Madeleine Is Sleeping (12 page)

Lucie makes a note of this: He has been taught good manners, even though he is an idiot.

What if we take away his cookie? Claude suggests.

But they shy away from the idea, these fierce-hearted children. It touches them strangely to see M. Jouy eating, the slow grinding
movement of his terrible jaws, heavy as death. But he takes the tiniest of bites! It is like waking up the miller, setting those huge stones into motion, for only a half cup of meal. But this is clever, thinks Lucie. To make the cookie last.

I know, says Jean-Luc, forgetting, for a moment, the pain in his back: What if we were to flick him, lightly, with the switch?

MADELEINE STIRS IN HER SLEEP
. She opens her eyes to see the photographer, his face close to hers. In this half light, she is not afraid to reach up and touch it with her ruined hand.

What is happening? From the corridor outside she hears the ringing of a hundred little bells, bells meant for summoning the director to his dinner or announcing the arrival of a visitor, but now their small polite voices are raised all at once, in alarm. The long hallway hisses with the sound of slippered feet.

A patient was kidnapped, the photographer whispers. And knowing that the matron is thus occupied, he lifts up the covers on Madeleine's cot and climbs in beside her.

They lie close together for a long time. The girl breathes so heavily he thinks she is asleep.

But then she says, clearly, So it can be done.

He moves her hand. He places it carefully. She is talking about escape.

JEAN-LUC EXPECTS
to receive some credit for the cruelty of his suggestion. But Beatrice only laughs at him. A switch! How childish. Her laugh reveals every way in which his thinking is tedious and quaint. Jean-Luc returns sadly to nursing the strain in his back. She acts as if she is the oldest of them all now.

She turns and looks at the other children, daringly.

You want to hear him talk? she asks.

Not one of them says yes. But she doesn't need them to. The horse lets out a little groan when she pulls on the reins, a warning he might not get started back up again. She's heard it before; she drops down onto the road, marches to the rear of the cart. On her face is the sly, important expression that the postman wears while making deliveries. She pretends as if she doesn't notice how hungrily her brothers and sisters are watching her. And then, with the same neatness of movement, the same absence of imagination with which she straightens the tablecloth, wrings the laundry, beats the carpets, dresses the children, heeds her mother's every command, she lifts the edge of M. Jouy's smock so that she can unbutton the opening to his breeches.

The children, too, let out a little groan. This is a constant source of wonder to them, that Beatrice should appear docile while being so profoundly disobedient.

MADELEINE'S VOICE
beside him is incredulous.

You found him?

In his hurry, he forgot to mention it. It was not what he was thinking of, as he slid into the cot.

Why didn't you come get me?

She sits up. She grabs his shoulder with her sticky hand and shakes him.

I was playing dominoes in the pantry, she says. As I always do.

Her head wags back and forth in bewilderment.

In the pantry, she says. Just down the stairs.

He knew that; he did. From the embittered cook, she had already won twenty-two cigarettes, which she kept in a biscuit tin at the bottom of his wagon and often asked him to recount.

I don't understand, she says slowly, while poking him. We had a conspiracy.

When she jabs her hand at his chest, it feels searching, not spiteful. She brings her face down to look at him, and he thinks for a moment that she is going to press her ear against his heart and listen.

Then she subsides, without warning. The sticky hand is withdrawn. She inhales sharply, in discovery.

Oh! she breathes. The two of you—

He wishes that she would poke him again, or shake him. That she would not take away her hand.

But full of understanding, she whispers to him:

You wanted to be alone.

WE CANNOT LEAVE HIM ALONE
! the children wail, clutching onto the sides of the pony cart. They take turns staring miserably after the half-wit and directing poisonous glances at their sister. Horrible girl! It was not his fault, they are certain of it: all the blame they reserve for heartless, bungling Beatrice.

Mother will thank me, she says as she applies, with cruel precision, the switch. The cart lurches forward: He's no good as a husband.

But he had nice manners! they protest.

Who needs manners? snaps Beatrice. His cock stopped working at the hospital!

That seems an unfair way of putting it.

You just didn't know how to work it properly, declares Mimi, the youngest and also the most foolhardy. In her eyes there is a defiant look, always, even when she is about to fall asleep.
I despise sleep!
her shining eyes declare as the lips droop ever more heavily downwards.

Drunk with her own courage she continues, unwisely: I don't think you pulled it hard enough.

For there he is, standing in the ditch, in the moonlight, with his smooth face and his noble body, not looking broken or imperfect at all.

I don't think you knew what you were doing, Mimi persists.

Beatrice swivels in her seat and gazes down at her siblings, huddled in the back of the pony cart, wincing in expectation.

The load is so much lighter now, she says, without fury. And then: We can go even faster if we let off one more.

This observation having been offered, the brothers and sisters keep their complaints to themselves. Instead, they stare behind them at the idiot, who, with every flick of the switch, grows smaller and more indistinct, though they are certain they can still make out, even from here, the slow hypnotic churning of his jaws.

YOU WANTED
to be alone, Madeleine says.

Rather than answer, the photographer embraces her, and for one or two minutes it feels fairly wonderful. Her nose sunk in his shirt, his arms around her; her breathing, without permission, falling in step with his own. Ahhhhhhh, she thinks, words leaving her. Ahhhhhhhh. There is only weight, warmth, covers, breath. Far down below, their feet touch.

But after one or two minutes have passed, the embrace becomes intolerable. Madeleine believes that she will die, that if she can't escape the arm, or kick her feet out from beneath the covers, she will surely, quickly, quietly die. She feels the panic of the dying: a swarming on her skin; a series of soft explosions coming closer; the difficulty of finding her next breath.

So she twitches, lets out a sigh; she acts as if sleep has come to take her. He relinquishes her then, he delivers her up. The parting is easier this way. And he curls over on his other side, tucking his hands beneath his cheek.

She is not sleepy in the least. She wants only the coldest part of the bed and slides to the far edge in search of it. But as soon as she arrives, she misses him. She would like to eat him up, if possible, or else be eaten up herself. If she were to kiss every part of his body, it would not be enough. She could gnaw at the back of his neck, suck on his fingers, cup his nose in the warm cave of her mouth and it would not suffice. To smother herself in his nice-smelling shirt,
allowing his weight to extinguish her last breath, would still leave her wanting him. And he is not even the one she loves.

She cannot tell which is more strange: enjoying his closeness, or thinking she might die, or suffering this sad bout of appetite.

TOMORROW, THEN
? Madeleine asks.

And with a sick heart she imagines the three of them panting on the grass, the hospital a glittering red shard in the distance; M. Pujol rolling on his side to gaze at the photographer and the photographer, beneath his gaze, beginning to smile (there will be wine in the afternoons, a basket lowered and raised from the window); and the act thus coming to its end, the night descending swiftly like a curtain—but then, there in the dusk, is the pop of a tin being opened. The shadow beside M. Pujol releases into the air an unmistakable smell, a shadow with small shoulders and two great mittens for hands. It leans closer, becoming Madeleine. She is offering him a selection of twenty-two cigarettes. They tempt him; he chooses one, and as he draws up onto his elbows to accept her burning match, he is astonished to observe how well she looks, how her complexion has brightened and her features softened, how resourceful she is, and generous, how irresistible the scent of her cigarettes—

Madeleine turns to the wall. She has got it all wrong. Open a tin? Light a match? She vows to return her winnings to the cook. The cot creaks beneath her, the photographer sighing. He is not answering her questions.

Again she asks, Tomorrow?

Adrien reaches for her hands but cannot find them.

Tomorrow? she asks, back curved away, withholding everything.

He does not want to come with us, he admits at last.

THEY WILL COME SOON
, Mother thinks, and puts flowers in a jar, tugging them up from between the floorboards. Her blessed children, and a bridegroom! She sings to herself in a low, gay voice, one she hasn't used in a long time, perhaps since her discovery of the mole on her husband's side, blooming just beneath his ribs like a small patch of lichen. All this time, and yet something new! How wonderful that his body, so well known to her, should still be capable of surprises. Such are the gifts of marriage.

I will count them for you, she sings to her daughter, her hair drying on the pillowcase. And upon finding herself unable to do so, she croons, They are without number.

WHY WON'T M. PUJOL
leave the hospital?

Because he is without hope.

How did he lose hope?

By accepting that he will never have what he wants.

What does M. Pujol want?

He wants to perform as he once did, in a theatre, wearing a tailcoat.

And why can he no longer perform?

Because audiences care little for authenticity or artistry.

No, truly, why can't he?

Because he requires an audience that is quaint, small-minded, suspicious, excitable, easily made red in the face. And such an audience can no longer be found in Paris. Or Toulouse. Or the Bois. Or many other places in the world.

HAVING SORTED OUT THE FACTS
, Madeleine whispers to the photographer: I plan to build him a stage. In my town, where they will love him. Then you can show him the poster, with his name on it, and he will be persuaded to come.

A stage? repeats the photographer, half-asleep. He finds her hand; he holds it up to the dim windows.

You? Build a stage?

He presses his mouth against her hand and kisses it.

Yes, Madeleine says, a real stage, inside a grand theatre, large enough to fit all the people in my town. There will be little footlights, and a velvet curtain, a printed program, and—

A poster. His name. A picture: a man delicately parting the tails of his coat. And letters, she is saying, tall red ones, as Adrien slips off to have a dream about his brother. In his dream he moves more freely than usual, leaping over things, yelping, swinging his arms high above his head. If he runs, he is able to keep up with Félix quite easily. And off they go crashing into a pond, where they slap the water's surface with their outstretched arms, as though they had grown the heavy wings of a swan.

When he wakes, light pouring through the windows, he finds himself spread selfishly across the cot, sheets bunched at his feet, and she, with her sticky hands, already gone.

FROM THE CURVE
in the road, the children can already see their mother, doubled over and heaving, exiting from the doorway backside first. She moves with the narrow, shuffling steps of a person towing a much larger and more lifeless body. Why hasn't she called Father for help? And all at once they turn pale, for having arrived unannounced they have done it at last: caught Mother in the midst of her private activities.

It's not Madeleine? Lucie asks, in a quavering voice.

No, says Jean-Luc, who is taller and proportionately less dramatic: It is only Mother's chest.

Only! The girls rise up on their toes, straining to see for themselves. The chest is forbidden to them, never opened, frequently polished, smelling faintly of candles when they press their furtive noses against its seams. Inside, they are told, they will one day find their mother's most beautiful things. And so Beatrice imagines a spill of silk underclothes, light as froth, and Mimi, who believes her mother's tastes to be in perfect accord with her own, pictures the glistening brown eyes of the tame monkey she longs for, while Lucie imagines a mirror, brimming at the edge of the chest like a pool: when the lid is finally raised, she will gaze down at its clear surface, seeing her own face, and those of her sisters.

No one imagines a veil.

A veil! Beatrice gasps, as Mother lifts it from the open chest, its sheer white length floating out from her fingers. A thousand tiny stitches hang aloft in the morning air. They have heard of this veil;
how many times has their mother described the putting on of it, the splendid wearing of it, the lifting of it to disclose her husband's gentle, nervous face, peering down at her? How lightly it must have rested upon her hair! Up, up it rises, curling like smoke, until at last it dissolves into a great cloud of goosedown, peculiar goosedown, which, rather than slowly tumbling to the ground, darts off merrily in all directions, the thousand stitches revealing themselves as moths.

OH NO, MURMURS BEATRICE
, who has watched her mother greet the bad news of ripped sheets, a sick cow, burnt bread, curdled milk, with an alarming degree of outrage. And now this, a true tragedy—perhaps they had better turn around and come home tomorrow.