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  -“Obviously you’ll receive a reward for your work. Every time you bring me one of Miss Claudel’s figures intact, I’ll pay you with a few francs...” I said, and although I did not have much money to spare back then, I thought this was better than leaving any trace of income behind.

  The guards smiled slyly. Finally they understood, or rather it was me who had finally learned how to handle the situation.

  -“Why didn’t you just say so, Sir,” said the stockier of the two guards, bending down to pick up the figures, passing them to me kindly. “Come to think of it, Mr Mathieu did say something about the sculptures made by Claudel,” he concluded rather cynically. “So there’s no need to say any more about it.”

  Ashamed of my double-dealing, I took off with the three figures and ran, faster than my legs could carry me. Confined in my room, I closed all the curtains. I lit some candles and devoted my time to studying deliberately, unhurriedly and with great pleasure my three new treasures that joined the other two. These new ones were minute, they seemed to be holding hands as though dancing around an invisible fire. They reminded me immediately of the work of the amazing Degas which I had once seen at a Paris exhibition. I stroked the half-finished human figures, simple maquettes that were superior enough to reveal the compelling force of a limitless imagination. They evoked in you an incredible feeling of tranquillity.

  Many years later, the same figurines are still here, dancing as though time had stood still and the dream of whoever made them continued to spur them on. They are impregnated with this beautiful, endless, almost celestial movement. I stare admirably at them, and no matter what happens outside in the real world, this never detracts from the sublime moment my soul finds peace with itself and seems to reach a state of supreme happiness. So here they are, forming part of this museum built on the foundations of shameful bribery, stolen in equal parts from Camille and the muddy canyons of the Vaucluse.

  Chapter 10

  Misery and magnificence

  Montdevergues, 22nd of November 1943

  I think about Camille quite often, and the kinds of ideas that must have been swimming around in her head. But the 20 years by her side were not enough for me to get to know every little detail about her. The strangest thing is that although I was fascinated by this extraordinary woman from almost the first I day I met her, I had in fact missed out on some of her best years. In front of me was an old, bitter and mournful lady who was sorry for the fate that her despairing existence had sealed for her, and who tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to free herself from the ties that restrained her in this prison cell. What was the Camille like who had arrived in Paris, as a teenager with the strength and potential of a volcano inside her, ready to take on the world of art? What would that little, unruly girl have been like, the one that drove her mother mad with fanciful ideas from a small village in the north of France? Little or almost nothing was left of her in the woman who had been in my care for the past two decades.

  It is not so different here. At Montdevergues, death, misery and corruption live side by side, whilst just a few miles away lies a fertile, sweeping countryside that can carry you up into the dizzying heights of satisfaction. Every so often I go on an unplanned escapade to explore the magnificent landmarks that nature has provided for the pleasure of all mankind. Since I was appointed Medical Director of the asylum, I have use of a vehicle which allows me to move about as I please, which is an unimaginable luxury in this time of great shortage that has been forced upon us. Any day now someone from the Vichy council will come and take it off me, but I am going to make sure I make most of it whilst it lasts.

  There are days when I drive for hours, just following the steady line of the Rhone Valley. My journey always begins from Avignon, sometimes heading north through Valence and arriving all the way to Lyon. On other ocassions I go down south in search of the mouth of the river, delighting in the breath-taking delta that wraps around the city of Arles. It is easy to see why well-known artists and predominantly painters have been inspired by this land. The light is different there; the sea, the skyline and even the horizon seem to all merge together. Hours drift by as I crouch on a hillside to watch dusk fall and the waters of the Mediterranean swirl in ever growing darkness.

  There are times when I feel more adventurous and I take less travelled roads to find the slopes of Mont Ventoux, which is visible from the asylum on clear days. I park the car and walk up a good distance, perhaps 6 or 7 miles, depending on the day. Eventually I collapse somewhere to take in the spectacular views, to enjoy some wine, bread and fine cheese that I buy along the way. From my viewing points, not chosen for any particular reason, I can look over the entire Rhone valley that stretches out before me. For these few moments, there is no war, no pain and no struggles for the sick, no famine. For a few seconds it is just the world and me. The strong wind that gives name to the mountain ruffles my hair as I remain exposed on the stark slopes with little shelter. But the wind does not bother me. It reaches my face, blasting it clean and fresh and ridding me of all those ugly thoughts that plague me. I feel as though I could stay there forever and never go back, perhaps become wild and live like that until nature decides when my time is up. For a moment I make peace with the cosmos, and I am no longer human, instead transforming into an indestructible stone, a pebble, lichen, or a never-ending trail in the snow.

  Inevitably I come back to my senses, but with my mind still following the conviction of a madman; there is really nothing that can drive you more insane than going back to Montdevergues after these few snatched moments of freedom and peace of mind. On my less-than enthusiastic return I often wonder about Camille. My slavery is motivated by a voluntary act, whilst hers is a shameful atrocity as part of an obscene conspiracy led by everyone who had ever tried to control her life. For lack of a better reward, they must have found great pleasure in her demise.

  As I arrive back at the asylum, through the walls and into the gardens, the grounds seemed to be a short but pleasant continuation of the landscape that only a few moments ago had surrounded me, helping to create the momentary illusion of similarity between the place I live and the wilderness just a few miles away. But in a matter of hours, I give up and reality brings me back down to civilization with a thump. A newspaper, a note on my desk or the occasional remark made by a nurse all remind me that my feet are still firmly rooted in hell, and even worse, that it was me who chose to bury them there in the first place.

  This is why I miss Camille so much. Because after many of those trips, in her dark-blue eyes and their reflections, I would often find something of the sea, the river or the mountain I had just been admiring. These elements lived in Camille and unleashed their forces of nature within her, teamed with her wild, beautiful character that was all things pure and untainted. By her side, her untameable energy was contagious, and even I began to believe, in all my naivety and short-sightedness, that although somewhat minimally, I also formed part of her small select group of people who were meant for glory, who knew they belonged to her and who fought and suffered with all their might to show this to the rest.

  But I am nothing more than a sad doctor who can barely even carry out his obligations, one who takes advantage of his position to live that little bit better than the rest and who tries to escape from reality without doing practically anything to change it. I am just a doctor, who, instead of appeasing the suffering of an exceptional, ingenious patient, used her instead to ease his own conscience and unfulfilled desires.

  Now whenever I see a stone quarry, filled with hundreds of workers picking away at the planet’s skin, I have a vision of Camille who instead manipulates the indomitable laws of the universe and creates figures in the same material, figures of a certain beauty that only the gods would be able to replicate, if they do so exist.

  Chapter 11

  Paul Claudel

  Montdevergues, 30th of November 1943

  Winter is coming and the damp cold of Vaucluse is setting in, skulking behind the walls
of Montdevergues. We are not delivered enough coal to heat up every room of the asylum, and barely enough for the quarters of the medical staff. The outer wings of the building are very much exposed, and the patients living there huddle up against the walls or under the covers, frozen stiff from the icy air that leaks in through the doors and windows. It is awful to visit at night to find them curled up in foetal positions, unable to sleep, gently whimpering as they bemoan their hardship. In times like these Camille would usually complain about the inhumane conditions she had to put up with, especially during her last few years.

  -“Even rats don’t deserve to suffer this deathly cold,” she said bitterly one December morning in 1941, when conditions had worsened considerably since my first years at the asylum, and the state of her health was very poor.

  -“Camille, you know I do everything I can within my power. And anyway, you could always...”

  -“I know what you’re going to say, and you know fine well what my answer will be!” she exclaimed, interrupting me sharply. She did know what I was about to propose, as I had numerous times already, but to no avail. Camille, because she was Camille, had been offered first-class quarters at no extra cost, where she had been living for a good while. But now she occupied the female wing, where the conditions were significantly worse. Two reasons had persuaded her to do this: one, both false and absurd, was that there were hardly any differences between the two classes and the other was that she knew that no one, absolutely no one took care of her costs at the asylum. In other words, she put saving face before her own health.

  -“You are stubborn,” I said affectionately, giving up, without trying to argue too much with her.

  -“And you are incompetent,” she pronounced, callously, as she often spoke to me.

  That remark hurt me, and even more so because it came from her, the one person at Montdevergues I looked up to. It was not until later when she knew death was closing in that she consented to going back to her old room to live out her final days. She also asked for my forgiveness.

  -“Edouard, I’ve been extremely hard on you. I hope you can forgive an old madwoman who’s spent nearly half her life trapped behind these walls,” she sighed, almost breathless now, regaining a calm I had only ever seen on very rare occasions.

  -“Think nothing of it, I know that you never meant anything unkindly.”

  -“No, no!” Please forgive me. All this time I’ve been venting my anger and resentment on you, for want of anyone else close by who actually deserves it. Please forgive me,” she pleaded earnestly, without leaving any room for disagreement.

  -“In that case, I forgive you.”

  The truth was Camille had nothing to be sorry for. This incompetency, as she put it, had been cultivating for years, and her remark now resounds like an immortal, irrefutable proverb, collaring each of my thoughts, paralysing my every movement. Yes, perhaps I could have done more, but I did not dare. Even now I am not armed with enough courage to confront the kinds of problems I have had to face. Human beings will always insist that everything is impossible and will hide away any solution or chance that may call upon sacrifice or strength. It is far easier to give in to passiveness and convenience.

  Those winters were very different from the first ones I had experienced at the asylum, which were serene, agreeable and so unlike the ones I was used to. The cold seemed milder and more manageable compared to the outskirts of Paris, and easier to get through. I used to like to walk to Monfavet, sheltered inside my woollen coat and in no hurry, enjoying the countryside and feeling the frozen, dry air from the Alps as it hit my face. I breathed it in, letting it reach all the way to the pit of my stomach, washing away my sins that had lined the deepest part of my being. Camille had already began to complain by then, but in the same way that any old, ill-tempered person might do who looks for something to moan about. But hope always loomed over her, and it niggled at me threateningly, every time I went to visit her.

  -One day my brother Paul will come and get me out of here. And he’ll take revenge for the degrading way I’ve been treated. He’ll take me to Japan any day now.

  Paul Claudel was well-known and considerably famous. Apart from a great poet and playwright, he was also developing an active role in diplomacy that had led him to the embassy in Tokyo. Camille would sometimes receive a letter from him, in exchange for the five she would have sent. These were practically the only letters she was allowed to receive.

  -Tell me about your brother, about Paul. You still haven’t told me anything about your relationship with him,” I said coaxingly, one winter morning when she began challenging me again with this imminent escape of hers.

  Camille bowed her head, and slumped heavily onto the bed in her room. I nearly always had to see her in her room, as she would refuse to go anywhere else. This was how much hostility she felt for the outside world, and for those of us who lived at Montdevergues. She got on reasonably well with perhaps one nurse and a couple of patients.

  -“Why do you want to talk about my brother Paul?” she asked suspiciously, as per usual. Nearly every time I brought up a new topic, she would reply warily and distrustfully.

  -“We have to talk about everything to do with your life. It’s important for me to know every aspect of it, and I presume your brother forms part of it,” I deduced, trying to seem close to her.

  She looked up at the ceiling, as though tracing on its chipped, yellowed surface the brushstrokes of another era, outlining the images imprinted on her retina like precious jewels.

  -“I think Paul loved me, do you know what I mean?”

  -“No, actually I don’t think I know what you mean,” I said in a neutral tone, as I did not want to make the mistake of closing the door I had just prised open. It was never easy to understand what she meant the first time she spoke about something, as she liked to come out with meaningless or ambiguous sentences.

  -“It was an innocent love,” she continued, as though not listening to me, “but it was not what you would call strictly brotherly love. He was fascinated by me, and I knew it. He might have been afraid of it, but he loved my rebellious side, my tangled hair, my thin, mud-stained dresses, the audacity I had to face up to our angry mother, my dark eyes... He always had beautiful words to say to me. At barely six years of age he was already a poet; even as a child he manipulated language with elegance and mastery.

  -“And you, what did you feel for him?”

  Camille pressed her lips tightly together, as though she was trying to hold in her anger, or maybe a yawn. Whatever it was, her expression turned grim.

  -“I adored him. I wanted to show him I was willing to do anything, anything he wanted, and I wanted him to feel completely free... He’s my brother...” she whispered, almost shaping and moulding each and every word.

  I imagined the kinds of thoughts swirling about in Camille’s mind, which made me feel great pity for her. She still had her eyes fixed upwards on the ceiling, without giving me so much as a glance, as though she had entered a sort of trance that kept her far away from our present.

  -I understand, Camille. It’s alright,” I said, suspecting the kinds of feelings that must have been tormenting her and wanting to help make them go away. Camille took her eyes off the ceiling and then focused them on my face. I watched her, trying to transmit a sensation of calm to her.

  -“You don’t understand Doctor, you can’t understand. Paul has betrayed me. He may have tried very hard to help me, but this is just to ease the guilt that eats away at him; he betrayed me and was the first to agree to me being locked up here, and now he doesn’t do anything to get me out no matter how many times beg. That’s why it’s tough for me to remember him as the little boy he was, as my brother who was entirely devoted to me.”

  The brutal, sad story as to why Camille was in confinement still had not revealed itself to me, but I knew more than enough already about what her own family was capable of doing, and just how heartless they were towards her.

  -“That's a wonder
ful way to look at things,” I said, treading carefully so as to not knock her unstable temperament out of balance.

  -“You mean it's a loser's way of looking at things.”

  It is difficult to address someone who you identify with, someone who you feel great empathy for, all the while trying not to stir the ghosts of the past. I still had not met the brilliant Paul Claudel, just Camille’s brother to me, but I already loathed him with all my might.

  Chapter 12

  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.