The Fox and Dr. Shimamura Read online

  Also, for a long time after he learned that it derived from a former gunpowder factory, the name “Salpêtrière” bothered Shimamura: every time it came up he was afraid the patients would think of explosives, and that couldn’t possibly be good for them. After the first evening, which he probably was misremembering anyway, he never again saw the fluttering shirts and hair. Appropriately corseted and clothed, the female patients were kept out of their beds during the day and set to work and given physical exercises; they ate at long tables in stone halls that looked the way a cloister probably did. At first glance they appeared amazingly healthy. In Tokyo, even in Matsue, the insane were much more insane. They also received more visitors. In Paris there was no one lamenting next to a pile of mussed up bedding, not a single aunt, sister, mother, or grandmother was praying, smoking and bringing food. Shimamura was still wondering how to explain such a difference when he learned that the women isolated here for examination all suffered only from hysteria. He had to hear it many times before he finally believed it. Charcot’s teaching as well as his fame were founded on hysteria, which he had redefined, moving it from a gynecological sideshow to the center of the neurological stage, and freeing it from the suspicion of being nothing more than a bad doctor’s excuse or a female patient’s wickedness. The Salpêtrière, at least the visible part — because there were probably hidden wards with patients who were demented or catatonic or suffering from all kinds of hereditary afflictions and who received little medical relief — was the paradise of hysteria. So said Dr. Tourette. Then he repeated himself, going as far as calling it a “little garden of paradise.” One could only marvel at it all.

  “I have only diagnosed one case of hysteria,” said Dr. Shimamura, as they were taking a break to eat a snack in the courtyard, and the sentence sounded heavy as the grave. So much so that when he uttered it Dr. Tourette seemed shocked. “It is a difficult diagnosis,” Shimamura quickly added, “and I am a young, inexperienced physician.” Dr. Tourette turned his face to the sun and said: “Yes, yes, and so on.”

  Charcot’s assistants Tourette and Babinski took care of Shimamura when Charcot didn’t have time for him, which at first was mostly the case. Dr. Tourette had studied mood disorders in the German army; Dr. Babinski was Polish. For these reasons, according to Charcot, both ought to have a command of German, and if not they ought to be ashamed of themselves. One day Charcot set his monkey, which he often took to work, on Tourette’s shoulder and laughed heartily. Tourette and Babinski laughed along; after all Charcot was their teacher. In Tourette’s case the laughter sounded pitiful; with Babinski it was jovial. Tourette was unkempt, lopsided and short: Babinski stood straight like an officer. For years Tourette had clung to a study of his own creation, concerning an absolutely atrocious variant of neuropsychiatric tic, while Babinski was content to wander in Charcot’s broad footprints. All the female patients hated Tourette and loved Babinski. Shimamura, filled with compassion, tried to like Tourette, but was unsuccessful. In one of the few letters home he wrote out the full name of the French doctor: Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette, and described the tic he was clinging to and which in reality was not a glorious disease.

  German did not flow easily either from Tourette or Babinski.

  Every day Shimamura sat in on Charcot as the famous doctor received dozens of cases in the large examination room — always careful to move his chair a little behind an assistant, usually Dr. Babinski, who seemed best suited as a protective shield, because he wanted to stay as far away from the female patients as possible. These were summoned and led in one at a time. Nurses removed parts of the patients’ dresses to expose the hysterogenic zones, which seemed to encompass practically the entire female body, and at that time were still awaiting systemization. These zones were then observed by everyone and manipulated by one assistant or the other. There were patients who could be stuck in the arm or neck with a long needle so that it came out the other end and they didn’t feel a thing. Others might fall into a state, start twitching or even present with paralysis as soon as their stomach or shoulder blade or finger was grazed with nothing but a feather. Some assistants used grease pencils to mark the zones in question with lines and circles. Others then recorded the lines and circles in their notebooks and added comments. Charcot sat on a large armchair, somewhat raised, far in the back behind Shimamura, and directed the goings-on. Rarely would he go up and actively do something himself. But once he grasped a young girl by the chin, whereupon she went stiff and seemed about to fall over, then she cried out and sank practically to her knees and started kissing Charcot’s hands, which Shimamura found disgusting. If someone did that in Tokyo, he thought, she would be sent home right away on account of hysteria. There must be something beyond that here, if the case was of such interest. After many days observing, Shimamura knew all there was to know about the structure of French undergarments and nothing about the anatomy of Charcot’s hysteria. He complained about this to Tourette and Babinski, but neither understood him, either because of Shimamura’s politeness or because of the German language. Then he managed to collar Professor Charcot in the corridor. Dashing ahead, he sidestepped Dr. Binet, who unfortunately also worked in the Salpêtrière when he wasn’t measuring reaction times at the Sorbonne, grabbed Charcot by the elbow, and said “my friend” before expressing his dissatisfaction. Now that the woodcuts were gone, Shimamura was forced to play the oriental card in this manner, by committing faux pas in the hope someone might be moved by them.

  Luckily, Professor Charcot was very moved by faux pas. In less than an hour Charcot himself escorted Shimamura to the Photographic Services Department, to give his Japanese colleague a better explanation of hysteria.

  The Photographic Services Department had at its disposal a magnificent atelier with all the requisite darkrooms and labs. It was situated in a small tower with a cupola illuminated by enormous windows. Inside, a variety of tableaux had been constructed: a hospital bed with glossy black rails and much white bedding; an armchair similarly draped with white, atop a pedestal; a footstool on another pedestal that was piled high with mattresses and pillows to form an undulating landscape. And throughout the space more sheets had been skillfully hung as drapes and backdrops. A wide assortment of cameras waited on tripods to be deployed: regular cameras of the most expensive kind, stereoscopic cameras, and one with twelve lenses and quick-action release. Light flooded the room from overhead and all around. The light of reason, thought Shimamura, and then he felt a sudden dread and then anger. “Oh my!” the student cried out, delighted by all the fantastic cameras, and Shimamura saw him tipping over the cliff and gently spinning into the deep, with his white loincloth and his white bottom — “Oh, Sensei!” Shimamura wanted to stop his ears. But the voice wasn’t coming from outside — “Oh! Oooh!” Shimamura regretted that he couldn’t shut his brain. Instead he kept his mouth closed so that nothing wrong came out. “In this Atelier,” said Charcot, “we photograph everything, just as it happens, so that nothing may be considered arbitrary.”

  “Might I . . .” Shimamura cleared his throat. “Might I stay here a little and make some notes? Where such technology is concerned Japan is still in its infancy.” Suddenly he no longer wished to have hysteria explained. But Charcot wasn’t listening. He shooed some people away — a nurse, a half-naked patient whom they had photographed and were now trying to force back into her institutional clothes, evidently against her will, and Dr. Bourneville with an emesis basin full of negatives — and seated Shimamura in the white-draped armchair on the white-draped pedestal. Then he pulled a file out of a cabinet and placed it on Shimamura’s knee. “Voilà,” said Charcot. “Since you are a lover of art . . .” and with the help of the photographs he proceeded to explain la grande hystérie as follows:

  There were four distinct phases, always the same ones. Charcot’s grande hystérie was a drama in four acts, a symphony in four movements. Charcot emphasized this over and over with different a
llegories, as he quickly leafed through the perfectly illuminated prodromal stages of several female patients that were less than fully representative.

  Then he came to the first phase, which he called epileptoid, as presented by five women. Shimamura recognized all the settings, the bed with the black rail that was always beautifully placed, the footstool with the mattress landscape, the armchair on which he was sitting. Five limber bodies used these props in various ways to perform what they proceeded to perform. Whether epileptoid was the best word, Shimamura preferred not to judge. Tetany, contractions, grimaces, salivation, craning, rolling, clinging, gyrating, twitching. Not a single picture was blurry. Shimamura leafed through all five cases and each was a perfect example of the arch of hysteria, the head bending backwards, hands cramped into paws, the pelvis thrust upward. “Our famous arch,” said Charcot, pausing for a moment to let the arch have its effect. In each image the drapery cast its beautiful, discreet shadow, the breasts were always barely covered, while all five women vaulted backwards, like fairground acrobats, like fish flapping on dry land, over pillows, blankets, bedrails, animated with interesting powers. “Paroxysm,” said Shimamura. The word came out squashed and with a horrible Japanese accent, even accompanied by a slight snort. Shimamura again cleared his throat. Charcot gave him a censorious look, as if his guest had coughed during an opera. “Congratulations,” said Shimamura, senselessly.

  “We call the second phase clownisme because of the antics,” Charcot explained. He pulled his watch out of his vest pocket and let it chime. “Turn the page.”

  Shimamura did so, and leafed through ten, then twenty illustrations of antics that could hardly be described as droll. Nor at first glance did they appear to exhibit any regularity. Charcot was explaining more and more rapidly, and Shimamura obediently ran through the pictures, also more and more rapidly. The clownisme phase gave way to the “grand movements” and then the “passionate attitudes” — and here appeared the backdrop with the footstool, mattress and pillows, the white waves good for rolling, kneeling, crawling. To accelerate the private tutorial, Charcot started underscoring his explanations with gestures, and soon he was doing a lively dance among the white sheets surrounding Shimamura’s armchair. He imitated the patients, giggled, implored, enticed, in keeping with the photographed women, pulling his invisible long hair and then throwing his arms open, freezing as though crucified. “In phase three every contortion embodies a feeling, an idea,” Charcot cried out. “Mockery! Annoyance! Love! Ecstasy! Religion! In no logical order!” Shimamura flipped more pages. Now the corset was open, the tongue sticking out. Charcot was perspiring. Now he was speaking increasingly in French. “Passions! Passions!” He let his tongue dangle from the left corner of his mouth, while winking with his right eye, and then clasped his hands to form a pyramid, moving them up and down in front of his stomach and appearing to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Then he grabbed a pillow and used it to mime “love.” Shimamura twisted this way and that on his white armchair so as not to miss anything. “Tournez!” said Charcot. Shimamura turned more pages. All sorts of voices, real and false, mixed inside his brain — the voices of the girls in the photographs, the voice of Charcot, his own voice shouting curses, and the voice of the Emperor, a solemn, sonorous voice that said: “Shimamura, we don’t need this.” And then the student. And the fishmonger’s daughter. What was her name again? “Paroxysme,” said Charcot. “Phase terminale.” He cramped his hands into claws and then relaxed.

  Dr. Shimamura looked around. Dr. Bourneville had entered, as had a lab technician. The nurse and her patient, who was still unlaced and flitting around with loose braids, had also come back and were circling the white pedestal. Because Shimamura wasn’t turning pages, Professor Charcot struck a few more poses of the terminal phase to finish the presentation. He sniffed at his fingers and grabbed at something invisible. “Délire.” Shimamura leafed on. All five patients slumped on an armchair — the same white armchair where he was sitting. Three of them had lost their corsets. Charcot mimed that as well, as best he could. Now quiet, he purred little snippets of French. The nurse tugged the patient behind a screen. The stereoscopic camera wobbled. Dr. Bourneville was busy with an appointment calendar. Three more colleagues, including Binet, had filtered into the Photographic Services Department and immediately took whatever seat they could find so as to calmly admire Charcot’s demonstration of the grande hystérie. Professor Charcot caught one last butterfly. For her part, the patient behind the screen seemed inclined to fall directly into clownisme, quite against the rule, a wild shadow play. The women in the pictures were all collapsed. Shimamura’s fingers clung firmly to the final photograph. Charcot was breathing heavily. A minor expiratory stridor. Once more he raised his arms, then let them drop slowly and finally stopped.

  “Enough for today,” said Charcot. He placed his hand on Shimamura’s shoulder. Shimamura felt himself trembling. Charcot reached around, closed the portfolio, lifted it off Shimamura’s knee and tied it lovingly shut.

  “The lie . . . ,” Shimamura began.

  The nurse pulled the patient out of the atelier. Bourneville led the technician into the darkroom. Binet and his two colleagues stood up and slipped off. It had started to rain; the dark drops beat against the windowpanes, all the bright glass.

  “The lie . . . ,” Shimamura repeated.

  Charcot put the file back in the cabinet.

  “The lie is one part,” said Professor Charcot, “an essential component of the grande hystérie.” He stroked Shimamura’s shoulder until Shimamura stopped trembling, all the while observing his colleague with interest. Shun’ichi Shimamura took far too long to get out of the armchair. And he was far too hesitant in following Charcot out of the atelier. Charcot wanted to dash down the stairs and sprint along the corridor to make up for all the lost time, but Shimamura could only move at a snail’s pace. As his guest crept along, step by step through the Salpêtrière, Charcot courteously stayed by his side.

  “I am inconsolable,” said Shimamura, “and I am ashamed for myself and for my entire country, but I don’t understand it, I do not understand your grande hystérie.

  Charcot stopped. He turned to face Shimamura. An elderly gentleman, who wheezed when he breathed, who needed three matches to light a cigarette because his fingers were arthritic, smiled and said, “I don’t understand it either,” and then jauntily exhaled the smoke through his nose, “and that, too, is an essential component. How is it going by the way, the business with the fox?”

  Charcot always brought up the fox whenever Shimamura wasn’t feeling his best.

  “A lie... That is also a lie,” said Shimamura.

  “Of course. But how does it work? Who is he? How does he get inside?”

  “It’s a she,” Shimamura muttered.

  “Oh?”

  “She comes in through the nipples or crawls under the fingernails, or more rarely through the ear.” Then in order to spoil Charcot’s enjoyment Shimamura cried out “international hysterogenic zones!” Finally he explained in rather complicated, presumably incomprehensible words that the lack of gender in Japanese nouns was a sign of a highly mature, philosophical language.

  “Say something,” Charcot suddenly requested. “I like hearing Japanese so much. So musical. So pure.”

  Shimamura was silent. He was now creeping along so slowly that they weren’t making any progress at all.

  “Don’t you know a poem?” asked Charcot. He flicked away his cigarette, just like that, onto the floor of the corridor. Then he fished a new one out of his case, as Shimamura recited:

  “The master of the powder factory

  is up to his neck in foxes

  which is why his breath whistles

  and his fingers are stiff and why

  he soon must go to rot and ruin.”

  “Aah,” said Charcot. He waved his hand in the air as though he were conducting an orchestra.
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  “A poem on cherry blossoms,” said Shimamura. “From Uji.”

  Just then a patient came their way, looked at Shimamura and fell stiff as a board at his feet. Then she began to rave. She raved fiercely, for two hours, and was not to be stopped, not by Charcot, not with laudanum, not with the straitjacket, not even when Shimamura swiftly removed himself. No clowning, no grand movements, no passionate gestures gave structure to her raving. She barked. She spat blood. She scratched her head until her fingers were sore, she scratched everyone’s arms and hands, the walls, the floor. Professor Charcot, long after his guest had been escorted away, heard in her crying a foreign tongue and saw something looming and moving under her skin that was neither tendon nor muscle nor bone.

  “Astounding,” Charcot said to Babinski. “Let’s bring our Japanese friend to the lecture. And then we’ll send him home to Japan.”

  10

  “I’ve never forgiven you,” said Shun’ichi Shimamura to Volume Six of the French Charcot, as he pulled it off the shelf so he could once again hold in his hands Kiyo’s toys. He untied the bundle, then set the top spinning on his desk and, smiling, twirled the bamboo stick between his fingers to make the little monkey climb.