Madeleine Is Sleeping (4 page)

Very well, she agrees and struggles to her feet, her wings thrashing the air. Jean-Luc loses his balance and tumbles down into Mother's gesticulating arms.

THE GYPSY CAMP
is disappointing in its tidiness. No smoking fires, no wagons painted in raffish reds and golds, no unmentionables hanging from the windows to dry. Instead, the camp is an outpost of sorts, a miniature rococo fantasy: the creamy-colored caravans are ornamented with flutings and fig leafs, and brocade curtains hunker in the doorways. In the gypsy mamas window boxes, a tiny but well-manicured topiary grows where geraniums ought to be straggling.

Madeleine's bandaged hands have wilted by her sides, and she slumps dejectedly on her stool. Trying to cheer her, Marguerite waves a pair of glittering shears in the air, as long and keen as a sword.

Be brave, she instructs Madeleine. Don't move a muscle.

The scissors dive down between Madeleine's shallow breasts, she shivers, and Marguerite brings the blades together with a snap. The monstrous dress falls to her feet, neatly cleft in two.

A sartorial disaster, Marguerite says as she repockets her enormous shears. She settles down onto her haunches: Now, give me one of your hands.

And she takes hold of the little bundle, so dear that she can hardly bear to touch it, like a butterfly collector cradling a cocoon. Her fingers fly over the bandages as if they were reading Braille; soon she has discovered and disinterred the ragged end.

Madeleine watches mildly as the punished hand is unwrapped.

She sees that her hand has healed.

The fingers have mended together, sewn up tightly along the seams.

My hand looks like a paddle, Madeleine says.

That might prove useful, Marguerite replies.

MADELEINE STARES DOWN
at the two paddles sitting in her lap.

An accident? Marguerite inquires.

Madeleine shakes her head.

I feared not, the woman sighs.

And straightening up, she resumes a conversation that Madeleine can't recall their ever having:

Among the first parts written for me was Lucretia. An old story: a woman raped by the son of a tyrannical king. There is nothing left of her but shame and rage. From hell I shall seek his ruin, she sings. With savage and implacable fury And then she does herself in at the end. Sword through the breast—I pantomimed the whole thing. The Marquis Ruspoli said he felt shivers running up and down his spine.

When the composer came to kiss my hand, I hissed at him, Don't ever write such a role for me again.

Marguerite draws her scissors from her pocket as though she were unsheathing a terrible blade.

I told him, Make me a general. Make me a son. If you give me a sword, let me bury it in Ptolemy's side. For who wants to be a woman wronged? With no recourse but wretchedness and death?

Not I, Marguerite declares, her blade flashing. Not I!

Her gaze falls suddenly upon Madeleine, who is caught unawares. She thought that Marguerite, in the throes of her story, had forgotten her.

The woman narrows her eyes: Do you understand me?

The girl shrugs. I suppose so.

Marguerite takes the injured hands in her own and says, coldly, You are disgraced. Disfigured. So what will you do now?

Madeleine announces an idea that has occurred to her only a few seconds before, as she reflected on how pleasant it felt to be wearing only her underclothes. She says, with dignity: I plan on being a tumbler. Or a contortionist. Whichever I am better at.

Marguerite claps her hands. Her severity gives way, in an instant, to laughter.

My dear child! she cries, voice lifting into song.

If drinking is bitter, Marguerite sings, become wine.

THE SMALL BROTHERS
and sisters receive a letter from Madeleine! The envelope is bedecked with bright, mysterious stamps. After gingerly prying open the seal, Beatrice smoothes the contents against her chest, delighting in the crackling fragility of the paper, and then lifts it above her head as the others clamber about her. Mother quiets them in the folds of her skirts so that Beatrice can read the letter aloud:

She is happy at the convent, she says. The others girls like her very much and she has a bed of her own to sleep in. Bernadette is the name of the girl who is kind enough to write this letter for her (Beatrice exclaims over the loveliness of her handwriting). She gives each one of us a kiss (Beatrice delivers kisses) and she prays for us every night before she goes to sleep. Love, Madeleine.

Very good, Mother says, and heads out to the shed to tell Papa that everything has turned out as it should.

Once alone, the children huddle together while Beatrice brings down a candle from the mantelpiece. The wick flares, and they are breathless in their conspiracy. Madeleine has taught them the secret language of siblings, the head flicks and eye rolls and coded words, and now, true enough, she has buried another letter beneath the surface of the first, a letter meant especially for them. Beatrice holds the parchment up to the flame and the effaced writing becomes translucently visible. Written in lemon juice, of course! She sighs at her sister's cleverness. So she tells aloud the second story, the one inscribed in invisible ink, and the children sit around her, rapt.

I do not miss anyone at all, she says. I live with gypsies. I have learned to stretch my feet back behind my head and waddle about on my hands. Yesterday a photographer appeared and asked to take our portraits. He stood me between the dog-girl and the flatulent man and told me to display my hands as if they were the crown jewels. What a fool, his buttocks sticking out from behind his machinery. In the picture, we will all be laughing.

CHARLOTTE PAUSES
in mid-flourish. Are you going to tell them about me?

New paragraph: I know a woman who looks like a viol, Madeleine dictates.

BOXING JEAN-LUC'S EARS
, Mother is struck by an idea. She hurries off towards the pasture, where Matilde is wrestling with kites.

Madame! Mother hollers up to the sky. Please share some tarte aux pommes with me.

Matilde disentangles herself: Happily!

She sails down from the heights like a mighty barge, then politely collapses her wings and strolls alongside Mother.

The two take their tea outside, on a stone bench warm from the afternoon sun. Matilde asks after the children.

I am so busy now, Mother sighs. My children are growing wild like weeds. I can't read them as well as I used to: Jean-Luc crept out from right under my nose! In earlier days, I would have known his wicked thoughts before even he did, and been waiting for him, arms outstretched, when he slid out from beneath the covers. Please forgive him for interrupting your experiments!

Matilde tsks: I wasn't bothered. She pats Mother's hand.

You are a woman of science, Mother ventures.

Matilde nods.

Then perhaps you can help me! Mother says.

Matilde gestures for her to continue.

When Madeleine sleeps, Mother explains, she smiles. Sometimes she sighs. Sometimes she is as still as a log. But these signs are so small and faint, as if coming from a great distance, and I cannot decipher them.

Matilde extracts her leatherbound diary from deep within her
cleavage. As she opens the book, its pages fan out like a peacock's tail. I have filled a volume, she says, describing small and mysterious signs. I have yet to see the pattern, but I know that it will emerge.

She presses Mother's hands against the pages: One day I will be leafing through my book, and suddenly the signs will become sensible. They will reveal themselves as a language, a story. That is what I am waiting for.

She lifts Mother's hands from the pages. Shutting the diary, Matilde tucks it back between her breasts.

THE MOUTH OF
the ink bottle still gleams wetly, but once the moaning begins, Charlotte shudders and finds that she can write no further.

Poor M. Pujol, she sighs.

Madeleine nods solemnly. The flatulent man, pale and elegant and tall, suffers from bad dreams, owing to the sordid company he kept during his reign in Paris.

A modest and elegant man, he never speaks of his former brilliance, but once, when Madeleine was practicing her contortions, he gently unfolded her and grasped her paddle in one of his warm hands. Behind the nearest caravan, he bowed slightly, lifted the tails of his well-cut coat and produced the most melancholy sounds she had ever heard: that of the nightingale, the grasshopper, the cuckoo. And though Madeleine was a child who rarely cried, the strange and unearthly emissions reminded her of her home, and she wept.

Charlotte, too, is crying. She hears in the nightmare moans of M. Pujol a voice that she misses.

M. PUJOL FINDS IT
strangely fitting that his performance should now excite tears, when once he could reduce an entire theatre to gasping and painful hilarity. How could such a simple and surely familiar act produce such paroxysms of laughter? On stage: a sad, pale-faced man; a large basin of water; a candlestick sitting atop a stool. In the seats: gentlemen and their wives, their mouths flung wide open, their hands clawing at the velveteen armrests. M. Pujol believes that his art is akin to that of the oboist, or the bassoonist: a matter of shaping the lips around a stream of air. The fact that his lips should belong to his lower regions, that his should be endowed with unusual agility and musicality, does not strike him as remarkable. But the pleasure that his gift brings to others! Due to the tightness of their corsets, and the violence of their laughter, women often lose consciousness altogether. They are carried out by swarthy nurses, whom the manager Oiler has stationed in the aisles—cunningly—for this very purpose.

The little boy who sweeps the floor finds it strewn with discarded collars, shredded handkerchiefs, pearly buttons trailing bits of thread. It is a phenomenon that M. Pujol has witnessed from the stage: this peculiar compulsion to disrobe, to rend from the body its restraints. He lifts his tailcoat, he farts; the whole house convulses. Le Petomane watches, aghast, as below him bodies burst forth from their envelopes. The audience stretches before him, a field in late summer, crackling pods splitting at their seams, releasing into the air armies of weightless and dancing spores.

THE GIFT REVEALED ITSELF
to him when he was only a child, and visiting the seashore with his family. His younger sister had been possessed by a growling cough all winter; it was thought that the air might restore her. Joseph, as he was then called, was the first to venture into the water. The sea licked at him like an icy tongue; his skin prickled; his genitals retreated. But inside he felt the warm thrumming of his own small body, the quiet roar of his blood, as if he had swallowed a wonderful little engine that kicked up its own heat. I am still warm in here! he rejoiced silently.

Joseph! his mother cried. He saw her, beautiful and slim, silhouetted by the bathing hut. Joseph! she cried. Do not swallow the seawater! It will burn your nostrils terribly! It will go right up into your brain!

He pinched the tip of his nose firmly between his fingers. He expanded his lungs, he puffed out his cheeks. He counted to seven. Then the water closed over him, sealing him inside its cold and salty mouth. The little engine panted away, and Joseph could hear the quickening thumps as the men, caps pushed back and sweating, heaved more coal into its radiant belly. I'm warm! Joseph crowed. It's working! He held the sea at bay; he curled up beside the hot, vibrating machine.

And then the unthinkable occurred. A gasket burst, perhaps, or a valve failed. The unreliable sphincter! Joseph felt the icy water enter him, felt it storming down his narrow corridors, felt it surging into the hold. The chamber flooded; the engine's glowing belly was
extinguished; the engineers' caps bobbed sadly atop the cold and salty sea that had invaded him. His abdomen contracted in a series of agonizing and colicky spasms.

On shore, behind an outcropping of white stones, squatting above the sand, he expelled a stomach's worth of sea. It bubbled briefly, then disappeared.

INSIDE THE BATHING HUT
, the wide-striped curtains flapping wildly, Joseph confessed to his beautiful mother: I think I've got a very bad illness.

How terrible! she said, and gathered him to her, where he squeezed his eyes shut, listened to the thud of the canvas slapping against the poles, smelled the unfamiliar newness of her bathing costume, and tried to ignore the intractable cold that had settled deep inside him. There is a doctor staying at the hotel, his mother said. We will call on him this afternoon.

The doctor was delighted by the boy's condition. He pointed to the chamberpot, sitting in the middle of an expensive Persian carpet, and demanded, Do it again!

Joseph obliged. He allowed the water to enter him, and then he asked it back out again. As it gurgled into the basin, the doctor clapped his hands together in astonishment. Quite fantastic! he cried. His muscular control is extraordinary!

Joseph's mother accepted the compliment with evident pleasure. But she wanted to be certain: It is not an illness?

Far from it, he assured. An abnormality, certainly, but I consider it, as should you, an endowment!

With a waving of his hands, the doctor indicated that the examination was now over, and that Joseph could pull up his shorts and resume a more dignified position.

The muscles can be strengthened, the doctor said, but that will require careful training. Imagine a trajectory of at least several
meters, like those of the magnificent fountains at Versailles. And if he can inhale water in such a manner, it stands to reason he can do the same with other substances. He can take in air, like a bellows, and learn to release it with direction and force. Can't you see it: the boy who blows out candles with his backside. The boy with the breathing bunghole!

The doctor sighed rapturously. He did not, in fact, belong to the medical profession. He had assumed the title of doctor as a reflection of his expertise in all matters hypnotic, clairvoyant, and supernatural. He had studied and improved upon the writings of Dr. Mesmer; he had enjoyed considerable success on both the spiritualist and vaudevillian circuits. The doctor believed that no one was better suited than he to recognize a great talent and, moreover, he was acquainted with an impresario who would see the possibilities of the enterprise. How fortunate, he thought, that this dear woman and her extraordinary child should have come to me, rather than a medical practitioner. Joseph and his mother, of course, were unaware of their mistake, for the doctor, not being a man of rigid principles, neglected to alert them. He wore a William II moustache that Joseph admired, and would one day emulate, when he was a grown man.