The Witch of Painted Sorrows

Chapter 22

Dr. Blanche, the alienist, had a private asylum in Passy. It was quite a ride from the house on rue des Saints-Pères. As I traveled there the next morning, I was apprehensive. Even though my grandmother’s doctor had assured me otherwise, I anticipated a home for the insane: disgusting and dirty and frightening. Especially since the building was the domicile of the Princess de Lamballe during the revolution and the scene of her gruesome end. Certainly it had been renovated since then. After all, Guy de Maupassant had spent the last two years of his life at Dr. Blanche’s. Others like Theo van Gogh, the artist’s brother, and the writer Gérard de Nerval had also been residents for a time. And yet I was still nervous.

As we got closer, the fashionable neighborhood suggested the clinic was not the horror I’d imagined, and when we pulled up to a beautiful eighteenth-century mansion surrounded by gardens, I was quite surprised.

I entered through grand front doors and was led from the elegant front hall to the doctor’s office, I was pleased. Lined with book-filled shelves, it was a warm, welcoming room with tall windows looking out onto the park. Despite the chilly air, the parade of nurses strolling past with patients soothed me.

The doctor introduced himself. He was a man of about seventy-two or -three. Robust and quite healthy-looking, with intelligent eyes and a wide forehead.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but your grandmother is not as well as I had hoped she would be by now,” the doctor said, shattering my becalmed state. “She is not yet showing any signs of improving. I wouldn’t allow the visit except I’m hoping that if she sees you are all right, it might help us in our effort. You are all right, aren’t you?”

For a moment he examined me as if it might be possible to see my mental health on my face.

“I most certainly am. Except for worrying about her, that is.”

“Is there any reason at all that you know of that would cause your grandmother to believe you are in mortal danger?”

“No, nothing that I can think of.”

“Well, she told me quite a tale about you and why she believes you are in danger.”

I didn’t realize I was clenching and unclenching my hands until I saw the doctor staring at my actions. What was I frightened of? What could Grand-mère have told him? About my husband bankrupting my father? About Papa’s suicide? About my running away from Benjamin and taking an assumed name so he couldn’t find me? Taking art lessons? Even wearing comfortable clothes to paint in?

“Your grandmother told me that you are possessed by a demon.”

I laughed, but from the expression on the doctor’s face I grasped that had been a mistake. He appeared disturbed by my response.

“Do you find that funny?”

“I find it absurd, don’t you?”

“She believes it. And she told me her cousin Rabbi Jacob Richter believed it, too. She said she took you to him, and he performed an exorcism on you in a mikvah, and that he not only saw the ghost who haunts you but that the ghost killed him on the spot. She also believes she saw the ghost in your bedroom.”

“Yes, she believes those things. But more to the point, do you believe in ghosts, Doctor? I cannot allow her to reside in any asylum run by someone who would fuel her deranged fantasies.”

“No, Mademoiselle Verlaine, I don’t, but at the same time I do very much believe the mind needs a seed to grow a story like this. I would venture a guess that something very real is in fact wrong and that your grandmother has lost perspective on it. Can you tell me more about the days leading up to her breakdown as well as the inciting incident?”

“I’d like to see her first,” I said. Tired of the conversation, I wanted to bring it to a close.

“And you will. But in order to treat her, it’s imperative that I understand the patient’s frame of mind before the onset of the episode. Can you indulge me and fill me in a bit on what happened in the days leading up to her hysteria?”

“There were three deaths close together. Too much death. Too much talk of dying. First there was my father, then her uncle the doctor, and then Cousin Jacob. It left my grandmother emotionally distraught.”

“And that day? What happened that day?”

“It was very strange. We were going to go to Cousin Jacob’s funeral together, but then Grand-mère had a fit about my hat, insisting I change it to a more sedate one. While I was doing that, she locked me in my bedroom, like a child, and went to the funeral without me.”

“Do you know why she did that?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“She didn’t explain?”

“She didn’t.”

“And when she returned?”

“She came upstairs to see me.”

“What were you doing when she entered your room?”

“Reading,” I lied.

“What book?”

I searched for a title and came up with that one book, the only book I had read in the last month. The Picture of Dorian Gray.

“She told me you were painting on the walls and that the mural was pornographic.”

“She is a courtesan well-versed in the ways of the world and she used that word?” I asked.

“I believe she did.”

I tried to picture those paintings on the pale yellow walls… to see them as someone would if they were to enter the room unprepared. Even someone as comfortable with sexual conduct and sexual pleasures as my grandmother. The sexual liaisons between the painter and his muse were erotic and arousing, but pornographic? I shook my head.

“What is it?” the doctor asked.

“I… I’m afraid I don’t paint. Oh, the occasional watercolor when I was in finishing school. But murals?” I laughed.

“You don’t dress up in gentleman’s clothes and study painting at Les Beaux-Arts?”

“Monsieur le Docteur, my grandmother is clearly not only hysterical, she is also delusional. Might I see her now?”

“Do you know who La Lune is?” he asked.

I shivered and tried to keep my voice steady. “Yes, an ancestor of ours. A courtesan who became a legend and started a legacy. Our family home is named after her.”

“Your grandmother is convinced that her ghost is taking you over. I’m afraid it’s a most disturbing story that she’s concocted and is quite obsessed by.”

I leaned across the desk toward the doctor, aware that I’d learned the seductive movement from none other than the woman we were discussing. “What would cause such a thing?” I asked, laden with concern.

“There are many possible causes. That’s why I was asking you what happened before the doctor was called.”

“Deaths… wouldn’t they make her think of ghosts? Her son. Then her uncle. Then her cousin. Isn’t that enough to explain her preoccupation?”

“I don’t think so.” He stood. “Let us go see your grandmother.”

I followed him down a long hallway, past well-lit offices, and then into the living quarters. I glimpsed a simple combination bedroom/sitting room where a woman in a dressing gown sat in a rocking chair by the window. A few doors down, a nurse exited another such room, and I saw two men sitting on a couch, sipping what appeared to be coffee or tea.

“It’s very nice here. I’m afraid I was picturing something quite different.”

“Thank you. We have the funds needed to ensure we can keep the clinic up to the highest standards. Nothing like the city madhouses.”

We’d reached the end of the hall. The doctor pointed to the door on the left.

“This is your grandmother’s room. She doesn’t yet have all her privileges, so she is restrained. I want you to be prepared.”

He opened the door and gestured for me to walk in.

Despite his warning, I gasped.

My beautiful Grand-mère was lying on top of a bed, her arms tied to the bedposts. Her hair was stringy and dull. Her naked face looked drawn and ravaged. Her eyes went wide when she saw me, and something wild filled them. My lovely Grand-mère, who never had looked her age, who entertained some of the wealthiest men in Europe, whose jewels rivaled those of princesses, was wearing a white shift stained with something red-not blood, I hoped-looked right at me and started to scream.

“La Lune, La Lune!” she cried. “Save Sandrine from La Lune!” She began to sob. Then gagged. Then vomited.

The nurse, whom I hadn’t even noticed, rose from her chair in the corner and attended to her.

I stood, shocked, disgusted, and saddened. The doctor helped the nurse, then spoke soothing words to my grandmother that seemed to actually quiet her.

He turned to me. “Why don’t you try to talk to her and tell her you’re all right? As you can see, she’s quite worried about you.”

“Can she hear me?”

“Yes.”

I walked toward the bed and stepped into my grandmother’s line of sight.

“Grand-mère, please, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I love you. I want you to get better.”

“I didn’t think you loved your husband,” she said.

I hadn’t known what to expect her to say… but that certainly wasn’t it.

“I don’t. I never have.”

“When you first came to Paris, you weren’t in love. I was so happy. You were safe. But you’ve met someone, haven’t you?”

“No,” I lied. “Why are you asking me this?”

“This is what she does, waits for a woman in love and then inhabits her. Have you taken a lover? You mustn’t. She’s why I never wanted you to come back to Paris. She waits in her house for someone to fall in love… and then she drives our women mad.”

This sounded like a version of the legend that my father had alluded to so many years ago. Surely no one could believe this? A woman dead for more than two hundred and fifty years could not somehow live on in Verlaine daughters, sisters, and nieces.

My grandmother turned to the doctor.

“Sandrine is beautiful, isn’t she? So strong. So like her father. But she’s too curious. Curiosity is dangerous for Verlaines, and-oh! No!” My grandmother screamed and pointed. “Doctor, do you see her? Look behind Sandrine. See the shadow tied to her? That’s the witch. That’s La Lune.”

“Now, now, Madame Verlaine,” the doctor began to soothe.

“Don’t try to placate me. Look at Sandrine. The witch is right behind her. Do you see the shadow? She’s desperate for love.” She turned her head to me. “Sandrine, you have to cast her out. Are you listening? Cast her out!”

I turned and run from the room and was soon careening down the corridor. At the end of the hall, out of breath, I stopped. I put my hand on the windowsill and looked out into the garden. Watching a robin picking at a twig, probably about to steal it away for nest building, I tried to stifle my sobs, but I was crying too hard.

A few moments later, the doctor joined me by the window.

“Are you all right, Mademoiselle?”

“My grandmother is really very ill, isn’t she?”

He handed me a handkerchief. “She’s had a severe break from reality. And it is serious, but I have seen far more serious situations resolve in time. If you would indulge me, though, I’d like to ask you to help me so I can help treat her.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Would you go back to your grandmother and ask her how you can get rid of La Lune?”

The thought of seeing her again filled me with dread. She wanted to destroy me. The person I was becoming. The painter. Julien’s lover. Was she jealous of my youth and my life? Yes, I could see now that had been happening since I came to Paris. My grandmother was aging, and my vitality was a threat to her.

“But you said you don’t believe in ghosts.”

“No. I don’t believe you are any more inhabited by a demon ghost than I am,” the doctor said. “But she believes you are, and perhaps if you enacted the ritual that she believes will rid you of the demon, we can convince her that you are safe again. It might be the first step to restoring her vitality.”

I didn’t respond.

“I’ll be with you. The nurse will be there. You don’t need to be afraid. You do want to help her, don’t you?”

No, a voice I could hear inside of me said. No, don’t help her.

A wave of nausea rocked me. I pressed my forehead against the cool window glass. What was happening? I was hearing- What was I hearing? The doctor was trying to soothe me and so was the voice inside of me-I couldn’t tell which was which-I had to get away-I was so frightened.

I took off, running away from her, from him, from the nurse, from the old lady who had once been my beautiful grandmother. As I ran, I heard the doctor’s footsteps behind me as he called out.

“Mademoiselle Verlaine? Please, don’t be afraid.”

I got lost in the maze of corridors and wound up in a large room filled with eucalyptus-scented mist so thick that at first I couldn’t make out where I was. Odd sounds echoed in the space: steam hissing, wind gusts, then a shriek, then a laugh. And under it all was the sound of water, dripping, dripping.

As I stumbled through the space, my eyes adjusted to the condensations, and I could make out copper tubs outfitted with strange metal tubing. In one of the tubs a man wearing a white dressing gown soaked and sang a schoolchild’s rhyme in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. In the next tub another man sat upright, his eyes half shut.

“Pretty lady, will you bathe me?” he asked, his voice heavy with sexual innuendo.

I kept running. Past another bather whose head was down, forehead touching the water. The nurse who sat beside him was speaking to him in a low, soothing tone, but the man seemed unresponsive.

Other patients were crying, shrieking, or giggling. Mixed together, it was the song of souls trapped in hell. No matter which way I turned, I saw yet another tub. Some patients, noticing me, became distressed by my presence and reacted. They rocked in their tubs, sprayed, and splashed water everywhere. It sloshed on the floor. I slipped in it. The smell of salts mixed with the mint and stale body odor made me gag. Here was the asylum I’d been afraid to see. And then a hand grabbed me by the elbow.

“Mademoiselle.” It was the doctor, and he sounded annoyed. “Please, do come this way. This disturbance is not good for my patients.”

Out in the hallway he took one look at me and then added an addendum to his last thought: “Or for you. Perhaps a walk outside would be a good idea.”

Julien had said the same thing to me, and it had in fact made me feel better. More myself. I agreed, and we stepped outside.

It was a warm day for early February, warmer than any day had been since I’d arrived in Paris. We entered the heavily wooded park and took a path that led us around a still, calm pond. As we strolled, the doctor extracted a silver case, took out a cigarette, then offered me one. I accepted it. He lit them both.

“I know how upsetting it can be to see someone you love in this state.”

I didn’t smoke often, but I welcomed the distraction. “Yes, very upsetting.” I rolled the cigarette between my gloved fingers.

“But it would really help me to find out more about your grandmother’s history-has anything like this happened before?”

“Not that I am aware of. But I’ve been only been here since January. I saw her infrequently before that, only once every few years.”

“Is there anyone else in your family whom we might talk to in order to find out if this has happened before? Someone who lives here in Paris?”

“I’m not sure there is anyone who knew her well other than her uncle and Cousin Jacob, and they are both dead.”

“Might I come to the house and talk to the servants?”

“I’ve already asked and no, none of them have seen any evidence of a disturbance before.” It wasn’t true, but I was worried that any conversation the doctor might have with the staff would reveal the lies I’d told him.

The doctor dropped his cigarette on the stone path and stomped on it with his shoe. I did the same.

“Are you cold, or shall we keep walking?” he asked.

“I’m not at all cold. I’d like to keep walking.” It had been days since I’d felt the weather. Paris’s winters were much warmer than New York’s, and this was a particularly warm day.

“I once had a patient who was as sane as you or I, and yet every night at ten PM he went into paroxysms of panic and fear and began to scream and tried to harm himself. Every night. It took me a full year to find out that he had watched his wife be attacked and killed in front of his eyes at ten PM and was reliving it daily.”

A pigeon flew past us and alighted on a branch of a chestnut tree. A squirrel darted from behind a holly bush, grabbed an acorn, and ran up the trunk of one of the plane trees.

“If only I could find the trigger to this episode, you see, I could help your grandmother.”

“Fine then, yes, come and talk to the servants. Please, talk to anyone you wish to.”

“Thank you. Now, I need you to return to the clinic with me and ask your grandmother how you can get rid of the ghost.”

I shook my head. “I can’t see her again like that.”

“Do you love her?”

“Of course!”

“Then you must help me to help her.”

I began to shake at the thought of going back inside her room and hearing her spew vitriol again. Her words were like vicious black slime suffocating me. “I just can’t.”

“Mademoiselle, I am afraid that if we don’t allow your grandmother to say what she is so desperate to tell you, we may lose her.”

“Do you mean she could die?” I clasped my hands together to stop the acute trembling. “She is the only family I have.”

“No, she’s not physically ill. I don’t fear for her corporeal body. But her mind is ill, and sometimes a patient can become lost to us inside the pathways of their thoughts. Sometimes they go so far into their terror we can’t pull them back.”

I would be free. The thought sprang up, unbidden. Like a green shoot, breaking through the last frost. Free to live at La Lune and paint and be with Julien. But at that cost? No, of course not.

“I’ll try,” I said.

We walked back into the sanatorium, down the main hallway, and stopped in front of my grandmother’s room. The door was ajar. Dr. Blanche put his fingers to his lips and motioned me to be quiet and listen.

My grandmother was speaking to her nurse in a very normal voice about a book they had both read and found enjoyable.

“The way the author described the character’s hairstyle would look very good on you,” my grandmother said. “It would accentuate your cheekbones. You have excellent cheekbones, you know.”

She sounded exactly like her old self. A wave of relief flooded over me. The doctor gestured to me that we were going to go in. He opened the door wider for me.

“I’m so happy you’re better,” I said as I walked toward her bed and then bent down to embrace her.

She leaned toward me. I felt her lips on my neck, and I thought she meant to kiss me on the cheek but missed. Before I understood what was happening, she bit into my flesh, grabbing the ruby necklace with her teeth and trying to pull it off.

I pushed her away, but she was still working her jaw and accidentally bit down on my index finger. Drops of dark red blood popped out on the surface of my skin.

I backed up, massaging my neck, looking from her to my finger.

My grandmother shrieked: “Get her out of here. She has La Lune with her.”

The doctor spoke to my grandmother: “Madame Verlaine, listen to me, this is very important. How can Sandrine get rid of La Lune?”

A drop of blood dripped down my hand and fell onto the white marble floor.

“You can’t wear the rubies, Sandrine,” my grandmother continued. “Take them off. All the women in the portraits are wearing them. Every one of them. You need to take off the rubies, or what happened to them will happen to you. Every one of them witnessed their lovers’ lives manipulated so they were free to be with them… but it always went wrong… In the end every one went mad… or died. Some, by their own hand.”

“You are making this up.”

“No.”

“How do you know it then?”

“I know all the stories. They have been passed from mother to daughter. Passed from my mother to me. Warnings. Dire, dire warnings. None of the women were strong enough for La Lune. Every one of them dead. Now I have to warn you.”

I was so cold. Her voice was so desperate. Her words seemed to be echoing in my head. Warnings… warnings… My neck throbbed. So did my finger. And it was still dripping blood. I looked down and noticed the blood had formed a shape. A familiar shape. I twisted my head. It couldn’t be. I must have stepped in it and smeared it. It just was not possible that the blood had formed a perfect ruby crescent moon. Nothing that was happening was possible. With the toe of my boot, I turned the shape into an unrecognizable mess. If I couldn’t see it anymore I wouldn’t have to accept that the symbol that was all over our house had somehow, mysteriously, appeared here too.