Hallucinating Foucault (14 page)

“Do you know what they’re trying to do to me in the asylum, petit? They’re trying to make me responsible for my own madness. Now that’s very serious. What an accusation …

“One of my hallucinations is that I am the last man and that in front of me there is nothing but a desert where everyone is probably dead …

“I tell stories. We all make up stories. I tell you stories that make you laugh. I love to watch you laughing. I shall never escape from this prison of endless stories …

“Would you like a crêpe sucré, with Grand Marnier and cream? Go on, I dare you to eat one …

“Have you read what Foucault wrote about Bedlam? Madness is theater, a spectacle. We have very few words to designate what we mean by madness in French. You, the English, you have a galaxy of words for the demented: crazy, foolish, simple, idiotic, rabid, distracted, manic, absurd, insane. It is important to traverse all those meanings. Look at you, petit, only a madman would have come all
the way to Clermont to find someone who had been incarcerated for nearly ten years, with so little hope of ever finding me. Without knowing who you would find.”

He looked at me carefully.

“Madness and passion have always been interchangeable. Throughout the entire western literary tradition. Madness is an abundance of existence. Madness is a way of asking difficult questions. What did he mean, the powerless tyrant king? O Fool, I shall go mad.

“Maybe madness is the excess of possibility, petit. And writing is about reducing possibility to one idea, one book, one sentence, one word. Madness is a form of self-expression. It is the opposite of creativity. You cannot make anything that can be separated from yourself if you are mad. And yet, look at Rimbaud—and your wonderful Christopher Smart. But don’t harbor any romantic ideas about what it means to be mad. My language was my protection, my guarantee against madness and when there was no one to listen my language vanished along with my reader.”

I could not resist the moment. I took the risk.

“May I ask you about Foucault?”

His reply was as instantaneous as a bullet, savage, furious.

“No.”

I could not call back my mistake. I snatched at words, mumbled my apologies. His whole aspect had changed; his face fractured with pain, then flared alight with cruel and extraordinary rage. He stood up.

“You disappoint me, petit. I was beginning to think that you might not be a fool.”

What happened next took place so rapidly I never saw exactly what happened. A man appeared behind Paul Michel as he rose and jostled him slightly. The man made a comment. I didn’t catch the
words but it was leering, knowing, insinuating and unmistakably aggressive. The man nodded towards me, and his meaning, even without the words, was unambiguous.

Paul Michel hit him suddenly, twice, once in the stomach and once in the face. He crashed backwards into the table behind us. The women leaped up, clutching their handbags and screaming. The whole room shuddered into chaos as someone seized Paul Michel by the collar of his shirt. I flung myself at the man who had laid hands on him and then felt my shoulders reeling into the pots of red geraniums, which lined the windowsill. Two of them lurched onto a table outside, covering the food in damp earth and roots. By this time the man who had started the incident was on his feet again, and didn’t much care whom he attacked as long as he settled the score. He went for me. I ducked out of range. Paul Michel smashed his head open with a bottle. There was blood all over the broken, empty, pottery plates. Everyone in the room seemed to be screaming.

And just as suddenly it was all over. A man with huge bare arms and an apron, who had clearly risen from the kitchen’s steamy depths, dragged Paul Michel and his aggressor out into the corridor. I seized our jackets and rushed after him. Surprisingly, no one insisted on explanations. The management wanted us all outside the restaurant as quickly as possible. There was a woman pushing me, jabbering. I couldn’t understand a word she said. Someone hustled her off to the toilets. All around us the clatter of Saturday night and the pounding music went straight on, as if there had been no interruption. I heard Paul Michel saying, with great aplomb, “I shall, of course, make my report to the Mayor himself …”

And the Director of Quinze Treize apologized profusely. I staggered after Paul Michel’s rigidly dignified retreating back under the archway and out into the street.

“Did you pay, petit?” he asked, putting his arm around me.

“No.”

“Good. Neither did I. You aren’t hurt?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

He dusted me down and straightened my clothes. I had dirt from the flowerpots on my new white shirt.

“That’ll wash off. Soak it tonight. Come on. Let’s go to a bar.”

We walked away rapidly down the hill through the darkening streets. He still had his arm around me.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry …”

“Shhhh …” He stopped my mouth with his hand and pulled me around to face him. We looked at one another for one terrible second. Then he said, “I would never hit you.”

He drew my face towards him and kissed me hard on the mouth in the public street, ignoring the people walking past us. We strode on down to the Place de la Victoire. Paul Michel was utterly calm and I was shaking with fear.

Three days later we were sitting smoking, side by side as usual, outside in the gardens. I was reading and Paul Michel was lying on his back, stretched out on a long stone seat, looking up into the shifting patches of light and shade in the lime trees, his eyes half closed. Neither of us heard Pascale Vaury approaching. She must have been standing there watching us for some time. I had no idea what was coming, but I think he did.

Paul Michel was so utterly unlike any other person, woman or man, that I had ever known. He had made no specific demands upon me, and yet he demanded everything I had; all my time, energy, effort, concentration. For something had significantly changed between us since the disastrous night out at Quinze Treize. The balance of power had shifted. I was no longer in control of the affair and the outcome was radically in doubt.

“I’ve got some news for you both,” said Pascale Vaury, her face expressionless. I started slightly at her voice and looked up. Paul Michel neither reacted nor moved. He continued to gaze up into the trees. She addressed herself to his supine indifference.

“I applied for a temporary release order on your behalf at the Préfecture. I should say that I was under some pressure to apply. I have had a barrage of phone calls from your legal guardian. Given his prestige within the medical establishment I haven’t had much choice. I have expressed my doubts. Nevertheless, the order has been accepted, subject to an additional report from the medical advisory committee. You’ll go before the committee tomorrow. If all goes well, you can leave on Saturday, Monday at the latest. I assume that you want to go this time.”

She paused, looking critically at Paul Michel. He sat up.

“I’ll think about it,” he said drily.

“You do that,” she said, “and if you do want to go, behave better than you did last time in front of the committee.”

I was terribly excited and anxious, crestfallen at Paul Michel’s lack of enthusiasm. Pascale Vaury went on. “I’ve mentioned your successful excursion last Saturday.” I held my breath. “It should count in your favor.”

The fracas at Quinze Treize had gone undiscovered. The only mystery which remained, as Paul Michel gleefully pointed out to me, was an unsolicited letter of apology sent to the Mayor of Clermont by the management of Quinze Treize. This became a journalist’s joke in the local paper towards the end of the week.

Paul Michel stood up, stretched, and yawned in her face.

“And where do you suggest that I go, Dr Vaury?”

She smiled ironically.

“Wherever you like within the frontiers. You can’t leave the country. But you have to decide before Saturday so that we can register
you with the police and the local clinic—and fax them your papers.”

“Well, as I say—I’ll think about it.” Paul Michel lay down again, arrogant and self-contained, dismissing her. Suddenly she leaned towards him and, with all the tenderness of a mother, she softly stroked his cheek.

“Ecoute-moi. Sois sage,” she said, turned on her heel and marched away. I stared after her. Paul Michel lay looking up into the trees, laughing slightly. I realized, for the first time, that all his rudeness to her face was a form of theater. There was an absolute trust and complicity between them. The hospital was his home. These were the only people he trusted, the only people he loved. I had nothing to say.

But it was as if Paul Michel was aware of what passed in my head. He knew I was jealous, disconcerted, insecure. He rolled over on his elbow and looked at me directly.

“It doesn’t do to sound too enthusiastic, petit. That’s why I wasn’t. But I do want to go. And with you.”

At one word from him my whole world was transformed from disappointment into joy. I was ashamed to be so dependent on someone else.

“What did you do to the medical advisory committee last time?” I asked suspiciously.

“I asked them to dance, insulted them when they wouldn’t and then danced on my own.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. They’ll lock you up forever.”

“Yup,” he sighed, “I felt like dancing and that’s what they felt they ought to do.”

He lit two cigarettes, gave me one and then said, “I really did have nowhere to go then, petit.”

I realized at once what a terrible thing he had said.

“But your father’s still alive …”

“He has Alzheimer’s disease.”

“Haven’t you got any family?”

“And they’d like to look after a homosexual novelist who’s abandoned his profession?” The scorn in his voice was perceptible.

I took a deep breath.

“You’ve got me.”

“I know.”

There was a pause between us.

“Can you drive, petit?” he asked casually, and the moment passed.

“Yes.”

“Do you know anything about cars?”

“Not much. A bit.”

“OK. I’ll give you a check for twenty thousand francs. Go and buy a small car that works. That couple you live with will give you a hand. I’ll make a few calls and tell you where to go. You’ll have to arrange the registration at the Préfecture and the insurance yourself. Go to Mutuelle. They’re the cheapest. I’ll get Vaury to give you my carte d’identité to sign all the papers. You can register the lot in my name but put yourself in the insurance. I’m forbidden to drive. Only remember to give them your home address in Clermont. Say that you’ve lived there a year. And don’t mention Sainte-Marie. You’ll need your driving license and your passport. You’ve got those? Good. You’ll have to buy the car in cash. But I’ll give you some blank checks for the rest. Get a 2CV or a Renault 4 if you can find one. Tell me if you need more money. I’ll think up a list of things to buy.”

The expedition began to sound like a military campaign. My only doubt was the medical advisory committee. It was suddenly clear to me that he was anxious too.

“What if we do all this and then they won’t let you go?” I asked.

“It’s no big deal. Three doctors come to see you. Vaury will be there too. She must be pretty certain she can swing it.”

“Then do as she says and behave. You’ve spent so many years acting as if you were mad …”

“And really being mad,” Paul Michel interrupted grimly.

“Well, pretend to be sane.”

“How do I present myself as sane, boy? What’s sane behavior? You tell me.”

“Say nothing.”

“But I said nothing for a year. Nothing. Total silence and they locked me up in the secure unit.”

“A year? Oh God, that is mad.”

He grinned like a wicked jester.

“Whose side are you on?”

I took hold of his shoulders and shook him.

“Yours, you bastard. Yours.”

I smiled helplessly. He was anxious and afraid that it wasn’t going to work.

“Listen. Just answer their questions calmly. They want to let you out. I’ve spoken to Dr Vaury. You’re not HIV positive …”

“Amazingly.”

“… and you haven’t been violent for a long, long time.”

“If you leave out last Saturday.”

“You were provoked. So was I. Listen. You’re not on drugs you can’t swallow. You get on well with me. We can get a month at least. Maybe more. Maybe two months. Then I suppose I’ll have to bring you back for observation or a checkup or something. But if you get through that, they’ll let you out again.”

“Will you stay with me when I see them?” he asked, his face set. My heart flinched with compassion.

“I can’t. You know I can’t. They won’t let me. You’ve got to do it on your own. Be careful. Take your time.”

We gazed at each other.

“For God’s sake, Paul Michel. Don’t, don’t, don’t provoke them.”

He laughed. And I felt then that I had passed the walls and stood alongside Sister Mary-Margaret and Pascale Vaury. Our complicity was now complete.

And if this was an opera, I would now be playing the introduction to the last act. I have replayed that summer, that year, so many times in my mind during all the summers since that it is now more than a memory. It has become a crossroads, a warning. My memory is a ghost town, still filled with heat and color, dominated by the voice of Paul Michel. People often ask me to describe him. I tell them that he was as brutally good-looking as the old photographs suggest. He was uncannily still most of the time. He would sit smoking, fixed in one pose. People noticed him because he already looked like a photograph or a painting. He had dark grey eyes, astonishingly passionless, cold. And he used to gaze at the world like an alien on a research expedition. It was there to be observed, understood and then analyzed. He was collecting data. But he was not playing, he sat outside the game. What I remember, even more intensely, was his voice, and his huge extraordinary laugh. Most of the photographs show an unsmiling man. It’s true, he was like that; moody, magnificent, the king in an exile of his own choosing. But we became friends. And he used to talk to me; often when we sat side by side, in the car, in the bars, in the gardens, on the wall above the beach. We always sat side by side. So that I was most aware of his hands, his face in profile. But I will never forget the timbre of his voice and the way he used to talk to me.