Pianist in the Dark by Michèle Halberstadt Page B

operations. He had asserted in the past to the Empress that her protégée was incurable and did not wish to be proved wrong. He decided to judge for himself the legitimacy of these claims.
    Gustav Barth, accompanied by a colleague, arrived at Mesmer’s home late one morning. He greeted the master of the house rather coldly and refused to meet with the young woman in the drawing room into which he had been shown.
    “Ost examined her inside. I wish to do so in broad daylight.”
    Maria Theresia was thus asked to sit on a stone bench in the sun.
    She immediately began blinking, of which Barth made much ado.
    “None of my cataract patients has ever had a problem with the noonday sun!”
    Mesmer objected that cataract patients were not blind and that their optical nerves never suffered any damage. Their vision was impaired for a few months, not for years, as was the case with Maria Theresia.
    Barth commanded him to leave them alone.
    “Who knows the power of your magnetism? I wouldn’t want to take the risk of letting it interfere with our examination!”
    Mesmer had no other choice but to obey. He went back into the house, expecting the worst.
    He was furious, powerless to protect her from this inauspicious visit. Maria Theresia was not used to being assailed by a slew of questions from malevolent strangers. She was sitting in the sun; she had not had lunch. She was alone, and the panic she was feeling would make her answers incoherent.
    But Mesmer underestimated his mistress’s determination to meet the challenge. It was Barth who had confined her head to a cataplasm for months on end. She intended to make him regret his judgments.
    “What do you see at the other end of the garden, on your left?”
    “A long, pale blue ribbon that is in fact a river. The Danube.”
    “What is the sky like today?”
    “Deep blue, as it often is in Vienna during the winter. It is called a dry cold.”
    “What word do you use to describe that thing reaching up to the sky?”
    “A tree. A holm oak, to be exact. Down the path, by the lake, are some rosebushes.”
    “What color is your dress?”
    “Sea green, like my eyes. My favorite.”
    “And the ring I’m wearing?”
    “A ruby, I think. Bloodred.”
    “What am I holding?”
    “A white handkerchief.”
    “Yes, but apparently you do not see the yellow border around it.”
    “I recognize the object.”
    “Yes, but your description is imprecise.”
    Maria Theresia started to feel the onslaught of fatigue pressing against her temples.
    “What do you see in the palm of my hand?”
    “I see nothing. The object in your hands is reflecting sunlight onto me. It is very unpleasant.”
    She was forced to use her hand to protect her eyes from the reverberation that sent needles into her skull and made her vision blur.
    “It’s a mirror! Every woman knows a mirror!”
    “My eyesight is too recent for me to have acquired a taste for coquettishness.”
    She was hot. Her head was spinning. She felt nauseous.
    “What is Professor Umlauer holding in his hand?”
    Everything around her was blurred.
    “A stick?”
    He let out a smug laugh.
    “A cane, you mean. What color is it?”
    “Dark, I think.”
    “Black! Not a very difficult color to recognize!”
    “I know. I’ve lived in blackness since I was a child ...”
    “And what is this?”
    He held out a round, thick object. She could not even make out its color.
    “A candle?”
    “Come now! Think! Do doctors walk around with candles in their pockets? It’s a cigar, like the ones Mesmer loves to smoke!”
    “He never smokes in front of me for fear of irritating my eyes.”
    She closed her eyes, tilted her head backwards, and started when suddenly he took her hand and placed it on his coat collar.
    “What do you feel beneath your fingers?”
    “You’re hurting me. Feels like dog hair!”
    Barth stood up, revolted.
    “It’s ermine!”
    Mesmer, who had been watching from a window, stormed into the garden to put an end to an