Madeleine Is Sleeping (15 page)

Claude, she says, to the child who is shuffling his feet the most miserably. Sweep the larder.

And to the youngest, to Mimi, she says, Bring me apples and pears.

But Maman, cries Mimi, before anyone can stop her: Nobody buys your preserves anymore.

It is true, a fact so plain that it must not be spoken. The children watch their mother in consternation. She is closing her eyes; she is nodding her head; she is accepting the truth of the remark. Collectively, the brothers and sisters wish for fury. But rather than inflaming her, the statement exhausts her, and she sinks, face slackening, back into her chair.

Silently, Mimi vows: I will fill a hundred baskets for her.

MADELEINE MEASURES
, placing one foot before the other. Here will stand the proscenium. Here, the orchestra pit. And over there, she would like for M. Pujol to have a private dressing room. But with such luxuries, where will she put the seats? Red upholstered seats, with armrests made of velveteen! She places one foot before the other. She imagines the possibilities. She counts twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, and then her toe bumps into the wall. The wall says: This is only a barn. Maybe a platform made of apple crates, maybe a sheet hanging from the rafters, will have to do.

The walls of the barn are ribbed with light. From between the planks, slats of daylight fall onto the floor, and as Madeleine measures, she notices how they flicker, the narrow strips of light beneath her feet. She puzzles over why that should happen, why they should darken and then go bright again, as if each slim ribbon were experiencing its own miniature eclipse, the moon passing in rapid succession from one slat of light to the next. Why should such a thing occur, Madeleine wonders, and with untimely delay the answer arrives at the same moment she realizes: I am surrounded.

Or, more generally speaking, the barn is surrounded. By a throng of onlookers, short in height, and long accustomed to moving soundlessly. She feels their presence like a moist breath, the air thickening with their shallow panting and their running noses, with the effort it takes for them to stand still. Their faces press against the cracks in the wall. Their knees and ankles itch in the spiky grass. And she is not afraid, because they are only children.

What do you want? she says to the four walls.

Claude saw something, replies the farthest.

He said it made him feel strange, says a voice nearby.

We wanted to see it, too, says another.

Is he here? Madeleine asks, heart rising. Did he bring you?

She turns about in a circle, asking of the four walls, Claude?

Oh no, explains the far wall: He's in trouble. They all are. They cannot leave their yard.

Madeleine fights disappointment. She says, So. Do you feel strange?

They take a moment to consider.

A little, says one.

Not as much as I had hoped, admits another.

I feel precisely the same! the far wall declares.

In that case, says Madeleine, you should make yourselves useful.

She strides over to the barn door. The children swiftly shadow her, rushing in from all sides like water circling towards a drain, and she throws open the door. They are ready to meet her; they stand at attention. So many of them, looking famished and eager, restless and sly, capable of enormous secrets. They look exactly like the children she remembers.

The following, Madeleine says, are things that I need.

AT THE HOSPITAL
at Maréville, the flatulent man moves his finger lightly over the anatomical diagrams, noting: They will open me here. And here. They will make their way past the duodenum. The twisting jejunum. And then my gifts will be exposed!

A shadow passes over the page. M. Pujol looks up from his diagrams and sees that an enormous woman with very small wings is hovering outside the window and obscuring the light. He stands and raps upon the pane.

Madame, he says. I must beg you to move.

One moment! One moment! the woman gasps.

She shakes at him a handful of broadsheets: I have agreed to distribute these!

With a little kick against the window, the woman pushes off, and agitating her wings, maneuvers herself until she is hanging directly above the walled garden. Here, the hospital's inmates are taking their daily exercise. The matron marches in their midst, instructing them to lift their faces to the sunlight, to inhale deeply the smell of daffodils. The patients would very much like an excuse to lie down in the grass and loll about. So when a flurry of paper comes floating down from above, and the matron begins excitedly blowing upon her whistle, the inmates take this opportunity to stretch out on their backs, cross their ankles, and examine at their leisure the curious broadsheets, just as a Parisian would idle in the park with his morning paper. But rather than reading the news of the day, they read about the arrival of an astonishing phenomenon.
They see, in tall red capitals, the letters of his name. They gaze at his picture: a man delicately parting the tails of his coat.

His light restored, M. Pujol takes up where he left off. His finger finds again its place on the elegant diagram. This display of seriousness prompts the director to pause in the doorway and smile. Never before has a patient demonstrated the same eagerness he himself feels when undertaking an operation. It touches him, strangely. And in order not to dampen the subject's enthusiasm, he has restrained himself from mentioning certain risks.

I HAVE LEFT THE HOSPITAL
behind me, Adrien thinks, his gaze fixed on the horizon, but sure enough, like a little dog or a servant girl, a sheet of paper comes flying out from behind the hospital gates, as if trying to delay him. It catches against the back of his knees and, stuck there, rustles plaintively.

The photographer twists about, freeing the paper from behind his legs, and though it flutters in his grip, he manages to read its tall red letters. His face brightens. Oh yes! He squints at the trembling page. I knew there was something I had forgotten to do.

Show him the poster; persuade him to come.

He remembers her hot, small body next to his in the cot.

Her sticky hands. Her voice whispering. A poster. His name. The people in my town. What else had she said?

The two of you—
You wanted to be alone.

And the photographer's face goes suddenly smooth, with the same sharp swiftness that Mother snaps the bedcovers straight—all thoughts, all creases, banished. He crumples the paper into a ball and pushes it deep inside his pocket. He refastens his eyes on the road ahead.

I have left the hospital behind me, says Adrien to himself, again.

OF ALL THE THINGS
that she can do with her fingers, what Madeleine enjoys most is counting on them. She also likes to use them while giving orders. For instance, she can put her index finger to very imperious purposes, such as when she points at a high-backed chair and says, Move it over
there.
Then she can hold up her fingers and count, nine chairs—plus a milking stool, a piano bench, a daybed—after which she loudly announces, We need thirty-six more.

The children have thrown themselves entirely into the spirit of the enterprise. Among the items that Madeleine counts are four curtain rods, two chests of drawers, seven candlesticks, a cuspidor and, unrequested, eight brittle teacups from Limoges. Perhaps refreshments should be served during the intermission. The more sensitive audience members might require it, weakened as they will be after laughing so helplessly at the feats performed onstage. After shouting, howling, writhing, staggering; and some will probably begin to suffocate.

Madeleine counts the number of tickets she must supply, then counts the little footlights that will illuminate the stage. But no matter how many times she figures it, one calculation continues to escape her. Girl, photographer, flatulent man. Any lesser number will not suffice. For she and the flatulent man are exquisitely shy, incapable of looking one another in the face. While she and the photographer are capable only of groping. And the two men,
together, do not exist unless she is there to gaze on them. What does that leave her with? The intractable number three.

As she counts it once more on her fingers, she is comforted unexpectedly by the arrival of a wonderful thought. She holds her fingers up to the light.

I CAN STROKE
, she thinks, with the tip of this finger, the soft hair growing on the back of his neck. I can do it so gently, she thinks to herself, he will not even know that he has been touched.

Excuse me? asks a scratchy voice at her elbow.

She looks down into a smudged face.

I think you dropped this.

The boy hands her a braided cord she had been holding, just a moment ago, with the intent of attaching it to the curtain. Taking it between her fingers, she tells him, Thank you.

He smiles hugely. But before she knows it, he has fallen down onto his knees and leapt back up again. He is handing her, once more, the braided cord.

Here, he says. You dropped this. A second time.

She reaches out to grasp the cord, but seems suddenly to change her mind. She tucks her hands behind her back. She says to him,

Why don't you hold it for me?

Which the boy is more than delighted to do.

MOTHER HAS LOST
a bridegroom, a business, and seen her heirlooms devoured by moths. But her thoughts are occupied with other losses. They visit her, one by one, at the table where she sits, like petitioners, those things that have been misplaced or neglected in the course of her schemes. The thread of a conversation: You are a woman of science, she had ventured, but how had Mme. Cochon replied? The ending of a story: so did that bloody woman ever find her lovely face? And also lost, the goodwill of her neighbors: I am far too busy! she had puffed herself up on many occasions and said.

Lost too, perhaps, the trust of her children.

As if in answer to her thoughts, her youngest daughter appears before her. Her face is streaked with dirt and tears. She is holding something heavy in her skirts, the cloth bunched in her hands, the hands pressed to her heart. With a cry, she lets go. Fruit comes tumbling down from her skirts and goes scudding across the floor. When an apple finds its way to Mother's foot, she leans down with a sigh and takes it.

It is misshapen; it yields to the touch. If she were to bite into it, the mouthful would be mealy and bitter. Looking across her floor, she sees that all the apples and pears are similarly afflicted: humpbacked, wormeaten, spoiling on one side.

I looked and I looked, Mimi whispers, and this is what I found.

CHILDREN HEAVING
, the curtain is hoisted up to the sky. It spills down from the rafters like a waterfall. Madeleine gets lost in it, fumbling in the darkness, adoring its density and its weight, the dusty smell in her nose.

How radiant she will appear, when she finally steps through! She will welcome them, arms wide, heart pealing like a bell. And the gift she is bringing them—her breath quickens as she thinks of it, quickens as she pictures their delight, their laughter, pink faces, gratitude. Why, it's nothing, she will tell them, just a little gift I thought you would enjoy, a little something I picked up in my travels....

They will never have seen anything like him before.

And how lucky, and worldly, and generous she will appear: the impresario who has brought them such unusual pleasures. That is my daughter, her mother will murmur, and her siblings will push forward in their frenzy to be the first to kiss her. Why did I not see it before? her mother will wonder. How well she looks, how bravely and wisely she carries herself, how her complexion has brightened and her figure filled out, how she has, in short, grown into a beautiful woman. Right beneath my nose!

Madeleine wishes that she could remain wrapped in this curtain until her moment of unveiling, muffled in the darkness of her dusty red cocoon. But there is still work to be done. The
ticket booth is listing; twelve seats are missing; the floorboards need to be secured to the stage. So much more to do! she declares, bending down to grasp a nail, and when she cannot close her stiffening fingers around it, she whispers to them, Not yet. Not yet.

SMALL, DIRTY FEATHERS
drift down onto Madeleine's upturned face. Far above her, Mme. Cochon is flapping valiantly.

Do you see him? Madeleine calls. Is he coming down the road?

Possibly, the fat woman says. He is tall?

Oh yes, says Madeleine. Quite tall.

And wearing a smock?

Oh yes, says Madeleine. All the patients at the hospital must wear them.

But he no longer wears a moustache?

The matron made him take it off.

And his shoulders sag when he walks?

His life, says Madeleine, has not been easy.

In the stately manner of a hot-air balloon, Mme. Cochon floats down from the sky. Her whole self seems to have swollen with her expanded responsibilities. She is not only in charge of publicity, and spotting Le Petomane from afar; her title as stage manager is now official, and among her several duties is welcoming the performer, brushing out his coat, preparing him for his splendid entrance, as Madeleine warms up the audience.

Your star approaches, the stage manager announces, rearranging her wings: He is headed for the barn. He is crossing over ditches and climbing over stiles, as if he already knew the way. As if he were drawn here, like a pigeon flying home.

Of course he is drawn here, Madeleine replies. I have built him a stage.

IN THE MORNING
, when he wakes, the mayor reaches beneath his bed and fails to find his chamberpot. The captain of the gendarmes sits down to his breakfast, only to discover that he has no seat to sit upon. The chemist goes to wash his face, but cannot; goes to open the curtains, but cannot; goes to complain to his obliging daughter, and learns that she also is gone.