Pianist in the Dark by Michèle Halberstadt Read Free Book Online Page B

illuminated horizon, the most beautiful discovery on which she had laid her eyes since she could use them: the sky dotted with stars.
    Every day she made progress, getting used to the light, learning to distinguish between what was near and what was far, between what she could touch with her fingers or reach with her eyes.
    Since she refused to be separated from him, he allowed her to accompany him to the pavilion. She attended his treatment sessions. She discovered the vats, the wooden tanks containing two bottles of magnetized water that were joined together by a steel rod with a moveable tip that the patients placed on the part of the body ailing them. Mesmer treated several patients simultaneously, for he was persuaded that magnetism circulated more readily in groups, with one patient holding the rod and all the patients holding hands.
    Was its success grounded in science or the result of the suggestive power of its staging? Maria Theresia witnessed unforgettable scenes. Patients racked by spectacular convulsions, eyes rolled upwards, spittle drooling at the sides of the mouth, as they were ejected from their worldly shells in a spasm of extreme violence and then returned to them calm and at peace, cleansed of all woes.
    She who had wanted to believe in Mesmer without trying to understand his method now learned the word “magnetism.” And although she did not understand the principle or the meaning of it, she was able to take note of its effects. Perhaps the patients were hysterical, or prone to exaggeration, but no matter: After spending hours in that vat, they managed to restore a harmony between body and soul. When Mesmer told her how he tuned the limbs of the body as if they were piano strings, his words resonated with truth for her. And once he succeeded in touching and repairing every nerve, he was able to treat the mind, the erstwhile prisoner inside a tortured body.
    This newfound respect for Mesmer made her love him even more. She was now a believer. She now understood why she would get better.
    She imagined herself living with him, helping him treat his patients, playing piano and singing for them. She saw in the mirrors of the pavilion the image of a radiant young woman with a hearty complexion and an unbowed figure. At night she sometimes caught a glimpse of her naked body reflected in her bedroom window, and sought in that shadowy image of her body signs of the pleasure emanating from its depths within.

Chapter 16
    F OR SEVERAL WEEKS SHE HAD FEARED THE VISIT. Mesmer had protected her from it for as long as he possibly could by tempering the news of her progress with advisements that her extreme melancholy justified sparing her any additional fatigue. But it was difficult to put off any longer the moment when Joseph Anton would demand that he be able to see his daughter.
    One afternoon he came to her door.
    Maria Theresia was terrified. She feared that her father would discover her double secret: her liaison with Mesmer and her inability to play the piano as brilliantly as she had before—no matter that she could blame everything on her frayed nerves, her moods, her difficulty to readapt to the world of sight. As for Mesmer, he was seeing a patient in the pavilion and had asked to be told if Monsieur von Paradis wished to speak with him.
    “You don’t look well. Too skinny.”
    This was the first thing the father said on seeing his daughter. The slightly plump angel he had dropped off at this house a few months earlier had shed her baby fat. And her newfound gaze had transformed her smile: It was more timid, more thoughtful; as sparkling as ever but less spontaneous. The innocent young girl was now a young woman who controlled her own feelings. She had freed herself of her father.
    Joseph Anton noticed only the external signs of this transformation, and he disapproved immediately. Still, he was pleased to see how naturally she took the hat that he handed her. She led him into the house without using her