Scarcely had she finished these thoughts and dried herself off than she heard the sound of Mademoiselle Objet’s key in the door. Hurriedly, she straightened the bed, got herself dressed and presented herself in the workroom where Mademoiselle Objet, already planted, sullen, on her chair at the workroom table, had that particular countenance that threatened a slight or immense volcanic eruption.
“So how is everything?” asked Madame Métier, appalled by her own ridiculous trivialness. Distraction, indeed, passion, had reduced her to a temporary state of stupidity, and Mademoiselle Objet, as if insulted, refused to answer. I’ll have to do better than that, thought Madame Métier; but before she could try, Mademoiselle Objet in her cattiest voice said, “So, have you finished your research, and are you an authority, now, on resurrection?”
It was shocking, how awesomely close to the truth, at times, Mademoiselle Objet’s most seemingly offhanded and mean remarks could be.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I suppose I have,” said Madame Métier, being slightly catty herself. She was angry that already, at this early hour she should have to deal with Mademoiselle Objet and her verbal torpedoes. A red shaft of rage, uncharacteristic, startling, swept majestically across her eyes. Across from her, Mademoiselle Objet looked back with a steaming fury of her own.
Madame Métier absorbed its raw orange glow but said nothing, no word of defense, nor assault, nor explanation. But inside she could feel the forming of a deep resolve. This whatever it was—this dalliance, this resurrection, this summer calliope with Monsieur L’Ange—she would have it. And no matter how Mademoiselle Objet might react, no matter if she had tantrums out to the stars, Madame Métier would have it, this miracle, whatever its consequences for her work.
Having thus resolved her position, she softened. Feeling as loved as she did at the moment, she was moved to compassion for the vituperative Mademoiselle Objet. It was difficult, after all, for a person of such perfected organizational attributes, to put up with so eccentric a woman as herself.
“Let’s have some tea,” she suggested finally. “I’ll bring some up.”
“You always want tea,” said Mademoiselle Objet, now petulant, frowning. “You always think tea can solve everything. Let’s get some work done! It’s always something with you. Every day’s an exception, and you always have an excuse. I did as much as I could yesterday—all by myself—and now I can’t do anymore. Besides, who knows where you were. At the library!? Doing botanical research!? I’ll bet!” Her voice was a siren, a blowtorch, shrill, almost screaming. “For all I know you were having a secret romance at the beach!” There she was—almost exactly on target again. “The next thing I know you’ll be running off in the sunset with some man half your age, and I’ll never see you again.”
Expended, she now started to cry, and Madame Métier, taking pity, sat down beside her. Then very gently laying Mademoiselle Objet’s head on her shoulder, she patted andpatted her hair, and laid her hand very still on her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” she said, herself still a little distracted. “I know I’m difficult. And I always get anxious when I’m about to do a new creme.” Her voice trailed off. It was a half-truth, only a part of the equation, the part that had to do with her work, which now, in light of her night with Monsieur L’Ange, seemed totally irrelevant. But to speak of him, or of it, to Mademoiselle Objet, that was impossible. He was her treasure, a mystery unfolding, and Mademoiselle Objet with her scissors-sharp words would, she feared, stab at her secrets and cut them to ribbons as, in her uncanny intuition, she had already all but stumbled on them.
But Mademoiselle Objet had now settled down. Her sobs had diminished to a whimper. “It isn’t even the work,” she said finally, sighing. “We do enough work. We do have sort of a routine. It’s just that I miss you when you’re not here. When you’re around, I feel light—as if everything is possible—and when you’re not, I feel empty and scared. Working with you, just being here in your presence, gives me such peace. And peace—feeling peaceful—that’s what I live for.”
“I understand,” said Madame Métier. “I do understand. And now that we’ve got all that figured out,” she concluded, laughing a little, lifting up Mademoiselle Objet’s head and wiping away the last tear, “let’s get some ridiculous work done.”
CHAPTER 23
Monsieur Sorbonne Begins to Photograph People
Having photographed Mademoiselle Objet as she slept, Monsieur Sorbonne had gone promptly to bed, but he had lain there for hours beside her thinkingly awake. There was something so true in the message from Madame Métier—that he should photograph only people—that once having heard it he had felt greatly relieved. Indeed, in capturing Mademoiselle Objet as she slept, he had learned some things. He saw that in taking her photograph, he looked at her with the eyes of his soul. Instead of seeing her anxiousness, her volcano-like aspects, he saw the loveliness within her; and although she would always remain his most favorite subject, he also felt moved from within now to also photograph other people.
Having at last gone to sleep, he arose the next morning in a state of confidence and great expectation, and, loading his camera with a new roll of film, he left early for work with the camera box tucked under his arm.
It was strange how, because of Madame Métier’s instructions once-removed, all human beings now looked different to him. Although as he walked the long way to work he felt drawn again and again to the elaborate cornices of buildings, the elegant proportions of doors and windows (there was still, to his eye, great beauty in all the works of civilization); it was remarkable how suddenly it was human beings that captivated him.
A day-nurse holding the hand of a bawling child was crossing the street and he photographed them in motion. Then a taxi stopped at a school. Scarved, mittened, and squashed together in the back seat like a pile of marshmallows, a rosy-cheeked bundle of children from the Orphan’s Home disembarked. He snapped and snapped as each one of them piled out. I’m in too much haste, he thought to himself; I’m wasting my film. But when he got to the Artifacts Museum and was greeted at the door by the tall, blue-uniformed guard, he was captivated once again and asked if, with the guard’s permission, he might photograph him. The blue guard, with his thick leather gloves, stood back, and as he rested one hand on a curlicue of the huge wrought iron door, a look of great pride passed into his face. He smiled a wide smile, and for a moment he looked like a king.
As Monsieur Sorbonne passed through the halls, a hunch-backed chambermaid in a dark-green uniform scurried by, carrying a pile of fresh towels to the Ladies’ Bathroom. As she approached, he asked her to pause; then he click-clicked and captured her look of surprise and delight.
He went to his cubicle in the basement, and leaving his camera out on his desk, decided that, spontaneously, he would photograph whoever entered his room. At eleven o’clock a young workman came to plaster a flaw in his ceiling. He had long, flowing Jesus-like hair and a ragged black pupil in one of his eyes. “Do you mind,” asked Monsieur Sorbonne as the young man ascended his ladder, “if I take a photograph of you?”
“Not at all,” he said, as trowel in hand, arms outstretched, he balanced himself high on the ladder not far from the ceiling.
At eleven-fifteen it was the lavender-haired secretary from upstairs. She had brought down a memo about a new shipment of wall stones from an ancient Egyptian temple. These were all to be counted and catalogued, and eventually reassembled to replicate the temple from which they had been retrieved. He photographed her as she stepped through his door, and as she laid the memo down on his desk, he photographed her plump hand.
So excited was Monsieur Sorbonne by his photographing adventure, that the so-called real work of his day—reviewing the memo, making a plan for the reassemblage of the temple—had utterly escaped him.
He looked at his watch. It was almost lunchtime, and in terms of his responsibilities at the Artifacts Museum, he had accomplished absolutely nothing.
Having so happily
accomplished nothing, he went out at noon, and, in a spirit of anticipation mixed with a shadow of doubt—was his camera really fixed? he wondered—he wound up the film in its canister and dropped if off at the Films Development Store.
CHAPTER 24
Mademoiselle Objet and Madame Métier Make Peace
“I’m sorry,” said Mademoiselle Objet at the end of the day, when they had finished their work and sat having tea, “that I was so cranky this morning. Thanks to you we finally did get a lot of work done. But frankly,” she said, looking directly at Madame Métier, “even so, you have seemed a little distracted.”
There she was again, thought Madame Métier, impeccably almost on-target again. She thought of responding, but just then the phone rang and Mademoiselle Objet jumped up to answer it. “It’s the TeleVisions Station,” she announced. “They want you next Tuesday, whether or not you’re finished with the calla lily creme.”
How could it be, Madame Métier wondered, that at precisely the moment she wanted to be nothing but a flower, she was overwhelmed by work and more work, and that, now, in addition to making her cremes, she was being caught up with TeleVisions deadlines.
“And, by the way, they won’t do the show unless they have a photograph of you,” said Mademoiselle Objet. “To put in the paper and advertise the series. And isn’t it wonderful,” she chirped, “I know just the person who can take it.”
CHAPTER 25
Madame Métier Is Alone
The workday was done. Evening had fallen, and Madame Métier prepared herself a pot of raspberry tea and retreated upstairs to her room. She took a warm bath with a lilac bain mousse and having thus refreshed herself, put on her red-rose-spattered dressing gown.
The bed, smelling faintly of clary sage, was it? or saxifrage?—she couldn’t quite tell—was made, and pulling back the comforter and removing her dressing gown, she arranged herself amidst its avalanche of pillows. The bed felt suddenly huge, immense like the sea, and her body like a small paper boat, seemed lost and adrift within it.
The moon was a huge white eye at the window staring relentlessly in, and as she sat in the bed sipping her tea, she felt profoundly alone. How strange it was, to feel so alone. She had never, in fact, felt quite so alone.
She had not felt alone with the doctor—perhaps because then, when she was young, she hadn’t known herself well enough to feel either alone or connected. She had certainly not felt connected. She had felt harassed and occupied and directed; but she hadn’t, it occurred to her now, felt very much of anything with him. She hadn’t, either, felt alone when he died. She had felt, if anything, relieved. And she had not felt alone with her work. Even before Mademoiselle Objet had arrived to deliver her from the chaos of all her objects, she had not felt alone. She had felt … occupied.
But now suddenly she felt alone. On the far side of the bed, there was a hollow, distinctly empty place where only a dozen hours ago Monsieur L’Ange had lain asleep.
Sipping the last of her tea, she felt suddenly angry at him. How cruel he was, to have treated her so well, to have entered her so deeply, to have opened her heart, and then disappeared. She had been fine, just fine before he arrived—all work and no play, but at peace with her one-dimensional life. Then he had appeared, insisting himself like a hummable, unforgettable tune into the folds of her life so that now, in his absence, she felt … alone.
Like an evening sky streaked with pink streamers of sunset, her spirit was streaked with a thin veil of sorrow. And smelling again the faint remembrance of his fragrance, the emptiness, the void, was poignant, palpable around her. Sadly, she turned out the light, and wondered if she would ever see him again.
CHAPTER 26
Mademoiselle Objet and Monsieur Sorbonne Have a Happy Reunion at Home
When Mademoiselle Objet got home that night, Monsieur Sorbonne was happy as a lobster. He was sitting at the dining room table and studying, one by one, the contents of an envelope of photographs. There they all were, the people who had peopled his day: the day-nurse with the child, the orphan children with their mismatched coats and collars and leggings and foulards. Funny, he hadn’t noticed before, the ancient sadness in all their eyes. And finally, the museum guard, his hat so crisp, his uniform so perfect and blue, his smile so strong and confident, as if he’d become much more than he’d ever expected in his life.
Monsieur Sorbonne went on through the pile: the Jesus plasterer, the secretary, the Ladies’ Bathroom maid. Strange, he had never seen before that look of defeat, and simultaneously, of complete acceptance in her eyes. And the secretary—what character in her face, under the pile of lavender hair—the way all the lines in it were a journey from somewhere to somewhere, and how he could see she had taken the journey, bravely and sadly and gladly, and finally arrived at herself. And then, at last, at the bottom of the pile, the deeply sleeping Mademoiselle Objet, whose lovely face and exquisite hands were etched against the pillowcase in a look of such composure that his heart was overwhelmed with love. No matter her endless volatility. From time to time composure was its counterpart, and although at times it was difficult for her to achieve it, this composure was the essence of her soul.
It’s amazing, he thought, what happens when you photograph people. You see them—not how they look, but who they are at the core.
“Guess what,” said Mademoiselle Objet, running into the room and throwing her arms about his neck.
But Monsieur Sorbonne, lost in a reverie of what he had seen in the photographs, just then did not want to guess.
“I don’t want to guess. Not now,” he said.
“But you have to!” said Mademoiselle Objet. She was bouncing up and down on her heels like an excited impatient child. “Come on,” she said. “Guess!”
“I can’t,” he said, becoming irritated.
“All right, then, I’ll tell you. Madame Métier needs you to photograph her! For the TeleVisions station. To advertise her new series in the paper.”
Drawn back by her words to the room and to himself, Monsieur Sorbonne digested this news. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “That is very wonderful indeed.”
CHAPTER 27
Madame Métier Recovers Herself
Madame Métier was slightly more composed the next morning as she greeted Mademoiselle Objet in the workroom. She had made the bed and tidied her room. She had thrown the calla lilies, whose edges were finally irreparably edged with brown, into the workroom waste can. Trying gamely to ignore the vague strange feeling of loss that hovered around her, she started, uncharacteristically, to tidy up the workroom itself.
She was thinking of Monsieur L’Ange. Perhaps she would never see him again. Perhaps he was only the message that she should have more in her life than her work. In that, surely, if only for a minute, he had been a gift. But she “missed” him. She felt vulnerable, at a loss and askew, like a schoolgirl waiting for a phone call. She straightened some boxes and filed away a few recipes cards, and then she felt a small measure of peace. For a minute, she understood the power of arranging objects as a practice to quiet the mind.
“You look peaceful today, more like yourself,” said Mademoiselle Objet, coming in a few minutes later. “I’m glad, because I’ve arranged for you to be photographed. Amazing!” she said, looking around the workroom, “you’ve tidied things up! You must have known. The photographer will be here any minute.”
Madame Métier was not entirely surprised to discover that the photographer, when he arrived, was Monsieur Sorbonne.
She at first shook his hand, then noticing that he seemed slightly hurt, a consequence, she imagined, of her forced formality, she took his hands into hers and held them both warmly.
From across the room, Mademoiselle Objet looked on. “You already know one another?!” she said, astonished.
“Yes, we do, as a matter of fact,” said Monsieur Sorbonne. Then as if to defend against a possible oncoming explosion, he added, “Worried for you, I came here one night and talked to Madame Métier abou
t some cremes for your hands.”
“I’m so glad,” said Mademoiselle Objet, her voice now light and cheery. “You’re so much alike. Both so calm. Threads from the same peaceful cloth. I always knew that someday you’d meet. I just never knew when it would happen.”
It never ceased to surprise him, the wild array of Mademoiselle Objet’s reactions, the versatility of her moods, how at times she could be so upended, at others so completely accepting. But he was happy that she was happy, and thus relieved, he set up his camera on a tripod, and situating Madame Métier across from him in the light, he instructed her how to look this way and that way, and how to situate her hands in a variety of ways.
“That’s perfect,” he said, crawling out for a moment from behind the large View Camera box and removing a fleck of lint from her blouse. He was excited. These photographs, even more than the ones he had taken yesterday, would be wonderful, he could tell. This woman was so unusual, and she was dressed today like a spirit, in a white voile shirt with a soft wide collar that wrapped around her neck like a cloud.
“Smile,” he said, and she smiled. “Don’t smile,” he said, and she held her face in repose. He arranged and arranged her in various positions, snapping and happily snapping. She was a worthy subject, an elegant human being; but there was something else, too, about taking her picture—what was it? He didn’t quite know, but he felt, as he stood and talked and walked about, arranging her in pose after pose, as if ever so slightly within him all his molecules had changed. He felt suddenly gifted, as if almost without effort he could do his work, as if simply by being in her presence he could capture the perfect image. He felt light, almost beautiful himself, as if without thinking or trying, without metering the light or measuring the distance, the essence of her self would give itself to him.
The Magical World of Madame Métier Page 15
