Free Mesmerised by Michelle Shine Page B

Gachet?’ Professor Bernard asked. He sat back, crossed his legs, placed an elbow on the arm of his chair and made a wave of his fingers. Late afternoon sunrays spilled in through the sash window creating a veil for his face and blond hair.
    ‘I am struggling , Professor.’
    ‘In what respect? Can you be more specific? I have not heard from any of your tutors that you are lagging behind.’
    ‘I am morally challenged by the way the course is taught,’
    ‘Ah,’ Bernard said, rising from his seat to look out of the window at the courtyard.
    ‘What is the most stupid thing you have ever done?’ he asked. He sat down again, gesturing with his wrist for me to take a seat and smiling through teeth that matched his dark grey suit. I lowered myself into the chair on the other side of a large mahogany desk and leaned forward.
    ‘When I was twelve, I jumped off a rampart into a moat.’
    ‘Reckless lad,’ Bernard said quietly, as if speaking to himself and then louder, ‘Well, I suppose you could have answered, “To enroll on this course”, but you didn’t, so clearly you still have a mind for the profession. Exactly which part of your studies here do you find a challenge to your finer instincts, Monsieur Gachet?’
    ‘Lobotomy is barbaric, I have a right to question it.’
    ‘You are not questioning. You are making a statement about an accepted form of treatment. You are a first year student, Monsieur Gachet , what can you know?’
    The Professor stood and walked around his desk. He looked at me with dull staring eyes. Rancid sweat mingled with sweet perfume surged through my nostrils and I tried not to breathe.
    ‘Enough. Time for you to go.’
    At the door, with my palm on the porcelain knob, he hissed, from so close behind me that his breath wavered the hairs on my neck, ‘You’re an idiot, Gachet! You’ll end up dispensing herbs from Culpepper’s quackery, and cheating the world with homeopathy.’
     
    They had been waiting for me. Hands in pockets, backs against the wall. As soon as the door slammed they fell in line behind me. Ran down the stairs like an avalanche in my wake.
    ‘Hey Gachet, slow down. Have you seen any ghosts lately? Woo, woo, woo,’ called Alain Desmarais, the handsome son of a banker who had once informed me that I should be very careful about what I think, and what I say, because his father had direct access to the only god that mattered.
    I pushed my way through big wooden doors into the courtyard, and was strangely comforted by a slap of cold air to my face. An aristocratic looking gentleman, with a silk scarf and greatcoat tails flapping, handed me a leaflet. I put the piece of paper in my pocket and walked away from the university as fast as I could.
     
    I took a holiday. One day away from Bernard and Canard. I sketched the professor with rays of sunlight concealing most of the features on his face. It was a dark morning. Rain fell through cracks in the skylight onto the end of my nose, and soaked my moustache. It splashed onto my eyelashes, drowning out my vision, and I was suddenly hurrying to open the cupboard and pull out the bucket.
    Some ghostly force took my breath away. I needed to get out. In the street I walked fast through the onslaught of a massive downpour. It was before the rebuilding of the city. There were no pavements and the roads were cobbled. Terraced houses and shops had holes in their roofs. Huddling in the doorway of a tavern, I searched my pockets for change that would buy me dinner and a beer. As I pulled out some coins from my trouser pocket, they slipped through my fingers, rolled and lodged themselves in the dirt between stones. I came forward, dodging a horse and cart, to retrieve them. I brushed mud away and dropped the money back into my pocket where I felt a piece of paper and pulled it out to investigate.
     
    Baron Clemens Maria Franz von Boenninghausen will be giving a talk in the chapel of the hospital Pitié-Salpêtrière at half past the