Chapter 174: Hashish Club [1]
And… smoking really was awful.
The place Dr. Pierre took us to reeked of cigarette smoke even before we entered. No, really. Smoke was literally seeping through the closed door. I could not believe it. These people were all doctors, and yet here they were, fogging up the place. Then again, during this time period, cigarettes were considered a kind of health tonic, so I suppose it could not be helped.
Hold on… what about my lungs…
Then again, my father was a heavy smoker and still lived a long, stubborn life. Maybe I inherited those genes. And in this century, if you lived to sixty, you were already considered long-lived. Seventy was practically a miracle.
“Hmm?”
With that resigned thought, I opened the door and was met with a bizarre sight.
“Indeed.”
Dr. Liston, who must have caught the confused look on my face, began explaining with the same dry tone he always used. He had a knack for being helpful in his own unfiltered way. After all, he was the only one among us who had formed any real rapport with the French.
“Some of them like to smoke… that way.”
He gestured rudely but accurately to a group of people snorting something up their noses. It looked like ground-up tobacco leaves. He clearly was not happy about it, but what could he do? It was Liston. He had already made his peace with society disappointing him.
“Ah… I still prefer the pipe. Looks more elegant, doesn’t it? But don’t worry. Our Hashish Club doesn’t allow tobacco smoking.”
Pierre spoke with mild distaste, as if even he were skeptical about the whole scene. His wrinkled nose said more than his words did.
It was a relief to hear that. I had already inhaled enough secondhand smoke just by being in the hallway. Everyone else seemed unbothered, but saying things like “I’m still young” was not much of a shield anymore. I could only hope my lungs survived this century.
“You really are wonderful.”
I meant that as a compliment, and apparently it worked. Pierre beamed, then turned to the waiter.
“Ah, doctor. Your guests are all here. I’ll take you in.”
“Great, thank you.”
The waiter clearly knew Pierre by face. Without asking anything further, he led us to a private room deeper inside. Something felt ominous. Again, smoke was drifting through the cracks around the door. But this time, it did not smell like tobacco.
It smelled like something else. Something worse. Like burned trash. Or—
The door opened before I could back away. Inside were several men, clearly intoxicated, but oddly, no alcohol was in sight. What were they drunk on?
The answer revealed itself quickly.
“Haha! So this really is the Hashish Club.”
Liston laughed and casually took a seat. Without hesitating, he picked up something that looked like a cigarette, lit it, and took a long drag. That same foul smell from the hallway filled the room instantly. My memory stirred.
Wait a second… I’ve smelled this before. Where was it…? Oh. Right. Los Angeles. That damn society meeting.
Back then, I had flown in for a medical conference. A local professor picked me up at the airport and brought me to quiet, suburban Irvine. For a brief moment, I thought living in America might be great. That changed the moment I saw downtown Los Angeles. People were smoking weed in public, stinking up every corner.
This was the same smell. No doubt about it.
Hemp.
“Good stuff, right?”
“Of course. This one’s from the Ottoman Empire. An exclusive product.”
“Haha! What luck to be in Paris! Everyone, don’t just sit there. Light up! It’s the best we’ve got!”
And just like that, Liston, London’s finest surgeon and our group’s rock, was smoking hash like he had been doing it for years. The truly terrifying part was that he seemed to be enjoying it. There was not a single shady dealer in sight. Just doctors and artists.
I might have been the only one in the room who thought this was completely insane.
Alfred, ever the friendly type, had already struck up a conversation with someone nearby.
“Oh, hello. I’m Alfred—oh, you don’t speak English?”
“What are you saying? English is basic.”
“Aha… you studied abroad?”
“Yes, yes. Worked on a collaboration with English physicians once.”
“Collaboration…?”
Hearing that piqued my curiosity, so I joined them. Most of the later arrivals had to sit wherever they could squeeze in anyway, so I had no excuse not to.
“Oh, sorry. I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Berlioz.”
“Berlioz…?”
The name was familiar, and I tilted my head, trying to place it. Suddenly, everyone turned to me. Pierre, in particular, was staring intently, his curiosity sharp as a knife.
“You know the name?”
I realized then that this bastard had been underestimating us this whole time.
Doctors who only knew medicine. Honestly, that was not even wrong. Still, the intellectuals of this time had an obsession with being well-rounded. If you did not know literature, music, and philosophy, were you even a person?
Thankfully, I had a secret weapon: my dad from my previous life.
The man had been a self-styled magazine expert and pseudo-professor in Insa-dong. Technically unemployed, but incredibly well-read. Thanks to him, I could bluff.
“I’ve heard of him. Didn’t Symphonie Fantastique get performed during the July Revolution?”
“Huh?”
“Wait. My name isn’t even known in England yet! Where did you hear that?”
Pierre’s eyes widened. Even Berlioz, who had been dazed from the hash just moments ago, blinked in surprise.
“He’s a true genius. He only started studying music seriously at twenty and still made it to the Paris Conservatory.”
I silently thanked my father’s endless cultural lectures. The others looked stunned. Even Blundell joined in the teasing.
“Haha! Our London doctors know everything! Symphony! I heard it too!”
And Liston? If strength built resistance, then his body must have been made of steel. He still looked sober, despite probably inhaling more than anyone else.
“It’s good.”
“How does it compare to British food?”
“Our food is garbage.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No. Just being honest.”
Meanwhile, Berlioz was mumbling, moved by what I had said.
“If I had studied in London, maybe I would have become a doctor…”
What kind of novel nonsense was that? I thought. But as he kept talking, I realized I had underestimated his sincerity.
“I went to medical school until I was eighteen. My father insisted I become a doctor.”
“Ah…”
Even back then, parents pushed their kids to become doctors. It made me wonder why. A doctor in the twenty-first century actually healed people. Back in this era, you could die just from cutting open the wrong cadaver. You could get stabbed by an angry family member. Or die from gangrene mid-procedure.
Unless you were someone like Liston, you would not survive long.
“Oh, right. He fainted during dissection.”
Pierre added this with a smirk, clapping Berlioz on the back.
“He passed out from the smell and said he was quitting. Frankly, good. You can’t perform surgery if you faint from a cat dissection.”
They said this like it was normal. As if they were not the weird ones for working in corpse-infested basements.
“Anyway, everything worked out. Now you’re a composer, a famous one. Famous enough for the Hashish Club, even!”
Pierre kept laughing, though I was not sure why. Maybe I had inhaled enough secondhand smoke to start laughing with him. My head was spinning, and that was when I remembered.
Hashish.
That name.
Assassin’s Creed! The Assassins used hashish to turn into fanatics!
Hehe.
I took the elixir. I inhaled the sacred mist!
“Whoop whoop.”
“Looks like our Pyeong is in a good mood too.”
“Haha, ha. This stuff’s powerful. Even after a family death, just one hit and all your worries go away.”
I was giggling for no reason now and ended up striking up a conversation with the man next to me, who, despite the haze of smoke, looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his back.
He looked intimidating. The kind of man I would normally avoid unless Liston were standing beside me. But here I was, too high to care.
“Hello? I’m Noble Kim of London. Dr. Pyeong.”
“Ah, hello. I’m Victor Hugo.”
“Huh?”
“Do you know me?”
Did I know him?
Les Misérables. The Man Who Laughs. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
These were not just books. They were monuments. And he looked barely older than Berlioz.
Wait… did he write all that while high?
Suddenly, I remembered something I had once said to a novelist: “Hey, what kind of drug did you take to write this stuff?”
Now I had goosebumps. What if he really was on something?
“You know me?”
Hugo asked again. I had Les Misérables on the tip of my tongue but could not remember if it had even been published yet. Damn it. I should have paid more attention to Dad’s lectures.
So I dodged.
“No, but your name has the kind of ring that sounds destined for literature.”
It was nonsense, but it worked. He looked pleased. And Liston, still somehow unaffected, laughed out loud.
“Ah! There’s something called physiognomy in Joseon! You must be quite perceptive!”
And with that, I accidentally created another layer of mystery around myself.