‘No! No! No!’ The girl beat the tiles with her soapy brush. She began to wring out the floorcloth, angry hands like bundles of excited sticks. ‘There are three more grates to be done this afternoon! You told me to clean them, didn’t you, Mother?’
‘Yes, dear. It does seem to be what you most want to do.’ The Mother Superior stepped back with a defeated smile, giving way to me.
I watched Christina Brossard continue her apparently unending work. She was clearly unbalanced, but somehow selfdramatising at the same time, as if totally gripped by her compulsion but well aware of its manipulative possibilities. I was struck both by her self-pity and by the hard glance which she now and then directed at the three nuns, as if she were deliberately demeaning herself before these pleasant and caring women in order to vent her hate for them.
Giving up for the time being, I left her mopping the tiles and returned to the hall with the Mother Superior.
‘Well, Dr Charcot, we’re in your hands.’
‘I dare say — frankly, I’m not sure that this is a case for me. Tell me she spends all her time cleaning out these grates?’
‘Every day, for the past two years, at her own wish. We’ve tried to stop her, but she then relapses into her original stupor. We can only assume that it serves some important role for her. There are a dozen fireplaces in this house, each as immaculate as an operating theatre.’
‘And the cinders? The bags filled with ash? Who is lighting these fires?’
‘Christina herself, of course. She is burning her children’s books, determined for some reason to destroy everything she read as a child.’
She led me into the library. Almost the entire stock of books had been removed, and a line of stags’ heads gazed down over the empty shelves. One cabinet alone contained a short row of books.
I opened the glass cabinet. There were a few schoolgirl stories, fairy tales, and several childhood classics.
The Mother Superior stared at them sadly. ‘There were several hundred originally, but each day Christina burns a few more — under close supervision, it goes without saying, I’ve no wish to see her burn down the mansion. Be careful not to touch it, but one story alone has remained immune.’
She pointed to a large and shabby illustrated book which had been given a shelf to itself. ‘You may see, Dr Charcot, that the choice is not inappropriate — the story of Cinderella.’
As I drove back to Nice, leaving behind that strange mansion with its kindly nuns and obsessed heiress, I found myself revising my opinion of the Mother Superior. This sensible woman was right in believing that all the dermatologists in the world would be unable to free Christina Brossard from her obsession. Clearly the girl had cast herself as Cinderella, reducing herself to the level of the lowest menial. But what guilt was she trying to scrub away? Had she played a still unknown but vital role in the suicide of her father? Was the entire fantasy an unconscious attempt to free herself of her sense of guilt?
I thought of the transparent bags filled with cinders, each one the ashes of a childhood fairy tale. The correspondences were extraordinarily clear, conceived with the remorseless logic of madness. I remembered the hate in her eyes as she stared at the nuns, casting these patient and caring women in the role of the ugly sisters. There was even a wicked stepmother, the Mother Superior, whose Hospice had benefited from the deaths of this orphan’s parents.
On the other hand, where were Prince Charming, the fairy godmother and her pumpkin, the ball to be fled from at the stroke of midnight, and above all the glass slipper?
As it happened, I was given no chance to test my hypothesis. Two days later, when I telephoned the Hospice to arrange a new appointment for Christina Brossard, the Mother Superior’s secretary politely informed me that the services of the Clinic, of Prof. Derain and myself, would no longer be called upon.
‘We’re grateful to you, doctor, but the Mother Superior has decided on a new course of treatment. The distinguished psychiatrist Dr Valentina Gabor has agreed to take on the case — perhaps you know of her reputation. In fact, treatment has already begun and you will be happy to hear that Christina is making immediate progress.’
As I replaced the receiver a powerful migraine attacked my left temple. Dr Valentina Gabor — of course I knew of her, the most notorious of the new school of self-styled anti-psychiatrists, who devoted whatever time was left over from their endless television appearances to the practice of an utterly bogus psychotherapy, a fashionable blend of postpsychoanalytic jargon, moral uplift and Catholic mysticism. This last strain had presumably gained her the approval of the Mother Superior.
Whenever I saw Dr Valentina my blood began to simmer. This glamorous blonde with her reassuring patter and the eyes of a cashier was forever appearing on television talk shows, putting forward the paradoxical notion that mental illness did not exist but nonetheless was the creation of the patient’s family, friends and even, unbelievably, his doctors. Irritatingly, Dr Valentina had managed to score up a number of authenticated successes, no doubt facilitated by her recent well-publicised audience with the Pope. However, I was confident that she would receive her comeuppance. Already there had been calls within the medical profession for a discreet inquiry into her reported use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs.
Nonetheless, it appalled me that someone as deeply ill and as vulnerable as Christina Brossard should fall into the hands of this opportunist quack.
You can well understand, therefore, that I felt a certain satisfaction, not to say self-approval, when I received an urgent telephone call from the Mother Superior some three weeks later.
I had heard no more in the meantime of the Hospice or of Christina. Dr Valentina Gabor, however, had appeared with remorseless frequency on Radio Monte Carlo and the local television channels, spreading her unique brand of psychoanalytic mysticism, and extolling all the virtues of being ‘reborn’.
In fact, it was while watching on the late evening news an interview with Dr Gabor recorded that afternoon at Nice Airport before she flew back to Paris that I was telephoned by the Mother Superior.
‘Dr Charcot! Thank heavens you’re in! There’s been a disaster here Christina Brossard has vanished! We’re afraid she may have taken an overdose. I’ve tried to reach Dr Gabor but she has returned to Paris. Could you possibly come to the Hospice?’
I calmed her as best I could and set off. It was after midnight when I reached the sanatorium. Spotlights filled the drive with a harsh glare, the patients were unsettled, peering through their windows, nuns with torches were fruitlessly searching the grounds. A nervous Sister Louise escorted me to the Mother Superior, who seized my hands with relief. Her strong face was veined with strain.
‘Dr Charcot! I’m grateful to you — I only regret that it’s so late..
‘No matter. Tell me what happened. Christina was under Dr Gabor’s care?’
‘Yes. How I regret my decision. I hoped that Christina might have found herself through a spiritual journey, but I had no idea that drugs were involved. If I had known…’
She handed me an empty vial. Across the label was Dr Gabor’s florid signature.
‘We found this in Christina’s room an hour ago. She seems to have injected herself with the entire dosage and then driven off wildly into the night. We can only assume that she stole it from Dr Gabor’s valise.’
I studied the label. ‘Psilocybin — a powerful hallucinogenic drug. Its use is still legal by qualified physicians, though disapproved of by almost the entire profession. This is more than a dangerous toy.’
‘Dr Charcot, I know.’ The Mother Superior gestured with her worn hands. ‘Believe me, I fear for Christina’s soul. She appears to have been completely deranged — when she drove off in our oldest laundry van she described it to one of the patients as "her golden carriage".’