Across the room, absorbed and content, Mademoiselle Objet observed the proceedings. She hadn’t realized until this very minute how much she had wanted the two of them to meet—the two of them. Both whom she loved so very much.
Feeling as completely delighted as she did at the moment, she was almost startled awake when, a few minutes later, the workroom phone rang.
“She’s busy. Occupied. She can’t come to the phone,” said Mademoiselle Objet to the caller. “Would you like to leave your name?” She paused briefly, listening, then repeated herself. “She’s busy, I told you. She cannot, at the moment, be interrupted. Would you like to leave your name?”
The caller apparently did not want to, for Mademoiselle Objet, by now quite obviously irritated, had begun to tap-tap her pencil on the corner of the desk. “As I’ve already told you,” she said, “you can’t. No, not even later. You don’t understand. She never speaks to anyone.” She said it emphatically, with finality; then she semi-slammed down the phone.
“Who was that?” asked Madame Métier.
“I don’t know,” said Mademoiselle Objet. “A man. Some upstart. One of your fans. He wouldn’t give me his name. But whoever he was, he has no idea how busy you are. He actually thought he could speak directly to you! But don’t worry. He’ll never bother you again.
“Smile,” said Monsieur Sorbonne, across the room, but no longer could Madame Métier smile. A ribbon of sad contemplation had wrapped up the light in her eyes, and her sparkle had receded, irretrievable.
“Perhaps we’re finished,” said Monsieur Sorbonne. “Your mood seems to have changed. Perhaps it was the interruption.”
“I’m sure you have enough photos,” said Mademoiselle Objet, “and if you ask me, it’s a good thing you got them before that nuisance called.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Madame Métier. Her voice was cloudy, distant, as if it had come from a cave, but Mademoiselle Objet didn’t notice.
“So do you mind, then,” she said cheerily, “if Monsieur Sorbonne and I go off together for the afternoon? He’s taken the day off from the Artifacts Museum.”
“I don’t,” said Madame Métier, insisting a smile through the veil of her disappointment. “Have a good time.”
CHAPTER 28
Madame Métier Is Once Again Alone
It had been Monsieur L’Ange, she was sure, who had called, and Madame Métier felt almost desolate to have missed him. Who knew where he was or how she could possibly find him.
Work—in this case, having her photograph taken—had once again impeded her life as a flower. Had her work in itself ever made her feel happy, she wondered? Had it made her feel delicious or carefree? It hadn’t. It had satisfied others, had healed and transformed them; but in the way that sitting by candlelight on the sitting room floor or lying with her head on Monsieur L’Ange’s chest had made her heart happy, work hadn’t made her happy at all. It had given her a deep sense of purpose, but it hadn’t made her feel liquid or fluid. It hadn’t made her feel like a woman.
She thought of Monsieur Sorbonne and Mademoiselle Objet, sitting right now as they must be, under a large umbrella somewhere, enjoying each other and the sun, and she felt pity, that most despicable of all feelings, for herself.
Perhaps it hadn’t been Monsieur L’Ange on the phone after all. Yet the mere thought of his calling had somehow rearranged her. She had felt excitement. And sadness. One right after the other. She had felt—and that, after all, was the point. She had felt with him, after so many years of not feeling, and she had imagined that because of feeling again, life might now also contain some other new things: soft moments of stillness, beautiful words, romantic happenings.
She hated the mood she was in, twinged at the heart like a schoolgirl, feeling a crooked admixture of desperation and longing. It was unnerving. She needed to gather herself, somehow to collect the dispersed components of her fretted psyche so that whether or not she should ever see him again she would be able, in spite of herself, to go on with her work.
Desperate, she put on her red bathing suit and headed for the beach.
CHAPTER 29
Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange Have a Reunion
“Having a work that you love is a gift. No matter how sorrowful your heart,” Madame Métier had just written in her notebook, “you have had, always, the great privilege of your work.”
“You look so beautiful, sitting there and writing in your notebook,” said Monsieur L’Ange, who had just arrived through the mists at the beach.
He sat down beside her, and wrapping his arms about his knees, which he had drawn up pincer-like in front of him, he turned sideways, looking at her. “I called you this morning, but I was told you were busy. The woman who works for you was extremely focused on something. She was rude to me, in fact. I didn’t want to further upset her.”
“Thank you,” said Madame Métier.
“But you’re sorry you missed me.”
“Yes. And …”
“You were afraid you might never see me again.”
“I had been.”
“I knew you were. I wasn’t worried. I knew I would see you later. Here.”
“How did you know?”
“I knew that after being sad you would come here, to try to make yourself feel better.”
“You know everything, don’t you?”
“Some things. Yes.”
There was an immemorial quality about the moment. Silken. Blessed. Magic. A soft breeze, like the presence of clouds, blew over them. Fine strands of Madame Métier’s hair unwound like long white ribbons striping her field of vision, and as she looked across the long plage of white sand, she felt suspended in time and she could find no voice, no language with which to speak of all the things she was feeling—where, only a few nights ago, together, they had been, where they were now, and where, in time, they might be going.
Beside her, mysteriously, he could feel all this. He unwrapped an arm from around his knees and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“I know it’s hard to talk,” he said. “Sometimes there are no words. But we don’t need to talk. Let’s walk. I need to walk.” He got up, and pulling her up with his hands, helped her put her things in her basket. Then with long elegant strides, they walked together down the beach.
CHAPTER 30
Mademoiselle Objet and Monsieur Sorbonne Have a Tête-à-Tête
Monsieur Sorbonne and Mademoiselle Objet were, indeed, sitting under a white umbrella at an Outdoor Lunches Restaurant.
“I’m happy,” said Mademoiselle Objet, as if this were a remarkable state of affairs.
“I’m happy, too,” said Monsieur Sorbonne. “Why are you happy?”
“I’m happy because my rash is gone. I’m happy because you love me. I’m happy because we’re sitting here in the sun. I’m happy because I like my work, and I’m happy because it seems like things have finally settled down. Why are you happy?”
The sun blasted down on the white umbrella, sheltering Monsieur Sorbonne from the harsh noonday brightness.
“I’m happy because I’ve had a good lunch—fumed salmon and pink lentil soup. I’m happy because you love me. I’m happy because I’m here instead of at work. I’m happy because today, again, I was able to take some photographs.”
“Do you think you got some good photographs? Do you think you got the photograph for the TeleVisions station?”
“I think so, probably,” said Monsieur Sorbonne, though slightly without conviction. He was thinking of Madame Métier’s little breakdown—or so, at the moment it had seemed to him, the way her mood, like a sunny day broken by clouds, had suddenly changed.
Mademoiselle Objet tap-tapped her long silver lemonade spoon mindlessly on the table. “What is it about this day?” she said, finally. “Everything was wonderful this morning, and now everything’s fallen apart. Something happened when that caller called. That man. Madam Métier went out the window. And now you. What’s the matter? Are you unhappy with the ph
otographs?”
“No,” said Monsieur Sorbonne pensively. “I’m sure the photographs are fine.”
“Then what’s the matter? Are your salmons over-fumed? What’s going on?”
“Something. I’m not sure. Maybe I was upset by the phone call this morning.”
“Oh, yes. The Pest. That nuisance. Wasn’t it great, how quickly I got rid of him?”
“No, actually, it wasn’t,” said Monsieur Sorbonne. “You shouldn’t have, I don’t think. I don’t know why, but I have, distinctly, feeling that Madame Métier really needed to talk to that person.”
“But you were right in the middle of photographing her.”
“I know, but there was something … necessary … I don’t know.”
“That’s right, you don’t.” said Mademoiselle Objet. “These people call all the time, just to carry on about the cremes. If we let them all through, there wouldn’t be any cremes. We’d never get anything done.” By then her voice had ascended to the higher registers. “I’m sorry,” she said, catching herself. “This is ridiculous. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so upset.”
“And I don’t know either—why I am,” said Monsieur Sorbonne. “But there was something about that phone call, because afterward … Madame Métier could no longer smile. She had been so poised and radiant all morning … and then….
With her long silver spoon, Mademoiselle Objet stirred her pink lemonade. “You’re right,” she said, thoughtfully, “I was being so efficient that I hardly noticed.”
“Something, though,” said Monsieur Sorbonne dreamily. “Perhaps we’ll never know. Come. Let’s take the film to be developed. I can’t wait to see the portrait of our beautiful Madame Métier.”
CHAPTER 31
Monsieur Sorbonne Returns to Work
When he returned to work the next day, Monsieur Sorbonne felt a slight disgust upon entering the Artifacts Museum. It seemed dusty. The marble halls seemed high and cold. The crypt in the basement, where he was still cataloging the wall stones from the ancient Egyptian temple, seemed sepulchral and grim. Where was the Ladies’ Room maid he’d photographed two days ago? He sensed that, vaguely, he missed her. And where was Madame Métier? Distinctly he felt that he missed the radiance of her presence in which, for several hours yesterday, before the distracting phone call, he had been able to bask.
There was a memo on his desk from the Chief Curator of Artifacts. Where was—and when would the new collection of Pre-Columbian sculptures and toe rings be organized for display? It was soon to be overdue and Monsieur Sorbonne, the Chief Cuurator noted, had prepared it neither with his former promptness nor enthusiasm, and it was far behind schedule.
In fact—and here the curator seemed to be becoming long-winded, extending his memo over onto the second side of the insipid blue-lined yellow memo paper—Monsieur Sorbonne’s performance in general, wasn’t quite up to snuff.
“If it doesn’t come back up to par soon”—vaguely, between the lines, Monsieur Sorbonne could feel the slight threat of removal—“We shall have to seek other means of accomplishing our exhibits,” it concluded.
This threat, unnerving as it was, did not untowardly affect Monsieur Sorbonne; for by now he had been so deeply affected by something else—the sense, quite distinct, of the utter inappropriateness of his employment at the Artifacts Museum—that he simply could not be bothered by it.
He was thinking, too, of Madame Métier, and, more specifically, of how he had felt in her presence, of how arranging and rearranging her face, her hands, and her hair in the light, he had felt for the first time, a real sense of meaning. To capture the human consciousness, to reveal the mystery of a single human being, to deliver the picture of a soul—and, in particular, of her extraordinary spirit. Ah, yes, all this at last and finally and only, seemed to Monsieur Sorbonne to have meaning.
He studied the memo. He should, he knew, get to work. He unwrapped the boxes of Pre-Columbian figures. As usual, there was an infinity of fragments. Bored by them all, dejected by their endless minute incompleteness, the shattered ancient ridiculousness of every one of them, he laid them all out on the gray felt-covered surface of his long work table.
First it had been Iron Age razor blades. Then it had been Etruscan pot shards. It had been shattered Peruvian pillars and weighty Egyptian wall stones. Now it was Pre-Columbian crumbs. Where would it end—in what disorganized piles and elaborate reconstructions?
Feeling as if not ever again, not once, not even for a minute could he contemplate, let alone scintillate about cataloguing or rearranging anything, he put on his coat and closed up his crypt and, deciding to have a premature lunch, stole out of the Artifacts Museum and went to the Films Development Store to pick up the portraits of Madame Métier.
CHAPTER 32
Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange Have a Dinner
“I know very little about you,” said Monsieur L’Ange a few hours later as, once again, they were sitting in the restaurant. In the background the faintest notes of piano music were playing and Madame Métier, entranced, had drifted off into them. “About your life, for example,” he continued. “About who you really are.”
She started again to talk about her work, the forthcoming TeleVisions show, the calla lily creme, the photographs yesterday morning.
“I know all that,” said Monsieur L’Ange. “It’s the rest, the everything else that I’m interested in—your hopes and dreams, what sparkles your heart, what you think about when you lie awake in the night.”
“How kind of you to ask,” said Madame Métier, “to want to know.” The piano tinkled in the background, elegant and fine, a chain of notes that hung suspended, jewel-like in the air. “What sparkles my heart—how delightful!” she said and smiled. “The beach. My red bathing suit. My workroom. My silk dressing gown. Giving my love through my work. Feeling the love of the earth for the stones, of the air for the sun, of the wind for each petal and frond. Making things. Inventing my cremes—the magic of that, the incomparable joy of being a part of—how shall I say it?—the work of creation. Serving. Being a part, though only the tiniest part, of the healing. The mystery of all that. The privilege …” She paused.
Across from her, Monsieur L’Ange was deeply listening. “You walk such a beautiful path,” he said. “Your love is so deep.” He reached his huge hands across the small restaurant table and stroked her hands lovingly, gently. “Your work is your love, and I’m so happy it’s been there for you, that it has sustained you … through all the losses.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“There have been many losses.” He said it matter of factly.
“Yes. I suppose there have been some losses.” Once again, she could hear the piano in the background, delicate, haunting, and sweet, a counterpoint to her words, a cradle, a hammock to receive them. “Some dear ones have died. My husband. A beautiful child. My father. But there have been gifts always, also, that came along with them.”
“The river of life,” he said. “Shining. Flowing. Returning.” He waved his hand in a sort of whispering figure-eight in the air. “You know the deep things—the losses and the gifts that come with them, and how in the end they grow your soul large. But I’m sorry you’ve had to go through them alone, that there’s never been someone to hold you, no arms around you, no shoulder to lean on.” Once again, magically, like a maestro, he waved his hands beautifully, hypnotically through the air. As if in so doing he had somehow mesmerized her, she quietly, dreamily smiled.
“So what do you dream of at night?” he asked.
She smiled once again. “Beautiful flowers. Flowers I’ve never heard of or seen. Plants with unimaginable healing powers. And love,” she said. “Love so strong it could heal the whole world.”
“You are that love,” he said, tracing with one of his fingers, each of her fingers, and then her lips, then the lids of her eyes. “That’s why you’re so beautiful inside and out. That’s why wherever you go, a sort of light follows you. But yo
u also need your own experience of love. Come,” he said. “Let’s go home.” So saying, he laid some money down on the table, and taking her hand into his, invited her to stand up. Arm after arm, he helped her into her long black coat, then wrapping his arm about her shoulder, he escorted her out of the restaurant.
Her body disappeared when he made love to her. It was as if she was no longer bound to it, contained by the configuration of her legs, her arms, the shape of her skin, but broken out of its cage, released into the seamless infinite whole, let go of and made free, so that when she came back—to the bed, to the pale blue blankets and white sheets, to the room with the high white moon staring in like a witness at the window, and even to his arms—she felt a small inexpressible sorrow as if the world, his body and her own, and even life itself, were somehow strangely an insult, a very small container for the huge, the magnificent thing.
“It’s hard to come back sometimes, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes.”
In the light of the moon she lay still next to him, adrift in the lapping tide of his breath, the sound of his steadily beating heart, waiting for sleep to overtake her. But she was strangely awake and he was, too, beside her. As she played with his hair and stared into his beautiful eyes in the moonlight, she felt a strange mixture of contentment and sorrow; but she was unable to speak it. The joy was the joy of being here now, beside him; and the sorrow—she couldn’t quite name it.
“You’re still awake?” he said, finally.
“Yes,” she said. “And I don’t know why, but I’m sad.”
“Don’t be sad,” he said. “We’re going to have a wonderful time.” So saying, he clasped her close to his heart, and, wrapped to him like moss to a stone, she finally slept.
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