Madeleine Is Sleeping (8 page)

SHE LETS THE CURTAIN FALL
. She stands there in the darkness, panting.

Memory will not adjust to this: the pulse, the stirring, of new organs. Her desire draws out its feelers, and unfolds its sticky wings.

NEVER—NOT WHEN
the prince kissed the princess, nor the priest laid the host upon one's tongue, not when Madeleine gripped the despondent member of M. Jouy, nor when Papa held Maman in the dark, not the brothers and sisters pressing their small, hot hands against the sleeping girl—has a person touched another with such tender concentration.

And in his touch there is not the kindness, the abnegation, of the abbot tending to the wounded Michel: here, there are no ministrations, no saints; no blazing suns, no attendant moons. There is only this perfect reciprocity—two stars in orbit, two flowers unfolding—an exchange of pleasure unlike that she has ever seen.

She watches how his fingers float over the crooked tie, the pale throat, the apple bumping along its narrow path, and it is as if this gesture has never before existed, has only now been invented by dint of his hunger. He must teach his hands, his fingers, to do that which is utterly strange to them. And to defy habit in this way—what force is great enough? How shabby, how halfhearted, her own mutiny now seems. So what force? Madeleine does not know. She knows only that the sight of it could impale her. That she could part the curtains and watch, swooning, as the gesture is performed again and again.

AND SO THE CURTAIN
is lifted.

As she looks once more on the scene inside, she thinks of a violinist tucking his instrument beneath his chin.

Behold: M. Pujol is pressing his cheek upon the photographer's hand. The hand is resting, like a violin, against his collarbone. He does not rub his cheek against the hand, as though it were the rabbit trimming on a coat, nor does he dig his chin into the flesh, like a half-wit who wants nothing more than to sink his face into the warmth of his own shoulder. He simply holds the hand against him, and in his touch is the impatience with which musicians handle their instruments.

He closes his eyes. He takes a breath.

It is all about to begin.

THEN, IN HER EMOTION
, in her extreme but vague excitement, it happens—Madeleine makes a wheezing sound. If there is a nestling in her hands, she will fondle it to death. If there is a reflection in a pool, she will peer too closely, lose her balance, splash through it with her boots. Her rough hands, her muddy boots, and the wings thrashing savagely inside her, sending up this wheeze, this strange whistling sound.

The hand retreats. The two men step away from each other. They look about them slowly, blinking sleepily like children.

To her relief, to her anguish, they do not see her.

THEY DO NOT SEE ME
! Claude rejoices, silently. For everything about him now is silent: his thoughts, his beating heart, his footfalls in the underbrush. He can tiptoe past all sorts of doors and nobody inside would know it. He seems to be mastering invisibility as well, for look: how close to the girls he crouches! So close that if he were to sneeze and not cover his mouth, they would each of them feel, on their necks and their cheeks, a satiny mist, like one coming off the sea. Claude is that close to them. He has crept there silently. His invisible body trembles in its joy and proximity.

It will be his at last, the secret. He alone will know what happens when the girls all disappear. For a moment, in the underbrush, he imagines how he will raise his hand, and stand, and issue a statement, or file a report. He imagines the magisterial weight of approval, the heaviness of men's palms clapping him on the shoulder. But then, easing a ticklish branch to one side, he pictures another possibility: that of nursing his secret, hiding it from sight, taking it out in the dark and stroking it, keeping it for the enjoyment of Claude alone.

But how to get that meaty one to move—her hips now occupy the whole of his view. As she sways back and forth in her eagerness, he catches only slivers of what he wants to see, which is maybe more maddening than not being able to see at all, and certainly more exciting than being able to see everything at once. He glimpses a pair of tentative hands, reaching out; a scattering, on pale skin, of petals; the flash of a mirror in the sunlight; the pucker of a navel. Could that be right? Naked skin? A belly button?

THE MAYOR CLEARS
his throat. He pushes aside his plate. He regards his youngest daughter, who is chewing her bread enthusiastically, and not giving him any encouragement at all.

I am an indulgent father, he begins. Which is a fine beginning; which is what he rehearsed. Firstly: his affectionate nature and dislike of tyranny; secondly: his public obligations; thirdly: the strange reports that have lately reached him, of sightings, and silences, and the odd, glittering look in his youngest daughter's eye, the bits of grass seen caught in her hair; and fourthly: he cannot remember fourthly.

Emma, he says.

And notices, as he often does, the stubbiness of her fingers. It would be quite impossible to pry those fingers from anything they might decide to grasp. One day, he expects, they will lengthen into cool, slender, white fingers, from which will issue all sorts of gentle touches and the pretty, even handwriting that he sees on invitations. As it stands, her lettering is heavy on the page, and executed with the same methodical relish with which she is now sawing off another piece of bread. But yes, her fingers will lengthen, and her complexion will not be so swarthy, and little curlicues will bloom upon the barren slopes of her alphabet.

Emma, he says again, and because her mouth is full, she reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. Yes, Papa, I am listening, is what her stubby fingers say. With warmth, and great insistence; and what a very pleasant feeling it is to be gripped by such fingers, and
to know that nothing could ever tear you from their hold. The mayor finds himself thinking that perhaps it would not be so terrible were his daughter to remain always like this: this small, this brown and sturdy, like a jug.

I am an indulgent father, he repeats, helplessly, and he can go no further.

THE MAYOR'S ELDEST DAUGHTER
is more to the point. Circling around the table, dishes balanced dangerously in one hand, she sees a butter knife making its way towards the jar of preserves.

Aha! she cries, grabbing with her free hand her sister's brown wrist, the butter knife flashing wildly like a fish twisting in a beak.

Let go, Emma says. I'm still eating.

No, her sister says. You let go. Let go of the knife.

But Emma is not yet finished with her breakfast. She would like to spread some jam on her last piece of bread. If she cannot spread her jam, like a lady, she will simply have to dunk her crust into the jar itself. So, forgetting the knife, she reaches out to grasp the lovely, golden, glowing jar that sings its siren song from across the table.

The eldest daughter perceives with alarm the younger's intent. The cutlery clatters, the dishes sway.

Take these!

The mayor finds himself responsible for the china.

And still pinching the brown wrist in one hand, his eldest daughter confiscates the treacherous jampot. She holds it up above her head, away from the clamorous hands of her sister, and looks down, as if from a great height, at her father's puzzled face.

Don't you see? she asks.

YOU MUST SEE
, the photographer pleads. You must see how you are—compromising—

His hands fly up from his pockets, fluttering with urgency, making all the arguments that language has failed to provide him with. Madeleine notes this carefully, the articulateness of his hands. He has become, quite suddenly, interesting to her. She grows shy in his presence. She is curious about everything he does.

Wrecking? Madeleine asks, as his hands wring the air. Destroying?

Together they stand at the edge of the lawn. She is spreading her newly washed drawers across the privet hedge to dry. How white they appear against the green, looking as if they might rise up at any moment, like sails, and pull with them the privet hedge, the velvety lawns, the grand house with its carpets and curtains. Only a great gust of wind is needed, and all will be unmoored.

Madeleine must concentrate on this, the white against the green, so as not to gaze too long at the photographer's face, or his talkative hands.

Yes, Adrien admits, exhausted. You are destroying everything.

He means that the widow is unhappy. She is unhappy because the girl continues to refuse her. Every night, they gather in her drawing room; every night, the candles are lit, the tripod's spindly legs are spread, the performers are placed in their humiliating poses; every night, the girl lifts her paddle (his cheek, her hand,
smack! was
the sound) and freezes.

Madeleine nods, pretends to listen. She would like to be having a different conversation. She would like to ask, Do you chew anise seeds? And is that you I hear sometimes, singing beneath your breath? Maybe they could take a turn around the garden. Maybe he could invite her inside, for a drink of water. What gives your shirts their nice smell? She wants to say, Tell me. She wants to know: Was it like—? Did you feel—?

She will send us away, the photographer says.

SPECIAL DELIVERY
! Mother sings out, clutching a jar in each of her hands.

But the mayor opens his door no more than a crack.

Mother smiles at him shyly. It's pear, she says. Your favorite.

The crack widens by a hair.

Madame, the mayor begins, I am a supporter of local business—

Indeed you are! she cries. Last month you bought a dozen jars!

And presenting her gifts, she says, Do not think I have forgotten.

The door creeps farther open, then closes with a slam.

Mother stumbles backwards. She stares at the mayor's front door; she frowns at this most uncivic display.

The red door swings open once again. The mayor has been replaced by his sour-faced daughter, her jaw set, her feet planted. Old enough, Mother thinks, to be married by now, and bullying someone other than her father.

Good morning, Mother ventures.

What do you want? the daughter replies.

To leave a token, Mother says, of my appreciation for the mayor.

And she holds up each golden specimen for her to see.

Preserves! the daughter snorts. Just as I thought!

She folds her arms across her narrow chest: We are not interested. The things you make—they have a queer taste.

Mother, looking in dismay at her jars, cannot muster a reply.

The mayor's daughter takes advantage. She observes, as she closes for the last time the door, But why should you care whether we like your preserves? You have so many customers in
Paris.

THE FLATULENT MAN
is very tired. His pale face has turned grey. Two dark circles seep from beneath his eyes, like drops of ink dissolving in a bowl of milk.

It is necessary now to take naps. Every afternoon he goes off hunting for them. Sometimes he is lucky: once, behind the gatehouse, in a cool damp spot that smelled of clay; another time, in a corner of the kitchen garden, abandoned to the eggplants. He creeps up on these places. He makes himself thin as a shadow.

When he wakes, he expects to find himself squinting into the sun. He expects that a long afternoon has passed, that the sun has moved across the sky and found him, its light slanting across his face, staining the inside of his eyelids. So he is surprised, when he wakes, to discover himself still in shadow, to see only the green sweating flagstone of the gatehouse, its surface alive with insects; or the dark, hairy depths of the tomato vines. And when he draws himself up onto his elbows, he will often hear a rustling, will catch a glimpse of white stocking disappearing into the foliage, or the flash of a silver watch chain.

He wants to cry out, Wait!

But the two are doe-like creatures; they seek him out and stare, then flee, their white tails showing. They spring off into the underbrush, off to their quarrels, their little anxious tasks, their acts of love, before he can stop them and say: At night, with the gravel rattling overhead—I have difficulty sleeping.

LOOKING AT HIM
, the man asleep in the garden, Adrien says, One time I touched his face.

Madeleine, at his elbow, finds her eyes watering at the thought of this.

He offers her the nice-smelling sleeve of his shirt.

Can you see? he asks, pushing aside a branch, pushing the hair from her face.

The sight makes her suffer. There he is, her enemy, on the ground as if dead: he who has, without knowing, without even trying, replaced her in her own affections. This makes the concession all the more galling to her, this unconsciousness. Yet the beauty of him asleep, arm thrown out, mouth open—if only she knew a poem! If only her hands and fingers could speak for her, making eloquent shapes in the air as Adrien's do. It is with one of these fingers that he tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. She turns to him, full of speech. But her hands are struck dumb, and the only words that occur to her are: Orchard. Swallow. Bell.

M. PUJOL KNOWS
what he will find when he opens the drawing-room door. He pictures it with the same sense of misgiving with which he recalls the schoolroom he sat in when he was a child, the map he had drawn of its dangers and unfriendly territories: the desk with an obscene picture on its lid; the alcove where the strongest boys hatched their plots; the row of meek children who would look at him knowingly, as if he belonged to them; the chair with the mysterious words scratched under its seat, over the ridges of which he would trace his fingers helplessly, and then pull his hands away in self-disgust, feeling contaminated. He had been glad, as a child, to be taken from that schoolroom. It was all thanks to his unusual gift.