“Well, don’t worry, it’s fixed,” said Mademoiselle Objet, handing him the camera box. “Madame Métier fixed it. But she said that you have to take pictures of people. That it won’t work otherwise.”
“I can’t believe it!” said Monsieur Sorbonne. “How did she fix it?”
“I don’t know,” said Mademoiselle Objet. “But why don’t you try it? She does have her ways.”
Monsieur Sorbonne picked up the camera and examined it. It looked exactly the way it had a few days ago, and he wasn’t sure he could bear another disappointment; but then remembering the quite remarkable feeling he’d had a few nights ago in Madame Métier’s presence, he called out to Mademoiselle Objet, “You’re probably right. It’s probably fixed. I’m going out to get some film.” Then, pulling on his blue overcoat, he walked down the boulevard to the All-Night Films Development Store.
When he got home, he loaded the film in the camera and, stealing into the bedroom, he photographed Mademoiselle Objet, whose exquisite hands, like two lilies, lay gracefully across the pillow as she slept.
CHAPTER 19
Madame Métier Has a Date
The restaurant Monsieur L’Ange had chosen for their dinner was one she hadn’t known existed. It was small and, except for the candles on the tables, dark; and, as she could see from the wall-posted menu, had the sort of odd foods that she liked to eat—crêpes, dandelions salad, sunflower walnut pâté—but which she had never imagined could be obtained in a public restaurant.
He seemed to have come here often. A waiter brought them at once two glasses of lemon-iced water.
Sitting across from him now, having removed her black coat and red scarf, and making visible the white lace blouse beneath it, Madame Métier felt suddenly school-girlish, soft, and unbearably shy. She was out on a date, it occurred to her now, or if not a date, then something quite more like a date than anything she’d been out on for years. She was nervous, and at the same time quite calm. For there was something at once so patient and strong about this young man—how old could he actually be, she wondered anxiously again—that allowed her, differently and deeply, to be herself with him.
She ordered her food—a salad with eggplant pâté—and he ordered his, and then in the candlelight, shifting, mysterious, subdued, he started talking about himself.
He had had a difficult life, an unspeakable father who beat him. At sixteen he had left home. He had lived in a box on the streets—“a refrigerator crate,” he said, “it was actually quite roomy”—until eventually he had built up a profession—he was a furniture restorer—and obtained enough money to buy a small cabin. He lived, still, in this cabin, he told her. Over time, he had grown tired of furnitures restoring, and, in recent years, because of the dexterity his hands had acquired in working so finely with curves and woods, he had become interested in the use of his hands for the purpose of physical healing.
“And you?” he asked, when he had finished.
Madame Métier told him about her work, about the development, now, of the calla lily creme. “That’s why I was in the library,” she said. “I was looking up calla lilies, acquainting myself with their properties, for the invention of this creme. And isn’t it lucky;” she said, smiling, “that’s how I came to see you again.”
She felt suddenly strange now, talking to him. Listening to herself, it appeared as if her whole life had been about her work.
“You have lost yourself in your work,” said Monsieur L’Ange, as she started eating her salad. “You have disappeared from your life. You, the woman, the flower herself, has ceased, almost, to exist.”
She felt oddly defensive, attacked almost, when he said this and yet, of course, he was right. She stopped eating and rested her fork on her plate. Necessity had led to … necessity. She had married the doctor, which necessitated that she become the doctor’s public decoration. The doctor had died, necessitating that she begin again with her cremes. She had begun with her cremes, necessitating that she employ Mademoiselle Objet. Her work had succeeded so that now she was busier than ever. One necessity had led inexorably to another, and now here she was—inexorably entrenched.
And “the flower of herself,” as Monsieur L’Ange had so charmingly called it, the woman in whose garden bloomed roses, the woman of the red silk flowered dressing gown—not the woman who created cremes, but the woman whose body might receive them—she, the flower, had disappeared.
Monsieur L’Ange sat across from her saying nothing. Vaguely she thought she saw him set his fork down on the table. When was it, she wondered—if ever—that she had last felt the flower of herself? When she was picking up scraps from the floor and washing the dishes and putting them up row by row for her mother? No, not then. When, as a young girl in school she had studied histories and maths and algebraic equations? No, certainly not then. When, with her father, she had walked in the garden watching him handle the petals and fern fronds? Yes, briefly then. Quite happily then. When, as still quite a young woman she had gone dancing? Yes, certainly then. When, one night after happily dancing, she had met her husband, the doctor? Yes, briefly, for a moment, then. But not after that. Not since the doctor. In fact, because of him precisely, her blossoming self had come to an end. She had wilted herself. Her self, along with the fronds and petals and stamens she had put away in the green striped hatbox, had been vanished away to some closet. She was shocked as she paused to contemplate this.
Quietly, thoughtfully, she picked up her fork and continued to eat her dinner. She felt frozen in some corridor of her life, while this mysterious man sat across from her in silence, observing, eating his dinner himself. She felt strange, irritated almost, that he had brought up such a personal matter. How, out of nowhere had she, with him, a virtual stranger, arrived at such a disturbing juncture? Very simply, it seemed. He had talked to her about himself and then asked her a simple question. And now, remarkably, here they were.
“You’re afraid that your life will be only all work,” he said then. “That there will never be anything else—no romance, no dancing, no playing.”
“Yes, perhaps,” she said. She could feel again a slight irritation. Irritation, was it? Or sadness? Or fear? He was persistent, invasive almost, but strangely caring; she could feel it. Inside her a little wall crumbled down. A woman who had been guarding something—her heart, perhaps, or a certain way of seeing herself—surrendered, gave in.
“I hadn’t thought so,” she said, “but now I see that you’re right. There has been only the work.” She paused. “And I hadn’t known that”—she smiled a little, poignantly, allowing herself to discover the truth in what he was saying— “until I sat here with you. Now suddenly my life seems terribly one-sided. I feel like I’ve disappeared.”
“I know,” he said tenderly. “But you haven’t. That’s why I’m here.”
Feeling his words, she stared off for a moment through the windows of the restaurant and into the distant rose-colored evening, as if in its pink voluptuousness the sky could tell her something. Streaks of clouds hovered, voluminous, filmy, like a woman’s gauzy skirt across the floor of the horizon, and feeling its luminous ethereal beauty, her eyes misted briefly, and a few little tears started slowly skidding their way down her cheeks.
“The tears?” he asked, reaching across the table and taking her hand into his.
She sighed. “Ah, yes, the tears …” Now she could feel them, the intricate subterranean rivulets starting to spill, and yet she felt strangely comfortable with the little outpouring, as if here, in his presence, softly, she might become a woman with tears. “Your kindness,” she said, “the thought … that you might have come here for me … I’m not even sure what you mean…. It’s surprising … unimaginable really.” She paused for a moment, allowing the slow tears to fall, then wiped them from her cheeks with the edge of her white linen napkin.
“And the other tears?” he said then.
She looked at him quizzically.
“The library tears. The tears you
were in the midst of when I found you earlier today.”
“Ah, yes. Those tears …” She gathered herself. “They were about my father. I used to meet him often at the library. Sometimes I miss him,” she said, and unexpectedly, again, the tears started flowing.
“You are so beautiful when you cry,” said Monsieur L’Ange. Then, standing up from his side of the table, he stepped around it to sit beside her. He put his arm around her then, and cupping her head with his hand, he tilted it ever so slightly until she found a place on his shoulder, where, softly, she continued to weep.
“You’ve waited so long to mourn,” he said, brushing away the sheets of her hair which shrouded her face like a curtain. “Thank you for mourning with me. You give me great honor to show me your tears.”
In the distance across the restaurant, a single black-suited waiter had turned out most of the lights. Except for the two of them, the restaurant was deserted. “I’m sorry, Sir,” said the waiter approaching their table and presenting the check, “but we’re closing. If you don’t mind, could you take care of this?”
“Yes, certainly,” said Monsieur L’Ange, and releasing her head from its place on his shoulder, and retrieving his billfold with his free hand, he paid the check.
It was strange, what had just occurred, a flood of tears she hadn’t even known was there, and across the table and then beside her, this man’s receiving of them. She stood up to put on her coat and he stood up beside her, helping her into it, arm after arm. She said nothing, and together they walked out slowly through the silent restaurant.
“I’d feel better,” he said, as they stepped out into the street, “if, after all this, you wouldn’t go home alone.”
CHAPTER 20
Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange Have a Seance
It was very strange, thought Madame Métier, being followed at night into her house by somebody else, especially a man. In the downstairs sitting room she lit several candles, and leaving Monsieur L’Ange alone, she went to the kitchen to make them some tea.
When she returned he was sitting there, shoeless, in the half-light, legs folded on the floor. “You have a wonderful house here,” he said finally. “It has a very sanctified feeling, though the feeling, I can tell, was achieved at a great price.”
“You’re right,” she said. She took off her shoes, sat down on the floor next to him, and poured out the tea.
He sipped it a moment, then set his cup on the floor. “I’m sorry the man who once lived here abused your spirit so much,” he said finally. “He had a small spirit, a very constricted—how shall I say it?—selfhood … personality.” He paused, breathing deeply, as if waiting for something—more information, or words, to be given to him. “He concerned himself with … the unimportant things. He was afraid. Of living.” He paused, again breathing deeply. “And of your power. You have so much and he had so little. That was very difficult for him. That’s why he needed fast cars. He was desperate, trying to keep up with you.”
Beside him, Madame Métier said nothing. She had put down her tea and in the shimmering light of the sitting room was now taking in all he had said. He seemed to give words to what she had only guessed in her bones. What would he say next?
“May I kiss you?” he said.
She didn’t answer. Instead she allowed herself to be gathered into his arms like a sparrow. For a time they sat there together, entwined in the half-light, pale soft shadows of the candles flickering against the walls, the heat of the light, the sound of the air, and the slow, strong pull of the stars enclircling them as he kissed her and tenderly kissed her, until in a place unoccupied and distant, a cathedral began to open inside her.
Later, upstairs in her bedroom, the moon, through the high-paned window, imprinted a huge rectangle of light on the wall, as if the light itself were a room that could be occupied. Monsieur L’Ange stood quietly in it, as if indeed it were a room, removing his socks one by one, then slowly unbuttoning his shirt.
She opened the bed, folding back the white down comforter, the pale blue blankets, exposing a field of white sheets. He lay down beside her. Across the room, on her dresser, the two white calla lilies hovered in their vase, stately, regal, open, each single-petalled cornucopia luminous and shining in the moonlight.
Wordless, he entered the cathedral of her body, holding her head like a chalice in his two hands. In the dark she could smell his fragrance—clary sage was it? or saxifrage?—and see his round eyes, their lashes like two awnings above them, his hair streaked ever so finely with white. And when they had worshipped together, and he had returned to a place at her side, she wrapped herself to him, laying her head on his heart, half closing her eyes.
In the half-light, half wakeful, she breathed. She could feel his breathing beneath her, and the beat of his heart, a melodic, strange, vivid, comforting music, a hammock in whose hum she dozed, then awakened, then dozed once again, until hours had passed in such half-sleep and half-wakefulness.
It was then, inexplicably, in the half-light of the early morning, eyes half closed, that she first saw it—the crown of thorns above his head. An ominous circular shadow, it rose, ascended in her vision slowly, then hovered above him in the gray light of the room. It was vague at first, a silhouette only, but then as she washed it started to take on an ever more explicit form until she could see all its twisted interwoven branches, each thorn elegant and deadly, and then all its thorns and all its branches, intricately intertwined. Then a few minutes later, when it had finally attained full focus, it just as quickly disappeared. It was replaced then in her vision, by a perfect circle of crystalline droplets, a coronet of tears that laced itself across his chest, then rose up high above his body and hung suspended in the air.
She paused, stilled, quivering, then breathed and looked around the room. Then, quivering still, she laid her head down on his chest.
With her head on his chest, in his half-sleep, he reached out his hand and smoothed and smoothed out her hair.
“You have seen something,” he said.
“Yes. And I don’t know why, but it makes me unbearably sad.”
“Stay close to me then,” he said. And holding her head in his hand for the rest of the night, angelically, they slept.
CHAPTER 21
Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange Greet the Day
“You are very beautiful when you sleep,” whispered Monsieur L’Ange. Morning light streamed in through the windows, and Madame Métier was astonished to see him still there beside her. There was a great peacefulness about him which never before in her life had she known in a human being. For her, now, the world felt new. It felt almost unreal, as if it now contained things of the dimension of another world, things unfamiliar, luminous, beautiful, and strange.
Wordless, she looked at everything—at him, at the light, at his eyes, at the calla lilies on the dresser, the frames of the panes on the windows, the folds of the blankets on the bed, the shape of his feet beneath them, the pale yellow walls, the high ceiling.
“Look,” he said then, pointing to the dresser. “Calla lilies. I hadn’t noticed them last night. How beautiful. The symbol of resurrection.”
Incredulous, she looked at him. Resurrection—how did he know? She wanted to tell him in words the things beyond words—that for her, he was the resurrection, that with his body he had redeemed her, delivered her from the life of all work to the life of being a flower. But she felt shy. The words eluded her.
“It’s alright,” he said shussing her lips with his fingers. “No need for words. It’s your turn now. It’s your time.” Then kissing her once again, he raised himself up from the bed. “I need to go now,” he said, and started to put on his clothes.
“By the way,” he added, pulling on his white trousers, fastening his white shirt, “the woman who works for you, she won’t like me because I’ll distract you from your work. But the man she loves—you have a very deep kinship with him; you can tell by the red handkerchief, the roses on your dressing g
own—he’ll help her come to her senses. They both love you more than you can imagine and they will be with you always, even until the end.”
So saying, he embraced her once more. Then, in bare feet, he walked down the stairs and let himself out the front door.
CHAPTER 22
Madame Métier and Mademoiselle Objet Have a Salty Encounter
It was amazing, wasn’t it, how everything could change. How at one moment you could be so entirely focused on one thing—your work—and then, with the touch of a hand or the strange rearrangement of your secret cells, you could be lifted up out of it all, be exquisitely refocused, suddenly redesigned. Truly, she had stumbled across some line. Madame Métier was thinking all this in the shower, streams of rain falling down like an endless array of small jewels, rhinestones and diamonds, moonstones and opals pelting her body.
It was true—now she could see it so clearly—that for years now, she had been breathing and sleeping and waking this strange botanical legacy of her father’s, without so much as a moment’s contemplation of what it had done to herself. It had been necessary, of course. She had needed a source of income, and the cremes had been her only choice; but it seemed sad now—wet ringlets of her hair fell languidly to her shoulder, and stepping out of the shower she gathered them up in a fluffy white towel and carefully tamped them dry—it seemed very sad indeed—she stepped on the small blue bath mat and applied some rose petal creme to her legs—how far she had gone from herself. It was strange, it was wrong, to have lived for so long a life of no life, a life of no words, of nobody and no body, of no whispering things in the dark. Of no touching, no hands, no making love.
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