Madeleine Is Sleeping

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  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 The sticky hand is withdrawn.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.

  Unmanned

  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.

  A Puzzle

  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.

  Denied

  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.

  Song

  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.

  Madeleine Reasons

  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.

  The Photographer Dreams

  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.

  Dowry

  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.

  Unveiled

  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.

  But Mimi, the youngest and most foolhardy, has already leapt down from the cart and begun running towards the house. As her feet fly beneath her, as her breathing quickens and the long grasses wave her on from the side of the road, she thinks, with each shuddering burst of her heart, That is my mother. There she is.

  Maman! she cries, coming closer, and the familiar figure turning towards her, arms spread. Maman! she shouts, for she is running to meet her mother, with her thick waist and her deep skirts and her dark, intoxicating smell. So pretty! is what she sobs before sinking far into her mother's folds. Then, surfacing only long enough to say it, her face swollen, her eyes swimming with love: You must have looked so pretty.

  For this is a revelation to Mimi, that Mother for her wedding wore moths in her hair, a revelation that casts her in an entirely new light.

  Reel

  MADELEINE IS CARRIED HOME in the company of bees. Before sunrise, she walks away from the hospital at Maréville, until in the darkness she comes upon a wagon, lit by a dying lantern and driven by a drowsing boy, whose head lists far to one side as he is pulled helplessly back into sleep. It is with hardly any effort at all that she breaks into a little run and scrambles up among the beehives on their way to Saturday market, the boy not even turning around or murmuring in protest.

  She leans against the hives and dangles her feet over the edge of the dray, watching the road unfurl in her wake. To move backwards in this way through the landscape that she left long ago—it makes her feel like a kite being reeled in from the sky. Passing beneath her are dusky fields, linden trees, a scattering of stony houses. The sleeping boy pulls her forever back, past the cupola atop the mayor's new house, past the slate roofs and the barely smoking chimneys, past the sprigged curtains hanging in upper windows, the painted doorways, the homely fences with their latched gates, past the pigsties and the henhouses, past the little low bench where her mother sometimes liked to catch her breath. And though Madeleine knows that her long spell of weightlessness has finally come to its end—the tug of the string, the smell of damp earth—she feels, contrary to all expectations, her heart begin to lift.

  Log

  MME. COCHON TOUCHES DOWN upon the chemist's shop. Here, with a light wind blowing and the sun still caught behind the church, she pulls her diary from between her breasts. She presses the tip of a pencil to her tongue.

  In the left-hand column, she notes:

  At dawn, ate a plum. Bitter. Spit it out. Saw wagon on road to Saint Nicholas. Beehives in back. Madeleine slid out. Pangs of indigestion. Watched her walk into woods. Dress needing a good scrub.

  For now, the right-hand column remains empty. Mme. Cochon is not her regular self today.

  On the left, she continues:

  Mid-morning, took some tea. Appetite returning. Clouds dispersed. Wanting jar of pear jam. No chance to ask. Children arrived with cart. Beauty in back.

  It is the sight of this stranger, sitting in the pony cart, that prompts Mme. Cochon to write her first full sentence of the day.

  She must drink vinegar to keep herself so slim.

  Visitor

  BEATRICE DOES NOT RISK making the introduction immediately, as Mother hails her triumphant children parading through the yard, the moth-eaten veil all but forgotten, the chest abandoned by the doorstep, but of her own accord the stray woman dismounts from the cart and inches towards the gate, where she waits to be noticed, invited in.

  Mother straightens, plucking Mimi's arms from about her waist: Who is that?

  There are gypsies wandering about, and thieves, and she has also heard many chilling accounts of kidnappers. As for this woman, is that a trick of the light, that makes the shape of her head seem familiar? It is unnerving, the way she gazes so wistfully at the house, the yard, the swarm of clamoring children. Yes, she is well-dressed, but her hand crawls up and down the length of her pale neck like a spider.

  The sight of this stranger prompts Mother to ask: Where is M. Jouy?

  Oh Mother, Beatrice exclaims, what a story we have to tell you!

  And as if on cue the other children stop where they are and drop down onto their bottoms, elbows on knees, chins in hands, rapt faces turned towards their sister. Mother, her suspicions aroused, her eyebrows raised, remains standing. It is difficult to tell whom she regards with greater misgiving: her gesticulating daughter, grown so tall now, or the vagrant woman hovering outside her gate.

  Beatrice Says

  ON THE ROAD WE FOUND a woman, covered in blood. As she walked, she left behind her a trail of red drops, falling from her hair and her sleeves and the tip of her chin. But she was so beautiful, so much more beautiful than we could ever imagine, we stopped the horse and asked her to come with us.

  We wanted to know, Why are you covered in blood?

  She told us, It is the blood of my husband. I returned to him because I had grown lonely for the sight of my face, and for the sound of my voice.

  We asked her, How lonely?

  And she told us, So lonely that I heard it in the branches of trees, in cart wheels and doorknobs, in the moans of a flatulent man, in all kinds of wind. And though I scraped on my body and ordered it to speak, the sounds I made were strange to me.

  And so I went home to my husband, and as soon as I stepped into his gardens, I heard him playing. I heard the sound of my own voice, carrying to me from an upstairs window. But when I entered his house, the viol fell silent, and all that I found, sitting down to his supper, was my enormous husband—

  And then she killed him! Claude cries as he slices an invisible sword through the air.

  Hello

  CLAUDE IS BANISHED to the orchard, to say hello to his father.

  I'm home! the boy cries.

  So you are, observes his fa
ther, arms high above his head, hands lost in the mottled ceiling of the leaves.

  When his hands emerge, holding apples, he offers one to Claude.

  And your trip, Father asks, it was pleasant?

  Claude nods, mouth occupied.

  And the horse did not complain?

  Claude shrugs his shoulders.

  Tell me, Father says, where is it that you went?

  As Claude struggles to swallow, Father apologizes.

  Your mother—she has a business, she's thinking all the time—and with her mind so full, she sometimes forgets to tell me.

  Claude takes another bite, so he doesn't have to answer.

  Underworld

  AS I WAS SAYING, Beatrice perseveres.

  My husband seemed not at all surprised to see me, perhaps because he had grown so used to looking at my face. Where is Griselda? I demanded, and he merely shrugged, intent upon helping himself to a great quivering pudding.

  In the scrapheap, I suppose, is all my husband said. And then he considered: Or maybe burned as firewood last winter, when it grew so very cold.

  I watched as he carved off the glistening leg of a goose.

  On further thought, said my husband, it is most likely at the orphanage, because in my old age I have cultivated the habit of charity. Did you know that they are musical, orphans?

  I knew only that my husband was lying. For hadn't I heard her raise her lament, heard her sobbing to me from across the gardens? And who better than I to recognize the sound of my own voice?

  See for yourself, my husband told me. And off I ran into the dark passageways of his house, a black labyrinth of chambers and corridors that had remained, even when I lived among them, impenetrable to me. But now I moved through them with a strange clarity of purpose, as though a little lamp were burning before me, and the doors I remembered as locked now fell open beneath my fingertips. Room after room of his mother's shrouded furniture; and my old bedchamber sheathed in white; and his libraries, the books rising untouched from floor to ceiling; and his practice room, spare as a cell, with sheets of music still spread on the stand—