These Good Hands

by Carol Bruneau

  Far above, swallows darted and swooped. “You must be melting in that coat.”

  “Why would you care?” Mademoiselle snorted, any earlier gumption faded and disappearing now that we’d reached the grounds’ limits.

  In his small gatehouse the guard glanced up from whatever he was reading. What harm, what possible harm, if we stepped out just for a moment? I thought, dazzled by the distant purple, lured even. The tiniest taste of freedom, however delusional, worked wonders. Even Head Nurse said so.

  “When did you last…?” Escape, I could hardly say.

  “To see the dentist. In Avignon.” A faraway, almost bored look filled her eyes.

  “A while, then.” I sniffed, squeezing the patient’s hand. Waving to the guard, I called out, “We won’t be but a minute,” fully expecting to be asked for a pass. Instead, he simply buzzed us through. “Hold on to my arm,” I instructed. “The last thing either of us needs is you breaking a hip, dear.”

  But beyond the wall Mademoiselle refused to venture farther. She was content to peer out into the roadway and across the pavement at the tiny canal running past some dusty trees. Walled with concrete, it was no wider than a brook, its current as swift as it had been the evening of my arrival, offering me its vague direction. Not too far off, silhouetted by lavender, women dug potatoes, turning earth dark as a freshly let-out hem. Mademoiselle bent to inspect a rose bush in the wall’s shade, more thorns than blooms. Before I could stop her, she sagged to her knees with terrific effort and traced a circle in the dirt with a small stone.

  Oh well, what harm? I supposed, before she picked up a clod of earth, the way a baby would, and squeezed it in her fist. She let the dirt sift through her fingers — not quickly enough, considering my worry that she might try to eat it. “Mind now, or I’ll have to call the guard to help get you on your feet.” I bent to assist the patient.

  Tears glazed her eyes. “Gold — fool’s gold! Give me chalky silt, I’ll fill my boots with it!” Mademoiselle fretted, her voice rising. “If I’d never left the country, you see, none of these horrors would’ve happened.”

  Better not to listen and not to argue. Besides, something had caught my attention, something snagged in the tufted grass. A banknote. Finders, keepers. I held on to Mademoiselle’s sleeve and went to grab it. My stomach rose even as I picked it up. Once again, it was a crisp dollar bill with that vile message on the back: L’Argent n’a pas d’odeur … MAIS LE JUIF… The enemy’s propaganda, and to think our own government was in cahoots! Worth how many francs, I thought, disgusted, if such filth could be exchanged? Repulsed, I crumpled it up — but not quickly enough.

  Mademoiselle’s eyes widened. “The Americans! The scoundrel’s friends!” the poor woman wailed. “Trying to lure me, don’t you see? A bribe! Now they say he’s dead, his friends act in his place!”

  Stay calm, be agreeable: no point debating sick thoughts. To the insane, such reasoning is true, no matter how irrational and — thankfully, in Mademoiselle’s case — its excitability short-lived.

  “Even from the grave he pursues me! You see for yourself, Nurse — you won’t deny it,” she continued to rant. Passion, or fear, had at least got her to her feet. “Leaving their petty cash to butter me up. That’s how they operate, the rodent and his gang. Next they’ll be at the shutters, forcing their way in.”

  By now the guard was watching through his little window. Mademoiselle leaned heavily on me. “Have mercy, Soitier

  Polange — hide me from them.”

  “Of course, dear. No need to worry. I will.” How stupid I’d been, profligate, assuming I could manage her outside on my own. Annoyed with myself, I waved to the guard; best to keep on his good side, and hope I wouldn’t be questioned. The new girl in Number 10, is she qualified to escort patients off grounds? By whose authorization?

  Wordlessly he buzzed us back inside.

  ***

  NOT TILL I’D settled Mademoiselle for her personal Quiet Time did I remember what I’d so hastily pocketed. Beyond troubling, it was. I locked myself in the staff WC, tore the “dollar” into tiny pieces, and flushed them.

  Lunchtime loomed. With fifty-nine mouths to feed, there was not another moment to fret about the enemy or any other presence. One of the epileptics chose just then to take a fit, body jerking and chattering over the linoleum, Novice needing help to depress the tongue. Next I was called to administer Veronal by suppository to a patient after two injections had no effect; following that, a fever treatment to manage, which Novice had to commence without me because several guests were tearing off their clothes in the heat and required restraints. Head Nurse took the time to mutter “Good work” — less a compliment perhaps than a nudge to remind me about Mademoiselle’s meal.

  Housed in a separate building, the refectory was a virtual steam bath of boiling pots. Mercifully for all but the priest, guests had chapel again before the evening meal, allowing workers to wash up from lunch and prep supper. The red-faced cook eyed me. “Oh yes — you’re here for Herself, the artiste,” she snorted. “Mind, last time she was here, the mess! Both hands in the bin, flour everywhere, till we shooed her out.”

  A girl plopped down a potato — or was it a knob of petrified wood? “She wants the usual?”

  “Baked to perfection,” Cook quipped, and someone scrubbing pots shrieked with laughter. A vat of something boiled over, and plates and cutlery clattered.

  The guest in the green blouse was perched nearby peeling carrots. Someone had tugged a net over her hair and put a paring knife in her hand. I drew Cook aside. “Risky, isn’t it, that utensil? The directeur approves?”

  “He arranged it. Those birds in Admin, they’re seeing to it that this one earns her keep.” Cook fanned herself and the guest smiled nervously. Someone appeared at the delivery door, a swarthy fellow in soiled clothes.

  “The farmer, here for the scraps,” Cook said, mopping her face with her apron. “What the guests don’t eat he takes for the pigs.” I don’t think it was my imagination, the way her eyes lit uneasily on the patient in green. “Simone? Run along now, you, and help him.”

  Greenie — Simone — set down her knife, scraping plates. Hefting the swill-pail, she swung it outside.

  “Tea,” I finally spoke up. “Mademoiselle will take tea, with milk. She needs nourishment.”

  Cook chortled. Her brows lifted, two thin clouds floating on her broad, sweaty forehead. “The poor old bird. No milk today, I’m sorry. None till the cows come home,” she clucked. Was she excusing Vichy’s order — which I’d heard the orderlies parsing — that extra provisions, food grown on hospital grounds, was to go to the war effort, to feed enemy troops and not patients?

  “But — surely some, a speck, can be rustled up?” One had to be persistent.

  Cook brandished a spoon. “It’s not my doing. As for our lady, a wonder she’s still with us, Miss. Seeing how she’s made it a career, starving herself — as long as I’ve been cook, anyway. Imagine, saying it’s our job to poison her. One way of getting out of here, I suppose, starving yourself.” She shook her head, cheeks jiggling.

  ***

  MADEMOISELLE WAS SITTING at her table, the cat in her lap, when I arrived with the tray. The morning’s upset seemed days past when she gripped my hand and gently shook it. But she showed no interest in the food, pushing the potato away. She cooed to the cat like it was a baby. “Ah, ma petite! The only friend I have in the world, Miss Solange,” she said, “except my brother — and you, perhaps.”

  It was an odd about-face, I must say, her remark. “Have you any children?” the guest wanted to know.

  “Why do you ask?” To be professional, one avoids the personal — though it was the blending of both modes that landed me here, and in nursing in general.

  “Is it a crime, being curious?” Mademoiselle studied me. “I’m glad you’ve come back, I hoped you would.” It was difficult to know whom the guest was addressing, myself or the cat.

  “No — no children.” Was
this something to discuss?

  “I’m surprised. Not sorry.” Mademoiselle’s laugh was forlorn. “You seem to like being kind to those unkind to you. A mother’s lot, or a woman’s?” She glanced around and drew something from her coat, an envelope, which she pushed into my hands. “Now, Miss Solange, if you’d be so kind as to do a poor old lady a favour? I’ll reimburse you, of course. For postage, and for your trouble. When my brother sends my money. He’ll be grateful for your help. I’m sure when he visits he’ll pay you double.”

  Yellowed and creased, the envelope felt warm, as if the cat had lain on it — or worse, damp as it was from her hand. The hospital’s address was stamped in the upper corner; in Mademoiselle’s sloping scrawl was a man’s name, and a place not too far away, between here and Lyon.

  “Now, Mademoiselle, you know this isn’t permitted —” The guest didn’t appear to be listening. “The address is correct, I swear, Miss Solange. You see,” her voice fell to a whisper, “fighting fire with fire is my only hope — the only way to deal with the devils holding me here.” With the eyes of a hawk, she watched the envelope’s uneasy progress into my pocket.

  ***

  EASILY ENOUGH DISPOSED of, I assured myself, bound for Head’s desk and the folder marked ADMIN, Attn: Directeur — but in the stairwell, my professionalism made it impossible to resist peeking inside the envelope. It was purely in the patient’s interests. Not only was writing therapeutic, it could offer insights into illness itself.

  Mon cher petit, the note began and ended simply enough, I send you a kiss, your sister. Perfectly benign, perfectly disappointing. It was an old woman sending her brother fond wishes. What could be more harmless, or welcome, than that? I tucked it carefully into my apron’s bib.

  Before I could reach the nurses’ station, Dr. Cadieu flagged me down. “I hear that you’re interested in new treatments.” She sounded slightly bemused, almost shy. “If Head Nurse is in agreement, if just once she can spare you, perhaps we’ll send you to Number Five to observe?”

  “I would like that very much,” I said.

  When I got to the desk, I looked for the folder. It wasn’t there. “Never mind that now,” said Head, waving me off. “Make sure the guest on Ward One gets food and lots of fluids into her. And Cadieu wants you to see to a fever on Ward Two. That business of yours — of Mademoiselle’s? — whatever it is will have to wait.”

  6

  LUNATIC ASYLUM

  DAY? MONTH? YEAR?

  DEAREST C,

  Life would’ve been grand if we’d never had to go home, if my friend and I could’ve lived in our atelier around the corner from Maman’s, that tiny hole-in-the-wall on Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Oh, Paris! But you remember my friend, her taste for a cozy featherbed and good table. Our bellies and lack of a cookstove drove us to the flat and Maman’s finery — finery, if your taste ran to Samaritaine’s quick-sale bric-a-brac, finds laid out to impress our boarder and Papa home from his week at work. (Do you suppose he worked in the suburbs to escape Maman’s badgering, his job taking up all but those precious weekends he visited?)

  “Look who it is,” Maman greeted us, my friend and me. With her black dress and hair scraped into a bun she resembled a widow weaned of grief on vinegar! Papa kissed our cheeks, and Maman offered hers to be air-kissed, the rosy scent of talcum prickling our noses till the smell of food blessed it. She’d had Cook prepare Papa’s favourite, coq au vin and pommes purée, a nod to our country roots. But the bickering at table made a farce of family bonds. Maman nattered at me to wash my hands, to allow our guest to be served first; at our brother to pull his nose from his book; at our sister to stop treating her place as an octave, her fingers skittering over the fresh cloth, executing scales.

  Afterwards Maman invited my friend to the parlour to watch her sew while our sister and I helped the maid clear the table. “Yes, Madame, no Madame,” we heard her saying, as our brother — trying to study — coughed. For all her ingratiating sweetness, my friend soon excused herself to take refuge down the street, working all hours till we were due at the Master’s next morning.

  “How many times must she play that?” Papa groused of our sister’s practising.

  “Can you guess what piece she’s playing?” our brother sneered, and even the maid rolled her eyes when our sister threw her sheet music, pages everywhere.

  Maman’s harangue: “Fathersonandholyghost! What have I done to deserve such children?” Perturbed at the state of my fingernails, she lamented that I would forever be her burden. “Who’ll marry a girl with fishwife hands?”

  Why a fishwife, who knows? A farm-wife would’ve made more sense.

  “Has she told you about the goings-on, where they spend their time?” our brother chimed in, too young to know the dangers of his question. Of course my friend wasn’t there to defend us. He wouldn’t have said such things in her presence. “It’s no place a decent girl would go, from what friends tell me. No chaperones. Last week I heard about a girl, very loose, petitioning the government to let her wear pants — petitioning, imagine! — the friend of a friend who —”

  “Cher Enfant! Infant heart of Jesus! My son, you don’t mean to say —”

  Plink-aaaa-plink-a-plinnk went our sister’s piano, pot lid cymbals clashing from the kitchen. Papa whacked the table with the stem of his pipe, so hard it snapped off. But he beamed at me, pride in us children tempering impatience. Protective of my gift, our gifts, he was pleased by my arrangement with the Master. In a few short months, with head-spinning ease, I’d gained an apprenticeship. Papa saw the value of my studies, though his taste, like Maman’s, ran to tabletop cherubs and urns sold by the lot. It tickled him to have his offspring’s talents praised, even our sister’s, doomed to be amateur.

  Yet always, always the arguing.

  “It’s your fault, if there’s anything untoward — you spoil her so!” said Maman.

  “If not for your high-horse tone, your battleaxe tongue … what’s a man to do for a second’s peace?”

  “Peace?!”

  The ceaseless game of cat-and-mouse forced me to the balcony for more than one calming cigarette. No escape from their quarrelling and from our sister’s Chopin, played as if she were typing. Drawn by the smoke, Maman soon appeared and cuffed my ear. A hairpin flew out over the railing that might’ve jabbed a passerby below.

  “Smoking! God knows what you’ll get up to next. Get inside before the neighbours see.” A fish out of water, our Maman in Paris.

  I used flattery to reach her softer spot, certain it was there, only buried. Reaching out, I tucked behind her ear a free strand of hair. “You’re pretty when you’re angry! Sit for me. Will you, Maman? Let me do your portrait. Will you? Please? For me.” Even if her softness seldom showed, I as her firstborn had witnessed it in her cradling and cooing to our infant siblings — the advantage of being oldest, if not male. Careful not to bait her, I poured on the praise. “Your forehead looks smooth with your hair pulled tight. You know, done in clay it would look even smoother.”

  She patted my ear, the one she’d twisted, and half smiled, shaking her head. I wish my friend had been there to see.

  By Sunday night, when Papa packed to leave, a truce enabled us to tiptoe round each other, not quite on eggshells. Maman’s voice pierced our sister’s practising: “Kiss your father, missy — pretend to be grateful that he goes off to work so I can be a caged bird while you children flit about.” Her refrain, never mind that we were hardly gadflies but the best students a parent could want. Our brother, still studying, covered his ears.

  “Sit, and I’ll pay you!” I coaxed him and our sister.

  “You have no money,” his reason for refusing at first. If we’d had money, my friend and I, we wouldn’t have relied on Monsieur’s models, but hired our own. But our dear young Paul relented, our petite Louise too, though in her case only once. Otherwise she, like our parents, would’ve marched down the Champs-Elysées naked before posing fully clothed for me.

  Maman
cornered my friend at the next opportunity. “And what do you think of this marvelous Monsieur?” she asked, inviting my friend to observe her gift with a needle, as sharp as her tongue, weaving in and out of embroidery trapped in her hoop. My friend, to her credit, pressed her lips together in a smile so singularly unattractive it graced her silence.

  ***

  LIFE WAS A blur of clay always seconds from drying out, needing wet rags to dampen it. Life was clamminess, a chill and the ache of work in our bones, dust in our throats and noses. The endless turning of hips and shoulders, bending Monsieur’s models toward light. We rendered, in clay, their knotted muscles, the invisible fibre of nerves. Their torsos arched over the splintery platforms they posed upon; their spread knees jutted. I don’t suppose you remember, for by then you had begun to depart.

  Monsieur’s hands shaped the air, forming bloodless figures, spirits locked inside. He summoned them forth, speaking to us. “Only I can free you,” his voice smooth as slurry, as wax poured into a cast.

  But no one, not even the Master, carved marble like I could, which I soon discovered working for him. My chiselling was sure, likewise my polishing technique. Monsieur supervised, standing close, doling out suggestions, mumbling what I should and shouldn’t do, saying what was good for me. “I only mean to help, Mademoiselle.” He was all generosity, breathing a little too close to my ear.

  Day after day, armed with our tools, my friend and I went there. Only once did she stay home, to nurse a cold in Maman’s company. Caving to Maman’s wishes, wanting only to please her, I rolled my hair as tidily as possible, and put on a clean smock over my dress the colour of pigeons — a waste wearing black in the studio; even Maman saw my wisdom.

  It was no small concession to waste time that day on grooming. I had hoped to use the Italian, the fellow more apt to sleep on his feet than actively pose, but Monsieur was already there, ordering him, “Be alert!” in his soft, forceful way. He drifted over, his gaze inquisitive if not fully welcoming. I expected him to continue positioning the Italian’s fist, adjusting his squat, but wordlessly he caught my hand, ran it over the arching back. Over each ridge of bone, muscle. The limbs oddly unyielding, though the atelier was stifling in summer. Monsieur nodded, his eyes turning shy.