The truth
Montdevergues, 5th of December 1943
Cyril Mathieu left his job at the Montdevergues asylum at the end of the summer of 1927. It was a sad, overcast morning that wanted to rain but could not quite manage. The gardens had all shrivelled up; the dark clouds cloaked the staff in ashen grey. The hospital walls were like the walls of a castle, watching as their king departed never to return. I should have been happy, but truthfully I was far from it. A new stage in my life was about to begin and I felt the kind of dizziness that comes before a time of change.
Just before he took off in the car that had come to collect him, he called me alone to his office. He was smiling, but the tension in his face and the corners of his mouth were a clear give away that it was forced, perhaps rehearsed unsuccessfully in front of a mirror: the mechanics of pretence stretched to their absolute limits.
-“Edouard, it’s time. From now on this is where you’ll work,” he said, opening his arms as though to take in all the space in the room. I was sure I could detect a metallic edge to the timbre of his voice. “I hope I’ve taught you well.”
-“Mr. Mathieu...,” I stammered, without knowing the right words to choose for a moment that I knew to be both difficult and dismal for the man in front of me.
The Medical Director came towards me and took me by the shoulders, as he often did and then drew me close to him, pressing into me. Again I had that same strong feeling that we were father and son, rather than a superior who was handing over the baton to his subordinate.
-“Don’t forget that you must make common cause with the staff. There will be times when you feel alone, and the only way to move forward will be to rely on them. Montdevergue can be a fantastic place,” Cyril exclaimed, in a slight melancholic tone.
-“I’ll try not to let it down.”
Mr Mathieu let me go, and for a moment I thought he was about to leave and run off down the stairs without a single word. That stern, heavyset man, who sometimes appeared as cold as steel, was in fact fragile and even sentimental. He never cried but his eyes misted over, showing that his departure was much more than just leaving his lifelong career.
-“One more thing Edouard,” the Medical Director said darkly. I could hear his erratic breathing and his irregular heartbeat.
-“Yes, Sir.”
-“Let go of your fixation on Miss Claudel. There are the files containing her medical records, as promised,” he said, pointing to papers on a shelf, “but maybe it’s better if you let them be; let them collect dust, or perhaps don’t read them at all and throw them in the fire. The world is full of injustice and we can’t do anything, or almost anything, about it. So says a man who’s lived for many years already. Stop indulging yourself, let it go and get on with your life without getting too involved in the patients. I know it doesn’t sound right, but sadly it’s not worth the hassle. That’s my last piece of advice for you, do you understand?”
-“Perfectly, Mr. Mathieu,” I replied through clenched teeth, rather opposing his last long-winded remark.
Cyril Mathieu did not say another word. He picked up a couple of things from his desk, which was now nearly mine, and left the room in silence. I heard his footsteps disappearing down the stairs. I heard the distant farewells from behind the car and the choked sobs of a few nurses. The car set off, and the office was suddenly filled with an inconsolable loneliness.
I spent about two hours at the window, contemplating the green expanse of valley that stretched all the way to the nearby hills. I felt my hands trembling uncontrollably from an unrelenting anxiety, or perhaps it was the wind that buffeted together the dark clouds above the asylum. The summer was spreading itself thinly in these final days and it seemed as though autumn was about to cover Montdevergues in a blanket of sadness. I turned and went towards the shelves where the files were kept. I hesitated for a few seconds, just brushing the spine with one finger before I jumped back, as though running from someone infected with the plague.
Every morning as I sat at my desk and before getting on with anything else, I would take a quick look at those files. It was like a temptation that was finally within reach, just as you had the strength to resist it. I could still here the echo of the Cyril Mathieu’s words in my head, exercising their powerful influence over my will. What exactly had the Medical Director wanted to tell me as he left? Why had he gone to so much trouble to warn me?
The days were passing by, and little by little I began to break the promises I had made to myself and the unspoken ones I had made to Mathieu. It was not long before I had removed Camille Claudel from the care of the new head of female patients. I found a perfect excuse for her to be placed back in my care from the innumerable complaints she had made. But what if Camille had complained before about my medical care? And anyway, who was I meant to be helping with this decision, her or me? I could almost read the answer from the look Richard gave me, the young man who had replaced me in my previous position.
-“I don’t understand the reason behind taking one of my patients out of my care. Please understand,” he exclaimed, annoyed after I had informed him of my decision, “that not only are you undermining me, but I also don’t know how Miss Claudel will take this, or the rest of the medical staff for that matter.”
Richard’s arguments, although rather audacious, were full of common sense. But from my perspective, anything that involved Camille was anything but sensible. I turned to lying once again to ruthlessly reason with and silence the weak protests of my colleague. I also began to find a unexpected pleasure in using the darkest side of my power.
-“This isn’t my decision; it’s not up to me. Miss Camille’s family asked it of me in a letter. You do realise that we are talking about our most prestigious patient here,” I said, paraphrasing Cyril Mathieu’s during such a shameful moment, “and that her stay in our asylum is a delicate matter, especially because of her brother’s growing importance.”
Richard nodded and resisted any further comment, as an intelligent man he knew that there was nothing more he could do. His insisting would have only irritated me, and it was not a matter of life or death. But even so, ever since that day I do believe he never looked at me again with the same respect.
That small, tyrannical incident dramatically sped up my descent into hell, my irreversible fall into the sins that, in some way, I knew Mr. Mathieu had tried to steer me away from. My fascination for Camille had not dwindled over the past few years, but rather on the contrary, it had intensified, like anything we keep forever denying ourselves. It was no surprise when one December morning, exactly 16 years ago today, like a forcibly abstaining alcoholic pouncing on a stock of wine bottles, I raided the filing cabinet that had become my most deeply buried obsession.
In barely two blissful hours I had read through Camille’s entire medical history. Exhausted, I leaned back into the armchair of my office, feeling the soft, icy breeze on my neck from the slightly open window. I was worn out, but at the same time I was furious, fuming, angry, yet I did not have the strength to take on the colossal revenge on the atrocious humiliation Camille had been victim to. She had never been mad, not in the strict meaning of the word, perhaps at most she had suffered a nervous breakdown that had led to reclusiveness and her distancing herself from everyone for fear of what they might do to her. It was true that she suffered from a persecution complex, her phobias were not just indulgent, but most of them were based on facts that would cause anyone to have at least severe changes in behaviour and personality, if nothing worse. Her problem was called Auguste Rodin, who she blamed unfairly, and probably unjustly, for all the misfortunes she had ever had to go through. And she did so continually, and passionately. Only a few months into her confinement at the Montdevergues asylum, she had begun to show clear signs that she had fully recovered from her depressive neurosis, and was in fact completely sane and ready to lead a normal life. From that moment onwards, Cyril Mathieu was pressured first by Camille’s family, and then by his superiors to alter those “erroneous” reports, because Miss Claudel had clearly lost all judgement and posed a great danger to society.
Camille’s medical history had more gaps on the last pages. First, every three months, then every six, and finally just one comment per year, which over the past three years had been the same, like a persistent adage in Cyril Mathieu’s own handwriting: “The patient continues to be completely sane and rational, although she does run the risk of incurable dementia caused by the cruel prison sentence we have subjected her to.”