Madeleine Is Sleeping (17 page)

Stealing a look at their worried faces—Sophie, Emma, the chemist, the mayor, her brothers and sisters, grown so tall, and then, most worn, most loving, the face most known and feared, her Mother!—she drops down upon the stage, stretches out along the floorboards, and closes her eyes.

CHARLOTTE AWAKES
in an unknown house, in an unknown bed, and wearing someone else's clothes. Sliding out from the covers, she feels the unfamiliar floor beneath her feet, and finds her balance by placing her palm on a table she has never seen. The window, the tree outside it, the bird singing in the branches of the tree. Even the smell of her own skin is foreign: pungent, and dark, and reminiscent of wine.

The kitchen she wanders through is deserted, the chairs in disarray, but the fire is still smoking, and the pot still warm. What is inside the pot she cannot tell; she lifts the lid and sniffs, takes a spoon from the table and stirs. I will have to try it, she decides, but the taste in her mouth is neither savory nor sweet; it tastes somewhat of apples but also of lamb.

And entering the yard she sees that it, too, has been abandoned, though only minutes ago, for the grass is still trampled underfoot and the cows in the pasture are lowing. From the empty yard, she passes through the garden and into the overgrown orchard.

She is not surprised when she fails to recognize the fruit: discolored, misshapen, not quite resembling one kind or another. But it is here, in the orchard, that she sees at last a thing that is familiar to her, leaning up against a tree, as if having waited a lifetime for her to appear. Charlotte takes it in her arms, sits down on a stump, and, embracing it between her legs, begins to play.

MARGUERITE, UPON
the desertion of so many of her entertainers, has fallen back on her own devices. Every night, after all, there is still the widow leaning forward in her chair, expecting pleasure. What is Marguerite to do but unlock her monstrous trunk, exhaling clouds of musk, and shake out her ancient costumes? The general's uniform, the lover's red cape, the burnished breastplate worn by a vengeful son. She also digs up, from the very bottom, her sword, which she slices through the air with untrammeled delight.

Of course, she must remember how to walk. How to swing her arms, and beat her chest, and meet a comrade heartily. That is easy enough to master. More tedious is wrestling her bosom back into its old restraints, tugging on the powdered wigs; the effort is proven worthwhile, however, upon her discovery that thus disguised, she has managed to enchant the restless widow. She finds an amorous note slipped beneath her door. She finds herself the object of winks, and eloquent glances. In the mornings, when she steps out from her caravan, she is greeted by an avalanche of roses.

Who is Marguerite, not to welcome love when it arrives at last? Wearing her red cape and brandishing her sword, she courts the widow; she wins her hand; she takes up residence in the very grand house, and learns that if one concentrates, growing a William II moustache is not so difficult to do.

A FISHING VILLAGE
sits at the edge of a warm sea. The moon beats her path across the waves, across the little boats rocking in their moors, past the shuttered shops and dark cafes, up a flight of whitewashed stairs, and through the open window of a rented apartment. Alighting upon an empty basket beneath the sill, and then a bottle, also empty, the moon comes tumbling into the room. She illuminates a chair, over which is draped an elegant tailcoat, a white butterfly tie, a pair of black satin breeches. She uncovers a wagon, inside of which is gathered a small family of flutes. And gliding up to the rumpled expanse of the bed, she finds what she has been searching for: a head resting on another's chest, his pale face loosened in sleep. He breathes deeply. He does not moan. His head rises and falls with the other's inhalations, and the movement is as gentle, as infinite, as that of a fishing boat lulled by the sea.

Shyly the moon extends her white fingers. She caresses the two men dreaming in the bed. Her hands are so light, and so full of care, that when they awake, they will not even know that they have been touched.

MADELEINE STIRS
in her sleep.

THE BARN IS SILENT
. All eyes are fixed upon the sleeping girl. She lies there, indifferent to their gaze: inert, dreaming, blank, detached. Innocence, some might take it for, the audience seeing her as if for the first time, as if she has been restored, through sleep, to her proper dimensions; she is only a girl, asleep, her hands folded neatly on her chest. She looks small. Her monstrous hands look small as well. The people of her town cannot stop gazing at them, at how quietly they lie. They watch her hands with the absorption of a poet, who cannot bear to look away from his mark on the page, the word he has left there.

FROM BEHIND
the curtain comes a fluttering, and Mme. Cochon steps out onto the stage. Her hair is dishevelled, her wings are askew, but it is with a beautiful degree of poise that she extracts her diary from deep between her breasts. When she opens the book, its pages fan out like a peacock's tail. The audience sighs at this disturbance, as if she were a noisy member in their midst. But she will not be silenced. She says to them:

You know me as a woman of science. For months you have seen me at work on this volume, in which I've recorded many small and mysterious signs. Now, at last, I wish to share with you my findings.

Holding her book in one hand, gathering up her fat in the other, Mme. Cochon sweeps past the half-wit, and like a dainty lady forced to navigate a puddle, she frowns at the girl lying asleep on the stage, and finally steps over her, as though she were of little matter.

From the first page of her book, the woman reads:

Hush.

And together, the neighbors, the brothers and sisters, together they inhale softly and the barn fills with one endless exhalation of breath: Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.

It is all about to begin.

GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
is made to the following authors and works: Roland Barthes,
Camera Lucida
(New York, 1981); Ludwig Bemelmans,
Madeline and the Gypsies
(New York, 1959); George Eliot,
Middlemarch
(London, 1872); Yasunari Kawabata,
House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories
(New York, 1969); Jean Nohain and F. Caradec,
Le Petomane 1857–1945
(Los Angeles, 1967); Andrew Porter, liner notes from
Handel: Arias for Durastanti
(Los Angeles, 1992); Sir Bart Sacheverell Sitwell,
Baroque and Rococo
(New York, 1967).