s consultations.’
‘That is not your responsibility. Now get out of my office, you have no business being in here.’
The nurse bows her head and leaves, closing the door behind her. Geneviève anxiously paces the room, arms folded over her chest. She is angry at herself for this moment of weakness – especially now there is a witness. Gossip travels faster in the Salpêtrière than it does in a village. The slightest mistake, the least hesitation, attracts attention that is best avoided. She cannot afford for others to doubt her. Another incident like this and she will be joining the madwomen in the dormitory.
This cannot happen again. She had a moment of weakness, she allowed herself to be tempted by the idea that those we have loved and lost are still close at hand – that death does not mean the death of the spirit, of the essence. She was tempted by such notions because Eugénie had touched a raw nerve, she had rekindled Geneviève’s innermost pain. But Eugénie is mentally ill. Eugénie is mentally ill, and Blandine is dead. This is what she must accept.
Geneviève takes a deep breath, picks up the papers on her desk and leaves the office.
Eugénie pushes open the entrance to the consulting room. The five young women standing in the middle of the room glance nervously towards the door, thinking that the doctor has arrived.
At first glance, the room looks like a gallery in a natural history museum. The tawny walls are adorned with cornices and mouldings. By the doorway, the shelves of a bookcase groan with hundreds of volumes on science, neuroscience, human anatomy, and illustrated medical tomes. On the far side of the room, between the tall windows, a cabinet in dark wood contains bottles, phials and liquids. On a side table there is a display of medical instruments of various sizes and levels of sophistication, all completely mysterious to anyone without medical training. Lastly, there is a screen that conceals an examination table. The room is rich with the scent of polished wood and ethanol.
