The Visionary

— J. Chr. de Vries

It was around noon, I had parked my old, small Peugeot at the supermarket in Le Bugue and was pushing a shopping trolley towards the entrance. As the automatic doors opened before me, suddenly the dream I had woken up with in the morning came to mind. In that dream, I was walking through a revolving door of a hospital, and once inside, I came face to face with an old flame of mine: Hedy Pogélosç, a psychologist from Serbia. We had a brief, quite intense relationship. She had indeed once worked in a hospital, so that part of the dream wasn’t strange in itself, although I had never met her in that hospital, nor had any rendezvous near a revolving door.

This is the moment when I must explain why this is a bad start to a story. Coincidence doesn’t work in a story. But I fear it’s inevitable for this one. When I walked through the supermarket doors, I came face to face with Hedy. I hadn’t seen her in years. Not that we parted ways in an argument, but there simply wasn’t a shared path for us. I had no idea what she was doing here in Le Bugue; I knew only that she was still working in Leiden, at the Academic Hospital.


We stared at each other, bewildered, for a few moments, then burst into unrestrained laughter that lasted at least a minute. After we had composed ourselves, we decided that, once we were done with the shopping, we would go somewhere for a drink together.

We were sitting on the terrace of a café-restaurant overlooking the Vézère, half an hour later, with a carafe of white wine and some nibbles. The weather was beautiful, not too hot, but warm enough to sit outside without a jacket.


Hedy revealed that she had bought a second home six months ago in Paunat, a small village just over ten minutes’ drive from Le Bugue. She did indeed still work at the hospital in Leiden, as a psychotherapist. After catching up on the rest of our lives following our brief relationship, I told her about my peculiar dream and our unlikely encounter.


“It’s like something out of Tintin,” she chuckled, taking a sip of her wine a bit too quickly, which made her choke.


“And this seems straight out of Freud,” I quipped.


“Laugh all you want,” she managed to say through teary eyes after a hearty coughing fit.


I gently patted her back, and she looked at me shaking her head. I immediately understood the Tintin reference; she was a huge fan of Hergé’s comic character. In the album ‘Cokes in Stock’, at the beginning of the story, Tintin and his friend Captain Haddock come out of a cinema discussing the film they just watched. Haddock didn’t like the ending because the plot was based on an unbelievable, coincidental encounter. ‘Just as unbelievable as if we were to bump into General Alcazar right now,’ he says. And of course, in the next panel, they do indeed bump into the general, who unexpectedly turns the corner. It was a particular detail from this album that Hedy had noticed, a story I would never forget.


Hedy had a keen eye for details. She once showed me the aforementioned album and pointed out a few panels that followed that encounter with Alcazar. The general had mentioned he was in a hurry but that they could meet him later at the Hotel Bristol. Then he quickly walked away. Tintin noticed he dropped something, which turned out to be his wallet. Tintin and Haddock went to the hotel to return the wallet to the general. They sat in the restaurant, the waiter came, and Haddock naturally wanted whiskey, but Tintin beat him to it and ordered two ‘seltzer waters’. Haddock was left looking disappointed. Meanwhile, Tintin went to the front desk to inquire about General Alcazar, only to find out that no General Alcazar was registered at the hotel. Tintin returned to the restaurant to find a beaming Haddock. There was no text to indicate what the panel showed; you just had to pay close attention to the details: Haddock had a hefty glass of whiskey next to him on the table, triumphantly looking at Tintin.


When Hedy finally regained her composure, she asked if I remembered Dr. Zeele. She had briefly interned with him but didn’t last long. “What a horrible man,” she said. I nodded sympathetically.


“Your story about your dream and our unexpected encounter now reminds me of him. It’s a long story, do you have a moment?” I nodded affirmatively, and she waved the waiter over to order another carafe of wine and some fresh nibbles.

After the orders were served, Hedy launched into her story. “So, during the time I was interning with him, in the mid-nineties, he was working on a peculiar case involving a cult around the French visionary Inez Serède. The woman had initially gathered a small sect around her, but after some apparently sensational predictions, the sect grew significantly. Zeele became involved after the French authorities took an interest in the sect; they asked for his expert advice, possibly due to his previous work in Paris. At that time, he was highly regarded internationally as a psychiatrist, and he also speaks and writes fluent French. I was able to focus on this case during my internship.”


What Hedy told me about this issue was indeed extremely peculiar and shocking. The visionary had, as Hedy mentioned, made some sensational predictions. She had a small group of seven followers around her, confidants whom she called Le cercle intérieur [the inner circle]. In Zeele’s report, these seven followers were indicated by a single letter, which had no connection to their real names. Later, in her own report on her internship, Hedy changed the letters to actual — but of course, fictitious — names to make reading easier. The predictions always concerned one of the seven followers. Usually, the prediction came from a dream of Serède’s, or so she claimed. One of the members of the inner circle became suspicious later on; she had conversations with the investigators from the justice department and later with Zeele. This was E., whom Hedy later called Ester.


The first prediction, as Ester told Zeele, was about a dream Serède had regarding a danger of an accident at home. The visionary also mentioned that O. (or Olga) appeared in that dream. Two days later, Olga slipped at the top of a staircase, fell down the stairs, and broke a leg and a wrist. The prediction had come true.


A month later, the visionary had a dream in which S. appeared. There was mention of a car accident. This accident happened on a motorway. Initially, Sendra was too scared to drive again, but after a week, she felt brave enough, though only in the city. Two weeks later, due to a family emergency involving her mother, she had to take the motorway. Just as the dream predicted, she lost control of her car and hit the guardrails. Fortunately, she was not seriously injured. Now, the followers from the inner circle were completely enthralled by the visionary. They started meeting more frequently and became more and more involved in certain rituals designed by Serède to influence the predictions positively.


The next prediction, about two months later, concerned G. (Gerda, in Hedy’s report, a Dutch woman). She had a weekend cottage where she spent her weekends. In Serède’s dream, Gerda fell ill in a bathroom. From Serède’s description, it was clear that it could only be the bathroom of her weekend cottage. Serède had never been there. For the first few weekends, Gerda avoided the cottage.


Then, Serède had a new prediction, concerning L. (or Lea). What was remarkable about this prediction was that a specific date was mentioned.


The visionary had her predictive dream in the early morning of July 18, 1995. Her dreams usually occurred just before waking up. Lea commuted five days a week by metro in Paris, to and from work, getting off at the Saint-Michel – Notre Dame station. The dream predicted a severe explosion at a station on Tuesday, July 25, exactly one week later. The ‘inner circle’ decided to engage in an extra elaborate ritual. Additionally, Lea decided to take the day off from work. All the sisters in the circle wholeheartedly supported her decision, including Serède.


Meanwhile, Gerda’s husband had gone back to the weekend cottage despite the predictions. He didn’t believe in them. When he didn’t return home on Sunday, she became worried. She drove to the cottage and found her husband dead on the bathroom floor. The police determined it was an accident, caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. He had forgotten to turn on the ventilation.


On July 25, a bomb attack was carried out by an Islamic terrorist group, resulting in eight deaths and around one hundred fifty injured. Lea had stayed home, but the sect members were in shock. For the first week, the group didn’t dare to meet. It wasn’t until early August that they gathered again. The visionary had another predictive dream, this time involving V., or Vera. Serède had seen that she had fallen ill and was taken to a hospital. Two days later, Vera accidentally took the wrong medicine. She had mistaken two similar bottles of liquid medicine, as they were in the wrong boxes.


Vera, taken to the hospital by taxi, was not in a life-threatening condition. It was different for R. (Renka). As predicted in the visionary’s dream, she caused a severe fire at her brother’s weekend cottage. She had left both the stove burner and the gas cylinder open, and when she lit the oven, there was a massive explosion. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. This incident led to the dissolution of the sect; there were no more gatherings. Meanwhile, the authorities had started an investigation into the sect. The trigger was the bomb attack on July 25. It turned out that one of the suspects in this attack was Lea’s brother. Initially, it was investigated whether the sect was responsible for the attack, but it soon became clear that this was not the case. Lea, as mentioned, the sister of one of the suspects, was not involved. The investigation, however, piqued curiosity about the sect. All those accurate predictions were too peculiar not to investigate. And so, Dr. Zeele became involved, and following in his footsteps, Hedy as well.

The story had grown long, and we decided to have lunch. After placing our orders, Hedy resumed speaking: “After the authorities were convinced that Serède and her sect had nothing to do with the attack, Zeele continued his investigation because there was something extraordinarily peculiar about those predictions; Zeele did not believe in ‘nonsense about the future’, as he called it. He sought psychological explanations, and especially when E. ‘came out of the closet’ — again in Zeele’s words — a theory began to form from her statements that was useful to him. E., or Ester, mentioned that she found the medicine switch involving Vera suspicious. Ester said that Vera had suggested once that the switch was intentional, albeit perhaps unconsciously, but according to her, it was not a random mix-up. As you probably recall, Zeele is a staunch Freudian. He began to look at the predictions from the Freudian concept of ‘mistakes’. The medicine bottle switch was, from that perspective, an action guided by the subconscious. Vera had become so enthralled by the visionary that she made the prediction come true through her subconscious. Presumably as a misplaced, of course, demonstration of loyalty. Zeele could explain the other predictions with this theory as well: the car accident, the oven incident, the staircase fall — all could be explained as actions guided by the subconscious. Thus, the dreams were not predictions but recipes for some sort of accident. Serède turned out to be the director of all the mishaps. Perhaps not based on a conscious, malicious intent, but nonetheless equally dangerous.”


“But what about the case of the carbon monoxide,” I interjected, “after all, it wasn’t the woman, G. (or Gerda), who was the victim, but her husband. And he didn’t appear in that dream, if I understood correctly.”


“Zeele had an explanation for that,” replied Hedy. “That he didn’t appear in the dream was irrelevant; it revolved around Gerda. And in a way, she was responsible for that poisoning. She always made sure the ventilation was working, not her husband. By staying at home, she put her husband in danger, or at the very least, she should have reminded him to be careful when showering. But of course, this isn’t about accusing her of anything; there was no intent involved, and all the events surrounding those predictions were extremely confusing for the group. The justice department, who received Zeele’s report, didn’t find any reason for prosecution.”


“And then there’s the bombing,” I said. “You can’t possibly explain that from the Freudian idea of ‘mistakes’?”


“No, Zeele didn’t claim that either. He dismissed it as ‘coincidence’, something that can always happen. There were numerous bombings in the eighties, more than ten in Paris alone. It was less common in the nineties, but they still occurred,” Hedy took a moment to sip her wine. “I didn’t agree with him on that, by the way,” she continued, “I believed, and as it turned out, I was right, that a more prosaic reason could be found.”


We were now sipping espresso with cognac. “Well, spill it,” I encouraged her, curious about this reason.


“Zeele didn’t give me a chance to figure this out at all; that’s the main reason I broke ties with him. I went to see Ester, and she put me in touch with Lea, the sister of the terrorist. That took some effort, but I was able to play on her guilt, and eventually, she confessed. I visited her with Ester, who helped me greatly. By then, it was months later.” Hedy took a sip of her cognac.


I had become quite impatient by now, and Hedy could tell from my expression and my restless shifting in my seat.


“Ha!” she said with a teasing, wicked grin, “there’s the man I know.”


My mind went back some years.


“Calm down,” she continued, “I couldn’t resist teasing you a bit.” She gave me a seductive smile. Then she became serious again. “Lea eventually told me something that made everything clear: she had told her brother about the sessions with the dreams, and had mentioned the explosion at a metro station. Her brother, who by the way had been brought before the court in the meantime and found guilty, had chosen the date for that attack based on her comment. He supported her plan to take the day off from work, and thus could plan the attack knowing his sister would be spared. So, the prediction had provided the date of the attack. It was accelerated due to that.”


“But then it still stands that the visionary predicted that attack, maybe not the date, but the attack itself.”


“I have an explanation for that, not entirely airtight perhaps, but plausible. After the conversation with Lea, Ester told me that in that ‘inner circle’, they knew something about that brother, it had been discussed, not that he was directly involved in terrorist activities, but that he was sympathetic to the Islamic agenda. Inez Sedère was, despite the fake predictions, a highly sensitive woman. So she might have sensed something, and turned it into a dream.” She paused for a moment, then chuckled. “That goes for you too, you’ve had a dream about me, and look where we are now!”

As we walked back to our cars in the supermarket parking lot half an hour later, Hedy suddenly put an arm around me, looking somewhat sheepish. “I have something to confess,” she said, with a bit of hesitation.


I looked at her somewhat concerned, and she hugged me tighter. “Well, out with it then,” I said.


“Two days ago, we saw each other, in the Bricomarché. I saw you there, and you saw me too, with a fleeting glance, without actually recognizing me. Probably because of that mild form of prosopagnosia you have, you need a context to recognize a face. And apparently, some of that glance did penetrate your brain, explaining your dream about me. When you saw me in the supermarket, that dream helped you recognize me then.”

— Bonnemort, 12 March 2024