Recognition
BENT OVER THE FIRE, Mother hatches a plan: small bodies creeping in the night, and then, at the hospital wall, each hoisted upon the shoulders of another. A stairway of children. The very highest step will be Claude: he raps on the window, awakens the slow-witted giant inside. Open the window! the boy urges. I have something for you!
A delicious lure, baked by Mother; a series of soft, mournful bird calls; a pony cart rolled out into position; an idiot falling through the darkness. When he lands, the cart wheels nearly break. The grain sacks exhale huge clouds of dust. The horse rears up, and then is quieted. The staircase dismantles itself. The bridegroom is abducted.
As Mother devises the retreat, a hand mirror appears before her. Beatrice is holding it; she has captured, again, something resembling a cow.
Do not worry, Beatrice says, Madeleine is still sleeping.
In the roundness of the mirror, Mother sees her own face captured. She sees how her eyes are shining, and her mouth clenched, in the great effort of bringing something forth, in the disfiguring strain of it. She barely understands the face as her own.
But I am not a monster, Mother says.
House of the Sleeping Beauties
TO MARRY, TO REAR HER CHILDREN, these things were on the surface good, Mother thinks. But to have had the long years in her power, to have controlled their lives, to have warped their natures even, these might be evil things.
Perhaps, beguiled by custom and order, one's sense of evil goes numb.
Alphabet
IT IS TIME to begin.
This photograph shall be titled, Terror!
Terror? Adrien wonders, beneath his black hood.
You must make the subject appear terrified! says the director. Fear will be the first entry in our alphabet.
How am I to do that? Adrien asks, hidden behind his camera.
This is your science, not mine, says the director with respect. I will stand here, out of the way, and quietly watch you at work.
The Photographer tries
WHEN THEY WERE CHILDREN, Adrien's brother owned a flock of racing pigeons. The pigeons lived in a loft atop the family's barn, and every night Adrien listened to the rub and flutter of their grey wings. Every day his brother trained them, and he watched, following his brother farther and farther away from home, across pastures, through villages, into places he had never been. Always at the moment he felt most thirsty and discouraged, his brother would lift his hands above his head and throw the pigeon into the sky. How loud the wings sounded! As loud as a thunderclap; as loud as the sound of his brother, whooping. It was the elation of this instant that made him walk such distances, in such silence. He wished one day to race pigeons of his own.
Earthbound
BUT HIS BROTHER THOUGHT him better suited to keeping rabbits. While he loved all airborne things, Adrien was the kind who lived close to the ground, who liked to sit under tables, and press his cheek against moss.
His brother had dedicated each of his pigeons to a Roman emperor, a method of naming that struck Adrien as very sensible. So in his hutch, just as in his brother's pigeon loft, one could find a Tiberius, a Hadrian, a Marcus Aurelius, a Nero.
He might have been a good rabbit keeper, but he was forgetful, and this often resulted in their escape. He would forget to secure the latch, or if he took them out for exercise, he would become absorbed in some other small thing and forget to watch them. Once, his rabbits spent an afternoon in the front parlor, where they ate the fringe off an ornamental shawl, and scattered their pellets in discreet places about the room.
Gift
DURING THIS TIME Adrien fell in love with the neighbor's daughter, and gave her the only gift he had, a rabbit. But she already had a pet, a brown and white spaniel, so instead she had a muff made, to keep her hands warm when she went ice-skating in the winter. He did not inform his brother of this exchange.
But he was afraid that his brother would notice something missing. Where's Augustus? he might ask, and then Adrien would have to tell him. For this reason he grew anxious in his brother's presence, starting when he entered a room, and jigging around the hutch, to distract him, whenever he drew near. When his brother asked him to display his rabbits at the fair, he refused.
His brother did a simple thing, then: he awoke Adrien in the night, led him to the hutch, and as they stood before it, in the starlight, watching the rabbits sleep, their sides softly heaving, he stamped his foot and clapped his hands. Just once, and sharply. It was an act so simple, so sudden and mysterious, that even after he had knelt down, unfastened the latch, and emerged with a rabbit, limp in his grasp, Adrien still did not understand what had happened.
Don't you see, his brother said, in exasperation: They are timid creatures. I scared this one to death.
Terror
ADRIEN BURSTS FROM behind his camera. With his foot, he stomps. With his hands, he claps.
With sympathy, the patient smiles.
Perhaps, whispers the director, a different method is required.
The photographer is apologetic: If only you knew Félix, he says. If only he were here.
But he is in Paris, on the boulevard des Capucines, where he is draping a length of dark velvet about the divine Sarah Bernhardt, so that her shoulders will not appear too skinny.
Oh Félix, he sighs. Félix.
Disappearing beneath his hood, Adrien continues to mutter the name, and each time he does so, it is with a new expression: meditatively, at first, but then in surprise, as if he has encountered, there in the darkness, the very person he happened to be thinking of. Félix! It is an exclamation of sheer and startled delight, and the reunion a happy one, if somewhat reproachful. The name is spoken in a playful, scolding tone, and then, Félix, he says, more mildly this time, to indicate that all is forgiven. But in the midst of this cheerful exchange, a note of worry is introduced. Félix? he asks. Félix? he says, with increasing agitation. Perhaps the friendly meeting has taken a turn. Perhaps old resentments are awakened, the brother's brow darkening, the brother pulling himself up to his full height. Félix, he squeaks. Félix, no! he says, now fully alarmed. But maybe the brother is not coming closer. Quite possibly, he is walking away. Quite possibly, he has tired of the encounter, has an appointment to keep, and wishes to continue on. Over and over again the photographer cries, and it is impossible to tell if his despair is that of a person menacingly approached, or that of a person left behind.
Félix! he cries. Félix! Félix! Félix!
The photograph is a success. In it, the patient wears an expression of fear.
Objects Lost on Journeys
MADELEINE'S HANDS make her useless. But she jostles the wagon, stoops over the canisters, and squints at the bulbs, in order to create the appearance of usefulness.
Have you found him? Adrien whispers.
Not yet, Madeleine says. I'm too short.
Adrien balances a glass plate between his hands, its surface etched with a terrified face, and says, I am beginning to worry.
Have you ever, he wonders, begun a journey with a suitcase, and guarded that suitcase closely, keeping it beneath your bed at night, and watching over it at the station like a mother? Then the suitcase is lost, but you are consoled, because a lady passenger has given you a pair of eyeglasses with green-tinted lenses, and you guard them on your journey with all the care that you once bestowed upon your suitcase. Then the eyeglasses are shattered, but you hardly notice, you have become so attached to the first edition you found in a moldering bookshop. Then the first edition tumbles over the railing of the ferry, the ferry carrying you from one end of the lake to the other, and when you land, and see the pretty town on the side of the mountain, you remember: on a stiff card, tucked into the lining of your suitcase, there is written the address where you are expected.
Are you worried, Madeleine asks, that we will never find him?
I am worried, Adrien says, that I will leave the hospital, that I will travel for many days, and only upo
n wandering into a market and finding a stall selling figs, or meeting the eyes of a young prostitute, or stumbling over a mangy dog run out into the street, only then will I realize what I have forgotten to bring with me: M. Pujol.
Usury
WHAT MADELEINE THINKS IS: Oh yes. I know what you mean exactly. Like the words: Orchard, swallow—but she cannot finish, because even to think her words again is to use them, to wear down the coins through repeated touching until they are of no value at all. So instead she says, stoutly: Do not worry. I will find him. And then we will all escape.
Coupling
MADELEINE, IN SECRET, wonders what will happen after the rescue takes place. There is the problem of numbers. The girl, the photographer, the flatulent man: three of them panting on the grass, with earth clumped in their eyebrows (escape by tunnel), or welts rising on their wrists (escape by rope). Or perhaps they are altogether untouched, having cooked a sticky and soporific pudding which the matron, unknowing, served the director with his lunch. Three people lie sprawled on the grass, chests hurting, the hospital far behind them.
Will the flatulent man rise up on his elbows, seeing Madeleine as if for the first time, noticing 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? (Why did I not see it before? he wonders. Right beneath my nose! he marvels.) Or will he roll onto his side, and find himself gazing at a dreamy young man, of a gentle and accommodating temperament, with whom he might retire to a fishing village on the edge of a warm sea and develop a lasting friendship? (There will be wine in the afternoons, he thinks; there will be a basket lowered and raised from our window.) Will he rise up on his elbows, or will he roll onto his side? It is impossible to predict.
If only a fourth should appear! The plucky kitchen boy, who aided the escape. The cynical magistrate, heart softened by the nobility of their cause. The long-lost fiancée, believed captured by pirates, who has disguised herself as a foreign prince and earned a university degree. The resourceful milkmaid; the soldier; the poet, disaffected with his art. Anyone would do. Even the matron, the director, the Dromedary Boy. All are loveable, once one learns how.
Because a certain symmetry is required. If not everyone is accounted for, the plot seems less bold, the escape less like an escape. What had once seemed a story is revealed as nothing more than a series of miscalculations, muddles, trap doors, false alarms.
New Entry
BUT THERE IS NO NEED to continue searching for the flatulent man. He is delivered to them. Or to Adrien, at least, on a temporary basis: the subject for a study of Embarrassment.
M. Pujol's face, upon seeing the photographer, causes the director to reconsider. He is Stupefaction, the director cries, personified!
Adrien ducks behind his machinery. He, too, is taken by surprise. For here at the hospital, where hygiene is so furiously pursued, the matron has forbidden moustaches, especially those that require waxing, and M. Pujol's face, destitute of moustache, is hardly recognizable as his face at all. It would have been preferable if he had lost an eye. Also his body: it does not seem the same. Underneath the white smock that all the patients must wear, M. Pujol appears to be less perfectly slim, less gentlemanlike, and though Adrien has seen him a hundred times without clothes, the thought of it now horrifies him, faintly.
For this reason the photographer remains hidden beneath his black hood, even after the director has left them alone. He is afraid that if he were to emerge, his own face would be legible, a new entry for the alphabet. Under D, for Deadened Affection? No, that is not it, exactly. The sight of M. Pujol still provokes him. He is dismayed to feel something twitching, like the snout of a little dog rooting in the leaves. He snaps it backwards on its leash; his nose wrinkles at what it has found.
Perhaps, if M. Pujol were behind the camera and he in front of it, the photograph would be titled Repulsion.
Pardon
THE WIDOW? She is well?
We have come to rescue you.
And the others in our company?
But we haven't figured out a plan.
So you are no longer taking art photographs?
The girl and I. We came here.
You have chosen, instead, the scientific. As I did!
It will not be easy.
Though I think I might be a disappointment to the director.
She loves you.
Apparently little can be learned without opening me up.
I am just helping her.
Could you say that again? Your voice. It is muffled.
What if
THE PONY CART, never known for its reliability, seems now in danger of collapsing altogether. It is unaccustomed to the weight of M. Jouy, who sits placidly at its edge, his feet dragging along the dim road and raising dust. To keep the cart from upsetting, all the brothers and sisters have scrambled to the front. They disagree over who will wield the switch. Their teeth rattle in their heads. But this cannot stop them from singing.
We are the most cunning family in the world! Claude shouts to the moon.
Jean-Luc, who has strained his back, is not as convinced of this.
Next we should kidnap the prime minister and demand ransom, says Lucie.
No! cries Mimi. He dislikes children, and will make an unpleasant prisoner. I say we should take the princess, who will do everything as we tell her.
Oh, it is easiest for the little ones! Jean-Luc moans.
To Claude's disappointment, M. Jouy has not joined them in their singing. He has not spoken, in fact, since his abduction, nor made any sound at all.
It is because his mouth is full, says Mimi.
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?
Hold Me
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.
Delivery
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.
Dominoes
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.
Madeleine Is Sleeping Page 9
