Mesmerizing

[patrick1]

(with Pipper)

Patrick never focused on individuals in his lectures. It would be too distracting.

For if he did, he would think about that individual, perhaps, and lose his train of thought.

But more: he needed to think of the students, some dozens of them today scattered up facing him in the big austere hall, as a mass, both more and less than individuals, a jumble of faces and t-shirts and pens and paper and electronic devices. He spoke to the row before the back, to no-one in particular, to everyone in general. It always worked fine.

Except that today -

They were laughing. He liked to make them laugh. He was showing a couple of old Peanuts cartoons – THE DOCTOR IS IN – to build up to his section about the influence of role, status, perceived power even in what seemed so medical a thing as the prescription and taking of pills.

She had green eyes. Third row, centre.

He didn't stumble. He had made his one mistake, years ago now, in the scenario that involved an eager bright female student and the flattered older professor: he wasn't going to make it again. 'Quite remarkably,' he concentrated on his words, this was new stuff interpolated into an old lecture, new research findings, 'it seems that in the trials of Prozac and Seroxat and all their cousins and siblings in the serotonin uptake family, the effect of the drugs was only a little greater than the placebo effect. How overwhelmingly important to us it is, to believe that we have something wrong with us, and that a sympathetic person in authority is looking out for us...'

It wasn't his best lecture. Perhaps he'd delivered it too many times: the trope about how charismatic figures from Mesmer, with his magnetisme animale, to Freud with his hypnosis and his seductive psychotherapy. Were perhaps only harnessing the power of the placebo...

Still, there was the usual crowd of questioners afterwards. A thesis proffered for comment. Email addresses exchanged.

The young woman with green eyes – she was a brunette, she had a shy smile – hovered on the edge of the group but didn't come forward to say anything.

Finally Miriam from the faculty was at his shoulder saying, 'Anything I can do for you Pat?'

And he began to say, 'Yeh you can tell me who...'

But she wasn't there any more. The young woman with green eyes. She'd melted away. And in any event what the hell was he doing asking Miriam about her? Some people just do that to you. 'Who what?' asked Miriam.

'No matter,' he said, 'no matter,' and resolved to break his usual daytime habits and get out of here and just for once sit in a quiet bar and have a dry martini. Drink a toast maybe to imaginary women with green eyes.

 

[pipper]

Wendy Bingham took in the Professor’s lecture. In fact she soaked it in. Hanging onto every word he said, while jotting down every example he gave. Though she had already learned most of what he spoke about, through online searches, and books, Wendy was always eager to learn something new.

When he mentioned Mesmer, her heart melted. Freud was very good, but Mesmer was supreme in her eyes, though some of her fellow students would disagree. Oh, how she wanted to learn more of Mesmer’s techniques.

After the lecture was over, Wendy along with some other students went down to ask Professor Patrick questions, but the trouble with Wendy was that she was shy. Always has been, for some unknown reason.

She so wanted to ask the professor so many questions, but she didn’t want to look foolish in front of others, so Wendy just stood there, listening to the answers, and then locking them into her memory, so that she would enter them into her laptop, along with her notes, once she went home.

Even when others exchanged emails with Pat, as he liked to be called, she decided not to do it. Yet another open door, she had closed on herself.

Seeing that there was no point in staying, she silently slipped away to the library, hoping to find some new books on Mesmer, but she was in for a disappointment. Wendy knew that her only chance to get more information on Mesmer was through Pat.

Running back to the hall where he had spoken, she saw him enter the hallway, along with Miriam. ‘Oh damn! He’s leaving.’

Wendy then blushed. Swearing wasn’t one of her habits, so the fact it had escaped her mouth, was a surprise to her, as well as anyone around who heard it.

As Miriam shook the professor’s hand to say goodbye, Wendy looked on in horror. Another lost opportunity. Or was it?

Plucking up courage, she followed him, at a discrete distance, hoping to catch him when he reached his car. But he kept on walking into the high street.

Wendy decided to close the gap between them, and as she did so, he stopped outside a bar, and then entered.

This is not what Wendy wanted. Going in would require getting an alcoholic drink.

‘Well, I’m not standing out here for ever, looking like an idiot,’ she softly muttered. Spotting no dress code notice, Wendy assumed her loose sweater and jeans would be acceptable attire.

On entering, she looked around for Pat. Then she spotted him, at the bar, with a drink in his hand. Though he was on in years, he did look quite handsome. Noticing a vacant bar stool beside him, Wendy practically leaped onto to it, before anyone else could claim it, with resulted in her getting a strange look from the bartender.

There was no going back now, shyness be damned. ‘Excuse me for meeting you like this, Professor, but I want to thank you for the lecture. Though it's rude of me to bring the subject up at this moment in time, I was wondering if you can assist me on how to get more information on Mesmer.’

 

[patrick1]

The man behind the bartender looked old to Pat. The kind who had given up that first phase of dyeing his grey streaks and was letting them run riot through his dark brown hair, whose smiling eyes were showing the lines of past laughter, whose smile itself had a melancholy tinge...

Behind the barman was a mirror. He was looking at himself.

Cheers.

The talk had gone well. He smiled at the man behind the barman, regardless of whether it made more lines on his face.

He heard the voice of his ex-wife, only this morning. 'Don't give me one of your speeches, just explain to me why you're trying to change the access arrangements AGAIN.'

It was a power struggle. He knew it was. He couldn't seem to stop himself. That argument was what had set him on course for this unfamiliar destination at this unfamiliar time.

How his ex-wife had gone on: 'Don't go thinking you can mesmerise me like you mesmerise your students...'

'Same again,' he said, even though the first one was going to make him light-headed any moment now. No classes to go back to this afternoon, what the hell.

The scrape of a bar stool. Green eyes! From the audience! Looking pert and pretty: what the hell? '...Professor, but I want to thank you...' - she must have followed him here. He looked around. Just a couple of newspaper-readers dotted around, and a woman at the end of the counter who looked like a permanent fixture. '….assist me on how to get more information on Mesmer.’

'Sure. Sure. Be glad to help.' Training his own green eyes on hers. She wasn't as innocent as she was acting, was she? Was she? 'Let me buy you a drink.' He gestured to the bartender to give her whatever she wanted. 'You looking for information for a thesis or some such? I should warn you, I can bore the world about Mesmer given half a chance...'

 

[pipper]

‘…I can bore the world about Mesmer given half a chance...'

Wendy knew that there was no way in hell, that Pat would bore her about Mesmer. ‘Actually, I’m planning to write both a thesis and a fictional book about a woman who falls under the spell of Mesmer.’

Damn! Why did she have to mention that last bit? Stupid! Stupid!

Too late to retract that without looking like a full blown idiot of a university student, she knew there was only one avenue of escape left open to her.

Taking a napkin from the bar’s counter, she wrote down her email address on it, and passed to Pat.

‘I’m sorry, but this has been a mistake for me to see you here. After all, this is your private time. I should have given you this after the lecture. I’ll leave it up to you if you still want to help me.'

With that, and without looking at him again, Wendy got off the stool, and quickly exited the bar.

 

[patrick1]

It wasn't that he forgot the young woman with the green eyes. On the contrary. There was a ferocity to her look, and a determination in her words, that had both unnerved Patrick, and provoked desire in him.

Actually, I’m planning to write both a thesis and a fictional book about a woman who falls under the spell of Mesmer.

But he did get drunk enough that day to have to leave the car behind and come back to collect it from the lot the following morning. And by then he had fallen back in love with his ex-wife (third martini), and fallen out again with her for good (fifth martini), all without her being any nearer than two hundred miles away.

He didn't even talk to her. Instead he sat with a fixed smile at the bar and talked with an imaginary Wendy. One charming thing about Mesmer is that in a way he seems to have been sceptical of his own abilities...

What had he done with the bar napkin though? With the woman's email address on?

Wendy she was called. Wendy what?

It was four days later, after a busy phase of teaching and private clients and his day with the kids, that the stray sound of a harmonica on late-night radio made him think, in a roundabout way, of Mesmer. And yes, of course, the napkin was tucked into his notes of his one-off talk at college so Wendy (he saw her green eyes glowing in the dark) received a midnight email from him:

Wendy

You were kind enough to say you liked my talk the other day. And you showed interest in Mesmer. Did you know about his use of music? Here's a link to a piece Mozart wrote for the 'glass armonica'. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UpLYuSVgoQ&feature=related Benjamin Franklin actually invented this instrument - a technically-advanced version of the basic idea of making a sound by touching glass containing liquid - and Mozart was introduced to it by Mesmer. In return Mozart wrote some pieces for it, which Mesmer used to play to patients during his 'treatment' sessions. Pardon me if you know all this!

Patrick

 

[pipper]

Wendy was surprised that Patrick had sent her an email with a link, for her watch someone playing the incredible looking instrument. Though she had read about it through reading books on Mesmer, Wendy had never heard, or seen, it played.

Wendy played the video twice, and took in the strains of the instrument.

Though the piece was only about two and a half minutes in length, she wondered if Mesmer could deeply relax a patient in that short of time. Maybe Patrick would know.

Patrick

Thank you for the email, and especially the link. I was wondering how long Mesmer would play the ‘glass armonica’ before his patients would be really relaxed, and do you know of downloadable audio files of this type of instrument?

Wendy

 

[womer]

In return Mozart wrote some pieces for it, which Mesmer used to play to patients during his 'treatment' sessions. Pardon me if you know all this!http://www.filii.info/g.gif