Madeleine Is Sleeping (5 page)

CHARLOTTE
, her face still gleaming wetly, unbuttons the bodice of her dress, draws her bow across the strings. She will accompany the nocturnal torments of M. Pujol, in the hope that he will cease his moaning. The sleeping man's anguish, released into the night, has now become her own: with each cry, M. Pujol conjures her former face and companion, Griselda.

Listen, Madeleine.

The viol sighs. The girl sits beside her.

You should listen. Music, more than any other thing in the world, teaches us emotion.

The viol grows agitated.

Pathos! Fury!

The viol sobs.

Longing. Desire.

Madeleine tells herself to listen hard, for she wants to expand her meager vocabulary. She has taken inventory and discovered the emptiness of her shelves: Curiosity; Amusement; Grumpiness; Delight; Disappointment. That is the extent of it.

Spreading herself onto the caravan's floor, she presses her cheek against the floorboards, her paddles resting like two loyal dogs on either side of her face. She instructs her ear to pay strict attention. But as Charlotte sways beside her, the bow seesawing furiously, Madeleine finds that it is not her ear but her very body that is being exercised. The song rises up through her limbs, her heart, her stomach, like heat from a flat and sun-soaked rock, and deep within
her something begins to reverberate, as if her own hidden strings have been set aquiver. There is only one emotion she feels, not the spectacular and edifying range that Charlotte had promised: no fury, no pathos, no longing. Just a wild tumult inside her.

Charlotte, she says from the floor. I could do that!

She points at the strings, the flickering bow: When you play, I feel as if I could play, too. As if to play so beautifully were as easy as taking and releasing a breath. As easy as falling asleep and having a dream.

MADELEINE STIRS
in her sleep.

AS FAR AS MOTHER UNDERSTANDS
, hers is not the only family ever to experience calamity. Daughters wander off into the woods, stumble into prostitution, fall in love with sailors, are eaten by wolves. When Mother was a child, she knew of a shapely girl who was plucked from her bath by a large and lice-ridden bird; it held her dripping from its talons and then, squawking merrily, took to the sky. The girl's family left the tub out by the barn, in the hope that once the bird tired of her company, it might return her to her bath. Over time the tub rusted and rattled; sometimes mice would scamper over its edge and drown.

But the misfortunes of other families seem always to involve disappearance or abduction. The girl is missed; she is mourned; she is remembered as bonny and helpful and light on her feet. What a loss! What a shame! Women clasp their daughters to their breasts and whisper horrors into their ears: Darkness. Appetites. Trees. And no moon to light your way.

And then there is Madeleine, who doesn't seem to be going anywhere; who takes up room; who attracts attention; who lies there, sighing voluptuously, as Mother sweats over the fire.

Nothing makes one's own work more difficult than being in the presence of another's idleness. The sight of Madeleine, stretched upon the bed, begins to try her mother's patience. Occasionally, she grows careless with the handle of her broom. Accidentally, she sets the pots aclattering. In the middle of the night, she undertakes an experiment: when a candle drips its wax onto Madeleine's cheek, it sets into motion a most fascinating series of twitches.

GYPSIES, IT SEEMS
, can no longer captivate a crowd. A woman who looks like a viol, a girl who waddles on the seared stumps of her hands, a man who sings from his backside, are incapable of provoking wonder. The procession of gypsy caravans trundles from one empty venue to the next. The fearsome Marguerite, who once wore a sword, who once played the hero, finds herself dangerously close to despair.

Miraculously, a summons arrives. The photographer has circulated his portraits among the wealthy of Toulouse. A widow, renowned for her fecund imagination, purchases every last photograph and hangs them all in her high-ceilinged drawing room. She sits, daily, for several hours, in this gallery of grotesques. One Sunday, when the lilacs are in bloom, she becomes animated by an idea. She wishes the company to pay her a visit, at her expense. She has a proposition.

LIKE THIS
? Madeleine asks, paddle suspended in midair.

Just so, the widow says.

The girl's hand falls squarely upon the backside of M. Pujol. Smack! is the sound of her palm meeting the flesh of his bared cheeks. His elegant tailcoat, his white butterfly tie, his black satin breeches, are folded neatly in a pile that sits by the door.

Louder, the widow says, from her chair. She cups a hand around her ear.

THE GYPSIES
install themselves on the velvety lawns that surround the house. From a window, high above them, the widow watches as the performers step out from their caravans. Here they are, in the sunlight, on the grass; there they were, in the candlelight, on the carpet. The sight wounds her, fills her with pleasure: yes, those are the same bodies, the same gentle souls. How could that be? How could the child tumbling along the shrubbery be the child who wielded her misshapen hands with such stimulating results? How could the man brushing out his coat be the man who flinched, and shivered, and moaned? And she, is she the same, standing with a Sèvres cup, looking out the window of her house?

As a very small child, she was told the story of a tailor who, for fear of losing his shadow, secured it to himself with stitches. This is how she imagines it: a woman sitting in a chair, in the candlelight, cupping her ear, is stitched onto the woman standing here with a Sèvres cup in her hand. And she knows that, as with all things sutured, the two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both. She is certain of it. Yet she persists in picking at the edges; she delights in seeing how the wound seeps, where the scab has been lifted away by a fingernail.

EVERYONE'S TALENT
is put to use. Madeleine paddles. M. Pujol moans. Charlotte plays. The photographer composes. He, too, has succumbed to the widow's proposition. His name is Adrien, and he is the younger brother of a famous and sought-after man who practices the same trade as he, except with greater success. That celebrated photographer counts among his sitters Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, the divine Sarah Bernhardt.

It is thanks to him that Adrien now finds his second-rate skills in demand. As assistant to his more capable brother, he has toured the catacombs and sewers of Paris, taking pictures underground, learning to illuminate dark places. Places no darker than the widow's drawing room at night.

Adrien shyly takes hold of Madeleine and turns her face to the light. She rustles when he moves her, layer upon layer of starched petticoat, shiny frock, drooping bow, rising up around her like froth on boiling milk. She submits to his touch with a tender complaisance, as if she likes nothing better than being arranged. But now he must fix the sad and pale-faced man. Try as he might, the photographer cannot make him understand. He must arch his back so; he must let his head drop between his arms; he must appear more dog-like. It is as the widow wishes. In exasperation, Adrien presses his hand into the small of M. Pujol's back: Like so!

He withdraws his hand, in fear. The shock of this man's skin
against his fingertips: it is something he has not felt before. Through the cameras round eye, the man is bright as a planet, his naked body whiter and more brilliant than the explosion that, for a single hot second, illuminates the room.

IF THIS WERE A MYTH
, then Madeleine would be the swan: wings beating, fingers webbed, with all the powers of a god.

And M. Pujol? He is overtaken; he is hot with shame.

IN THE STARLIGHT
, behind the shrubbery, M. Pujol practices his scales. Although his backside has now been put to other uses, and the only sounds he utters are those involuntary moans, he dreams of one day returning to the stage. What a pity that the widow expresses no interest in his true talent. If only she could hear his repertoire: this the timid fart of the young girl, this the bride on her wedding night (very little) and the morning after (very loud), this the dressmaker tearing two yards of calico, this the storm clouds thundering in the sky, this the cannon defending the coastline. Surely, it would delight her. Surely, she could sponsor his triumphant return!

He confides to Madeleine: I think if I were to do one or two vocalizations....

But it is hopeless. The widow is a woman of voluptuous tastes and wide experience; only the prudish could take pleasure in his gift. The body's eruptions, he realizes, hold no power over those who have moved beyond embarrassment. How terrible it is to recognize that one's brilliance rests solely upon the small-mindedness of others.

M. Pujol's head droops from his long and elegant neck.

The widow has selected him, it seems, for no reason other than his William II moustache, his Ledaen body. His expression of sweet, dreaming melancholy.

THE BURN OF
the chestnut too hot from the fire? The sting of a wasp in late summer? The prick of a burr, stuck in your side, as you crash through the brambles?

Adrien peers at his inflamed fingertips.

No, that's not it. That's not it at all.

AFTER THE LAST CANDLE
has been extinguished, and the widow has withdrawn to her chambers, the performers gather on the lawns, where they listen to the flatulent man tell stories of celebrity and betrayal. M. Pujol, once so reluctant to speak of his past, has been changed by his rather precipitous decline. He is now possessed by the need to recount his days in Paris; he must make his companions understand that his life has not been one spent upon the hands and knees.

He is most emphatic on this particular point. I was a man of great stature, he says, flinging his arms high above his head. I always performed upright!

I had a pretty little English carriage, a cabriolet drawn by a mare named Aida, and when I drove it through town, dressed in my very best, I was recognized and saluted wherever I went. People loved to joke, Is that Le Petomane who just passed?

With my name at the top of the bill, the theatre prospered, the owner and the manager growing fat off the ticket sales and lavishing praise on me, who had brought them such good fortune. They hosted extravagant parties after my performances, their stiff shirtfronts turning scarlet with spilt wine, pomegranate seeds, the dribblings of fuddled dancing girls. What a wind-fall! they would toast, their shouts of laughter hurting my ears and making me tremble with disgust.

So I would beg indigestion, and the manager would shuffle
me out. Aida would then take me home, her hooves clocking along the empty streets, and I would try to improve my spirits by recalling the precise moment when the audience burst open before me.

I am Le Petomane! I would tell myself. I am a source of astonishment and delight!

UNTIL THE ARRIVAL
of an impostor, M. Pujol sighs. Marguerite looks up sharply from Madeleine's hands, which she is dressing with a balm made of beeswax and camomile.

I'm quite sure that Oiler, wily man that he was, recruited her from the brothel he frequented. She called herself La Femme-Petomane and, of course, she was entirely fraudulent. Oh, the trickery made possible by a woman's attire! A woman, after she has completed her toilet, is like a house of illusions: a thick waist is turned slender, a shallow bosom appears ample, nothing is as it appears! The false petomane was no different. Within the dark recesses of her skirts, she hid a wind-making device, perhaps as simple as the bellows one finds beside the fireplace.

Because her emissions were of an artificial nature, they necessarily lacked the musicality and nuance of my own, but this is a distinction that the public failed to make. How they loved her! How they laughed at her crudities! You must remember that I always conducted myself with the utmost dignity and restraint. This she dispatched with immediately, and the audience seemed not to miss it, but instead roared all the harder at seeing a woman perform the feats that I had invented and perfected. The very fact of her femininity seemed only to heighten their shock and their pleasure.

A broken man, I was taken in by our kind benefactress, and thus I find myself a member of this charming company.

M. PUJOL OFFERS
Marguerite a bow, which she accepts with a shrug of her shoulders.

Yes, we are all tricks and illusions, she wryly observes. As opposed to you, who are naked, and utterly without artifice.

The flatulent man blushes.

AND SO DOES MADELEINE
. And to flush this way, for his sake—as though a blush were contagious, as though it could spread like Roman fever through the night air—it alarms her. She does not understand what is happening. She wrestles her hands away from Marguerite, then flees, racing across the black lawns, seeking water: a fountain, a fish pond, troughs in the stables, the pump outside the kitchen door—just water, please. Away she runs, made swift by terror, looking for a cool, dark place; for wetness; relief.

She has felt this once before: this slow, corrosive burn.

M. PUJOL TOSSES
an orange high into the air. He believes he is alone; he hums a tune; he tosses the orange higher and higher, so that when it grazes the foot of a dryad frisking on the ceiling, and a little bit of painted plaster comes tumbling down from above, M. Pujol freezes, and then, with the toe of his elegant shoe, guides the bit of plaster behind a column. He drops the orange.

Are you going to eat that? Madeleine asks. She is standing outside in the sunlight, a small fierce shadow looking in.