Memory of Flames

CHAPTER 29

MARGONT went into the office belonging to the medical director of the Salpetriere. He had been planning to explain everything to Pinel but found himself face to face with a crowd of young doctors and guardians. Exhausted — that was the first word that came to mind on seeing Pinel. Too many people making too many demands of him. And he was nearly seventy. Margont’s entrance annoyed him.

‘Go back outside and wait your turn, Monsieur! I don’t doubt that your problem is genuine, I imagine you have come to seek help for one of your relatives, but those in front of you are also in need.’ Already two men had risen. One had his hands on his hips, the other his arms crossed, encouraging Margont to leave of his own accord. Margont undid his belt and fiddled with the buckle until it opened, revealing a small compartment. He took a piece of paper from this strange hiding place, and unfolded it again and again, finally handing Pinel a letter. The latter glanced at it and his eye fell on Joseph Bonaparte’s signature. He looked up, hesitating, unsure whether he was dealing with a madman or with a genuine imperial agent.

‘I would request everyone to leave us,’ ordered Margont.

To everyone’s astonishment, Pinel agreed and they all obeyed without asking any questions. Margont explained the reason for his visit, emphasising how important it was to keep what he said secret. The doctor was immediately interested; his eyes blazed like two little suns above the dark clouds of the circles beneath.

‘You want to use my knowledge of insanity to help unmask a criminal? What a novel but tempting idea! Please sit down. So you think the criminal you’re hunting might have a mental illness?’

‘It’s just a thought. But the burns inflicted after death ...’

‘An insane criminal hiding in the ranks of mentally healthy criminals - if such a concept makes sense. In the eyes of his accomplices he would appear quite normal ...’

‘Have you ever come across such a case?’

‘I must admit I haven’t.’ Pinel looked thoughtful. ‘Do you know why I was appointed to Bicetre in 1793? It was because they wanted me to categorise patients. People were being guillotined left, right and centre, France had gone mad - that doesn’t just happen to individuals, it can happen to societies, to countries as well. The Committee of Public Safety was convinced that royalists and foreign agents were concealing themselves amongst the lunatics. When I treated a nobleman or a cleric I had to certify that he was genuinely ill. If I were to say that he was of sound mind, he would be sent to the guillotine! Happily I always came to the conclusion that they were insane. Today I can admit that sometimes I lied. All that is just to say how much your question troubles me. In 1793 they wanted me to unmask the sane hiding amongst the insane, so that they could execute them; twenty years on, you would like me to help you find a madman in the midst of healthy people so that he can be sent to prison. Your request is like a mirror image of what I was asked to do in 1793. I don’t really understand why everyone is determined to find a line so that the insane can be put on one side of it and the sane on the other side. Such a line does

not exist. They are us, we are them. You appear to me to be perfectly reasonable today, but you might just as easily appear to have lost your mind in a year’s time. Whilst the insane might well have recovered their reason. And that’s without taking into account those whom today we consider insane, but whom we will later come to understand just had a different way of looking at the world, a way that we didn’t understand at the time. I’m thinking for example of the Marquis de Sade, whom you must have seen in the corridor...’

Anxious to bring the conversation back to his inquiry, Margont voiced one of his thoughts. ‘I thought of all the things that fire symbolises in the Bible. The suspects are all aristocratic, so religion for them—’

‘Fire? But it’s not fire that is the most striking thing in what you have told me. It’s the repetition of fire. He burnt someone, then he burnt someoneelse.'

‘I think I follow, more or less ... So might it be someone who was himself burnt?’ ‘More than that! He’s still burning today.’

‘You think this man is in some way haunted by fire? He has been the victim of fire in one way or another. He thinks about it constantly ...’

Margont vaguely understood that. He had participated in several battles and they regularly came back to him as nightmares. The same went for his childhood memories of being shut up in the Abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert, although these days, those memories were not as strong.

‘Unlike some of my colleagues,’ emphasised Pinel, ‘I think that mental illnesses have a cause, that they result from shocks to the mind, which themselves stem from violent emotions that the subject was unable to control. The man you’re looking for has probably suffered a traumatic experience to do with fire, which has disturbed the working of his mind.’

‘So if we find the original inferno, we will be able to identify the man ...’ said Margont thoughtfully.

Pinel was delighted. ‘Bravo! You should become a doctor and treat the insane, like I do!’

‘Pardon?’

'I'm serious! Everyone is interested in the mind but no one wants to work with the insane! Do you know what most of my colleagues do when confronted with madness? They bleed the patient! What an aberration! They’re so worried by anything abstract that they want to do something practical, although it has be said that bleeding is the opposite of practical! The profession would appeal to you and I think you would have a gift for it. If you were interested, and you started your medical studies, I would willingly accept you as a pupil.’

Margont was struck dumb and the doctor went joyously on, ‘Have you never thought what you will do when the war is over?’

Lefine sniggered. ‘Will it ever be over?’

‘I think about it all the time,’ replied Margont. ‘I’d like to launch a newspaper—’ He caught himself. He had said too much!

‘Do both!’ suggested Pinel. The study of madness would give you plenty of material for your articles, believe you me! There would be enough to fill ten newspapers on the subject of the ill treatment of the insane. When I decreed they should be freed from their chains,

I was almost locked up with them!’

‘I’ll think about your proposition. But going back to our investigation ... The fire ...’

‘You’re hiding behind the fire so that you don’t have to answer my offer. That’s understandable. But it still stands. Take all the time you need to think about it.’

‘Do you think the murderer is unstable?’

‘No. It’s not someone who was operating in a blind fury otherwise they would have destroyed everything in the room, making an unbelievable uproar, which would have had the police come running. I don’t think either that they hear voices, because the poor souls who suffer from that plague are so deranged by it that when they go to commit a crime, they are easily found out. Because their thoughts are so disturbed, they’re incapable of scheming and carrying through a coherent plan. Besides, their illness is evident in their behaviour and their speech ...’

‘I haven’t noticed anything like that in any of my suspects.’

This man is in full possession of his intellectual faculties. But he has been profoundly affected by fire and is trying to free himself from the grip of its memory. There are many kinds of debilitating or oppressive feelings: grief, hate, regret, fear, remorse, envy, jealousy ... But they don’t degenerate into madness unless they reach great intensity, often after a shock.’

Margont clasped his hands together. It was an instinctive gesture, as if his ideas were floating in front of him like a cloud of midges, and he was trying to gather them together. It was also like the strange prayer of a believer, who was so exasperated by religion that he thought himself an atheist.

‘He’s hiding in a group of monarchists. Might he be dividing his thoughts between his obsessive fear and his political ideals? No, everything is linked to the fire. In one way or another, even his royalist loyalty must relate to fire.’

Pinel nodded. ‘I think so too. He seems to have a real monomania about fire. It’s an obsession, his only one. Even if there is something else that interests him, which initially has nothing to do with fire, fire will spread in his mind and burn it up.’

‘Something else or someone else that interests him. And he will be obsessed until he succeeds in extinguishing the blaze - assuming that’s his aim. How will he be able to do that?’

Pinel gave an apologetic smile. ‘I think you know how ...’

In a sense, Margont did. He had been haunted by his own ‘fire’: being sent away to the Abbey Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. Unfortunately by the time that fire had in effect been reduced to embers, a new fire had been ignited in him by the war. ‘He has to settle the score with his past ...’

‘Isn’t that what we all do, all through our lives?’

‘Why are the burns in different places on the two victims? The face, then the arms. Is that significant?’

‘Yes, it will be significant, but I’m not sure how. You mustn’t ignore that question. Because fire is at the heart of this criminal’s monomania. All his thoughts converge sooner or later on fire. So nothing he does with fire is without meaning.’

Pinel could offer no help on the question of curare. Margont shook the doctor’s hand warmly. He was physically exhausted - as if the conversation had been a race several hours long - but his spirit had been completely revived. ‘I can never thank you enough!’

‘Good luck. And think about my proposition.’