Le magnetiseur

When your child’s skin is red and cracked and nothing works—not creams, not oats, not changing his diet, not even the sea (which did help, but was a two-hour round trip and February cold)—you start to lose your smug grip on science. You begin to entertain suggestion. Folk wisdom. Unlikely sources.

Maurice and Rolande, who ran the local crêperie, told us about a man. A farmer. A magnétiseur. “He works with energy,” she said, “with animals, too. He’s helped many people.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, like we’d be silly not to go.

So we did. We drove thirty kilometres inland, through twisting lanes and past damp fields, to a squat stone house sunk into the earth. The shutters hung crooked. A tired dog raised its head and did not bark.

He answered the door in overalls, hands like sausages, eyes like anchors. No greeting, no handshake. Just a nod. I tried to joke—it bounced off him like rain on slate. Delphine explained in French why we’d come: our son’s eczema. And, since we were here, she asked, “Do you do verrucas?”

He grunted. “Oui.”

Archie, all wide-eyed and solemn, was invited to stand on a stool in the middle of the room. The farmer began to move his hands—not touching, just hovering, slowly, with purpose. It was not performative. It wasn’t even especially spiritual. It was just… odd. Serious. Like he was ironing invisible creases out of the air.

While he worked, I was told to remove my shoe and sock. He examined my heel and disappeared into a side room that smelled of rust and offal. When he returned, he handed me a pig’s ear wrapped in cloth.

“Rub it on the verruca. Ten minutes.”

So I did. We sat in silence. My son balanced on a stool. I massaged a cold pig’s ear into the sole of my foot.

Ten minutes later, the treatment was over.

He led us out back to a wheelbarrow filled with compost. With one swift motion, he sliced the mound in half with a shovel and gestured. I dropped in the ear. He covered it over.

“Two weeks,” he said. “It will be gone.”

We paid him fifty euros—twenty for the verruca, thirty for the eczema—and drove away in silence.

Two weeks later, the verruca was still there. Archie’s eczema flared, receded, returned. A little better after the sea, a little worse after stress. But the story stayed. The story of the pig’s ear. Of Breton magic. Of that day we drove into the woods and handed our ailments to a man with no smile and strong hands.

And I suppose that was the real remedy. Not the compost. Not the ear. But the gesture of belief, absurd and tender. The ancient parental urge to try everything. Even this.