"Monsieur Pain" by Roberto Bolaño

LA Times

Set in Paris in 1938, "Monsieur Pain" (Amazon.com:
http://xrl.us/MPain ) is loosely based on actual events.
The titular character, Pierre Pain, is a mesmerist called
to the bedside of the famed Peruvian poet César Vallejo,
who cannot stop hiccupping. Pain is brought in as a last
resort, through the machinations of Madame Reynaud, a
widowed friend of Vallejo's wife with whom Pain is in love.
A World War I veteran on a military pension, living in
rented rooms, he is a mousy type, unable to escalate his
acquaintance with Reynaud into courtship.

Although the doctors can find no ailment to treat, they
acknowledge that Vallejo is near death. A prominent
specialist has been cajoled into taking the case, but he
seems overmatched, and also derelict in his duties. In a
typically satisfying instance of Bolaño's authorial
misdirection, Pain sees Vallejo exactly once, for no more
than a few minutes, before being ejected from the room by
the briefly interested specialist.

Even before he sees Vallejo, though, the mesmerist finds
himself followed through the perpetually rainy Paris
streets by a pair of mysterious Spaniards. Eventually, they
bribe Pain to leave the case alone. Pain takes the money, a
considerable sum, without either understanding the
foreigners' motivations or intending to follow their
directives. The next day, however, he is denied entry to
the clinic. He later sneaks back inside, only to become
lost in the building's labyrinthine corridors -- one of
several strange, solitary adventures on which Pain will
unintentionally embark...

Continued: http://xrl.us/MonsieurP