Madeleine Is Sleeping

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  But when the dresses arrive, cocooned in crisp tissue paper, they are not the gossamer confections that she has imagined; indeed, they make her appear even more uncanny: half-child, half-beast. The bodice and skirt are indistinguishable from the convent uniform, austere and shapeless and busy with buttons, but the arms: they droop like two flaccid elephant ears.

  Scherzo

  PERHAPS IT IS THOSE unwieldy arms that make the gypsies love her so. They pluck her from the crowd as if she were the roundest and ripest fruit, and the eleven other girls squirm with envy. A disappearing trick! Sister Clavel wrings her hands; outings make her perspire and she is happy only when her charges are praying or asleep. Madeleine smiles at them from the center of the ring as the gypsy mama unspools, from one of her several and cavernous pockets, an endless piece of string.

  Displaying it for all the crowd to see, she secures the greasy end between Madeleine's fists and circles around her with the swiftness of a spider until Madeleine looks like a well-wrapped fly. Can she breathe? Sister Clavel worries, while Bernadette steels herself, preparing to make the rescue.

  The little package is raised aloft by the gypsy mama, and then tossed, with a series of shouts, from one epicene acrobat to another. Firecrackers hiss and the sickly, frail animals begin to fret inside their cages. The audience stomp their feet like tribesmen, join in the chanting of the gypsy words, and suddenly, from out of the cacophony, there rises a wounded wail; the midgets scurry, brushing aside a velvet curtain, behind which sits a beautiful woman, who saws upon her own tautly stretched hairs with the energy of the devil. Her costly dress gapes open, her fingers jig up and down her elegant neck, and her bow bobs back and forth across her belly. The faster she plays, the more her face glows: she is self-illuminating, ecstatic, and her strange, discolored song makes the gypsies dance with the desperation of a bear on a chain. They gravitate towards her, yelping, and Madeleine comes flying with them, shuttling over their heads as they reel in tightening circles around the stringed beauty, whose bow moves so quickly it blurs. She scrapes harder, faster, more frantically, her knees atremble, and then: the bow clatters to the ground, the strings jangle, and the player gasps. The spell is cast.

  Cuddling it in her arms, the gypsy mama returns the ball of string to center stage. A hush falls over the tent. Is the little girl propped on her head or on her feet? By now it is impossible to tell. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh! the mama commands. See and be amazed!

  After a peremptory wiggle of her fingers, she grabs the frayed end of string and yanks it.

  Evanescent

  OFF THE BUNDLE GOES, spinning like a top. It leaves a trail of string in its wake, tracing a desultory pattern across the floor. When it skitters out to the edges of the ring, Bernadette swoops down and opens her arms, but as soon as she can feel its whir, away it goes in the opposite direction, obeying a gravity of its own. Its progress is dizzying; heaps of string litter the stage. The bulge unravels into a ghost of its former self, until all that is left is a latticework of twine, suspended, still quivering, in midair.

  Madeleine has vanished.

  Visitor

  MOTHER IS STARTLED by a thunderous thump, and Madeleine moans in her sleep. Looking up from her cauldron, she sees Papa, cheek flattened against the warm flank of a cow, arm extended and pointing placidly at their roof. Matilde has alighted there, and left droppings beside their chimney.

  Mother bustles outside and gestures at Matilde with her spoon: Not today, Madame, please! Madeleine is sleeping.

  The wings of the fat woman swell: I am conducting a scientific experiment. I should not be long.

  She stoops down and sniffs her droppings. Roses! she announces. It smells like roses!

  How wicked! Mother gasps and seeks shelter inside, her head protruding from the door so that she can remind Matilde: Only the saints' bones should smell like roses. You must have made a mistake.

  Impostor

  MADELEINE IS AWOKEN by the reek of roses, and when she opens her eyes, she sees the gypsy mama, swabbing off her dusky complexion with a handkerchief soaked in rosewater. Beneath, her skin is tuber pale and porous.

  So you are not a real gypsy? Madeleine asks, extracting herself from the depths of a flabby divan.

  Heavens no! the woman exclaims. I was only acting.

  Then please take me back to Sister Clavel, Madeleine says with decision.

  The woman laughs, and her voice pirouettes in the air like one of her willowy acrobats: You may call me Marguerite, she says.

  And then she resumes at the mirror.

  Alchemy

  IT IS NO MISTAKE. Matilde has made a survey of her own droppings, keeping assiduous record of her mood, the direction of the wind, the sun's position in the sky. Since she has taken flight, she is most often seen scratching away in the leatherbound diary she keeps stashed between her breasts: leaning up against someone's chimney, or resting in the crotch of a pear tree, her stubby legs dangling cheerfully. In the left-hand column, the data: a loaf of bread and half a pot of preserves; buttermilk; leg of lamb with mint sauce; beer; feeling melancholy; a moderate breeze from the southeast; sun barely past the church spire. In the right-hand column, the results, which are inexorably the same: chalky color, pasty to the touch, and redolent with roses.

  The scientific spirit has infected Matilde; like her, these droppings are the product of inexplicable change. Atop the village's roofs, which now serve as her laboratory, she hitches up her skirts and relieves herself. She contemplates the evidence and is puzzled by the enormity of the transformation—the seedy strawberries, the marbled side of ham, the bumpy rind on a wheel of Camembert—all reduced, distilled, made uniform: nothing is left of them except this puddle of excrement, white as an eggshell, and fragrant as June.

  Jean-Luc, who has been waiting for her visit, climbs over Claude and slides out of the bed. Before Mother can catch him, he has rushed out of the house and hoisted himself onto the trellis. He trembles on the highest rung, but only his forehead rises over the edge of the thatching.

  Pardon me! he cries.

  Matilde leans over the edge to see him better. Her bulk casts a shadow over Jean-Luc's upturned face.

  My kites got tangled, he says, and jerks his head towards the pasture, where a fragile forest of kites has knotted itself into a skein. They flap fretfully against the sky.

  Will you please untangle them? he asks.

  Matilde squints at him. She recognizes his froggy voice, remembers that he could throw far and accurately. She suddenly misses her slow and suety processions. Astride a rooftop, above the hubbub of those bound by gravity, she longs for the market days when she paraded down the street.

  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.

  Stripped

  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 fing
ers 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.

  La Lucrezia

  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.

  Palimpsest

  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.

  Scriptor

  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.

  Method

  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.

  Le Petomane

  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.

  Performance

  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 reg
ions, 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.