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.
Chapter 23