Leaving Van Gogh (18 page)

“What do you think of our ball?” the laundress shouted as we took up our position at the end of a line of couples. The chapel organist was trying to organize a quadrille, apparently.

“It seems very festive,” I said, despite my growing unease. I looked up the line of women’s faces across from me. There was a range of expressions on them, a much greater range than you would normally see at a dance. Yes, I saw the laughter, happiness, vague annoyance, concentration on the music that bourgeois women would display. But there were also frowns, inattention, and that expression I have only ever seen among the mad—you might call it exaltation, an exaggerated excitement in which every emotion, every perception reaches an intensity unknown to the sane.

But then I could see no more, because our two lines became a single column of pairs, and we began our grand parade around the room. We paced by the portrait of Dr. Pinel, and past the bench of the
furieuses
, who stamped their feet in approval.

Normally, the dance would have ended once we had made a circuit of the room, filed back into our original positions, and bowed to each other. But before we reached the end, the room grew much less noisy, and as the laundress and I turned the corner, we saw that there was no double line of dancers in the center of the room. Instead, one of the monkeys snatched a pair of candles from a sconce on the wall and handed one to the monkey behind him. They linked arms with their partners and disappeared through the door.

The laundress and I looked at each other in horror. This possibility had never occurred to me. I had been worried about women getting too stimulated by the dancing and the costumes and the lights, but I had never imagined that they would be taken out of the room, let alone into the darkness of the quadrangle below.

A knight and a musketeer had seized the accordion and violin from the band: they played a medley of marches at the head of the group. They were skipping up the long walkway, lit only by the flickering from candle flames or oil lamps that had been snatched from the walls. The misty evening softened the outlines of the dancers in the dark.

“Was that gate open when you came in?” the laundress asked me, pointing to the end of the enclosure.

“I didn’t enter that way. I’ll go check it now,” I said and lifted my robe to my knees. Harm could still be averted. The Salpêtrière was like a maze. Most courtyards had two or three gates, and most buildings had two or three entrances. Of course these were all supposed to be locked—one of our primary responsibilities was quite simply to maintain custody of our charges. But what if the gates were open? I could imagine it all too clearly. Carried away by the music and the costumes and the lights, our patients could so easily get lost, become frightened and anxious. This was where madness told: these women would not be able to help themselves. They would not be able to stay calm, to scan the sky for light coming from a nearby courtyard, to listen for voices, to call for help, even to remember which way they had come—or why.

And then there were the young men, as spirited and stimulated as the women. Who knew what kinds of violations they were capable of?

I was almost at the head of the line now, a few meters from the men with the instruments, who marched triumphantly backward, facing the stream of dancing followers. A confusion of voices arose. “The wall! Mind the wall!” “Pay attention to the gate!” people called, as the leaders backed into the obstruction they could not see. As they hit the gate, they did not fall: they merely mimed the impact and pretended to stagger. Then, to my relief, they turned, following the wall, steering the crowd around the edge of the yard. Everyone changed course happily, as a procession would turn a corner in a church, following their leader, absorbed in the movement rather than the destination.

I finally reached the end of the courtyard and stood panting next to the gate. The leaders of the parade were marching gaily toward the glow of light from the tall windows of the atelier. As the stragglers paced toward me, ready to turn the corner, I leaned back against the heavy wooden panel of the gate to draw a deep breath.

But it did not support me. It shifted. I staggered as the knight with the accordion had, then fell when the gate swung open. I tumbled onto my back and rolled quickly to my knees, but not before a small group separated from the procession and followed me through the gate.

I couldn’t count them in the dark. One of the art students carried something like a torch, but there was no other light. I scrambled to my feet and pushed the gate closed but met resistance. Someone was pushing against me. I set my feet in the gravel and put my shoulder to the heavy timber to push with all my strength, while behind me I heard someone shout, “Let’s play hide-and-seek!”

Amid the clamor, I heard a voice calling my name. “Gachet! Gachet, it’s Lemaire!” I stood up straight and pulled back the gate. One of the other young externs slipped through, then closed it behind him.

“How many are there?” he asked me.

“Perhaps a dozen.”

“How many are patients?”

“Most,” I answered. “And three young men, I believe. But they’ve split up, they’re playing hide-and-seek.” As I said this, one of the male voices cried out in the dark,
“Cache-cache!
”

“Are there other entrances to this yard?”

“I think so,” I said. “We must be sure they are closed off. But I may know one of the men from the
École
. Let me see if they won’t help us gather the women.”

“Yes, you do that. Try to start them moving back inside, will you? I’ll be with you in a moment. Thank God this is one of the smaller gardens,” he called as he ran off.

The rest of the sounds in the courtyard had diminished. I was glad the ground was covered with stones rather than grass, so that I could at least hear my quarry. A giggle came from my far right, and ahead someone was trying to step silently but merely prolonging the quiet crunch his or her feet made on the gravel.

“My friends and patients,” I called out. “This is Dr. Gachet speaking. I am an extern in training here. Some of you may know me, and the artists among you might know my friend Amand Gautier. He came tonight dressed as a Roman soldier. I would like you please to rejoin the party. I am concerned about our patients being out in the cold night air.”

“Fuck the night air!” said a female voice.

“Amen to that!” said a man, and laughter echoed back and forth. I was walking toward the light of the torch, hoping that an art student still held it.

“You’ll have to find us!” trilled a woman.

“It’s
cache-cache
, so come seek the hidden!” answered another. “La-la-la-la-la, here I am,” she sang, and her feet made rhythmic noises in the gravel.

I was trying to sound authoritative, but my breath was coming faster. The voices around me gave the scene the air of a nightmare. I kept walking steadily toward the torch.

“Are you hearing voices, Doctor?” sang out a woman. “Just like the rest of the crazies! Oh, ha, ha, ha!”

“He’s one of us now!”

“Take him to Bicêtre!”

“No, keep him with the women at the Salpêtrière! We’ll entertain him!”

“Who’s mad anyway?” asked a female voice nearby, sounding utterly reasonable. “Not I.”

“Nor I!”

“Nor I!”

They came from all around me now, a series of echoing voices. Some, I knew, were the men speaking in falsetto. The rest were the women, drawn together in uncanny unison the likes of which I had never witnessed. One of the marks of the mad was that they inhabited their own worlds and not those of others. That night, in the damp and the dark with the torch flaring straight in the sky, they were acting and thinking together. Saner than ever, one might have thought.

I reached the torch only to find that it had been tied to an old wellhead with a strip of fur-trimmed leather from someone’s costume. Without thinking, I untied it, then clambered up onto the wide stone lip of the well. I had hoped that the height would allow me to see better, but the circle of light around me made the darkness more profound. Across the yard, I could see the orange glow of my torch reflected from a window. I heard Lemaire’s footsteps pounding toward me.

“The gates are closed. There is one doorway into a building, but it leads only to another locked door. They must all be here,” he panted.

“Oh, it’s the yellow-haired doctor,” one of the patients said, quite near to us. “Dr. Saffron.” The torch I held over my head must have made my features visible.

“Oh, I like him,” someone else replied from behind me. “He’s a nice one.”

“Then I hope you will do as I suggest,” I broke in quickly. “Why don’t you all come here, toward the torch, and we will go join our friends at the ball? Dr. Lemaire, will you open the gate?”

From where I stood on the lip of the well, the workroom beckoned a hundred meters away. The rounded panels at the tops of the windows had been opened, and music escaped, this time a waltz. The light streamed through the mist in palpable-looking golden blocks. The sight was as good as a signpost: “This way to warmth and comfort and music.”

“Let us go, then,” I called out and jumped down from the well. “Can someone tell me if there are prizes at this ball? For the best costume, perhaps?” I started forward, walking with purpose and what I hoped looked like confidence.

I listened for a moment. There was silence. Only my footsteps crunched on the gravel, one, two, three, four … Then I heard a deep sigh very close to me. “Well, the doctor has a point,” a woman said, stepping into the light. She was an older patient who was one of the gifted needlewomen of the curtain workroom. Once, I had walked through her atelier and seen her in charge, calmly beating a tambourine to establish the rhythm for the other women’s stitches. “It’s a little bit chilly for outdoor games, no?”

“Marthe, you old woman!”

“That’s it, Solange,” she called back. “Too old for this kind of fun, anyway.” Marthe was trudging alongside me now, her arm linked in mine. I was hopeful. My authority as a doctor alone might not have been sufficient to lure the women inside, but with Marthe’s help, I thought I could safely lead all of our charges back to the party.

I heard footsteps coming forward, and a few faces emerged into the torchlight. I counted six, seven women joining us. None of the men. I kept on walking.

Then someone screamed. I knew right away who it was. Odette was easy to overlook in any group. She was neither young nor old, neither tall nor short, and her behavior was such that she could pass for normal—except when she was screaming. And she did not simply scream: she threw herself to the ground and flailed and thrashed around, kicking and hitting anything nearby.

She was not vicious and had never hurt another woman, but she was often restrained. What else could one do? The power of those fists and feet posed a threat. And now, so did the power of her voice.

Once again, I had no time to plan. The evening had become a nightmare. I could only act and hope for the best. “Marthe,” I said, to the woman next to me. “Will you take the torch and lead everyone inside? I need to help Odette, and I don’t want the other women upset.”

She nodded decisively but said, “Keep the torch. They will follow me, and you should never put fire in the hand of a madwoman, Doctor. Surely that was the first thing they taught you?” With a little smile she ran past me down the path, calling out, “Come to me, ladies, let us see who won the prize!”

I followed the sound of the screaming, which was coming from somewhere to my left. A figure brushed past me, away from Odette, with a papery rustle as I hurried to her. I remembered the lion costume with its clever brown-paper mane.

I slowed down, because I could hear that I was getting close to Odette now, and that she was on the ground. Her body was grinding against the gravel, and her boots were thudding steadily as she drummed her feet. I didn’t want to be in the way of her blows, but it seemed imperative to touch her.

I had seen Odette in this kind of fit only once. It was at dinner, and the noisy order of the refectory was suddenly broken by a clatter as she threw down her mug and fell to the floor. To my surprise, the other patients just glanced at her and went on with their meals. Only the wardress came to her side and spoke to her gently, with a hand on her shoulder. It had seemed to me that Odette almost knew what she was doing. Almost. The screaming and thrashing were a way to shut out her surroundings. It did not appear that she was in control of herself, exactly, or that she had deliberately launched herself into this state, but it did seem that something had alarmed her and the fit was a form of self-protection.

As I knelt beside Odette on the damp, cold pebbles, I began to speak, though I doubted she could hear me through her screams. “Odette,” I said, “Odette.” Nothing more. I reached toward her thrashing body but was defeated. Her stiff arms batted away my outstretched hand. When I reached again, I touched only her chest or her breast. She was rolling on her back, becoming rigid. “Odette,” I tried again. “Odette!” In a moment the flailing and screaming stopped. I wondered why, and what was happening to her. I reached out again, and made contact with her arm. It felt stiff, as if she were gripping something.

Footsteps approached, from behind me, then the gloom brightened as a soft ring of light surrounded us. Lemaire had returned with a lantern. “Dr. Theroux is the senior physician on duty tonight,” he said, panting, kneeling beside me. “He will be here in a moment.” He held the lantern high so that we could see Odette more clearly.

She looked dreadful. She was lying on her side, with her stiff body arched backward into a near semicircle. I couldn’t imagine how she even drew breath with her body so contorted. Just a few minutes earlier, I had thought I could reach her with touch or a gentle voice, but now it seemed as if Odette was not even present. Lemaire gently pulled up one of her eyelids. Her eye was white, the pupil rolled back. Lemaire touched the back of his hand to her neck.

“So strange,” he said. “It’s like death, only not.”

I put my hand to her wrist. I had no watch to time her pulse, but it was steady. I felt both ignorant and helpless.