Madeleine Is Sleeping (7 page)

This was my idea! hisses Madeleine, from the rooftop.

LOUDER, SAYS THE WIDOW
, cupping her hand around her ear.

BUT ALREADY
he has leapt up, swung through the air, attached himself like a wayward trapezist to the tin roof of the caravan. He dangles there, looking glumly up at Madeleine, and she sees that his face is innocent, as if his every gesture, every act, has been performed without his knowledge.

Madeleine steps on his fingers, so she can feel how they tremble from the effort of clutching onto the roof. If only she were heavier. If only he would fall.

Ow, Adrien says.

Her cold toes curl around his knuckles.

Don't, he says.

Her toenails press into the backs of his hands.

This hurts, he says.

And, in saying so, nearly upsets her gravity. Oh yes: this hurts. That which has remained unknown to Madeleine now makes its sudden and forceful acquaintance. It is the sight of dumb, suffering Adrien, it is his small cry, that awakes her.

DOWN SHE PLUMMETS
, her drawers sailing out behind her like the skirts of a disaffected angel, or the tail of a plunging kite.

ADRIEN TAKES THIS OPPORTUNITY
to heave himself onto the roof. From the damp ground below, Madeleine scowls at him, thinks up curses. May your every picture be pornographic! May your glass plates shatter! May you ruin every single thing you touch.

Her curses are bitter, not only because he is up on the caravan, and she down on the grass, but also because what was once faint and without name—no more than a shudder, a flush, a short spell of light-headedness, an intestinal fluttering—feels now like a wound.

Without knowing it, he has told Madeleine her own secret.

That she loves the flatulent man; that she aches for him.

I LOVE YOU
, Mother says, in an experimental mood.

The sleeping girl says nothing in return.

Mother puts down her spoon, rubs her hands on her apron, and goes to stand alongside the bed. With a brisk, unthinking movement, she straightens the coverlet so that all is smooth.

She tries again.

I love you, Mother says. Very much.

And the girl, who has been known to sigh enormously, and moan, and even to let loose a ripping snore, makes no sound at all. She is as pale and unresponsive as a lump of dough.

Do you remember, Mother asks, how I used to brush your hair? You would make a rumbling sound in the bottom of your throat, just like a little cat. In the evening, when I sat down with the sewing, you would kneel at my feet and push your head in my lap, seeking out my hands, wanting again the feel of me moving the brush against your scalp. And never once did I not put my needle down and touch you. For it was a pleasure to me, to hear that sound you would make....

In her bed, the girl remains silent, and unmoved.

Do you remember, Mother asks, the story I used to tell you? About the donkey, and the princess, and how she found the golden key....

But Mother finds she can no longer recall the details exactly, nor the ending, nor the plot.

Well, there was a story, she says, and what matters is that you
liked it, and that I told it to you. I told it to you countless times, for you could not be satisfied, and would refuse to hear another story, or to hear the story told by any other voice but mine. So I told it, again and again, long after I had grown sick of it, because you wanted to hear my voice, repeating the words that pleased you. Do you remember that? Do you remember my voice?

And, leaning very close to the pillow, so close that she can feel the moistness of her daughter's breath, she says, again, I love you.

The sleeping girl does not so much as shudder.

Ach, Madeleine! Mother cries in despair, turning away from the bed. You were always stubborn!

SMACK!
IS THE SOUND
of the girl's hand falling squarely upon the backside of M. Pujol.
Smack!
is the sound of her palm meeting the flesh of his bared cheeks.

Tonight, though, the widow hears nothing. No sound at all. She leans forward, frowning, in her delicate chair. She cups a hand around her ear.

As M. Pujol twists his head over his left shoulder, Adrien steps out from beneath his shroud, and Charlotte lifts her fingers from her strings. They all look at Madeleine, who is wincing and wagging her hand, as if from the sting of a very sharp blow.

At last she declares: The widow has gone completely deaf!

The performers stare at her effrontery. Hasn't the widow just complained of M. Pujol's sighs, and punished the servants for singing in the kitchen?

I am not in the least deaf, the widow says.

All but Madeleine nod slowly in agreement.

Leaning back in her chair, the widow says, Why not try again.

But Madeleines paddles are now fists, and her arms hang stiff at her sides like two furious exclamation marks.

No, she says.

She is obstinacy itself.

THE WIDOW SMILES
at Madeleine, and rising from her seat, gestures for the girl to follow.

Together they disappear inside the widow's chambers, where the drapery falls behind them with the soft, deadly sound of snow sliding off a roof. The last thing the performers see is Madeleine's scornful glance, trained on them as she turns back, before the curtains envelop her: You are cowardly, all of you, she remonstrates. I had a plan!

In silence the performers imagine terrible things. No one has ever entered the private rooms of the widow.

THE CURTAINS OPEN
onto a darkened hallway, so dark that she must run her fingertips along the walls, and at the end of it, there are more curtains, as dense and velvety as the first. Then there is a warm room, with walls the color of pomegranates, where she is given toast with raisins, told to take off her shoes, placed before the fire on a footstool. And above her, on the mantelpiece, is a miniature circus made all of tin, with its stiff pennants flying and its elephants parading.

Am I too old for this, Madeleine wonders, because she would like to touch it, to see if the lion tamer's arms move in his sockets, or if there is a key she can turn, releasing music.

She would also like to unbutton the dress of the waxy doll standing aloof in the corner; slide her hands over the sad, long face of the wooden horse; ask for two more pieces of toast. Then she remembers: I am in trouble. Also: I can neither button nor unbutton.

But the widow does not seem angry in the least. When she speaks, it is in a coaxing and conspiratorial tone that Madeleine is startled to recognize, and all at once the pull of the horse, the perfect circus, becomes stronger: for the widow—of course—is a grandmother, and these belong to her grandchildren, and Madeleine is not indifferent to the strange magnetism exercised by other children's things.

THE WIDOW SAYS
: I, too, feel sympathy for M. Pujol.

Madeleine studies her toast. There are three raisins remaining, clustered like a birthmark, and the crust, which isn't burnt.

The widow says, So you must not think that I am unfriendly.

Is it better to take many small bites, that taste almost of nothing, or to devour it all at once, and feel regret?

The widow persists, I might even understand why you won't do as I ask.

Crunch. Then no more.

Is it perhaps because, the widow ventures, you have fallen—

The crust catches on its way down. Madeleine turns colors, throws her fist against her chest.

He reminds me of my favorite saint, she gasps.

Who is your favorite? the widow asks. Let me guess, she adds, leaning closer: Sebastian.

Saint Michel, Madeleine says, recovered. In the cathedral, in my town, there is a picture of him in the window. M. Pujol looks exactly like him, except M. Pujol wears a moustache.

And remembering what they taught her at the convent, she folds her paddles neatly in her lap.

But unlike Michel, the widow says, M. Pujol has not been restored to his former beauty and perfection. He remains wretched.

So the widow is familiar with the excesses of the saints.

And for that reason, she murmurs, you wish to spare him.

Madeleine nods. She believes herself saved.

For the widow has turned her back to Madeleine, as though in deference to her argument, and is now fingering the small figures on her mantelpiece. From her stool, Madeleine contemplates her own piety.

Very softly, the widow says: You are mistaken.

And whispering to the tiny circus, she says: He moans like a man in pain. But what you must understand is that you comfort him with your blows.

Turning towards Madeleine, she hands her the lion tamer in his tight scarlet trousers. Madeleine grips him unsafely in her mitts and discovers it is true: his arms move, as do his well-shaped legs, and his head; all of him moves, with terrible pliancy. Even his wrist, flicking his tiny lash, twists on an invisible screw.

You are attending to his wounds, the widow murmurs. You are ministering, with your maimed hands, to his every suffering.

Inside Madeleine something trembles, then falls into place with a thud.

Like the abbot at Rievaulx, she says dully.

The plash of water in a bowl, the wringing of cloths—

Exactly, says the widow, who again offers her lovely smile, and places her hand lightly upon Madeleine's head: You are filled with kindness.

IT IS RARE
that the widow experiences surprise. But when the girl leaps from the stool, threatening the teacups, and gnaws her lips in agony, and roughly returns the lion tamer to the mantelpiece, his limbs all askew, and at last announces—I am not like the abbot—careless of how she strews crumbs everywhere, the widow is taken aback.

I am more like Michel, the girl says, before she struggles her way into the heavy curtains, without waiting to be dismissed. Michel! she shrieks, with all the fury and astonishment of one usurped.

THE PRIEST ADDRESSES
his flock with affection.

My children, he says, and feels a sudden strange yearning of heart, for indeed they are like children, stirring in their seats, nudging the warm sides of their neighbors, marking time, he is sure, through all manner of small devices. See how the chemist, with his bemused expression, calculates the amount of emetic he should order in the coming week. The mayor's lips barely move as he rehearses the difficult conversation he must have with his daughter. While the captain of the gendarmes, he closes his eyes and dreams.

But the girls—look at them—their concentration is ferocious. They nod over their prayer books. Their heads touch. They follow the words with their fingers. How sober, and upright, and fine they appear, like a stand of young trees growing in the midst of untended shrubbery. They are the first to echo him: Amen. Their low, sweet voices sound all at once, in perfect agreement.

BENEATH BEATRICE'S FINGER
: the word Handmaid.

And then: Unto.

Her finger drifts to the bottom of the page: Shall.

And rests upon the word: House.

H-U-S-H, Sophie spells, shivering in her excitement.

BEHIND THE HEAVY CURTAINS
, all is quiet. Madeleine pauses, there at the end of the passageway, and listens: where is the sound of Charlottes bow, tapping absently against the floor, and the murmur of Marguerite's disparagements? The swish of stockinged feet, the clanking of canisters against the little wagon, and the sigh of the drawing-room windows being pulled shut after the last cigarette has been flicked onto the lawn? The secret, languid sound of the performers laughing, unobserved?

Madeleine had hoped to burst through the curtains, ablaze with her anger, frightening the others and making them feel small. They would freeze; they would stare at her. They would be struck, as if with Marguerite's wooden sword, by the sight of Madeleine, enraged.

So she had thought as she came rushing down the hall. But now she halts, uncertain, thwarted by this peculiar silence. Not a silence, exactly; a peculiar hush: for it does not sound as if the drawing room is empty, but rather that those inside have grown suddenly quiet. Madeleine gets the uncomfortable feeling that were she to enter, were she to throw back the drapery and storm through, it would be an intrusion.

WITH MADELEINE
, though, curiosity prevails, always.

And so the curtain is lifted.

Behold: the flatulent man is nearly dressed. No longer on his hands and knees, he wears his black satin breeches, his elegant tailcoat. His fingers fumble in the stiff white folds of his butterfly tie. The others have grown tired of waiting, perhaps, and wandered off to bed. This seems an unexpected gift to Madeleine, that he should be alone, that she should be allowed to watch him as he dresses, to love his fastidiousness, to picture him as he once stood: upright, clothed, framed by a scarlet curtain. She imagines the dimming of lights, ushers disappearing, programs rustling, an old gentleman coughing, and the breathless heavenly feeling that yes, yes, it is all about to begin....

But then another player stumbles out from the wings. His face wears the dismayed expression of someone who finds himself in the wrong production. He looks back over his shoulder beseechingly, as if a stagehand might whisper his lines, or a tremendous piece of scenery might roll out and flatten him beneath its wheels. How did I end up here? his whole body asks, twitching in the candlelight, longing to do away with itself.

The flatulent man makes a small, exasperated noise. His arms drop to his sides.

Upstaged, once again, by an amateur. His triumphant return, foiled!

NO; HE IS HAVING DIFFICULTY
with his butterfly tie.

And suddenly Adrien seems to remember what it is that he is supposed to do. His eyes brighten; he steps forward with courage; he lifts his arm and—like that—it falls away from him, his clumsiness and coarseness and bewilderment, it all falls away, like the sleeve of a dressing gown as a young woman raises her hand to brush her hair, exposing the whiteness of her forearm, her elbow—like that, his purpose is revealed, that beautifully. He must fix the flatulent man's tie. And his face no longer resembles that of the sleepwalker, or the opium eater; his face is that of a man who must tilt M. Pujol's chin, with all the tenderness in the world, and arrange the wing-like folds of his white evening tie.